Latest news with #Zohar
Time of India
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Hyderabad's historical royal mosque to now double up as legal mediation centre
Hyderabad: The historical royal mosque in Public Gardens in the city will now double up as an authorised mediation centre to resolve various legal issues through arbitration. This is the first mediation centre to be attached to a mosque in the two Telugu states. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now The mediation centre, which will be open to people cutting across religious lines, will formally begin functioning from Saturday. The aim behind the centre is to help people resolve disputes and avoid knocking on the doors of police stations and courts for every issue. The mediation outcome will be binding on the disputing parties and its order recognised by court. The royal mosque, which was the official mosque of the princely state of Hyderabad where Nizam VII Mir Osman Ali Khan offered Friday congregational prayers, has been running some sort of mediation centre for many years. But this centre had no recognition. Now, with the permission from the Telangana Legal Services Authority, it will formally become an authorised mediation centre. All the staff handling the centre have been trained and certified by the legal services authority. Of late, mosques in Hyderabad have evolved into community and social service centres, with several of them running clinics, old age homes, diagnostic centres, coaching classes for competitive exams and schools. A brainchild of moulana Dr Ahsan bin Mohammad Al-Hamoomi, Imam of the royal mosque, the mediation centre will deal with all types of civil disputes, including marital and inheritance. It will function every Saturday after the Zohar prayers (around 2 pm). Named Al-Ifadah Mediation Centre, it will primarily focus on issues related to the Muslim community, though people of all religions may approach it for out-of-court solution of their legal problems. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now 'This centre is a second opinion legal cell. We have legal experts supervising us with their guidance,' said Dr Ahsan, adding that most problem could be solved through mediation without people having to spend years fighting in courts. He, however, pointed out that those not satisfied by the mediation may go to court. 'We will not give judgment, but our decisions will be authorised by courts,' he said. The entire proceeding will be kept confidential and the identity of the disputing parties will not be revealed to the public. Renowned preacher Asifuddin Muhammed welcomed the establishment of the mediation centre, emphasising its role in fostering peace within the Muslim community by providing a dignified alternative to police intervention for domestic disputes. 'This initiative promotes harmony, preserves family bonds, ensures confidentiality, aligns with Islamic principles, and eases the burden on police personnel and the judiciary,' Asifuddin said, urging the community to support the effort. It Will Be Open To All Religions, Says Imam
Roya News
05-05-2025
- Politics
- Roya News
Gaza occupation outweighs captive rescue: "Israeli" minister
Israeli Occupation Minister of Culture and Sports Miki Zohar revealed in a recent interview with Kan, "Israel's" national broadcaster, that the newly approved phase of the military campaign in Gaza has a clear objective: 'the complete occupation of the Strip.' Zohar, a senior figure in the ruling Likud party, acknowledged the risks this escalation poses to the remaining captives held in Gaza. 'Such a move endangers those who remain in captivity,' he admitted, 'but there is no choice left.' According to Zohar, the aggression was prolonged in part due to "Israel's" efforts to retrieve as many captives as possible. He suggested that renewed military pressure could be the key to forcing Hamas to negotiate seriously. 'Hamas may soon realize that it has no choice but to return [the hostages] and exile itself from Gaza,' Zohar stated.
