The capital of the United States has HIV rates higher than those of Congo and Ethiopia. A lot of those infections are among drug injectors. Many in the city were hugely relieved when a ban on funding for needle exchange programmes in DC was effectively dropped just a couple of weeks ago. The city’s mayor [...]
As citizens of a country founded on the slogan “No taxation without representation”, Americans living overseas get to pay taxes without any dedicated representation in Congress. But they do get to vote in primaries. The Democrats make it easier than the Republicans , even providing helpful on-the-spot voting sites in pubs in Dublin and donut [...]
Salon’s Sheila Kaplan, Newshoggers and Michael Clark bring to our attention the latest salvo in the Bush administration’s war on science — this time, it was suppressing information about possible toxicity of trailers used to house victims of Hurricane Katrina because of formaldehyde, though it might just as well be the safety of condoms (which [...]
As Think Progress and CREDO pointed out, George Bush shouldn’t have been quite so smug in his State of the Union address. They list some of the ways that US money is undermining progress against HIV. But I’m afraid they’ve missed some other gems that the administration has thrown up in the way of effective [...]
Some good news for drug injectors in the US: a nasal spray that costs less than US$ 10 can reverse the effect of an opiate overdose . Some even better news: programmes giving out these sprays have sprung up across the country. A programme on National Public Radio reports that these kits, which put drug [...]
Anyone else amused by all the harrumphing about the pollsters’ failure to predict the results of the New Hampshire Democratic party primary? All manner of explanations are offered for why the pollsters got things so wrong. But very few people have come up with the explanation that is levelled at virtually every piece of sexual [...]
Democrats in Indonesia have organised to produce what every presidential candidate needs: handy condoms in packaging hardy enough to withstand the ardours of the campaign trail. Studded condoms, to boot, supplied by the ever-popular Fiesta brand. Studs and parties, then. Not entirely inappropriate.
In an eminently sensible editorial, Daniel Halperin recently argued that the vast resources available for AIDS in the developing world, and especially in Africa, are threatening to crush other important priorities such as basic sanitation. This has prompted a prickly response from the Global AIDS Alliance. Somewhat predictably, the Global AIDS Alliance argues that [...]
So Congress has finally passed the US$ 556 billion budget bill (Reuters). It now goes to George Bush to be signed. As John McManus and others note, the bill is laden with pork.
McManus is rightly infuriated by how keen most Congressmen are to bring home the pork, in other words, to bundle spending on useless [...]
Brits tend to look down on the US for allowing fundamentalist fervour to drive politics. But Britain would do well to look at the rise of the tub-thumpers at home. Check out the plans for a Christian theme park in Lancashire, modeled, perhaps, on the Holy Land Experience in Orlando, Florida.
In keeping with Britain’s [...]
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