Princess Lamia Bint Majid Al-Saud was named winner of the Achievement in Philanthropies Award at the Arab Women of the Year 2017 held in London on Thursday.
Princess Lamia is Secretary General and member of the board of trustees at Alwaleed Philanthropies which over the past 35 years has supported and initiated projects in more than 124 countries regardless of gender, race or religion.
The Foundation collaborates with a range of philanthropic, government and educational organizations to combat poverty, empower women and youth, develop communities, provide disaster relief and create cultural understanding through education.
Princess Lamia was among eleven outstanding Arab women recognized for their achievements in a wide range of categories including social leadership, culture, music, women’s advancement, trade development, motivation and wellbeing, education, journalism and public awareness.
A special award was presented to a program created by the OLE.IRD and UNHCR called ‘The Tiger Girls’. Tiger Girls, which stands for ‘These Inspiring Girls Enjoy Reading’, enables 120 Syrian girls in the Zaatari refugee camp, supported by Syrian female coaches, to participate in team-based learning. Present to accept the award alongside her colleagues was UNHCR senior adviser, Reem bint Amr bin Abdelhamid from Saudi Arabia.
Event organizer Omar Bdour, Ceo, London Arabia Organization, said he had been completely overwhelmed with emotion when he visited the Zaatari camp in Jordan and met the young women benefitting from the program.
He described a moving moment during his visit to the desert camp when young girls released balloons carrying messages describing their hopes and dreams. For young people who “have almost nothing,” he said, “their hopes and dreams are all that sustain them but that doesn’t mean they don’t want to break out of their box.”
He added that the Arab Women Awards celebrated Arab women who ‘aspire to make a difference.’
Award Advisory Chairman, Professor Aldwyn Cooper, Vice-Chancellor and Ceo, Regent’s University London, said in the Arab world educational institutions are climbing up the global world rankings. He saw as a valuable element in this trend the social change being led and supported by the country’s rulers. “There is recognition of the knowledge, skills and innovation of Arab women in many fields,” he said.
On the UK, he said: “It is important that we recognize Arab students as creating genuine inputs into the cultures of our universities with new perspectives, new ideas and real innovation.”
He said there would be announcements made by the UK government on Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2017, about changes to the visa arrangements for students studying in the UK and staying to contribute to the British economy.
He said: “We are open for business in Britain for education and everything else.”
Guest speaker Desiree Bollier, chairwoman and global chief merchant, value retail management, said women make up 67 percent of her organization’s workforce.
“Women are wives and mothers and working. All we have done over the years is stretch their days and hours. The average work and social life and expectation of being a wife, mum and working woman is an average 14-hour day. We support these women with flexible hours – the office today is merely a mobile – you can do your work from anywhere.”
The glittering awards evening, hosted by Saudi social media influencer and entrepreneur Bayan Linjawi, was held in the Jumeirah Carlton Hotel in Knightsbridge. Entertainment was provided by the Scottish Egyptian multi-instrumentalist Ayoub Sisters, Sarah and Laura who played a range of wonderful classic pieces
The event was attended by royals, diplomats and a host of high achieving women showing their support for the award winners.
Dr. Hania Mursi Fadl, winner of the achievement in social leadership award, is one of the first Sudanese women to be trained as a radiologist. She established the Khartoum Breast Care Center using a family foundation fund of $14 million. The KBCCC is the only fully equipped and staffed cancer center available to women in the region.
Sheikha Intisar Alsabah, of Kuwait, winner of the achievement in community development award, is the founder of Alnowair, a first of its kind non-profit initiative in region.
The achievement in culture award went to Dr. Maha El-Khalil Chalabi. Born in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, Chalabi has led numerous welfare and cultural campaigns for her native city which has been on UNESCO’s World Heritage List since 1984. She notably initiated the establishment of a medical and social care center and the International Festival of Tyre.
The well-known Kuwaiti singer Nawal El-Kuwaitia won the achievement in music award. She is known as The Queen of Classic Music and famed for her Harp of Khaliji Song, the Gulf’s Fairooz and the Sun and Moon of Kuwait. She currently has 16 albums and has collaborated with many composers and poets.