CNBC
25-04-2025
- Business
- CNBC
38-year-old turned his New York apartment into a 'spice warehouse'—now his company brings in $8 million a year
When Ethan Frisch first tasted wild-grown cumin hand-picked in Afghanistan's Hindu Kush mountains in 2012, he was shocked. A former chef who once worked in a Michelin-starred restaurant in New York, Frisch traveled rural Afghanistan as an infrastructure program coordinator for the Aga Khan Development Network, a group of agencies that support rural development, health and education initiatives throughout Asia and Africa. The quality of the spices he encountered — even at small markets and roadside restaurants — blew him away. "I thought I knew my way around a spice cabinet. And then I realized that there was a whole world of spices that I had not had access to, that were not really being imported to the U.S.," says Frisch, 38. The wild-grown cumin inspired Frisch and his longtime friend Ori Zohar, 39, to co-found New York-based Burlap & Barrel, which sells kitchen spices sourced directly from small-scale farmers around the world. Each man chipped in around $20,000 to launch the company in 2016, they say: Frisch emptied his life savings, and Zohar, a serial entrepreneur, pulled his money from a mortgage tech startup he was business has been profitable since Day 1, says Frisch. It grew its annual gross revenue from roughly $100,000 in its first full year to nearly $8 million in 2024, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. Sourcing directly from farmers is the key, says Frisch. For the three years he worked in Afghanistan, he spent his free time using his international development contacts to build a network of small-scale farmers, in countries ranging from Guatemala to Zanzibar. The business model allows Burlap & Barrel to skip markups from the industry's brokers and middlemen, while paying the farmers anywhere from double to more than 10 times what they'd typically receive for their crops, Frisch says. $40,000 in startup funds may sound like a lot of money, but Frisch and Zohar — who serve as co-CEOs — felt financially pressured by the costs of travel and spice acquisition, they say. Instead of renting office space, they worked from Frisch's Queens apartment, which he'd managed to register as a "spice warehouse" with the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. "We went to IKEA [and] bought shelving. We made a packing area, a storage area and a shipping area. We really transformed his entire living room into a spice production facility," says Zohar, noting that whenever he left Frisch's apartment, his clothes smelled so strongly of spices that they inevitably "had to go through the wash." Frisch and Zohar didn't take salaries until 2018, with Frisch surviving on unemployment benefits and "living on scrambled eggs" as they sold mostly to restaurants around New York, he says. The co-founders took minimum-wage salaries in 2018 before ramping up to more livable wages the following year, they say. When the Covid-19 pandemic arrived, they worried they'd be out of business: Restaurants were their biggest source of revenue. Instead, at-home cooks splurged on $10 jars of high-end spices from Burlap & Barrel's website to step up their culinary game with fancy restaurants shuttered. A Bon Appetit review of the brand's Vietnamese cinnamon in February 2020 helped, Frisch notes. "By May, home cooks had more than made up for the sales that we had lost from restaurants," says Zohar, adding that Burlap & Barrel ultimately brought in roughly $3 million in 2020 sales. The company now packs and ships all of its spices from warehouses in Las Vegas and Hagerstown, Maryland. Burlap & Barrel has landed partnerships with chefs like Martha Stewart and Marc Murphy, and placement on FX's television show "The Bear." The company appeared on an April 2023 episode of ABC's "Shark Tank" — an idea the co-founders credit to Zohar's mother, an "avid" viewer of the show — which sent its website traffic "through the roof" before the episode finished airing, Zohar says. Burlap & Barrel faces a few obstacles to its continued expansion. One is its price point: Burlap & Barrel products cost roughly the same as comparable items from other luxury spice providers like Diaspora Co. and Evermill, but noticeably more than basic grocery store spices. A 1.8-ounce jar of Burlap & Barrel's bestselling Royal Cinnamon costs $9.99, while a 4-ounce container of cinnamon from food giant McCormick & Company costs just $6.66 on Amazon. Eventually, Frisch and Zohar will run out of potential new customers willing to pay the upcharge, particularly with many Americans wary of rising grocery costs, they note. A potential solution, they say, is to sell products beyond kitchen spices. Burlap & Barrel typically launches 50 new products each year, which last year included a line of single-origin sugars and a partnership with the Jane Goodall Institute on jars of honey from Tanzania. Another challenge lies in the U.S. tariffs announced by President Donald Trump on April 2. Burlap & Barrel sources spices from a variety of countries named in Trump's initial policy announcement, which is now in the middle of a 90-day pause and currently replaced by a baseline 10% tariff on all imported goods. If Trump's original rates go into effect in July, Burlap & Barrel could pay a 46% import rate on spices from Vietnam, or a 26% rate on products from India. The company plans to absorb any added tariff costs for the foreseeable future, Frisch says. But the uncertainty made the co-founders recalculate their expectations for 2025: Instead of forecasting 10% revenue growth over last year, they now hope to merely match 2024's sales figures, they say. Burlap & Barrel would still turn a profit with that result, adds Zohar. Longer-term, the co-founders remain optimistic, they say. If the tariffs get rolled back, they can resume business as usual. If the U.S. economy suffers, whether from tariff fallout or inflation, more people could skip eating out at restaurants in favor of staying home and cooking for themselves, they predict. "We're expecting to grow a lot in the next few years," says Zohar, adding: "The spices in your grocery store are stale and unimpressive."
