In recent months global awareness on the risks associated with climate change has shifted drastically. Few would now dare to argue against the view that climate change presents an enormous humanitarian challenge. Even if progress in reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases is made, we should not forget that weather patterns have changed already, writes Kofi Annan.

India and South Africa have become close allies in the past decade — but it was not always so. Mahatma Gandhi’s brushes with South African racism are well known, and independent India was an early and vocal critic of apartheid. “Our links with South Africa may stretch back several centuries,” writes the Indian high commissioner to South Africa, Rajiv Bhatia.

In 1976 Sindiswa Nunu, then a pupil at Gugulethu’s Isaac Mkhize Secondary, was shot in both legs by the police during the wave of student uprisings that swept the country. She could not walk for three months. Eight years later, while pursuing her diploma in teaching, she was teargassed and detained when Nyanga Bush, a squatter camp near Crossroads in Cape Town.

A KwaZulu-Natal golf course is offering a R5 000 reward leading to the arrest of the culprits who stole grass from the club’s 15th green, a news report said. Confirming the theft, Empangeni Golf Club greenkeeper Andre Rautenbach said that the grass had been dug out from the putting green on the 15th hole.

The new geography of trade is the basis for the cooperation between India, Brazil and South Africa, says the Brazilian ambassador, Lucio Pires de Amorim. ”The similarities between the three countries make it mutually beneficial for them to work with one another on key areas that include trade and development. They are three countries with large populations.”