Saudi Arabia Participates in Jerash Festival for Culture and Arts in Jordan

The festival will be held in the ancient city of Jerash
The festival will be held in the ancient city of Jerash
TT
20

Saudi Arabia Participates in Jerash Festival for Culture and Arts in Jordan

The festival will be held in the ancient city of Jerash
The festival will be held in the ancient city of Jerash

Saudi Arabia is participating in the 37th edition of the Jerash Festival of Culture and Arts in Jordan, which will be held in the ancient city of Jerash from July 26 to August 5, with the participation of several Arab artists and performing teams.

The Kingdom is represented by three cultural commissions, which will display the Saudi cultural heritage and tradition at the iconic festival, including folklore dances and performing arts.

Three teams from the Theater and Performing Arts Commission will perform folklore arts at the festival from July 27 to 30, reflecting the Kingdom's diverse traditions, including Samri, Al-Dahha and Al-Khutwah.

Accompanied by the Saudi National Orchestra and Choir, a women's team from the commission will be performing the folkloric dance of Samri and Al-Khutwah at the festival in addition to three performers of the Hakawati (bard) art.

The Kingdom's participation at the annual festival falls with the Culture Ministry's efforts to promote the presence of Saudi cultural heritage at Arab and global events and to enhance cultural relations and exchange with various countries in line with the objectives of the Saudi Vision 2030.



Activists Return Macron Waxwork Stolen from Paris Museum 

A photo shows a wax statue of French President Emmanuel Macron, stolen the day before from the Grevin Museum, during an action by Greenpeace environmental activists outside the EDF headquarters in Paris on June 3, 2025. (AFP)
A photo shows a wax statue of French President Emmanuel Macron, stolen the day before from the Grevin Museum, during an action by Greenpeace environmental activists outside the EDF headquarters in Paris on June 3, 2025. (AFP)
TT
20

Activists Return Macron Waxwork Stolen from Paris Museum 

A photo shows a wax statue of French President Emmanuel Macron, stolen the day before from the Grevin Museum, during an action by Greenpeace environmental activists outside the EDF headquarters in Paris on June 3, 2025. (AFP)
A photo shows a wax statue of French President Emmanuel Macron, stolen the day before from the Grevin Museum, during an action by Greenpeace environmental activists outside the EDF headquarters in Paris on June 3, 2025. (AFP)

Greenpeace activists overnight Tuesday to Wednesday returned a wax figure of President Emmanuel Macron they had stolen from a Paris museum as part of a protest against French economic ties with Russia in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine.

After taking the waxwork from the Grevin Museum in a carefully planned heist on Monday the campaigners had placed it outside the Russian embassy in a symbolic protest.

Carrying on the action late on Tuesday, they placed the waxwork, estimated to be worth 40,000 euros ($45,500), in a chest and put it outside the headquarters of French electricity giant EDF.

They also put the statue on its feet and stood next to it a sign with a slogan denouncing Macron for not completely cutting ties with Russia under Vladimir Putin, in particular in the energy sphere.

"Putin-Macron radioactive allies," it said.

Police then arrived and secured the chest and waxwork ahead of its return to the Grevin Museum, the Paris equivalent of Madame Tussauds in London.

"We came to bring back the statue of Emmanuel Macron because, as we said from the start, we had just borrowed it," Jean-Francois Julliard, executive director of Greenpeace France, told AFP at the scene.

"We notified both the management of the Grevin Museum and the police. It's up to them to come and retrieve it," he said.

The choice of the EDF headquarters was "to make Macron face up to his responsibilities concerning the trade that is maintained with Russia, particularly in the nuclear sector," he added.

According to Julliard, French companies can still, despite the sanctions regime in place since the invasion, "import a whole host of products from Russia" including enriched uranium to power French nuclear power plants, natural uranium transiting through Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan via Russia, LNG and chemical fertilizers.

He said Greenpeace particularly criticized the surge in Russian fertilizer imports into the EU, which rose some 80 percent between 2021 and 2023 according to French fertilizer manufacturers.

According to a police source, two women and a man on Monday entered the Grevin Museum posing as tourists and, once inside, changed their clothes to pass for workers. The activists slipped out through an emergency exit with the waxwork.

A museum spokeswoman acknowledged that "they had clearly done their research very thoroughly".