But it is likely to heed the recommendation made by the 22-member advisory panel of

But it is likely to heed the recommendation made by the 22-member advisory panel of doctors and scientists who heard testimony from the patient’s family and Aids specialists at the University of California.The panel asked researchers to try to find better baboons for Getty’s donation because the two lined up were infected with five known viruses. However, it said that if better baboons could not be found and Getty wanted to take the chance the FDA should allow the procedure anyway.Doctors from San Francisco General Hospital and the University of Pittsburgh say there is a small chance that baboons could hold the key to boosting Aids patients’ immune systems because the animals do not get infected with HIV-1, the virus that causes most Aids cases in America.. In an article headed “A pounds 2 million contract for the boss’s girlfriend” (17 November 1991), we raised a number of questions about the quality of the management and financial controls of the Red Star division of British Rail. We referred to the fact that Marilyn Lloyd’s company, Kaleidoscope Presentations Limited, was awarded a valuable contract with Red Star at a time when she was in a close personal relationship with a senior Red Star executive. There was no intention to suggest that Marilyn Lloyd obtained the contract other than on her own merits and her ability to perform the contract has never been in question.

If any readers understood otherwise, that is a matter of regret and we are pleased to take this opportunity to make the position clear.. HEAD teachers in one of Britain’s most racially tense areas are up in arms because their local authority has ordered them to close their schools for the Muslim festival of Eid. They have complained that the move in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, where the British National Party won a council seat in 1993 but lost it again in 1994, could be racially divisive.
Many Muslim parents withdraw their children for Eid and some schools close for it, but there are fears that the new compulsory holiday will upset non-Muslim parents.Of 25 head teachers who replied to the council’s consultation on the issue, all but one said it should be left to their discretion. They also pointed out that because Eid happens the day after the new moon can be seen over Mecca, its date is not known for certain until immediately beforehand.However, councillors have insisted that schools must close for two separate days for the two festivals of Eid, which are two months apart and which will fall in the late spring next year, and that the summer holidays will be two days shorter.

Christian voluntary aided schools will be requested to close, but it seems likely that many will refuse.Some other London boroughs close their schools for non-Christian religious holidays: Waltham Forest has days off for Eid, for the Hindu festival of Diwali and for Guru Nanek’s birthday, which is celebrated by Sikhs.Half the primary school children in Tower Hamlets are Bangladeshi Muslims, but one-third are English, Scottish or Welsh and almost one in five are from a wide range of other racial backgrounds.The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), which represents 90 out of the 100 Tower Hamlets heads, says the move will be counterproductive. It has written to the Department for Education and Employment about it, but has been told that holidays are the responsibility of the local authority.Heads whose schools close for other non-Christian holidays at the moment are upset because they will no longer be able to do so.Michael Russell, head teacher of Malmesbury Junior School in Bow and NAHT national executive member for the borough, said that in an area of rich cultural diversity, it seemed narrow to grant a Muslim holiday but to ignore other racial groups.”It would be a great shame if this was divisive and if it increased racial tension in an area where the local authority has already done so much to promote harmony, trust and understanding,” he said.A council spokeswoman said the holiday was designed to allow all pupils to take part in a festival already enjoyed by many.”It helps to promote a multicultural environment for all our pupils to learn from. Michael Schade’s Tamino is youthfully fresh and “artless”, Christiane Oelze’s Pamina likewise; Cynthia Sieden’s Queen of the Night blurs her coloratura but delivers top Fs with sufficient ease to make them musical; and Gerald Finley is the most engaging Papageno you could ask for – not so much an earth-man as an operatic Hugh Grant radiating bashful charm. Precious moments that should bathe in radiance float past and barely register. But that said, there is some delicious if, er, lightweight singing from a largely German cast. In the circumstances the artists – members of Bernini Opera – did pretty well and, I hope, pleased their sponsors, P&O.The other Mozart was the latest, and last, in a series of the composer’s mature operas which John Eliot Gardiner has been presenting over the past five years.

Each production has originated abroad and been designed for touring, which means travelling light. And the new Die Zauberflote, which opened at the QEH on Wednesday, travels lightest of all in that it has no sets. All scenic needs are supplied by the dance company Pilobolus who transform themselves into temple doorways, animals, water and fire – whatever Mozart asks for – by knotting their bodies into a sort of human macrame. This was wonderfully imaginative, slightly distracting (I kept thinking what inventive sex lives they must lead), but good for momentum in that, with nothing to shift, each scene flows seamlessly into the next.The “lightness of being” in this Zauberflote becomes less bearable, though, when you find it encompasses the humour and the music, which are wonderfully refined but with their substance undervalued. One was a Don Giovanni playing in the Chichester Festivities with a reduced orchestration (one instrument to a part, no trombones), no chorus, and a tiny stage area that required the singers to address an audience on two sides and behave like dervishes, whirling on the spot. With the “big” music of symphony and opera it paradoxically breeds trivia.Placido Domingo took over the lead in Stiffelio at Covent Garden this week and stalls seat-prices promptly leapt to pounds 197, raising the inevitable question: is he worth it? The answer, I fear, is no – not because there’s anything materially wrong with the performance, but because it just isn’t special enough.