Saudi Arabia on Tuesday said it would allow driving permits for women under a royal decree to take effect in June. Princess Nourah University in Saudi Arabia has said it will open a driving school for women, in a first for the ultra-conservative country after a ban on women driving was lifted.

A university in Saudi Arabia has said it will open a driving school for women, in a first for the ultra-conservative country after a ban on women driving was lifted.

"Princess Nourah University is preparing to set up a driving school in cooperation with the relevant authorities," the women's university said on Saturday.

"This is the first such announcement following this week's order by King Salman to allow women to drive," it said.

Saudi Arabia on Tuesday said it would allow driving permits for women under a royal decree to take effect in June, sparking euphoria and disbelief among activists who long fought the ban.

The Gulf kingdom was the only country in the world to ban women from taking the wheel, and it was seen globally as a symbol of repression in the Gulf kingdom.

Princess Nourah University says it has more than 60,000 female students in Riyadh and other cities. Tuesday's decision is expected to push women into the workforce and boost car sales, especially in the coming months before a scheduled imposition of a government value-added tax in January 2018. Car makers including Nissan, Chevrolet and Ford have rushed to congratulate Saudi women, as millions of women are expected to hit the road in the kingdom in coming years.

Israeli scholars have pieced together and deciphered one of two previously unread manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls more than half a century since their discovery, an Israeli university has said.

The more than 60 tiny fragments of parchment bearing encrypted Hebrew writing had previously been thought to come from a variety of different scrolls, a Haifa University spokesman told AFP on Sunday.

But Eshbal Ratson and Jonathan Ben-Dov of the university's Bible studies department found the pieces all fit together after they started examining them just under a year ago, Ilan Yavelberg said.

"They put it all together and said it was actually one scroll," he said.

A Haifa University statement said that Ratson and Ben-Dov were now working on deciphering the last remaining scroll.

The Dead Sea Scrolls, which include the oldest known manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, date from the 3rd century BC to the 1st century AD.

Numbering around 900, they were discovered between 1947 and 1956 in the Qumran caves above the Dead Sea.

The parchment and papyrus scrolls contain Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic writing, and include several of the earliest-known texts from the Bible, including the oldest surviving copy of the Ten Commandments.

Many experts believe the manuscripts of the Dead Sea were written by the Essenes, a dissident Jewish sect that had retreated into the Judaean desert around Qumran and its caves.

The latest deciphered scroll contains references to the 364-day calendar used by the sect, as opposed to the lunar calendar used in Jewish religious practice today.

It also refers to annual wine and olive harvest festivals no longer observed in Judaism.

Source: AFP

Indian Educational School (IES), Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, a staunch supporter of authentic Indian culture across the Middle East region and elsewhere celebrated the true spirit of ‘Hindi Diwas’ on 14 January at the IES school auditorium.

The Department of Hindi organized many cultural events as part of the celebrations such as the Interschool ‘Nukkat Natak’ (Street Play) contest, which was indeed the highlight of the celebrations.  Eminent writer Dr. Navneeth Gandhi and Sapna Joshi, HoD, Hindi, Kuwait Indian School were the chief guests as well as the adjudicators of the interschool contests.

The program began with the ‘lighting of the lamp.’ The ceremonious lamp was lit by all the invited dignitaries. Many school teams participated in the Nukkat Natak competition which had the theme ‘Kahin kho na jaye bachpan.’ (Childhood). The Street Play team of Delhi Public School, Kuwait was adjudged to be the best. The team that represented the host school was declared as the first runner up and the team that represented the United Indian School was declared as the second runner up of the Nukkat Natak Competition.

In the sub-junior category, Ammar Yusuf of Indian Community School, (ICSK) Junior won the first place in the Story Telling competition. The second and the third prizes were bagged by Ruth Ann Joby of ICSK Amman and Amairah Sharma of IES respectively.  In the junior category, Aman Baig of Learners Own Academy (ILOA) won the first prize. The second and the third prizes were won by Maryam Chorghay of ICSK and Priyati Alkesh of Smart Indian School (SIS). A puppet show and a dance by Devi Nandana and Harichandana added spice to the Hindi Diwas celebrations.

‘Hum honge kamyab,’ the Hindi version of the world famous marching song ‘We Shall Overcome’ was sung by the IES students amid thunderous applause.
The prizes were given away by the guests amid applause of appreciation. Swarna Saini, Faculty Head, Hindi delivered the welcome address.

Mrs. Vandana, a member of the Hindi faculty proposed the vote of thanks.

