Michelle Obama urges Africa to advance women's rights (Reuters)

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – First Lady Michelle Obama urged young Africans on Wednesday to fight for women's rights and battle the stigma of AIDS, using her husband's "yes, we can" campaign slogan to motivate youth across the continent.

Obama is on her second solo trip abroad as first lady to promote issues such as education, health and wellness.

But her speech to a group of young women and men at Regina Mundi Church, which played a role in South Africa's anti-apartheid movement, touched on much harder topics: race, discrimination, democracy, and development.

Obama, who is traveling with her mother and two daughters, drew on the leaders of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and the civil rights movement in the United States as an example for the younger generation to follow.

"It is because of them that we are able to gather here today...It is because of them that I stand before you as First Lady of the United States of America," she said to applause.

"That is the legacy of the independence generation, the freedom generation. And all of you - the young people of this continent - you are the heirs of that blood, sweat, sacrifice, and love."

Obama appeared visibly moved when the audience stood and sang an impromptu serenade as she approached the podium. Placing her hands over her heart, she thanked the crowd and seemed to choke back tears.

She spoke passionately about women's rights, saying the young leaders should ensure that women were no longer "second class citizens" and that girls were educated in schools.

"You can be the generation that stands up and says that violence against women in any form, in any place, including the home - especially the home - that isn't just a women's rights violation. It's a human rights violation," she said.

"You can be the generation that ends HIV/AIDS in our time, the generation that fights not just the disease, but the stigma of the disease, the generation that teaches the world that HIV is fully preventable and treatable, and should never be a source of shame," she said to applause.

Obama was introduced by Graca Machel, Nelson Mandela's wife.

Obama and her family met Mandela at his home on Tuesday.

Barack Obama is the first black U.S. president, just as Mandela was the first black president of South Africa.

Mrs. Obama used her husband's famous campaign slogan, which helped him win the 2008 presidential election, to urge the audience to follow through on the issues she addressed.

"If anyone ever tells you that you shouldn't or you can't, then I want you to say with one voice - the voice of a generation - you tell them, 'yes, we can."

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Elton John urges Fla. gov to save HIV/AIDS funding (AP)

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Singer Elton John wrote to Gov. Rick Scott urging him to protect a program that helps low-income HIV/AIDS patients obtain medication needed to control the virus after learning the state is considering changing the income eligibility to participate, which could increase an already long waiting list.

John, founder of the Elton John AIDS Foundation, told Scott that changing the income eligibility could add 1,600 patients receiving medication to the waiting list.

HIV/AIDS patients earning 400 percent of the poverty level or below are eligible for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program. The Department of Health has held hearings around the state while it considers dropping that income level to 200 percent of poverty as a cost savings measure. The program now serves 9,600 people and has another 3,482 on a waiting list.

"Given that life-saving HIV/AIDS medications can cost between $10,000 and $30,000 per year, this proposal would put these low-income individuals with HIV/AIDS in the untenable position of being completely unable to afford treatment for an incurable, communicable disease," John wrote in a letter cosigned by foundation chairman David Furnish.

The state Department of Health believes, however, that it may be able to continue serving all its current patients and possibly reduce the waiting list if it gets the increase in federal funding it expects, said Tom Liberti, chief of the department's HIV/AIDS bureau.

The budget Scott signed last week keeps state money for the program at this year's level, or $9.5 million. The Department of Health is moving another $1 million into the program from other parts of its budget. And while he doesn't know the final figure, Liberti expects an increase in the $85 million federal grant now available for the program.

"We're working as hard as we can for Florida to help solve this problem and I think with some additional federal sources and the economy getting better I think that we'll start to make some progress very shortly, " said Liberti.

Once he determines the cost of continuing to help everyone now in the program and the final amount in state and federal money available, he'll make a recommendation to state Surgeon General Frank Farmer on whether to go ahead with the income eligibility reduction. However, Liberti said he is confident that the state should have enough to help all current participants and is hopeful that the waiting list can be reduced.

John's Foundation hopes that's the case.

"The Department of Health has formally issued a proposal to change ADAP eligibility requirements, held public hearings across the state, and all indications are that Florida is seriously considering this harmful rule change. We would welcome any information to the contrary, and we hope the governor and other state officials will immediately block this measure from being enacted," said Scott Campbell, the foundation's executive director.

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Elton John urges FL gov. to save HIV/AIDS funding (AP)

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Singer Elton John is urging Florida Gov. Rick Scott to protect a program that helps low-income HIV/AIDS patients get medication needed to control the virus.

John, founder of the Elton John AIDS Foundation, wrote to Scott on Tuesday after hearing the Department of Health was considering changes in income eligibility.

A department spokeswoman says there are no immediate plans to change the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, though it held hearings to discuss the possibility of lowering income requirements to participate.

In their letter, John and foundation Chairman David Furnish say lowering income eligibility could mean 1,600 people will no longer get help obtaining antiretroviral medication.

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Elton John urges FL gov. to save HIV/AIDS funding (AP)

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Singer Elton John is urging Florida Gov. Rick Scott to protect a program that helps low-income HIV/AIDS patients get medication needed to control the virus.

John, founder of the Elton John AIDS Foundation, wrote to Scott on Tuesday after hearing the Department of Health was considering changes in income eligibility.

A department spokeswoman says there are no immediate plans to change the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, though it held hearings to discuss the possibility of lowering income requirements to participate.

In their letter, John and foundation Chairman David Furnish say lowering income eligibility could mean 1,600 people will no longer get help obtaining antiretroviral medication.

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Prince Charles urges US not to overtax Mother Nature (AFP)

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Britain's Prince Charles warned Wednesday at a US conference debating the future of food that unsustainable farming methods are overtaxing nature and pushing the global food system into crisis.

"In some cases, we are pushing Nature's life-support systems so far they are struggling to cope with what we ask of them," the heir to the British throne, who is a long-time advocate for sustainable food production, told some 700 people packed into a meeting hall at Georgetown University.

"Soils are being depleted, demand for water is growing ever more voracious and the entire system is at the mercy of an increasingly fluctuating price of oil," the prince said in the keynote speech at the "Future of Food" conference.

Charles was joined by the son of a peasant farmer from Mexico who now advocates for farmworkers' rights, a professional basketball player turned organic farmer, a pediatrician working to promote healthy diets for low-income families and others in calling for a change to the way Americans produce and consume food.

But the prince was the only speaker to be given a standing ovation that set the wooden Flemish-Romanesque meeting hall rumbling.

The world's food producers must urgently "create a more sustainable approach to agriculture... that is capable of feeding the world with a global population rapidly heading for nine billion," the prince said.

"Can we do so amid so many competing demands on land, in an increasingly volatile climate and when levels of the planet's biodiversity are under such threat or in serious decline?" he said, urging Americans to lead the way in fixing the global food system, which has already reached crisis stage.

"The way we have done things up to now is no longer as viable as they once appeared to be," the prince said, urging the world's food growers to take "some very brave steps," including developing "more sustainable, or durable forms of food production."

"I have no intention of being confronted by my grandchildren, demanding to know why on earth we didn't do something about the many problems that existed when we knew what was going wrong," Charles said on the second day of a whirlwind visit to the United States.

The Prince of Wales kicked off his official visit to the United States Tuesday -- just days after the pomp and ceremony of his son Prince William's wedding to Kate Middleton -- with a visit to an urban farm in a gritty, deprived Washington neighborhood.

He also visited the US Supreme Court and met US service members who were wounded in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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