ALEPPO: On the terrace of the Baron Hotel in Aleppo, the owner’s widow, Roubina Tashjian, sorted through old photographs of its happier past in a more peaceful Syria.
Founded by an Armenian family in 1911, the Baron played host to adventurers, writers, kings, aviators, Bedouin chiefs and presidents until war forced it to close five years ago.
Tashjian sees the Baron as part of a Syria that values religious and ethnic diversity, openness to the outside world, culture and respect for the country’s great antiquities. “A Syrian is a mixture of all these ethnic groups and cultures ... this is a big pot and it’s all mixed up. But we cook the same kibbeh,” she said, referring to a Levantine dish.
Trying to revive that vision of Syria amid a war that has aggravated social fractures would involve reconciliation between political opponents, religious sects and economic classes.
But with hundreds of thousands dead, more than half the country’s pre-war population displaced and fighting ongoing, there seems little hope of that for now.
For the Baron, whose business depended on stability, safety and the draw of Syria’s cultural treasures, the 2011 uprising was a catastrophic assault on everything that allowed it to thrive.
During most of the fighting, Aleppo’s government-held western districts were subjected to shellfire, an influx of refugees and shortages of water, electricity and food.
East Aleppo, held by rebels until December when the army swept through it after months of siege and air raids, was left all but a wasteland.
The Baron, in west Aleppo near the front line, was hit by mortar bombs, including one that sprayed shrapnel across an upper floor and another that crashed through the window of its “Oriental Room” onto delicate floor tiles but failed to explode.
The tail fin from that round now sits in the Baron’s cabinet of curiosities alongside such relics as pottery given by visiting archaeologists and T.E. Lawrence’s hotel bill.
In the upstairs room she always took during her frequent stays in Aleppo stands the glass-topped wooden desk where Agatha Christie wrote part of Murder on the Orient Express.
For supporters of President Bashar Assad it is the fault of rebels they describe as terrorists, viewing them as Islamist militants who despise diversity and criminal gangs who loot cultural treasures.
Assad has cast his state as a secular protector of Syria’s minorities and cultural heritage against Sunni rebels backed by hostile foreign states whose ranks include many hard-liners.
It was a view shared by some of the audience at a concert in an Old City church, fluttering fans in the summer heat of the open basilica, its roof ruined by shelling, as they listened to Mozart’s Mass in C Minor.
But any characterization of Assad’s Syria as diverse, secular, open and tolerant is rejected by the opposition, as well as some Western countries and rights groups. Critics say Syria’s government has long been one of the most oppressive in the Middle East and this was a root cause of the war.
The privileged position of Assad’s Alawite sect under him and his father, the late President Hafez Assad, fed grievances among many in the Sunni Muslim majority even as other Sunnis including urban elites backed the government.
While the government has promoted the idea of a secular Syria throughout the war, the conflict’s sectarian edge has been hard to miss.
As rebels rallied around Sunni Islamist slogans, Assad drew on allies including Shiite Islamist militias backed by Iran. They played a big part in the campaign to retake eastern Aleppo.
In the city, the conflict’s socio-economic dimensions are readily apparent. Areas where the rebellion was strongest included places bypassed by economic growth and poor quarters to which rural people flocked.
One west Aleppo resident, who had driven through devastated eastern districts after the fighting ended, said the inhabitants had brought ruin upon themselves by consorting with rebels.
“Those people were the cause. Yes, it’s sad, but...” the person said.
REFUGEE FAMILIES
In the Baron, the wood-panelled dining room, the bar stocked with antique bottles, the pink furniture of the high-ceilinged smoking room and the bedrooms all seem worn and tired.
It stopped taking paying guests in 2012 — bar a few old friends — when Syria’s civil war came to Aleppo and mortars and sniper fire began to plague the streets around.
Tashjian, a 66-year-old former teacher, chases away street kittens that creep through broken french windows into the dining room and tries to keep the mostly deserted hotel from falling further into disrepair in a city with little electricity or water.
Her husband, Armen Mazloumian, the grandson of the hotel’s founder, died in 2016, two years after they married following a 30-year friendship. The Baron now belongs to his sisters, who left Syria years earlier, she said.
On the terrace from which Egypt’s nationalist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser once addressed a huge crowd, the boxes of old photographs were surrounded by other detritus recently hauled from a basement after the fighting abated.
Kilims, antique sewing machines, a set of 1950s towels, and moldering linen imported from Europe and embroidered with the hotel’s name, cascaded from large rattan trunks.
During the fighting, the hotel took in refugee families from east Aleppo. While they were there they used so much water cleaning the floors of their rooms each morning that the elegant geometric tiles were damaged, Tashjian said.
In the late afternoon heat, the hotel is cooled by a breeze that drifts in through broken windows on the ground floor and up the grand staircase.
