Qatar Divorce Rate 12th Highest in the World
Today’s story in The Peninsula examines the increasing number of divorces this year, in relation to the number of marriages.
Not a single expert quoted mentions that perhaps many of these marriages were bad alliances in the first place. One expert continually mentions the problem being women having greater access to divorce.
It is no surprise that women who have access to divorce get out of bad marriages.
She is supposed to stay with a man addicted to pornography?
With a man who cannot complete the sexual act?
With a man with a drug problem?
With a man who is openly gay, and she is to provide cover?
With a man who has a fatal sexually transmitted disease which he neglected to disclose?
With a man who is still emotionally attached to his long-time girlfriend and was forced to marry another woman?
With a man who hits her?
With a man who ignores her and goes off with his friends all the time in preference to spending time with her? (Yes, expectations for marriage are higher now than they used to be. Times change. Expectatons change.)
(These are all stories told to me by local women about failed marriages.)
I’m not a big fan of divorce. I think marriage is serious business, and a lot of hard work. And I strongly believe that women need to have the exact same access to divorce that men have. I don’t see any of the experts citing male behavior as a possible cause of this divorce rate.
Divorce rate to reach new high this year
Web posted at: 12/30/2009 5:38:55
Source ::: The Peninsula / BY SATISH KANADY
DOHA: Qatar’s divorce rate is steadily going up. Crossing last year’s figure of 939 divorces, a total of 982 couples split in the country during the first 11 months of this year.
Going by the latest data released by the Qatar Statistics Authority (QSA), more than 80 divorces take place every month in the country. The 2009 figure is expected to cross the 1,000 mark once the figures for December come in.
According to the QSA, of the 982 divorce cases this year, 655 involved Qatari women. The number of non-Qatari women who split with their spouse during the period was 327.
The months of April, May and June witnessed a large number of divorces. While 127 women got divorced during the month of May, 107 and 101 women got divorced in June and April, respectively.
It may be noted that a recent international study identified Qatar as the country with the 12th highest divorce rate in the world. The country has 0.97 divorces per thousand people, it said.
The total number of divorces in the country in 1999 was 496. However, the number has grown steadily over the past decade and touched 997 in 2007, with a total of 721 Qataris and 276 non-Qataris getting estranged. Though the rate went down in 2008 (939), this year’s figures are expected to break the 2007 record.
The QSA’s figures are disturbing against the backdrop of the fact that the total number of marriages held this year in Qatar until November 2009 was 2,917, against which the number of divorces was 982.
Against the 266 marriages that took place last month, 90 couples got divorced. Of them, 57 included Qatari women. In the month of May, which witnessed the largest number of divorces — 127 — the number of marriages was 323.
Opinions are divided among Qatari social scientists on the data revealed by the QSA. While a section of them sees the divorces as a direct consequence of Qatar’s “culture shock”, others say QSA’s methodology in collecting the data is not foolproof and the figures do not seem realistic.
“The data collected from the courts need not necessarily reflect the exact divorce rate in Qatar. For, there are a large number of cases where the couples re-join after obtaining a divorce from the court”, said a Qatari woman scholar who is doing research on Qatar’s broken families and divorces.
However, Moza Al Malki, a prominent Qatari psychologist, said: “Qatari women’s exposure to the changing world and their growing self-reliant nature are the prime reasons for this social problem.”
Al Kula, a system that encourages women to approach a court if they are not comfortable with their partner, is also contributing to the growing number of divorces, she added.
Qatar: “We Are a Nation That Does Not Read”
This is one of the saddest articles I could read, a Nation that Does Not Read.
There is a secret to teaching your child to read. The secret is: be readers.
When a child grows up surrounded by books and magazines, when she grows up seeing her parents with books, magazines and newspapers in their hands, guess what happens? The child also grows up to be a reader.
YOU are the key to your child’s reading. Do you read to your children before bed every night? Do they already have their favorite books? Do you use books to reward good behavior?
There is a world of wonderful children’s books out there for children of every age. I commend Qatar for taking these first steps to create a nation of readers, and I urge that this be a long term project, with continuing support.
There are several bookstores in Qatar – the Jarir has a large number of children’s books. Virgin has books. The Dar ath Thaqafa stores have children’s books. There is a store in City Center called Eye Spy which has all kinds of children’s educational resources, it is up on the third floor, I believe. Buy books when you are travelling abroad and give them out during the year as special treats. You CAN create a nation of readers. 🙂
From the Gulf Times
Club will nurture rare ‘book worms’
By Ourouba Hussein
The Childhood Cultural Centre is to launch an ambitious project that aims to inculcate the reading habit among children in Qatar.
