Arabs & Arabian Records Aggregator. Chronicler. Milestones of the 25 Countries of the Arabic Speaking World (official / co-official). AGCC. MENA. Global. Ist's to Top 10's. Records. Read & Enjoy./ www.arabianrecords.org
A Saudi team won three medals at an international physics Olympiad on Sunday.
Sadiq Al-Abbad from Riyadh won a silver medal, Jawad Al-Saif from the Eastern Province won a bronze medal, and Lama Al-Ahdal from Jeddah earned a bronze at the Nordic-Baltic Physics Olympiad held at Estonia’s Tallinn University of Technology.
The Olympiad was launched in 1992 with the participation of Estonia and Finland and was called the Estonia and Finland Physics Olympiad.
With Latvia joining in 2014 and Sweden joining in 2016, the name of the competition changed to the Nordic-Baltic Physics Olympiad.
Each main country participates with 20 competitors, while each guest country participates with a specified number.
This year’s Nordic-Baltic Physics Olympiad had four main and four guest countries participating.
The head of the Saudi delegation to the Nordic-Baltic Physics Olympiad, Talal Al-Rashidi, said the physics team had won three gold and silver medals in the GCC Olympiad that was held in March.
The team was participating in the European Physics Olympiad in May with five students and the Asian Physics Olympiad immediately afterward.
“Since 2010, we have achieved 472 medals in many international competitions in mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, informatics, and sciences. Saudi Arabia is the first in the Arab world and the first third globally in various scientific disciplines.
source/content: arabnews.com (edited)
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This success is ‘an extension of the series of achievements in international competitions in which KSA participates.’ (Supplied)
Fatima Albanawi is an actress, producer, and filmmaker, who has performed in several drama, horror, romance and comedy productions.
Albanawi completed her undergraduate degree at Effat University in psychology in 2011, and received her master’s degree from Harvard University in theological studies in 2015.
In 2016, Albanawi was recognized for her role in the award-winning feature film “Barakah Meets Barakah.” The film won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the Berlin International Film Festival, and was also the Saudi Arabian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 89th Academy Awards.
She has also played a Parisian actress from the seventies in the feature film “Roll’em,” a selfish theater superstar in the “Bashar” series, and appeared in the Netflix series “Paranormal.”
Albanawi has traveled to multiple countries and performed around the world including in Buenos Aires and at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
Early on in her career, Albanawi founded “The Other Story” project. This is a book with the raw and unedited stories of Jeddah’s residents and visitors.
The actress had earlier served as a consultant at the Islamic Development Bank for six months, where she worked on developing a policy for the empowerment of women at the bank and its member countries. In 2018, Albanawi was selected as one of Time Magazine’s Young Generation Leaders, a series about the young people impacting the world. She was selected for her work in sharing the stories of people in Saudi society.
In the same year, she narrated and performed in a short film titled “A Blink of an Eye,” which shared the stories of “five normal lives that have changed or would change in a blink of an eye.”
In 2020, she wrote and directed her first short film “Until We See Light,” which became part of the feature “Becoming” in collaboration with the Red Sea International Film Festival.
Albanawi also co-wrote, co-directed, and starred in the “Al-Shak” serial drama, a Shahid.net original. The storyline was shot completely from home during the global pandemic.
In 2021, Albanawi starred in the Egyptian thriller series “60 Minutes,” which premiered on Shahid.net, recording the highest viewership in Egypt.
Suhayr al-Qalamawi is an icon of literature and politics in the Arab world in general and in Egypt in particular.
She greatly influenced cultural life in Egypt and the Arab world and it was her idea to establish the Cairo International Book Fair.
Qalamawi was born in Cairo, in a family that focused on educating their daughters. Her father was a surgeon and her mother spoke various languages. This upbringing helped her complete her education, and she graduated from the American College for Girls in 1928.
Her father also played a major role in developing her linguistic and cultural skills. She excelled reading the holy Qur’an with her father. Qalamawi’s father also owned a library where she was able to feed her infinite hunger for reading.
She was able to benefit from her father’s vast library of works at an early age, and it seems that writers such as Taha Hussein, Rifa’a al-Tahtawi and Ibn Iyas greatly contributed to her literary talent and shaped her voice as a writer.
Her father encouraged her to specialize in Arabic literature, and she became the first young girl to attend Cairo University and the first woman among 40 men to study Arabic literature. After obtaining a Master of Arts, she then received a scholarship to conduct research in Paris for her Ph.D. in 1941. After the completion of her doctoral thesis, she became the first woman to obtain a doctorate from Cairo University.
