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Asharq Al-Awsat Receives 3 Awards at Arab Media Forum in Dubai

Second Deputy Ruler of Dubai and Chairman of the Dubai Media Council Sheikh Ahmed bin Mohammed bin Rashid with the winners of the Arab Media Award. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Second Deputy Ruler of Dubai and Chairman of the Dubai Media Council Sheikh Ahmed bin Mohammed bin Rashid with the winners of the Arab Media Award. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
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Asharq Al-Awsat Receives 3 Awards at Arab Media Forum in Dubai

Second Deputy Ruler of Dubai and Chairman of the Dubai Media Council Sheikh Ahmed bin Mohammed bin Rashid with the winners of the Arab Media Award. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Second Deputy Ruler of Dubai and Chairman of the Dubai Media Council Sheikh Ahmed bin Mohammed bin Rashid with the winners of the Arab Media Award. (Asharq Al-Awsat)

Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper proudly received two prestigious awards at the 2nd edition of the Arab Media Award (AMA) ceremony on Monday.

The ceremony, held on the opening day of the 21st edition of the Arab Media Forum (AMF), celebrates excellence in journalism across three key media sectors: Journalism, TV, and Digital Media.

Second Deputy Ruler of Dubai and Chairman of the Dubai Media Council Sheikh Ahmed bin Mohammed bin Rashid,attended the ceremony.

Asharq Al-Awsat's journalists Jamal Johar and Sawsan al-Abtah received the Investigative Reporting Award and Best Columnist Award respectively.

Kuwaiti thinker and renowned media figure Mohammed al-Rumaihi received the Media Personality of the Year award for his tremendous contributions to Arab media.

The Saudi Research and Media Group (SRMG) won various categories, including the Best Economic Program Award for "al-Sabah Ma Siba", airing on the Asharq news channel, and the Digital Media Award category for Best Economic Platform: Argaam.

For the Best Sports Program Award, the winner was "Fi Al Marma," broadcast on the al-Arabiya news channel.

Hespress won the Best News Platform award in digital media, and FilGoal received the Best Sports Platform.

Furthermore, Magdi Abu al-Fotouh of Ashorouq newspaper received the Economic Journalism Award, and Ahmed Diab from al-Ahram al-Arabi won the Political Journalism Award.

Children's Media Award was presented to Asmaa al-Shamsi of Majid Magazine.

"Bil Khat a-Areed", on Lebanon’s LBCI channel, received the Best Social Program Award, while "Thakirato al-Rimal", broadcast on Sky News Arabia, won the Best Documentary Award.

The Arab Media Forum kicked off in Dubai held under the patronage of Vice President and Dubai Ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

Organized by the Dubai Press Club, the two-day event will bring together over 3,000 distinguished attendees, including influential media personalities, ministers, and heads of leading local, Arab, and international media organizations, as well as thought leaders, intellectuals, and writers.

In opening remarks, Managing Director of Dubai Media Council and Chairperson of the Dubai Press Club Mona al-Marri congratulated all the winners and stressed that the award's distinguished status was a testament to years of hard work and constant encouragement.

She stressed that the future of Arab media depends on institutions' ability to adapt to these changes and embrace modern media tools.

Marri also highlighted artificial intelligence's integral role in shaping the future of media.

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Varieties

British Sculptors Achieve Notable Victory in Global Ice Carving Competition

The team sculpted a kraken eating a boat
The team sculpted a kraken eating a boat
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British Sculptors Achieve Notable Victory in Global Ice Carving Competition

The team sculpted a kraken eating a boat
The team sculpted a kraken eating a boat

Two stonemasons have won a snow sculpting prize as part of Team GB's entry to the World Snow Festival in Switzerland, according to BBC.

Sheffield sculptors Lily Marsh and Steve Roche were part of Great Britain's four-person team, which won the public vote and came third in the technical judging at the competition in Grindelwald.

They competed against 10 nations with the Spanish team taking first place in the technical category.

Sculptor Lily Marsh said it was “refreshing” to swap stone for snow. “Normally it's very dusty and it's much quicker to move the materials so I really enjoyed it,” she said.

The team - led by Christine Close, a sculptor based in France - carved a kraken eating a boat as part of the myths and legends theme set by the competition organizers.

They worked with a large block of snow, starting with a small model.

“We used big chisels on the end of broom handles. A bit like gardening hoes.

