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AMMAN — HRH Prince Raad on Wednesday chaired a meeting to set the role of the education and social development ministries in the area of inclusive education for students with disabilities under a memo signed recently.

The prince, who chaired the meeting in his capacity as president of the Higher Council for the Affairs of Persons with Disabilities (HCD), noted that the memo’s provisions should be implemented over a five-year period based to an action plan that results in integrating students with mild and moderate mental disabilities in public schools.

He added that the plan should also result in providing quality services to persons with severe and complex mental disabilities in centres affiliated with the Social Development Ministry, according to an HCD statement.

AMMAN –– The UK’s International Development Committee is visiting Jordan this week as part of their inquiry into the UK’s regional response to the Syrian refugee crisis, the British embassy in Amman announced.

The International Development Committee monitors the policy, administration and spending of the UK’s Department for International Development and its associated public bodies and takes an interest in the policies and procedures of the multilateral agencies and non-government organisations, the embassy statement said.

AMMAN — Chairman of the Joint Chiefs-of-Staff Gen. Mashal Al Zaben on Wednesday received Air Marshal Sir Christopher Harper, director general of NATO International Military Staff, and discussed cooperation between the Jordan Armed Forces and NATO.

HRH Prince Feisal attended the meeting.

AMMAN — Senate President Abdur-Ra’uf S. Rawabdeh on Wednesday met separately with Qatari Ambassador to Jordan Zayed Bin Saeed Rashid Al Khayarin and Danish Ambassador to Jordan Rolf M.

Hay Pereira Holmboe.

Discussions covered the latest developments in the region and means to enhance parliamentary ties.

AMMAN — Jordan has voiced appreciation for Kuwait’s support and assistance, Prime Minister and Minister of Defence Abdullah Ensour said on Wednesday at a meeting with Lt. Gen. Abdulrahman Mohammad Al Othman, chief of the general staff of the Kuwaiti army.

Ensour said Kuwait was among the first Arab Gulf countries to honour its commitment regarding the Gulf Cooperation Council’s $5 billion grant to Jordan.

Othman praised Jordanian-Kuwaiti relations, highlighting the respect that the Kingdom commands at the international level.

AMMAN — Ahmad Daqamseh, who is serving a life sentence for killing seven Israeli schoolgirls in March 1997, was admitted to hospital late Tuesday night following a six-day hunger strike, police said Wednesday.

Daqamseh began a hunger strike on
March 14 in his prison cell in Um Al Lulu Correctional and Rehabilitation Centre in Mafraq in protest against the killing of Jordanian Judge Raed Zuaiter by Israeli soldiers on March 10.

Zuaiter, a judge at the Amman Court of First Instance, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers on the King Hussein Bridge crossing linking Jordan and the West Bank.

“Daqamseh stopped taking his medication and refrained from eating food, so he was taken to Mafraq Public Hospital for a medical check-up,” Public Security Department Spokesperson Maj. Amer Sartawi said.

Sartawi told The Jordan Times that Daqamseh was later taken to Al Bashir Hospital in Amman for further medical check-ups and “was finally transferred to Prince Hamzah Hospital in the capital to offer him the utmost medical care and attention”.

The police spokesperson said it was unclear when Daqamseh will be discharged from hospital, adding that the former soldier has ended his hunger strike.

Daqamseh was also protesting against his continuous detention “after spending 17 years in prison over the shooting incident of the Israeli schoolgirls in 1997”, according to a recent statement by the Popular Committee to Defend Soldier Ahmad Daqamseh.

Daqamseh pleaded guilty in court to shooting the Israeli girls while on duty, but claimed that he acted “impulsively”.

The court convicted him of the “intentional murder of several people”, and he was demoted from corporal to private and dishonourably discharged from the military.

In its ruling, the tribunal said it did not convict Daqamseh of premeditated murder because he was suffering from an anti-social mental disorder that rendered him unable to control himself and prevented him from understanding the outcome of his actions.

AMMAN — Police on Wednesday announced the arrest of a “dangerous suspect” who reportedly committed dozens of armed robberies recently.

The suspect was apprehended in an east Amman suburb following a shoot-out with a special police unit that was dispatched to arrest him on Wednesday, Public Security Department (PSD) Spokesperson Maj. Amer Sartawi said.

“No one was injured in the raid of his hideout, but the suspect put up a lot of resistance,” Sartawi told The Jordan Times, adding that police also retrieved the weapon reportedly used in the shoot-out.

The PSD official said the special police unit was formed to track down the suspect who was armed and dangerous and had “committed several robberies” including one last week of a money exchange shop in the capital’s Marj Al Hamam suburb.

The shop, which was broken into four days ago, was robbed of JD100,000 in cash, computers and the surveillance camera system “so that they would not be identified by police”, Sartawi said.

The suspect also confessed to robbing dozens of other places with the help of two men, the PSD official added.

Police are questioning the suspect to determine the whereabouts of the stolen items and cash, according to Sartawi.

“The suspect is still being questioned to find out what he did with the stolen goods and to try to identify his accomplices and arrest them.”

AMMAN — Social media can be used as an important tool for diplomatic missions to better understand the country and what is on the minds of its people, UK Ambassador to Jordan Peter Millett said Wednesday.

Unlike traditional methods of communication, social media allows direct interaction with people, which should encourage all diplomatic missions to focus on reaching out to Jordanians, Millett added.

“Diplomatic missions need to further adopt social media tools, which can help them realise their objectives,” the British ambassador said at the MediaME Forum 2014 “The Jordan Digital Media Event”.

