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South Africa to Court 500,000 at Sydney Mardi Gras Dutch Weddings Set for April 1 |
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By Rex Wockner
International News Report Drug Companies Take South Africa to Court
More than 40 drug companies took the South African
government to court March 5 -- including
Boehringer-Ingelheim, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck,
Bristol-Myers Squibb and Roche.
They are fighting a law passed by the South African parliament which allows HIV drugs and other life-saving medicines to be imported from countries where they are produced generically rather than from countries where they are available only as patented brand-name drugs. The pharmaceutical companies claim the law infringes intellectual property rights. Nearly five million South Africans carry HIV. Only a tiny minority can afford the patented drugs that have enabled richer countries to transform AIDS from a killer into a frequently manageable illness. "These companies, with the support of some Western governments, are protecting their monopolies at the expense of millions of lives," said South Africa's Treatment Action Campaign. "This legal action shows that the pharmaceutical industry is more concerned with staving off competition and protecting their high profit margins than with genuinely increasing access to medicines. "We believe that this lawsuit is legally flawed and morally reprehensible," the group said. "We call on the companies involved to drop the case and on Western governments to provide clear support to the South African government as it strives to tackle the urgent HIV/AIDS epidemic." 500,000 at Sydney Mardi Gras
The famous parade was led off by 300 dykes on bikes and featured 175 floats and around 8,000 marchers. This year's theme was gay and lesbian parenting. The lead float, Behind the Pink Picket Fence, carried pink flamingos holding wrapped babies in their beaks. The parade and its satellite events inject the equivalent of more than U.S. $60 million into the local economy, according to tourism officials. It is the highest-earning sporting or cultural event on the Aussie tourism calendar. Dutch Weddings Set for April 1
Several nations have special partnership laws that give registered gay couples many or nearly all rights of matrimony, including Denmark (and Greenland), France, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and, in the U.S., the state of Vermont. A few other nations, including Canada, grant gays many rights of marriage under common-law marriage statutes. (This reporter will travel to Amsterdam for the April 1 events.) |
Mardi Gras, Sydney's annual gay blowout, attracted
some 500,000 people to Oxford Street March 3.
