Tag Archives: Middle East

Texas A&M Today: Texas A&M-Led Humanities Project Seeks To Preserve An Endangered Language

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Texas A&M Today: Texas A&M-Led Humanities Project Seeks To Preserve An Endangered Language. “Texas A&M University historian Dr. Daniel Schwartz has devoted the last decade of his professional life to preserving the past — specifically, the culture of a 2,000-year-old language known as Syriac. He and likeminded colleagues from around the world have been working across place, time and cyberspace to safeguard Syriac cultural heritage, painstakingly creating Syriaca.org, a cyberinfrastructure to link Syriac literature to their persons, places, manuscripts and key concepts.”

NiemanLab: Google News Initiative grants in Africa and the Middle East yield mixed results, study finds

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NiemanLab: Google News Initiative grants in Africa and the Middle East yield mixed results, study finds. “Innovation — in newsrooms and elsewhere — takes more than a new idea. It requires transforming that idea into value for the organization… A new study investigates reasons that one-year grants supplied by Google News Initiative in Africa and the Middle East resulted in a number of projects that fall short of that definition, instead producing ‘minimum viable products’ that were under-realized versions of the original ideas.”

Eurogamer: Assassin’s Creed Mirage has an unlockable database for history buffs

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Eurogamer: Assassin’s Creed Mirage has an unlockable database for history buffs. “Assassin’s Creed Mirage will include an interactive history feature available in the game at launch, allowing you to delve deeper into the real world version of the game’s Baghdad setting. This option appears to be an alternative to the more involved Discovery Tour mode that popped up some time post-launch in Assassin’s Creed Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla.”

The Star (Malaysia): World’s first-ever Muslim family law online repository is launched

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The Star (Malaysia): World’s first-ever Muslim family law online repository is launched. “Musawah’s Campaign for Justice (CFJ) in Muslim Family Laws has recently launched its inaugural microsite, which houses the world’s first and only global repository of Muslim family laws. The online archive includes country overview data and tables with detailed and vital information on legislation, case law, procedures, policies and practices in over 38 countries in the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as South and South-East Asia.”

Politico: Russia is waging a disinformation war in the Middle East

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Politico: Russia is waging a disinformation war in the Middle East. “Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, the United States, United Kingdom and European Union all took quick and decisive action to counteract Russian propaganda, banning its state-sponsored television channels — Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik — from the airwaves, with YouTube also blocking their channels. In the Arabic-speaking world, however, Russian disinformation still hasn’t received the same attention — and as a result, Russia is doing a lot better on that front in the wider Middle East.”

The National: New archive treasure trove to map the history of the UAE

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The National: New archive treasure trove to map the history of the UAE. “The documents are part of the second phase of the Arabian Gulf Digital Archive ― a landmark digitisation project between the UAE and the UK ― that aims to shed light on the rich history of the Gulf. A vast collection of hundreds of thousands of files are expected to go live on the AGDA’s website later this year once they are catalogued, transcribed and translated into Arabic.”

Dawn (Pakistan): What Pakistan stands to gain if Google opens shop

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Dawn (Pakistan): What Pakistan stands to gain if Google opens shop. “Over the years, officials clai­m­­ed multiple times that compan­ies have agreed to establish their presence in Pakistan, but nothing substantial came out of it. Last month, it was reported that Google has decided to open a liaison or representative office in Pakistan. The move was unlike the past claims, as the California, US-based search engine giant also obtained a registration certificate from the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP).”

AFP: Iraqi conservators strive to preserve ancient manuscripts

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AFP: Iraqi conservators strive to preserve ancient manuscripts. “In a country that bears the scars of decades of conflict and has seen antiquities and cultural heritage regularly plundered, the House of Manuscripts’ collection has managed to survive. It was safely stashed away in the Baghdad suburbs, while the national museum was ransacked in the turmoil following the 2003 US-led invasion…. The collection, now ensconced in the national museum in the capital Baghdad, includes books, parchments and calligraphy boards, some of them damaged by humidity, pests and centuries of use.”

Bloomberg: FTX Chaos Prompts Reckoning on Dubai’s Embrace of Crypto Giants

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Bloomberg: FTX Chaos Prompts Reckoning on Dubai’s Embrace of Crypto Giants. “FTX was one of the first firms granted a license by Dubai’s Virtual Asset​s Regulatory Authority as part of the push to lure business, and the exchange set up its regional headquarters in the city…. With FTX and Bankman-Fried now facing investigations from the US to the Bahamas, officials have distanced themselves from that decision, even scrubbing its license details from the regulator’s website.”

Jordan News Agency: $2.3M US-Funded Project Launched To Set Up Database For Jordan’s Moveable Cultural Artifacts

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Jordan News Agency: $2.3M US-Funded Project Launched To Set Up Database For Jordan’s Moveable Cultural Artifacts . “The Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and the American Center of Research (ACOR), on Thursday, launched a project to set up a database for Jordan’s first comprehensive and national inventory of moveable cultural artifacts with a value of about $2.3 million.”

Cairo Scene: The Arab Kissing Archive Reclaims On-screen Intimacy In Arab Film

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Cairo Scene: The Arab Kissing Archive Reclaims On-screen Intimacy In Arab Film. “The Instagram account acts as a digital archive, posting snippets of kissing scenes from films made all over the Arab world, documenting titles, actors and filmmakers in the process. The project began in January 2022, with the anonymous founders amassing a dedicated Instagram following and a feed of Arab cinema’s remarkable pecks and smooches while reclaiming a cinematic narrative that is often forgotten.”

The National: ‘Ramy’, ‘Mo’ and the rise of the Arab social media comedy star

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The National: ‘Ramy’, ‘Mo’ and the rise of the Arab social media comedy star . “With the new season of Ramy receiving rave reviews, and the recent success of Mo, which stars Mo Amer as the first Palestinian lead character on American television, Arab comedy is enjoying a renaissance. The effect can be seen across the comedy landscape and particularly among an emerging group of Arab comedians who have been carving out large audiences through social media platforms.”

Politico: Arabic social media remains an unchecked Wild West

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Politico: Arabic social media remains an unchecked Wild West. “Suspected Kremlin agents peddle falsehoods masquerading as Instagram models. The terrorist organization Hezbollah posts propaganda updates as if it were a news organization. More than 2 million Iraqis join Facebook groups where guns are bought and sold without checks. Welcome to the world of Arabic-language social media — a Wild West where content moderation is minimal, foreign governments act with abandon, and jihadists foster online hate in arguably some of the world’s most war-torn countries.”

Doxxing: a new tool of repression against Arab women (Thomson Reuters Foundation)

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Thomson Reuters Foundation: Doxxing: a new tool of repression against Arab women. “In Tunisia and other Arab states, the malicious posting of personal information on social media – known as doxxing – is increasingly being used to harass and intimidate women, anti-government protesters and LGBTQ+ activists.”

New York Times: Cooking Online, Arab Women Find Income and Community

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New York Times: Cooking Online, Arab Women Find Income and Community. “The kitchen, historically the symbolic heart of domesticity in the Arab world, has often kept women tethered to household responsibility, and out of the work force. Only about 25 percent of women in the Middle East participate in the labor force — the lowest such figure in the world, even as female university graduates in the region often outnumber their male counterparts. But the rise of social media platforms, YouTube in particular, is changing the power dynamic for Arab women, allowing them to turn the kitchen into a source of income and influence.”