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AMMAN — The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) on Thursday uncovered the identity of seven people involved in defrauding a citizen of JD250,000, and arrested five of the suspects who were in possession of some of the money, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported on Thursday.

According to a security statement, the CID received a complaint from a citizen claiming that he had been defrauded by people pretending to own land worth JD250,000, who then disappeared after receiving money.

Investigations showed that the suspects used a counterfeit identity of the actual land owner, asking the victim to complete the transaction outside the Department of Land and Survey due to the landowner’s illness. The statement added that investigations are still ongoing.

AMMAN — The recently concluded UN donor conference on Yemen's decision to raise $2.5 billion to alleviate the suffering of the civilian population means “the continuation of hostilities”, a scholar and political scientist said on Wednesday.

Once the NGO sector receives large amounts of funding, the war continunes, Farea Al Muslimi, an associate fellow at London's Chatham House noted during a lecture titled “An Update from War-torn Yemen: A Talk by Farea Al Muslimi”.

“We all know aid is the beginning of a sustainable conflict, as aid is more of an apology than a problem solver,” Muslimi said at the event organised by the Columbia Global Centres in Amman.

 Opening his presentation, Muslimi said that March 26 marks the fourth year since the beginning of the military intervention in Yemen led by Saudi Arabia, the UAE and several other countries, noting that we entered the fifth year of the Houthi war in Yemen.

When the war began, the international coalition around Saudi Arabia had four objectives: "to bring back the legitimate government to power; implement the UN resolution 2216; protect Saudi Arabia’s border and security; and resume the political process in Yemen,” Muslimi highlighted.

Some of the unspoken goals of the military intervention included the new regional order sought by Saudi Arabia or the "new Saudi domestic order", which was led by Mohammad Bin Salman and aimed at countering Iranian influence in the Middle East, he outlined.

The Saudi-led coalition successfully expelled Houthis from Aden and from "80 per cent of the country”, he said, stressing that it is “a deceptive number” as most of the population is still under Houthi control.

“Despite its claim, the Yemeni government is still in Saudi Arabia running its affairs using Facebook and Whatsapp from Riyadh,” Muslimi emphasised.

In regards to the implementation of the UN Security Council’s Resolution 2216, Muslimi elaborated that even the government itself violated that resolution, claiming that the recent sacking of Khalid Baha by the Yemeni government was "a kind of a coup d’etat".

The goal of securing the border with Saudi Arabia also failed, given that Houthi militia launched seven missile attacks over the last few months, he continued, adding that it “may increase the length of the war”.

“Either ways, it leads us to the second set of goals which are non-Yemeni objectives; one of being an attempt by Saudi Arabia to create a new regional order, which succeeded to a certain extent,” the political scientist explained, adding that the rise of Prince Mohammad coincided with the electoral win of US President Donald Trump in 2016.

For the first time since president Obama won two presidential terms, Americans and Saudis are “on the same page”, he highlighted.

Muslimi drew the parallel between the influence of the regional actors in Lebanon and in Yemen, concluding that “what worked in Yemen doesn’t work in Lebanon and it backfired”.

Unlike Hizbollah and Assad’s regime, Iran does not look at Houthis as strategic allies “since there’s a limit in weaponry that Tehran provides to Houthi militia”, he claimed.

The scholar pointed out that Yemenis have been stuck between two geopolitical calculations:  Tehran and Riyadh, Moscow and Washington, Houthis and Hadi, adding that the economic impact of the crisis is more negative than the fighting itself.

Six million Yemenis “didn’t receive salaries for months and the Sanaa airport [has been] closed for two years”, he said, adding that the de-evaluation of the Yemeni rial affected 60 per cent of the population.

A country like Yemen, he continued, imports 90 per cent of its food, so any depreciation of the local currency will worsen the humanitarian crisis, he emphasised.

The collapse of the public services, particularly the Ministry of Education, left millions of children out of schools who then became easily recruited by local militias, the scholar stressed.

