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AMMAN — Police on Saturday said that a man has confessed to murdering his five-year-old son in the northern Badia shortly after being arrested while attempting to cross the border.

Police Spokesperson Lt. Col. Amer Sartai said that the authorities received a tip-off that a man “was attempting to cross the borders illegally with another man and were immediately arrested by the Badia forces”.

“One of the two men confessed to strangling his son and throwing his body in a pond,” the police official told The Jordan Times.

A special force headed to the pond where the man claimed to have dumped his son’s body, “and found a little boy floating”, Sartawi added.

“We still do not have a motive for the murder and currently questioning both men to learn more about the incident,” the police official added.

A senior judicial source told The Jordan Times that Criminal Court Prosecutor Hilal Hawamdeh was to start questioning the suspect late Saturday night to “learn more about the motives and to level charges against him”. 

AMMAN — Police on Saturday said they were still searching for the suspect who robbed a bank at gunpoint in Amman’s Wihdat neighbourhood on Wednesday.

“We are still searching for the suspect and can not release any additional information because investigations are ongoing,” Public Security Department  Spokesperson Lt. Col. Amer Sartawi said 

The police official told The Jordan Times that “the public will be notified of any new development in this case in due course.”

Societe Generale Bank Jordan was robbed at gunpoint by a hooded man who managed to escape with JD76,000 in cash.  

On Monday, Etihad Bank was also robbed at gunpoint by a man who managed to escape with JD98,000 before being arrested by authorities almost 90 minutes later. All the cash that was stolen was retrieved by the authorities.

No one was injured in any of the bank robberies.

Last week, Sartawi said new security measures have been adopted in cooperation with banks and other financial institutes, including beefing up their security measures, to ensure the protection of these entities.

The police official said “special police forces were tasked with examining all banks and studying the weak spots to ensure there are no security breaches”.

AMMAN — A mobile app aimed at bringing together refugee children and volunteers across the globe to share bedtime stories was featured on Friday, as part of the closing event of the MIT-led Refugee Learning Accelerator (RLA).

Mike Clarke, a 28 year-old American living in Lebanon, introduced Kindi, his team's invention during the final pitching session, which saw the presentation of the 13 participating teams' projects.

"We launched the RLA as a way to get young innovative minds from the region involved in the design of learning solutions for refugees," said Genevieve Barrons, the RLA project lead, noting that "most of the projects presented here gave us great hope in the future of e-learning for groups of people who are deprived of education due to a lack of access or resources."

"We all grew up having the chance to fall asleep after listening to our parents' reading a bedtime story and these are some of the most memorable moments of a childhood," said Palestinian Leen Naffaa, the designer of the app, noting that "this is when children's imagination runs wild and reading skills improve."

Aiming to provide all children around the world with that opportunity, the four-member team created an app that pairs refugee children willing to learn and practice foreign languages with people seeking to help "in other ways than simply donating money".

Through a live video call, the young learner and his/her "buddy" are able to read a bedtime story of their choice, with an option allowing the child to rehearse some words he/she does not understand or know how to pronounce with the help of a native speaker.

"So far, we have around 100 stories available on the app, in English, Spanish and French. We also had talks with the learning platform Edraak in Jordan with plans to collaborate in uploading more stories," said Ahmad Ghizzawi and Ali Moussawi, two Lebanese team members.

The project, which has been launched as a pilot at the Kayany foundation in Lebanon, has been supported by UNHCR. 

"One of the things we wanted to foster during this incubation week was the sense of community and collaboration among innovators," said Philipp Schmidt, director of Learning Innovation at the MIT Media Lab, noting that "these e-learning projects are coming from the Middle East to the Middle East, which is fundamental in enhancing community building."

For their part, Jordanians Yazan Fanous and Mohammad Tuqan developed a project aimed at detecting children's learning difficulties and disabilities through online chat.

"Although many organisations exist to help children with learning difficulties, it is very hard for refugees to reach out to those services," Fanous explained.