Yasmine Sabri won the award for achievement in promoting women’s advancement. Sabri, who was a professional swimmer in Egypt, shot her first movie in Mumbai and was number one in the box office. She participated in the “You are more important campaign” celebration – “Smile of Gold” at the Childrens’ Cancer Hospital during the World Children Cancer Day.
Shaikha Hind Al-Khalifa won the achievement in trade development award. Shaikha Hind was born and raised in the city of Muharraq, Bahrain and served as the Assistant Under-Secretary for the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. She is president of the Bahrain International Federation for Business and Professional Women.
The winner of the achievement in motivation and wellbeing award was Hala Kazim. She is a certified counselor and coach from the City University, London. Kazim established ‘Journey through Change’ in 2011 to positively impact people’s lives by taking them out of their comfort zone and expanding their intellectual boundaries.
The achievement in education award went to Professor Karma Nabulsi a Fellow in Politics at St. Edmund Hall who lectures at the University of Oxford where she is currently Director of Undergraduate Studies at the Department of Politics and International Relations. Dr. Nabulsi recently directed, co-edited and co-curated ‘The Palestinian Revolution,’ a bilingual Arabic-English digital humanities and teaching resource exploring Palestinian revolutionary thought and practice in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
Ragihda Dergham won the achievement in journalism award. Dergham is the Founder and Executive Chairman of Beirut Institute, a cutting edge independent think tank for the Arab region. She has been a columnist and senior diplomatic correspondent for the London based Al Hayat daily since 1989.
Hind Al-Eryani won the achievement in public awareness award. She is a writer, journalist whose articles are widely published on media including TV5, Alsafeer, and Lebanon Now.
Eryani has led many campaigns against Qat highlighting its negative effects on the economy, water and agriculture. Her latest campaign promotes peace in Yemen.
Arab Women of the Year 2017 was partnered and sponsored by Regent’s University London, Bicester Village, La Vallee Village, London & Partners and the Arab British Business Association.
Saudi women shine at Arab Women of the Year awards in London
Saudi women shine at Arab Women of the Year awards in London
Japan awards longest-serving death row inmate $1.4 million
- Payout represents 12,500 yen ($83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention
- The former boxer was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others
TOKYO: A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded $1.4 million in compensation, an official said Tuesday.
The payout represents 12,500 yen ($83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last.
It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said.
The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others.
The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in Japan, where gaining a retrial is notoriously hard and death row inmates are often informed of their impending death just a few hours before they are hanged.
The Shizuoka District Court, in a decision dated Monday, said that “the claimant shall be granted 217,362,500 yen ($1.44 million),” a court spokesman told AFP.
The same court ruled in September that Hakamada was not guilty in a retrial and that police had tampered with evidence.
Hakamada had suffered “inhumane interrogations meant to force a statement (confession)” that he later withdrew, the court said at the time.
Hakamada’s legal team said the money falls short of the pain he suffered between his 1966 arrest and his release in 2014, when he was granted a retrial.
“I think the fact that he will receive it... compensates him a little bit for all the hardship,” lawyer Hideyo Ogawa told a press conference.
“But in light of the hardship and suffering of the past 47 or 48 years, and given his current situation, I think it shows that the state has made mistakes that cannot be atoned for with 200 million yen,” he said.
Decades of detention – with the threat of execution constantly looming – took a major toll on Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers have said, describing him as “living in a world of fantasy.”
Hakamada was convicted of robbing and killing his boss, the man’s wife and their two teenage children.
He initially denied the charges but police said Hakamada eventually confessed.
During his trial, Hakamada claimed innocence, saying that his confession was forced.
More than a year after the killings, investigators said they found blood-stained clothes – a key piece of evidence that the court later said was planted by investigators.
Hakamada now lives with his sister with help from supporters.
Hakamada was the fifth death row inmate granted a retrial in Japan’s post-war history. All four previous cases also resulted in exonerations.
Japan is the only major industrialized democracy other than the United States to retain capital punishment, a policy that has broad public support.
