Rising sea levels, desertification and shrinking freshwater supplies will create up to 50 -million environmental refugees by the end of the decade, experts warned this week. Janos Bogardi, director of the Institute for Environment and Human Security at the United Nations University in Bonn, said creeping environmental deterioration already displaced up to 10 -million people a year.

Although most industry players expected this week’s colloquium on telecommunications costs would be no more than a talk fest, some hard- hitting proposals were made by government officials and regulators. One key suggestion was for Telkom to unbundle the local loop, which is the connection from the telephone exchange to a home or office.

South Africans had a foretaste of just how bitterly fought the Jacob Zuma case will be, both legally and politically after the former deputy president appeared in court this week. Zuma’s lead counsel, Kessie Naidu, SC, arrived at the Durban Magistrate’s Court with a small army of lawyers, comprising no fewer than three other senior counsel, one junior counsel and his instructing attorney.

Two and a half years of bloodshed have convinced the outside world that Baghdad is not so much a city as an event, a maelstrom of violence. The ferocity and frequency of bombings and shootings have turned Iraq’s capital into a maze of military checkpoints, concrete blast walls and razor wire. In the past fortnight, violence has claimed almost 400 people.

The scale of the disaster has traumatised the entire country — or perhaps not quite. Here in Lahore, a group of people collecting funds for earthquake relief were apprehended and charged. They were amassing money for themselves. Even in the midst of devastation, life goes on.