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AMMAN — UAE will fund a renewable energy project worth $220 million, UAE ambassador to Jordan Matar Shamsi announced, adding that the construction will begin “soon”.

Quoted by the Jordan News Agency, Petra, on Saturday, Shamsi added that under the direction of its leadership, the UAE supports Jordan, and is returning favours the Kingdom has done for the Emirates before and after the latter’s establishment.

He cited Marsa Zayed and Saraya projects in Aqaba that are being implemented by an Emirati company, with an investment amounting to more than $12 billion and securing thousands of jobs for Jordanians. 

As the UAE, a federation of seven emirates that emerged in 1971, marks its 46th national day, Shamsi told Petra that Jordan was the first country to recognise and establish diplomatic ties with the Emirati union, remarking that diplomatic representation at the level of ambassador was in place one day after the union was declared. 

Shamsi noted that the UAE-Jordanian Joint Committee held its third meeting at the end of October 2017, during which 12 agreements and memoranda of understanding were signed. He pointed out that the volume of UAE investments in Jordan amounts to 16 billion dollars. On the other hand, there are many leading Jordanian businessmen investing in the UAE.

On bilateral relations, the Emirati envoy pointed out that the first Jordanian educational, military and health missions to the UAE were sent when the UAE was an underdeveloped desert community in the 1950s. 

No further details were available on the project.

AMMAN — His Majesty King Abdullah on Saturday received a telephone call from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, during which they addressed the latest regional developments. 

King Abdullah acquainted Abbas with the outcome of his meetings with US officials in his recent working visit to Washington, according to a Royal Court statement.

AMMAN — A total of 1,500 volunteers from all parts of the Kingdom on Saturday participated in the national campaign to clean and plant trees at Naur forest.

HRH Princess Rahma took part in the campaign, organised by the “Green Amman 2020” project’s committee. The event saw the participation of representatives of the public and private sectors as well as local community members, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

Princess Rahma expressed her gratitude for participants in the campaign, which was implemented in an area characterised by wide green spaces, which requires sustained preservation and awareness raising of the importance of the environment.

Naur’s Mayor Ziad Sawaeer commended the committee’s efforts and role in coordinating efforts among stakeholders to increase the number of green areas nationwide. 

AMMAN — The Jordan Trail association on Friday concluded the Jordan Trail Run in Aqaba, under the patronage of Tourism Minister Lina Annab, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

Jordanian athlete Mohammad Al Sweity and British runner Alfie Pearce-Higgins concluded the 650-kilometre-long Jordan Trail Run, passing through 52 villages across the Kingdom.

During the ceremony, Annab said that the Jordan Trail association has put the Kingdom on the map of adventure tourism, noting the growing international interest in the sector.

She said the trail has become a global symbol in the sporting field, attracting large numbers of tourists and contributing to the development of the economy and the local communities.

The Director General of the Association Basheer Daoud, announced that the association is considering organising an annual Jordan Trail ultra marathon.

AMMAN — The 15th international conference on parliamentary affairs, organised by the Independent Election Commission (IEC), is scheduled to begin on Monday. IEC said that the conference, held under His Majesty King Abdullah’s patronage, will see the participation of 60 organisations working in democracy-related domains, 25 representatives of parliaments and governments, as well as 50 election commissions representing 55 Arab and foreign countries.

The IEC added in a statement carried by the Jordan News Agency, Petra, that the event aims at exchanging expertise among democratic societies and election administrations in the world and the region to contribute to improving the electoral process.

The conference is organised in cooperation with the International Centre for Parliamentary Studies and European Centre for Electoral Support.

AMMAN — Residents of Amman and Zarqa will receive reduced water and experience shortened pumping hours this week, as the Jordan Water Company (Miyahuna) on Sunday starts maintenance on the Disi Water Conveyance Project, a Miyahuna senior official said on Saturday.

Changes in the amounts of water supplied to subscribers as well as the number of pumping hours under the weekly water distribution programme are expected as of Sunday, when the company will suspend pumping water from the Disi project, a main water source to Amman and Zarqa, Miyahuna CEO, Ghazi Khalil, said.

Khalil underscored that the company has been preparing for the suspension of the pumping of water from the Disi project since last month to ensure minimal disruption for residents in both governorates.

“The programme will continue undisrupted this week but people will receive less water than usual and will witness slight reduction in pumping hours,” Khalil told The Jordan Times.

Under the water distribution programme, households across the Kingdom receive water once during a certain period, usually between 7 to 10 days, on a rotating basis. Scarce water resources in the country compelled the Kingdom to initiate the programme in the early 1980s to conserve limited resources whilst ensuring a sustainable supply of water.

