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DUBAI: Around 13,000 people from the hospitality industry are set to gather in Dubai on May 23 for The Hotel Show, Emirates News Agency reported.
The three-day exhibition, which will be held at the Dubai World Trade Centre, coincides with a regional expansion in hospitality investment led largely by the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
“Saudi Arabia alone needs to accommodate the 100 million tourists it hopes to attract by 2030 with a hotel pipeline valued at $110 billion, while the UAE hospitality market is expected to expand by 25 percent over the same period adding a further 48,000 rooms to its room stock” Elaine O’Connell, vice president of design and hospitality at DMG Events, said.
“This offers unprecedented opportunity for developers, equipment and product suppliers, designers and operators,” she added.
Through conferences and seminars, the exhibition will provide insight into regional hotel prospects. Meanwhile, over 100 experts will take the stage at the event.
This year, the event’s profile will include new content and features in three key industry verticals: Hospitality technology, operating equipment & supplies, and food and beverages.
O’Connell said: “For years, the Middle East has been a change influencer for the sector and its willingness to quickly address game-changing issues signals that it intends to retain that mantle.
“Coupled with the excitement around ongoing regional developments, the growing regional drive to net zero, increasing data regulation and the need to meet rising consumer demands for greener facilities and services, the region, and The Hotel Show Dubai, are again at the fulcrum of sectoral change.”
The UAE Professional Housekeepers Group Meeting will also be held at the exhibition, with in-depth discussions and tutorials on maintaining excellence in the face of changing market conditions, including changing guest expectations, emerging technologies, techniques, regulations, and products.
In addition, nine culinary teams from the region’s top hotels will compete over three days to create a stunning five-course meal in the hopes of winning the coveted title of Hotel Culinary Team of the Year.
RAMALLAH: The disastrous consequences of an ongoing strike by UN Relief and Work Agency’s 3,600 employees in the West Bank are showing in the health and education sectors and other services provided by the UNRWA for the million Palestinian refugees in the West Bank.
UNRWA sources say that the employees union in the West Bank has been on strike for two months, demanding a pay hike. But the agency is in a challenging financial situation and cannot raise wages.
The UNRWA’s services have stopped and the camps are littered with waste, sparking fears and warnings of disease outbreaks.
Raed Amira, media spokesman for the UNRWA staff union in the West Bank, said they went on strike to achieve an increase in the number of employees to fill vacancies, the conversion of temporary and daily-wage workers into contractual staff, the reduction of the number of working days in health clinics from six to five, and a $300 increase in wages due to inflation.
On April 12, UNRWA called on the union to end the strike without proposing any solutions.
In a Ramadan message, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini called on the agency’s staff to halt the strike, saying: “The strike in the West Bank deprives more than 9.9 million refugees of vital services, and this means that more than 40,000 children are not in school.”
As many as 46,000 people with non-communicable diseases are not receiving medicines and the most vulnerable and needy refugees are not getting referral services.
Taysir Nasrallah from Balata Refugees Camp told Arab News that patients were now buying their medicines from private clinics, garbage was piling up in the streets and students were not going to schools. He called on UNRWA to respond to pay hike demands if there were sufficient funds.
For years, UNRWA has suffered from major financial crises, which have dented its ability to provide services.
Adnan Abu Hasna, consultant and media spokesperson for UNRWA, told Arab News that UNRWA would suffer from an estimated deficit of $75 million by the end of 2022 as several donor countries have informed it they will reduce their support to the agency.
“UNRWA recognizes the right of its employees and is open to discussing an increase in their salaries and the services provided to refugees, but it does not provide the necessary funds,” Abu Hasna told Arab News.
The agency fears that if it agrees to increase the salaries of its 3,600 employees in the West Bank, its 30,000 employees in the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon will demand the same increase, which will lead to its financial collapse.
The UNRWA spokesman said the agency’s financial situation is “hazardous” and does not allow for increased salaries.
“UNRWA is not a state, it lives on begging, and the world has changed, and UNRWA and the Palestinian cause are no longer a priority,” Abu Hasna told Arab News.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian government held the UNRWA management responsible for the strike and the cessation of services in the Palestinian camps.
It said the continuation of the strike would not be accepted.
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s parliament Tuesday postponed municipal elections for up to a year for a second time amid concerns the government would not be able to secure the needed funding in time for polling.
The delay came as Lebanon’s economy and infrastructure continue to crumble, with legislators in the deeply divided parliament unable to reach a settlement to end a presidential vacuum for almost six months.
Lebanon has been without a fully functioning government for nearly a year as Prime Minister Najib Mikati heads a caretaker Cabinet with limited functions. The country has also been in a severe economic crisis since late 2019, with three-quarters of the population now living in poverty.
Riot police lobbed tear gas at hundreds of protesting retired soldiers who broke down a barbed wire fence near the government headquarters in downtown Beirut ahead of a scheduled Cabinet meeting. Retired military personnel have frequently protested the country’s dire economic conditions.
Lebanon’s municipal elections were originally slated for May last year but were postponed for a year because they coincided with parliamentary elections, which brought in a dozen reformist lawmakers running on anti-establishment platforms.
Opposition and reformist groups would likely continue this momentum and win additional seats in the upcoming local elections, as living conditions across the country continue to deteriorate. They have called for municipal elections to take place as planned in May, and most have boycotted parliament’s session.
