The Kingdom’s solar power project has been accredited with International ISO certification, the King Abdulaziz City For Science and Technology (KACST) has announced. The overall quality certificate (ISO 9001-2008) was issued by the TÜV SÜD — one of the leading technical service organizations. An official from the KACST said that the ISO certificate will be a major landmark in the development of solar energy projects of the Kingdom, which also signifies the global recognition to the ongoing solar project. The Kingdom’s solar projects benefit from nano technology provided by the KACST. Please read full story on Page 2
DUBAI: In a significant milestone for the Jordanian royal family, Princess Iman bint Al-Hussein, the eight-month-old daughter of Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah and Princess Rajwa Al-Hussein, embarked on her first official overseas visit to the Kingdom of Bahrain.
Accompanied by her parents, the young princess was received by Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa at Al-Sakhir Palace.
For the occasion, Saudi-born Princess Rajwa – known for her elegant fashion choices – opted for a white-and-blue ensemble from London-based fashion label Erdem, including a floral midi pencil skirt and a draped short sleeved top. She completed the look with white lace slingback pumps from Manolo Blahnik and a Jacquemus shoulder bag.
Meanwhile, last month, Crown Prince Hussein took to Instagram to mark Mother’s Day with a heartfelt tribute to his mother, Queen Rania, and Princess Rajwa.
In the first of two images, Queen Rania is holding her granddaughter, Princess Iman, as the crown prince watches on.
In the second image, Princess Rajwa, dressed in a plain white t-shirt, is seen holding her daughter.
“To my beloved mother and my loving wife, your presence fills our lives with joy, and your love is the true meaning of giving. Happy Mother’s Day,” he captioned the post.
The royal couple welcomed their first child on Aug. 3, 2024.
RIYADH: Uzbekistan’s $220 million education reform deal reflects a growing global shift to align schooling systems with economic transformation, according to Global Partnership for Education CEO Laura Frigenti.
Speaking to Arab News on the sidelines of the Human Capability Initiative 2025 in Riyadh, Frigenti said the agreement, signed with the Islamic Development Bank and the Uzbek government, aims to help the country “accelerate that process of transformation.”
Fully aligned with Uzbekistan’s national education strategies, this project aims to enhance the quality and efficiency of the education system while supporting the achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 4.
“Uzbekistan is a country that has a very well-functioning, in a way, education system because under the Soviet Union, education was a big priority,” she said.
“At the same time, [it] was a system that was designed thinking about a world that doesn’t exist anymore. And so, because they are moving very quickly at transforming their own education, they do want to have resources to accelerate that process of transformation and that is the sense of, you know, of the project that we signed today,” Frigenti told Arab News.
The $220.25 million “Smart Education” program includes $160.25 million from IsDB, a $40 million grant from GPE, and a $20 million contribution from the Government of Uzbekistan. The project is already under implementation, with early work focused on school construction and partnerships with UNICEF and UNESCO.
“It’s also a project that is part of the process of finding innovative instruments to finance education,” Frigenti said. “Education, as I’m sure you know, is a very expensive type of sector that, until now has been basically mainly funded either through domestic financing or with the development assistance resources.”
Education for growth
Frigenti emphasized that education systems must shift to meet the needs of evolving economies, and focus on producing skills that are needed to make society progress and facilitate process of growth and so on.
Saudi Arabia, she noted, has made significant headway in this area.
“Saudi Arabia has been understanding this connection between skills and economic growth very well and they have invested in this over the past couple of decades significantly,” Frigenti said.
“Other countries need to get to that and so the kind of things that we are trying to do is to see how can this re-alignment of education with the needs of the economy be translated for countries that do not have the same resource base of Saudi Arabia.”
She added: “And this is where we are working on issues related to financing of the sector, efficiency in the administration of the resources, etcetera.”
Women’s workforce gains
Frigenti also highlighted Saudi Arabia’s progress in gender inclusion.
“I think having a very clear political vision that sets a specific target, like 50 percent of the labor force needs to be female, as in the Vision 2030, and then having the ability of designing a set of policies and programs that leads to that results in record time — that is quite an extraordinary result,” she said.
Zooming out, she described the Kingdom’s broader economic transition as strategic and well-resourced.
“Saudi Arabia is a country that has several strong things going for it. First one, there is a clear vision of where the country, you know, needs to go — and the country needs to go toward an economy that is more diversified, that is not depending on fossil fuels and where you know that there is a whole range of new activities that needs to be started and stimulated.”
She added: “The second part is that to be able to get to that different type of economy, you need a different type of skills. You need people that can do different things, people that can work in services, for example, people that can work in manufacturing and so on and so forth.”
