Someone lost a lot of weight and other important news

Here comes a hodge-podge of bits:

First, here is one of the BBC Arabic anchors. He has lost a lot of weight. What's going on?

He's called Mohammed Saif Al Nasser. I think that means: Mohammed the Sword that is Victorious. Good for him.

Then, the BBC Arabic covered the fact that Obama was in Ethiopia, where he said that South Sudan is doing very badly:

And finally, there's been protests in a refugee camp north of Jerusalem:

I didn't quite catch what it was about. But you can see that people are out in force.

Health, diet, and Ramadan on the Arabic news

Back at the end of May, the BBC Arabic had an interview with this doctor:

I didn't catch what country, but she is somewhere in the Middle East. 

She was urging people not to eat at night because that's dangerous. I think she said that at night, it becomes harder to control just how big the meal is. Maybe people don't realize just how much they are putting on their plates.

The BBC Arabic anchors asked her, what about people who work at night? They need to eat.

So the doctor said, if you have to eat at night, eat things like yogurt, fruit, dates. That will give you energy for your night job, but still keep your hormones in check.

Then, just a few days ago, on the eve of Ramadan, they had another dietician or health expert or doctor on the BBC Arabic. This was again a lady, and she was sounding pretty frantic: Yes, it is very easy for people to have bad diets during Ramadan! Everyone's expectation is that they are going to eat a lot of sweets at night when they can finally break the fast, but that is no good! And eating a lot of fatty foods, that is not good, either! And definitely, if people are not careful, the bad habits that they pick up during Ramadan will spill over into the rest of the year. 

Bikes in Syria

This was a really cool report on the BBC Arabic about girls and women in Syria who are starting to bike. There are now bike lanes. Whoa!

The story starts with the infamous 'service' transportation vans, which are the norm if you don't have a car:

Now that there's been 3 years of war, and fuel prices are high, people can't even necessarily afford the service vans, and they're so crowded ...

... so some people have started biking:

I get so surprised by that picture! It doesn't look like a war zone, it looks like the US basically. It's so weird.

Even girls and women are biking. This is a big deal, because if you ask most Arab women (at least in my experience) they will tell you that after you become 13 or so, it's taboo for girls to bike. Boys will laugh at them if they do so. I don't really get what would be so taboo and awful about it, but probably the sheikhs have decreed that girls biking ruins their reproductive abilities. Any case, now in Syria, under the duress of the higher fuel prices, women are biking:

This lady says that not only is it great exercise, but she feels great and likes biking.

And this man says he thinks biking is the best way for girls to get around. That way, they can avoid being harassed by the noble, saintly Syrian male taxi drivers. He says that biking is the best way for girls to get to the university, and that he encourages all girls and his own daughters to do so.

The Syrian government is apparently giving students money so they can buy bikes. I don't know how they have money to do that. Maybe I heard wrong. And there are bike shops everywhere:

And near the universities, they have painted bike lanes:

I think this is the first time I see bike lanes in an Arab country.

And off they go:

Ebola

Here is the BBC Arabic reporting on ebola:

In this clip, they were showing the work by Doctors Without Borders.

This was a few weeks ago, when the nurses in Texas had become infected. You can bet that the BBC Arabic had a field day with that one. I think they take special care to cover American mess-ups.

But to be fair, they also cover American innovation, and American aid, and all sorts of other stuff.

So this was how a dinky Texas hospital made it to the Arabic news:

Songs against Cigarettes in Jordan

Today in the car, these were the news headlines on the radio in Amman:

1. The US is giving $35 million to Syrian refugees. The money will go to the World Food Programme and to various NGOs in the area.
2. Jordan is struggling under the pressure of amongst the largest Syrian refugee populations in the region.
3. The Ministry for Agriculture is preparing a campaign to counter the attacks against water supplies. I think the people doing the attacks are farmers who do not get an adequate supply of irrigation water, but I'm not sure if I heard that part right.
4. Dozens of people have been killed in fights in Syria.

Next came a segment, spoken in the innocent voice of a young child - who was likely coached into all the cheesy inflections he used - that is called, "Letter from a Child to a Grown-Up." They have that segment every morning, apparently. Today's was about the English language, or about writing letters, but the windows were open and the wind was too loud for me to hear!

After that they had a long anti-smoking commercial. First, a man with a nice, serious voice talked about how smoking is against Islam, and the Muslim community all needs to take a stand and show how wrong smoking is. Then, they had a short dialogue between two men, a smoker and non-smoker. The non-smoker asks the smoker, 'are you smoking again?' Finally, they finished off the campaign with a song. It went something like, 'he lit the cigarette, and then he left it. he lit the cigarette, and then he left it.'