Smart Indian School (SIS) organized a kite making and flying activity on Thursday, 11 January to help children enjoy the outdoors. The students had a magical thrill to launch a kite up and into the air. Some of these kids held a kite in their hands for the first time. Once the kids figured out how to get it flying, they began to master the challenge of keeping the kite in the air, and maybe even learn a trick or two.

Through flying a kite the teachers explained to the children how wind and weather keep the kite flying up in the air. The little children were excited to fly the kite, which also helped develop hand and eye coordination, kinesthetic awareness, and gross motor skills.

Kindergarteners enjoyed their annual kite making day and had fun while learning to play.

Scarlet hibiscus petals infuse their flavour in a giant pot of liquid, where green leaves picked from the west African kinkeliba shrub also swirl. With a pinch of ginger and some baobab fruit, the concoction is ready to be tasted.

Aissata Diakite's juices are part of an all-natural health startup which the 28-year-old Malian launched in December, blending traditional flavours with an engineer's eye for detail.

The idea of launching a range of entirely natural fruit juices using locally sourced products from the African savannah came from her childhood in Mopti, a region in central Mali through which the Niger River flows.

And it was there, while studying agribusiness in France, that the project came to fruition.

"When I was a student, I used to come back to Mali on holiday and I would drive through rural agricultural areas to meet the farmers, to understand the seasons and how to manage the off-season," she explains animatedly.

And last month, she launched her line of "Zabbaan" juices after meeting prospective buyers at the "Invest in Mali" forum.

The business takes its name from the zaban -- or saba senegalensis, a shrub-like tree native to the Sahel region which grows predominantly on riverbanks and in woodlands, whose fruit and leaves are highly prized.

- Investing in her homeland -

The forum was not for the fainthearted: Mali is struggling with a jihadist insurgency across large swathes of its rugged terrain -- including Diakite's home region -- which are currently being patrolled by several international military forces.

"Coming to Mali today is an act of faith," admitted President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in a speech at the forum's opening.

Nonetheless, investors pledged some 34 billion CFA francs ($63 million, 52 million euros) to an array of businesses, from solar energy to cement and packaging.

"Producing what we consume, that's how we create jobs and wealth," Industrial Development Minister Mohamed Aly Ag Ibrahim said a week later at the formal launch of Zabbaan.

And he hailed Diakite as "an inspirational young woman" who had "returned from abroad to invest in her country and succeeded in that challenge".

- Echoes of an empire -

There are 10 juices in the range, each bearing names like "the king", a punchy mango and baobab mix, "the duke" -- zaban and baobab, or "the warrior" which blends hibiscus with mint and baobab, with names evoking the pomp of the Mali Empire, which ruled large sections of west Africa for 400 years.

It was her grandmother who told her stories about Mali at the height of its power when it was a world-renowned centre of learning, she told AFP.

Her recipes are based on leaves, flowers and fruits from the African savannah, "most of them growing wild" with fresh, local products one of the trademarks of the range.

"We work with a network of farmers who supply us, who often work on lands passed down through the family," she says.

"And these products are also used in traditional African medicine."

In order to break into new markets and start exporting overseas, the company is also in the process of obtaining organic certification.

- Essence of Mali -

Bamako's small but growing middle class is taking note.

Zabbaan now produces around 1,000 bottles a day at its production facility in the capital which are mostly sold at supermarkets in Bamako for 500 CFA francs ($0.90) a go.

The juice, which is pasteurised, comes in brightly-coloured 300 ml (10 fluid ounce) bottles, which are made of recyclable plastic.

But even this foothold in a nascent market was hard won.

"It's not easy to grow a network of suppliers like that," Diakite said. "It took me about three years."

On the factory floor, where the latest batch is ready, the production team is in full swing.

Before it can be bottled, the product -- "the prince" in this case -- must be tasted. And it's a job for the whole team."Some people think that this one lacks ginger, so we are changing that and adding a bit more," says Lala Coulibaly, who is responsible for quality control and hygiene.

With 65 employees on the payroll, Diakite has now set her sights on the export market, with the company due to start shipping juices to France in February.

And she's also working on a new line of products: the extraction and export of pure essences that will also bear the label: "Made in Mali".

A Cypriot court Thursday ordered an Israeli national suspected of being the brains behind an international organ trafficking gang to remain in custody until an extradition process begins on February 5.

Moshe Harel's defence lawyers had asked for the 70-year-old travel agent, who was arrested at Larnaca airport on January 5, to be released from custody on bail terms until the process starts.