“Syria was the most comfortable, the most secular country in the Arab world,” said Tashjian. “It was embarrassing if people asked if you were a Christian or a Muslim.”
At historic Aleppo hotel, nostalgia for a Syria lost
At historic Aleppo hotel, nostalgia for a Syria lost
UAE-based nurse nominated for Aster Guardians Global Nursing Award 2025 with $250,000 prize
- Filipino nurse says he will use money for cancer research if he wins
DUBAI: A UAE nurse shortlisted for the Aster Guardian Global Nursing Award 2025 has said that he will not spend a cent of the $250,000 prize money on himself, but instead on pediatric cancer research.
Fitz Gerald Dalina Camacho has been shortlisted for the award, which includes the quarter-of-a-million dollar prize.
The 10 shortlisted for the prize were selected from a record-breaking 100,000 applicants from 199 countries.
The only candidate working in the UAE and wider Arab world, Camacho is listed with nine other nurses in the running for the annual award, which celebrates their dedication and skill.
The Filipino nurse learned about the nomination during a shift at work. “I was shocked when my parents and friends sent me the links on social media. I did not expect to be nominated,” Camacho said.
Despite his modesty, Camacho has an extremely decorated career. After starting his pediatrics training in the Philippines, he moved to the Gulf, first in Saudi Arabia.
“It was quite a transition for me moving to Saudi,” Camacho said. “But it is a very good foundational place where the learning is very (well) supported.”
He has been stationed in the UAE for 11 years and is currently a duty manager at Mediclinic City Hospital in Dubai.
Since starting this post, Camacho has taken it on himself to upskill his nursing colleagues in areas where they might lack experience; especially in different age groups.
“I started an initiative of upskilling our nurses, and training them in terms of rehabilitation and intensive care,” he explained. “If they were an adult nurse, I have skilled them to pediatric and if they were pediatric, I have skilled them to adult.”
But Camacho said that he wants to make a move in his career from education to research so he could pursue one of his passions — pediatric care.
“I’ve seen how patients with cancer struggle,” Camacho said, “So if I were chosen as the winner, then I would use the money for pediatric cancer patients back home in the Philippines.”
The final round of the award will include interviews from a distinguished grand jury. After voting, the winner will be announced at a gala event in Dubai on May 26.
A rare New Zealand snail is filmed for the first time laying an egg from its neck
- What looks like a tiny hen’s egg is seen emerging from an opening below the head of the Powelliphanta augusta snail, a threatened species endemic to New Zealand
WELLINGTON, New Zealand: The strange reproductive habits of a large, carnivorous New Zealand snail were once shrouded in mystery. Now footage of the snail laying an egg from its neck has been captured for the first time, the country’s conservation agency said Wednesday.
What looks like a tiny hen’s egg is seen emerging from an opening below the head of the Powelliphanta augusta snail, a threatened species endemic to New Zealand.
The video was taken at a facility on the South Island’s West Coast, where conservation rangers attempting to save the species from extinction have cared for a population of the snails in chilled containers for nearly two decades.
The conditions in the containers mimic the alpine weather in their only former habitat — a remote mountain they were named for, on the West Coast of the South Island, that has been engulfed by mining.
Observing their habits
Lisa Flanagan from the Department of Conservation, who has worked with the creatures for 12 years, said the species still holds surprises.
“It’s remarkable that in all the time we’ve spent caring for the snails, this is the first time we’ve seen one lay an egg,” she said in a statement.
Like other snails, Powelliphanta augusta are hermaphrodites, which explains how the creatures can reproduce when encased in a hard shell. The invertebrate uses a genital pore on the right side of its body, just below the head, to simultaneously exchange sperm with another snail, which is stored until each creates an egg.
A long but slow reproductive life
Each snail takes eight years to reach sexual maturity, after which it lays about five eggs a year. The egg can take more than a year to hatch.
“Some of our captive snails are between 25 and 30 years old,” said Flanagan. “They’re polar opposites to the pest garden snail we introduced to New Zealand, which is like a weed, with thousands of offspring each year and a short life.”
The dozens of species and subspecies of Powelliphanta snails are only found in New Zealand, mostly in rugged forest and grassland settings where they are threatened by habitat loss.
They are carnivores that slurp up earthworms like noodles, and are some of the world’s largest snails , with oversized, distinctive shells in a range of rich earth colors and swirling patterns.
A political storm
The Powelliphanta augusta was the center of public uproar and legal proceedings in the early 2000s, when an energy company’s plans to mine for coal threatened to destroy the snails’ habitat.
Some 4,000 were removed from the site and relocated, while 2,000 more were housed in chilled storage in the West Coast town of Hokitika to ensure the preservation of the species, which is slow to breed and doesn’t adapt well to new habitats.
In 2011, some 800 of the snails accidentally died in a Department of Conservation refrigerator with faulty temperature control.