You use those to stab at it and shave stuff way,” explained Roche.

“And we used a length of chain that had nuts and bolts set in it with two handles at the end like a big chain saw to carve off the really big bits that we needed to get rid of at the start of the design,” he added.

Despite the low temperatures, Roche said the work kept the team warm.

“I was working in a T shirt most days. I was moaning it was too warm. I got sunburned. I had to go to the shop to get sun cream because it was so bright,” he said.

After the judging, sadly the sculptures did not last and were left to melt in the snow, said Marsh.

“It's quite a liberating thing because often you can get precious about the stuff you make or get worried about it not being good enough and actually it's quite a good practice to make something and know that it's definitely going to melt. It releases you from that worry a bit,” he said.

Varieties

How a Syrian Refugee Chef Met Britain's King Charles

Imad Alarnab, a chef and restaurant owner who fled Syria in 2015, hosted King Charles III at his Soho restaurant. Ben STANSALL / AFP
Imad Alarnab, a chef and restaurant owner who fled Syria in 2015, hosted King Charles III at his Soho restaurant. Ben STANSALL / AFP
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How a Syrian Refugee Chef Met Britain's King Charles

Imad Alarnab, a chef and restaurant owner who fled Syria in 2015, hosted King Charles III at his Soho restaurant. Ben STANSALL / AFP
Imad Alarnab, a chef and restaurant owner who fled Syria in 2015, hosted King Charles III at his Soho restaurant. Ben STANSALL / AFP

Pots clanged and oil sizzled inside the London kitchen of Syrian chef Imad Alarnab, as the former refugee who fled his country's civil war recalled hosting King Charles III.

When the chef left his war-torn homeland in 2015, he never imagined that one day he would watch as cameras flashed and wide-eyed crowds greeted the monarch arriving at his Soho restaurant last year.

Alarnab, 48, said he had asked the king to come to the popular eatery when he met him at Buckingham Palace before an event honoring humanitarian work in 2023.

"I told him 'I would love for you to visit our restaurant one day' and he said: 'I would love to'... I was over the Moon to be honest".

The chef has come a long way since he arrived in London after an arduous journey from Damascus with virtually no money in his pocket.

Fearing for his life, he had escaped Syria after his family was uprooted again and again by fighting.

His culinary empire –- restaurants, cafes, and juice bars peppered across the Syrian capital -- had been destroyed by bombing in just six days in 2013.

Alarnab spent three months crisscrossing Europe in the back of lorries, aboard trains, on foot and even on a bicycle before he reached the UK.

"When I left, I left with nothing," he told AFP, as waiters whirled past carrying steaming plates of traditional Syrian fare.

Starving and exhausted, he spent the last of his money on a train ticket to Doncaster where his sister lived.

'Love letter from Syria'

To make a living, Alarnab initially picked up any odd jobs, such as washing and selling cars, saving enough to bring his wife and three daughters over after seven months.

His love of cooking never left him though. In France, while he was sleeping on the steps of a church, Alarnab had often cooked for hundreds of other refugees.

"I always dreamed of going back to cooking," he said.

So it wasn't long before he found himself back in the kitchen, cooking up a storm across London with his sold-out supper clubs, bustling pop-up cafes, and crowded lunchtime falafel bars.

He now runs two restaurants in the city –- one in Soho's buzzing Kingly Court and another nestled in a corner of the vibrant Somerset House arts center.

"I was looking for a city to love when I found London," Alarnab said, adding it had offered him "space to innovate" and add his own modern twist to classic Syrian dishes.

Far from home, Alarnab said his word-of-mouth success had grown into a "love letter from Syria to the world" that needs no translation.

"You don't really need to speak Arabic or Syrian to know that this is the best falafel ever," he said, pointing to a row of colorful plates.

-'There is hope' -

For Alarnab, spices frying, dough rising and cheese melting inside a kitchen offered an unlikely escape from the real world.

"All my problems, I leave them outside the kitchen and walk in fresh."

When he fled Syria, Alarnab thought going back to Damascus was forever off the table.

Yet he returned for the first time in October, almost a year to the day after longtime leader Bashar al-Assad was toppled in a lightning opposition offensive -- ending almost 14 years of brutal civil war.

He walked the familiar streets of his old home, where his late mother taught him to cook many years ago.

