The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a $15 billion commitment, is set to expire at the end of fiscal year 2008. This critical boost in U.S. AIDS funding has helped millions of individuals infected with HIV, and in so doing, has improved developing nations’ health and education systems and decreased violence against women. In an original podcast by the Environmental Change and Security Program and the Global Health Initiative, UNAIDS Executive Director Dr. Peter Piot discusses how reauthorizing PEPFAR at increased levels of funding, expanding AIDS prevention programs, and coordinating global efforts to combat HIV/AIDS under U.S. leadership could amplify the effectiveness and sustainability of the global AIDS response.

Click here for the Wilson Center, “PEPFAR Reauthorization and the Global AIDS Response” event summary.

As reported in Russia Today, a toxic cloud from a metallurgical plant in the northwestern Russian town of Nikel has been covering a neighboring town in smoke and dust. A surge of patients have sought treatment for breathing problems, and the effect on local ecology is obvious, as leaves fall from the trees out of season.

Local prosecutors have launched an inquiry into the case, but the factory has already accepted full responsibility and has promised to install new equipment to lower emissions. However, the equipment will take several years to install, and local residents do not want the plant to be closed in the interim, as it is the main source of employment in the area.

As objectionable as Nikel’s pollution and health problems seem, this is not the first time we’ve heard about them. In 1992, Wilson Center Senior Scholar Murray Feshbach and co-author Alfred Friendly wrote about this same issue in their book Ecocide in the USSR: Health and Nature Under Siege.

A new study (login required) by the UN High Commission for Refugees and the University of Copenhagen, published in the June 30 issue of the Lancet, contradicts the prevailing belief that conflict fuels the spread of HIV. Data from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Southern Sudan, Rwanda, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Burundi “did not show an increase in prevalence of HIV infection during periods of conflict, irrespective of prevalence when conflict began.” Additionally, the study finds “insufficient data to support the assertions that conflict, forced displacement, and wide-scale rape increase prevalence or that refugees spread HIV infection in host communities.”

K.Y. Amoako, distinguished diplomat, former Wilson Center African Scholar, and former executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, will discuss regionalism as a major movement in world politics—particularly in Africa—on the Wilson Center’s radio show Dialogue this week.