“Yemen is not Syria, which is too internationally divisive, nor is it Libya, where violence is too decentralised; it was a war that no one expected,” Muslimi observed.

He also cited the expulsion of minorities who had lived in Yemen for centuries — Jews and Bahais — as the first in history, conclluding that it will "forever change the character of the country".

AMMAN — Following recent hikes in sales tax on various commodities and ending bread subsidy, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has decided to increase the volume of aid given for food electronic vouchers to Syrian refugees living outside refugee camps.

The decision to increase the amounts given to Syrian refugees followed a study conducted by the WFP on prices of commodities in the market after recent decisions by the government to increase sales tax and end bread subsidy, Faten Al Hindi, donors and private sector partnerships officer at the WFP, told The Jordan Times on Thursday.

As of this month, each Syrian refugee outside the camps that is classified among the vulnerable refugees will get JD15 per month instead of JD10 per month, Hindi said.

Each refugee living outside the camp from among the extremely vulnerable refugees will get JD23 per month instead of JD20 per month, she said.

"The decision only includes refugees living outside the camps currently, but we are also looking into the situation of refugees living in camps," she added.

"Our objective is to increase our help to the refugees amidst increasing cost of living and prices of commodities following recent government's decision," Hindi said.

In January, the government lifted decades-long subsidies on bread, which increased prices of several types of bread between 60 and 100 per cent. The government also increased sales tax on several food items.

The WFP provides support to 500,000 Syrian refugees inside and outside the camps, 80 per cent of whom live outside the refugee camps, according to Hindi.

Syrian refugees expressed their happiness about the WFP's decision.

"I have five children and the cost of living in Amman is very high and increasing all the time…any additional support no matter how small will help," Um Adnan, a Syrian refugee who lives in Al Hashemi area, told The Jordan Times on Thursday.

"In addition to the food vouchers that we get from the WFP, we also rely on assistance from the neighbours as we have other needs than food such as paying for the rent or medical treatment," said Um Adnan, who came to Jordan along with her children in 2013 from Homs.

Ziad Haraki, a Syrian refugee who lives in Al Istiklal area in Amman along with his wife and three daughters, echoed similar remarks.

"We hope there will be more increases in the amount of money we get to buy food. Each of my family members get JD20 per month and we certainly need more than that to have a healthy life," Haraki said.

"We face several challenges as we live outside the camp, especially after prices of food and bread increased…I work and earn JD250 per month but this is not enough as the rent in Amman is high…we welcome the increase and hope there will be more in future," Haraki told The Jordan Times Thursday.

AMMAN — The desire to provide accessible, evidence-based information to parents in Jordan and the Arab world pushed a group of Jordanians to start the only parenting magazines in Jordan, Family Flavours and Nakahat ‘Ailiyeh more than a decade ago.

“After I had my first child, I was struck by the lack of suitable information available to Jordanian and Arab parents and by the number of widespread misconceptions about parenting and childcare,” recalled Hind Lara Mango, the publisher and managing director of Al Marji Publications, adding “after a while, I got together with a group of parents who had the same desire to provide reliable, localised information for our community”.

This is how Family Flavours and its Arabic equivalent Nakahat ‘Ailiyeh were born, some 12 years ago, aiming to offer parents across the Kingdom references on topics ranging from family health, couple life, parenting and literature, among many others.

“We strongly believe that everyone should have access to credible, science-based information on subjects that are too often misunderstood or confusing due to the abundance of contradictory advice young parents get from their entourage,” Mango told The Jordan Times at the offices of Al Marji Publications, which publishes the two magazines.

Determined to provide a real, home-grown magazine to the local public, Mango contacted Jordanian experts in the field of nutrition, religion, medicine, sexual health and fashion. 

“We try to tackle every aspect of a family's life, without taboo and bias, while striving to promote respect, self-acceptance and diversity,” she continued, stressing that the magazine only portrays “real people, of all shapes, races and backgrounds”.

The publisher noted that “every parent is vulnerable in the face of information and everyone should be able to better understand how to best care for their family.”

