A Spanish news report claims that the latest geological study has cast doubt on the feasibility of a project to build an undersea rail tunnel across the Strait of Gibraltar between Spain and Morocco.
Dismissing criticisms on a clampdown of Islamic financial services in Morocco, the Moroccan financial authorities have now upped the ante on developing a more conducive platform for Islamic finance in the country. Currently, Morocco does not allow full fledged Islamic institutions and only conventional banks are permitted to offer Islamic financial services products, albeit, with a higher tax than conventional banking products. This will change soon.
Morocco financial authorities, criticised by powerful Islamist opposition for the slow start of Islamic banking, are determined to develop Islamic financial services, according to Morocco’s central bank chief.Authorities in Morocco have shut down about 60 Qur'anic schools belonging to a Muslim theologian who argues that girls as young as nine can marry. The authorities also plan to close down the internet site on which Sheikh Mohamed Ben Abderrahman Al-Maghraoui decreed earlier this month that the marriage of nine-year-old girls is allowed by Islam.
Ahmed El Maanouni's 1981 movie "Transes" is to get a screening at the 35th edition of the Ghent Film Festival in Belgium, which runs from October 7th to 18th.
Morocco is gaining in popularity as a backdrop for fiction. One of the latest additions for your Moroccan bookshelf is Lulu in Marrakech by Diane Johnson.
We have reported in the past about the impact on tourist numbers in Fez of the withdrawal of the number of direct flights from the U.K. Now it appears the Moroccan government is taking the problem seriously although at this stage there is no indication of what concrete steps the government intends to make.
Fatima Sadiqi is well known to readers of The View from Fez as Director General of the Fes Festival of Sacred Music. However she has another life as a Professor of Linguistics and Gender Studies. For those lucky enough to be near Syracuse University there is a chance to hear her speak on Women, Language and Power in Morocco.
The "TAP Portugal" airline will open a new service fromf October 27 with regular flights between Lisbon and Casablanca.
According to a Reuters report Morocco's Central Bank is more worried by inflation than by global financial markets turmoil originating in the United States.Speaking at the weekly cabinet meeting on the recent developments of national economy and international environment, Mezouar said that real estate loans in Morocco are mainly fixed interest rate loans with the possibility for variable interest rate loan beneficiaries to opt for fixing these rates under regulated and predictable conditions, Communication minister and Government Spokesperson, Khalid Naciri, said in a press briefing at the end of this meeting.
The financial situation of Moroccan banking institutions has significantly improved in recent years, thanks mainly to the strengthening of banking supervision in general and the stabilization of the public financial sector in particular, the minister said, adding that the upsurge in the energy and food products had an impact on our balance of payments and our public finances.
However, he noted, thanks to government support through the fund of compensation, the effects of this upsurge has had no impact on the purchasing power of our citizens, nor on production factors.
According to the minister, real GDP rose respectively by 7% and 6.7% in the first two quarters of 2008, which would allow for a growth rate estimated at 6.8% this year.
According to a report being run by Maghreb Arabe Presse, Morocco's cost-of-living index for August has edged 4.8% from the same period of last year, the High Commission for Planning (HCP) said on Thursday.The rise is pinned on a 8.3% hike of the food product prices and a 1.8% progress of non-food product prices, the Rabat-based HCP said in its monthly bulletin.
Compared to July, the index edged 0.4%, inflated by a 0.8% rise of the food product prices and a 0.1% progress of non-food products, it said.
The year-on-year index for July had jumped 5.1% on the food price hike, which had rocketed 9.1%.
The highest rise was registered in the western city of Kenitra, with 1.3%, followed by Tangier, where the index rose 1.2% and Fez and Tetouan (1%), the commission said.
Between October 23rd and 26th our wonderful city of Fez will host the 4th Culinary Arts Festival under the theme "1200 years of gourmet history in Fez."
"The ruling today showed the situation of human rights has changed in Morocco and there is improvement in court dealings with cases related to rights of opinion and free press" Erraji's lawyerThere was relief in the media and blogging communities with the news that a Moroccan appeals court on Thursday cancelled the two-year jail sentence given to Mohamed Errajia for disparaging King Mohammed and the royal family. Last week, the blogger was jailed and fined 5,000 dirhams. He was later released on bail pending the appeals court ruling.
In our series on travel writing about Morocco we have often been critical of simplistic stereotyping and ill-informed information. So it was refreshing to discover a "foodie" article about Morocco. Cynthia Clampitt writes a couple of blogs as well as contributing to magazines. Her The World's Fare blog is certainly worth a look.
Here is her recent entry -
I visited in March, and I tend to believe the locals who told me this was the best time of year to visit. The weather was perfect and everything was in bloom. As we traveled from Casablanca to Rabat, we were amazed at the beauty of the countryside: incredible greenery, fabulous wildflowers running riot in fields and on hillsides, olive groves, lush farms, and rows of trees interspersed between small towns. We followed the curve of the country, the Atlantic Ocean off to our left, and finally arrived in the medieval city of Rabat just after noon. It was lunchtime, so our first stop was, of course, a restaurant: Borj Eddar, a wonderfully weathered seaside establishment in an ancient, golden-stone building with a view of the ocean and the nearby walled city. We enjoyed a splendid meal of saffron-tinted fish soup, fresh, charcoal-grilled sardines, and a flavorful white fish for which we could acquire no recognizable name. Then it was off for a hike through Rabat.
