It is no longer a rainforest but a tree cemetery. As far as the eye can see there are uprooted, bare and broken trunks. The canopy, a roof of foliage so lush you could walk over it, is gone. The few remaining bits of green are no bigger than broccoli. This is the aftermath of Hurricane Felix along Nicaragua’s Mosquito Coast. A smell of decay shrouds the landscape.
The CBD of Athlone, Cape Town, has become the first previously disadvantaged area in South Africa to be declared a City Improvement District (CID), a concept that has worked wonders in turning around parts of the CBDs of Cape Town and Johannesburg. But can it work in smaller areas, driven by local owner-managers, as opposed to large corporations?
There’s good and bad news on the energy efficiency front. The good news is that the country now has its own private sector council dedicated to promoting sustainability in the building industry. The bad news is that government — at least as far as its critics are concerned — is apparently dragging its heels on introducing new legislation to promote energy efficiency.
The whole place is rife with rumours the government’s going to arrest protesters. That’s why I moved from place to place. Close friends of mine have been picked up, either on the street at protests or when the authorities make ‘guestlist checks’. Everyone who’s got someone staying in their home must register them with the local authority. If they’re discovered and they’re not on the list, they’ll get arrested.
Prosperity has come at a price in Belgium. As affluence has grown, so has the country’s waste mountain — a problem that all governments are finding increasingly hard to ignore. But, the region of Flanders in Belgium claims to have found a solution, and the world’s waste authorities are beating a path to its door.
Columnists should generally resist the temptation to write about themselves. Unless purely comic, the column that begins "I want to tell you about my awful experience on the Guava Fruit Airline the other day" is a self-indulgent expropriation of a public space. But writing about the organisation that one has been employed by for 12 years is I hope forgiveable, especially if it seeks to make a broader point.
Temperatures in the Niger Delta’s swelling creeks are up again following threats by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) to resume attacks on oil infrastructure and kidnapping expatriates in the area. Mend made the threats recently after the arrest in Angola of Henry Okah, aka Jomo Gbomo, the leader of the main Mend faction.
There has been much interest recently in mine-contaminated water, with media reports highlighting the issue and concern mounting that environmental and health risks are not being managed effectively. Africa’s variable and unreliable water resources have been a source of conflict for centuries.
Domestic workers now have an affordable and simple retirement savings plan that will make it easier for employers to provide for their workers’ retirement. The product launched by the Presidential Working Group on Women and Old Mutual forms part of a much larger initiative by PWGW to create a women’s retirement plan, writes Maya Fisher-French.
When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s combative president, provoked his latest controversy in New York this week by asserting that there were no homosexuals in his country, he may have been indulging in sophistry or just plain wishful thinking. While Ahmadinejad may want to believe that his Islamic society is exclusively non-gay, it is a belief undermined by the paradox that transsexuality and sex changes are tolerated and encouraged under Iran’s theocratic system.