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
A 98-year-old in Ukraine walked miles to safety from Russians, with slippers and a cane
- Describing her journey, the nonagenarian said she had fallen twice and was forced to stop to rest at some points, even sleeping along the way before waking up and continuing her journey
KYIV, Ukraine: A 98-year-old woman in Ukraine who escaped Russian-occupied territory by walking almost 10 kilometers (6 miles) alone, wearing a pair of slippers and supported by a cane has been reunited with her family days after they were separated while fleeing to safety.
Lidia Stepanivna Lomikovska and her family decided to leave the frontline town of Ocheretyne, in the eastern Donetsk region, last week after Russian troops entered it and fighting intensified.
Russians have been advancing in the area, pounding Kyiv’s depleted, ammunition-deprived forces with artillery, drones and bombs.
“I woke up surrounded by shooting all around — so scary,” Lomikovska said in a video interview posted by the National Police of Donetsk region.
In the chaos of the departure, Lomikovska became separated from her son and two daughters-in-law, including one, Olha Lomikovska, injured by shrapnel days earlier. The younger family members took to back routes, but Lydia wanted to stay on the main road.
With a cane in one hand and steadying herself using a splintered piece of wood in the other, the pensioner walked all day without food and water to reach Ukrainian lines.
Describing her journey, the nonagenarian said she had fallen twice and was forced to stop to rest at some points, even sleeping along the way before waking up and continuing her journey.
“Once I lost balance and fell into weeds. I fell asleep … a little, and continued walking. And then, for the second time, again, I fell. But then I got up and thought to myself: “I need to keep walking, bit by bit,’” Lomikovska said.
Pavlo Diachenko, acting spokesman for the National Police of Ukraine in the Donetsk region, said Lomikovska was saved when Ukrainian soldiers spotted her walking along the road in the evening. They handed her over to the “White Angels,” a police group that evacuates citizens living on the front line, who then took her to a shelter for evacuees and contacted her relatives.
“I survived that war,’ she said referring to World War II. “I had to go through this war too, and in the end, I am left with nothing.
“That war wasn’t like this one. I saw that war. Not a single house burned down. But now – everything is on fire,” she said to her rescuer.
In the latest twist to the story, the chief executive of one of Ukraine’s largest banks announced on his Telegram channel Tuesday that the bank would purchase a house for the pensioner.
“Monobank will buy Lydia Stepanivna a house and she will surely live in it until the moment when this abomination disappears from our land,” Oleh Horokhovskyi said.
Amazon Purr-rime: Cat accidentally shipped to online retailer
- Galena was found safe by a warehouse worker at an Amazon center after vanishing from her home in Utah
LOS ANGELES: A curious cat that sneaked into an open box was shipped across the United States to an Amazon warehouse after its unknowing owners sealed it inside.
Carrie Clark’s pet, Galena, vanished from her Utah home on April 10, sparking a furious search that involved plastering “missing” posters around the neighborhood.
But a week later, a vet hundreds of miles (kilometers) away in Los Angeles got in touch to say the cat had been discovered in a box — alongside several pairs of boots — by a warehouse worker at an Amazon center.
“I ran to tell my husband that Galena was found and we broke down upon realizing that she must have jumped into an oversized box that we shipped out the previous Wednesday,” Clark told KSL TV in Salt Lake City.
“The box was a ‘try before you buy,’ and filled with steel-toed work boots.”
Clark and her husband jetted to Los Angeles, where they discovered Amazon employee Brandy Hunter had rescued Galena — a little hungry and thirsty after six days in a cardboard box, but otherwise unharmed.
“I could tell she belonged to someone by the way she was behaving,” said Hunter, according to Amazon.
“I took her home that night and went to the vet the next day to have her checked for a microchip, and the rest is history.”
What did people eat before agriculture? New study offers insight
- Analysis of forms — or isotopes — of elements including carbon, nitrogen, zinc, sulfur and strontium in these remains indicated the type and amount of plants and meat they ate
WASHINGTON: The advent of agriculture roughly 11,500 years ago in the Middle East was a milestone for humankind — a revolution in diet and lifestyle that moved beyond the way hunter-gatherers had existed since Homo sapiens arose more than 300,000 years ago in Africa.
While the scarcity of well-preserved human remains from the period preceding this turning point has made the diet of pre-agricultural people a bit of a mystery, new research is now providing insight into this question. Scientists reconstructed the dietary practices of one such culture from North Africa, surprisingly documenting a heavily plant-based diet.
The researchers examined chemical signatures in bones and teeth from the remains of seven people, as well as various isolated teeth, from about 15,000 years ago found in a cave outside the village of Taforalt in northeastern Morocco. The people were part of what is called the Iberomaurusian culture.