Harel is accused of seeking out people in need of kidney transplants and of luring donors to Kosovo from Turkey and the ex-Soviet Union a decade ago.

Both Russia and Kosovo, which Cyprus does not recognise, have issued international arrests warrant for him.

"In view of the seriousness of the crimes, I judge that there is visible danger of him escaping before his extradition process begins… The bail terms proposed by the defence are not satisfactory,” judge Michalis Charalambous said.

The prosecution argued against his release because he had no ties with Cyprus and could flee to the breakaway north of the island.

Harel has been hunted by authorities for almost a decade for exploiting victims, often recruited from poor areas in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, by promising 15,000 euros ($18,000) for their organs.

Recipients, mainly Israelis, would pay up to 100,000 euros ($122,000) for the transplant.

The organ trafficking network came to light in 2008 after a Turkish man collapsed at Pristina airport after having a kidney removed.

In 2013, an EU-led court in Kosovo sentenced five Kosovan doctors to up to eight years in prison for organ trafficking.

Donors, whose organs were illegally removed, were left without proper medical care and treated "like waste", prosecutors said at the time.

But the supreme court of Kosovo annulled the verdict in 2016 and ordered a new trial, which is ongoing.

The indictment named Harel as the trafficking network's mastermind, while Turkish doctor Yusuf Ercin Sonmez -- labelled by Kosovo media as the "Turkish Frankenstein" and still on the run -- was suspected of performing the transplants.

Source: AFP

A suggestion that schools send students on exchange between Germany's former East and West to heal persistent divides sparked debate on Monday, almost 30 years after the country's reunification.

"We don't just need pupil projects exchanging with Poland or France, but between Leipzig and Stuttgart" in the lagging east and prosperous southwest, Left party politician Helmut Holter told the Funke newspaper group.

"East and West talk far too little about the way things were and the way they are now," he added, referring to the nation's decades of division between the Soviet-dominated German Democratic Republic and the westward-looking Federal Republic of Germany.

Holter, from the small former eastern state of Thuringia, made the remarks as he takes over chairmanship of a committee of culture ministers from all modern Germany's 16 states.

"East German experiences have to be brought into the West and vice versa" as part of a programme to defend democracy, he said.

Talk of the country's internal divisions has grown recently as far-right populists Alternative for Germany mine deep seams of resentment in the economically weaker East, helping fracture a once stable political landscape.

But not everyone agrees Holter's proposal would help bring the nation together.

"Rather than East-West exchanges, we need a frank view of German history and an active culture of remembrance for the victims of war, injustice and tyranny in the last century in our country," culture minister in populous North Rhine-Westphalia state Yvonne Gebauer told news agency DPA.

"Almost 30 years after reunification, dialogue has become a matter of course, at school and at work, in private life and at the most official events," the Stuttgarter Nachrichten newspaper commented.

"Conversely, school exchanges are weak where they remain urgently needed, between European nations... the culture ministers would do well to support international exchanges more," it added.

source: AFP

 Jiri Drahos, a Czech presidential candidate who will face-off against pro-Russian incumbent Milos Zeman in a run-off in 15 days, is a pro-European scientist with a life-long passion for music.

The chemist and former head of the Czech Academy of Sciences won 26.58 percent in the first round of the presidential election on Friday and Saturday, against Zeman's 38.6 percent.

Drahos has said that he will campaign to "anchor the Czech Republic in Euro-Atlanticism" in a clear jibe at the Kremlin-oriented Zeman.

Analysts say that since he can count on the support of several round-one also-rans, the 68-year-old stands a good chance of beating Zeman in the second round run-off vote on January 26-27.

Favoured by liberal voters and urbanites, the bespectacled, dove white-haired scientist boasts sophistication and manners radically different from those of the current head of state, who can be outspoken to the point of being rude.

But analysts say that compared to the charismatic Zeman, Drahos appears dull, even wishy-washy.

Drahos argues he is simply doing his best to bring decency to politics, which is "neither a weakness nor a reason to be laughed at."

While the physically fit Drahos has said he quit smoking at age 13, Zeman, 73, is a frail-looking chain smoker and passionate drinker who walks with a cane and suffers from diabetic neuropathy.

Drahos has also had a life-long passion for music -- he first played piano in a band he formed with his brother, then they switched to rock, and now he sings in a choir that he joined 43 years ago.