"We therefore developed an app that allows parents to reach out to a robotised system that will analyse their child's needs through a standardised comprehensive questionnaire, and then advise institutions that might be able to provide help for their kid," he told The Jordan Times at the event.

Stressing that the app does not provide counseling or medical diagnosis, Tuqan nonetheless pointed to the need of creating such a bridge between the refugee community and the medical and psychosocial sector to improve the delivery of education for refugee learners.

All projects were presented to representatives of MIT, local and international NGOs, as well as experts in the field of education and technology, who provided their feedback on potential loopholes and implementation challenges during the pitching session.

The judges are now assessing the viability of each of the projects and will later link the teams to NGOs working on the ground, in order to help them implement those solutions as part of their humanitarian response programmes, Barrons concluded.

AMMAN — The Jordanian National Commission for Women (JNCW) has welcomed a circular by Prime Minister Hani Mulki on Wednesday calling on all ministries, official departments and public bodies not to specify the gender of the candidates to fill available job vacancies, noting that “the candidate selection shall be carried out according to competitive eligibility regardless of gender, except in those cases of compulsory nature”.

The decision comes in line with the provisions of Article 22 of the Jordanian Constitution, which stipulates that “appointment to any government office or to any institution attached to the Government, or to any municipal office, whether such appointment is permanent or temporary, shall be made on the basis of merits and qualifications”. 

JNCW, in a press statement issued on the same day, said that “this decision reinforces gender-based justice and equality, which the commission always seeks.”

“We [JNCW] have long demanded the freedom of the applicants to assess their capability to face the described working conditions themselves — especially in those vacancies which claim that the job can not be performed by a woman due to long working hours or the requirement of field work,” the statement continued, noting that the commission has addressed letters to the concerned employers denouncing that “such job postings do not comply with the principle of justice and equal opportunity in accordance to the provisions of the Jordanian Constitution”. 

“This is a great step forward, but it is not enough,” JNCW Secretary General Salma Nims told The Jordan Times, stressing that the commission is advocating for the abolition of Article 69 of the Labour Law, which “allows ministers to decide the industries and jobs in which it is prohibited to engage women, and the working hours during which it is not allowed to employ females”.

In addition, Nims highlighted the lack of female Sharia (Islamic law) judges in Jordan, noting “the importance of engaging women in such positions, as Sharia courts often deal with family issues in which women find themselves in a weaker position”. 

“The law allows the engagement of women in this profession, but we have not been able to see this come into practice in Jordan,” she concluded, highlighting the presence of female Sharia judges in neighbouring countries as an example to be followed by the Kingdom. 

AMMAN — Developments in the Palestinian issue following the US decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and UNRWA's financial burdens topped the discussions of Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi's meetings with counterparts on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos.

Safadi's meetings with foreign ministers of Switzerland Ignazio Cassis, Netherlands Halbe Zijlstra, Finland Timo Soini and Norway Ine Marie Eriksen Soreide focused on efforts to reach a political solution to the Syrian crisis and the latest regional developments, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported on Friday.

Talks also covered means to enhance bilateral cooperation in the economic, trade, investment and defence fields.

The ministers reviewed efforts to end the political stalemate in the Mideast peace process through effective endeavours to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict based on the two-state solution that guarantees the establishment of a Palestinian state within the pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, according to relevant international agreements.

In this regard, Safadi warned against the consequences of the absence of a comprehensive solution that meets the legitimate rights of Palestinians in achieving freedom and establishing their state.

He stressed that failure to reach such a solution would contribute to instilling despair that feeds extremism and violence, threatening the security and stability of the entire region.

The foreign minister also highlighted the importance of joint work to take practical steps that contribute to addressing the UNRWA budget deficit and enabling it to continue presenting vital services to Palestinian refugees.

