Dan-E

¶18 June, 2009

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Iran: Four Ways the Crisis May Resolve

Image via Wikipedia

One: Revolution 2.0?

Two: A Tehran Tiananmen?

Three: Khamenei’s “Divine” Retreat?

Four: A “Zimbabwe” Option?

The End Game in Iran: Four Ways the Crisis May Resolve - TIME

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¶7 June, 2009

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Pollo Campero announces its foray into the Arabian Gulf

Guatemalan chain opened its first location in Barcelona, Spain, and prepares its next opening in Andorra and the Kingdom of Bahrain in the coming months.

Pollo Campero opened its first restaurant in Barcelona and third in Spain, located in the Heron City shopping mall in the Catalan town of Can Drago in alliance with the company Eat Out.

Al-Hazeem, president of JA Group Holding, will introduce Campero brand in the Middle East. Al-Hazeem wanted to witness the opening for the proximity to the same event will occur in the Kingdom of Bahrain.

The global economic crisis not slowing expansion plans Campero International, which this year plans to increase its network of restaurants in Indonesia, the first opening in Andorra, and his arrival at the next world with the help of Arabic Jamal A. Al-Hazeem y el grupo JA Holding, informed the Guatemalan chain through a press release.

According to plans Campero, the partnership with JA Holding lets you take your brand to 7 countries in Gulf Arabic and assemble a network of at least 35 restaurants.

Pollo Campero is the largest restaurant chain in Latin America, has to date more than 300 restaurants in 11 countries (Central America, Mexico, United States, Ecuador, Spain, China and Indonesia), serves more than 80 million meals per year and employs over 10 thousand people.

— elPeriodico, Guatemala

P.S. Google translate still needs some work…

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“28 May, 2009

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Books like these are more dangerous than Taliban bullets

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— Afghan Governor Ghulam Dastagir Azad, a Sunni from the country’s dominant Pashtun ethnic group, speaking to The Associated Press on why the government quietly dumped more than 1,000 Shiite texts and other books from Iran into a river after he complained that their content insulted the country’s Sunni majority.

devex

The Global Development Executive Group

devex.com

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¶30 April, 2009

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Girl, 8, gets divorced in Saudi Arabia

Image by Shabbir Siraj via Flickr

An eight-year-old girl from Saudi Arabia has been granted a divorce from her 50-year-old husband.

The case has prompted the kingdom to re-evaluate its conservative attitudes to marriage.

The girl’s marriage was arranged by her father and backed twice by a judge on the condition that it was not consummated until she reached puberty.

Her mother, who is separated from the father, objected to the arrangement and twice sought a divorce on her daughter’s behalf. It was refused both times by the judge, Sheikh Habib Al-Habib, after the girl’s husband refused to agree.

The judge did say that when the girl reached puberty she could herself seek a divorce.

The case was widely publicised and prompted heated debate in the country, which is currently giving more rights to women than have previously been granted. It was also condemned by human rights groups abroad.

King Abdullah, seen as a reformist, appointed the first ever woman deputy minister earlier this year.

One of his advisers, Mohsen al-Obaikan, an Islamic scholar, went public to demand that a legal age for marriage be set at 18. The justice ministry said it was considering reforming the law, which until now has given no minimum.

The justice minister said he wanted to end the “arbitrary” control of marriages by girl’s fathers.

However, the country’s highest religious authority, the Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Shaikh, said that marrying girls even under the age of 15 was not against Sharia - Islamic law which forms the basis of the Saudi legal system.

The Saudi Gazette reported that the marriage of the eight-year-old, who has never been named, was annulled in a private out-of-court settlement between the two families in the city of Onaiza.

Most such marriages are arranged by families in return for money. In this case, the father was said to need to pay off a personal debt to the husband, a friend.

The girl herself has been living with her mother, and was never told that she was married, or of the international controversy her case had provoked.

Earlier, Anne Veneman, director of Unicef, said: “Unicef joins many in voicing concern that child marriage contravenes accepted international standards of human rights.”

Girl, 8, gets divorced in Saudi Arabia - Telegraph

Young Saudi girl’s marriage ended (news.bbc.co.uk)
Saudis ‘to regulate’ child brides (news.bbc.co.uk)

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†30 October, 2008

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Cost of remittances | The Economist

As many as 190m migrant workers sent money home in 2007, according to the World Bank. Remittances that could be tracked reached $337 billion last year, of which $251 billion went to developing countries. The cost of sending money depends on both its source and its destination. On average, it costs only $7.68 to send $500 from Spain to Brazil, a 1.5% fee. By contrast, it costs a whopping $86.41 (a charge of 17.3%) to send the same sum from the Netherlands to Indonesia. The Netherlands, Germany and Japan tend to be the most expensive places to send money from. Remittance costs are generally lowest in Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Singapore, America and Britain.