Some 120,000 festival-goers vibrated to the enchanting rhythms of fusions, finding in four cities of the Kingdom the magic of the Gnaoua Festival, which is one of the most popular and appreciated events in the cultural landscape, indicated, on Saturday, the organizers of the Gnaoua Festival Tour, placed under the High Patronage of His Majesty King Mohammed VI. The four stages of the Festival, namely Essaouira, Marrakech, Casablanca and Rabat, met with success beyond expectations, they underlined in a press release closing this special edition. “The public responded with strength and joy, as did the artists, with a dialogue that was played on stage, every evening, during the 30 concerts of the Festival”, they added. According to the organizers, the Gnaoua maâlems have once once more proven the strength of their heritage and the success of the exchange, inviting musicians from all over the world to share, create a renewed dialogue and contribute to the enrichment of diversity. culture and human creativity. The Gnaoua Festival Tour was a real success with more than 150 artists, including 23 maâlems who performed during 30 colorful and emotional concerts, in addition to an exceptional artistic program thought out, created and carried out with passion by the two artistic directors. , the great maalem Abdeslam Alikane and the talented drummer Karim Ziad, the same source said. Moments of pure musical magic during fusions will remain in the annals, such as those tinged with jazz by Avishai Cohen Trio with saxophonist Emile Parisien and accordionist Vincent Peirani in fusion with the great Hamid El Kasri at the end of the tour in Rabat , enriched by the sweetness of Nabyla Maan, those charged with energy from the Trio Assala, or the Cubans of CimaFunk with the maâlems Khalid Sansi and Ismail Rahil. Recalling that in December 2019, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco), which considers intangible cultural heritage as a crucible of cultural diversity and guarantor of sustainable development, granted the status of intangible cultural heritage of humanity in the Gnaoua, the press release specifies that “The Gnawa culture continues to gain in popularity and vitality, in Morocco and throughout the world”, affirming that the artists present during this exceptional tour, musicians and musicians from Morocco and the 15 invited countries, showed the power of cultural mixing when artistic encounters create bridges.
In addition, the musicians, who were present in force, enchanted the public and conquered the press through the performances of the two malemates, Asmaa Hamzaoui and the young Hind Ennaira, the Senegalese with the golden voice Kya Loum, the guardian of the temple of Moroccan song, Soukaina Fahsi, the bewitching Hindi Zahra, the virtuoso flautist Naïssam Jalal, the singer Fama Mbaye from Mauritania, the American drummer prodigy of Avishai Cohen Trio Roni Kaspi and the profound Nabyla Maan, a true trait of union between contemporary music and the Arab-Andalusian tradition. The organization of the Gnaoua Festival Tour confirms this in the wake of 22 successful editions of the Gnaoua and World Music Festival, thus taking up the challenge of crossing generations. After two years of stoppage due to Covid-19, the festival’s tour through 4 cities has once once more demonstrated the remarkable ability of the Gnaoua to federate and participate in the promotion of the values of openness, tolerance and share. And the same source recalls that the producer of the festival, Neïla Tazi, declared during the closing evening that the organizers have from the beginning chosen to approach this project as if it were an inexhaustible treasure. waiting to be discovered and conquered, that of “our popular culture and our youth”. The Gnaoua Festival Tour was also an opportunity to allow the new generation of Gnaoua artists to show the full extent of their talent, alongside big names in Tagnaouite, featuring the next generation of Gnaoua and young Maâlems, who have taken up the torch and have become the guarantors of sustainability.
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Diplomatic successes, military strategy… Morocco is driving the Algerian regime crazy, says a political scientist
written by Alexandra Hartman Editor-in-Chief
The Algerian regime is mad with rage following Morocco’s recent diplomatic successes on the international scene and the military balance of power favorable to the Kingdom, said Moroccan political scientist Tajeddine Houssaini.
“Morocco has just recorded important positive points regarding the Sahara following Germany, Spain and other countries, especially African countries, have considered the autonomy proposal as the most serious, credible and the most realistic”, said this professor of international law, in an interview with Le360.
“These successes added to the balance of forces have destabilized the Algerian military regime which is doing everything to camouflage its humiliation”, explains the political scientist.
Algiers broke diplomatic relations with Morocco, uttered all kinds of insults once morest the Kingdom, invented false information, closed its airspace, closed the Maghreb gas pipeline before attacking Spain by recalling its ambassador in Madrid and by freezing the Treaty of Friendship, Good Neighborliness and Cooperation which binds it to Spain, recalled Tajeddine Houssaini.
