links for 2009-11-24

China has executed two people for their role in a scandal involving tainted milk powder that resulted in six children dying, officials have said.

More than 300,000 other infants were made ill from milk powder contaminated with melamine, an industrial chemical.

Zhang Yujun and Geng Jinping are the only people to have been executed over the scandal, court officials said.

Greater access to antiretroviral drugs has helped cut the death toll from HIV by over 10% over the last five years, latest figures show.

The World Health Organization and the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) says an estimated 33.4 million people worldwide are infected with HIV.

That figure is up from 33 million in 2007 – as fewer are dying with HIV.

The cosmopolitan life has slipped away from many of us in these straitened times. But fear not – Patrick Kavanagh’s poetry provides pointers for making the most of meagre surroundings

An estimated 33.4 million people worldwide have the AIDS virus, according to a statement issued by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Joint UN Programme on HIV/Aids (Unaids).

FOR 23 years Rom Houben was imprisoned in his own body. He saw his doctors and nurses as they visited him daily during their rounds; he listened to the conversations of his carers; he heard his mother deliver the news to him that his father had died.

But he could do nothing. He was unable to communicate with his doctors or family. He could not move his head or weep, he could only listen.

IARNROD Eireann will seek planning permission early next year to build an underground DART line in Dublin costing up to €3bn.

The proposed new line would run from the Docklands to Inchicore. Capacity would be 20 trains in each direction per hour, potentially allowing 64,000 commuters to use the line every 60 minutes.