Granted, I fall in love with almost every place I visit, but Morocco really surpassed expectations. It was gorgeous, ancient, evocative, rich in culture, with friendly people and surprising scenery. I saw everything I expected and even more I didn’t expect.
This story originally appeared in a slightly different form in Hungry Magazine.
©2008 Cynthia Clampitt
Booming property market in Morocco waits for Wall Street effectNorth Africa's fast growing property sector could be the next to be affected by the credit crunch and turmoil on Wall Street.
"Jordanian blogger Qwaider writes of his prediction that Chrome will eventually outdo Firefox in the browser wars." - Jillian C York posting on Global Voices
Syrian Yaser Sadeq says Google new browser Chrome is not available in Syria because “our friends in Google corp. have decided or agreed to withhold their services from Syrian users as part of the embargo by the U.S government against Syria.” - Amira al Hussaini on Global VoicesBloggers around the world have been quick on taking up the latest browser in the market. As Qwaider in Jordan wrote:
According to recent amazing statistics from StatCounter, based on 250 Million page views globally, Chrome, is killing Firefox, Safari and Opera.
Surpassing Safari and Opera in it's first day, and going after Firefox next. Snatching a precious 4% of Firefox's market share in 3 days.
Surprisingly, IE's share grew 4% also, at who's expense do you think?
I still expect Google to play dirty. See your Google Analytics? Google has confirmed that it has been filtering out Chrome hits before it's release date. Which makes you wonder, what else is Google hiding? Or what will they hide next. But most importantly, are they going to be biased towards their own browser when comparing it to others in Analytics? You bet!
Chrome not so shiny - yet.
So is all of this important to day to day bloggers and web surfers? On the surface Chrome (in its present form) is basic in the extreme and yet if I was Microsoft I would be a little concerned about its rate of uptake and its potential down the track.
On the plus side Chrome it is extremely easy to use, super-fast and crash free. However on the negative, those of us who have been enjoying Firefox with all its plug-ins and little extras can only hope that Google have them waiting in the wings. At the moment it feels like going out in your underwear rather than in a nicely tailored outfit.
Early reviews have as "minimalist in the extreme", easy-to-use, crash-free and super-fast, but some have criticised its lack of support for certain features - most notably plug-in extensions - and poorly worded terms of use.
Essentially Chrome allows Google to put all its goodies in the one basket with the company's web applications including its search, Gmail and word processing tools accessed through the web browser. The obvious implication is that Google will have the ability to direct its users away from Microsoft which means web surfers will be exposed more frequently to Google ads.
Asher Moses in the Sydney Morning herald quotes Microsoft's general manager of Internet Explorer Dean Hachamovitch telling The New York Times he thought Internet Explorer 8 was better "for what people do every day again and again".
Speed test applications provided by Google show Chrome as being 10-15 times faster than competitors Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.
However, Firefox creator Mozilla fired back with its own test results showing an upcoming version of Firefox performing up to 30 per cent faster than Chrome.
Both tests were based on the performance of JavaScript, the programming language that powers most internet applications.
The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg said his tests found that Chrome was slower at loading web pages than Firefox and Safari but faster than Internet Explorer 8.
CNET's Molly Wood, on the other hand, said Chrome was so fast she thought it must be a trick. "The tabs almost seem to click themselves; the autocomplete is so speedy that I thought it was reading my mind," she said.
Chrome in Morocco
Chrome is available and works in Morocco and our first (admitedly unscientific) trial-runs in the notoriously slow internet Fez Medina certainly showed off Chrome's speed. For Maroc telecom subscribers the speed will certainly be a plus. The lack of extensions and other plug-ins remains a problem but Google are certainly aware of this and will be on the case.
However I doubt that the uptake will be particularly fast in sectors other than the blogging community. Time will tell.
We would love to hear your thoughts on Chrome V Firefox (or Safari and Internet Explorer.)
Following on from our earlier story, Merième Addou, AfricaNews reporter in Rabat, reports on the detail of the Air Arabia moves into Morocco.From Saudi Arabia, Stilettos in the Sand posts a similar complaint about driving. She explains:
Driving While Fasting… Dangerous. Driving in the Sandbox is scary under the best of conditions! To say that driving, here, is challenging is the understatement of the century if there ever was one - and you literally take your life in your hands the moment you step into a vehicle, whether as the driver or as a passenger. The chances of being in an accident are exponentially multiplied during Ramadan as “drivers, eager to reach their destination, throw all driving sense and caution to the wind.” Yep. ‘Tis true. Today's Saudi Gazette has an article that says, “The standards of driving are known to be erratic in the country and it only gets worse in the holy month of Ramadan.”
One thing that continually surprised and confused Beck was how to interact with people of the opposite sex in Morocco’s predominantly male-dominated culture. The differences were compounded with the problem of combating the widely held belief in Morocco that U.S. women were promiscuous.
Teaching English is perhaps the best overseas opportunity for Christians. It deals with people face to face; leads to discussions that point to truth; and is needed everywhere in the world. — Ralph Winter
France's supreme court upheld a decree that refused citizenship to a Muslim woman from Morocco, ruling that she had failed to assimilate French culture. It was ruled that her radical practice of Islam is incompatible with French values.
