Good News:
All South African babies under the age of one will be treated if they test HIV-positive, President Jacob Zuma has announced in a major policy overhaul.
In a speech to mark World Aids Day, he promised more anti-retrovirals – drugs the previous government said were too expensive and potentially harmful.
And he announced he was preparing to take an HIV test himself.
Mr Zuma’s speech is a marked departure from Mr Mbeki, whose government denied the link between HIV and Aids. [BBC News]
Bad News:
Britain and Canada today led Commonwealth protests against a law proposed by the Ugandan parliament which would introduce the death penalty by hanging for “aggravated homosexuality”. The suggested legislation would apply to sex between gay men or lesbian women in which one person has HIV.
The bill also proposes the introduction of a three-year prison sentence for anyone who knows of the existence of a gay man or lesbian woman and fails to inform authorities in Uganda within 24 hours. [Guardian.co.uk]
Bunnies: And finally, bunnies. (I have no idea where I found this, which is one of the perils of always transferring the documents from computer to computer as one goes. I’ve some files on my laptop at home that are backups of things I submitted to BiFrost!(somewhere))