Japan’s justice minister said in October that abolishing the death penalty would be “inappropriate” even after Hakamada’s acquittal.
Stressed? Sick? Swiss town lets doctors prescribe free museum visits as art therapy for patients
- Dr. Marc-Olivier Sauvain, head of surgery at the Neuchatel Hospital Network, said he had already prescribed museum visits to two patients to help them get in better shape before a planned operation
NEUCHATEL, Switzerland: The world’s woes got you down? Feeling burnout at work? Need a little something extra to fight illness or prep for surgery? The Swiss town of Neuchâtel is offering its residents a novel medical option: Expose yourself to art and get a doctor’s note to do it for free.
Under a new two-year pilot project, local and regional authorities are covering the costs of “museum prescriptions” issued by doctors who believe their patients could benefit from visits to any of the town’s four museums as part of their treatment.
The project is based on a 2019 World Health Organization report that found the arts can boost mental health, reduce the impact of trauma and lower the risk of cognitive decline, frailty and “premature mortality,” among other upsides.
Art can help relax the mind — as a sort of preventative medicine — and visits to museums require getting up and out of the house with physical activity like walking and standing for long periods.
Neuchatel council member Julie Courcier Delafontaine said the COVID crisis also played a role in the program’s genesis. “With the closure of cultural sites (during coronavirus lockdowns), people realized just how much we need them to feel better.”
She said so far some 500 prescriptions have been distributed to doctors around town and the program costs “very little.” Ten thousand Swiss francs (about $11,300) have been budgeted for it.
If successful, local officials could expand the program to other artistic activities like theater or dance, Courcier Delafontaine said. The Swiss national health care system doesn’t cover “culture as a means of therapy,” but she hopes it might one day, if the results are positive enough.
Marianne de Reynier Nevsky, the cultural mediation manager in the town of 46,000 who helped devise the program, said it built on a similar idea rolled out at the Fine Arts Museum in Montreal, Canada, in 2019.
She said many types of patients could benefit.
“It could be a person with depression, a person who has trouble walking, a person with a chronic illness,” she said near a display of a feather headdress from Papua New Guinea at the Ethnographic Museum of Neuchatel, a converted former villa that overlooks Late Neuchatel.
Part of the idea is to get recalcitrant patients out of the house and walking more.
Dr. Marc-Olivier Sauvain, head of surgery at the Neuchatel Hospital Network, said he had already prescribed museum visits to two patients to help them get in better shape before a planned operation.
He said a wider rollout is planned once a control group is set up. For his practice, the focus will be on patients who admit that they’ve lost the habit of going out. He wants them to get moving.
“It’s wishful thinking to think that telling them to go walk or go for a stroll to improve their fitness level before surgery” will work, Sauvain said on a video call Saturday, wearing blue scrubs. “I think that these patients will fully benefit from museum prescriptions. We’ll give them a chance to get physical and intellectual exercise.”
“And as a doctor, it’s really nice to prescribe museum visits rather than medicines or tests that patients don’t enjoy,” he added. “To tell them ‘It’s a medical order that instructs you to go visit one of our nice city museums.’”
Some museum-goers see the upsides too.
“I think it’s a great idea,” said Carla Fragniere Filliger, a poet and retired teacher, during a visit to the ethnography museum. “There should be prescriptions for all the museums in the world!”
Paris residents vote in favor of making 500 more streets pedestrian
- The referendum will eliminate 10,000 more parking spots in Paris, adding to the 10,000 removed since 2020
- Last year, Parisians voted to triple parking charges for large SUVs. A 2023 vote approved a ban on e-scooters
PARIS: Parisians voted in a referendum on Sunday to pedestrianize a further 500 of the city’s streets, giving fresh momentum to efforts by the French capital’s left-leaning town hall to curb car usage and improve air quality.
Some 65.96 percent of Parisians voted in favor of the measure, while 34.04 percent rejected it, official results showed. Only 4.06 percent of voters turned out in the consultation, which was organized by the municipality.