Analysis of forms — or isotopes — of elements including carbon, nitrogen, zinc, sulfur and strontium in these remains indicated the type and amount of plants and meat they ate. Found at the site were remains from different edible wild plants including sweet acorns, pine nuts, pistachio, oats and legumes called pulses. The main prey, based on bones discovered at the cave, was a species called Barbary sheep.
“The prevailing notion has been that hunter-gatherers’ diets were primarily composed of animal proteins. However, the evidence from Taforalt demonstrates that plants constituted a big part of the hunter-gatherers’ menu,” said Zineb Moubtahij, a doctoral student in archaeology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany and lead author of the study published on Monday in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
“It is important as it suggests that possibly several populations in the world already started to include substantial amount of plants in their diet” in the period before agriculture was developed, added archeogeochemist and study co-author Klervia Jaouen of the French research agency CNRS.
The Iberomaurusians were hunter-gatherers who inhabited parts of Morocco and Libya from around 25,000 to 11,000 years ago. Evidence indicates the cave served as a living space and burial site.
These people used the cave for significant portions of each year, suggesting a lifestyle more sedentary than simply roaming the landscape searching for resources, the researchers said. They exploited wild plants that ripened at different seasons of the year, while their dental cavities illustrated a reliance on starchy botanical species.
Edible plants may have been stored by the hunter-gatherers year-round to guard against seasonal shortages of prey and ensure a regular food supply, the researchers said.
These people ate only wild plants, the researchers found. The Iberomaurusians never developed agriculture, which came relatively late to North Africa.
“Interestingly, our findings showed minimal evidence of seafood or freshwater food consumption among these ancient groups. Additionally, it seems that these humans may have introduced wild plants into the diets of their infants at an earlier stage than previously believed,” Moubtahij said.
“Specifically, we focused on the transition from breastfeeding to solid foods in infants. Breast milk has a unique isotopic signature, distinct from the isotopic composition of solid foods typically consumed by adults.”
Two infants were among the seven people whose remains were studied. By comparing the chemical composition of an infant’s tooth, formed during the breastfeeding period, with the composition of bone tissue, which reflects the diet shortly before death, the researchers discerned changes in the baby’s diet over time. The evidence indicated the introduction of solid foods at around the age of 12 months, with babies weaned earlier than expected for a pre-agricultural society.
North Africa is a key region for studying Homo sapiens evolution and dispersal out of Africa.
“Understanding why some hunter-gatherer groups transitioned to agriculture while others did not can provide valuable insights into the drivers of agricultural innovation and the factors that influenced human societies’ decisions to adopt new subsistence strategies,” Moubtahij said.
Palestinian prisoner in Israel wins top fiction prize
- The mask in the novel’s title refers to the blue identity card that Nur, an archaeologist living in a refugee camp in Ramallah, finds in the pocket of an old coat belonging to an Israeli
ABU DHABI: Palestinian writer Basim Khandaqji, jailed 20 years ago in Israel, won a prestigious prize for Arabic fiction on Sunday for his novel “A Mask, the Color of the Sky.”
The award of the 2024 International Prize for Arabic Fiction was announced at a ceremony in Abu Dhabi.
The prize was accepted on Khandaqji’s behalf by Rana Idriss, owner of Dar Al-Adab, the book’s Lebanon-based publisher.
Khandaqji was born in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Nablus in 1983, and wrote short stories until his arrest in 2004 at the age of 21.
He was convicted and jailed on charges relating to a deadly bombing in Tel Aviv, and completed his university education from inside jail via the Internet.
The mask in the novel’s title refers to the blue identity card that Nur, an archaeologist living in a refugee camp in Ramallah, finds in the pocket of an old coat belonging to an Israeli.
Khandaqji’s book was chosen from 133 works submitted to the competition.
Nabil Suleiman, who chaired the jury, said the novel “dissects a complex, bitter reality of family fragmentation, displacement, genocide, and racism.”
Since being jailed Khandaqji has written poetry collections including “Rituals of the First Time” and “The Breath of a Nocturnal Poem.”
He has also written three earlier novels.
Mexican doctor claims victory in $28 Cartier earrings battle
MEXICO CITY: A Mexican man has claimed a victory over French luxury brand Cartier, saying an error allowed him to buy two pairs of earrings for $28 that were supposed to cost nearly $28,000.
After a four-month struggle, doctor Rogelio Villarreal said he had finally received the jewelry, which he accused the company of refusing to deliver after his online purchase in December.
According to Villarreal, he came across the low-priced earrings while browsing Instagram.
“I swear I broke out in a cold sweat,” he wrote on the social media platform X.
Cartier declined to recognize the purchase and offered Villarreal a refund, as well as a bottle of champagne and a passport holder as compensation, according to a company letter shared by the doctor.
But Villarreal refused and decided to take the case to Mexico’s consumer protection agency, which ruled in favor of the doctor.
Cartier accepted the decision, Villarreal announced.
“War is over. Cartier is complying,” he wrote.