As the company will suspend water pumping from the Disi project for four days starting on Sunday, it has been filling it reservoirs in Amman and Zarqa to avoid water cuts while it carries out maintenance on the Disi project, Khalil highlighted.

The Disi project conveys 100mcm annually from the Disi aquifer in southern Jordan to the capital via a 325-kilometre pipeline. The project started pumping water to Amman in 2013.

Maintenance on the Disi project is part of an annual maintenance on all of the water sources and pumping stations, Khalil said.

“The company always opts for carrying out maintenance during winter and particularly in December, when water consumption is at its lowest,” he underlined.

Miyahuna has 600,000 subscribers in Amman and 150,000 subscribers in Zarqa.

DEAD SEA — Over 475 participants from the Arab world gathered at the Dead Sea on Friday for the opening of the 10th Annual Forum for Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ). 

The conference brought together several international speakers, media support groups and investigative journalists under the theme: “Investigative Journalism: Battling Fake News”.

The ceremony was opened by ARIJ’s Executive Director Rana Sabbagh, who started her speech by asking the audience for a moment of silence for those who lost their lives for unveiling the truth and “fighting corruption in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq, among others”. 

In her remarks, Sabbagh also thanked the Jordanian government for facilitating visas and travel permits for those participants coming from “restricted states”, and especially welcomed the 60 journalists from Yemen, who had gone through extensive travel time and various checkpoints to get to the Kingdom. 

The three-day forum held in Jordan by Amman-based ARIJ, hosting over 45 training sessions and workshops, provides a central and strategic location for Western journalists to meet and network with those working in the Middle East and North Africa. 

“ARIJ has done a tremendous job in promoting investigative journalism in the Arab world, be it by mentoring journalists, working alongside them, or giving them access to great trainers around the world,” said Lina Ejeilat, co-founder and executive director of 7iber.com, an online magazine that publishes in-depth multimedia content and critical analysis on issues from Jordan and the surrounding region. 

The event’s speakers, hailing from various parts of the world, had a common theme in their lectures and workshops: their perseverance for truth, accuracy and transparency. 

Maria Teresa Ronderos, a renowned Columbian investigative journalist, called for professionals of different fields to work together and encouraged “cross-border investigative journalism” since many bribes or corruption cases can be traced “beyond one country”. 

This was a sentiment shared by Lina Attalah, the publisher of Egyptian news website MadaMasr who said “cooperation is indispensable in light of the political landscape we are suffering from” during a panel titled: “Survival of Independent Media in the Era of Post-Truth Politics and Fake News”.

The panel, which invited five editors of small and independent media outlets that work on producing in-depth reportage, discussed the challenges the Arab world faces regarding access to information, the control over data, business models, and ways of staying independent while sustaining funding for investigative projects.

“Unfortunately, we see a lot of journalists who’re dependent on tips here and there, rather than solid information,” Ejeilat told The Jordan Times while explaining the scope of access to information in Jordan. 

She continued: “Jordan boasts the fact that it was the first Arab country to have an access to information law, but the devil is in the details. The law says that every citizen is allowed access to information for legitimate purposes, and this clause is extremely problematic because what it essentially means is that it’s very easy to dismiss, on the grounds that u don’t have a legitimate reason.” 

However, the 7iber.com editor said many groups are pushing to allow more freedom of information, as it is essential to investigative work, which is “needed now more than ever in a trending media landscape of faster, shorter, bite-sized content that is shareable, and tweetable”, concluding with: “we need to goback to the basics, try to do more investigative stories and hold those in power accountable”.

AMMAN — The Court of Cassation has upheld a July Criminal Court verdict sentencing a 27-year-old man to 10 years in prison after convicting him of murdering his pregnant sister over “lost virginity” claims in an Amman neighbourhood in June 2014.

The court, which amended the premeditated murder charges to manslaughter, declared the defendant guilty of murdering his 21-year-old relative by choking her to death with a towel on June 14, and handed him a 20-year prison term.

However, the court decided to reduce the sentence to half because the victim’s family dropped charges against the defendant.

Court papers said the sister and her husband were married for three years and-a-half before the incident. The victim’s husband claimed that “his wife, a mother of a three-year-old child, was involved in an illegitimate affair before their marriage and that she was not a virgin”.

“The couple had a domestic dispute one day before the murder and, as a result, the victim’s husband informed her brothers that she was not a virgin when he married her and the defendant decided to murder her,” court papers said.

On the day of the murder, the court maintained, the defendant went to the building where the family resided at and entered the apartment his sister was staying at.

