Although not due out until September, the new novel, The Cobbler's Apprentice, is already being promoted by the publishers. Morocco features strongly in the second half of the novel with scenes set in the Medina of Fez and Essaouira.
Morocco now has an online medical directory (check it out here) with the added advantage of also being designed to provide visitors with easy, fast and free medical and paramedical information in different cities of the kingdom.
According to the Moroccan daily Al Ahdat Al-Maghrebiya, seven members of a terrorist network were accidentally caught after agents of the Royal Gendarmerie intercepted three men in a car. The agents thought at first that it was a traffic violation but their investigations later led to the discovery of the terrorist network 
Atlas Blue is reinforcing its existing destinations ensuring six weekly flights between Marrakech and Lyon, four flights per week from Marrakech to both Bordeaux and Toulouse and two or three flights to Nice.
The Marrakech-Nantes route will be serviced four times weekly in winter and Marrakech-Lille twice a week. Atlas Blue is also maintaining its daily Marrakech-London flight and is to add an eighth in a week as of February. Milan is to be serviced daily, Brussels five times a week and Geneva four times.
To secure the flights, Atlas Blue has bought in 2006 an Airbus A321 and a Boeing 737-800, increasing its fleet to eight planes.
RAM and Atlas Blue flew 4,104,126 passengers by the end of September 2005, a rise of 21% compared to the same period in 2004.
The country is already behind in getting stadiums ready for the competition, but FIFA president Sepp Blatter is attempting to downplay the crisis and will not confirm that moves are afoot to move the finals elsewhere.
However, sources close to the US soccer federation say there are two countries on standby to host the tournament who have been asked by FIFA to get stadiums ready just in case.
The nations mentioned are the UK and Morocco both of whom are said to be on standby should South Africa fail to live up to FIFA's expectations. If such a drastic change is made it is likely that Morocco would host the cup.
In a follow-up to our earlier slightly optimistic post about the migration conference being held in Rabat, we have to report that things are far from positive. It seems that while happy to chat about minor details, the delegates have failed to grapple with the major problems of corruption and mismanagement that have turned the wealth gap between north and south into a chasm into which many young Africans plunge in their attempts to escape grinding poverty.
Mohamed Khachani, head of the Moroccan migration research group AMERM was refreshingly blunt when he reported, "We expected a frank and sincere dialogue that goes to the heart of the problem, but it seems that didn't happen. There doesn't seem to be much of a change of tack by Europe, which is still obsessed with fighting illegal migration"
He said little was done to relieve the immediate suffering of thousands of destitute Africans ready to brave treacherous seas in crowded motor launches and decrepit fishing boats for the chance of a new life in Europe.
Europe, keen to prove it is sympathetic, played up the benefits of legal migration and championed ideas like micro-credits for migrants to set up businesses back home, and centres of medical excellence to stop an exodus of African health workers.
A new observation unit will track migrant movements and states agreed to work together to crack down on human trafficking gangs, branded "21st century slave traders" by Senegalese Foreign Minister Cheikh Tidiane Gadio.
But there was little mention of the waste and corruption that has left swathes of Africa starved of infrastructure and meant economic growth and living standards have failed to keep pace with the rapidly growing population.
"Europe has a fundamental role to play when we talk about bad governance because these governments are often supported by the European Union," said Khachani.
Le Matin reported last month that Agriculture Minister Mohand Laenser claimed that more than a quarter of the country's 30 million people make their living from grain cultivation. The purchasing power of this number - nearly a quarter of the population - has been boosted by a record grain crop this year. With more money in their hands, new local investors are entering the market.
``Morocco is still quite dependent on agriculture,'' said Ashraf El Ansary, who helps oversee $5.5 billion at JP Morgan Fleming Asset Management in London and holds Moroccan shares. ``A good harvest this year will help the stock market grow.''
The Morocco Casablanca New All Share Stock Exchange Index is the seventh best performer this year out of 80 gauges tracked worldwide by Bloomberg News, with a gain of 41 percent in dollar terms. It's outperformed all other Arab markets and the Morgan Stanley Capital International Emerging Markets Index, a measure of developing nations that's up 6.6 percent.
