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Jordan: Queen Rania Presents Merkel with Golden Victoria Honorary Award

Queen Rania of Jordan takes part in a plenary session on empowering girls and women during the Clinton Global Initiative in New York September 21, 2010. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
Queen Rania of Jordan takes part in a plenary session on empowering girls and women during the Clinton Global Initiative in New York September 21, 2010. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
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Jordan: Queen Rania Presents Merkel with Golden Victoria Honorary Award

Queen Rania of Jordan takes part in a plenary session on empowering girls and women during the Clinton Global Initiative in New York September 21, 2010. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
Queen Rania of Jordan takes part in a plenary session on empowering girls and women during the Clinton Global Initiative in New York September 21, 2010. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

Queen Rania of Jordan presented on Monday German Chancellor Angela Merkel with a Golden Victoria Honorary Award for Political Leadership, introduced by the Association of German Magazine Publishers (VDZ) in Berlin.

VDZ, which represents approximately 500 German publishing houses comprising more than 6,000 brands, chose to award Merkel with this award in recognition of her successful management of the financial crisis, leadership, and promotion of Germany's economic strength and democracy.

During her speech at the event organized by the association, Queen Rania hailed the chancellor's moral courage and steadfast commitment to delivering stability, prosperity, liberty and peace, along with her leadership style, highlighting her many contributions to addressing global challenges, including the refugee crisis, financial turmoil, terrorist attacks and violent conflicts.

The chancellor's 'calm resilience and resolve have enabled Germany not just to chart a safe course but to help guide the global community through the storm, the Queen said.

Her Majesty also hailed the chancellor for rallying Germany to welcome more than a million refugees in 2015 and said: "We too, in Jordan, have opened our neighborhoods, our hearts, and our means to those in needs. Today, one out of every seven people in my country is a refugee. We could not shoulder this duty without Germany's solidarity and support, and our country is proud of this friendship."

Her Majesty called on an audience of 800 journalists, politicians, diplomats and public figures in attendance to imagine how different the global landscape might look if the chancellor's moral compass was the norm. During her speech, Queen Rania thanked the association's journalists and members of the press for giving voice to the voiceless, highlighting the importance of their role in the modern age.

Bigotry and hatred are not new ideas, but they have gained new momentum and reach in our digital age, where outrage sells and is amplified and spread with every click, she added.

Since 2006, VDZ has annually presented Golden Victoria awards in three categories: Press Freedom, Entrepreneurship and Lifetime Achievement/Leadership. Other honorees this year included Nestle CEO, Béatrice Guillaume-Grabisch, as well as the late Daphne Caruana Galizia and Ján Kuciak, two European journalists who recently lost their lives.

Her Majesty and Chancellor Merkel also met ahead of the award ceremony.

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Varieties

Trump Renews Call for End to Seasonal Clock Changes

A bird flies in silhouette as the sun rises over the Atlantic ocean in Lido Beach, New York, US, April 10, 2025. (Reuters)
A bird flies in silhouette as the sun rises over the Atlantic ocean in Lido Beach, New York, US, April 10, 2025. (Reuters)
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Trump Renews Call for End to Seasonal Clock Changes

A bird flies in silhouette as the sun rises over the Atlantic ocean in Lido Beach, New York, US, April 10, 2025. (Reuters)
A bird flies in silhouette as the sun rises over the Atlantic ocean in Lido Beach, New York, US, April 10, 2025. (Reuters)

President Donald Trump on Friday repeated his call for an end to the "costly" custom of moving clocks back one hour every autumn, which he said was imposing an unnecessary financial burden on the United States.

"The House and Senate should push hard for more Daylight at the end of a day," Trump urged the US Congress in a Truth Social post.

"Very popular and, most importantly, no more changing of the clocks, a big inconvenience and, for our government, A VERY COSTLY EVENT!!!"

The summer clock, known as Daylight Saving Time, was adopted by the federal government during World War I but was unpopular with farmers rushing to get produce to morning markets, and was quickly abolished.

Many states experimented with their own versions, but it wasn't reintroduced nationwide until 1967.

The issue has become a pet subject for Trump, who appealed in December for more light in the evenings, but he has at times appeared confused by the terminology.

The demand would mean a permanent change to DST, whereas in December he pledged to get Republicans working on the opposite goal -- abandoning DST.

"The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn't," he said then.

In 2022 the Senate, then controlled by Democrats, advanced a bill that would bring an end to the twice-yearly changing of clocks, in favor of a "new, permanent standard time."

The Sunshine Protection Act called for moving permanently to DST, to usher in brighter evenings, and fewer journeys home in the dark for school children and office workers.

The bill never made it to then-president Joe Biden's desk, as it was not taken up in the Republican-led House.

The bill was introduced in 2021 by a Republican, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who is now Trump's secretary of state. He said studies had shown a permanent DST could benefit the economy.

Either way, changing to one permanent time would put an end to Americans pushing their clocks forward in the spring, then setting them back an hour in the fall.

Colloquially the practice is referred to as "spring forward, fall back."

The clamor has increased in recent years to make DST permanent especially among politicians and lobbyists from the Northeast, where frigid conditions are normal in the early winter mornings.

Rubio said the United States sees an increase in heart attacks and road accidents in the week that follows the changing of the clocks.

Any changes would be unlikely to affect Hawaii and most of Arizona, the Navajo Nation, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, which do not spring forward in summer.