During her educational career, she was influenced by a number of personalities, most notably the dean of Arabic literature Taha Hussein, who was head of the Arabic language department and editor-in-chief of the Cairo University Magazine at the time. He made her assistant editor-in-chief of the magazine in 1932, and Qalamawi became the first woman to obtain a permit to practice journalism in Egypt.
Suhayr al-Qalamawi started her career after graduation as the first female lecturer at Cairo University in 1936. Soon she became a university professor and later the head of the Arabic language department between 1958-1967, in addition to becoming the president of the Egyptian Feminist Union.
She became the president of the Egyptian General Authority for Cinema, Theater and Music in 1967 and the head of the Child Culture Society in 1968. Qalamawi was also the head of the administration of the General Egyptian Book Organization, from 1967 to 1971, and the head of the censorship authority from 1982 to 1985.
In addition, Qalamawi was able to make outstanding contributions within the cultural field. During her tenure as head of the General Egyptian Book Organization, she worked to expand the range of readers, encourage young writers, and advance the book industry in 1967. From here, she established the first book fair in the Middle East, which is the Cairo International Book Fair in 1967.
Suhayr al-Qalamawi’s contributions were not limited to the cultural community, but she also contributed to the struggle of women, in order to preserve their rights through her literary works, in addition to her participation in many conferences on Arab women, and in 1960, she was the president of the International Conference on Women.
Furthermore, Qalamawi’s journey was also full of political work, and the beginning was when she entered politics as a member of Parliament in 1958 , and was nominated again in the period from 1979 to 1984.
Qalamawi’s career was crowned with a number of awards, as she was awarded the Arabic Language Academy Award in 1954 and the State Appreciation Award in Youth Literature. She also received the State Encouragement Award, the State Appreciation Award in Literature, The First Class Order of the Republic, the Medal of Achievement, and an Honorary Doctorate from the American University in Cairo.
After an enriching career, Suhayr al-Qalamawi passed away in 1997.
Nora Bloza, Founder & CEO – Nakheel Fruits gmbh, Germany
Dates have always been omnipresent in Nora Blouza’s life. The 37-year-old is from southern Morocco, where her late grandfather once owned a date plantation. “Dates would always be in the house,” she told Arab News.
When Blouza’s Dutch-Moroccan husband came to Germany due to his work in 2018, she followed him with their three children after having lived in the Netherlands for 17 years.
“Originally we planned to just stay for three years,” she said. But the coronavirus pandemic thwarted the family’s plans.
It was during Ramadan last year that her daughter brought up a topic that gave Blouza a new idea. “She reminded me of the high amounts of dates people consume, especially during Ramadan, of the many different types and tastes.”
It was then that Blouza had the idea of launching her own date business in Germany and importing large amounts. Although she was raised on dates, the business itself was something new to her.
As Blouza is Moroccan, her home country and its neighbors Algeria and Tunisia were the first that came to mind as potential suppliers, but none of them met her criteria.
“Saudi Arabia has many different and often unique types of dates,” she said. “Ajwa, for example, is something that only grows in the city of Madinah.”
Blouza undertook research and found a supplier that suited her ideas best: Nakheel Alya, a company in Madinah.
Despite that, it “met my criteria,” said Blouza, who fulfilled her dream and launched her business, Nakheel Fruits, in August 2021.
Boxes of different products such as natural dates, date cookies, and dates covered in chocolate and filled with almonds or walnuts, fill the company’s warehouse in Eppstein, a town in the state of Hesse at the edge of the Taunus mountains.
“We mostly supply supermarkets and individual clients that order our products via our website,” said Blouza
While individual clients are from all over Germany, the supermarkets are mostly from Hesse, with demand rising during Ramadan.
She hopes that her business will grow and expand nationwide. “My dream is that we will develop further and that German customers will discover the quality and diversity of Saudi dates and date products.”
www.nalya.de
source/content: arabnews.com (edited)
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When Nora Blouza’s Dutch-Moroccan husband came to Germany due to his work in 2018, she followed him with their three children. (Supplied)
Fartun Osman, the CEO and head coach of Girls Rock, an all-girls club founded in 2004 that promotes sport for Somali and Muslim girls, will be honoured by the NCAA with the 2022 Legacy Award for her local activism in the Minneapolis area.
The award ceremony is part of the NCAA Men’s and Women’s Final Four festivities.
Osman is one of eight community leaders in the US to be recognized for her contributions to female athletics. She will be awarded a plaque during the semifinal games at the Women’s Final Four in Minneapolis on April 1.
