Franz Opitz (Credit: franzman.skyrock.com)

As the train stopped, I felt as if I had travelled back in time.

Stoke-on-Trent stands the rough English wind with its five storey buildings painted in a dull yellow. Famous artists to hail from Stoke-on-Trent include singer Robbie Williams of Take That and guitarist Slash of Guns N’ Roses.

However, after meeting Franz Opitz in this place halfway between London and Manchester, I now wonder if one day it might be associated with him too.

It’s only after I have spoken to Franz that I start to understand his personality and sense of humour.  I can’t help but smile as I notice the picture on the calendar he has given me as a gift.

“Hey You Sexy Thing! Morning Hygiene Routine in Bukuya,” it reads below the picture of him having a bucket shower in Uganda, where water still remains an issue.

The calendar features pictures taken by Franz during one of his stays in Uganda and can be bought here at £6.50 for the slim line version and £8.50 for a larger A3 version with more photos and amusing text.

All contributions will help make Michael Katende’s future brighter. Michael, who has been Franz’s translator in Uganda, is the oldest of his siblings in the family. Franz has just sorted out Michael’s visa, who in a few weeks will fly for the first time from Uganda to the UK to start university.

Michael and Franz (Credit: franzman.skyrock.com)

“He’s the kind of person who’d never ask me for anything,” Franz said. “Even when he saw my mobile phone, he never cared about it or about any other of my possessions.

I want him to have the opportunity to study here so that when he goes back to Uganda he will get a good job and make the difference.”

I’ll get back to Michael later. Franz is a man who’s had all most people want from life.

"Ratchet," an emergency vehicle and Autobot Transformer (C.W. Spaulding)

Last weekend, The Leader World columnist C.W. Spaulding was with her husband, Andrew, visiting Chicago. While there, they saw filming for the upcoming American movie, “Transformers 3,” set for release July 1, 2011.

A brief history of “Transformers”

For anyone unfamiliar with the franchise, “Transformers,” with its tagline “Robots In Disguise,” pits a group of heroic robots, the Autobots, against their recurring enemies, the Decepticons.

"Bumblebee," a Chevy Camaro and Autobot Transformer (C.W. Spaulding)

“Transformers” started out as a line of action figures developed by American company Hasbro and inspired by products from Japanese company Takara Tomy. In the 1980’s, the franchise spun off into an extremely popular cartoon series, an animated movie and numerous comic books.

Different versions of “Transformers” continued on into the 1990’s, but its overall popularity declined entering the 2000’s. Then, the franchise made a major comeback.

With a roller-coaster economy and high unemployment, this is the time to take stock and ask yourself some important financial questions to ensure you keep your financial house in order.

Here are five important questions to ask yourself:

   1. Do I have an exit strategy with my investments? If the stock market endures another free fall or your company stock takes a dive, how will you secure the assets that have grown over the past year? How far will your money go before you exit the stock market? How much does it need to make before you might take some profit off the table? Learn from the ups and downs you saw in the early 2000s and in 2007-08.

 
   2. Do I have enough of a cash reserve? With job-market uncertainty, make sure you beef up your cash reserve for at least three months more than you would normally have. If you are used to having three months in a cash reserve, double it to six months.

Read on for the rest...

That was fast. Two weeks after the last widely reported breakthrough against HIV, here comes another one.

Researchers in South Africa and the United States conducted a study involving 900 HIV-uninfected South African women with a gel containing tenofovir, an antiretroviral drug. The gel prevents the virus from multiplying. It was determined that women who use the gel reduce their infection risk by 50 percent after a year.

In the study, half of the women received the gel, the other half received a placebo.

The study was published in the journal Science and will be presented at today's International AIDS Conference in Vienna, Austria.