Sports
Dubai Food Festival designed with all tastes in mind
Dubai Food Festival designed with all tastes in mind Staff Reporter / 16 February 2014 Taste of Peru and the Grand Kerala Festival added to the line up of events. With just a few days until the start of the inaugural Dubai Food Festival (DFF), Dubai Festivals and Retail Establishment (DFRE), an agency of the Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM), announced a full and appetising line-up for the city-wide celebration of food-related events, tastings and activaties. Two of the new events added to the line-up — Taste of Peru and the Grand Kerala Festival — further demonstrate the range of flavours inherent in Dubai’s culinary offer, which is inspired by both Arabic traditions and those of the 200+ nationalities who live in the Emirate, and is one of the key themes of the festival. Helal Saeed Almarri, Director-General, DTCM, said: “The quality and range of our culinary offering is something that will increasingly be used as a tourism driver and through the Dubai Food Festival we will demonstrate the variety of offer that exists across the Emirate, including world-class international brands, homegrown restaurants, and high quality street-food.” Laila Mohammed Suhail, Chief Executive Officer, DFRE said: “We are pleased with the response that we had from various stakeholders of Dubai’s food industry and gastronomy sector.” “The programme has been designed with all tastes in mind. From family-friendly consumer events to more industry focused forums and conferences, both residents and visitors can look forward to a festival that is as exciting and inclusive as it is delicious,” she said. Joining the line-up of events already announced including the Dubai Food Carnival, Gulfood, The Big Grill, and Taste of Dubai, will be the Grand Kerala Festival, The Taste of Peru, and the Global Restaurant Investment Forum. The Emirates Airline Festival of Literature 2014, Gulf Photo Plus 2014 and the Dubai International Boat Show will join the celebrations through specific culinary related activities and initiatives. Adding star power to the festival’s programme will be over 26 celebrity chefs. Representing restaurants and cuisines from around the world, these culinary stars include well-known names such as French Chef, Jean Christophe Novelli; Australian power pair, Greg and Lucy Malouf; Queen of the Arabic Kitchen, Egyptian Chef, Manal Al Alem; Lebanon’s Chef of the Year 2013, Maroun Chedid; and Indian TV personality, Sanjeev Kapoor. Home to more than 200 nationalities, Dubai’s diversity is reflected in its restaurant offer, a fact represented by two of the new confirmations to the programme. The Grand Kerala Festival (February 20-22) will showcase the rich flavours and vibrant colours of India’s southern state, with Dubai’s Wonderland transformed into a bustling Kerala village, complete with a lively array of exciting events and entertainment and authentic Malayalee cuisine. From South India to South America, the Taste of Peru (February 26 to March 1) will see Madinat Jumeirah Souk Madinat transformed into a four-day celebration of Peruvian gastronomy. The event will include appearances from celebrity Peruvian chefs and live Peruvian music, and feature award-winning cuisine inspired by a nearly 500-year melting pot of cultures and cuisines. The festival is set to take place between February 21 and March 15 at locations across Dubai. news@khaleejtimes.com For more news from Khaleej Times, follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/khaleejtimes , and on Twitter at @khaleejtimes Continue reading
Lebanon forms government after 10-month deadlock
Lebanon forms government after 10-month deadlock (Reuters) / 16 February 2014 Prime Minister Tammam Salam hopes the new government would allow Lebanon to hold presidential elections before May. Lebanon announced a new government on Saturday, breaking a 10-month political deadlock during which spillover violence from neighbouring Syria worsened internal instability. A caretaker government has run the country since former Prime Minister Najib Mikati resigned in March as parties aligned with the Hezbollah movement and a Sunni-led rival bloc pursued a power struggle exacerbated by their support for opposing sides in Syria’s almost three-year-old civil war. “A government in the national interest was formed in a spirit of inclusivity,” new Prime Minister Tammam Salam declared on live television. He said he hoped the new government would allow Lebanon to hold presidential elections before President Michel Suleiman’s mandate expires in May and finally conduct parliamentary polls that were postponed last year due to the political impasse. “I extend my hand to all the leaders and I am relying on their wisdom to reach these goals and I call on all of them together to make concessions in the interest of our national project,” he said. Parliament designated the Sunni lawmaker as prime minister in April 2013, but he had been unable to form a cabinet for months due to rivalries between the Hezbollah-dominated March 8 bloc and the March 14 alliance, led by the Sunni Future Party. Former Energy Minister Gebran Bassil, from the March 8 bloc, becomes foreign minister. Former Health Minister Ali Hassan Khalil, also from March 8, takes the finance portfolio. Nouhad Machnouk, a March 14 legislator, was named interior minister. Salam said his “national interest government” had a mandate to fight mounting security problems, which he linked to Syria. “We must also deal with our complicated economic and social issues, the most important of which is the growing number of refugees from our Syrian brothers and the burdens this has placed on Lebanon,” he said. Sectarian violence has erupted sporadically in the past year, particularly in the north, and car bombings targeting both security and political targets have increased dramatically, with Hezbollah-dominated areas being the most frequent target. “We want this new government to open the doors for a complete settlement and to get the country back on the train to stability,” Finance Minister Khalil told Reuters by telephone. Salam had tried again to form a government last month, but was thwarted by a row over who would hold the energy