But the species’ slow survival continues: In March this year, there were nearly 1,900 snails and nearly 2,200 eggs in captivity, the conservation agency said.
Kenya court fines teens for trying to smuggle protected ants
- The case has received considerable attention after the Kenyan Wildlife Service (KWS) accused the four of engaging in “bio-piracy“
- Lornoy and Lodewijckx were arrested in possession of 5,000 queen ants packed in 2,244 tubes in Nakuru County
NAIROBI: A Kenyan court on Wednesday fined four people, including two Belgian teenagers, more than $7,000 for attempting to smuggle thousands of live ants out of the country.
The case has received considerable attention after the Kenyan Wildlife Service (KWS) accused the four of engaging in “bio-piracy.”
David Lornoy and Seppe Lodewijckx, both 18 of Belgium, Duh Hung Nguyen of Vietnam, and Dennis Nganga of Kenya all pleaded guilty to possession of the ants, but denied seeking to traffic them.
Lornoy and Lodewijckx were arrested in possession of 5,000 queen ants packed in 2,244 tubes in Nakuru County, around 160 kilometers (100 miles) from the capital Nairobi.
Duh and Nganga were found with ants stored in 140 syringes packed with cotton wool and two containers, according to a charge sheet seen by AFP.
The senior magistrate, Njeri Thuku, made a reference to the slave trade while passing judgment.
“Imagine being violently removed from your home and packed into a container with many others like you. Then imagine being isolated and squeezed into a tiny space where the only source of nourishment for the foreseeable future is glucose water,” she wrote.
“It almost sounds as if the reference above is to slave trade. Yet, it is not slave trade, but it is illegal wildlife trade.”
Lornoy was described as an “ant enthusiast” who kept colonies at home in Belgium and was member of a Facebook group called “Ants and Ant Keeping,” according to the sentencing report.
He told investigators he was not aware that transporting the ants was illegal.
Police had put the value of the ants taken by the Belgians at one million shillings ($7,740).
The haul included the rare Messor cephalotes species, a single queen ant that currently sells for at least $99 each, according to the court report.
Possession of any wildlife specimen or trophy without a permit is a criminal offense in Kenya, with suspects normally subject to a fine of up to $10,000 and five years or more in prison.
The court ultimately sentenced all four to a fine of one million shillings ($7,740), or a year in prison if they failed to pay.
The court said Lornoy and Lodewijckx “do not come across as typical poachers” and were ignorant of the law.
But it said the case reflected a script “that has been played out before in centuries gone by... of Africa having resources that are plundered by the West and now the East.”
The KWS said their action was not only a “wildlife crime but also constitutes bio-piracy.”
The suspects “intended to smuggle the ants to high-value exotic pet markets in Europe and Asia, where demand for rare insect species is rising,” it said in a statement.
Socks and satire: Syrians mock ousted Assad dynasty
- Pictures of the Assad clan have gone from being ubiquitous symbols of repression to objects of derision and mockery
DAMASCUS: At Basel al-Sati's souvenir shop in a central Damascus market, socks bearing caricatures that ridicule ousted Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and his once feared family now sell like hot cakes.
"I want to bring joy to people who've been deprived of happiness for so many days and years," said Sati, 31, displaying pairs of white ankle-length socks.
"Everyone who comes from abroad wants to buy the socks -- some to keep as a souvenir, others to wear mockingly and take pictures," he told AFP.
"There are even some who buy them just to stomp on them," he said.
Stamping on someone's image is considered deeply insulting in the Arab world, so the socks allow wearers to trample the Assads underfoot as they walk.
Pictures of the Assad clan have gone from being ubiquitous symbols of repression to objects of derision and mockery since his December 8 ouster by Islamist-led forces after nearly 14 years of devastating civil war.
Some socks showing Assad in sunglasses read "We will trample them", while others depict him with heavily exaggerated features.
Others bear a caricature of Hafez al-Assad who ruled Syria before his son, depicted in his underwear and chest puffed out.
They bear the phrase "This is what the Assads look like" -- a play on the family's last name, which means lion.
Assad's once feared younger brother Maher labelled "the captagon king" also features. Western governments accused Maher and his entourage of turning Syria into a narco state, flooding the Middle East with the illegal stimulant.
Sati's shop, brimming with other gift items, is decorated with images from Syria's revolution.
An image of Assad is on the ground at the entrance so people can walk on it.
"It's another kind of celebration, for all the Syrians who couldn't celebrate in Ummayad Square after the fall of the regime," Sati said.
The Damascus landmark filled with huge crowds from across the country and hosted days of celebrations after Assad's ouster, with people raising the now official three-starred flag symbolising the revolution.
Afaf Sbano, 40, who returned after fleeing to Germany a decade ago, said she had come to buy "Assad socks", which sell for around a dollar a pair, for friends.