“It is surprising that such a regime behaves in this way by daring to shout from the rooftops, but without convincing, that it is in no way a party to the conflict over the Sahara”, remarks this expert, who asks: who shelters, finances, arms and deploys its army, its diplomacy and its means in this affair?
In his argument, Tajeddine Houssaini cites the letter just sent by Morocco’s ambassador and representative to the UN, Omar Hilale, to the Security Council. “In this letter, Morocco refers to Security Council resolution 2602 in which Algiers is cited five times as a party to the conflict,” he observes.
According to this political scientist, this resolution was rejected by Algiers quite simply because it points the finger at it”. Asked how far Algiers can take its escalation, Tajeddine Houssaini did not rule out the military option, although the risk is very low.
“Algiers knows full well that Morocco is fighting for a national cause to which a whole people adheres behind its King. The kingdom will yield not a grain of its sand. In addition, Morocco has managed to balance its balance of power with the Algerian military regime. This is evidenced by the professionalism of its army, its equipment, its motivation as well as the participation of its forces in the various international military exercises,” he said.
The political scientist also returned to the forthcoming visit to Rabat of the Personal Envoy of the UN Secretary General for the Sahara, Staffan de Mistura. “This visit, scheduled in principle for July, will focus on the need to relaunch the round table process with the participation of the parties involved in this conflict, namely Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania and the Polisario separatists”, predicts the expert.
“Algeria cannot escape from these round tables, because it will take responsibility for the blocking of this process by the international community and will be particularly at odds with the resolutions of the Security Council”, concluded Tajeddine Houssaini.
Grandstand. Epilepsy and pregnancy: motherhood is possible under medical supervision
written by Alexandra Hartman Editor-in-Chief
Epilepsy complicates a woman’s reproductive life. However, improved diagnosis and treatment of this disease, as well as better social adaptation, have enabled most women with epilepsy to marry and have children.
The collaboration between the neurologist and the obstetrician is important in order to optimize the management of women suffering from epilepsy who wish to become a mother. And it is by planning the pregnancy and selecting the appropriate treatment before it in order to respond to the double challenge of maintaining control of convulsive seizures while minimizing any risk of teratogenic malformation that women with epilepsy can become mothers.
Compared to pregnant women without epilepsy, pregnant women with epilepsy have a higher mortality rate, a two to three times higher incidence (number of new cases) of preterm birth and other maternal and fetal complications.
Several complications can be added during the treatment, which require rigorous monitoring. Because antiepileptics are likely to cause malformative teratogenic effects in particular.
To avoid or minimize these complications, women with epilepsy must be accompanied from puberty.
The collaboration between the neurologist and the obstetrician is important in order to optimize the management of these patients by planning the pregnancy and selecting the appropriate treatment before it in order to meet the double challenge of maintaining seizure control. seizures while minimizing the teratogenic risk.
The choice of breast-feeding is individual, as there are no formal contraindications to breast-feeding in epileptic women undergoing treatment.
Compliance with these conditions builds confidence and promotes a reassuring reproductive life for Moroccan women with epilepsy, concludes the scientific work supervised by doctors M. Berrada, S. Ennigrou, S. Bellakhdar, B. El Moutawakil and MA. Rafai, published in the June 2022 issue of the Moroccan journal of practical medicine.
It should always be remembered that pregnancy and childbirth are precious moments in a woman’s life. However, they may be responsible for physiological modifications which may play a role favoring the onset or aggravation of certain neurological pathologies, such as the epilepsy mentioned above or other more or less serious ones.
So, with pregnancy, causing an acceleration of blood clotting, there is the risk of the occurrence of cerebral venous thrombosis.
Cerebral venous thrombosis corresponds to an obstruction, localized or diffuse, of the veins of the brain, by a blood clot. This can be the cause of cerebral edema, which can cause ischemia, namely the reduction or even the cessation of the blood supply to the brain.
Headaches are also a frequent complaint during pregnancy, their prevalence (ie number of cases of a disease in a population at a given time) is estimated at 35%.
The most common form of headache is migraine, which occurs mainly during the first trimester and postpartum (following childbirth).
Other potentially serious pathologies can be triggered during pregnancy, and therefore it is necessary to seek them out, diagnose them, in order to ensure adequate management. Because, some can engage, by their complications, the vital prognosis of the future mother.
A relatively common pathology in women of childbearing age is multiple sclerosis, whose relapses mainly occur in the first three months following childbirth, and whose therapeutic implications are not always easy to handle by medical teams. specialized.
Multiple sclerosis (MS), a neurological disease, is most often diagnosed between the ages of 20 and 40. More than two-thirds of MS patients are women. They are young and of childbearing age. And the influence of pregnancy on the evolutionary course of multiple sclerosis has been controversial. For a long time, women with MS were advised once morest having children, arguing that the disease worsened during pregnancy, but especially just following childbirth. This is no longer the case today.
