UK businesses, big or small, can help spread diversity and LGBT rights worldwide, a meeting at the Foreign Office will hear.

Radius, the LGBT business networking group, is organizing the panel session. It will help businesses big and small to plan expansion abroad – in particular how to look after LGBT employees working abroad in countries which may have poorer gay and trans rights.

John Marshall, a British national, has been arrested in Rome, Italy on suspicion for brutally murdering a gay tour guide and torturing another man.

The suspect met online the victim, a 55 year-old man, in a gay chat room and arranged to meet him in person, reported the The Telegraph today (24 February).

British firms have been slower than their American counterparts to promote themselves to the LGBT market.

But one bank is starting to change that. Lloyds, which has more UK customers than any of its rivals, has started to introduce a gay flavor to some of its advertising campaigns.

In particular, a TV commercial for Lloyds TSB screened late last year mixed a gay couple, taking their hedgehogs for a walk on a Segway, into its cast of characters.

A trans women from Beylikduzu in Istanbul was shot last Saturday, tragically extending 2012's list of murdered transgender women in Turkey.

Gunce Hatun, a 19-year-old who worked as a sex worker was shot dead on the street, said Kemal Ordek a Turkish steering committee member for Transgender Europe.

Turkish news reports say that police arrested a man who is a driver for a private bank. He claimed Hatun tried to force her way into his car.

This brings the number of murder trans women in Turkey this year to six.

Manchester Pride, one of the UK’s biggest and best gay festivals, is to donate £52,000 ($84,000, €64,000) to charity – but its profits have been halved by bad weather.

The event charges for entry to the streets of Manchester’s gay Village during the pride weekend but always spreads its profits around the north west’s LGBT and HIV charities.

But this year’s festival in August in the gay capital of northern England faced a perfect storm of wet weather and a UK-wide decline of 20% in charitable giving.

Sometimes it can feel difficult to make your voice heard, to have an impact, to feel like you’re making a difference to the people and the world around you.

You can feel lost, overwhelmed and a little powerless as the millions of people around you busily go about their daily lives, politicians bluster about things that seem important but remote, and the media constantly reminds us how bleak the outlook for everything is.

A new survey has shown that two thirds of life assurance companies now offer HIV life assurance through independent brokers.

The survey, carried out by medical financial advisers Unusual Risks, asked the nine largest life assurance companies in the UK whether they would accept applications from HIV positive applicants. Of the nine, six responded that they would.

I ache. And not in that oft occurring post-workout self-righteous way or that occasional occurring post-coitus mixture of satisfaction, shame and regret. No, it’s PEP that has made me ache.

Most people haven’t heard of it but PEP (or post exposure prophylaxis) is a month-long treatment if you have been exposed to HIV to, hopefully, prevent you getting the virus. It’s not for the faint hearted.

And my experience of it over the last week has made me question sensible Susan status of continuing the course of drugs.

It may seem like a small world, but businesses are getting bigger.

Plenty of companies now like to send their employees out on tasks or positions in other countries, but this can mean lesbian, gay and bisexual people find problems they did not have at home.

British gay rights charity Stonewall has produced a guide called Global Working aimed at employers who have staff on overseas assignments across the globe, including in countries where it is illegal to be gay.

Manchester Pride organizers announced today tickets are on sale for the 22nd annual Big Festival and Pride Fringe weekends.

The event in North West England is one of the most popular Pride celebrations in the country.

The Big Festival weekend will take place the August bank holiday weekend, 24 to 27 August. Organizers have frozen ticket prices to match Early Bird tickets for £15.

Margarita Pracatan, the campy Cuban chanteuse who wows audiences with her own renditions of pop song favorites, will be headlining Pride Fringe from 17 to 23 August.

Spectrum, the LGBT staff network at banking giant Barclays, has launched its own mobile app to help staff keep up with the latest.

The British banks gay workers can use it to access details of upcoming events, news and links to Spectrum’s social media presence on Facebook and Twitter.

Until now Spectrum, a 10-year-old staff network, has seen most of its membership coming from the bank’s largest office hubs in London’s Canary Wharf, Northampton and Radbroke in Cheshire.