This dedication to a gender sensitive social agenda is precisely what drew Laura Haddad to become the managing editor of the magazines, which emphasise their focus on fathers and mothers alike.

“It is a shame that the generalisation of mothers being the only caretakers of the children has become a supposedly true fact in Jordan. Through our workshops and other activities, we noticed the eagerness of fathers to be part of the family life, and to challenge the preconceived idea that they do not want to be involved in their kids’ uprising,” Haddad explained.

“I do believe that we are much more than a magazine people skim through to pass time. We have a social purpose to raise awareness on crucial issues with a multidisciplinary approach. We provide a human face to the struggles that people go through in their daily life,” she underscored, citing the importance of local experts in providing holistic advice on issues that touch every group in society.

“Family Flavours and Nakahat are definitely not a 'West Amman only magazine' and we cater for every segment of society. For instance, our ‘Divine corner’ offers a Muslim and Christian experts’ perspective on important topics. This is a way to show that everyone is equal in the face of parenting, feeling the same fears and having the same interrogations,” Haddad noted.

Stressing the need to help people “regain self-love” at a time when photoshopped media's conveyed ideas of perfection are overflowing, the two women strive to display "all types of people" in their publication.

“We have photoshoots with children with Down syndrome, people in wheelchairs, old, young, size ten or size 16, because that is what society looks like. Nobody can identify with polished, unattainable images of flawless individuals we see in most media,” Haddad explained, adding that “all our editions are related to pressing issues and time bound topics".

Last month, the magazines highlighted women through International Women's Day and Mothers’ Day, while the April edition will feature Autism Awareness Day and Earth Day, focusing on energy food, holistic medicine and yoga, among other topics.

“We are a homegrown product that caters to the needs and demand of the local community. We sincerely internalise what we preach, through workshops where we put parents face to face with experts to whom they can ask all the questions they have and get a scientific context related feedback,” Mango said, noting that the organisation also partners with numerous organisations such as UNICEF, UNFPA, and various institutions which offer the readers “the latest and most reliable local data”.

“I think we all need to join hands in helping people to love themselves whoever they are, and to stop feeling bad for not fitting to the norm that tends to make them believe that ‘there is something wrong with them’,” Mango concluded.

AMMAN — A series of photographs taken inside the desert of Wadi Rum provides the local audience with an intimate insight into the life of Bedouin men, as part of the 7th edition of the Image Festival Amman, centred this year around the theme of “Home”.

"Bedu" was inaugurated on Wednesday night at the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, attracting visitors intrigued by the unusual depiction of the southern Jordanian community.

Born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria, Jordanian-Palestinian Farah Foudeh returned to her original land where she worked extensively with the bedouin communities from the Wadi Rum desert to provide a photographic portrait of the landscape and its impact on people, aiming to break down the public perceptions and prejudices in this regard.

"Working in tourism for a while and being a Jordanian living abroad, I got to realise the stereotypes conveyed about the region and its people," she told The Jordan Times after the exhibition, adding: "It always seemed like each person visiting Jordan was taking the same photos over and over again, only capturing a fragment of reality."

"I started using photography as a tool to study our understanding of the world and its impact on perceptions and prejudices," said the young woman, who shares her time between Barcelona, where she is completing a Masters degree in photography and design, and Amman.

“'Bedu’ addresses the issues of identity and representation by studying the earliest Orientalist Western portrayal of the bedouin man. Within this context, the bedouin man was constantly performing for the voyeuristic gaze, portrayed as immune to time, development and modernity," Foudeh continued.

Through her work, she tries to create an inclusive and reflective portray of the bedouin man and his relationship with the desert. “It is a performative play with the viewer’s vision of the man, a dance within the landscape, that also emphasises the photography’s limitations as a representative medium,” she highlighted, voicing her joy to see the public so engaged at the opening.

"I really wanted to instigate a strange feeling in the audience, who would question my work and themselves at the same time, to finally reach the explanatory text I wrote for this solo exhibition," Foudeh said.

