Category: General

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) for Arab States on Thursday called for the protection of all civilians during hostilities or conflicts, particularly complete and unconditional neutralization for females and vulnerable people.

UNFPA Arab States Regional Director Luay Shabaneh stressed that the assassination of Shireen Abu Aqla, a Palestinian journalist and Al-Jazeera correspondent in Palestine, while carrying out her civic activities as a journalist and reporter, is further evidence of the dangers threatening Palestinian civilians, especially women and girls.

The journalist lost her life while covering the events in Jenin camp at Wednesday dawn, he noted.

“Ghada Sabateen – a widow and mother of 6 children in her forties – was shot dead last month at the eastern entrance of Husan village in Bethlehem governorate, and in the village of Faqqua, Jenin district, Hanan Khadour – a high school student – also died after being shot,” he said.

He called for ensuring that all measures are taken and all guarantees are provided to protect civilians, especially women and girls.

Source: Jordan News Agency

The Jordan Customs Department (JCD) personnel seized, in cooperation with the security bodies, a factory manufacturing tobacco for shisha (water pipe) and faked famous brands.

Head of the Anti-smuggling Department Col. Raed al-Sheyyab said that the personnel also seized packaging machines, tobacco for water pipe and faked famous brands printed on papers.

Source: Jordan News Agency

Qualifiers of the 6th Arab Reading Challenge (ARC) competition kicked off on Thursday, at Jordan’s regional level.

In a statement, Director of the Educational Activities Department at Ministry of Education, Abdul Salam Shanaq, said the ministry’s participation in 2022 ARC project is the “largest,” with 2 million male and female students, under the supervision of 7,678 teachers in 3,836 schools countrywide.

According to Shanaq, 1,038 male and female students, who showed outstanding performance in the qualifying rounds, came from the Kingdom’s 42 educational directorates.

This number also includes UNRWA and Za’atari camp schools, he said, adding that arbitration experts from the Ministry of Education’s supervising teams work on the participants’ evaluation.

During the arbitration days, the evaluation team will move from the southern Aqaba governorate, to the northern Irbid city and finally to capital Amman, to pick up the top 100 participants for the final qualifiers in the Kingdom, he pointed out.

This process, he noted, will determine participants in the reading challenge at Jordan’s level, who will represent the Kingdom in the ARC qualifiers in the UAE’s Dubai.

For her part, general coordinator of 2022 Arab Reading Challenge project, Ola Badaynah, asked the evaluation team to apply the arbitration criteria, based on scoring system approved by Dubai’s ARC.

Source: Jordan News Agency

The Jordan Uranium Mining Company (JUMCO) announced Thursday that a new operational factory produced about 20Kg of yellow cake from 160 tons of uranium ore.

The JUMCO General Director Muhammad Shunnaq said that the factory is set to produce tens of kilograms of yellow cake, a mainstay of industrial production, after processing hundreds of tons of uranium ore over the next few months. He underscored that the production stages were carried out in accordance with international standards, specifically the requirements of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

This achievement, he added, is due to the company’s team efforts over the past few years, which has enabled it to obtain the necessary data, measurements and engineering designs and the cost of production.

Shunnaq indicated that the company has created a physical preparatory lab and specialized mining and analytical labs on the company’s field site to conduct experiments and research.

Founded in 2013, the JUMCO has worked to increase operations to explore, mine, and exploit sources of nuclear materials in the central area of the Kingdom in accordance with the Joint Ore Reserves Committee requirements. It issued three reports to pinpoint the amount of uranium in Jordan, which is estimated at 41,000 tons of uranium oxide (U3O8) at a concentration rate of 150 parts per million.

Source: Jordan News Agency

The Jordan Enterprise Development Corporation (JEDCO) has launched new programs to support small, med-size and emerging enterprises (SMEs).

In a statement on Thursday, JEDCO said the programs are part of its strategic plan to provide technical and financial support, funded by the government, to start establishing new small projects in various governorates. The programs will also lay out base of innovative marketing plans for existing companies, in order to locally and internationally develop their marketing performance.

“In addition, JEDCO will financially support the Jordanian export industries, by paying 50% of the cost of air and sea freight borne by the exporter, as a government contribution to maintain the shares of national exports in global markets in light of the rising shipping costs,” the statement added.

Applying for JEDCO’s financial and technical support is available year-round on the corporation’s website.

Source: Jordan News Agency