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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

Children Suffer as Schools Go Online in Polluted Delhi

Confined to her home by the toxic smog choking India's capital, Harshita Gautam attends an online class on a mobile phone - AFP
Confined to her home by the toxic smog choking India's capital, Harshita Gautam attends an online class on a mobile phone - AFP
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Children Suffer as Schools Go Online in Polluted Delhi

Confined to her home by the toxic smog choking India's capital, Harshita Gautam attends an online class on a mobile phone - AFP
Confined to her home by the toxic smog choking India's capital, Harshita Gautam attends an online class on a mobile phone - AFP

Confined to her family's ramshackle shanty by the toxic smog choking India's capital, Harshita Gautam strained to hear her teacher's instructions over a cheap mobile phone borrowed from her mother.

The nine-year-old is among nearly two million students in and around New Delhi told to stay home after authorities once again ordered schools to shut because of worsening air pollution.

Now a weary annual ritual, keeping children at home and moving lessons online for days at a time during the peak of the smog crisis in winter ostensibly helps protect the health of the city's youth.

The policy impacts both the education and the broader well-being of schoolkids around the city -- much more so for children from poorer families like Gautam.

"I don't like online classes," she told AFP, sitting on a bed her family all share at night in their spartan one-room home in the city's west.

"I like going to school and playing outside but my mother says there is too much pollution and I must stay inside."

Gautam struggles to follow the day's lesson, with the sound of her teacher's voice periodically halting as the connection drops out on the cheap Android phone.

Her parents both earn paltry incomes -- her polio-stricken father by working at a roadside food stall and her mother as a domestic worker.

Neither can afford to skip work and look after their only child, and they do not have the means to buy air purifiers or take other measures to shield themselves from the smog.

Gautam's confinement at home is an additional financial burden for her parents, who normally rely on a free-meal programme at her government-run school to keep her fed for lunch.

"When they are at school I don't have to worry about their studies or food. At home, they are hardly able to pay any attention," Gautam's mother Maya Devi told AFP.

"Why should our children suffer? They must find some solution."

Delhi and the surrounding metropolitan area, home to more than 30 million people, consistently tops world rankings for air pollution.

The city is blanketed in acrid smog each winter, primarily blamed on agricultural burning by farmers to clear their fields for ploughing, as well as factories and traffic fumes.

Levels of PM2.5 -- dangerous cancer-causing microparticles that enter the bloodstream through the lungs -- surged 60 times past the World Health Organization's recommended daily maximum on Monday.

A study in the Lancet medical journal attributed 1.67 million premature deaths in India to air pollution in 2019.

Piecemeal government initiatives include partial restrictions on fossil fuel-powered transport and water trucks spraying mist to clear particulate matter from the air.

But none have succeeded in making a noticeable impact on a worsening public health crisis.

- 'A lot of disruptions' -

The foul air severely impacts children, with devastating effects on their health and development.

Scientific evidence shows children who breathe polluted air are at higher risk of developing acute respiratory infections, a report from the UN children's agency said in 2022.

A 2021 study published in the medical journal Lung India found nearly one in three school-aged children in the capital were afflicted by asthma and airflow obstruction.

Sunita Bhasin, director of the Swami Sivananda Memorial Institute school, told AFP that pollution-induced school closures had been steadily increasing over the years.

"It's easy for the government to give a blanket call to close the schools but... abrupt closure leads to a lot of disruptions," she said.

Bhasin said many of Delhi's children would anyway continue to breathe the same noxious air whether at school or home.

"There is no space for them in their homes, so they will go out on the streets and play."