Called the “Book Club”, the project was conceived after a study found that children in Qatar read only a quarter of a page per year.
Book Club project manager Abdullah Hamid al-Mulla said that children in Qatar read almost nothing outside their syllabus while children in the US read 11 books a year and their counterparts in the UK 8 books.
“We are a nation that does not read,” he stated.
According to the study, the number of books published in the Arab world is eight for every 12,000 children, al-Mullah said, adding “we know why Arabs are lagging in many fields”.
He said the project, under the slogan “a trip into the minds of people”, targeted children in the age group of 6-18 years and aimed at expanding their perceptions, as well as creating a reading culture.
He noted that since statistics showed that Arabs did not read more than six minutes per year and experience proved that children did not go to libraries or book clubs, the centre decided to reach out to them, in schools and “wherever they are”.
“We will work out agreements with schools and provide the books in schools also.”
Al-Mullah said incentives associated with the project that will be launched in conjunction with the Doha Book Fair 2009, featured excursions inside and outside Qatar, awards and cultural publications. The book fair opens at the Doha International Exhibition Centre today.
He explained that once a child is registered with the club, he will earn points according to participation in activities organised by the forum.
“Points are earned according to the level of the child’s usage of the free library, reciting stories for reading groups or attempts to write on his own, as well as participation in workshops,” he said.
According to the number of points earned, the child will be rewarded.
Al-Mulla also pointed out that experts would be available to help children select the most appropriate books.
He noted that the club’s pavilion at the Doha Book Fair will introduce many interactive educational projects for children.
Stieg Larsson and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
I needed some escape time, so I started The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, a mystery by Stieg Larsson, set in Sweden. I love these detective stories set in other countries; I can learn something as I pass the time reading an exciting mystery. And part of my heritage is Swedish, so I thought this should really be fun.
It wasn’t, at least not at the beginning. At the beginning, I didn’t like any of the characters, and they were always eating sandwiches that sounded awful, like liverwurst and egg. I felt like the characters didn’t have any moral center, like they drifted from day to day without neither conscience nor a plan. The main character, Mikael Blomkvist, is about to go to prison for libel; he printed a story about a major industrialist which turned out to be false, and he protected his source. We don’t really know the whole story, not until the end, which makes it hard to evoke a lot of sympathy for Blomkvist.
He is contacted by another industrialist, and asked to solve a mystery, if possible, about the disappearance, 40 years ago, of his niece, Harriet Vanger. Blomkvist would investigate under the cover of writing an autobiography of his employer and his family. There are members of the family who object. In many ways, it isn’t a very nice family.
Blomkvist gets an assistant, a deeply troubled and flawed young woman, Lisbeth Salander, with a gift for investigation. There is a lot of violence, sexual violence, and mutilation of animals. One of the points I credit Larsson with making is the amount of violence against women in Sweden, which goes on under a seemingly civilized veneer. The truth, as I see it, is that there is violence against women in every society; in some it is better documented than in others. In some, it is better punished that others. It exists in all societies, in all countries.
Another think I ended up liking about the book was that the main character, Blomkvist, who writes financial analysis, takes the press to task for printing what passes for financial news without critically reading and evaluating, which he feels is a responsibility of the press. At one point, as people quail with fear that the stock exchange will drop dramatically, he is interviewed and explains that the stock market is based on perceptions, while the Swedish economy is based on production and services; that while the markets may fail, the economy can still be going strong.
Slowly, the book tightens up. Actually, by the end, I was hooked. The only question in my mind is – did I like it enough to read another?
The book is available, new, from Amazon.com at $6.00 plus shipping.
New Qatar Traffic Violations and Fines
Update: LLOOLL, I went to QatarLiving.com and discovered that these “new” laws came out in 2007. These are great laws, deterrents to bad driving and aggressive driving, but the laws mean nothing without enforcement. Do I still see many many children sitting in the front seat? Are people driving while talking on their mobile phones? And not a word about one of the worst offenses these days – texting.
A recent study showed texting is even more dangerous while driving than talking on a mobile phone:
The crash risk attributable to texting is substantial. One possible explanation is that drivers who text tend to decrease their minimum following distance and also experience delayed reaction time. For example, in the Drews et al. study, drivers’ median reaction time increased by 30% when they were texting and 9% when they talked on the phone, compared with their performance in a driving-only condition.
