Oprah opens South African school for disadvantaged girls

The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in Henley-on-Klip, South Africa, was built with a $40-million US donation by Winfrey.

Winfrey said she was grateful that she had an opportunity for a good education and welcomed the chance to see bright young women develop into leadership roles in South Africa.

She hailed the attitudes of many of the 11- and 12-year-old girls she interviewed personally before accepting them to the school, saying they seem to value education in a way that North American children no longer do.

Oprah’s school for girls opens Tuesday

Oprah Winfrey’s $40 Million School to Open

Winfrey, who devoted five years to creating the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls outside Johannesburg, also said of the assistance she has given at home, “I became so frustrated with visiting inner-city schools that I just stopped going. The sense that you need to learn just isn’t there.”

In America, she says, “If you ask the kids what they want or need, they will say an iPod or some sneakers. In South Africa, they don’t ask for money or toys. They ask for uniforms so they can go to school.”

Winfrey has called the Leadership Academy “the fulfillment of my work on earth.”

Pat Robertson: God told me of ‘mass killing’ in 2007

Evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson said Tuesday that God has told him that a terrorist attack on the United States would cause a “mass killing” late in 2007.

“I’m not necessarily saying it’s going to be nuclear,” he said during his news-and-talk television show “The 700 Club” on the Christian Broadcasting Network.

“The Lord didn’t say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that.”

Robertson said God told him about the impending tragedy during a recent prayer retreat.

God also said, he claims, that major cities and possibly millions of people will be affected by the attack, which should take place sometime after September.

Water is the new oil: CIBC

“What we are witnessing here is a trend that is profoundly modifying water as an investment theme throughout the world.”

YouTube enlivens Liberal race

It was Canada’s first YouTube political campaign.

The Liberal leadership race has been swept up in the cultural phenomenon that is the Internet’s most popular file-swapping service — YouTube.com.

Diamonds could be Canada’s new best friend

The billions-of-years-old rocks underneath the Canadian Shield have untold potential for Canada, as they include the kimberlite rock formation where diamonds are found, and could bring a glittering bonanza, the head of De Beers Canada says.

An Inconvenient Truth Squeezed from Classrooms

The producers of An Inconvenient Truth have offered to supply American classrooms with 50,000 copies of the movie free of charge. That offer has been rejected by the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), the nation’s leading science education teachers group, citing a risk to funding from key financial supporters.