Lying outside her hut on a tattered mat, 20-year-old Maria struggled with her breathing as she tried to explain why she and her five orphaned nieces and nephews in her charge had not eaten. Maria was dying from Aids-related diseases, as well as from severe malnutrition. "I had to sell my plot of land to survive," she said through her gasps for breaths.
A study conducted by the Centre for Social Science Research at the University of Cape Town and the University of Michigan, started tracking about 4 800 youths in 2002 to gauge their opportunities and challenges in democratic South Africa. TheTeacher explores some of the findings of this study.
According to a paper by University of KwaZulu-Natal academics Professor John Aitchison and Anne Harley, the government has been accused of misleading the public for 10 years about its progress in combating adult illiteracy.
Testy relations between China and Japan were further strained this week when Tokyo signalled its intention to explore gas fields in the contested seabed between the two countries. The Japanese Trade Ministry started accepting bids from companies to drill in a region just east of what Tokyo describes as a median line separating the countries’ exclusive economic zones.
More than half of Turkey’s young female population has no schooling, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef). Females account for the vast majority of the seven-million people believed to be illiterate in the predominantly Muslim state. Under Turkey’s Education Minister, Huseyin Celik, this inequity is however being addressed
As hopes that the next pope will come from Africa were increasingly dismissed as unlikely last week, and Nigeria’s Cardinal Francis Arinze was criticised as not being a strong enough contender, a dark-horse candidate, capable of bridging the divide between the Europeans and the Latin American Roman Catholic cardinals, appeared to be emerging in the shape of the Patriarch of Portugal, Jose da Cruz Policarpo.
BP was forced to defend its environmental policy last week after it admitted its production of greenhouse gases increased last year. The world’s second-biggest quoted oil producer produced more than 85-million tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2004, up from 83,4-million tonnes in the previous year, according to the company’s green report published last week.
Rich countries need to increase the amount of aid given to poor nations even though the level reached last year was a record high, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said this week. At the same time, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have called on rich nations to act boldly this year if global poverty is to be reduced, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Aga Khan Univerisity in the UK organized a conference last month to look at Muslim Education around the world. The conference included sessions on university governance and reforms. Women in higher education, as well as teaching and research and international partnerships, were also on the agenda.
Saddam Hussein’s effigy was pulled down again in Baghdad’s Firdos Square last weekend. But unlike the made-for-TV event when United States troops first entered the Iraqi capital, the toppling of Hussein on the occupation’s second anniversary was different. 300 000 Iraqis were on hand, and they threw down effigies of US President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair as well.