Safadi acquainted his counterparts with the Jordanian and Arab stances that refuse the US decision, stressing that the decision violates international laws that stipulate that Jerusalem is a final status issue whose fate must be determined in direct negotiations under international legitimacy resolutions. 

The minister also met with Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP) David Beasley and UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Mark Lowcock, to whom he stressed the importance for international organisations to help in bearing the repercussions of the Syrian refugee influx. 

Safadi commended the important role of the WFP in the Kingdom, praising the high level of cooperation and coordination between Jordan and the UN in meeting the refugees' needs.

Beasley and Lowcock expressed appreciation for the Kingdom's humanitarian role in shouldering the refugee influx burdens.

Lowcock voiced gratitude for Jordan's approval to deliver aid to the Rukban refugee camp inside Syria, as Safadi announced that the Kingdom allowed delivering assistance to the camp for one time after the UN presented a convincing plan to deliver future aid from within the Syrian territories. 

Rukban is a Syrian and international problem rather than a Jordanian responsibility, and aid has to be delivered from within Syria in light of the field possibility of doing so, the minister said. 

AMMAN — The Higher Education Council on Thursday approved a reduction in the maximum credit hours that students are allowed to take in the first semester of master’s degrees from 15 to 9 hours, Higher Education Minister Adel Tweisi told The Jordan Times on Saturday.  

The decision came during a meeting chaired by the minister, where the council decided to amend the second paragraph of its decision No. 2/2010 to reduce the number of courses to be taken over the first semester to a total of three. 

Asked about the reasons behind the change, Tweisi said that “the ministry considered that graduate students were undertaking a very heavy study load, thus we decided to make it more reasonable for master’s students.” 

Regarding the language requirements, the council determined that the students who did not pass the national Test of English as a Foreign Language  will no longer have to take two English courses during the first semester of the master's degree, allocating the remaining credit hours for the three remedial courses required for students with a "pass" GPA grade. 

“It was a mistake to require students to register in two English courses in the same semester,” the minister said, stressing that “English 102 is a requirement for English 101 and it does not make sense for students to be enrolled in both courses at the same time.” 

“This way, students with a ‘pass’  GPA grade will be able to register in a total of six credit hours of the required remedial courses in addition to the English 101 course during the first semester,” the minister explained, adding that “this change will ease the journey of the students into the beginning of their master’s degrees.”

AMMAN — Police on Saturday said a special committee was formed to investigate an alleged attack that occurred in downtown Amman over the weekend and resulted in the brief arrest of two Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) employees.

A support wall collapsed on Friday near a public market in Ras Al Ain area as a result of the heavy rain in the area, which resulted in the death of an Egyptian national and the injury of a second man, according to the Civil Defence Department (CDD).

Police Spokesperson Lt. Col. Amer Sartawi refused to comment on the incident but told The Jordan Times “that a special committee was formed to investigate this incident from all its aspects”.

GAM elected member Khader Saoud said he headed to the area with another GAM member Wisam Rbeihat to “check on the situation since I was elected by the people because we are entrusted by the public”.

“When we arrived, there was a police force that was attacking a GAM employee and we tried to intervene but they did not listen to us,” Saoud charged.

The police then “attacked and beat us then took us to a police station for a while. We filed an official complaint against the police and are awaiting the committee’s outcome,” Saoud told The Jordan Times.

Acts of riots were reported near the police station following the arrest of the two GAM employees but police contained the situation.

AMMAN — Her Majesty Queen Rania on Wednesday announced the expansion of Edraak.org, the leading Arabic Massive Open Online Courses platform for adult learners, to meet the needs of school-aged children across the Arab world, according to a statement from Her Majesty’s Office.

Edraak’s K-12 platform offers digital open educational resources in Arabic that are designed to align with national curricula in the MENA region. These resources can be used in and out of the classroom, reinforcing the crucial role teachers play in their students’ educational journey. 

