FEAST OR FAMINE

F og lamps, a standard feature on cars, may soon disappear – at least from luxury cars. Several makers of luxury vehicles, including Audi, Cadillac, Lincoln, and Mercedes-Benz, are omitting the front fog lamps from many of their latest models – and the new Genesis line from Hyundai will also be without fog lamps. Those companies say their latest high-tech headlights make separate fog lamps unnecessary. However, the public-interest groups that test headlights, including Consumers Union and the Insurance Institute for Highway Saftey in America, say that they have not tested the new lights to determine their effectiveness in fog. Fog is often an isolated, regional or seasonal road hazard, but it is particularly challenging for drivers. A 2014 report by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety in America, that studied national crash data on fatal crashes from 1990 to 2012 and police-reported crashes from 1990 to 2008, found that fog was a factor in nearly 20% of deadl...

The Fifth Letter (2017) is set in Australia in 1993 and 23 years later in June and July 2016. In 1993, four 12-year-old girls formed a friendship group based on their birth month (November) and the initial of their surnames (C): Joni Camilleri, Deborah Camden, Trina Chan, and Eden Chester. Joni married Kai (no children); Deb married Connor (one child); Trina married Josh (one child) ; and Eden married Ben (two children). In June 2016, the four 35-year-old women reunite in a holiday house, as they had been doing almost every year since they turned twenty-one. During the holiday, each of the women write an anonymous letter to the group to share one secret about themselves. The letters are read aloud. How is it that friends for 23 years did not know the others’ secrets? And can they guess who wrote the letter from the style of writing? They do try to guess, and they do judge the letter-writer – or, at least, express their views on the secret revealed. Someone li...

A new affordable generic version of a frontline antiretroviral drug was launched in Kenya on 28 June 2017, the first time that HIV patients will have access to the more affordable version of the treatment. Dolutegravir (DTG) will be available to patients through a partnership between the Kenyan Ministry of Health and the Geneva-based company Unitaid.   DTG has been the preferred first-line treatment in the United States and Canada since 2014, a year after it came onto the market. Prior to the current introduction, Kenyan patients paid $50-$60 for a 30-day supply pack. This generic version costs about $4 a pack. The generic DTG launch is part of a $34-million three-year Optimal ARV project by Unitaid and the Clinton Health Access Initiative aimed at accelerating access to affordable antiretroviral treatments across 11 countries. Globally, there are more than 36 million people living with HIV, of which roughly half are untreated. The World Health Organization (WH...

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).