As the story continues to develop, it has taken quite an interesting turn. Hospital staff at the Prince Hamzah Hospital staged a one-hour protest yesterday in defense of the X-ray doctor who has been accused by the Prosecutor General for being involved in the death of Hassan Hafnawi last week. More insight into the case […]

This issue regarding the Danish cartoons is like a monkey on the nation’s back: it just won’t go away! The redundant quality to it has rendered it even more absurd than the first time around, which by now feels like ages ago! It’s like beating a dead dog with a stick.
On the front page […]

Earlier today I spoke at the United Nations University in Amman, in a conference entitled “Media in the New Global World Order: Media, Economy & Development”. The conference focused a great deal on leadership in the media sector, specifically with regards to economic reporting. The session I was asked to speak in concerned the challenge […]

This might sound like deja vu, but this is Jordan and that feeling is consistent with our inability to solve the same problems. So, by now, everyone (specifically on the Jordanian blogosphere) is aware of blogger Who Sane’s dilemma last September when his father went missing for several days before being discovered at the […]

AMMAN (Reuters) - Jordanian authorities on Wednesday released Jordanian Sheikh Abu Mohammad al-Maqdisi, a leading al-Qaeda mentor, after several years imprisonment without trial, security sources said. They said Maqdisi, who was regarded as the spiritual mentor of slain al Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had been in solitary confinement since he was rearrested […]

I attended this Jordan Media Survey event the other day and I’ve been looking over the results of the survey which you can read for yourself here (PDF). While I think the polling sample was too small, there are a few unique results that I wanted to sum up in bullet points. Radio now outranks […]

A Jordanian court has sentenced a French national of Palestinian origin to three months in jail for slandering King Abdullah. The court was told Muntaser Shehab became abusive after a row at a five-star hotel in the capital, Amman. [source]
Ah! To be convicted of lesé majesté. Note, that he was originally given a year but […]

Radio Al Balad on Saturday sent a letter of apology to the Lower House for reading a comment on air deemed insulting to the Chamber of Deputies and called for allowing the station to resume broadcasting sessions, which were halted last week. In the letter, addressed to Lower House Speaker Abdul Hadi Majali, Radio Al […]

Ninety: The latitude of the North Pole and the South Pole.
Ninety: The number of minutes in a football (soccer) match.
Ninety: The number of Psalms credited to Moses
Ninety: The year Ptolemy, Greek mathematician, is born.
Ninety: The number of days Saudi blogger Fouad Farhan has been stuck in jail as of today. He is yet to be […]

Following the attack on the Jewish seminary that resulted in the death of 8 Israelis, the gunman’s relatives in Jordan set up a mourning tent as is common in the country, in his honor. The state decided to shut the whole thing down.
Not only does this contradict any position the country took towards “urging” Israel […]

I haven’t posted a playlist in a while so here’s a lengthy one that includes all the music I’ve been listening to in the past couple of weeks. In addition to Jack Johnson’s Sleep Through The Static and the bowl-full of awesomeness that is the Once soundtrack (Falling Slowly, When Your Minds Made Up, Say […]

Not only has AmmanNet - now called Radio Al Balad - been banned from broadcasting the Lower House sessions after MP’s filed a lawsuit against it, but now the regulator, the Audio Visual Commission, has also filed a lawsuit against the station!

“We filed a lawsuit against Radio Al Balad almost two weeks ago, after […]

Now this is pretty interesting. Six hours a week can cause quite a ruckus, but I guess it’s more about the principle.
BOSTON - In a test of Harvard’s famed open-mindedness, the university has banned men from one of its gyms for a few hours a week to accommodate Muslim women who say it offends […]

No one liked the last Lower House but this one is just acting retarded these days. AmmanNet, which is now Radio Al-Balad, has been banned from broadcasting the Lower House of Parliament sessions because apparently they’ve insulted MP’s. Apparently the “insult” came by way of a comment posted by a reader on January 29th.
According […]

While everyone waits with bated breath the results of today’s deadly primaries in the US, here are a few del.icio.us pickings I’ve been reading these past couple of days:
- A Rose By Any Other Name: An Iranian court has ordered a man to give his wife the 124,000 roses that he promised in her dowry, […]

Following the 9/11 attacks, President Bush claimed that Muslims hate America for its freedoms. Since then, 50,000 Muslims in 35 countries were surveyed by Gallup, the largest poll of Muslims ever. The results represent over 6 years of study and are outlined in a new book by Dalia Mogahed and John L. Esposito entitled “Who […]