BUSH TARGETS BRAZILIAN PWAs
George W. Bush wants to take HIV drugs away from Brazilian people with AIDS.
The Bush administration has lodged a complaint with the World Trade Organization alleging that Brazil's generic production of seven common HIV drugs violates WTO rules and U.S. drug company patents.
More than 100,000 Brazilians are being kept alive by the locally produced copies of the exorbitantly priced brand-name drugs.
During a public health emergency, Brazilian law allows for generic production of drugs that otherwise would require authorization of the patent holder.
CHINESE POP
STAR OUTED
Chinese pop music star Mao Ning has been outed after being stabbed near a cruisy Beijing park allegedly by an angry ex-lover, Guan Ming.
According to local media, Mao has departed China to avoid reporters and distressed fans.
Writing in The Advocate, gay journalist Steve Friess, who is spending a year working in China, said press coverage of the stabbing marked the first time Chinese media reported on a celebrity's homosexuality.
Friess said the Chinese newsmagazine 21st Century called the incident "the biggest scandal to hit China's entertainment world in recent years."
MAURESMO AND LOVER SPLIT
Lesbian French tennis star Amelie Mauresmo and her lover of three years, Sylvie Bourdon, have broken up.
"We have decided to go our separate ways," Mauresmo told Le Figaro.
She said she hoped the media would respect her privacy.
"I have the right to my secret garden," Mauresmo said.
TAIWAN GAY BOOKSTORE ATTACKED
Someone threw a brick through the window of the Taipei, Taiwan, gay bookstore Gin Gin's Jan. 27, the Taipei Times reported.
Dozens of local gay-rights groups have denounced the incident.
"It seemed a minor case of a small gay and lesbian bookstore being attacked with a brick and the mere breaking of a window seems like no big loss at all," the organizations said in a statement. "But, if the attack on Gin Gin's was made because it's a gay and lesbian bookstore, then that sends a strong message of hatred against homosexuality. If the attack with a brick is tolerated today, we might see attacks with petrol bombs in the future."
CAYMANS PREACHERS CHALLENGE GAY LAW
Religious leaders in the Cayman Islands have launched a petition drive against Britain's forced legalization of gay sex in the Caymans and other Caribbean territories.
Britain imposed the change in January as local legislators continued to ignore prodding from London to repeal the laws.
"The people of the Cayman Islands as well as other overseas territories have made it abundantly clear what our position is on this matter," said Cayman Ministers Association Chairman the Rev. Al Ebanks.
Britain said the islands' gay-sex bans violated international human-rights accords Britain has signed. The forced repeal also applied to Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
AUSSIES OPPOSE
LESBIAN ACCESS TO SPERM BANKS
Australians are opposed to letting single women and lesbians access artificial-insemination technology and sperm banks, a Morgan poll has found.
The Federal Court cleared the way for such access last July.
Fifty-four percent oppose letting single women access the procedures and 59 percent oppose giving lesbians access.
Younger people were slightly less hostile to the idea. People over 50 disapproved the most.
The poll questioned 1,116 men and women from age 14 up.
BRITISH STUDENTS BAN EMINEM
Students at Britain's Sheffield University have banned American rapper Eminem saying he's anti-gay.
Clothing featuring Eminem's likeness is banned at the university discotheque, Eminem's music is banned from the campus radio station and the student newspaper is prohibited from reviewing his albums and concerts.
"We are trying to reduce homophobia," said Neil Foster of the student union board.
Some workers at the radio station opposed the decision.
"We argued till we were blue in the face that we're all over 18 and unlikely to have our opinions about homosexuality influenced by the lyrics of a singer, but it didn't do any good," station music director Dan Morfitt told the Daily Telegraph.
Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP contains lyrics such as: "You faggots can vanish to volcanic ash and re-appear in hell with a can of gas and a match" and "My words are like a dagger with a jagged edge that'll stab you in the head, whether you're a fag or lez, or the homosex, hermaph or a trans-a-vest, pants or dress. Hate fags? The answer's yes. Homophobic? Nah, you're just heterophobic."
BANANA RELEASED FROM PRISON
Former Zimbabwean President Canaan Banana was released from Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison Jan. 29 after serving eight months for sexually assaulting and sodomizing male members of his presidential staff.
Among those Banana intimidated into having sex were his bodyguard, cook and gardener.
Banana was president from 1980 to 1987. The incidents came to light starting in 1995 when former Banana aide Jefta Dube shot to death a fellow policeman who had taunted him by calling him "Banana's wife."
Dube testified that he and Banana had sex uncountable times over a period of three years. The first time, Dube said, he was drugged and woke up naked with a smiling Banana saying, "We helped ourselves."
Other victims described a scenario in which Banana would ask them to play cards, offer them a drink, put on music, insist on teaching them to dance, then kiss and fondle them while dancing.
PARIS EXPECTED TO ELECT GAY MAYOR
A gay man is expected to be elected mayor of Paris in March.
Bertrand Delanoë, who would be the first Socialist to head the city since the 1870s, leads in the polls by a wide margin.
Delanoë is campaigning for more green spaces, fewer cars, protected pedestrian zones along the Seine River, and renewed cultural vitality.
POPE DENOUNCES GAY MARRIAGE
Pope John Paul II said Feb. 1 that gay marriages are unnatural.
"Marriage is not just any old union between human persons, susceptible to being configured according to a plurality of cultural models," the pope said in a speech to Vatican bureaucrats. "You observe that in a very clear way in the ongoing attempts to present de-facto unions, including homosexual ones, as comparable to marriage, in which one negates, in fact, the natural character.
"The natural consideration of marriage shows us that a couple unite themselves precisely because they are persons of different sexuality, with all the spiritual richness that this diversity has at a human level."
