Beside Moroccan participants, active figures in the field of literature came to attend the festival from different Arab and African countries such as Egypt, Yemen, Iraq and Senegal. Also a large audience was present making the inauguration procedures exceptional.  

The event included honoring different figures including the manger of the Tamazight Radio Programs.

to be continued……………..

Morocco is ploughing ahead with a programme to boost wind energy production, particularly in the southern Tarfaya region, where Africa's largest wind farm is set to open in 2014.

The kingdom, which has no hydrocarbon reserves of its own, hopes to cover 42 percent of its energy needs with renewable sources by 2020, and has launched a plan to produce 4,000 megawatts.

Half of this will come from solar energy: at the beginning of May, the first of five solar power plants near Ouarzazate was officially launched, and the site is set to be operational from 2015.

Wind power will supply the remaining 2,000 MW, and Morocco's wind-blown southern coast, where many of the new farms will be built, already resembles a huge building site.

At Tarfaya, which will be home to the continent's biggest wind farm, the project led by the French company GDF Suez, in partnership with local company Nareva Holding, is only just beginning.

"Building started at the end of December 2012. But the first section, which will produce 50 MW, will be in service in January," Francis Schang, a manager at Siemens which is carrying out the work, said.

"It's a high-speed project," he added. By December 2014, if all goes to plan, 131 turbines, each 80 metres (260 feet) tall, will dot the desert landscape.

Together they will produce 300 MW, enough to meet the energy needs of several hundred people, Schang said.

At a cost of nearly 500 million euros ($640 million), the Tarfaya wind farm, stretching over nearly 20 kilometres (12 miles), will allow Morocco to "avoid CO2 emissions equal to the amount absorbed by 150 million trees," Boutaina Sefiani, the head of the project, said.

The main problem that has to be addressed is the effect sand from the surrounding desert will have on the turbine mechanisms, Schang said.

"The turbines will require greater maintenance, with a special sealing treatment," he said.

The Akhfennir wind farm around 100 kilometres east of Tarfaya is much smaller, but is almost ready to start production.

In the middle of a rocky desert plateau, where only a few camels and their herders wander, 50 turbines are already turning in the wind.

Around 10 more turbines will be switched on in June, allowing them to produce 100 MW, Mohamed Ben Osmane, project manager for Moroccan Wind Energy (Energie Eolienne du Maroc, EEM), said, adding that the site's capacity is expected to double over time.

As plans to boost the country's wind energy production progress, Energy Minister Fouad Douiri said he hoped to see renewable sources developed even further.

"Between the sites that are operational and those that are still under construction, we are reaching 1,000 MW from wind power," Douiri said.

"The wind programme is coming along well," he said.

"We think that between now and 2020 we may even be producing a little more than 2,000 MW. And after 2020, we will keep going. There is the potential to take this much further."

Middle East Online

Hachiko

During their time together, the professor would take a train ride home each working day and be greeted by Hachiko at the train station. Hachiko would sit and wait for the professor at the end of each working day, without fail. The pair continued this daily ritual until sadly one day the professor suffered from a cerebral hemorrhage (brain bleed), and passed away, never to return to the train station again where his beloved companion was waiting.

For the next nine years, Hachiko attracted the attention of many people far and wide as each day, without fail, he would visit the train station as normal and wait for his owner, hoping to see his best friend step off the train and greet him once again.

Hachiko passed away in 1935, aged 11 years.  A movie was released in 2009 based on the story of Hachiko and the professor, called Hachi.

Ref : Wikepedia

Read and Animated Cinderella story

Police originally arrested the Frenchman on charges of paedophilia, "setting up a criminal organisation" and "illegal residency" in the kingdom.

On Tuesday, a court handed the accused a 12-year jail term, police sources said, confirming reports in the Arabic-language dailies Akhbar al-Yaoum and Al-Massae.

He also received a fine of 60,000 dirhams ($7,000) to be paid to the family of the girl whose complaint lead to his arrest.

Akhbar al-Yaoum reported that he had confessed to the charges, but police sources said that the accused had appealed the verdict.

The police sources added that the French national had come to live in Morocco four years ago, fleeing the possibility of prosecution for paedophilia at home.

After he arrived in Morocco, he started relationships with two young women he employed as domestic workers, before asking them to help him meet 10-year-old girls.

The two young women were also jailed for eight months for "complicity in forming a criminal organisation".

Thousands of people marched in Casablanca on May 5th to protest against child sexual abuse after a harrowing assault last month in the northwestern Sidi Kacem region nearly killed a young girl.