portfolio, a ministry given extra weight by the discovery of potential gas and oil reserves off Lebanon’s Mediterranean coast. The Christian Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), a Hezbollah ally, had insisted former Energy Minister Bassil keep his post. The dispute was finally resolved with the appointment of Arthur Nazarian, from the FPM-aligned Tashnag, a small Armenian party. “The top priority of this government will be stability and security, and also to improve people’s daily life, and I think one of the essential things that is important to all Lebanese is the petroleum issue,” Bassil told a news conference. Salam had earlier made a deal with political parties that requires all cabinet roles to be rotated among different religious groups in each new government, so that no sect can indefinitely dominate a particular ministry. Lebanon, still struggling to recover from its own 1975-1990 civil war, has found its internal rifts aggravated by the conflict in Syria, whose sectarian divisions mirror its own. The Future party supports the anti-Assad uprising led largely by the Syria’s Sunni majority. Syria’s war has stoked a region-wide struggle for influence involving Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-ruled states against Iran and its Shia allies in Lebanon and Iraq. The Lebanese cabinet deal could signal that those powers want to stem the sectarian violence convulsing Syria and rippling across Lebanon, Iraq and other countries. In a televised speech on Friday, Future party head Saad Hariri, a former prime minister who threw his weight behind a unity government with March 8 last month, vowed to tackle sectarian radicalism within his own Sunni sect. He also called on Hezbollah to pull its forces out Syria to prevent a “sectarian holocaust” in Lebanon. For more news from Khaleej Times, follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/khaleejtimes , and on Twitter at @khaleejtimes Continue reading
Rise in Internet use reason for decline in family time
Rise in Internet use reason for decline in family time Staff Reporter / 16 February 2014 Expats suggest parents must try and spend at least the weekends with their kids, teenagers must try and give time to their parents. For Indian national Shreya Venkatesh (14) and her mother Kalpana Venkatesh, the idea of not spending enough time with each other is something of an alien concept. The Venkatesh family has been living in the UAE for the last 10 years. “I have two kids and I am very much involved with them. I always try and spend as much time as I can with them. One of the reasons I decided to become a stay-at-home mom, is so that I can pay attention to the needs of the kids,” said Kalpana. In response to her mother’s comment, Shreya said: “I think children and parents must make it a point to spend at least one entire day a week with each other. I have a lot of my friends whose parents work outside and parents lock their gadgets up. They don’t have any other options, except study at home.” Parents in the UAE are spending much less time together with their kids compared to when they were growing up, according to a survey of more than 1,200 expats conducted by 999 Magazine. Conducted in January, the survey points out that on an average, expat parents in the UAE spend just 50 minutes of quality time together with their children on a normal working day, with a slight improvement on Thursday (75 minutes). Some of the reasons include increased workloads of parents and children, longer commuting time, increased time spent watching TV and being on the Internet. The poll shows that the UAE’s expat families have a little more than 11 hours together in total each week, with weekends the best time for family bonding. Khaleej Times caught up with a few expatriate residents in Dubai, and all of them are of the opinion that parents must try and spend at least the weekends with their kids. They added that teenagers must try and give time to their parents, as well. Student and Pakistani national Maryam Waris (21) said: “With the state that the economy is in, parents have no other choice except work. But weekends can be kept aside for the family. Growing up, I didn’t face much of a problem with my folks not giving me enough time, but kids must also take the initiative to spend time with their parents, especially teenagers.” Another Pakistani national Mubeena Waris (23) said: “I think that off late, because parents don’t spend enough time with children, a lot of children have low emotional maturity. Parents must take care of their kids and must be careful not to drag them into their personal problems like fights between parents.” Twenty-four-year old insurance consultant Rebecca Pinto said: “I used to spend time with my parents every weekend and even though my dad used to be away for work while I was growing up, I never got the feeling of being left out of anything. I used to spend a lot of time with my extended family, like my grandparents as well. I think off late there is a trend where kids are a little emotionally stunted because they don’t spend sufficient time with parents.” Janeiro D’souza (23) said: “Weekends were strictly family time. We would see to that we have lunch or dinner with the family. It is the parent’s duty to spend time with the child, and if they can’t do it, then it is very unfortunate. If the parent does not do so, there is a high tendency for the child to drift away.” The survey further stated that even when families get together, more than six in 10 parents (62 per cent) said the quality of time spent is not great as most of it is spent either in front of the TV, doing homework, reading, playing computer games or some other tasks that don’t qualify as quality family time. Experts are warning against the dangers of not spending enough quality time with children, maintaining that family time can be ‘therapeutic’ and acts as a deterrent to potential serious problems. The decline in family time in the past few years coincides with a rise in Internet use and the popularity of social networks. dhanusha@khaleejtimes.com For more news from Khaleej Times, follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/khaleejtimes , and on Twitter at @khaleejtimes Continue reading
