Stem-cell institute's hunt for president goes on

California's $3-billion stem-cell initiative has given up on its bid to find a permanent president by this summer.

On 8 August, the board at the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) appointed Richard Murphy as the agency's interim president. Murphy, former president of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, has begun working on a six-month contract but could stay until March 2008.

Murphy was a member of the CIRM's board until he retired from the Salk in July. He did not want to be considered for a permanent post at the CIRM because he is relocating to the US east coast.

His temporary appointment has not been unanimously welcomed by the CIRM board. Some fear it will distract the agency from its urgent need to find a replacement for former president Zach Hall, who resigned in April. The agency has already begun handing out its first rounds of research grants (see Nature 446, 238–239; 2007).

South African president fires deputy health minister

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Sacked: Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge.

Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, South Africa's deputy health minister, was sacked last week by President Thabo Mbeki ostensibly because she travelled to an AIDS vaccine conference in Spain without receiving the required permission to make the trip.

Her dismissal has been interpreted by opposition members and AIDS activists as a deliberate snub of her forthright views on AIDS (see page 727). Madlala-Routledge is the only minister or deputy minister to have publicly taken an AIDS test.

Earlier this year, Madlala-Routledge took the lead in promoting AIDS awareness in South Africa while her boss, health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, was ill. The two have reportedly clashed in recent months over the government's AIDS policy. Tshabalala-Msimang has promoted use of garlic and other nutritional products to fight AIDS.

Novartis loses claim to patent Gleevec in India

In a closely watched ruling for the pharmaceutical industry, a high court in Chennai, India, has dismissed a patent claim for the anticancer drug Gleevec (imatinib).

The Swiss drug firm Novartis was seeking a patent for a newer version of the drug. It had gone to court after the patent office in Chennai rejected its application last year on the grounds that Indian law did not allow patenting of incremental modifications of existing compounds. Novartis argued that the law does not conform with the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement.

Granting the patent, say opponents, would have set a legal precedent discouraging firms from making cheaper, generic versions of life-saving drugs.

Ranjit Shahani, managing director of Novartis India, has warned that the verdict is a loss for India. He adds that multinational drug companies will instead invest in research in China.

Freed medics were forced to confess in Libya

The six medical workers freed last month after eight years in a Libyan jail were tortured while in detention, a son of Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi has admitted.

In an interview last week with the television network Al Jazeera, Seif al-Islam al-Gaddafi confirmed allegations that the medics — a Palestinian-born doctor and five Bulgarian nurses — were forced to confess that they deliberately infected more than 400 Libyan children with HIV. "They were tortured by electricity and they were threatened that their family members would be targeted," he said. The Libyan government has since issued an official denial.

Libya's highest court last month commuted death sentences against the six to life imprisonment after families of the children each received US$1 million in compensation. This opened the way for the medics' release on 24 July (see Nature 448, 398; doi:10.1038/448398a 2007).

Seif al-Islam conceded that investigations were not carried out in a professional way, but denied that Libya would face legal action. Ashraf Ahmad Jum'a, the freed doctor, plans to file a complaint against Libya before a United Nations human-rights panel, his lawyer said last week.

Logo offers physicists a system for hire education

Looking for a job in applied physics? Then say so when you give your next talk. That's the idea behind an initiative from the Japan Society of Applied Physics, which is encouraging postdocs and graduate students to advertise their availability on their PowerPoint slides.

Thanks to programmes in the 1990s, Japan now has a glut of more than 15,000 postdocs — but too few employment opportunities for them (see Nature 447, 1028; 2007).

So the physics society has come up with a 'Career Explorer' logo, which it recommends postdocs incorporate on the opening slide of presentations on their research. The first opportunity to test the logo, which features a smiling young researcher peering through enormous binoculars, will come next month at the society's annual meeting in Sapporo.

Survey team sets sail for a summer on the Danube

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The world's biggest river research expedition for 2007 was set to launch this week on the Danube (pictured). An international team including 18 scientists will travel 2,375 kilometres on a flotilla of three boats from Regensberg, Germany, down to the river's delta in Romania and Ukraine.

In 1994, countries through which the Danube flows signed an agreement to work together to improve water quality. The signatories are funding the project, which has a budget of more than 1 million (US$1.4 million), as a way to provide highly reliable and comparable data across the various borders.