Over a third of German national TV programmes are produced in Cologne. Alongside the eight channels based on the banks of the Rhine, in `media city', are the offices of the young, resolutely feminist FrauTV and the militant magazine Emma

`Women's media' - does the concept ring a bell? Magazines full of sample sachets of new shower gels? Saturated with ads? Celebrity rumours? Quizzes about your relationship? If that's what the women's press boils down to in your eyes, that's because you haven't discovered two German alternatives, FrauTV and Emma. They bring female issues to the fore, but through frank discussions between the sexes, or from an explicitly feminist perspective. As an antidote to ditsy, superficial and conventional women's weeklies, a trip to Cologne, where their offices are based, does the world of good. No more tapestry!

'Welcome to our show for young embroidery enthusiasts, vixens, angels of vengeance, goddesses, mums, grannies, married women, lesbians, tomboys, singletons, cows, witches, teenagers, walking clothes-horses, virgins, nice old ladies... and men, of course.' FrauTV's trailer sets the tone for the show. While the approach might be as youth-orientated as a copy of Closer, with an audience just as diverse as Marie Claire's readership, presenter Lisa Ortgies and her team stay away from beauty obsessions and make sure their viewers are getting some intellectual nourishment. Because on FrauTV, the subjects range from abortion and diets through to Jehovah's witnesses and sex addiction. It's a `modern, female, magazine show that doesn't need to be confrontational, but stays open-minded and clear-sighted about issues that affect women, covering them with journalistic rigour and, occasionally, a fair amount of charm and humour,' explain the creators. 'FrauTV isn't one of these programmes that are only interesting to women. Increasingly, it's also a show for men.'

World Breastfeeding Week started on Sunday. For the next seven days the beauty of breastfeeding, related health aspects and the problems it may lead to - for example at work or in social life - will be in the spotlight. 
 
A number of special breastfeeding cafes have been opened in the Netherlands over the last couple of years. In sociable surroundings young mothers can exchange experiences and get tips from professional maternity carers. They can do this openly, without having to worry about colleagues or other onlookers.
 
Wendy Seelen from Careijn Maternity Care runs a breastfeeding cafe at `De Peer' in Breda. Mothers meet there every Wednesday morning.
 
"Our approach is not really to solve problems," Wendy says "but to offer a place where mothers can get answers to their questions and support by exchanging information. A good atmosphere is also important, hence the cafe concept. Mothers should also be able to meet each other outside a health care environment, because breastfeeding does not belong in a health care environment. Moreover, it is something that belongs in the outside world."

WARSAW -- Two dozen homeless men are building a ship to sail themselves around the world at the St. Lazarus Social Pension here, in the yard of a former tractor factory. Sparks fly from the rusty 55-foot hull as they weld it into form, even after losing the priest who led and inspired the mission.

These men with sharply lined faces and blurry, old tattoos have set out to prove their seaworthiness, and to prove that they have some value to society, even if society has largely written them off.

"Some people smack themselves in the head when they hear, and probably think we're crazy," said Slawomir Michalski, 51, who was a welder in the famous Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk and joined the strike led by Lech Walesa in 1980 that helped shake the foundation of Communist rule in Poland and the entire Soviet bloc. It was a singular moment in Polish history and one that adds resonance to tales of shipbuilding here.

A Croatian island that was home to a sinister Titoist re-education camp for 40 years will shortly be provided with a memorial and documentation centre. For former detainees, acknowledgement of the horror they endured remains an ongoing combat, reports Dutch daily Trouw.

One night in 1949, in a darkened cell in Montenegro, Dmitar Kastratovic, an 18-year-old student, sat with his hands tied behind his back. A leader of the youth section of the local communist party, he had been arrested ten days earlier for possession of a Soviet newspaper. The secret police agent interrogating him shoved a pistol against his chest, "Who is smarter, Tito or Stalin?" After hours of grilling, Kastratovic finally replied "Stalin." Two days later, he was sent for three years to the island prison on Goli Otok.

Today, Kastratovic is nearly 80, but the memories of the horror that he experienced there continue to haunt his nightmares. He remembers being forced to work for hours without water in the searing midday sun. "Sometimes, they only gave us four beans to eat, but if the guards heard anyone complaining, all of us were punished. They made us run for hours, and battered us with truncheons until we collapsed." Kastratovic eventually lost a kidney to the torture on the island, and he still suffers from debilitating headaches -- but he was one of the luckier inmates. Images of friends, who committed suicide by jumping from the rocks, or those who died from exhaustion still appear in his dreams. He was ordered to carry the bodies of the dead to the other side of the island, where he had to bury them with his bear hands.

A new strain of the virus that causes AIDS has been discovered in a woman from the African nation of Cameroon.

It differs from the three known strains of human immunodeficiency virus and appears to be closely related to a form of simian virus recently discovered in wild gorillas, researchers report in Monday's edition of the journal Nature Medicine.

The finding "highlights the continuing need to watch closely for the emergence for new HIV variants, particularly in western central Africa," said the researchers, led by Jean-Christophe Plantier of the University of Rouen, France.

Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National party, was speaking to Channel 4 News last month when he made a statement that infuriated Vaughan Gething.

"There is no such thing as a black Welshman," the BNP MEP for north-west England said. "You can have a black Briton; you can't have a black Welshman. Welsh is about people who lived in Wales since the end of the last ice age."

Gething, who is hoping to be the first black person elected to the Welsh assembly, says: "On that basis, most white people wouldn't qualify.

"It's quite clear that Nick Griffin just doesn't accept that black British people or black Welsh people are entitled to call themselves proper, full citizens of the country.

"And every time he tries to define what an ethnic Briton is, it's all bollocks. Because the definition he's searching for is really about saying 'white people who speak English'.

"There have been black Welsh people for centuries. Cardiff, in particular, has had centuries' worth of the port and people being brought there to work and settling there and being accepted as part of the community. All of my memories are from the UK. This really is my country."

Vaughan is a good friend of mine, I worked on his campaign when he was a councillor and I'm involved with his campaign as an AM candidate. I also know him through work, no escaping each other!

The Wales TUC conference in May was the first time I have ever heard him speak about his ethnicity and I've known him personally and politically for about 6 years. He's a very talented man. Take a look at the comments underneath the article. Pure racism and accusing him of playing the race card which he has genuinely never done.  Not nice stuff. And we wonder why we don't get a greater diversity of people in politics.  

Ad astra per aspera