Latest news with #Mourad
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
'Why this? It's killing business'
Standing beside his Chapel Street restaurant, Mourad Mohsiine gazed at a traffic jam on Tuesday (May 13). The queue was moving at a snail's pace. It was like this on Monday afternoon, and every midweek hometime rush hour last week. And the 42-year-old believes his Moroccan eatery Fez Tajine is 'suffering' because of it. 'This is the first week and we've already seen signs of it affecting the business,' he explained. 'We rely on passing trade and people coming from different places. Chapel Walks and Chapel Street is the heart of this area.' READ MORE: 'My teenage daughter was jumped at the park and covered in blood - they stole her phone and filmed it' READ MORE: Manchester dad arrested at Saudi Arabia airport after family holiday is jailed for 10 years as wife issues statement At the moment, the heart of the area is covered in roadworks causing 'hour long' jams for buses, deliveries, emergency services, and motorists. The cones and the closure arrived last week (May 6) to allow workers to build more space for buses, extra room for pedestrians, and new bike lanes. It will be in place until next April. Salford council has apologised for the disruption, and insisted shutting Chapel Street eastbound, away from town, 'remains the safest, most efficient option to complete the works, balancing the needs of residents, businesses, pedestrians, cyclists, and public transport in a constrained city centre environment'. But Mourad, and other businesses on Chapel Street, say the scheme is driving people away, affecting deliveries, and compromising the quality of their products. The restaurateur continued: 'What we're trying to do is bring a bit of life to this side of Salford. It used to be that no-one wanted anything to do with this area but with these businesses there's a bit of life on this street. 'We are already suffering from a lot of things as a business - people can't afford to go out as much as they used to be able to. It's really tough at the moment for a new business. We need a reward or some kind of support for this.' Next door, Matt McGuire runs the F45 gym. His review of the situation is short: 'It's s***, it's shocking.' He goes on: 'It's really doing me no favours. My classes tend to be at peak times - before and after work - and people can't turn up. At this class I've got now, I've got about four people missing and I'm losing money.' Like Matt and Mourad, Ramadan Nashnush is seeing clients drop off as they avoid the area. While people can go to Fez Tajine and F45 without using a car, Ramadan's customers can't, as he runs Nash's garage which does MOTs, servicing, and bodywork repairs. The 53-year-old explained how it affected him: 'People are thinking they cannot come in. Why are they closing it? 'It's one year. It's killing business. We need to pay tax and rent. Why this? It's not good.' Ramadan was speaking at 11am on Tuesday, when the traffic had dissipated. But 'three appointments cancelled' that morning, so he 'lost money'. However, not every firm is suffering. The manager of Black Lion pub, Josh, said he hasn't noticed an impact. 'I do not think this has affected us,' he said. 'The people who come in just want a drink, whenever sport is on people just want two.' That being said, there are firms here which go to customers directly, rather than welcoming them in. For them it's been a difficult week. Omer Kula, 40, is the manager of Ohannes burger bar on Chapel Street. He outlined how it 'affected us': 'It's affecting the delivery drivers, they cannot reach the shop in time, so it's affecting the order quality. We've been here two years, it's not been easy. This is not good.' Sophie Smith, 23, works at estate agents The Property Place, where staff have to do multiple viewings — sometimes as far away as Preston or Leeds. 'I live in Eccles and it's normally 15 minutes to get home, now it's an hour,' she added. 'We look forward to the school holidays, but we will not be this year because it's no different.' And as Sophie pointed out, it's not just drivers and businesses who have been hurt. 'The buses would still be stuck', she said after one photo showing 40 gridlocked last Thursday as Manchester United played at Old Trafford, also closing other arterial roads nearby. In response to the complaints, Councillor Mike McCusker, lead member for planning, transport and sustainable development, said: 'Salford City Council have planned the works on Chapel Street carefully, and as part of that process all partners have considered and explored a number of options to maintain traffic flows in the city centre. 'This was in partnership with Manchester City Council and Transport for Greater Manchester. 'The current one-way closure remains the safest, most efficient option to complete the works, balancing the needs of residents, businesses, pedestrians, cyclists, and public transport in a constrained city centre environment. 'The one-way closure extends over approximately 400 meters of the city centre road network. While roadworks can impact disruption to traffic flow, the periods of increased congestion and delays are primarily due to the overall capacity of the network being affected by a combination of incidents, popular events, and high vehicle volumes, rather than solely by the temporary roadworks.'
