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Lebanese Hoda Barakat Wins Arab Booker Prize

Lebanese writer Hoda Barakat, photographed in 2015 after she was short listed for the Man Booker International Prize (AFP Photo/ADRIAN DENNIS)
Lebanese writer Hoda Barakat, photographed in 2015 after she was short listed for the Man Booker International Prize (AFP Photo/ADRIAN DENNIS)
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Lebanese Hoda Barakat Wins Arab Booker Prize

Lebanese writer Hoda Barakat, photographed in 2015 after she was short listed for the Man Booker International Prize (AFP Photo/ADRIAN DENNIS)
Lebanese writer Hoda Barakat, photographed in 2015 after she was short listed for the Man Booker International Prize (AFP Photo/ADRIAN DENNIS)

Lebanese author Hoda Barakat won the Booker International Prize for Arabic fiction for her novel “The Night Mail”.

In a statement, the Chair of Judges, Charafdine Majdouline, said: "The Night Mail is a highly accomplished novel that stands out for its condensed economy of language, narrative structure, and capacity to convey the inner workings of human beings. By choosing to use techniques well-known in novel writing, Barakat faced a challenge, but she succeeded in creatively innovating within the tradition to successfully convince the reader.”

The International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) is the Arab world’s prestigious literary prize.

Barakat received her award at a ceremony held at the Fairmont Bab Al Bahr in Abu Dhabi.

A summary published on IPAF website said “The Night Mail” tells the stories of letter writers.

“The letters are lost, like the people who have penned them, but each is linked to another and their fates are woven together, like those of their owners. The writers are foreigners, either immigrants by choice or forced by circumstance to leave their countries; exiled and homeless, orphans of their countries with fractured destinies,” it said.

“The novel’s realm is — like the times we live in — one of deep questioning and ambiguity, where boundaries have been erased, and old places and homes lost forever,” it added.

Barakat is a Lebanese novelist, who was born in Beirut in 1952. She has worked in teaching and journalism and currently lives in France. She has published six novels, two plays, a book of short stories and a book of memoirs.

Barakat received the ‘Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres’ in 2002 and the ‘Chevalier de l’Ordre du Mérite National’ in 2008. Her novels include: The Stone of Laughter (1990), Disciples of Passion (1993), The Tiller of Waters (2000) which won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in that year, and My Master and my Lover (2004). Her fifth novel, The Kingdom of This Earth (2012), reached the IPAF longlist in 2013. In 2015, she was a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize, given (at that time) every two years to honor a writer’s overall contribution to fiction on the world stage.

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Varieties

Shark Stranded in South Korean Canal Draws 600,000 Visitors as Rescue Bid Fails

People take pictures of a shark that has been trapped in a canal since September 18 in Busan, South Korea, September 20, 2026. Yonhap via REUTERS 
People take pictures of a shark that has been trapped in a canal since September 18 in Busan, South Korea, September 20, 2026. Yonhap via REUTERS 
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Shark Stranded in South Korean Canal Draws 600,000 Visitors as Rescue Bid Fails

People take pictures of a shark that has been trapped in a canal since September 18 in Busan, South Korea, September 20, 2026. Yonhap via REUTERS 
People take pictures of a shark that has been trapped in a canal since September 18 in Busan, South Korea, September 20, 2026. Yonhap via REUTERS 

A shark stranded in a canal in the South Korean port of Busan has become the country's latest wildlife sensation, with the city saying about 600,000 ‌people have flocked to see it over the past two weeks.

The 3.5-meter shark was first spotted in a narrow waterway in North Port on September 18, according to Reuters.

As the days passed without the shark finding its way back to the ocean, authorities launched a rescue operation on Tuesday to guide it out, ⁠but the effort failed.

The Coast Guard and other agencies deployed vessels to spray jets of water behind the shark to gently propel it toward the open ocean, but it swam away from the streams, according to videos published by Yonhap News Television.

Officials now plan to use a net to try to guide the shark out of the canal on Friday, the Chosun Daily reported.

The shark, reported to be a bronze whaler, has become something of a celebrity in South ‌Korea ⁠and has been dubbed “Bukangi,” a nickname derived from “Buk Hang,” the Korean name for Busan’s North Port, and the Korean suffix “-i.”

During the four-day Chuseok holiday last weekend, about 480,000 people visited the waterfront park where the shark was stranded, compared with the park's usual daily average ⁠of around 2,000 visitors on weekends, according to a Busan city statement and media reports.

On Tuesday, Busan declared the shark an honorary public relations ambassador for the city after ⁠a poll on the city’s official Instagram account received 91% approval from about 8,000 participants.

Other animal escapades have gripped South Korea in the past.

Earlier this year, ⁠a wolf that escaped from its enclosure at a South Korean zoo spawned a cryptocurrency meme coin and even prompted a message of concern from the country's president.

 

Varieties

Swiss Glaciers Lose Over 5% of Ice Volume in 2026 as Heatwaves, Low Winter Snow Accelerate Thaw

General view of the Fiescher Glacier near Fiesch, Switzerland, June 14, 2023. (AP)
General view of the Fiescher Glacier near Fiesch, Switzerland, June 14, 2023. (AP)
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Swiss Glaciers Lose Over 5% of Ice Volume in 2026 as Heatwaves, Low Winter Snow Accelerate Thaw

General view of the Fiescher Glacier near Fiesch, Switzerland, June 14, 2023. (AP)
General view of the Fiescher Glacier near Fiesch, Switzerland, June 14, 2023. (AP)

Glaciers in Switzerland – the home to the most in the Alps – lost 5.5% of their ice volume this year, the second-biggest percentage drop on record due to heatwaves and low winter snowfall, experts report.

