In The News

HIV Case Airs Secrets of Porn Industry

Alan Clendenning April 29, 2004
Boasting uninhibited women, lush tropical backdrops, and cheap production costs, Brazil has become a prime destination for adult film outsourcing. But Brazil also has the second highest incidence of HIV and AIDS in the western hemisphere. Last month, the porn industry's increasingly global risks surfaced when an American porn actor contracted HIV after shooting unprotected sex scenes with...

Arab World Risks Missing its Development Goals

Majdoline Hatoum April 2, 2004
Illiteracy, gender inequality, and unemployment plague Arab countries, despite the region's concentration of oil wealth. Arab leaders addressed these issues at a recent development conference. They proposed various plans and strategies to help Arab countries meet the Millennium Development Goal, which was signed by 189 countries in 2000 as part of the UN's Millennium Declaration. The...

China Steps Up to a Global Threat

John Gittings December 5, 2003
World AIDS Day on December 1 was marked in China by an unprecedented openness on the subject of HIV-AIDS. One of the nation's top leaders, Premier Wen Jiabao, visited patients in AIDS wards and proclaimed a new commitment to providing medical treatment for HIV-infected people and to prevention measures and education about the HIV virus. Veteran China watcher John Gittings writes that...

Africa: Gender Inequality Fuels AIDS Crisis

December 3, 2003
Agencies trying to curb the AIDS crisis in Africa need to expand their approach, argues Human Rights Watch. There is a crucial link between gender inequality and the spread of AIDS. Sexual assault, the use of rape as a mechanism of war, the cultural acceptance of domestic violence, and women's lack of voice have kept women at the mercy of the disease in Africa. On that continent, women are...

WHO Unveils Plan to Fight HIV and AIDS

David Brown December 1, 2003
A program that was deemed "too ambitious" two years ago is set to be implemented by the World Health Organization (WHO). By providing instruction, expertise, and written documents, as well as calling for the training of 100,000 workers for 10,000 clinics, the WHO hopes to provide 3 million people with AIDS treatment by 2005. The WHO will not pay for the treatment itself, but it hopes...

India Plans Free AIDS Therapy

Amy Waldman December 1, 2003
On the eve of an election day in India, the government announced plans to provide free antiretroviral therapy to H.I.V.-positive new parents and H.I.V.-positive children in the six states most affected by the disease. This is part of a larger initiative spearheaded domestically by Sushma Swaraj, India's Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare, and internationally by organizations like...

'We must build a global social system' – Bill Clinton

November 19, 2003
Nayan Chanda, editor of YaleGlobal Online, interviewed former US President William J. Clinton on October 31, 2003. The full text of the interview is presented here.