“He went to the kitchen and asked his sister, who was five-month pregnant, about her husband’s claims but she did not answer so he strangled her with a towel until he made sure she was dead,” court documents said.

After he left the kitchen, the defendant informed his family members that he “murdered his sister” and headed to the nearest police station where he turned himself in, according to court documents.  

The defendant had argued that he “should benefit from a reduction in penalty because he murdered his sister to cleanse the family’s honour because she was not a virgin”, according to the court verdict.

However, the higher court rejected his claims and stated that the Criminal Court’s ruling was accurate and the defendant deserved the punishment.

“The defendant’s actions were based on hearsay and there is nothing to prove the husband’s allegations. Therefore, the defendant does not benefit from a reduction in penalty,” the Court of Cassation ruled.

The Court of Cassation tribunal comprised judges Mohammad Ibrahim, Majed Azab, Naji Zubi, Nayef Samart and Bassem Mubeidin.     

AMMAN — Violence whether physical, verbal or psychological are rampant in many public and private schools, which necessitates dealing with them as “a phenomenon” rather than individual cases, Education Minister Omar Razzaz said on Saturday.

Commenting on a video that went viral on social media, which showed a teacher berating a kindergarten child, swearing at him and the entire class amidst widespread shock, Razzaz said that the ministry will investigate the incident and take proper action against the teacher.

The minister added that different opinions on the incident reflects three challenges that should be addressed jointly, by teachers, parents, school administration and specialists, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

The first challenge lies in overcoming the “scapegoat” mindset, he said. The second issue requires changing the view that there is conflict between the rights of teachers, children and parents. Instead, Razzaz stressed, efforts should be unified to reach a safe educational environment. 

The third challenge, which is the most difficult to address, according to Razzaz, is to acknowledge “the humane nature” and that dignity and sanctity are the purposes of school development, stressing that physical, psychological and verbal abuses do not lead to building good citizens.

He added that fear and worry at an early age lead to atrophy of the brain cells, noting that it has been proved that physical and verbal punishments cannot change students’ behaviours. 

The minister said that alternatives to punishments, which include activities building the personality of students and channelling their energy towards useful practices, have become familiar to all.

Meanwhile, he stressed that attacks by students or parents on teachers are in direct contradiction with humanitarian and moral values, and that they are responsible for the degradation of the job, educational process and the entire school environment.

In this regard, Razzaz said that all parts of the educational process are interrelated and attacks are fuelled by the fact that each side thinks of itself as the only victim, which justifies attacking others.

AMMAN — The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has organised a roundtable discussion and a camp field visit for the diplomatic missions in Jordan, as part of its continued partnership and communication efforts with the donor community, a statement from the UN agency said. 

Over 40 diplomats, representing some 25 embassies and foreign delegations to Jordan, were brought together with UNRWA students from Palestinian refugee camps across Jordan, who showcased their achievements and discussed the challenges they face in the area of education. 

Held at the UNRWA Wadi Seer Training Centre, the roundtable discussion saw UNRWA Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) programme students engage with the diplomats on issues including educational life, their aspirations, future plans and the challenges facing them, the statement said. 

The students discussed the various courses and learning paths offered by the agency’s TVET programme in Jordan, through the Amman and Wadi Seer Vocational and Training centres, which provide practical training to young Palestinian refugees, equipping them with skills relevant to the labour markets in the region. 

Students from the Wadi Seer Training Centre’s culinary training programme prepared a breakfast menu for the participants.

The one-day event included a field visit to the Qusour Preparatory Girls School, a rented school building,  where the diplomats witnessed the challenges of delivering educational services in buildings that were not constructed to serve such purpose. These included severe overcrowding, poor lighting and ventilation and lack of additional facilities such as science and computer labs, libraries and proper playgrounds, according to the statement.

The diplomats then visited the Marka Preparatory Girls School where they met the school Parliament’s members. The student parliamentarians showcased their debating skills and achievements in promoting human rights. They also presented some of the volunteering and community service initiatives they have been engaged in.

The diplomats were briefed about UNRWA health, relief and social services at their final stop at Marka Health Centre. The centre, which serves over 61,000 refugees, was recently expanded and renovated. On average, each of the doctors working at the centre provides just over 60 consultations per day.

 On behalf of UNRWA and Palestinian refugees, the Director of UNRWA Operations in Jordan Roger Davies expressed gratitude to the international community and the agency’s donors for their continued support. 

“The high rate of participation by diplomats in today’s roundtable discussion and field visits is a clear sign of the continued support by the international community and our partners and of their commitment to the agency’s mandate,” Davies said, adding “UNRWA is committed to providing better, more accessible services for Palestinian refugees in Jordan and to continue to support their human development.”