From the richest fish in the world, will our coasts become in such a short time the least rich in fish resources and the most polluted on the planet? Videos that have been circulating for a few days on the Internet, showing Turkish and Chinese boats using rotating nets to scrape the seabed, are chilling. We see them throwing their giant nets on shoals of fish and grabbing everything without any respect for the resource or the fishing grounds. The problem is that the phenomenon is not new and no government has agreed to muster up the courage to put an end to it. The Chinese and Turks are well protected, it seems. When we add to this already catastrophic situation, the dozens of fish factories installed in Nouadhibou – Aziz had, in his time, issued at least forty approvals – which pollute not only the air but also the sea by dumping their waste directly there. untreated, there is reason to fear for the bay of this city. Just last week, thousands of fish were found dead on its shores: pollution, no doubt. Dark picture at all levels. However, civil society actors, in particular international NGOs, the media and researchers have constantly sounded the alarm bell, but it has fallen on deaf ears. Displaying loud and clear his good intentions, each new minister promises to tackle the problems of the sector but – remembered to what (dis) order so powerfully embedded in high places? – do not delay in coming back to earth. So here he is managing day-to-day business until his departure and replacement. Turn, turn, little ships, a sandy desert was not enough for us, so kill us also our waters!

Ahmed Ould Cheikh

North Rhine-Westphalia’s school minister Dorothee Feller (CDU) apologized on Wednesday. She knows what that means for students who prepare for their exams with their own work plan, she said in Düsseldorf.

The decision to postpone the start of the Abitur exams was very difficult. She can understand that students and teachers are “really angry”, said the minister. “That’s me too.” At the moment the downloading of the Abitur exams for this Thursday is going well. The ministry was constantly in contact with the schools, said Feller.

A number of schools had already called for help on Tuesday followingnoon, as the NRW Philology Association reported to the “Aachener Zeitung”. The opposition in the North Rhine-Westphalia state parliament criticized the procedure and pointed out what they saw as a lack of communication from the state government. The SPD parliamentary group in the state parliament requested a special session of the school committee.

“Abi-Super-Gau”

Dilek Engin, spokeswoman for school policy for the SPD parliamentary group, wrote in a reaction that the school minister had a “super meltdown” and accused her of “catastrophic communication behavior”. The minister had disappeared for hours. Teachers and high school graduates would now have to pay for the problem. “By the way, especially the pupils of Muslim faith, who celebrate the sugar festival on Friday. And whether the announced rail strike on Friday can be guaranteed to run smoothly at all is still completely open,” Engin continued.

“Actually, they can no longer be used because confidentiality cannot be guaranteed one hundred percent,” said Engin, referring to the exam tasks. Franziska Müller-Rech, spokeswoman for school policy in the FDP parliamentary group in North Rhine-Westphalia, was outraged by the breakdown. “What a horror! You spend weeks preparing for your Abitur – and then it falls through due to a lack of tasks,” said Müller-Rech in a written statement.

The NRW school minister said on Wednesday that students who are unable to take the exam on Friday because of the sugar festival can make up for it. The minister does not fear a data leak. Your house currently sees no reason to set new tasks on Friday. “We assume that the tasks are not burned,” said a specialist from the ministry.

“It’s an indictment”

Even a Bielefeld school does not help their own initiative: As reported to this editor, the upper school head went to a friend’s school, which was lucky enough to be able to download the tasks, and organized the tasks in this way.

Harald Willert, spokesman for the school management association NRW eV, is also outraged: “It is a sign of failure that the server crashes the first time it is loaded. That is very unfortunate for thousands of high school graduates.” It shows that data processing and digitization are still on shaky ground.

Christian Beckmann, Chairman of the State Parents’ Conference of North Rhine-Westphalia, makes a similar statement: “Imagine the uncertainty of the high school graduates the day before their first final exam – and that following the pandemic years. That’s an impertinence and there has to be a better way.”

These exams should have taken place

On Wednesday, the Abitur exams should have started all over NRW at high schools and comprehensive schools. Tests were planned in the subjects biology, chemistry, nutrition, computer science, physics and technology.

In the followingnoon, Sabine Mistler, head of the Philology Association of North Rhine-Westphalia, emphasized to the WDR that timely downloading of the exams is particularly important in these subjects. This is because a test arrangement often has to be set up in order to carry out the test. In addition, the right subject areas had to be selected.

The B solution didn’t work either

The service provider for transmitting the tasks had a second server, Feller explained on Wednesday. However, this B solution did not work either. In the fall, the download was tested smoothly with around 300 schools. Downloading was also successful for 300 schools on Tuesday followingnoon. The schools were asked to keep the exams under lock and key.