Meanwhile, top political groups and leaders continue to quarrel. Mikati’s government and various major political groups in parliament, notably the Christian Free Patriotic Movement, have accused each other of stalling the securing of funding and logistics that caused the delay.
“If you really didn’t want to postpone municipal elections, why did you attend today’s session and secure a quorum?” The prime minister said at parliament in a heated dispute with several parliamentarians.
Just 65 of Lebanon’s 128 lawmakers attended, the bare minimum needed for a legislative session to secure a quorum.
Earlier this month, caretaker Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi, whose ministry oversees elections, said Lebanon was ready to hold timely municipal elections, and that he had secured funding from the European Union and the United Nations to ease the burden on the country’s shoestring budget.
Both the EU and the UN have urged the crisis-hit country to hold elections on time. However, legislators have yet to pass a draft law that would secure an advance to the Interior Ministry.
Deputy Speaker Elias Bou Saab said in a parliamentary committee session on funding that holding the vote on time would be “impossible” and added that Mawlawi’s representative had told lawmakers they could not secure the funds despite the interior minister’s claims.
Lebanon’s last municipal elections in 2016 saw low voter turnout. In Beirut, local media reported a 20 percent voter turnout, whereas 48 percent of voters in Baalbek near the Syrian border cast their ballots.
In Lebanon’s sect-based power-sharing system, citizens only directly vote in parliamentary and municipal elections. Parliamentarians, split evenly between Muslim and Christian sects, vote for a Maronite Christian president, who then negotiates alongside them to bring in a Sunni Muslim prime minister. The speaker of parliament is a Shiite Muslim.
PRAGUE: Twenty artefacts repaired by Czech art restorers after being damaged during the civil war in Syria are on display at Prague’s National Museum before their return back home next month.
The objects include three limestone funerary portraits from the UNESCO-listed ancient site of Palmyra, which were damaged by Daesh group militants who took the city by force in 2015.
“Things get damaged by fighting, on purpose for ideological reasons, or by local people looking for something to sell,” National Museum director Michal Lukes told AFP.
“These portraits were all smashed with metal hammers,” he added at the “Restored Face” exhibition.
Syrian government forces retook control of Palmyra in 2017 after the city had served as a stage for public executions, with many of its famed landmarks destroyed by the Daesh group.
Inspired by previous cooperation with Sudan and Afghanistan, the National Museum brought the twenty artefacts from Syria in 2022 and its team of six restorers took a year to repair them.
“There are metal, bronze and iron objects and the funerary portraits from Palmyra,” said Lukes.
The exhibits include a gold-coated pin from 1600-1200 BC, bronze razors and a knife, as well as bronze and copper statuettes of ancient gods.
Prague’s National Museum has been cooperating with Syria’s Directorate General for Antiquities and Museums since 2017.
“We started to help them by supplying material which was indispensable for them to maintain, conserve, transport and treat artefacts mainly from war zones,” said Lukes.
The cooperation led to the creation of a joint archaeological team working near the western Syrian city of Latakia.
After the month-long exhibition, the artefacts will return to Syria by the end of May, Lukes said.
“I hope the situation in Syria has calmed down enough so that they won’t be damaged again,” he told AFP.
“The exhibition is a memento not only of Syria, but of all countries in the world where a war is raging and monuments are being damaged,” Lukes added.
DUBAI: Dr. Sultan bin Ahmed Al Jaber, COP28 president-designate, has returned from a two-day visit to Beijing, where he held a series of bilateral meetings with Chinese officials, Emirates News Agency reported on Tuesday.
Discussions centered around Emirati-Chinese partnerships in the run-up to climate conference COP28. Given China’s leadership position in advancing clean technologies, the country has significant opportunities to promote low-carbon economic growth.
“Given the size of China’s economy and the scale of its development of renewable energy and decarbonization technology, China provides a good model for sustainable economic growth and the global energy transition,” Al Jaber said.
“Over the past five years alone, China has been responsible for adding more than 40 percent of the world’s new solar and wind power capacity and has set a very ambitious target of deploying 1,200 gigawatts of renewable capacity by the end of this decade,” he added.
Al Jaber, who is the UAE minister of industry and advanced technology, emphasized that both the UAE and China were committed to diversifying their energy mix and seeking practical climate solutions.
“The partnership between the UAE and China will be a key asset to the COP28 presidency as we seek innovative solutions to boost industrial decarbonization, expand access to clean technologies, and ensure a just energy transition,” Al Jaber added.
During his visit, Al Jaber spoke to students at the Tsinghua University Institute for Carbon Neutrality, highlighting China’s leadership in renewable energy development and its unique capacity to strengthen South-South cooperation on climate action.
The president-designate also participated in a private sector roundtable with cleantech entrepreneurs and advocated for investment in industrial decarbonization in his meeting with Chinese business and industrial leaders.
“Steel, cement, and aluminum, like energy or manufacturing, are the industries that run the world. We simply cannot stop using them. But we do have to find a way to make them more sustainable,” he said.
“We must reduce emissions, not progress. We have to work with industry leaders to bring them on board as partners, and to source the solutions together,” the minister added.
Al Jaber lauded the UAE-China partnership as a model of collaboration toward sustainable, low-carbon growth and prosperity.
He said: “Partnerships will be key to making COP28 a COP of action and a COP of solidarity, unity and impact.
“We need China, as we need all countries and parties, at the table to meet the Paris goal of keeping global temperatures from rising 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.
“We need a major course correction and a massive effort to reignite progress. And I look forward to working with China to deliver a successful COP28.”