"To return to Damascus and for her not to be there, that was extremely difficult."

Torn between the two cities, Alarnab said he longed to one day rebuild his home in Damascus.

"I wish I could go back and live there. But at the same time, I feel like London is now a part of me. I don't know if I could ever go back and just be in Syria," he said.

Although Syrians still bear the scars of war, Alarnab said he had seen "hope in people's eyes which was missing when I left in 2015".

"The road ahead is still very long, and yes this is only the beginning -- but there is hope."

Varieties

El Nino May Return in 2026 and Make Planet Even Hotter

FILE - Villagers fetch water from a makeshift borehole in Mudzi, Zimbabwe, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Ufumeli, File)
FILE - Villagers fetch water from a makeshift borehole in Mudzi, Zimbabwe, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Ufumeli, File)
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El Nino May Return in 2026 and Make Planet Even Hotter

FILE - Villagers fetch water from a makeshift borehole in Mudzi, Zimbabwe, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Ufumeli, File)
FILE - Villagers fetch water from a makeshift borehole in Mudzi, Zimbabwe, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Ufumeli, File)

The warming El Nino weather phenomenon could form later this year, potentially pushing global temperatures to record heights.

There is a 50- to 60-percent chance of El Nino developing during the July-September period and beyond, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The World Meteorological Organization will issue an update on El Nino on Tuesday.

Here's what you need to know about El Nino and its cooler sister, La Nina:

- Why the name? –

El Nino and its cooler sister La Nina are two phases of a natural climate pattern across the tropical Pacific known as the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

Peruvian and Ecuadoran fishermen coined the term El Nino ("the boy" or "the Christ Child") in the 19th century for the arrival of an unusually warm ocean current off the coast that reduced their catch just before Christmas.

Scientists chose the name La Nina as the opposite of El Nino. Between the two events, there is a "neutral" phase.

- El Nino -

El Nino can weaken consistent trade winds that blow east to west across the tropical Pacific, influencing weather by affecting the movement of warm water across this vast ocean.

This weakening warms the usually cooler central and eastern sides of the ocean, altering rainfall over the equatorial Pacific and wind patterns around the world.

The extra heat at the surface of the Pacific releases energy into the atmosphere that can temporarily drive up global temperatures, which is why El Nino years are often among the warmest on record.

"All else being equal, a typical El Nino event tends to cause a temporary increase in the global mean temperature on the order of 0.1C-0.2C," Nat Johnson, an NOAA meteorologist, told AFP.

El Nino occurs every two to seven years.

It typically results in drier conditions across southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, and northern Brazil, and wetter conditions in the Horn of Africa, the southern United States, Peru and Ecuador.

- Another record? -

The last El Nino occurred in 2023-2024, contributing to making 2023 the second highest year on record and 2024 the all-time high.

Carlo Buontempo, director of the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, told AFP in January that 2026 could be "another record-breaking year" if El Nino appears this year.

However, El Nino's impact would be higher in 2027 than in 2026 if it develops in the second half of this year, said Tido Semmler, a climate scientist at Ireland's National Meteorological Service.

"It takes time for the global atmosphere to react to the El Nino," he said.

"Having said this, there is a risk of 2026 being the warmest year on record even without El Nino, due to the global warming trend," Semmler told AFP.

"2027 would face an increased risk of getting a record warm year if El Nino developed in the second half of 2026," he added.

- La Nina -

The latest La Nina episode was relatively weak and short lived, starting in December 2024 and due to enter a neutral phase during the Februady-April period.

La Nina cools the eastern Pacific Ocean for a period of about one to three years, generating the opposite effects to El Nino on global weather.

It leads to wetter conditions in parts of Australia, southeast Asia, India, southeast Africa and northern Brazil, while causing drier conditions in parts of South America.

La Nina did not stop 2025 from being the third hottest on record.

- New calculation –

The NOAA adopted in February a new way of determining El Nino and El Nino events.

The old Oceanic Nino Index (ONI) compared the three-month average sea surface temperature one region of the Pacific with a 30-year average in the same area.

But as the oceans have been warming rapidly, that old 30-year average can be out of date.

The new method, the Relative Oceanic Nino Index (RONI), compares how warm or cool the east-central Pacific is compared to the rest of the tropics.

The NOAA said RONI is a "clearer, more reliable way" to track El Nino and La Nina in real time.