7NEWS
30-04-2025
- Automotive
- 7NEWS
Close call as crane crashes down near student accommodation
A 60-tonne crane has toppled, crushing five cars just metres from student accommodation. The incident occurred at Bond University on the Gold Coast on Wednesday while the crane was removing trees damaged by Cyclone Alfred. Know the news with the 7NEWS app: Download today Both the crane and a large gum tree came crashing down in the parking lot. 'We just heard this big bang … people kind of screaming and stuff,' said witness James Dibben, describing the chaos. The crane's cabin smashed into one car, while the boom and the tree hit four others. 'If it had fallen on those demountables ... those would've had people in them, so [it's] lucky it came and fell the other way,' said Allan Mourad, another witness, referring to the student accommodation next to the carpark. An external contractor was removing hazardous trees when the crane toppled. 'He was trying to get the gum tree on this side ... hooked it up, when they cut the branch it swung and dragged the thing over,' said Mourad. Fortunately, no one was near the crane when it fell, and it was operated remotely. 'You know that show on TV... idiots at work... on YouTube.. say no more...,' Mourad laughed. Bond University said the work was scheduled during the semester break when most students were away. However, despite barriers around the carpark, residents say no warning was given to keep cars away.
Middle East Eye
04-04-2025
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
Daughter of Ottoman princess: How I rejected CIA attempt to make me a spy
Next week, Kenize Mourad will be receiving France's most prestigious award - the Legion d'Honneur. But there's something else on the mind of the prominent French writer, who was born in 1939 to Ottoman and Indian royalty: a recent flurry of articles in the Turkish press claiming that she worked as a CIA agent in the 1970s. Speaking to Middle East Eye from Paris on Friday, the journalist and best-selling novelist, now 85, says she wants to set the record straight. In an extraordinary episode in 1973, Mourad says she briefly went along with a CIA attempt to recruit her as a spy, planning to expose the agency in a news story. But she quickly got cold feet. "The claims in the press have been maybe more terrible than to say I killed my mother," she tells MEE. "They are a stain on my integrity." New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters "But I've always been honest - I'm an idealist," adds the great-granddaughter of the Ottoman Sultan Murad V. "I'm fighting for the Palestinians, and I've paid for it dearly in France." Murder and intrigue The revelations about the CIA's attempt to recruit Mourad appeared last month in a Sunday Times investigation into the murder of the paper's foreign correspondent David Holden over 40 years ago. Having been shot from behind, Holden was found dead in the dirt near the airport in Cairo, in December 1977. The full investigation by Peter Gillman and Emanuele Midolo has recently been published as a book, Murder in Cairo: Solving a Cold War Spy Mystery, and reveals that Holden had been recruited to the Soviet Union's KGB by his gay lover, a Soviet spy, while working at the Sunday Times. Multiple sources suggest Egypt under Anwar Sadat, a US ally against the Soviets, was responsible for Holden's murder. Mourad reporting in Beirut in 1982 (Supplied) Shortly before the killing, Mourad - then a reporter for a French paper - met Holden in Damascus on 29 November, and then again in Amman, where she had dinner with him on both 2 and 3 December. On the second night she went to his hotel room for a drink and stayed there until 1am. "Nothing romantic happened between us," she says. "To me he was a great journalist - he knew so much about the Middle East. "I was bored when I met up with him in Amman. I was waiting for an interview with King Hussein." Mourad was stunned to hear of Holden's murder days later. There has never been any suggestion that she was involved in the incident. But the Sunday Times investigation uncovered secret CIA memos that alleged there was an attempt to recruit her as a CIA asset in Paris in autumn 1973, to spy on Chinese diplomats "and Near East targets". The memos record that she initially accepted the offer but soon went back on her decision. "The idea seemed exciting,' she wrote to her case officer. "But I finally realised it was going deeply against my feelings… It would be a constant struggle in my mind." After the Sunday Times investigation was published, many articles in the Turkish press misrepresented its findings and claimed Mourad had worked as a CIA spy in the 1970s. So what really happened? 'How the CIA tried to recruit a left-wing journalist' Mourad explains that she was an "ultra-leftist" journalist in 1973, the year the CIA approached her. "We were very anti-American because of Vietnam, because of Cuba. Che Guevara was our hero." She was struggling to have her articles published, partly because editors complained that she didn't present the American viewpoint. "My English boyfriend, who I thought was a journalist, told me he could put me in touch with someone in the American embassy." Mourad agreed and they had lunch with a "gentleman, who was like an old uncle and was very nice". The diplomat invited her to have coffee the next week, and they spoke some more. 