Britain's Glaxo Wellcome, maker of the AIDS drugs AZT (Retrovir)and 3TC (Epivir) as well as the herpes drug acyclovir (Zovirax) showed profits of $2.4 billion in the first six months of 1997 on gross sales of $6.4 billion, reported London's The Pink Paper.

AZT sales more than doubled over 1996 while 3TC sales rose 36 percent. The drugs are common components of the new protease-inhibitor-based anti-HIV "cocktails."

The company expects to further increase profits in the near future thanks to a new treatment for chronic-active hepatitis Band yet another anti-HIV substance.

Glaxo Wellcome's good fortune comes as health-care budgets in industrialized nations are being stretched thin to pay for theanti-AIDS cocktails -- and while people with AIDS in the Third World simply go without. A year's supply of HIV treatment costs more than double an average salary in Mexico -- which is far from the world's poorest nation.

DESIGNER DUMPS MAGAZINES OVER VERSACE COVERAGE

German fashion designer Wolfgang Joop has canceled $1 million in advertising in the Burda company magazines Bunte, Focus, Freundin and Elle because of Bunte's coverage of the murder of Gianni Versace.

The magazine reported extensively on what it called the "decadent and perverted world of high-class homos" such as, allegedly, Versace. It also said gay men commonly have over 3,000 lifetime sexual partners.

Bunte Publisher Christian Hirsch dismissed Joop's move as "a personal view expressed ... because he was deeply affected by the death of Mr. Versace, who was a friend."

IMMIGRATION GRANTS ASYLUM TO BANGLADESHI GAY

The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service has granted political asylum to a 28-year-old Bangladeshi gay man who was threatened with stoning by Islamic fundamentalists in his home city of Dhaka, reported the Washington Blade.

But the man, who lives in the Washington, D.C., area, still fears for his life.

"The militant Islamic fundamentalists in the political organization Jamaat-e-islaam know that I am gay and have warned my sister that I will be stoned, in accordance with the Koran's traditional punishment for homosexuals," he told the Blade.

In his INS affidavit, the man also reported being raped by police, forced into electroshock treatment and ordered by his family to enter into an arranged marriage.

A spokesman for the Embassy of Bangladesh called the man's story "concocted," saying there is no such thing as execution by stoning in Bangladesh.

At least 136 other gay/lesbian foreigners have won asylum in the U.S. based on anti-gay persecution in their homelands, according to the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.

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Rex Wockner's Weekly International News dating back to mid-1994 is fully searchable at http://www.wockner.com

Rex Wockner's Weekly International News in its original format is archived at http://www.qrd.org/qrd/www/world/wockner.html

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