Arts, Culture, Science and Technology Minister Ben Ngubane has allocated R1 million for the Umzimkhulu Moral Regeneration project from the minister's discretionary fund.

Projects dealing with moral regeneration and HIV/Aids are among the main beneficiaries of the ministerial discretionary fund of the Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology. The fund amounts to R5 million for the 2002/3 financial year.

The World Bank yesterday approved two credits totaling US$250 million to help Uganda fight the abject poverty that afflicts 35 percent of the country's population overall, and 66 percent of the population of Northern Uganda. Uganda will receive US$150 million for the Second Poverty Reduction Support Credit (PRSC2), which is second in a planned series of three World Bank PRSC operations, to support Uganda's medium-term development and reform program. Meanwhile, the US$100 million Northern Uganda Social Action Fund credit will specifically address service delivery problems in the North.

All South Africans should look at children with intellectual disabilities in a different light, former president Nelson Mandela said last Saturday. "We need a more accepting, supportive and caring society to remove the shame, stigma and fear of those who find themselves with mental disabilities in their families," he said at the newly renamed Peter Mokaba stadium in Polokwane.

The elimination of ignorance has been a standing objective of the Kenyan government since independence from Britain in 1963. Lately, however, the country's education sector has faced severe tests.

Hundreds of street children and homeless people were last month forced out of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa and dumped in a forest outside the city, the Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO) has said.

Ibrahim Jabr has been the head of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Ethiopia for the last three years. He tells IRIN of the change in approach by UNICEF and the issues it faces in Ethiopia.

The Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) on Sunday said it would encourage all teachers countrywide to leave their schools if the Ministry of Education Sport and Culture, together with the Public Service Commission, failed to take concrete and visible steps to protect their lives and properties.

The United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, said more than 440,000 people in the southern African country of Lesotho are at risk of starving, including about 62,000 children under age five. UNICEF has said Lesotho's problem is compounded by poverty and a high level of HIV/AIDS.

Children are said to be dying at their school desks in Zimbabwe as a "fatal cocktail" of Aids and food shortages sweeps the country.

Tanzania has expelled another group of 400 Ugandan illegal migrants who have now pitched camp at the Kamwema border post in western Mbarara district.

The Second South-South Biopiracy Summit is to be hosted by Biowatch South Africa on the 22-23 August in Johannesburg, South Africa, just prior to the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). The aim is to raise awareness, enable information sharing, and build capacity on issues of access and benefit sharing, as well as to facilitate the development of mutual strategies and statements for the WSSD. The Summit will also provide an important opportunity to review the progress on implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), since its adoption in Rio ten years ago.

The International Secretariat of the OMCT requests you to write to the authorities of Sudan voicing concern about the arbitrary arrest and detention of 11 leaders from the Four tribe by security forces in Zalingei, Western Darfour, on 11 July.

This sourcebook is for all who work with others on participatory learning and change. It provides ideas and options for facilitators, trainers, teachers and presenters, and anyone who organizes and manages workshops, courses, classes and other events for sharing and learning.

Of the 21 million deaths from AIDS to date, three quarters were people living in sub-Saharan Africa. AIDS in Africa is fuelled by poverty, and it is causing a humanitarian and economic crisis in which children orphaned by the disease are growing up without parents, schooling or adequate food. What should African governments and the international community be doing to tackle this growing catastrophe?

Many factors may explain the vulnerability of displaced people to sexual exploitation but there are "no excuses" for its occurrence, US-based NGOs said in a just-released document titled 'Report of the InterAction Task Force on the Prevention of Sexual Exploitation of Displaced Children'.

Overcrowding in primary school classrooms might not be a cause for alarm in Tanzania but a group of visiting young politicians from the US were dumbfounded to learn that some classrooms in primary schools in Dar es Salaam accommodate as many as 270 pupils at a time.

Greg Notess is a well-known name to online librarians and researchers. His recent piece on locating free full-text articles on the Interent is a useful read. Take a look.

Children account for more than half of the 12.8 million people in Southern Africa threatened by starvation, and related diseases such as measles, cholera and HIV/AIDS.

In collaboration with the Ministry of Education of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Belgium has initiated a project to produce five million primary school textbooks for Congolese children and teachers, Belgian Secretary of State for Cooperation and Development Eddy Boutmans has said.