'There was one week when I thought I could cheat the CIA' But it was when he asked her to meet up a third time that Mourad became suspicious. "I asked my boyfriend if he could be secret service. He smiled and said 'no'; that I should talk to him. I went to meet him for coffee again. This time I was on my guard, but I could not believe that the CIA was trying to recruit a left-wing journalist." As she would soon realise, that was exactly what was happening. The diplomat revealed he secretly worked for the CIA and asked her to join the agency. "While he was talking," Mourad remembers, "I was imagining a fantastic article on how the CIA tried to recruit a left-wing journalist." She pretended to accept the offer, planning to go along with the process and then write a sensational story about it. "I thought this would impress my editors - I was ambitious, maybe reckless." She pauses and reconsiders: "I was certainly reckless." Rejecting the CIA offer While it has been widely reported that there was a month between the CIA offer and her rejection of it, Mourad is keen to stress that in reality, her idea lasted only a week. A journalist friend warned Mourad that the idea was risky and that the CIA could take revenge. "I became frightened," she recalls. "I worried they would think I tried to cheat them, so a week later I wrote to them saying I had reconsidered. That was maybe a mistake because it left a trace, but I had no courage to confront the man." Is it a fake? The mystery of the last Ottoman caliph's secret plan Read More » And that was that: Mourad insists she never heard from the CIA again. It was over four years later that she met KGB spy Holden. One CIA memo quoted in the Sunday Times investigation records that "operational approval was cancelled in April 1979", years later. Mourad says she finds it bewildering. "It could be a bureaucratic mistake, or maybe they didn't want to admit they had failed in their attempt. "There was one week when I thought I could cheat the CIA." Mourad is best known for her 1987 novel Regards from the Dead Princess, on the life of her mother, Princess Selma, the granddaughter of Sultan Murad V. She was exiled from Istanbul with the rest of the Ottoman imperial family after the empire fell and the caliphate was abolished by the young Republic of Turkey in 1924. Her family moved to Beirut, and Princess Selma travelled to India in 1937 to marry an Indian prince, Syed Sajid Hussain Ali, the raja of Kotwara, a princely state in the north of the subcontinent. Ali was an Edinburgh-educated communist who drove a sports car and would later become a supporter of the ruling Congress Party in independent India. But his wife met a tragic end. After an unhappy marriage she travelled to Paris in the summer of 1939, pregnant with her first child and accompanied only by a eunuch. Mourad was born on 11 November that year. Selma died of sepsis in Paris in 1941, and Mourad was raised in a convent. She grew up in France and studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, before entering journalism. 'The genocide happening now is horrendous' Mourad says she feels particularly hurt by claims that she worked for the CIA because she remains an idealist, and she has suffered dearly for sticking by her principles. Mourad's 2005 book Our Sacred Land: Voices of the Palestine-Israeli Conflict led to her being effectively boycotted by the French press. "The book was balanced. I depicted Jews who were heroes and helped the Palestinians, standing against their government. I showed settlers who were very nasty," she says. "Before that book I was always on television and my books were in all the papers. But afterwards it all stopped and even my next novels were boycotted." Although Mourad is being given the Legion d'Honneur, she says she remains effectively persona non grata on French television. She still writes and speaks extensively about the Palestinian struggle. Revealed: Why there is an abandoned Ottoman tomb in remote India Read More » "I know that if I write something excusing Israel I would be in the newspapers again. But I will never do it," she insists firmly. "The genocide happening now is horrendous. My whole life as a writer, I have aimed to serve as a voice of the voiceless. Now, most journalists are repeating the words of the powerful instead." For Mourad, the environment in France - the country where she grew up - has become so suffocating that she has made Turkey her home. "In France, when you talk about Palestinians, you are told you are a terrorist. You are an antisemite. This is why I live in Turkey now," she says. "There are many problems in Turkey but it's not anti-Palestinian, it's not anti-Muslim." Meanwhile, she mourns what has become of the country of her birth - the nation giving her an award in recognition of her writing. "France was the country which brought free thinking to the world," she reflects. "And now, there is no free speech."