The CEO went on to say: “And then you need to have the resources that on one hand create this skill mix and on the other hand, put in place the infrastructures that allow this to happen. That is rather unique.”
Young population
Frigenti sees Saudi Arabia’s youth bulge as a pivotal advantage. “The very young workforce is accessing the labor market and is going through the education system at this time. So all this has been an exceptionally fertile ground for transforming the education system on one side, but the economy on the other in a very quick time.”
She said they had created “a working group, a forum” that brings together ministers of education, heads of major technology companies, and key government players — with Saudi Arabia playing a particularly strong role.
According to her, the Kingdom wanted not only to contribute its experiences but also to learn from others. “Attention to technology and the role it can play in education is something that I feel is going to be very much at the center of the education portion of the Vision 2050,” she said, adding that this would be highly relevant going forward.
She concluded by saying that Saudi Arabia is actively looking to share and absorb best practices globally.
Frigenti also emphasized that Saudi Arabia is eager to engage in a global exchange of best practices — sharing what has worked for them while also learning from successful experiences elsewhere. “They are very keen on having a kind of exchange with the rest of the world around good practice, what works and what doesn’t work,” she said.
“Events like HCI 2025 are just an example,” the CEO concluded.
France says Algeria threatening to expel diplomatic staff
Algeria protested over the weekend against Frances’s detention of an Algerian consular agent suspected of involvement in the kidnapping of an Algerian
Updated 3 min 58 sec ago
Reuters
PARIS: France said on Monday that Algeria had threatened to expel 12 of its diplomatic staff and that it would take immediate reprisals should that occur in the latest flare-up between them.
Algeria protested over the weekend against Frances’s detention of an Algerian consular agent suspected of involvement in the kidnapping of an Algerian. French media said three people, including the diplomat, were under investigation over the seizure of Algerian government opponent Amir Boukhors.
“The Algerian authorities are demanding that 12 of our agents leave Algerian territory within 48 hours,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said in a statement.
“If the decision to expel our agents is maintained, we will have no choice but to respond immediately.”
There was no immediate confirmation from Algeria of an imminent expulsion.
France’s relations with its former colony have long been complicated, but took a turn for the worse last year when French President Emmanuel Macron angered Algeria by backing Morocco’s position over the disputed Western Sahara region.
Only last week, Barrot had said ties were returning to normal after a visit to Algeria.
Palestinian ministry says Israel PM’s criticism of Macron an ‘unjustified attack’
Emmanuel Macron said that France could take the step during a United Nations conference in New York in June
His remarks sparked a wave of criticism from right-wing groups in France and from Netanyahu and his son Yair
Updated 13 min 9 sec ago
AFP
RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: The Palestinian foreign ministry on Monday condemned the Israeli prime minister’s criticism of French President Emmanuel Macron for announcing that Paris intended to recognize a Palestinian state within months. “The ministry strongly condemns the unjustified attack and offensive remarks made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his son against President Emmanuel Macron,” the Ramallah-based ministry said in a statement. “The ministry considers these statements a clear acknowledgement of Netanyahu’s ongoing hostility to peace based on the two-state solution, as well as a blatant rejection of international legitimacy and a persistent preference for violence and military solutions over the political path.” Macron, in an interview with France 5 broadcast on Wednesday, said that France could take the step during a United Nations conference in New York in June, adding he hoped it would trigger a reciprocal recognition of Israel by Arab countries. “We must move toward recognition, and we will do so in the coming months,” Macron said. “I will do it because I believe that at some point it will be right and because I also want to participate in a collective dynamic, which must also allow all those who defend Palestine to recognize Israel in turn, which many of them do not do.” His remarks sparked a wave of criticism from right-wing groups in France and from Netanyahu and his son Yair Netanyahu. “Screw you!” Yair Netanyahu wrote in English on X late on Saturday, while Netanyahu himself dismissed Macron’s remarks. “President Macron is gravely mistaken in continuing to promote the idea of a Palestinian state in the heart of our land – a state whose sole aspiration is the destruction of Israel,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “To this day, not a single figure in Hamas or the Palestinian Authority has condemned the horrors of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,” he said, referring to the October 7, 2023, attack led by Hamas on Israel. He described it as “a silence that reveals their true attitude toward the Jewish state. “We will not endanger our existence over illusions detached from reality, and we will not accept moral lectures about establishing a Palestinian state that would threaten Israel’s survival — especially not from those who oppose granting independence to Corsica, New Caledonia, French Guiana, and other territories, whose independence would pose no threat to France whatsoever.”