Born in Somalia, Fartun Osman was a rare female basketball player in her native country. She was always active in sports and said that her first love was soccer but pivoted to basketball because of the lack of opportunities for women in the sport.
Osman traveled to other countries as part of the women’s Somali national basketball team as a teenager.
Following the breakout of the civil war in the early 1990s, Fartun emigrated to the US. She quickly discovered similar barriers to entry for Somali and Muslim girls into sports and made it her mission to make sports more equitable for girls who look like her.
She fought hard for the rights of her all-Muslim girl soccer teams to play with their hijabs, and her Girls Rock initiative has coached and mentored over 1,000 girls.
“The 2022 NCAA Legacy honorees are an impressive slate of community leaders and citizens who, through their daily actions, have shown their care and concern for their neighbors,” said Felicia Martin, NCAA senior vice president of inclusion, education and community engagement.
Dr. Hanan bint Abdulrahim Al-Ahmadi was awarded the International Award for Exceptional Achievement during the Tulane Alumni Awards Gala, hosted by Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine on April 9.
Al-Ahmadi, an academic who specializes in economics and health management and who also serves as the assistant speaker of the Saudi Shura Council, was honored for the contributions of her legacy of excellence at Tulane University.
The award is given to alumni who represent the highest standards of excellence and community service locally and internationally.
During her acceptance speech, Al-Ahmadi said that the scholarships to study abroad provided by Saudi Arabia are pillars of educational strategy in contributing to distinguishing the Kingdom as a global educational institution.
Al-Ahmadi highlighted that all this is due to the great investment in women’s education in Saudi Arabia. She emphasized that the leadership’s support of Saudi women contributed to elevating her to international and regional forums and representing the Kingdom abroad.
Two other doctors, Dr. Neil Meltzer and Dr. Joseph Kanter were also honored for different achievements alongside Al-Ahmadi.
Representation matters. Not just representation of ethnic background, but of personal experience. As Egyptian director Mohamed Diab becomes the first Arab to direct a Marvel project with the eagerly awaited limited series “Moon Knight,” it’s a landmark moment not only because of his nationality, but also because he was born, raised, thrived and suffered in Egypt, living through his country’s revolution and painful rebuild, and ultimately becoming one of its most important chroniclers.
“I’m not someone who is obsessed with firsts, but I will say that what is unique about me getting the Marvel job is that I’m coming directly from the Arab world,” Diab — who previously helmed the award-winning films “Cairo 678” (2010), “Clash” (2016), and “Amira” (2021) — continues.
There was a major reason that Diab’s voice was so necessary to the project. While many of the Marvel comic books from the 60s and 70s drew from cultures and mythologies from across the world, they were written and drawn from a perspective foreign to the cultures they were influenced by, leading to limited — sometimes offensive — portrayals of those people, places, and histories.
Part of Diab’s mission was not just to apply his own voice to the show, but to include the creative voices of as many Egyptians and Arabs as he could. Each Egyptian character on the show is portrayed by an actual Egyptian — something rarely, if ever, done in Hollywood — including the ancient deity that plagues Moon Knight himself. Behind the scenes, Diab recruited the previous collaborator Ahmed Hafez as one of the series’ editors, and the great Egyptian composer Hesham Nazih to write the series’ score.
Diab — as the show’s key creative voice along with creator Jeremy Slater — was integral in far more than capturing the Egyptian aspects of the show; he helped shape its entire aesthetic, so the show embraces elements that no Marvel project has before in terms of tone, style, and themes. He also personally convinced two actors who had long resisted becoming part of a superhero project — Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke — to come aboard.
“The wonderful idea of hiring Mohamed to be our quarterback, to guide this ship, is that the movies he’s made in Egypt are incredible,” says Hawke. “He’s not looking at this with the eyes of an American, he’s looking at this — and these deities, and this world — from a vantage point of growing up in Egypt and having a lot to say about it. It’s exciting to be around him in that way.”
Diab also recruited the Egyptian-Palestinian actress May Calamawy, best known for her role in the Golden Globe-winning sitcom “Ramy,” as one of the show’s leads.
Ultimately, “Moon Knight” — which debuts internationally on Disney+ on March 30 and will premiere in the region this summer — is a show full of outsiders who, in partnership with Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige and many others, lent their creative voices to make this a Marvel project like no other.
source/content: arabnews.com (edited)
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Egyptian director Mohamed Diab is the first Arab to direct a Marvel project with the eagerly awaited limited series “Moon Knight.” (Supplied)
Moroccan activist Lamia Bazir is once again awarded for her efforts in promoting youth and women’s empowerment in Morocco.
