In brief: AIDS conference opens in Rome

ROME – The head of the United Nations AIDS program called Sunday for an increase in access to drugs that help treat or prevent the spread of the disease, saying it is “morally wrong” to keep millions of people off lifesaving medication.

Michael Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS, said the gap in access to HIV treatment should be closed both within and between countries.

Sidibe called for better delivery on the ground, a reduction in the number of years it now takes to turn scientific discoveries into actual progress for the poor, and increased cooperation among states, pharmaceutical companies and international organizations.

“We must use innovation to overcome social division and inequity,” he said at the opening of an international AIDS conference in Rome.

Former Uruguayan dictator dies

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay – Former Uruguayan President-turned-dictator Juan Maria Bordaberry died early Sunday at home, where he was serving a 30-year sentence for efforts to eliminate leftist dissent in the 1970s. He was 83.

Bordaberry had been suffering from breathing problems and other illnesses before he died. Elected in 1971, Bordaberry was a wealthy, conservative landholder who cut short his democratic term with a June 27, 1973, auto-coup carried out with military backing. He suspended the constitution, banned political parties, ordered tanks to ring Congress and ruled for three years by decree until his 1976 ouster by generals who went on to lead a right-wing dictatorship until 1985.

After his ouster, Bordaberry lived quietly for decades out of public view until his arrest on Nov. 17, 2006, when a push for human rights investigations under leftist President Tabare Vazquez led to his indictment for a total of 14 deaths and disappearances.