Notwithstanding the safety risk of texting while driving, previous research by Drews and colleagues at the University of Utah — not to mention crash data and widespread legislation — makes clear that using a phone while driving is dangerous.
(To check my source, just click on the blue type, above)
We were talking about people who were saying “Qatar is the most dangerous place to drive in the world” and wondering where this is coming from? Most of us have driven in more dangerous places, but this is the new quote floating around, with no foundation, no statistics, no studies, at least not any I can find with a simple Google.
The topic of new laws came up next over Christmas dinner. New laws? New fines?
“I never saw a word about this in the paper,” I said, peevishly.
“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” said AdventureMan.
People who have been married a long time will understand the urge to kill . . .
Someone else jumped in,
“I think the different companies are passing it around. The Education Foundation has it. Some of the universities have it. That’s the way it is in Qatar, news of new laws filters out.”
LLLOOOLLL. News of new laws “filters out?”
I found it online HERE, at Team BPH and it looks exactly like the copy AdventureMan brought home yesterday, but there is no attribution. Who put this out? There is no kind of official marking on it at all.
IF ENFORCED, these laws would have a serious effect on Qatar traffic.
In theory, these went into effect in November 2009, just last month. Who issued these? Has there been any coverage in the newspapers? TV? How can people be held accountable for violating laws of which they are not aware? Or is this something one of the companies printed up, anticipating new laws?
Three Market Trends for 2010
From The Peninsula Business Section
Three market trends to watch for in ’10
Web posted at: 12/27/2009 11:51:49
Source ::: LAT-WP
Washington: In case you missed it, Treasury Secretary Timothy F Geithner this week promised America that there won’t be another financial crisis in 2010.
“We’re not going to have a second wave of financial crisis,” Geithner said in an interview with National Public Radio. “We’ll do what is necessary to prevent that. We cannot afford to let the country live again with a risk that we’re going to have another series of events like we had last year.”
Well, there it is. And you wonder why the stock market is at 14-month highs? Anyone who has deep-seated doubts about the financial system’s health may view Geithner’s explicit guarantee as a sign of dangerous government hubris, or simple naivete.
But his promise does address what is for some investors the pre-eminent question about 2010: Can the world avoid another calamity on the scale of what fueled the markets’ meltdown from September 2008 to March 2009?
To put it another way: Your financial planning for the new year would be a lot easier if you knew that the chance of another collapse was remote even if markets were likely to be volatile.
The strongest evidence against a second collapse is that the credit crisis has eased dramatically. That may not be evident in banks’ lending. But by many key barometers, including new issuance of corporate bonds and the rates banks charge each other for short-term loans, credit has begun to flow again worldwide.
If we assume that Geithner is right about the absence of another mega-crisis in 2010, I think there are three important financial trends that either got under way or accelerated in 2009 that also will be critical for investors and savers in the new year:
The Great Deleveraging rolls on. Many Americans piled on excessive debts in the 1980s, 1990s and first half of this decade. On that much, everyone agrees. Now, that total household debt load of $14 trillion is being worked down — voluntarily, as people pay off credit cards, for example, or involuntarily, as banks force foreclosures. Consumer credit excluding mortgages fell for a ninth straight month in October, a record stretch of declines, according to Federal Reserve data.
But debt reduction has a “long, long way to go,” says Ian Shepherdson, chief US economist at High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, New York. The question is whether it can proceed without tipping the economy back into recession.
One ticking time bomb: a jump in 2010 in the number of homeowners with so-called option ARM loans who will see their loan rates reset at higher levels.
An obvious implication of consumers’ need to reduce debt is that people will save more and consume less than before. That will be a continuing drag on the economic recovery. I know we’ve all heard that a million times, but that doesn’t make it less true.
The upshot: no imminent rate relief for savers who now are lucky to earn 1 percent or 2 percent on their cash.
Corporate earnings keep improving. Expectations of a profit recovery helped stoke the stock market’s turnaround in March. Wall Street has been pleasantly surprised since then.
Starting with the current quarter, earnings are forecast to begin rising, albeit from extremely depressed year-earlier levels.
Sales have edged up for many companies this year as the global economy has begun to rebound. But a big part of the profit-recovery story has stemmed from companies’ slashing of their payrolls, driving the US unemployment rate above 10 percent for the first time since 1982.