“The gallery really strives to support young and experimenting artists, and it was a great honour to be asked to host Farah’s work. Her pictures truly reflect the beauty of Jordan and its inhabitants,” said Khalid Khreis, director of the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, adding that “her work intensively captures the reality of ‘Home’, the theme of this year’s festival, highlighting the unusual sense of home that vast, open air spaces like the Wadi Rum desert can provide”.

“People tend to perceive home as a closed material place, but the bedouins have made this wide, natural desert their home, in a very unique way,” he told The Jordan Times at the gallery.

Khreis praised the research and detailed study conducted by the young photographer, whose pictures “catch the eye of the viewer with an intimate intensity".

The gallery will host the exhibition through April 28, in addition to various activities including a public workshop conducted by two Spanish photographers on April 24.

AMMAN — Thailand will provide more training to Jordanian experts this year to deploy patented Thai technology to make artificial rain, according to officials, who said that “it is a matter of time” before artificial rain falls in Jordan.

Thailand, which reached a deal with Jordan in 2009 giving the Kingdom permission to use the technique, will receive a team of Jordanian meteorologists, engineers and experts over the next few months to provide them with additional training on the Thai rainmaking technology, Pakdee Chantraket, director of the Royal Rainmaking Academic Group at the Department of Royal Rainmaking and Agricultural Aviation, said last week.

“Jordan is one of four countries only with which we shared our technology to make artificial rain and we will continue to work with our Jordanian counterparts to ‘make it rain’,” Chantraket said during a meeting with a Jordanian media delegation in Chanthaburi province.

“We have already provided training to experts at the Jordan Meteorological Department and, this year, we will provide further training on various aspects of the process,” Chantraket said.

The technology was developed in 1969 by King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand, who holds an international patent for the rainmaking method which involves introducing certain chemicals in cloudy areas to “seed” the clouds with increased moisture that would eventually result in precipitation.

Thai Ambassador in Amman Pornpong Kanittanon said it was a matter of time before the process of artificial rainmaking succeeds in Jordan.

“Jordan already has the radar necessary for the weather forecast for the rainmaking process… More training and experiments are needed until it works,” the ambassador told The Jordan Times.

“When the technology was first launched in Thailand, it took us a few years before it actually worked and we succeeded in making artificial rain… we are committed to continue supporting Jordan in this regard and it is a matter of time before experiments start to yield fruitful results,” the ambassador said.

According to Chantraket, the cost for each rainmaking process stands at about $10,000 and, when the process succeeds, the average rainfall will reach around 10 millimetres over an area of 32 square kilometres.

“If the rainmaking process starts in the morning and all conditions are suitable, it starts raining in the afternoon… This technology has been used for decades in Thailand and we are keen on enabling Jordanians to make the most out of it, as Jordan needs water,” Chantraket said.

Approximately 91 per cent of Jordan is arid, with an average annual rainfall of 50-200mm, while 2.9 per cent of the country’s land is categorised as semi-arid. Only 1.1 per cent of Jordanian land receives an average of 400-600mm of rain a year, according to official figures.

Jordan tried making artificial rain on its own between 1989 and 1995, but the experiment failed as the airplane and equipment used for this purpose stopped functioning, in addition to several other challenges.

On cooperation between Jordan and Thailand, the ambassador said that the number of visitors between the two countries is “on the rise”.

In 2017, some 20,000 Jordanians visited Thailand while around 20,000 Thai tourists came to Jordan. The overall number of Jordanian tourists to Thailand in 2017 was 7 per cent higher than that of 2016, according to the ambassador.

“The number of Thai tourists who visited Jordan in 2017 was 10 per cent higher than 2016 and it keeps growing… Jordan is home to many wonderful sites and we believe that cooperation in this regard is on the rise,” the ambassador said.