This was the third such referendum in Paris in as many years, following a 2023 vote that approved a ban on e-scooters, and a decision last year to triple parking charges for large SUVs.
The referendum will eliminate 10,000 more parking spots in Paris, adding to the 10,000 removed since 2020. The city’s two million residents will be consulted on which streets will become pedestrian areas.
Paris town hall data shows car traffic in the city has more than halved since the Socialists took power in the capital at the turn of the century.
The 500 additional streets to be pedestrianized will bring the total number of these so-called “green lungs” to nearly 700, just over one-tenth of the capital’s streets.
Despite recent changes, Paris lags other European capitals in terms of green infrastructure — which include private gardens, parks, tree-lined streets, water and wetlands — making up only 26 percent of the city area versus a European capitals average of 41 percent, according to the European Environment Agency.
Quirky livestream that lets viewers help fish is a hit with millions
- When viewers see enough fish, they alert a water worker who opens the lock to let the fish swim through
- Letting the fish through help them make their springtime migration to shallow spawning grounds
UTRECHT, Netherlands: The central Dutch city of Utrecht has installed a ” fish doorbell ” on a river lock that lets viewers of an online livestream alert authorities to fish being held up as they make their springtime migration to shallow spawning grounds.
The idea is simple: An underwater camera at Utrecht’s Weerdsluis lock sends live footage to a website. When somebody watching the site sees a fish, they can click a button that sends a screenshot to organizers. When they see enough fish, they alert a water worker who opens the lock to let the fish swim through.
Now in its fifth year, the site has attracted millions of viewers from around the world with its quirky mix of slow TV and ecological activism.
Much of the time, the screen is just a murky green with occasional bubbles, but sometimes a fish swims past. As the water warms up, more fish show up.
Without the help, native freshwater fish like bream, pike and bass can become backed up behind the lock and form easy prey for predators in the spring, when the lock is rarely opened for passing boats.
The bell is the brainchild of ecologist and concept developer Mark van Heukelum. He’s been happily surprised at the response, with millions of people from around the world tuning in over the years.
“I guess the combination of a good cause, a beautiful story and just a simple idea generates all this attention,” he said.
Anna Nijs, an ecologist with Utrecht municipality, was also amazed at the popularity of the concept around the world.
“We get a lot of fan mail from people who think it’s slow TV and they find it relaxing,” said Nijs. Besides, “they appreciate that they can actually do something to help.”
Spain reverses ban on hunting wolves in north
- An amendment stipulates that capture and killing of wolves may be 'justified' in the event of a threat to the Spanish agricultural production
- Conservation group Ecologists in Action called the reversal of the hunting ban 'irresponsible'
MADRID: Spanish lawmakers on Thursday voted to end a ban on hunting wolves in the north of the country, three years after its introduction by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s minority leftist government.
Spain declared Iberian wolves living north of the Douro river a protected species in 2021, extending an existing hunting ban that was in place in the south over the objections of farmers who argued that it would lead to more attacks on their livestock.
Controlled hunting of the species had been allowed until then in the region which includes Asturias, Cantabria, Castile and Leon, and Galicia where the vast majority of the country’s Iberian wolves live.
The reversal of the hunting ban was introduced via an amendment to a law on food waste and approved with the votes of lawmakers from the conservative main opposition Popular Party (PP), far-right Vox, Basque regional party PNV and Catalan separatists JxCat.
The amendment introduced by the PP stipulates that the capture and killing of wolves may be “justified” in the event of a threat to the Spanish “productive system,” namely agricultural production.
It removes the wolf from a list of wild species under “special protection” north of the Douro.
Conservation group Ecologists in Action called the reversal of the hunting ban “irresponsible” while animal rights party PACMA described it as “the biggest step backwards in wildlife conservation in years.”
Members of the Bern Convention, tasked with the protection of wildlife in Europe and some African countries, in December agreed to lower the wolf’s protection status from “strictly protected” to “protected.”
Grey wolves were virtually exterminated in Europe 100 years ago but their numbers have rebounded since then to the current population of 20,300, mostly in the Balkans, Nordic countries, Italy and Spain.