Police originally arrested the Frenchman on charges of paedophilia, "setting up a criminal organisation" and "illegal residency" in the kingdom.

On Tuesday, a court handed the accused a 12-year jail term, police sources said, confirming reports in the Arabic-language dailies Akhbar al-Yaoum and Al-Massae.

He also received a fine of 60,000 dirhams ($7,000) to be paid to the family of the girl whose complaint lead to his arrest.

Akhbar al-Yaoum reported that he had confessed to the charges, but police sources said that the accused had appealed the verdict.

The police sources added that the French national had come to live in Morocco four years ago, fleeing the possibility of prosecution for paedophilia at home.

After he arrived in Morocco, he started relationships with two young women he employed as domestic workers, before asking them to help him meet 10-year-old girls.

The two young women were also jailed for eight months for "complicity in forming a criminal organisation".

Thousands of people marched in Casablanca on May 5th to protest against child sexual abuse after a harrowing assault last month in the northwestern Sidi Kacem region nearly killed a young girl.

You totally don’t want to think about it right now, but finals are just around the corner. That means you can add studying for them to your already vast to-do list. Here are some helpful hints on how to prepare for your exams and get everything else done.

Tip 1: Start early
Preparation for exams should begin earlier than the day before the test. You can’t cram an entire unit of information into an all-nighter. Get started at least a week before the exam.

Tip 2: Organize
Begin by making yourself a calendar outlining a daily schedule of topics for review. Cover a small amount of material for each class each day. Every time you complete a topic, give yourself a mini review.

Tip 3: Outline
Once you have decided what you need to study and how much time you need to spend studying, it is time to actually study. One of the best ways is to make succinct outlines. As you read over your textbook and class notes, write a brief summary for each topic. Highlight the areas in your outline that were most troublesome. When you have finished with all the material, you will have an outline you can review.

Tip 4: Make flashcards
Similar to outlining, making flashcards is a really helpful technique for studying. By writing down the information from your outline, you are already doing half the studying. Once the flashcards are complete, you will have a portable study packet to look over.

Tip 5: Get help
If you are having trouble memorizing something or a particular concept is just not sinking in, get help before it’s too late. Ask your teacher to go over a glitch you might be having. Or if memorizing 200 vocabulary words seems like too much to do, recruit your family members to quiz you with index cards.

Tip 6: Sleep
You need at least seven hours of sleep a night to function. Tests are designed to make you think. If you are sleep-deprived, you won’t be able to remember any of the information you worked so hard to cram into your brain.

Tip 7:Stay calm
Do not panic at the exam! Even if at first glance the test is overwhelming, remember to breathe. If a question seems too hard, answer all the questions you know, then return to the ones you left blank. Remind yourself that you are prepared.

Tip 8: Don’t rush
You have spent at least two weeks studying, so what’s another couple of minutes? Work through the exam slowly and read all the questions before answering them. If you are done before the time is up, look over your answers.

Tip 9: Relax post-exam
Don’t let panic overwhelm you. Even if you think you bombed the exam, worrying will not change your score. It may, however, affect your mindset for your next final. Zone out the last test and stay focused on the next one. Odds are, you didn’t do as badly as you think.

Source: www.fastweb.com

Are sheep too smart for their own good, or are they just plain dumb? Is it matter of supernatural sense of unity or is it just an animal stupidness?  I’ll let you to judge and discuss that after you have read this bizarre yet slightly fascinating story which happened in 2005 in Turkey .

ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) – Stunned Turkish shepherds, who had left the herd of sheep to graze, while they had breakfast, one sheep decided that it had enough of the world and jumped to its death. It doesn’t stop there though…

As the  shepherds looked on, their herd of sheep one by one followed the initial sheep’s actions and jumped one after one to their death as well –  a nearly whopping 1,500 of them!

In the end, 450 sheep died after the mass suicide jump, lay on top of one another in a white pile, the Aksam newspaper said. Those who jumped later were saved as the pile got higher, cushioning the fall, the daily newspaper Aksam reported.

"There's nothing we can do. They're all wasted," Nevzat Bayhan, a member of one of 26 families whose sheep were grazing together in the herd, was quoted as saying by Aksam.

The estimated loss to families in the town of Gevas, located in Van province in eastern Turkey, is close to 100,000 Turkish lira, which is equal to roughly $91,000 Cdn. This is a significant amount of money in a country where average GDP per person is around $2,700 US.

"Every family had an average of 20 sheep," Aksam quoted another villager, Abdullah Hazar as saying. "But now only a few families have sheep left. It's going to be hard for us "

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