Carla Bruni in Benin for AIDS campaign

Wednesday, January 27, 2010
COTONOU: Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the First Lady of France, has begun her visit to Benin as part of her ambassador role in the fight against AIDS.

She was met on Tuesday by President Thomas Yayi Boni.

Bruni-Sarkozy, a Global Fund ambassador, last month renewed a call to eliminate the transmission of HIV from mothers to their children by 2015.

Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region most heavily affected, accounting for 67 percent of all people living with HIV and 91 percent of all new infections among children.

Around 1.2 percent of Benin's population live with HIV in the small West African country of less than 9 million people, where the first HIV case was diagnosed in 1985.

Bruni-Sarkozy described AIDS as a plague for the entire world, but said "United we can fight against these pandemic diseases."

On Wednesday today Bruni-Sarkozy and Melinda Gates, representing the Bill Gates Foundation, one of the Global Fund's biggest donors, will visit a hospital in the village of Dangbo around 100 km from the capital Cotonou.

The "House of the Redeeming Love" hospital in Dangbo specialises in programmes of protection against transmission of HIV from mother to infant.

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Cuba's world-famous cigar festival closes in Havana

Sunday, February 28, 2010 HAVANA: Hundreds of wealthy merchants and cigar aficionados from all parts of the world gathered in Havana this week to bid high stakes for humidors full of premium cigars. Cuba's annual Habanos festival ended on Friday night with an auction of ornate humidors of cedar and mahogany stacked with hand-rolled stogies that raised 800,000 euros ($1.09 million dollars). Habanos S.A. executives this month said cigar sales fell 8 percent to $360 million in 2009, so they have created the Julieta, a smaller, milder version of the Romeo y Julieta cigar, aimed specifically at female smokers. Women now make up only 5 to 10 percent of customers for Habanos. But even with the creation of the Julieta, Garcia said Habanos has only modest hopes for 2010 sales, due largely to a weak economy in Spain, the biggest market for Cuban cigars. The flavor of premium tobacco relies on the soil and climate in which it is grown. The western province of Pinar Del Rio, famous fo...

Snake bite deaths

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New arts space on the block

Updated at: 1821 PST, Saturday, September 19, 2009 NEW YORK: The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) has officially opened LentSpace, a half-acre public park in lower Manhattan that it plans to use as a temporary gathering space, contemporary-art venue, and performing arts site. The block, which is bounded by Grand, Varick, and Canal streets and Sixth Avenue, is owned by the Trinity Real Estate Corp., which manages Trinity Church's real estate holdings. Unable to arrange a sufficiently lucrative arrangement for the property, church officials decided to allow the LMCC program to go there until economic conditions improve.

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