Everything's coming up roses

The Independent in London has no news on its front page at all today, just a nice picture of some gently wilting roses by the artist Gary Hume. Given that its rival The Guardian is publishing the lion’s share of the WilkiLeaks revelations, you could be forgiven for thinking that the paper has given up the ghost completely. But you’d be wrong. Instead it has drafted in the pop legend Elton John as guest editor for World Aids Day and allowed him to fill its pages with some of his pet hates (the EU fighting to protect the interests of pharmaceutical companies) and his heroes (Bill Clinton, the actor Stephen Fry, Cherie Booth, the wife of former British prime minister Tony Blair), who believe people in India and Africa have a right to anti-retroviral drugs at the lowest possible price. Meanwhile, a report published in Portugal indicates that from between 1983 and December 2009 almost 5,000 cases of HIV/AIDS in people over 50 years old were identified, 900 of them being over 65. The new data released by the UN/AIDS says that 42,000 people in the country are infected with the virus, writes Público.