Many investors keep looking for a middle ground on risk-taking. That means cash probably will keep pouring into bonds — at least until some people discover, to their surprise, that it’s possible to lose money in fixed-income securities, too.
Small investors usually are prone to chasing hot stock markets. Not this year. Even as the US stock market has continued to rally Americans have shunned domestic stock mutual funds. Each week since late August more cash has been pulled from them than has flowed in via new purchases, according to the Investment Company Institute’s data.
Mixed Forecast
Interesting article from today’s Peninsula Business Section on rising mortgage trends in the United States. The views are so mixed; is the economy recovering? Are there going to be buyers for all those houses on the market? Will they find a way to forestall the next round of foreclosures as ARMs come due and new rates kick in?
US mortgages on upward trend
Web posted at: 12/27/2009 11:52:57
Source ::: LAT-WP
WASHINGTON: After hitting an all-time low in early December, the average rate on a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage rose to 5.05 percent this week and could climb to 6 percent by the end of 2010, if not sooner, according to giant mortgage financier Freddie Mac.
The results are noteworthy because rates have not topped 5 percent since the last week of October, when they reached 5.03 percent, based on the results of this closely watched survey, which polls lenders during the first three days of every week.
Many firms regularly track interest rates and come up with slightly different numbers because they survey different lenders at different times of the day or week. But several have reported the upward trend in recent weeks. They attribute it in part to the effects of the holiday season, when demand for buying and refinancing homes dies down and financial markets coast through the end of the year.
“However, this is also a glimpse of what we’re going to see in 2010,” said Greg McBride, a senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com, a personal finance Web site.
The key catalyst for interest rates going forward will be the end of a Federal Reserve program that buys a sizable chunk of mortgage-backed securities issued by firms such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That program succeeded in immediately pushing mortgage rates well below the 6 percent mark when it was announced last year.
But the Fed has committed to winding down the program by March. The central bank is betting that by gradually tapering its purchases, private buyers of mortgage-backed securities, who have largely been absent from the market, will return and rates won’t rise much.
But Amy Crews Cutts, deputy chief economist at Freddie Mac, said interest rates are bound to rise to six percent by the end of 2010 because private buyers will demand a higher rate of return on the securities than the Fed did. Lenders may have to raise the rates they charge to consumers in order to make that happen.
“Extraordinary resources have been put into keeping the rates down and supporting the mortgage markets and it’s hard to imagine that the rates can go much lower than they are,” Crews Cutts said. “Anything we get at or below five percent is a gift at this point.”
This week’s Freddie Mac survey found that the 5.05 percent average on 30-year fixed-rate loans (with an average 0.7 point) was up from 4.94 percent the previous week but down from 5.14 percent at the same time last year. The all-time weekly low since the firm started tracking the numbers in 1971 was in the first week of December, when rates fell to 4.71 percent.
Many borrowers have not been able to secure the best rates because they lack the stellar credit scores and hefty down payments that many lenders now demand. Some who have tried to refinance have not been able to qualify because their home prices have plummeted to the point where they now owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth.
But anyone who can secure a loan should not wait much longer, especially if they are looking to refinance, McBride said. Homeowners are more sensitive to interest rates when they refinance than when they buy a home. “The difference between 5 percent and 5.5 percent could mean the difference between refinancing or not,” he said.
But the interest rate is less critical to people who want to buy a home, McBride said. In that case, price and affordability should trump interest rates.
From the Fireworks Crew
As a reply to one of the comments on an earlier post about the Qatar National Day Fireworks Program, the crew that planned, organized and executed the fireworks display commented:
21 crew, 8 x 40 foot shipping containers of equipment, 2 weeks setup, 3 days of bloody rain, 17 pontoons over 3.2km, 1 island with 25 firing positions, kilometers of cable, countless hours of programming, 18 minutes of show, 4 days to pack it all back up and then fly home…great show, but exhausting! Very glad you enjoyed it!
Imagine! Imagine the work that goes into those 18 minutes. . . .
And I bet they are off soon to do New Year’s in some other fabulous location. Imagine, what a life that must be!
A Child Is Born!
Duccio di Buoninsegna
detail: The Nativity with the Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel, 1308/1311
Andrew W. Mellon Collection
May the Peace of God fill our hearts with love and compassion, and may it inspire us all to be better neighbors to one another.
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