Primary school feeding schemes are intended to give poor children an incentive to attend school - and not to compensate for the lack of nutrition at home, argues Lenore Dunnett, deputy director for the Western Cape's Nutrition Programme. But for many under-privileged children, the food they receive through such schemes is all they can expect to get to eat on any given day.

A drug that reduces the trauma and risks of abortion has been available since February - but many of the women who need it most are not aware it exists. Mifepristone, developed in France under the working name RU486, also known as the "abortion pill", was registered by the Medicines Control Council last September, and has been available through private clinics for five months.

Cosatu and the Treatment Action Campaign are to table a national HIV/Aids treatment plan in Nedlac following the first national treatment conference, which concluded in Durban this week. A key aspect of the plan involves making antiretroviral drugs available through the public health system to those infected with HIV.

The Democratic Alliance (DA), stung by allegations by German fugitive Jurgen Harksen that he donated money to the party, has proposed legislation to regulate political party funding. Harksen claimed he had donated about R750000 to the DA, allegations which have not yet been validated by forensic auditors from Ernst & Young, who have tracked every donation of more than R5000 of the 14000 donations received at national and provincial level last year.

The HIV epidemic has created an emergency in SA. This emergency threatens South Africa's future by creating more poverty and impacting negatively on the ability to reconstruct and develop SA to the benefit of all of its people. A national HIV/AIDS Treatment Plan is needed to combat this emergency. A treatment plan will strengthen the existing five-year strategic plan, which concentrates mainly on prevention. These were the conclusions of a Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) National Treatment Congress held in Durban, South Africa, between 27 and 29 June.

Why are we so afraid of admitting our racism/s? Media coverage of racism often extends only to sensational killings or attacks, or the media defending itself against being racist. There is little space for open, honest debate on race, and when there is, where are the voices of ordinary people? And why are the voices so often male? Do women experience racism?

A Grootvlei Prison warder on Monday denied claims by inmates that he had made racist and sexist remarks about members of the Jali Commission into prison corruption.

Not treating HIV-positive people was more expensive than buying them medicine, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) said in Johannesburg on Monday. "That's the thesis that our experts are testing and they are looking at hard figures to support it," TAC secretary Mark Heywood told reporters in Johannesburg. Heywood was speaking ahead of a HIV/Aids congress due to take place in Durban.

Men, women and children ran for cover as violence erupted in Lenasia on Tuesday morning after police opened fire with rubber bullets. The R554 highway to Lenasia, which had been closed off in protest by about 4 000 residents over the removal of Tembelihle informal settlement residents to Vlakfontein, was strewn with odd shoes, clothes and knobkerries after police started firing rubber bullets.

President Thabo Mbeki has ordered the special investigating unit the Scorpions to investigate wide ranging allegations of corruption and maladministration in five councils in the Western Cape province of the country.

South African researchers have made a breakthrough in malaria research that will enable more effective drugs to be developed to treat the parasite-based infection, a medical researcher said on Sunday. The breakthrough was based on identifying how the malaria parasite handles iron in red blood cells, said Giovanni Hearne, a doctor at the Wits University's Medical School in Johannesburg. Malaria is transmitted to humans through the bite of an infected female anopheles mosquito and is a huge problem worldwide, particularly in Africa.

Highly active antiretroviral therapy can reduce the incidence of tuberculosis in HIV-positive people by 80% or more in areas where the two diseases are endemic, with the most protection being afforded to those with advanced immune suppression, according to a study published in the June 15 issue of the Lancet.

The American lawyer who won compensation for Holocaust victims is about to launch legal claims for billions of pounds against companies, many of them British, that benefited from apartheid.
The first action will be announced at a press conference tomorrow by Dorothy Molefi, mother of the most famous casualty of the 1976 Soweto student uprising, Hector Petersen, who at the age of 13 was the first student shot dead by police in 1976. The photograph of his bloodstained body cradled in the arms of a friend, with his tearful sister running alongside, came to be the symbol of student resistance.

Rural women produce more than three-quarters of the world's food and play a crucial role in fighting the 'evil twins' of poverty and hunger, says Mpumalanga premier Ndaweni Mahlangu. Speaking at a conference to promote women's access to land in the province, Mahlangu said land redistribution urgently needed to be fast tracked so that women could participate in mainstream farming.

The South African government has relented, and some say completely reversed itself, with an unexpected April announcement that it would make anti-retroviral drugs available for rape survivors. The government's U-turn on drugs has been widely applauded inside and outside of South Africa. But the Director-General of Health, Dr. Ayanda Ntsaluba, says the government isn't so much changing course as moving to where the evidence takes it.

With only 69 days to go before the start of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, concern is mounting over whether heads of state from several key industrialised nations will attend the event.

"What are we going to do about the United States?" It's a blunt question for a UN diplomat, but it was on the minds, the lips, and in some cases the T-shirts, of many of the thousands of delegates who recently gathered in Bali for last preparatory meeting before the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) to be held in Johannesburg in late August. Kenny Bruno was at the Bali "Prepcom" and says despite the many roadblocks erected by Washington, many delegates are still optimistic that "another UN is possible."

The South African presidency has dismissed reports that Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi believed President Thabo Mbeki's New Partnership for Africa's Development was a project of former colonialists and racists. Rumours that South Africa is involved in talks about a possible arms deal with Libya have also been played down.

Nelson Mandela has met a controversial South African poet and song writer whose latest song has been branded "racism and hate speech". After meeting the former president, Mbongeni Ngema said the debate he had hoped to raise had gone the wrong way and he would not object if the song was banned from sale.

At least 5,7-million children in South Africa, roughly a third of those under 18, would have lost one or both parents from Aids by 2015 unless there were major interventions, the Medical Research Council (MRC) has warned.