The 500-million people who live in the world’s desert regions can expect to find life increasingly unbearable as already high temperatures soar and the available water is used up or turns salty, according to the United Nations. Desert cities in the United States and Middle East, such as Phoenix and Riyadh, may be living on borrowed time as water tables drop and supplies become undrinkable.
The marine unit involved in the killing of Iraqi civilians in Haditha last November had suffered a ”total breakdown” in discipline and had drug and alcohol problems, according to the wife of one of the battalion’s staff sergeants. The allegations in Newsweek magazine contribute to an ever more disturbing portrait of embattled marines under high stress.
A famed South African former dancer and his ex-ballerina wife have opened up a new world and possible career prospects for children from Cape Town’s poor slums through free dance lessons. The project launched by Philip Boyd and his wife, Phyllis Spira — one of the country’s top ballerinas in her heyday — now encompasses about 600 children.
The strike by foot soldiers in the private security industry has been going on for weeks now. It is a wonder that any of us is still alive, given that we have begun to take for granted that they are our last defence against the Barbarians, in the absence of an effective police force that the average citizen takes as his or her constitutional right.
There have been few times in my life when sheer excitement has rendered me speechless. And even fewer when that excitement has caused my mouth to hang open in a zombie-like gawp.
The newly built entrance with a nightwatch shelter, and gates that have been daubed with a fresh coat of creamy white paint, send out a false signal about Moses Mnisi High School (MMHS).
With the recent announcement that MTN Group CEO Phuthuma Nhleko is to purchase R266-million-worth of his company’s shares, he has — as an analyst who declined to be named put it — told the market that not only does he believe the company will do well in the next three to five years, but "he intends to lead the company through that phase".
Putri and her friend Anif have been inseparable since the earthquake. Each day, the little girls come to the giant white tent, grab a handful of crayons and set to work. Five-year-old Putri sketches a mountain with gray smoke snaking from its peak. ”Merapi”, she says, referring to the increasingly active volcano nearby.
The Berlin Wall made the news every day. From dawn to dusk we read about it, heard about it and saw it: the Wall of Shame, the Wall of Infamy, the Iron Curtain. But the Moroccan Wall, which for 20 years has perpetuated Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara, goes unmentioned altogether.
Someone once said: ”Those who can, do and those who can’t, teach.” I suppose that might depict the majority of us currently in the profession as no-hopers and failures. However, this is hardly the case as the demands on a teacher today are simply enormous and stressful. As our communities have changed and adjusted under the pressures of the modern world, so too have our children and their families. Teaching, today, is not for the faint-hearted.