WASHINGTONNews (Updated
January 31, 2009)
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Mon Jan 19, 2009 10:26pm
EST
The decision to hand out the new drugs means
that nine of 20 drugs to combat AIDS are now available to patients in China, the
official China Daily said, citing senior Health Ministry official Hao Yang.
Treatment with Tenofovir, marketed by Gilead
Sciences Inc under the brand Viread, and Kaletra, manufactured by Abbott
Laboratories, cost over $1,500 a year each.
In comparison, the other drugs already
available in
The new offerings come after a nationwide
survey released last year showed that more than 17 percent of HIV patients in
Although HIV infection is incurable,
cocktails of the drugs can control the virus.
Nearly 60,000 people had received free HIV
drugs since they were first offered in 2003, cutting the mortality rate in China
from over a quarter in 2002 to just 5.8 percent in 2007, the China Daily said.
Drug-resistant HIV strains are turning up in
parts of
By MATTHEW LEE and
LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writers Matthew
Lee And Liz Sidoti, Associated Press Writers
Sat Jan 24,
4:12 am ET
WASHINGTON
Obama's move, the latest in an aggressive
first week reversing contentious Bush policies, was warmly welcomed by liberal
groups and denounced by abortion rights foes.
The ban has been a political football
between Democratic and Republican administrations since GOP
President Ronald Reagan first adopted it 1984. Democrat
Bill Clinton ended the ban in 1993, but Republican
George W. Bush re-instituted it in 2001 as one of his first acts in
office.
"For too long, international family
planning assistance has been used as a political wedge
issue, the subject of a back and forth debate that has served only to
divide us," Obama said in a statement released by the White House. "I
have no desire to continue this stale and fruitless debate."
He said the ban was unnecessarily broad and
undermined family planning in developing countries.
"In the coming weeks, my administration
will initiate a fresh conversation on family planning, working to find areas of
common ground to best meet the needs of women and families at home and around
the world," the president said.
Obama issued the presidential memorandum
rescinding the Bush policy without coverage by the media, late Friday afternoon.
The abortion measure is a highly emotional one for many people, and the quiet
signing was in contrast to the televised coverage of Obama's announcement
Wednesday on ethics rules and Thursday's signing of orders on closing the
Guantanamo Bay prison camp and banning torture in the questioning of terror
suspects.
His action came one day after the 36th
anniversary of the landmark
Supreme Court ruling in Roe
v. Wade that legalized abortion.
The Bush policy had banned
Critics have long held that the rule
unfairly discriminates against the world's poor by denying
Supporters of the ban say that the
The ban has been known as the "
Both Obama and Secretary of State Hillary
Rodham Clinton, who will oversee foreign aid, had promised to do away
with the rule during the presidential campaign.
In a related move, Obama also said he would
restore funding to the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA). Both he and Clinton had
pledged to reverse a Bush
administration determination that assistance to the organization violated
Obama, in his statement, said he looked
forward to working with Congress to fulfill that promise: "By resuming
funding to UNFPA, the
Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of
the U.N. Population Fund, said: "The president's actions send a strong
message about his leadership and his desire to support causes that will promote
peace and dignity, equality for women and girls and economic development in the
poorest regions of the world."
"We are confident that under the new
president's direction, the
The Bush
administration had barred
Congress had appropriated $40 million to the
UNFPA in the past budget year, but the administration had withheld the money as
it had done every year since 2002.
Organizations and lawmakers that had pressed
Obama to rescind the
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the move "will help save lives and empower the
poorest women and families to improve their quality of life and their
future."
"Today's announcement is a very
powerful signal to our neighbors around the world that the United States is once
again back in the business of good public policy and ideology no longer blunts
our ability to save lives around the globe," said Sen.
John Kerry, D-Mass., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Population Action International, an advocacy
group, said that the policy had "severely impacted" women's health and
that the step "will help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies,
abortions and women dying from high-risk pregnancies because they don't have
access to family planning."
Anti-abortion groups and lawmakers condemned
Obama's decision.
"I have long supported the Mexico City
Policy and believe this administration's decision to be counter to our nation's
interests," said Senate
Republican leader Mitch McConnell of
"Coming just one day after the 36th
anniversary of the tragic Roe v.
Wade decision, this presidential
directive forces taxpayers to subsidize abortions overseas — something
no American should be required by government to do," said House
Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.
Rep. Mike Pence,
R-Ind., called it "morally wrong to take the taxpayer dollars of millions
of pro-life Americans to promote abortion around the world."
"President Obama not long ago told the
American people that he would support policies to reduce abortions, but today he
is effectively guaranteeing more abortions by funding groups that promote
abortion as a method of population
control," said Douglas
Johnson, legislative director of the National
Right to Life Committee.
By NASSER KARIMI,
Associated Press Writer Nasser
Karimi, Associated Press Writer
Thu Jan 22,
11:16 am ET
The attorney, Masoud Shafii, said
authorities notified him this week of the sentences handed to the two
physicians, Arash and Kamyar Alaei, who are brothers and were convicted over the
weekend. Shafii said he would appeal the verdicts.
The prosecution of the doctors raised an
outcry among international human
rights groups and critics who said the case was the latest instance of President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's hard-line government targeting Iranians with
Western connections and depicting them as tools for an American campaign to
overthrow the regime.
The brothers ran a clinic in
The charges against the Alaeis are similar
to those
The brothers' trial on Dec. 31 was shrouded
in secrecy, and Shafii said the judge only notified him of the verdict on
Tuesday. Two other people were sentenced with the doctors, but neither their
identities nor the lengths of their prison terms are known.
The Alaeis were convicted under an Iranian
law that stipulates that anyone cooperating with a foreign "hostile"
government against
However, the lawyer said only the Supreme
National Security Council can define whether the
But the lawyer refused to elaborate since
legally he was not allowed to reveal the content of a verdict.
On Monday, the official IRNA
news agency quoted an unnamed intelligence official as saying the
brothers were convicted of taking part in a U.S.-backed plot to overthrow
The prosecution appears to have more to do
with the brothers' contacts with the
Numerous medical and scientific
organizations have publicly called for the release of the brothers, who have
been held in Evin prison just north of
The Massachusetts-based Physicians
for Human Rights expressed deep concern Wednesday over purported
confessions by the Alaeis that the group said were used by Iranian authorities
to convict them. The confessions may have been forcibly extracted, the group
warned in an e-mail sent to The Associated Press.
According to a press release Wednesday from
the International Campaign for Human Rights in
Tension between the
GENEVA, Jan 26 (Reuters) - South Africa's Standard Bank <SBKJ.J> will
provide free advisory help to countries receiving grants to tackle HIV and other
diseases, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria said on
Monday.
Under the pilot
partnership, Standard Bank, the largest in
The programme is expected
to be extended gradually to more African countries, the Global Fund said.
Only about $180 million
of the $3.1 billion the Global Fund received last year came from private sources
such as Chevron <CVX.N> and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Global Fund Executive
Director Michel Kazatchkine has made it one of his key priorities to increase
private-sector support of his organisation's work.
In a statement, he said
the Standard Bank deal "shows that the corporate sector in
The Global Fund has
committed $14.9 billion to prevent and treat the three diseases in 140 countries
worldwide. (Reporting by Laura MacInnis)