Society catergory

Moscow, Russia | AFP |  Russia’s HIV infection rate is growing 10 percent a year and over one million Russian have been diagnosed with the disease in nearly three decades, the country’s top AIDS expert said Tuesday. The number of registered cases reached 1,087,339 on September 30, Vadim Pokrovsky, head …

Vatican City, Holy See | AFP |  Pope Francis on Wednesday issued a call for “responsible behaviour” to prevent the spread of AIDS without specifying whether that included wearing condoms. The pontiff also issued a fresh call for every sufferer, no matter how poor, to have access to treatment. In …

Johannesburg, South Africa | AFP | South Africa on Wednesday begins a major clinical trial of an experimental vaccine against the AIDS virus, which scientists hope could be the “final nail in the coffin” for the disease. More than 30 years of efforts to develop an effective vaccine for HIV …

Geneva, Switzerland | AFP | The World Health Organization warned on Tuesday that nearly half of all people with HIV around the globe do not know they are infected, and called for broader access to at-home testing kits. The UN health agency said that 40 percent of people with the …

Paris, France | AFP | A good night’s sleep may reinforce negative memories in the brain, researchers said on Tuesday, lending scientific credence to the time-worn caution against going to bed angry. Slipping into slumber while holding on to a freshly-formed bad memory engraves it in the brain, making it …

Rabat, Morocco | AFP |  A public television station in Morocco has apologised after uproar on social media followed its broadcast of an item on makeup to hide the facial bruises of battered women. The sequence — marking last week’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women — …

  Breaking the norm, symbolism, and escapism Critics are always praising works of art for being urgent, challenging, disturbing, and provocative and so forth. But is that what people actually want from the art? It is well known that most (visual) art produced nowadays exists almost entirely to allow the …

Bishops’ statement on genocide seen as positive In 1994, violence erupted in Rwanda after a plane carrying then president Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down. Thousands of ethnic Tutsis, a minority group who became a target after Habyarimana’s death, sought refuge in the country’s Catholic and Protestant churches. Hutu militia surrounded …

THE LAST WORD: By Andrew M. Mwenda Why nations that are different exhibit similar health service dysfunctions I have been rereading Melle Leenstra’s 2012 book, `Beyond the Façade; the instrumentalisation of the Zambian health sector’. It offers an interesting insight into the challenges that central African nation faces in its …

Stockholm, Sweden | AFP | Sweden on Friday said 200,000 chickens were being slaughtered at a farm where bird flu has been detected, following a resurgence in the virus across Europe. Traces of the H5N8 virus were found at the Aniagra farm in Morarp, southwest Sweden, on Thursday. The discovery …