Day: May 24, 2021

The weather on Monday is expected to be moderate in most parts of the Kingdom, and relatively hot in the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea and Aqaba as temperatures will register 3-4 degrees below annual average, reaching a high of 25 degrees Celsius in the capital, Amman, the Jordan Meteorological Department (JMD) said in its daily brief.

In the late afternoon and evening hours, cooler weather is forecast as mercury levels slide to around 16C. In the port city of Aqaba, daytime temperatures will stand at 33 degrees, while lows will slide to 22C at night.

Clouds at low altitudes are also forecast to appear on Monday, with a weak chance of light showers in the northeasterly areas of the country, while winds will be northwesterly moderate to brisk at times, the JMD added.

Over the next two days, mercury levels will rise few degrees, becoming around seasonal average, but similar fair weather will remain in the highlands and the plains, while it will be relatively hot in the Badia regions, and hot in the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea and Aqaba, with northwesterly moderate to active winds, the JMD predicted.

Source: Jordan News Agency

Palestinian citizen early Monday died of wounds he sustained during the recent Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip, according to Palestinian sources.

The martyr, from Beit Hanoun in the northern part of the coastal enclave, was seriously injured by the Israeli attacks on the town, the sources added.

Source: Jordan News Agency

Israeli occupation authorities Monday barred eight Jerusalemite women from the Al-Aqsa Mosque for a week and told them to return and receive a new six-month ban order amid the ongoing tensions in Arab East Jerusalem and across the West Bank.

The Wadi Hilweh Information Center in the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Silwan, which documents Israeli violations, said in a report that Israeli police detained for hours about a dozen Jerusalem women for investigation as they left the compound.

Israel also handed Al-Aqsa Mosque guard Mukhtar Al-Tamimi an order keeping him away from the compound, one of Islam’s holiest shrines, for a week, and also detained two people, including a woman, at the Lion’s Gate in the Old City for allegedly taking pictures inside the shrine, it said.

Elsewhere in the West Bank, Israeli forces arrested 23 Palestinians during night-time military sweeps into Palestinian towns as clashes with the occupation army continued in a number of flashpoints.

The Palestinian Prisoners Club said in a statement that the occupation forces stormed various areas in the cities of Hebron, Bethlehem, Ramallah and

El-Bireh, as well as several Jerusalem neighborhoods and made the arrests.

Tension remains high across the occupied territories despite a ceasefire that ended 11 days of a deadly Israeli bombing of the blockaded Gaza Strip and rockets fired on Israeli settlements bordering Gaza, amid a standoff in the Jerusalem Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, where dozens of Palestinian families faced forced eviction from their homes.

Source: Jordan News Agency

The Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) said that its mission is to protect and restore the region, one of the richest areas of biodiversity in the world, and home to thousands of species of flora and fauna.

On the occasion of the International Day for Biological Diversity, the Intergovernmental organization of 42 member states pointed out that the occasion provides a fitting opportunity to raise awareness and understanding of the importance of Mediterranean biodiversity under the theme “We are part of the solution.”

The Mediterranean basin is a recognised biodiversity hotspot, with outstanding flora diversity of 15,000 to 25,000 species, according to a ICUN report. 60% of flora and around one third of fauna in the Mediterranean is endemic, or unique to the region. By 2100, the drop in pH could reach 0.462 and 0.457 units for the western and eastern basins of the Mediterranean, respectively. This acidification has very serious consequences on marine biodiversity, affecting many elements of the living chain.

In this sense, the UfM set up the 2030 Greener Med Agenda as a collaborative basis for joint solutions to protect ecosystems and biodiversity while accelerating the transition towards a green, circular and inclusive economy in the region, with biodiversity at the centre. It defines as one of its three key priorities the need to protect, preserve, manage and restore natural resources in the Mediterranean, and is set to be approved by Member States at the upcoming Ministerial later this year.

The IBPES Global Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services found that human activities are responsible for 75% of ecosystem destruction, which in turn impacts climate change, economic activity, food and water security, and even human health. It has been shown that mismanaging biodiversity and ecosystems increases the risk of infectious diseases passing from wildlife to humans, thereby increasing the risk of further pandemics.

Isidro Gonzalez, Deputy Secretary General for Water, Environment and Blue Economy commented: “Current trajectories will not meet goals for conservation and sustainability. We call for transformative changes across economic, social, political and technological systems as we rebuild from the pandemic in the Euro-Mediterranean region. At the UfM, we believe that we are all part of the solution, and that only by working together can we achieve real impact on biodiversity protection and restoration.”

Source: Jordan News Agency

As part of its work to foster cooperation around biodiversity protection and restoration, last March the UfM supported the launch of the innovative partnership “Mediterranean Consortium to protect Biodiversity,” bringing together the skills, experience, know-how and scientific knowledge of six key regional UfM partners: MedWet (the Mediterranean Wetlands Initiative of Ramsar), MedPan (Mediterranean Protected Areas Network), PIM (Mediterranean Small Islands Initiative), Tour du Valat (TdV), AIFM (International Association for Mediterranean Forests) and IUCN-Med (IUCN Centre for Mediterranean Cooperation). The Consortium will develop a regional vision with a common goal and promote the integration of sustainable development with concrete conservation actions and initiatives.

The UfM, the statement added, supports several projects to safeguard biodiversity, including Plastic Siena University-led Busters MPAs project in Italy which?tackles marine litter in the Mediterranean, with the overall goal of maintaining biodiversity and preserving natural ecosystems in pelagic and coastal marine protected areas (MPAs). The second project is the Scaling Up Forest and Landscape Restoration, implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization, and aims to restore biodiversity and promote joint mitigation and adaptation approaches through regional platforms, technical assistance and pilot activities applying appropriate forest and landscape restoration.

These initiatives were born from Euro-Mediterranean Ministerial Declarations on the Blue Economy. The latest UfM Sustainable Blue Economy Ministerial of February 2021, to which all 42 Member States have committed, laid the foundation for a Mediterranean roadmap to bring national climate action to the regional level, and further to the international level at the next UN Biodiversity Convention in October 2021.

The Blue Economy Agenda brings together the economic potential of the Mediterranean Sea with the need to integrate environmental sustainability into the way we harness these opportunities. In addition, Member States reaffirmed their commitment to the regional marine litter management plan and to achieving the collection and recycling of 100% of plastic waste.

Source: Jordan News Agency