The days of cheap treatments for millions of Aids patients around the world are coming to an end, health agencies warned on Tuesday night, after the Indian Parliament passed a Bill that makes it illegal to copy patented drugs. The practice of copying patented drugs has made medicines affordable for patients around the world.
Journalists are the self-appointed custodians of the pot of public sympathy and they guard its apportionment jealously. To the good and virtuous they dole out rich, nourishing platefuls of comfort; to the undeserving, a grudging and watery dilution of feeling. Consider the very different treatment meted out by the media to Leigh Matthews and Annemarie Engelbrecht.
"Glorified secondary schools" is the derisive term coined by Nigerians to describe their country’s universities. Classrooms are overcrowded, with students sitting on the floor during lectures. Libraries lack books, and laboratories are ill-equipped to conduct experiments. And, just as facilities are decaying, so is the quality of education being received by students.
Five South Africans were last month invited to address the first international conference on Restorative Justice and Peace in Colombia: Albie Sachs, Tutu, Penuell Maduna, Tokyo Sexwale and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela. "One could say we were in Colombia as ambassadors of South Africa’s peaceful transition," writes Gobodo-Madikizela.
A motorcyclist on holiday in KwaZulu-Natal was caught speeding at 275km/h and fined R31 000, the traffic department said on Wednesday. The man repeatedly tried to escape, and traffic officials had to block the entire N2 highway before they could bring him to a halt, said spokesperson Collin Govender.
”It’s all porn,” a colleague said. He was reacting to the Patricia Lewis skande. ”It doesn’t really make a difference if it’s hard or soft.” We’d seen the morning headlines, and this time the news was huge. This was not just a catfight with market rival Amor Vittone. Nor just news that she was pregnant and capable of breeding.
South Africa may have a special role to play in the global search for what one might call the ”decent economy”. But if we are to achieve this — stage two if you like of the revolution of which so many have dreamed in the long march to freedom — it is necessary to examine unflinchingly what we have and have not achieved since 1994.
Five years ago, investors were told there was unlimited money to be made out of the dotcom revolution — and that was true, until the point where there were no longer more buyers than sellers. The market reached that point in March 2000 and, since then, the Nasdaq has lost 60% of its value and millions of small investors have suffered.
Prison reformers are calling for the Department of Correctional Services not to punish consensual sex between prisoners and for eventually allowing such sex in prisons. This seemingly far-fetched proposal is even suggested by the Judicial Inspectorate of Prisons, a statutory agency tasked with making recommendations on correctional services.
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