Zingisile Mapazi

Gauteng finance MEC Jabu Moleketi has confirmed the provincial government's intentions to intensify its antiretroviral programmes by allocating the health department a lion's share of the budget.

The Scorpions are preparing to seize an alleged bribe of R340 000 paid by the developer of the Roodefontein golf estate, Count Riccardo Agusta, to the New National Party, the elite investigative unit said on Thursday

President Thabo Mbeki on Wednesday led calls for ''a heroes' welcome'' to be accorded Bafana Bafana on their return from South Korea.

Hopes of a lasting peace in the war-ravaged Middle East were raised on Tuesday when Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said his country was ''ready to pay any price for peace'' in the region, including handing back most of the occupied territories back to the Palestinians.

While there was nothing ''improper'' about the current stormy relations between the government and the official opposition, the onus lay with President Thabo Mbeki to set the tone for some interaction, says Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon.

The SA Municipal Workers' nation-wide strike got into full swing on Tuesday despite threats of disciplinary action by some municipalities in the Free State, Samwu claimed.

A major report published by the International Bar Association exposes how threats to freedom and justice have triggered off a chain reaction putting millions of people in Malawi under threat of famine.

About 2 000 Congress of SA Trade Union members marched on the SA Broadcasting Corporation and Media24 on Tuesday to protest against the pair's ''anti-labour'' news reporting.

After refusing flatly to address the local media in Pretoria on the indecent assault claims he is facing, England's Manchester United club manager Sir Alex Ferguson on Saturday opened up to the British media and rejected the allegations.

Investigators on Sunday recovered the flight data recorder of the aircraft which crashed into rugged mountains near George on Saturday, killing former cricket skipper Hansie Cronje, its pilot and co-pilot.

Up to five million needy children qualifying for government's monthly cash grants still go hungry, despite over R1-billion idling in government coffers.

The Jeremy Cronin saga, which last month dominated the SA Communist Party's national congress and threatened the relationship between the ANC and its SA Communist Party ally, ended dramatically when he apologised to the ANC's national executive committee.