“If diplomats do not use social media such as Facebook and Twitter, they will not keep up with the younger generation that are using these tools,” Millett noted, highlighting the importance of “Twiplomacy”, which mixes traditional diplomacy with social media.

During the event, representatives of the social media, marketing, telecom and IT sectors also discussed opportunities in the digital gaming industry, whose revenues in the Middle East reached $260 million in 2013 and are growing by 30 per cent every year.

Mohammad Iswaid, co-founder and business development director at the Noqosh Mobile Media Group, said the potential for mobile advertisements is huge in the Middle East and North Africa.

About 10.8 billion ads were published on gaming sites in the Middle East and North Africa in 2013.

Iswaid added that the gaming industry at present is valued at $22 billion globally.

According to figures presented during the event, spending on mobile advertisements in the region ranges between $60 million and $100 million annually.

Participants said about 70 per cent of clicks on mobile advertisements come from Nokia devices, while only 1.9 per cent come from iPhone holders in Jordan.

AMMAN — HRH Prince Hassan today celebrates his 67th birthday. 

The past year has seen the prince pursue an extremely busy schedule, continuing his focus on the cross-cutting themes of water, energy, the human environment and human dignity.

Through the Royal Scientific Society, the Arab Thought Forum (ATF), the Higher Council for Science and Technology (HCST) and the Royal Institute of Inter-Faith Studies (RIIFS), which in turn are the umbrella institutions for many other organisations, the prince continues to actively seek ways to strengthen the rights of Jordanians and to further the country’s interests both regionally and internationally.  

He firmly believes that good governance can only be achieved by an uncompromising respect for human rights and human dignity.  

Throughout his writings and talks, Prince Hassan has always maintained his call for dialogue within the region from all sectors of society “between the sons and daughters of the Arab nation” to spread the values of tolerance, respect and citizenship.

It is not possible to detail all of his organisations’ activities, but to highlight just a few: For its part, the ATF, under the patronage of Prince Hassan, hosted a series of lively debates on His Majesty King Abdullah’s Discussion Papers. 

The Royal Scientific Society was selected against heavy competition to host the World Science Forum in 2017 — a significant achievement. This forum will allow Jordan to add its voice to the dialogue with the world’s scientific community.  

In a similar vein, the HCST, in cooperation with the University of Jordan, launched the Jordan Scenarios Project 2030.  

And finally, this year will mark 20 years since the inception of RIIFS by the prince, with events planned to mark this milestone.

Under Prince Hassan’s chairmanship, the West Asia-North Africa (WANA) Forum held its annual meeting in Amman in June last year. The theme of the 2013 forum was “Achieving the Human Dignity of the Uprooted”, which, with an estimated 26 million uprooted around the world and 20 million in the WANA region alone, proved timely.    

The prince highlighted the ongoing conflict in Syria as the foremost regional threat to human security as well as the burden faced by neighbouring countries hosting the uprooted people of Syria fleeing their homeland.  

The forum’s Guiding Principles fed into the High-level Dialogue on International Migration and Development — the only submission from the region.   The theme of the 2014 WANA Forum will be the “Legal Empowerment of the Poor”.

Billions of people around the world live without the full protection of the law, denying them their rights and human dignity. Prince Hassan recently joined eminent persons from around the world in signing a statement to the UN member states calling for justice to be included in the Post-2015 Development Goals.  

In May 2013, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon appointed the prince as the Chairman of his Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation (UNSGAB).  

Prince Hassan has sought to use the platform offered by his chairmanship to advocate for a standalone goal for water and sanitation in the post-2015 development goals. In his keynote speech at World Water Day in The Hague in March, he continued his long-term call for a supranational regional commission for water and energy. 

In November 2013, the prince was honoured in Marrakech as the recipient of the inaugural Ibn Rushd International Award in recognition of his achievements in promoting human rights and human dignity and for his efforts to build bridges that transcend political and religious barriers.    

Prince Hassan and Princess Sarvath were blessed last December by the birth of their eighth grandchild — Prince El Hassan Ibn Rashid.  

The prince will be spending his birthday quietly with his family.

AMMAN — The Ministry of Water and Irrigation is undertaking a study to reduce its energy consumption, which constitutes more than 13.6 per cent of the Kingdom’s energy use, according to government officials.

The study, part of a 26-million-euro project funded by the German Development Bank, seeks to reduce the ministry’s energy expenditure by JD3.2 million annually, ministry officials said.

The water sector’s energy consumption is rapidly increasing, doubling from 979 gigawatts per hour in 2007 to 1,955 gigawatts per hour in 2012, according to Water Minister Hazem Nasser.

“The volume of energy expenditure in the water sector exceeds 60 per cent of the expenditures of the Water Authority of Jordan, which total JD80 million annually. This shows the challenge the sector is facing,” a ministry statement quoted Nasser as saying.

Meanwhile, a source at the ministry said the project entails three phases: conducting a 1.9-million-euro study, implementation of the project and a 12-month maintenance phase.

Under the project, new equipment will be procured and installed in several pumping stations and water resources, the source added, in addition to installing the state-of-the-art SCADA system, which is a high-level supervisory control and data acquisition system, in order to reduce energy consumption.

“Under the first phase of the project, some 4 per cent, or 42,100 gigawatts, will be saved annually, which is equal to spending JD3.2 million on energy,” the source said, highlighting that water wells are responsible for 24 per cent, or 258 gigawatts, of the water sector’s energy consumption.