The United States and Britain stepped up pressure on Syria on Sunday, calling for foreign ministers of the United Nations security council countries to meet to consider urgent measures that might include demanding that senior Syrian officials give face-to-face evidence on the murder of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafiq Hariri.

Vanilla, liquorice and chocolate — will these flavours entice South Africa’s notoriously resistant men into wearing condoms? Recently, an Aids media project announced it would be distributing hundreds of thousands of free, vanilla-flavoured condoms to lure men into having safer sex.

The mayor of Bloemfontein’s Mangaung council, Papi Mokoena, was still in office on Thursday, defiantly ignoring an African National Congress order to step down.  Mokoena; the Mangaung council speaker Zongezile Zumane; city manager Mojalefa Matlole and other officials have been charged in the Bloemfontein Magistrate’s Court with corruption after a Scorpions’ investigation.

While allegations of forensic bungling in the Brett Kebble and Constable Frances Rasuge cases have made headlines in recent weeks, the reality is that the criminal justice system is ill-equipped to handle forensic evidence, particularly in sexual offence cases. South Africa has arguably the world’s highest incidence of violence against women.

One does have to sympathise with Jacob Zuma when he complains of being made to feel like a hounded activist of the apartheid days, the way the various warring branches of the State Gendarmerie go about things when fixing to throw the book at a private citizen these days.

I was very interested in Professor Loyiso Nongxa’s article on Wits ("Ngxe!", September 30). For those ex-Witsies, like me, who were privileged white students in the 1980s at the height of apartheid, it was eye-opening to read such an honest account of just how excluded and alienated many of our fellow black student felt about their years at Wits.