Millions in Africa died of Aids, while western governments and drug companies blocked access to low-cost medication

Several years ago, I began to learn about what I would come to regard as one of the great crimes in human history, whereby millions of people in Africa and elsewhere were cynically allowed to die of Aids, while western governments and pharmaceutical companies blocked access to available low-cost medication. The outrage I felt as I discovered the details of this story was exceeded only by a deep sense of betrayal mixed with shame for not having known more about it in the first place.

Today, I find those feelings mirrored in audiences who see my film, Fire in the Blood, which, incredibly, is the first comprehensive account of this horrendous atrocity and how it was eventually halted. As anyone who knows anything about pharmaceuticals will tell you, the name of the game is monopoly. In the case of medicine, monopolies emanate from patents. Typically a patent lasts for 20 years, but drug companies are expert at getting them extended. As long as the monopoly is in place, the company selling the drug can essentially charge whatever they want for it. Pricing is unrelated either to the cost of production (normally a few pennies per pill) or how much was spent in development, but a simple calculation of how to maximise revenue. Though most western countries do have price controls, these typically only keep price levels consistent with other comparable countries, so restraints are minimal.

Why does society accept this? The narrative the industry has been immensely successful in selling is that it spends vast sums of money on research and development, that this R&D is very high risk, and that monopolies and high prices are a "necessary evil" needed to finance innovation of new medicines. These arguments do not hold up under scrutiny. 84% of worldwide funding for drug discovery research comes from government and public sources, against just 12% from pharma companies, which on average spend 19 times more on marketing than they do on basic research (paywalled link). When we screened our film at the Sundance festival last month, audiences were dismayed to learn how much of their tax money goes to discover medicines which are then sold back to them at monopoly prices nearly half of all Americans surveyed say they have trouble affording.

Nigeria's secret service say they have arrested a "terrorist cell" trained in Iran who planned to attack U.S. and Israeli targets in Africa's most populous nation.

The State Security Service (SSS) said they arrested Abdullahi Mustapha Berende and two other Nigerians in December after Berende made several suspicious trips to Iran where he interacted with Iranians in a "high profile terrorist network".

"His Iranian sponsors requested that he identifies and gathers intelligence on public places and prominent hotels frequented by Americans and Israelis to facilitate attacks," SSS spokeswoman Marilyn Ogar said in a statement.


"There is conclusive evidence that Berende in collaboration with his Iranian handlers were involved in grievous crimes against the national security of this country."

Media outlets send snippets of interviews to White House officials, who tweak them before publication or prohibit their use entirely.

This is a story best told in quotes.

Here's newly sworn in President Obama, welcoming his senior staff to the White House in January of 2009:

I will also hold myself as president to a new standard of openness .... Let me say it as simply as I can: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.

Seventy years ago today, three German students were executed in Munich for leading a resistance movement against Hitler. Since then, the members of the White Rose group have become German national heroes - Lilo Furst-Ramdohr was one of them.

In 1943, World War II was at its height - but in Munich, the centre of Nazi power, a group of students had started a campaign of passive resistance.

Liselotte Furst-Ramdohr, already a widow at the age of 29 following her husband's death on the Russian front, was introduced to the White Rose group by her friend, Alexander Schmorell.

"I can still see Alex today as he told me about it," says Furst-Ramdohr, now a spry 99-year-old. "He never said the word 'resistance', he just said that the war was dreadful, with the battles and so many people dying, and that Hitler was a megalomaniac, and so they had to do something."

Pope Benedict XVI is considering issuing a decree that would speed up the process of appointing his replacement.

By canon law, a papal conclave starts between 15 and 20 days after the papacy becomes vacant. But as The New York Times reports, that takes into account a papal funeral.

Benedict is stepping down. The Times reports Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi said Benedict is "taking into consideration" changing the rules by decree or Motu Proprio, the issuance of a personal document that has the ability to shift Church law.

According to data compiled by the FBI, the number of Americans purchasing guns has skyrocketed since Obama was elected. There have been 65,376,373 background checks completed for Americans purchasing firearms since February of 2009, the first full month of Barack Obama's presidency.

This totals 65,376,373 background checks completed since President Obama's first full month in office, or 44,748 background checks per day. By comparison, the number of background checks in Obama's first term is 91.1% higher than President George W. Bush's first-term total of 34,214,066.

Officials in Texas announced on Thursday that State Troopers would no longer be allowed to open fire on suspects from helicopters after the recent killing of two immigrants.

While announcing the new policy, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw insisted that the ban on aerial shootings had nothing to do with the October 2012 death of two Guatemalan immigrants, who were gunned down by troopers in helicopter while they were hiding in the back of a speeding pickup truck near La Joya.

Appearing Thursday night on Current TV's "The Young Turks," filmmaker Ric Roman Waugh, behind the new film "Snitch," explained that his movie is based on true events brought about in part by Reagan-era drug laws.

The film features Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as the father of a young man facing jail time over a drug charge, unless he can give up one of his co-conspirators. Johnson instead proposes that in exchange for his son's freedom, he go undercover in gangland to root out a distributor, and prosecutors agree.

"They signed off on this, that actually happened," Waugh said. "I've seen the documents where the U.S. Attorney signed off on it."

Locksmiths and firemen in Spain are rebelling against a wave of evictions in the economic crisis by refusing to help bailiffs open ruined homeowners' doors to throw them out.

"Families' lives were being ruined and we were acting as executioners," David Ormaechea, president of the Locksmiths Union, told AFP. "It was causing us tension and unease."

A wave of evictions of mortgage-holders ruined by the recession has prompted several suicides and sparked a protest movement that last week brought a motion to parliament for a law to end the procedure.

With the locksmiths refusing to take part, some authorities have been asking the fire service to step in and break open the doors of those resisting eviction.

On Tuesday in the northwestern city of A Coruna, firefighters were called to help evict an 85-year-old woman who had defaulted on her rent.

The UN released proposals for a response to the threat of objects from space impacting the Earth. DW looks at the implications of last week's meteorite explosion and what the UN could do for the space industry.

The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) released its recommendations for an international response to the threat of objects from space this week - five days after a large asteroid narrowly missed the Earth and a meteorite explosion caused significant damage in Chelyabinsk, Russia. The explosion of the 17-meter-long asteroid was 30 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, according to calculations by Peter Brown from Canada's University of Western Ontario.

Apart from identifying existing gaps in the work of identifying near-Earth objects (NEOs) that may pose a threat to the planet, the UNOOSA wants to form an International Asteroid Warning Network as well as a space missions planning advisory group.

More UN involvement?

It is still too early to say whether the event in Chelyabinsk will increase international collaboration and lead to the formation of an organization to coordinate national space agencies. A meeting of the space agencies at Planetary Defense Conference in April will discuss the UN's proposals and make its own recommendations, according to Nicolas Bobrinsky, head of the European Space Agency's Space Situation Awareness (SSA) program.

"It would be extremely useful to have a forum where space agencies can meet under the forum and protection of the UN," he told DW.