Developed with the support of a $3 million grant from Google.org, and complemented with engagement from Google employees to provide product design expertise, the platform has launched with Mathematics materials for grades 7 and 9, including more than 1,200 educational minutes of bite-sized video lectures. 

The e-curricula and learning resources for the rest of grades will be released over two phases by the end of this year, and other major subjects will be gradually introduced by 2020. The platform will also offer tools and resources for parents and educators, empowering them to guide children’s learning journey.

The new platform offers sequential learning material as well as student-centred inquiry-based learning, making it possible for students to search for specific concepts without having to enroll in a predefined learning sequence. Given the growing need to support remedial education due to conflict and unrest that have disrupted formal education in the region, the platform adopts a competency-based approach to learning, while also providing material that can be used in a blended learning setting. 

Speaking at an event hosted by Google at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Her Majesty thanked Google.org for its commitment to the project, explaining that education is a solution capable of bringing hope and opportunity to the Middle East. 

“A child denied an education isn’t just a tragedy for that child; it leaves the rest of us vulnerable,” Her Majesty said, adding “but the future doesn’t have to be this bleak – not in this age of innovation.”

Today, more than 15 million children across the MENA are out of school as a result of armed conflicts and displacement, according to UNICEF. Regional turmoil has also compromised the quality of education offered in stable host nations like Jordan, whose education system has been strained under the weight of large numbers of refugee students.  Edraak’s K-12 platform leverages the thoughtful use of technology and the potential of open educational resources to offer a flexible learning tool for school-aged learners so that the next generation is equipped with the necessary education to underpin a new era of economic, political and social development.

The platform will build on Queen Rania Foundation and Google.org’s efforts in offline functionality and support, thereby ensuring equitable access to the region’s most vulnerable children.

Edraak CEO Shireen Yacoub stated that “the new platform builds on the success of Edraak’s existing platform for adult learners, which has reached over 1.5 million learners across the Arab world since its launch in 2014. Leveraging our experience in developing educational content created specifically for Arab learners, the launch of Edraak’s K-12 platform advances Edraak’s comprehensive goal of transforming education in the region”.

“We’re excited about the progress that Edraak has made in creating new open resources that will benefit Arabic speaking students everywhere,” said Brigitte Hoyer Gosselink, Education Lead at Google.org, noting “platforms like Edraak help ensure that all students benefit from the potential of technology as part of their learning.” 

Launched by Her Majesty in 2014, Edraak is the leading Arab open education platform that aims to revolutionise access and delivery of education in the MENA region. The platform offers high quality learning opportunities for adults and school-aged learners. 

Google’s philanthropy, Google.org, supports non-profits that innovate to address some of the world’s toughest problems. Since launching in 2005, Google.org has sought out non-profit innovators that apply radical data-driven innovation to solving the world’s biggest challenges. The organisation aims to contribute towards the creation of a world that works for everyone, utilising technology and innovation to move the needle in the key areas of education, economic opportunity and inclusion.

AMMAN — His Majesty King Abdullah on Saturday sent a cable of condolences to Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani over the deaths and injuries caused by a terror attack in Kabul earlier in the day.

His Majesty expressed his condemnation of such heinous terrorist acts, stressing Jordan’s full solidarity with Afghanistan and Amman’s support to Kabul in its efforts in the war against terrorism and in maintaining security and stability, according to a Royal Court statement.

The King expressed his condolences to Ghani and the victims’ families, wishing the injured a speedy recovery.

Also on Saturday, the government “strongly” denounced the attack, describing it as “an evidence of the criminal mindset of the terrorists and their inhumane and heinous acts”. State Minister for Media Affairs Mohammad Momani said that the repeated terror attacks undermine the security and stability of Afghanistan. 

AMMAN — German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and an accompanying delegation on Saturday visited the Amman Citadel, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported. During his visit, the president toured the site and was briefed on its history and the city of Amman.

The president arrived earlier in the day and was received by Water and Irrigation Minister Hazem El Nasser, senior officials and military officers.