Torkham, Pakistan: Muhammad Rasool stood waiting at the Torkham border crossing in northwestern Pakistan earlier this month, set to return to his homeland of Afghanistan after 45 years with only a few belongings on his back.
The journey is not one Rasool, an Afghan refugee, is making by choice.
Earlier this year, Pakistan’s interior ministry asked all “illegal foreigners” and holders of Afghan Citizen Cards — a document launched in 2017 to grant temporary legal status to Afghan refugees — to leave the country before Mar. 31, warning that they would otherwise be deported from Apr. 1. The move is part of a larger repatriation drive of “illegal” foreign citizens that began in November 2023, with over 948,870 Afghans repatriated since, as per figures published on state broadcaster Radio Pakistan on Monday.
The campaign was launched after a spike in militant attacks in recent years that Islamabad says is partly to blame on Afghan nationals residing in the country without offering proof. The drive is also taking place amid worsening relations with Afghanistan, whose Taliban-led government Pakistan has accused of providing sanctuary to militants who carry out cross-border attacks. Kabul denies the accusations.
Millions of Afghans have sought refuge in Pakistan over the past four decades, fleeing successive conflicts including the Soviet invasion, a civil war and the post-9/11 US-led takeover of Kabul by the hard-line Taliban government. Thousands were born in Pakistan or left Afghanistan while they were children, and many have never even visited the country they are now forced to return to.
Rasool, 55, is one such refugee.
“We have lived in Pakistan for 45 years,” Rasool, a daily wage laborer most of his life, told Arab News on Saturday at the Torkham Border Crossing just to the west of the historic Khyber Pass in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province that borders Afghanistan.
Afghan refugees with their belongings arrive on trucks from Pakistan at a registration centre in Takhta Pul district of Kandahar province on April 13, 2025. (AFP)
He was leaving the country with his wife, three daughters and two sons.
“We were so happy here. We are so sad that one can’t imagine.”
Rasool complained of harassment of Afghans by authorities in the days leading up to his departure for Torkham from Taxila in the eastern Punjab province where he was based in Pakistan.
“Afghan refugees were disrespected and harassed by the police. Some of the Afghans living near me were picked up from home,” he said. “I was worried that the police would also come to my home so to save my honor, I packed my belongings and left.”
A short distance away, Muhammad Islam, a man in his mid-thirties who was waiting with his family of five for a transport vehicle to take them to Jalalabad in Afghanistan, also spoke about the fear of harassment.
“Due to the fear that our female family members would be picked up by the police, we rushed to leave for Afghanistan,” he told Arab News.
The Pakistan government says it is ensuring the “dignified” repatriation of all illegal aliens.
“MY HEART ACHES”
As per latest figures obtained from the KP Tribal and Home Affairs Department, 500,040 illegal foreigners, mostly Afghan nationals, have been repatriated through various border crossings in the province since September 2023. Between Apr. 1-11, at least 16,242 ACC holders and 17,689 ‘illegal’ Afghan nationals have been repatriated through the Torkham border, according to the home department’s data.
Among them are many like Rasool, whose children can’t even speak the official languages of Afghanistan, Dari and Pashto, and who don’t know what lies ahead.
“They don’t know a word of Pashto, they are all worried as they don’t know the language and the place is new for them,” he said. “Where should we go? What should we do? We are worried about this.”
Sakhi Gul, a 57-year-old Afghan refugee who has worked as a bread maker in Pakistan’s Attock district for over 35 years, said he was barely ten years old when he left his homeland.
“How should we know now where we are being sent? People are saying that a camp has been established,” Gul said. “We don’t know any place or home to go to.”
When asked what he would do in Afghanistan, he said, “I will see once I cross the border … We worked hard in Pakistan and will try to work harder in Afghanistan. At first, I will try to find work as a laborer to feed my family.”
Muhammad Islam, a man in his mid-thirties, also said his professional and personal future in Afghanistan was uncertain.
“I don’t know what I will be doing in Afghanistan. I have never seen Afghanistan. I will see what to do once I cross my family over.”
What most of the refugees do know is that they will miss the life they are leaving behind.
Gul said his Pakistani friends and neighbors, with whom he had spent most of his life, were pained to see him leave.
“Yesterday, they were also weeping and asking why are we going.”
Islam too said he would miss the Pakistani community he was leaving behind in the eastern Chakwal district where he had lived for several years and worked at a junkyard. His spouse and four children, one of them a baby in his wife’s lap, were accompanying him to Afghanistan.
“I miss my friends, my heart aches for them,” Islam said. “They wept with us when I was getting on the vehicle, and I also wept. My heart says that I shouldn’t go.”
