We would like to thank all of you for the overwhelming response to our call for abstracts for the 3rd MIM Pan-African Conference to be held in Arusha, Tanzania, 18-22 November 2002. The Conference titled "Global Advances in Malaria Research: Developing Evidence-Based Policy and Control" aims to promote the exchange of scientific ideas and will focus on scientific progress and potential in malaria research, with special emphasis given to the linkage between malaria research and its contribution to evidence based policy and control. Due to several requests we have decided to extend the deadline for abstract submission until Sunday May 12; after May 12th the online abstract submission site will close. We are therefore encouraging those who missed the May 1 deadline to use this extension to submit abstracts. Please do not resubmit a revised version of an abstract you have already submitted. In particular, we would like to see more abstracts in the following areas:

The winner of the best short film at the Pan African Film festival has been awarded to Sechaba Morojele for Ubuntu's Wounds, one of the funded projects of The National Film & Video Foundation (NFVF). Morojele was already well known in the South African film industry as an actor and writer (Tsaba Tsaba in Going Up and Mr. Mahlatsi in Yizo Yizo and wrote scripts for Kelebone, Soul City, Generations and Isidingo) when he decided to enrol for a two-year degree in directing at the American Film Institute (AFI) In his first year he made five films and submitted the first draft of Ubuntu's Wounds, a film that tells the story of one man's disappointment with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The hijacking of the World Conference on racism has led to the reuniting of the Black world on issues that affect the Black world. Racism and invasions of Blacks lands in Sudan and Mauritania, Indonesia and West Papua is one of the issues that affects the Black world, even though some of the participants in the system of sanctified racism in North East Africa are Black African, who would be reminded of who the are in Germany, the U.S., Libya, Israel, Russia, China, Latin America, India, Europe and parts of the Middle East, where the term "slave" would be used to call them. Racism in the Americas, continued racism in parts of Southern Africa, poverty, degradation and other forms of racism in Latin America, North America and elsewhere are issues to Blacks around the world. The World Conference on Racism was hardly about finding solutions to making racism impotent. It dealt with the issues of other people, while most of the world's oppressed Black people were left with nothing.