'World's largest book sale' comes to Middle East

Thursday 18/10/2018

DUBAI - A gargantuan touring book sale that touts itself as the world's largest is making its first stop in the Middle East, filling a huge hangar in Dubai with stacks of 3 million discounted books, open around the clock.

The Big Bad Wolf Book Sale, launched in Kuala Lumpur in 2009, has since regularly toured Asian cities including Jakarta, Manila, Cebu, Colombo, Bangkok and Taipei. Organizers hope to attract as many as 300,000 visitors during 11 days in Dubai.

Founder Andrew Yap said he expects the sheer number of books will lure in punters.

"In a mature market like Dubai, this will give variety to readers," he said.

Roudha Al Marri, an Emirati co-author of a guide to life in the UAE whose own book was on sale at the fair, said a city such as Dubai needed such an event to help spur reading among a "tablet generation" preoccupied with screens.

"To hold a book, smell it, to return us to more beautiful days, to throw us into mazes of stories. Every generation needs this," she said.

Source: Middle East Online.
Link: https://middle-east-online.com/en/worlds-largest-book-sale-comes-middle-east.

Spanish rescuers recover dead baby, save 520 migrants at sea

October 28, 2018

MADRID (AP) — Spain's maritime rescue service says a baby has died despite efforts by rescuers to save it after a small boat carrying migrants sunk in the Mediterranean Sea. The death came as over 500 others were rescued.

The service says Sunday that the bottom of the rubber boat gave out, tossing 56 migrants into the water when its rescue craft reached it Saturday east of the Strait of Gibraltar. Rescue workers were able to save 55 men, women and children, but could not reanimate the baby.

In all, Spanish rescue workers saved 520 people trying to cross from North Africa to Spain on Saturday. In addition, one boat with 70 migrants arrived at the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean. Over 1,960 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe this year.

Birth of a new Ukrainian church brings fears of violence

October 21, 2018

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Tensions are escalating in Ukraine as it prepares to establish a full-fledged Orthodox church of its own. The planned religious rupture from the Russian Orthodox Church is a potent — possibly explosive — mix of politics, religious faith and national identity.

The imminent creation of the new Ukrainian church raises deep concerns about what will happen to the approximately 12,000 churches in Ukraine that are now under the Moscow Patriarchate. Since the late 1600s, the Orthodox Church in Ukraine had been a wing of the Russian Orthodox Church rather than ecclesiastically independent. Many Ukrainians chafed at that arrangement.

The Istanbul-based Orthodox patriarchate has now removed an anathema against Ukrainian church leaders, a major step toward granting full recognition to a Ukrainian church that does not answer to the Moscow Patriarchate.

Germany's governing parties punished in state election

October 29, 2018

BERLIN (AP) — Germany's governing parties lost significant support in a state election Sunday that was marked by discontent with infighting in Chancellor Angela Merkel's national government and prompted calls for her coalition to get its act together quickly.

Merkel's conservatives emerged with an extremely lackluster win from the vote for the central Hesse region's state legislature. Her center-left governing partners' dismal performance left them level with the resurgent Greens in second place, while the far-right Alternative for Germany entered the last of Germany's 16 state parliaments.

Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union was defending its 19-year hold on Hesse, previously a stronghold of the center-left Social Democrats, the chancellor's coalition partners in Berlin. Speculation has been widespread before the vote that a disastrous result for either or both parties could further destabilize the national government, prompting calls for the Social Democrats to walk out and possibly endangering Merkel's own position. On Sunday, government leaders appeared keen to try and keep the show on the road.

Andrea Nahles, the Social Democrats' leader, said that "the state of the government is unacceptable." She said her party would insist on Merkel's governing coalition agreeing on "a clear, binding timetable" for implementing projects, adding that its implementation ahead of an already-agreed midterm review next fall will show "whether we are still in the right place in this government."

The CDU's general secretary, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, said the coalition needs to identify "three concrete projects for the coming months that we implement." She didn't specify what they might be. Hesse's conservative governor, Volker Bouffier, told supporters that "the message this evening to the parties in the government in Berlin is clear: people want less argument, more objectivity, more solutions."

Merkel's CDU won 27 percent of the vote Sunday and the Social Democrats 19.8 percent. When Hesse last elected its state legislature in 2013 — on the same day that Merkel, at the height of her power, won a third term as chancellor — they won 38.3 and 30.7 percent, respectively. It was the worst result in the region for the Social Democrats since World War II.

There were big gains for the Greens, who took 19.8 percent of the vote, compared with 11.1 percent five years ago. And the anti-migration, anti-establishment Alternative for Germany won 13.1 percent. The pro-business Free Democrats won 7.5 and the Left Party 6.3 percent of the vote.

Voters have appeared generally satisfied with Bouffier's outgoing state government. It was the first coalition between the CDU and the traditionally left-leaning Greens to last a full parliamentary term, and an unexpectedly harmonious alliance.