Humanitarian Awards Global has recognized Lamia Bazir’s efforts in promoting youth and women’s empowerment by selecting her for the list of “Most Distinguished Change Makers: Women in Africa” for 2020-2021.
The list celebrates African women who excelled in sectors such as humanitarianism, entertainment, politics, business, science, and sports.
The distinguished list includes renowned women in leadership positions such as the former Executive Director of UN Women Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Director of WHO Regional Office for Africa Matshidiso Moeti, and President of Tanzania Samia Suluhu Hassan.
Bazir obtained her bachelor’s in International Relations from Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane before completing her dual master’s degree in International Development at Science Po Paris and Columbia University.
In 2012, she founded a social venture aimed at empowering women in the Atlas Mountains by supporting women’s leadership as a catalyzer for the region’s sustainable development.
Two years later, Colombia’s School of International and Public Affairs applauded her efforts by awarding her the “Harvey Picker Prize for Public Service” prize.
From 2014 to 2017, the Moroccan activist served as an officer at the head of the government’s office, where she worked on a poverty reduction cooperation program with American partners.
In 2018, she was appointed as Executive Director of the National Observatory for the Rights of the Child to advance children’s rights in Morocco.
A year later, the African youth awards selected her as one of the 100 most influential young leaders on the continent.
source/content: moroccoworldnews.com (edited)
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Humanitarian Awards Global Celebrates Morocco’s Lamia Bazir
Elham Fateem’s collection of vignettes about successful Egyptian women in nontraditional careers makes an interesting and approachable read about gender for specialists and the public alike.
A book about gender is normally not an attractive read for the public, yet putting it in the form of stories rendered Hekayat Setat men Baladna (“Tales of Women from our Land”) an interesting read for the specialists in the field and regular readers alike.
The writer is Elham Fateem, a veteran in the human development field who has worked for decades on developing womens’ and childrens’ skills and capacities. She was able, in a smooth writing style, to present stories of regular women and show their strengths while explaining the paths they took and the obstacles they faced.
The subject is women who broke the society’s taboos in choosing nontraditional careers such as diver, butcher, mechanic, carpenter, marble worker and others. The tales came from her fieldwork and interviews across Egypt’s governorates. The writer states that writing about the women she worked with has been a dream of hers for a long time. Taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic, she finally wrote and published it.
The writer chose different examples of women that she considered heroines for taking the route they chose in their life. The subjects are diverse; they come from different backgrounds, whether educational, financial or social ones. The choice of jobs depends on each woman’s circumstances, choices and inclinations.
The writer chose seventeen women to profile, which is still just a drop in the ocean.
The subjects are more than we can imagine. Oppressed women and those who have lost their rights by the society are all over the media and can be seen in day to day life, but those who are successful in a non-traditional ways need some digging to show the difficulties they had to face in order to stay on the paths they chose.
Three Moroccan Taekwondo champions participated in the Spanish Open this year.
Moroccan athletes Ayoub Bassel and Nada Laaraj have won silver and bronze medals respectively at the Spanish Taekwondo Open.
Morocco’s National Olympic Committee celebrated the news in an Instagram post on April 3.
The Spanish Open championship was organized on April 2-3 in Alicante, Spain, bringing together Taekwondo champions from around the globe.
Bassel, 26-years-old, won the silver medal in the over 87 kilograms weight class. But the Moroccan champion lost in the final against Spain’s Ivan Garcia after beating the 2018 world champion, Emre Kutalmis Atesli.
In February, Bassel secured another silver in the Arab Cup Championship in Fujairah, UAE. The Moroccan athlete has participated in over 15 international tournaments.
Nada Laaraj, 21-years-old, secured the bronze medal after losing against Spain’s Marta Calvo in the semi-final for the under 62 kilograms weight class.
Laaraj has won three gold medals in international Taekwondo competitions including in the 2022 Arab Cup Championship, 2019 African Games, and the 2018 African Championship.
In 2021, she secured a silver medal in the African Championship in Dakar, Senegal.
20-year-old Rabab Ouhadi represented Morocco in the under 49 kilograms weight class. But she did not succeed in obtaining a medal as she ranked 8th in the women’s section after losing in the first round to Italy’s Martina Corelli.
The athlete started competing internationally in 2018, participating in the Olympic Games qualification in Hammamet, Tunisia.
In the same year, she clinched a bronze medal in the French Open in Paris before collecting other silver and bronze medals in regional and international Taekwondo championships.
In February, she represented Morocco along with Bassel and Laaraj in the 2022 Arab championship in Fujairah where she secured a bronze medal.