In another scientific study coordinated by the teams of the department of neurology of the CHU Ibn Rochd of Casablanca, the laboratory of genetics and molecular pathology of the faculty of medicine of Casablanca and the laboratory of research on the diseases of the nervous system, neurosensory and handicaps of the same faculty, also published in the June 2022 issue of the Revue Pratique de Médecine, pregnancy is not contraindicated in the case of multiple sclerosis, but must be programmed, with a setting of the date of delivery .
And there are well-defined therapeutic protocols to bring the pregnancy to term and ensure delivery in the most optimal conditions.
The coordinators of this continuing medical education file on pregnancy and neurological diseases, Dr Malika Berrada and Pr Mohammed Abdoh Rafai, affirm that the various neurological diseases, discovered or triggered by pregnancy, require strict collaboration between neurologist, doctor general practitioner, pediatrician, and for certain situations, the anesthetist-resuscitator, for personalized care of each patient.
*Dr Anwar Cherkaoui is a doctor. Winner of the higher cycle of Iscae, he was, for thirty years, the head of medical communication at the CHU Ibn Sina in Rabat.
A few start-ups, but also automotive giants are starting to install solar panels on their new electric cars, promising a little extra range, but not yet to roll with the eye.
Under the scorching sun of northern Spain, the “0”, the first production model from the start-up Lightyear, gathers enough solar energy to travel more than 70 kilometers free of charge every day. Its front hood and long roof are covered with five square meters of solar panels.
Its founders, young Dutch engineers, have won several solar-powered races in the Australian desert. Taking advantage of falling prices for photovoltaic panels and batteries, they are trying to apply this technology to everyday cars.
The very aerodynamic body of the “0” and its motors integrated into the wheels allow it to consume less energy than the electric SUVs which dominate the market, and to display a range of 625 kilometers on a charge. By driving little, we might thus only plug it in in winter, promises the brand.
“The clock is ticking: we need to drive sustainably as soon as possible,” said one of its founders, Lex Hoefsloot, to AFP. “Charging stations remain a major obstacle. If we don’t need it, we can scale much faster.”
Lightyear has set the bar very high, with this first model built in less than 1,000 copies and displaying a Bentley price of 250,000 euros. An affordable version, around 30,000 euros, is announced for 2024-2025.
Daily trips
As the electric car market explodes, several models with solar panels are expected in the coming months. Toyota already offered panels on its Prius hybrid (optional) and on its very first 100% electric car, the BZ4X. Ditto for Tesla’s prototype pickup, scheduled for 2023.
Mercedes has equipped the roof of its luxurious EQXX prototype with photovoltaic cells which, with the same slender profile as the Lightyear, promises 1,000 kilometers of autonomy.
According to the American researcher Gregory Nemet, “photovoltaic panels have become so cheap that, even in areas with little sunshine, it is worth installing them”.
“Even if a car roof can’t fully charge the battery in a day, it can still pack enough energy to get you home from work,” said the energy scientist at the University of Wisconsin.
With a few hundred euros extra per car, solar energy might at least compensate for the use of air conditioning, analyzes Gautham Ram Chandra Mouli, specialist in electric mobility at the University of Delft, in the Netherlands.
Be careful, however, where you park, warns the expert: the car obviously only recharges if it is outside, and much less in winter. In addition, it recharges much better near the Equator than in Northern Europe.
Under the California sun, the Aptera start-up is displaying 25,000 pre-orders for its first model scheduled for the end of the year, a small car with three wheels and two seats. Depending on the version, billed between 26,000 and 46,000 dollars, it displays between 400 and 1,600 kilometers of autonomy.
Another much more classic solar model, but also affordable and ambitious, is expected in Germany at the end of 2022: the Sion. This compact with five seats is cubic and all black, because fully covered with solar panels.
“We have developed a technology that covers the entire car,” explains Jona Christians, co-director of the big German start-up that imagined it, Sono Motors. With 18,000 registered pre-orders, they plan to produce 260,000 cars by 2030.
The Sion incorporates the “Vehicle-to-Grid” system, which allows its charged battery to return electricity to the grid when the sun is no longer shining.
The small manufacturer also plans to sell its solar technology to others, such as the French group of refrigerated trailers Chéreau.
Another Dutch brand, Squad Mobility, plans to launch license-free solar cars in 2023.
Its boss Robert Hoevers, a former Lightyear employee, sees the future of cars in the sun: “panels will become even cheaper, electric motors more efficient: sooner or later, we will be driving on solar energy every day”.