Kazakhstan, an entire nation is struggling to learn a new alphabet.
Last year Kazakhstan’s president-for-life Nursultan Nazarbayev decreed that the country would switch from reliance on Cyrillic script to use of Latin script – a move away from the country’s former Russian colonizers and toward the West.
But in a country where more residents speak Russian than Kazakh, there’s nothing simple about this change.
The government has budgeted $670 million to deal with the transition, while small-business owners are scrambling to rework signs, and schools are rushing to train their teachers. The transition is scheduled to take place over seven years and to be completed by 2024.
Rabat, Morocco, women surfers are beginning to take to the waves.
Most wear wet suits and many say they have been harassed in some way while surfing, but their numbers are growing.
In September 2016 the country held its first international women’s surfing contest. Surfing has been popular in Morocco since the 1960s, but up until recently it was not considered an appropriate activity for women.
Christian Scientist Moniter