There is "no better" gift for those "who can't come to Syria to celebrate the fall of the regime", she told AFP.
"I bought more than 10 extra pairs for my friends after I shared a photo on Instagram," she said.
"We had never dared to even imagine making fun of him" before, she added.
Manufacturer Zeyad Zaawit, 29, said the idea of socks to mock the Assads came to him after the former ruler was deposed and fled to Russia.
Zaawit started with a small number and then ramped up production when he saw they were selling fast.
"People hate him," Zaawit said of Assad.
"I took revenge on him this way after he fled," he said, adding that the socks were so popular that some customers even paid in advance.
Zaawit said he produced around 1,000 pairs in the first week and has since tripled production, making more than 200,000 pairs in three months.
Images of the socks have been shared widely on social media and they have even been used in satirical television programmes.
Assad's own words have also been turned against him -- including a refusal to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a foe who is close to Syria's new authorities.
Erdogan made repeated overtures to Assad in the period before his overthrow.
In August 2023, Assad famously said: "Why should I meet Erdogan? To drink refreshments?"
The pronouncement, now the subject of jokes on social media, appears on posters in food and juice stalls, sometimes accompanied by mocking images of Assad.
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ says he’s ‘a little nervous’ as sex trafficking trial gets underway
NEW YORK: The federal sex trafficking trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs, whose wildly successful career has been dotted by allegations of violence, began on Monday in New York City with jury selection that was briefly paused when the hip-hop entrepreneur said he was “a little nervous” and needed a bathroom break.
Three dozen potential jurors were questioned by Judge Arun Subramanian about their answers on a questionnaire meant to help determine if they could be fair and impartial at a trial that will feature violent and sexually explicit videos. Opening statements and the start of testimony are scheduled for next week.
The judge gave the would-be jurors a brief description of the sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges against Combs, telling them he’d pleaded not guilty and was presumed innocent.
By the end of the day, the jury pool was half its size as some were excluded for personal reasons such as inability to endure a trial projected to last two months or because their opinions or past experiences would make it difficult for them to remain objective.
A similar number of jurors was expected to be questioned on Tuesday. A jury was not expected to be chosen before Wednesday.
Throughout Monday, Combs, 55, sat with his lawyers in a sweater over a white collared shirt and gray slacks, which the judge had allowed rather than jail clothing. He’s been held in a grim federal lockup in Brooklyn since his arrest last September. His hair and goatee were almost fully gray because dye isn’t allowed in jail.
Unlike other recent high-profile celebrity trials, Combs’ court case won’t be broadcast live because federal courtrooms don’t allow electronic recordings inside — meaning courtroom sketch artists serve as the public’s eyes in the courtroom.
If convicted of all charges, he could face up to life in prison.
Several prospective jurors indicated they’d seen news reports featuring a key piece of evidence in the case: a video of the hip-hop mogul hitting and kicking one of his accusers in a Los Angeles hotel hallway in 2016. One prospective juror described a still image she saw from the video as “damning evidence.” That woman was rejected from consideration.
After another juror was dismissed, Combs asked for a bathroom break, telling the judge, “I’m sorry your honor I’m a little nervous today.”
One prospective juror said she had posted a “like” to a video put on social media by a comedian who included references to large amounts of baby oil found by law enforcement in one of Combs’ homes. She was not dismissed.
The 17-page indictment against Combs — which reads like a charging document filed against a Mafia leader or the head of a drug gang — alleges that Combs engaged in a two-decade racketeering pattern of abusive behavior against women and others, with the help of people in his entourage and employees from his network of businesses.
Combs and his lawyers say he’s innocent and any group sex was consensual. They say there was no effort to coerce people into things they didn’t want to do, and nothing that happened amounted to a criminal racket.
Prosecutors say women were manipulated into drug-fueled sexual performances with male sex workers that Combs called “Freak Offs.” To keep women in line, prosecutors say Combs used a mix of influence and violence: He offered to boost their entertainment careers if they did what he asked — or cut them off if they didn’t.
And when he wasn’t getting what he wanted, the indictment says Combs and his associates resorted to violent acts including beatings, kidnapping and arson. Once, the indictment alleges, he even dangled someone from a balcony.
Combs has acknowledged one episode of violence that is considered a key piece of the prosecution’s case. In 2016, a security camera recorded him beating up his former girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie, in the hallway of a Los Angeles hotel. Cassie filed a lawsuit in late 2023 saying Combs had subjected her to years of abuse, including beatings and rape.
The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly, as Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura, did.
Combs’ attorney, Marc Agnifilo, has said Combs was “not a perfect person” and that there had been drug use and toxic relationships, but said all sexual activity between Combs, Cassie and other people was consensual.
The trial is the most serious in a long string of legal problems for Combs.