Middle East Eye
10-03-2025
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
CIA tried to recruit French writer born to Ottoman and Indian royalty
Prominent French journalist Kenize Mourad was born in 1939 to an Ottoman princess and an Indian prince. She worked for almost 15 years as a war correspondent and has since written several books, including a best-selling novel based on her mother's extraordinary life in exile. But a stunning new investigation published in the Sunday Times into the killing of a foreign correspondent decades ago has revealed that Mourad, now 85, was recruited by the CIA while she was a journalist in the Middle East in the 1970s. Mourad says she initially agreed to work for the US intelligence agency in order to write a story about its operation, before getting cold feet. Mourad is best known for her novel Regards from the Dead Princess, on the life of her mother, Princess Selma, who was the granddaughter of Sultan Murad V. She was exiled from Istanbul with the rest of the Ottoman imperial family after the empire fell and the caliphate was abolished by the young Republic of Turkey in 1924. Her family moved to Beirut. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters Over the next few years, strong ties developed between Ottoman royals and wealthy potentates in the Indian subcontinent. The seventh nizam of Hyderabad, a billionaire prince and the richest Muslim ruler in the world, financially supported the exiled last caliph, Abdulmecid II, who lived on the French Riviera. In 1931, Abdulmecid's daughter Princess Durrushehvar married the nizam's heir apparent, Prince Azam Jah. She went to live in Hyderabad with her cousin Princess Niloufer, who had married the nizam's younger son, Prince Moazzam Jah. Revealed: Why there is an abandoned Ottoman tomb in remote India Read More » It was in this context that Princess Selma, Mourad's mother, travelled to India in 1937 to marry another Indian prince, Syed Sajid Hussain Ali, the raja of Kotwara, a princely state near Lucknow in northern India. Ali - despite his royal position - was a Scottish-educated communist who drove a sports car and would later become a supporter of the ruling Congress Party in independent India. But his wife Selma met a tragic end. After an unhappy marriage she travelled to Paris in the summer of 1939, pregnant with her first child and accompanied only by a eunuch. Mourad was born on 11 November that year. Selma died of sepsis in Paris in 1941, where she was buried, just three years before the exiled Caliph Abdulmecid died in the same city. Mourad grew up in France and studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, before entering journalism. "I became a journalist and later a writer to try to explain the societies of West Asia and subcontinent to the western people who have a lot of misperceptions and prejudices," she told the New Indian Express in 2013. "It is, I suppose, because I am part of these two worlds, born and brought up in France but from an Indian father and Turkish mother." The killing of David Holden The revelations about her entanglement with the CIA appear in a recent Sunday Times investigation into the murder of the paper's foreign correspondent David Holden in 1977. Having been shot from behind, Holden was found dead in the dirt near the airport in Cairo that winter. The mystery of his killing was never solved. The full investigation by Peter Gillman and Emanuele Midolo will be published as a book, Murder in Cairo: Solving a Cold War Spy Mystery, later this month. Is it a fake? The mystery of the last Ottoman caliph's secret plan Read More » The Sunday Times had originally sued the CIA after the killing in an unsuccessful bid to force it to reveal information it had on Holden. The US intelligence agency first denied it had a file on Holden, then later admitted its existence while insisting its release "would endanger the security of the United States". In November 1978, Gillman, deployed by the paper to investigate the murder, published an article speculating that Holden had been a spy who was killed for betraying an intelligence agency. Decades later, Gillman and Midolo have concluded that Holden had been recruited to the Soviet Union's KGB by his gay lover, a Soviet spy, while working at the paper. They also reveal that Holden later joined the CIA, likely working as a double agent - concluding that this was probably why he was killed. Multiple sources they cite point to Egypt under President Anwar Sadat, a US ally against the Soviets, as responsible for Holden's murder. The head of Cairo's police even allegedly confessed to the killing, reportedly saying: "We did it. Holden was working for the KGB." Bond creator Fleming and a cast of spies The story has thrown up even more revelations. At the same time as Holden, the investigation reveals, multiple spies were working as journalists at the paper. They had been hired by Ian Fleming, the Sunday Times foreign manager and legendary writer of the James Bond novels. 