Al-Ahram Weekly
05-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Al-Ahram Weekly
Israel minister slams Oscar win for West Bank eviction film - Screens - Arts & Culture
Israeli Culture Minister Miki Zohar on Monday decried a "sad moment for cinema" after an Oscar win for "No Other Land", a documentary about Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank. The film, which Palestinian activists directed, won the Best Documentary award at Sunday's Academy Awards. "Instead of presenting the complexity of our reality, the filmmakers chose to echo narratives that distort Israel's image in the world," Zohar said in a post on X. Shot in Masafer Yatta near the West Bank city of Hebron, the documentary follows a young Palestinian struggling with forced displacement as the Israeli army tears down his community's homes to make space for a firing zone. "Freedom of speech is an important value, but turning the defamation of Israel into a tool for international promotion is not creation -- it's sabotage against the State of Israel," Zohar added. The Israeli army declared Masafer Yatta a restricted military zone in the 1980s. After a long legal battle with Palestinian communities, an Israeli Supreme Court ruling in 2022 paved the way for the eviction of the area's more than 1,000 residents. Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967. The West Bank, excluding Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, is home to around three million Palestinians as well as nearly half a million Israelis who live in settlements that are illegal under international law. "No Other Land" premiered in February 2024 at the Berlin International Film Festival, winning the Panorama Audience Award for best documentary. Zohar said the film's Oscar win highlighted why his government was passing reforms to guarantee that public funds only go to "works that speak to the Israeli audience, and not to an industry that makes a career out of slandering the country at foreign festivals." The film industry has decried the reforms as an attempt to muffle liberal perspectives and views it as an attack on freedom of expression. Follow us on: Facebook Instagram Whatsapp Short link:
Al Arabiya
03-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Al Arabiya
Israeli minister slams Oscar win for Palestinian-Israeli documentary ‘No Other Land'
Israeli Culture Minister Miki Zohar on Monday decried a 'sad moment for cinema' after an Oscar win for 'No Other Land,' a documentary about Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank. The film, which was directed by Israeli-Palestinian activists, won the best documentary award at Sunday's Academy Awards. 'Instead of presenting the complexity of our reality, the filmmakers chose to echo narratives that distort Israel's image in the world,' Zohar said in a post on X. Shot in Masafer Yatta near the West Bank city of Hebron, the documentary follows a young Palestinian struggling with forced displacement as the Israeli army tears down his community's homes to make space for a firing zone. 'Freedom of speech is an important value, but turning the defamation of Israel into a tool for international promotion is not creation - it's sabotage against the State of Israel,' Zohar added. The Israeli army declared Masafer Yatta a restricted military zone in the 1980s. After a long legal battle with Palestinian communities, an Israeli supreme court ruling in 2022 paved the way for the eviction of the area's more than 1,000 residents. Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967. The West Bank, excluding Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, is home to around three million Palestinians as well as nearly half a million Israelis who live in settlements that are illegal under international law. 'No Other Land' premiered in February 2024 at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Panorama Audience Award for best documentary. Zohar said the film's Oscar win highlighted why his government was passing reforms aiming to guarantee public funds only go to 'works that speak to the Israeli audience, and not to an industry that makes a career out of slandering the country at foreign festivals.' The film industry has decried the reforms as an attempt to muffle liberal perspectives and views it as an attack on freedom of expression.