- Farm hand -

Drahos spent his early years in the easternmost Czech town of Jablunkov, where he was born on February 20, 1949.

He has recalled taken up piano and trumpet lessons, but also working at his uncle's farm.

"I first mowed with a scythe at eleven," Drahos said, adding that he had mucked manure and dried hay as well as slaughtering and skinning rabbits.

After secondary school, Drahos moved to Prague to study physical chemistry at the University of Chemistry and Technology.

At 24, he joined the Czech Academy of Sciences, which he ended up leading from 2009 to 2017.

Refusing to join the Communist Party or the Communist secret police, Drahos was an ordinary researcher until the 1989 Velvet Revolution that toppled totalitarian rule in former Czechoslovakia.

He went on a year-long stay in Hannover, West Germany in 1985, owing to a fellowship provided by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

"My wife and children had to stay in Prague as hostages," says Drahos.

After 1989, his career blossomed -- he became professor in 2003 and deputy head of the Czech Academy of Sciences two years later.

"My career at the academy has taught me to respect facts and promise only what I'm really able to do, and, of course, endurance," says Drahos.

"As chairman, I led scores of talks with politicians," he adds, answering those who question his experience with politics.

A supporter of his country's EU and NATO membership, Drahos wants the Czech Republic to "play an active role in the EU," but he has also joined the chorus of eastern leaders when he said "a clear no to refugee quotas" proposed by the EU.

Married to librarian Eva since 1974, Drahos likes to spend his free time with his wife and two daughters at a weekend house.

"My wife and I love opera. I also listen to Eric Clapton, John Mayall, the Beatles or the Rolling Stones," says Drahos.

Speaking English, German, Russian and Polish, Drahos also lists hiking and cross-country skiing among his hobbies.

source: AFP

The International Government Communication Centre (IGCC) has announced ‘The Future of Government Communication in the Age of Digital Community’ as its main theme for the seventh edition of the International Government Communication Forum (IGCF).

Organised by Sharjah Government Media Bureau (SGMB), IGCF 2018 is scheduled to take place from 28 – 29 March 2018 at Expo Centre Sharjah. The topic reflects the IGCF commitment to keep pace with the latest communication technologies and practices. 

‘Digital Millennium ... To Where?’ will be the slogan for IGCF 2018, and a testament to its communication initiatives in presenting the transition of government communication practices from conventional to a more sophisticated and integrated framework. Due to the digitalisation of content, connectivity and services across various platforms such as applications and social media platforms, the slogan will embark on identifying and addressing the core competencies and challenges of the future.

The IGCF, which was launched in 2012 to translate the goals and directives of His Highness Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Mohamed Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Sharjah, aims to harness technology to develop government communication in Sharjah, the UAE and the wider region in order to build a better future for communities across the world.

The Sharjah Forum is set to focus on four main themes: the Fourth Industrial Revolution and its impact on various aspects of life; the social networking revolution and its associated challenges to government communication; new government approaches that have been able to adapt to the requirements of the digital world; and the new digital generations that will form the majority of the world’s work force by 2020.

Announcing the IGCF 2018 agenda, Sheikh Sultan bin Ahmed Al Qasimi, Chairman of Sharjah Media Council, said, “The IGCF aims to strengthen the Emirate’s presence and stature on the media landscape by playing an influential role in developing communication strategies and practices. This will contribute to serving Emirati citizens and residents, achieving an optimal communication ecosystem between governments and society.”

He pointed out that the IGCF aspires to build a sophisticated new government communication infrastructure based on the principles of partnership and cooperation. 

Sheikh Sultan bin Ahmed Al Qasimi said the millennials and post-millennials, also known as Generation Z, who were born in the digital era and with the emergence of smartphones, would have a strong presence at this year’s Forum. 

“We want to listen to their opinions and hear their ideas on the development of government communication, especially considering that this generation depends so much on the speed of communication and transparency in work,” he added.

Aside from panel discussions and open dialogue highlighting leading experiences in government communication, the seventh edition of the Sharjah Forum will feature a number of training workshops designed to develop technical knowledge, skills and expertise.

The Forum will also provide university students with a deeper insight into the best communication practices, which will help them if they consider government communication as a career in the future, in addition to offering wider participation for people interested in the communication sector and those who have a passion to contribute to changing its mechanisms and methods of influence.

More than 2,500 global figures, influencers and senior officials, including heads of state and governments, thought leaders, heads and directors of regional and international organisations, civil society, study and research centres, media personnel and students of mass communication and media are expected to participate in the IGCF 2018.