GENEVA: Rwanda, where the United Nations estimates that 52 percent of people die before age 40, will become the first government to use global trade rules to override pharmaceutical patents and import generic drugs.

The African country said that it expected to buy 260,000 packs during the next two years of TriAvir, a fixed-dose combination of the widely used anti-AIDS drugs lamivudine, zidovudine and nevirapine. The generic product is manufactured in Canada by Apotex.

Under Word Trade Organization rules, countries can issue compulsory licenses to disregard patent rights, but only after negotiating with the patent owners and paying them adequate compensation. An agreement in 2003 allowed poorer countries to import the drugs from abroad if they cannot produce the medicines themselves.

“Because it is not possible to predict with certainty the extent of the countrys public health needs, we reserve the right to modify the foregoing estimate as necessary or appropriate,” Rwanda said in a letter released Friday by the WTO.

Combivir, made by GlaxoSmithKline of Britain, contains lamivudine and zidovudine. Nevirapine is a generic version of Viramune, made by Boehringer Ingelheim of Germany.

Brazil and Thailand have recently issued compulsory licenses to develop cheap generic versions of U.S. AIDS drugs, among other medicines. Health campaigners praised them, but industry groups criticized the countries, and the United States later placed Thailand on its copyright watch list.

Many AIDS patients have developed resistance to older anti-retrovirals and now need more expensive, second-line drugs. The international aid group Oxfam says that the patent-busting procedure is almost never used because developing countries face pressure from wealthy governments acting on behalf of their drug companies. In a report last year Oxfam said that 74 percent of AIDS medicines were under monopoly, and that 77 percent of Africans lacked any access to AIDS treatment.

“Rwanda is making a bold move,” Cйline Charveriat of Oxfam, said. “This provision was set up to ensure poor countries get access to affordable medicines.”

(07-20) 06:51 PDT SAN FRANCISCO, (AP) —

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. posted a second-quarter loss on heavy acquisition costs and lower microprocessor prices but gave investors hope with rising sales that beat Wall Street’s expectations.

The world’s No. 2 microprocessor maker won more market share during the quarter, and management predicted that the company will break even in the fourth quarter.

“I’m optimistic,” said Doug Freedman, an analyst with American Technology Research. “I have my long-term concerns, but there was a bit of sentiment that these guys were going to get run out business. You don’t expect someone who’s going to get run out of business to run up the share like they did.”

After the market closed Thursday, Sunnyvale-based AMD said it lost $600 million, or $1.09 per share, for the three months ended June 30. That compares with a profit of $89 million, or 18 cents per share, in the same period last year.

The chip maker incurred one-time charges of $130 million, or 24 cents per share, during the latest quarter related to shares $5.6 billion acquisition of graphics chip maker ATI Technologies Inc. and other expenses. Excluding those charges, AMD would have lost 85 cents per share.

Revenues for the second quarter were $1.38 billion versus $1.22 billion last year.

Analysts were expecting AMD to report a loss of 85 cents per share on $1.26 in revenue, according to a survey by Thomson Financial.

AMD shares fell 3 cents to $15.75 at the open of trading Friday.

The company said the 13 percent sales increase was driven by higher microprocessor shipments for servers, laptops and desktops. Average selling prices for desktop microprocessors were lower for the quarter, however.

AMD said the second-quarter results for 2006 and 2007 don’t correlate directly because of the ATI acquisition.

“While we made solid progress in the second quarter across a number of fronts, we must improve our financial results,” Robert Rivet, AMD’s chief financial officer, said in a statement.

Price-cutting has hurt profits at AMD and its larger rival, Santa Clara-based Intel Corp.

A strong new product lineup introduced by Intel last year helped the world’s largest semiconductor company take substantial market share from AMD. Intel also made a quicker transition to a more advanced chip-making process that boosts performance while lowering manufacturing costs.

But AMD is showing signs of a comeback.

The company appears to have stabilized its market-share losses, ending the second quarter with 11.4 percent of worldwide microprocessor sales, a slight increase from the previous quarter, according to preliminary data released Thursday by market researcher iSuppli Corp.

AMD’s share of the global microprocessor market had risen to nearly 17 percent last year before falling about six percentage points in the second half of the year, according to iSuppli.

During the second quarter, AMD also announced that Japanese electronics giant Toshiba Corp. has agreed to use AMD processors in new consumer laptops in the U.S. and Europe. Toshiba had used previously used only Intel chips, which AMD cited in its landmark 2005 antitrust lawsuit against Intel. That case is still in discovery in Delaware federal court.

AMD’s closely watched gross profit margin was 34 percent of revenues in the second quarter, excluding one-time expenses. That was three percentage points higher than the first quarter. AMD said the increase was caused by higher microprocessor sales even as the company wrote off about $30 million worth of old microprocessor inventory.

AMD said Thursday it expects revenues to increase in the third quarter in line with seasonal trends. The company is also set to launch its new server chip, code-named Barcelona, in August. The chip Д which has four processing cores on the same slice of silicon Д is seen as vital for AMD’s competitiveness against Intel.

PARIS: Journalists at Le Monde have rejected a bid by the chief executive, Jean-Marie Colombani, to renew his mandate, leaving uncertainty about who would lead the French newspaper.

Because Colombani was the only candidate, the vote late Tuesday blocking his appointment added a dose of uncertainty to a board meeting scheduled for Friday to name a chairman.

Colombani, a widely read editorial writer, has worked at Le Monde since 1977 and led the paper as chairman since 1994. The new appointment would have been his third six-year term.

Another French media organization, the private broadcaster TF1, also became a subject of news coverage this week after it hired a senior member of the campaign team of the newly elected president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy.

Laurent Solly, deputy director of the Sarkozy campaign, will join the broadcaster in mid-June as a deputy director general. The appointment has served to fuel accusations of excessively close association between Sarkozy and the owners of major French media.

For example, immediately after his election, Sarkozy retreated to a large private yacht loaned to him by the media financier Vincent Bollorй.

At Le Monde, the journalists, who hold veto power over the appointment of a chairman, expressed dismay at changes within Le Monde during the Colombani tenure.

Like other major French newspapers, Le Monde has faced a drop in circulation, and losses at the paper have been projected to reach \40 million, or $54 million, by 2008.

Colombanis response was to make investments and partnerships with other publications, using a hard-charging style that antagonized many at the newspaper.

“Le Monde has not only changed size, but it has changed its nature,” Robert Solй, a Le Monde journalist critical of Colombani, wrote in a message to colleagues. “We were a newspaper, but we have become a media group.”

From a business perspective, Colombani has become a victim of his own success, wrote Claude Perdriel, the founder and chief executive of the weekly news magazine Nouvel Observateur.

“When Jean-Marie Colombani took over the newspaper 12 years ago with Alain Minc, the title was failing and should have fallen into the hands of an industrial group,” said Perdriel, whose publication has a shareholding link with Le Monde.

“He created a group, but above all he did that while maintaining a structure that left important decisions in the hands of the employees,” Perdriel said.