'Never in my life did I work or think to work for an American secret service' - Kenzie Mourad Fleming, himself a former intelligence officer, had hired them knowing that they were spies. However, the "most startling revelation" concerned Kenize Mourad. After Holden's murder, Mourad told reporter Peter Gillman that she had bumped into Holden in Damascus on 29 November 1977, and then again in Amman, where she had dinner with him on both 2 and 3 December. On the second night she went to his hotel room for a drink and stayed there until 1am. She said she saw him last on the morning of 4 December before he left to travel to the occupied West Bank. Mourad then went to Damascus. "I came to the view she was an eager young journalist admiring of an old Middle East hand," Sunday Times editor Harold Evans concluded at the time. 'Operational approval' But secret memos from the CIA station inside the American embassy in Tehran, retrieved after the 1979 revolution, list Mourad as a CIA asset, recruited in Paris in autumn 1973 to spy on Chinese diplomats "and Near East targets". The memos record that she changed her mind a month later. "The idea seemed exciting,' she wrote to her case officer. "But I finally realised it was going deeply against my feelings… It would be a constant struggle in my mind." However, one memo shows that the memo recorded that "operational approval was cancelled in April 1979". Operational approval was granted for covert operations. Yet Mourad insisted to the Sunday Times that she "was neither following David Holden nor gathering any information". "Never in my life did I work or think to work for an American secret service!" Iran and the US: When friends fall out Read More » She recalled meeting a US diplomat in 1973 and said she had been "stunned" when he tried to recruit her for the CIA. Initially she planned to agree, so she could write a story on the CIA recruiting left-wing journalists. But later, "I realised I was a fool and that I could not write about the CIA without risking a terrible revenge. "I should not even let them know that I played a game by letting them believe I could work for them. I was even afraid to confront the man, that is why I sent a letter pretending that I was sorry, that I thought I could, but I could not." Mourad was then asked why her "operational approval" was recorded as having lasted for nearly six years. "I suppose it was just a bureaucratic mistake," Mourad said. "Or maybe they did not want to acknowledge their failure?" There is no suggestion at all that Mourad was involved in the murder. But the episode - one in a series of many in the writer's dizzyingly cosmopolitan life - illustrates the remarkable extent to which European journalists were entangled in espionage during the height of the cold war.
Yahoo
28-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
ICE in Metro Detroit: Arrests ramp up one week into second Trump term
The Brief President Trump is one week into his second term and policies are already being felt. The numbers show an increase in activity when it comes to border control agents in Michigan. The numbers also point to an increase in activity, as close to 1,000 people were arrested by ICE nationwide on Sunday. DETROIT (FOX 2) - It has been only a week since President Donald Trump started his second term in office and changes in policy are being noticed nationwide and in Metro Detroit. What they're saying The numbers show an increase in activity when it comes to border control agents in the area. One of those arrests was seen right outside a Kroger in West Dearborn. Most people FOX 2 spoke with are well aware of an increase in border patrol agents, and that has some concerned and making calls to an attorney. Many videos of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were taken at separate locations in Dearborn on Monday afternoon. According to immigration law attorney Raed Mourad, this is indicative of what he is also seeing in the community. "ICE has definitely ramped up on their pickups. I have constant calls on a regular basis, mostly from Hispanic clients who are nervous and scared," said Mourad. Even the Detroit branch of Homeland Security Investigations posted these pictures on 'X' with the caption: "Working to apprehend immigration violators in Michigan and Ohio." Big picture view The numbers also point to an increase in activity, as close to 1,000 people were arrested by ICE nationwide on Sunday alone. Compare that to all of 2024, where only 2,234 people in Detroit alone were arrested by ICE. The deportation process has also changed. What's next Effective on Jan. 21, according to the National Immigration Law Center, the Department of Homeland Security expanded its use of a process called "expedited removal," meaning it's no longer required to go before a judge before being deported. "We are seeing these cars. People are calling. People are being arrested. ICE is out here. You need to be careful and know your rights," said Mourad. The Source FOX 2 talked with Immigration law attorney Raed Mourad and used information from the National Immigration Law Center.
