1998 News Archive


 


6/26/98

AIDS IN JORDAN RISES

AMMAN (UPI)-- Jordan's Health Ministry said 14 new cases of AIDS, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, have been recorded this year, raising the number of infected persons to 178 in the kingdom.
However, the U.N. World Health Organization in the Jordanian capital Amman said in a report this month that the actual number of infected patients was 600.
The Health Ministry said in a report that the registered AIDS patients last year were 164 people, 74 of whom were foreigners, and that 45 have died since the 1980s when the disease was discovered.
Jordan still quarantines patients infected with the AIDS virus, which widely remains a "taboo disease" in the country where public awareness campaigns are practically non-existent in the conservative Muslim society.
Many foreign nationals are required to take HIV tests before being granted work and residency permits in Jordan. The ministry said 80 percent of the AIDS cases were acquired from outside the country, and that 45 patients were infected through blood transfusions abroad.
It added that 22 AIDS patients were under the age of 18.

5/16/98

Transsexual gets asylum...

PARIS (Reuters) - France granted political asylum to an Algerian transsexual Friday on the grounds that the individual risked persecution from both sides in Algeria's bloody civil strife.

The government board that gave political refugee status said the transsexual was in danger in Algeria from Islamic fundamentalists seeking to overthrow the government. The identity or gender of the applicant was not disclosed.

The applicant had also been the victim of sexual abuse by Algerian police after complaining to them about specific fundamentalist threats, the board said.

4/27/98

Roving husbands pass on Aids


Ninety-nine per cent of Lebanese women suffering from Aids were infected through husbands who used to live abroad, said the head of the education department at the International Commission of the Red Cross, Reine Helou. Addressing students at the Batroun high school on Saturday, Helou gave figures on HIV infection in Lebanon and stressed the importance of individual efforts in preventing the spread of the virus.
HIV, which can lead to Aids, was detected in Lebanon three years after it was first identified in the US in 1981.
Seventy per cent of all registered cases in this country were attributed to immigrants who had been living in west Africa, Europe or the US.
Of the 465 reported cases of people with HIV in Lebanon, who are aged between 25 and 45 years, 93 are now being treated in hospital suffering from full-blown Aids.
Seventeen children were infected with the HIV virus while in the womb. World-wide, almost 40m people will be infected with the virus by 2000, 90 per cent of them from developing countries, medical experts predict.
Helou said that statistics also indicate that nine out of ten infected people are not aware of their condition.
From The Daily Star

3/27/98

UAE deports foreigners infected with HIV


The authorities in the United Arab Emirates say that over the past few years, they have deported around six-thousand foreign workers infected with the AIDS virus.
A senior health official told local newspapers that the measure was in line with existing laws, and was part of a campaign to fight the spread of the deadly disease.
He did not give details of the nationalities of those affected, but correspondents point out that most foreigners in the country are Asians, mostly from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
From the newsroom of the BBC World Service

2/27/98

Hate Preacher In Iraq

from The Advocate
Antigay crusader the Rev. Fred Phelps has taken his message to Iraq, The Kansas City [Mo.] Star reported Thursday. For the past several days Phelps has been outside Iraq's Foreign Relations Ministry building in Baghdad carrying signs protesting President Clinton, homosexuality, and a potential war against Iraq, Phelps's relatives said. "His issue is not that Saddam Hussein is a great guy. His issue is that this [disagreement over U.N. arms inspections in Iraq] isn't our business," said Shirley Phelps-Roper, Phelps's daughter.

2/23/98

SLAIN MAN WAS LOVER OF HAIFA MURDER VICTIM

from Haaretz
The Haifa police have identified a dead body found in the Carmel Forest on Saturday as that of the lover of another man murdered about two weeks ago.
The body was identified as that of Abed al-Rahman Abu Abeid, of Kafr Yamoun near Jenin. The police's prime suspect is the man who has confessed to murdering Nissan Agassi, Abeid's lover: a 21-year-old soldier named Charles Perach from Kfar Yassif in the western Galilee.
The police said yesterday that they plan to ask for an extension of Perach's arrest. The discovery of Abeid's body casts doubt on Perach's story that he murdered Agassi because the latter had raped him four years earlier, they said.
"I met the murdered man [Agassi] by chance in my village four years ago," Perach told the Haifa Magistrate's Court last week, at a hearing at which his arrest was extended for eight days. "He offered me work selling carpets door to door. I lived in the village and he lived in Haifa, and I was short on cash, so he suggested that I sleep at his house. That night, while I was sleeping, he raped me. Throughout the period following the rape ... I have had a desire for revenge and the wish to kill him. I could not live with such a thing. I couldn't tell anyone or complain about the act... The whole story was burning inside me for four years until the final revenge."
The police plan to request a psychiatric examination of Perach to see if he is fit to stand trial.
Over the past three years, six homosexuals have been killed in Haifa.

2/14/98
 

ELTON'S JEWEL OF THE NILE

The Elton John-Tim Rice musical formerly known as Aida will make its debut at Atlanta's Alliance Theatre next season, under the new title Elaborate Lives. The story, based on Verdi's opera, focuses on an Egyptian soldier and his taboo love for his Nubian slave.
 

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