“Alpine glaciers have no chance of surviving in the long term under such conditions,” the GLAMOS Swiss glacier monitoring service and Swiss Academy of Sciences said in a statement released Thursday.

The trend has worsened in recent years: Over the past five years alone, the volume of ice in Switzerland has declined by nearly a fifth, the experts say.

The report testifies to the latest concerns that global warming is wreaking havoc on Europe, the world’s fastest-warming continent.

“The warming that we are experiencing now can be attributed 100% to anthropogenic climate change. It’s as simple as that,” said Matthias Huss, who heads GLAMOS. “Without human emissions or fossil fuels we wouldn’t have any warming at the moment.”

The record retreat of glacier ice in Switzerland came in 2022, when summer heat, low winter snowfall and an unusual smattering of reddish dust blown in from the Sahara darkened the glaciers and caused them to absorb more heat.

Huss said the snow cover in winter was important for two reasons.

“On the one hand, it protects the bare ice from melting. The longer you have snow, the longer you avoid the loss of old ice,” said Huss in an interview at the Federal Polytechnic Institute ETHZ, where he is a glaciology professor.

“On the other hand, the snow is important also for generating new food for the glacier. The more snow you have, the higher the potential to keep some of the snow at high elevation and to form new ice,” Huss added.

The great thaw in Europe’s legendary Alps is not alone: Experts say global warming helped to destabilize a Himalayan slope that collapsed in August and unleashed catastrophic and deadly flooding across Nepal. Satellites have shown vast shrinkage of glaciers in places like Greenland and Antarctica over the last half-century or so.

Percentage drop rises as overall ice volume falls

In Switzerland, in absolute terms, volume lost has been less than that in 2003, but the percentage decline this year is greater. That’s because the total volume today is roughly a third of that 23 years ago. Back then, the relative loss was 3.5% of total ice volume in Swiss glaciers.

Such accelerated ice melt has had an impact in Switzerland — the loss of 2.2 trillion liters (581 billion gallons) from July to September amounts to four times the annual consumption of water in the country of about 9.1 million people. Switzerland gets more than half of its electricity from hydropower.

But the impact of accelerated glacier melt ripples far beyond: Switzerland is the water tower of Europe, and feeds some of the continent’s most important rivers: The Danube, Po, Rhine and Rhone.

The experts say the “extreme melting” faced by Switzerland’s glaciers this year included a decline in the average thickness of individual glaciers between 2-1/2 to 4 meters (about 8-13 feet) and a reduction of up 10 meters (33 feet) on the tongue of some glaciers.

The expert teams have fanned out to assess runoff and crevices caused by the running water through the glaciers, in part by dumping red dye into the streams to track the water flows.

The Allalin, Clarident, Rhone and Aletsch glaciers — Aletsch being the largest in the Alps — were among the glaciers to experience their biggest melt on record this year.

Varieties

Saudi Arabia Strengthens Role in International Water Efforts Ahead of Riyadh World Water Forum 2027

Saudi Arabia affirms that hosting the 11th World Water Forum in Riyadh in 2027 represents an important milestone in strengthening joint international action - SPA
Saudi Arabia affirms that hosting the 11th World Water Forum in Riyadh in 2027 represents an important milestone in strengthening joint international action - SPA
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Saudi Arabia Strengthens Role in International Water Efforts Ahead of Riyadh World Water Forum 2027

Saudi Arabia affirms that hosting the 11th World Water Forum in Riyadh in 2027 represents an important milestone in strengthening joint international action - SPA
Saudi Arabia affirms that hosting the 11th World Water Forum in Riyadh in 2027 represents an important milestone in strengthening joint international action - SPA

Saudi Arabia affirmed that hosting the 11th World Water Forum in Riyadh in 2027 represents an important milestone in strengthening joint international action and accelerating the transition from commitments and initiatives to practical solutions that contribute to water security and sustainability.

This came during the participation of Deputy Minister for Water at the Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture Dr. Abdulaziz Al-Shaibani in a dialogue session held today as part of the Euro-Mediterranean Water Forum in Rome, with the participation of several ministers, senior officials, and international experts in the water sector, SPA reported.

Al-Shaibani said that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is preparing to host the 11th World Water Forum from March 21 to 25, 2027, noting that the forum aims to enhance international partnerships, support actionable solutions, and link global commitments to clear programs whose impact can be measured and results monitored.

He highlighted that the World Water Forum in Riyadh will address six main themes and more than 30 topics, including water security, water finance, water for humans and nature, water governance and diplomacy, innovation for water, and the value of water. More than 20,000 participants from over 150 countries are expected to attend.

Al-Shaibani stressed that the Kingdom is working to ensure an inclusive preparatory process involving various stakeholders and reflecting the needs of different regions and countries, while enhancing the participation of youth, academic institutions, the private sector, international organizations, and river basin organizations.

He also called on the international community to actively contribute to preparations for the forum and provide initiatives, expertise, and partnerships that support practical and sustainable outcomes. He reiterated that the Kingdom looks forward to the forum serving as a platform that brings the world together for joint action toward a more water-secure and sustainable future.