But only the Greens, who are in opposition nationally, benefited at the polls. The result left Bouffier's outgoing CDU-Green coalition with a one-seat parliamentary majority. A CDU-Social Democrat coalition, or a combination of the Social Democrats, Greens and Free Democrats, would also have a one-seat majority, but neither appears very likely.

The election campaign in prosperous Hesse, which includes Germany's financial center of Frankfurt, has been largely overshadowed by the woes of a federal coalition in office only since March. The state is home to 6.2 million of Germany's 82 million people.

Two weeks ago, both Merkel's partners in the federal "grand coalition" of what have traditionally been Germany's strongest political forces — the Christian Social Union, the Bavaria-only sister to the chancellor's CDU, and the Social Democrats — were battered in a state election in neighboring Bavaria.

The Social Democrats, who were badly beaten in last year's national election, only reluctantly entered Merkel's fourth-term national government in March. Many are dismayed by what has happened since. The government has been through two major crises, first over whether to turn back small numbers of migrants at the German-Austrian border and then over what to do with the head of Germany's domestic intelligence service after he was accused of downplaying far-right violence against migrants. It has failed to convince voters that it's achieving much on other matters.

Karl-Rudolf Korte, a political science professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen, predicted on ZDF television that its leaders "will do everything to save the 'grand coalition' for the next three years."

Being able to keep Bouffier, a deputy CDU leader, as governor would stabilize Merkel in the short term, he said. Germany's chancellor of the past 13 years has indicated that she will seek another two-year term as CDU leader in December.

Georgians choose new president directly for last time

October 28, 2018

TBILISI, Georgia (AP) — Voters in Georgia are choosing a new president for the former Soviet republic on the Black Sea, the last time the president will be elected by direct ballot. Opinion polls ahead of Sunday's election suggested that none of the 25 candidates is likely to receive the absolute majority need for a first-round win. If no one wins 50 percent support, a runoff between the top two candidates is to be held by Dec. 1.

After the new president's six-year term in completed, future presidents are to be chosen by a delegate system, part of constitutional changes that make the prime minister the most powerful political figure in Georgia. The president functions as head of state and commander in chief but is otherwise largely ceremonial.

Incumbent Giorgi Margvelashvili is not running. The three top contenders are all former foreign ministers — Salome Zurabishvili, Grigol Vashadze and David Bakradze — who served during the presidency of now-exiled Mikheil Saakashvili.

Zurabishvili was sacked in 2005 amid disagreements with parliament. She is running as an independent but is backed by the powerful Georgian Dream party, which is funded by controversial billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, a Saakashvili foe. Georgian Dream holds an overwhelming majority in the parliament.

Zurabishvili, however, has been heavily criticized for her contention that Georgia started the 2008 war with Russia. Some Georgians look with suspicion at her foreign background: born in France, she did not visit Georgia until she was in her 30s and she once served as a French diplomat.

Zurabishvili counters that this background is a strong qualification for Georgian president as the country seeks closer ties with the European Union. Georgia also is a strong U.S. ally and has ambitions to join NATO.

Vashadze, who is backed by a coalition that includes the United National Movement that was founded by Saakashvili, says Saakashvili, who was stripped of his citizenship in 2015 and was sentenced in absentia for abuse of power, should be allowed to return to Georgia.

The third top candidate, Bakradze, is from the European Georgia Party, which split off from the UNM. He says Zurabishvili is "unacceptable due to her position and statements, which directly harm Georgia's security and national interests."

Some 3.5 million people are registered to vote in the election, which is being monitored by local and international groups.

Police take lions, others away from private zoo in Albania

October 28, 2018

TIRANA, Albania (AP) — Albanian authorities have forced their way into a private zoo and removed 12 animals due to fears they were malnourished. Police and conservation officials on Sunday forced their way past a locked main gate into the Safari Zoo Park in Mbrostar, 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of the capital, Tirana. The zoo had been closed by owners after criticism emerged about the treatment of its animals.

Veterinarians from Four Paws, an international animal welfare charity, sedated 12 animals there — three lions, a bear, a waterbuck, four deer, a fox, a zebra and a turtle — to transport them to Tirana's public zoo.

Albania's environment and tourism ministry said it took the animals because their living quarters were too cramped and some were sick. Zoo owners have denied that the animals were sick or malnourished.

Look what we found: Tiny female lion cub in French garage

October 26, 2018

PARIS (AP) — France's customs agency says it's made an extremely surprising discovery in a garage in Marseille: a lion cub. Marseille's customs brigade found a small female lioness inside a cage Wednesday that weighed just "a few kilograms (pounds)." Experts say she's 1 to 2 months old and has not been weened.

The agency said a man who was placed in detention said he acquired the cub from some people in "a building" in the southern French city who said they didn't know how to look after a wild cat and gave the animal up.

The custom agency says the feline was immediately handed over to France's animal protection group for specialized care. In January 2007, two lion cubs were discovered by Montpellier customs before being given to the Marseille Zoo.