The #MeToo movement is making waves in the music industry after Sony Music ‘parted ways’ with R&B superstar R Kelly in January as a result of numerous rape allegations made in the documentary Surviving R Kelly. It details accounts of alleged long-term and wide-scale sexual assault by the singer, whose predatory behaviour was an open secret in the music industry. It’s not the first time R Kelly – who denies the allegations – has been in hot water. In 1994, when he was 27, he illegally married 15-year-old singer Aaliyah. No doubt Sony, and he, will continue to profit from his royalties, but the move is welcomed by survivors.
Doctors are now able to administer the first oral treatments for both early and late stages of sleeping sickness, a huge step towards protecting the 60 million at risk from the disease. The new painless cure for this long-neglected parasitic infection, which is carried by tsetse flies, was approved by the European Medicines Agency last November. The Democratic Republic of Congo is home to some 72 per cent of all cases of the disease, which, as well as putting sufferers at the mercy of an extreme and out-of-whack sleep cycle, attacks the central nervous system causing confusion, violent behaviour, convulsions and death.