Morocco's production of soft wheat, durum wheat and barley may double to 8.6 million metric tons this year, more than twice that of the previous year, according to the web site of Morocco's main grain buyer, the Rabat-based National Office of the Cereal and Vegetable Industry.
Read the full Bloomberg story HERE.
The Rabat Declaration, made public at the end of the two-day conference, says the partnership should be "pragmatic and operational" and has to come up with "concrete and appropriate answers" to the central issue of migration flows between Africa and Europe.
The partnership is also to be part of the fight of poverty and the promotion of development, says the declaration, which is accompanied by an action plan agreed upon by some 60 countries and regional and international organizations attending.
The approach, conclusions and action plan of the conference will be presented as a contribution to the high level dialogue of the United Nations on global and joint dealing with migration.
The main concrete orientation and measures contained in the action plan call for the inception of cooperation programs on the management of legal and economic migration. The plan also aims at carrying out the objectives of the Rabat Declaration, including the partnership destined to deal with migration “which cannot be tackled without taking a concerted action regarding the migration root causes.”
United Press International's International Editor, Claude Salhani, wrote in a recent article that... During the first semester of this year Moroccan authorities have foiled 6,824 attempted clandestine immigration crossings, of which 4,200 originated from sub-Saharan Africa. One hundred and sixty networks were dismantled. Morocco's efforts in combating illegal immigration, along with that of Malawi, were "recognized in their dynamism in combating clandestine migration" in the 2006 U.S. State Department report citing them as the only Arab and African countries struggling with greater efficiency against the phenomenon of irregular migration.
Besides re-organizing its border protection and immigration services to better deal with the issues at hand, Morocco has fielded 11,000 security agents to monitor their borders, of which 4,500 have been allocated to monitor the coast.
But just as the United States has learned that no wall, fence, ditch, moat or security forces can prevent immigrants escaping hunger, political and social oppression, so to are the Moroccans and their European neighbors coming to the same realization. The only way to hold back the hordes of would-be migrants is to offer them incentives to stay where they are in the first place. Europe has to start thinking about job creation not only in the 25-member European Union, but in the impoverished sub-Sahara, too. Nothing else will ebb the unstoppable tide of immigration.
The two day meeting, looked into the anti-terror policies and their conformity with human rights in the Maghreban countries, noted that "terrorism definition remains vague," underlining the incompatibility between the anti-terror laws and the International Law and the international conventions and acts.
On the positive side, Egyptian jurist, Georges Abi-Saab deemed that the anti-terror measures in Morocco have not had a negative impact on the reforms launched in the kingdom. He added that international legal experts of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) held meetings with several Moroccan officials, through which they noted a Moroccan “resolve to keep on the reforms path…, which augurs well.”
Several international experts and jurists took place in this meeting, which is part of the project launched in 2005 by the ICJ to look into the conformity of the national anti-terror policies with the human rights principles. This project includes setting up a team of eight distinguished jurists that will examine "the impact of the anti-terror fight on human rights and state of law."
The team, which has a 18 month mandate, will listen, within the framework of a set of regional and sub-regional meetings, to testimonies of civil society representatives, lawyers, journalists, academics and governmental representatives, before elaborating a final report on this subject.
In a press conference, the participating human rights organizations also called for "putting an end to the emergency state in Algeria."
Tags: Morocco Fes, Maghreb news
Safi, Morocco, will host the 4th "Lights of Safi" French-language film festival from 11-15 July. Competing films include La Symphonie Marocaine (Morocco), De Battre, Mon Coeur S'est Arrêté (France), L'enfant (Belgium), Tout un hiver sans feu (Switzerland-Poland), Le Grand Voyage (France-Morocco), Mooladée (Senegal, Morocco, Cameroon), C.R.A.Z.Y (Canada), A Perfect Day (Lebanon-France), La Mort de Dante Lazarescu (Romania), and L'enfant endormi (Belgium-Morocco).
Homage will also be paid to Egyptian actor Jamil Ratib, Moroccan actor Mohammed Majd, Jacques Villeret and Mohammed Osfour, known as the father of Moroccan cinema. New Moroccan film Les jeux de l'amour by director Driss Chouika and Cherche ton coeur by Swiss director Vincent Pluss will also be presented outside of the competition.