AMMAN — Lower House Speaker Atef Tarawneh on Thursday stressed that reaching a consensus among Arabs has been widely agreed as the solution to the divisions threatening the region, but “nobody seems to take serious measures towards this solution”, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

Heading the Jordanian parliamentary delegation to the 27th conference of the Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union in Cairo, Tarawneh warned of the divisions threatening the region amid several talks of deals that may shatter the hopes of Arabs who have long waited for peace and security.

He pointed out that Jordan seeks to unify the Arab stances hoping that it would lead to realising the Palestinians’ aspirations of an independent state and stressing that “denying the Palestinians their rights” would feed the spirit of “vengeance and extremism”.

Tarawneh also stressed the international community’s duty towards refugees and the importance of dealing with the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where most people live off the aid provided by UNRWA.

On the Syrian crisis, he expressed concern that the current clashes would send the situation in the war-torn country “back to square one”, stressing Jordan’s stance which calls for finding a political solution through an inter-Syrian dialogue with no external interference.

The speaker highlighted the huge burden put on Jordan by the consecutive refugee crises, noting that it weakened its economic growth. He stressed that providing support to Jordan is neither a gift nor a favour, but a moral obligation.

The conference witnessed the participation of delegates from Jordan Bahrain, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Iraq, Oman, Kuwait, Libya, Egypt, Morocco, and Yemen, according to Petra.

AMMAN — An old landmine on Thursday exploded in a sheep farm in Northern Badia, causing no injuries, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported, quoting a security source. The source added that security services began investigating the incident. 

AMMAN — HRH Prince Hassan, chairman of the Higher Council for Science and Technology (HCST), on Thursday honoured the winners of “El Hassan Bin Talal Award for Scientific Excellence”, as well as the members of the jury committee, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported. 

The award, which was founded in 1995, aims to encourage educational, scientific and technological endeavours in institutions concerned with education and training in Jordan, and to develop the performance of educational institutions, teachers and students.

In his speech delivered at the ceremony, HRH Prince Hassan said that enhancing the educational process and enabling students and teachers are a priority, in addition to strengthening schools’ technical capabilities. He pointed out that technological progress is the “engine of creativity” which can help provide innovative and sustainable solutions to current problems.

During the ceremony, attended by HRH Prince Raad and HRH Princess Rahma, who was deputising for the President of the award HRH Princess Sarvath, Prince Hassan highlighted Jordan’s role in hosting large numbers of refugee students, despite the limited national possibilities and the minimal international support, praising the efforts of the Education Ministry.

He stressed the importance of focusing on establishing the concept of heritage and human identity among children and working to build a generation aware of its responsibilities.

HCST Secretary General Khalid Shraideh said that some 25 applicants from 14 higher education institutions took part in the competition, and that members of the jury were chosen based on the fields and subjects of the projects. 

The first award was granted to the Jordan University of Science and Technology (JUST) for its project titled “Initiating and Developing a Referral Diagnostic Laboratory for Transboundary Animal Diseases, and Abortive and Neonatal Diseases”, while the second prize was shared between Petra University for its project dubbed “Development of oral insulin delivery system”, and the University of Jordan for its “Cell Therapy Centre”.

The Hashemite University’s “The University Academic Nursery” project and the Al Hussein Bin Talal University’s “The role of Petra College for tourism and archaeology in uncovering and introducing the cultural heritage of Jordan” proposal shared the third spot.

AMMAN — Senate President Faisal Fayez and Secretary General of the Muslim World League Mohammad Ibn Abdulkarim Alissa on Thursday highlighted the importance of enhancing moderate religious discourse to fight terrorist and extremist ideologies.

Fayez said that campaigns aimed at distorting Islam and associating it with terrorism require Muslim scholars to combat the Western stereotype of Islam being a religion of killing and terrorism, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

Also on Thursday, Interior Minister Samir Mubaidin and Alissa reviewed the main challenges facing Arab and Muslim nations in light of the latest regional and international developments.

Alissa said that Jordan enjoys a long experience in dealing with attempts to spread the deviated ideologies of terrorist organisations, praising the Jordanian model which is “appreciated and respected worldwide”.