6A NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
TUESDAY DECEMBER 1,2009
HEALTH
South Africa hopes to help AIDS crisis
BY DONNA BRYSON Associated Press
JOHANNESBURG - South Africa has more people infected with the AIDS virus than any other country, but it also has a new government determined to end the crisis, the head of the U.N. AIDS program said Monday.
"If I am not in South Africa for World AIDS Day, I don't know where I should be," UNAIDS executive director Michel Sidibe told The Associated Press on the eve of the day when the world takes
stock of efforts to fight the epidemic and remembers those who have died.
South Africa, a nation of about 50 million, has an estimated 5.7 million people infected with HIV — more than any other country in the world. Nearly 1,000 South Africans die every day of AIDS-related diseases.
Former President Thabo Mbeki questioned the link between HIV and AIDS, and his health minister distrusted drugs developed to keep AIDS patients alive, instead promoting beets and garlic as
AIDS treatments.
A Harvard study has concluded that more than 300,000 premature deaths in South Africa could have been prevented had officials here acted sooner to provide drug treatments to AIDS patients and to prevent pregnant women with HIV from passing the virus to their children.
Mbeki's own party forced him to step down late last year after almost a decade as president, and President Jacob Zuma took over following April elections. Zuma and his health minister have
said Mbeki's AIDS policies were wrong and set a target to get 80 percent of those who need AIDS drugs on them by 2011.
Zuma is scheduled to give a major speech on AIDS today. Sidibe said he hoped the president would address the social and financial issues related to fighting AIDS.
Sidibe credited the country's health department with moving quickly to distribute more AIDS drugs and for working with the U.N to improve ways of using scarce resources.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sibile talks with the Associated Press in Johannesburg Monday. Sibile said that South Africa has more people infected with the AIDS virus than any other country, but that it also has a new government determined to end the crisis.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials use bloodhounds to search for Arcade Joseph Comeaux Jr. Comeaux was being transported from the Estelle Unit in Huntsville to the Stiles Unit in Beaumont when he brandished a firearm and directed the officers to stop the vehicle.
CRIME
Convicted sex offender escapes custody
BY JUAN A. LOZANO Associated Press
Man pulls gun on guards, flees on foot during prison transfer despite requesting wheelchair
Associated Press
HOUSTON — A convicted sex offender sentenced to life in prison pulled a gun on two guards during a prison transfer Monday and held them 'hostage temporarily before fleeing on foot in one of the guard's uniforms, authorities said.
At the time of the escape, the inmate was in a wheelchair, which he claimed he needed to help move him around, officials said.
The guards were transferring Arcade Joseph Comeaux Jr. from a prison in Huntsville, north of Houston, to one in Beaumont, in southeast Texas, when he pulled out a gun and told the guards to stop the vehicle, said Michelle Lyons, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Comeaux took control of the transport van at 6:30 a.m., nearly two hours into the trip, as the vehicle was going through Conroe,
just north of Houston. He told the guards to continue driving until they reached Baytown, a refinery town east of Houston, officials said.
"At some point he brandished a firearm. We do not know how he was able to obtain that firearm and ordered officers to pull off to the side of the road," Lyons said.
At the time, Comeaux was shackled and was in a wheelchair, which he had claimed was needed for mobility, Lvons said.
Comeaux, 49, took the officers' weapons and handcuffed them together in the back of the vehicle before fleeing on foot at around 9 a.m., Lyons said.
The officers were later found unharmed about an hour later.
Comeaux was wearing one of the officer's gray uniforms and black boots and took the guards' weapons, a shotgun and two semi-automatic pistols. Lyons said. He left his own weapon behind.
There were several unconfirmed sightings of Comeaux in the Baytown area, said Lisa Block,
a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Public Safety.
State troopers, the Texas Rangers and a Department of Public Safety helicopter were helping search for Comeaux, Block said.
The6-foot,200-poundComeaux
has been in and out of the Texas prison system for the last 30 years, Lyons said.
He was serving a life sentence after being convicted in June 1998 of aggravated sexual assault out of Brazos County.
returned to prison in 1984 to serve a 20-year sentence on a new charge of indecency with a child out of Harris County. He was paroled in 1991 but was in and out of prison for parole violations until 1996.
"Apparently, he used his wheelchair to pin her against a wall and then began stabbing her..."
located northwest of Houston
He was first sentenced to prison in 1979 on three 10-year sentences for rape of a child, aggravated rape of a child and burglary of a building, all out of Harris County, where Houston is located. He was paroled four years later, Lyons said.
MICHELLE LYONS
Texas Department of Criminal
Justice spokeswoman
His parole was revoked and he
Comeaux was given two extra
lite sentences after being convicted for stabbing his wife and another person in 1999 while she visited him in prison. She survived the attack.
said.
"Apparently, he used his wheelchair to pin her against a wall and then began stabbing her with a handmade metal object," Lyons
Comeaux also injured a man who was visiting another inmate at the time and tried to stop the attack.
The escape triggered a lockdown at Lee College and three campuses in the Goose Creek school district, in and around Baytown.
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