Taskurgan is an unforgiving place. Located at 10,140 feet in the Pamir mountain range on the borders of Afghanistan and Tajikistan, close to Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan, this small autonomous Kashgar Prefecture county in Xinjiang, China is cold, the winters are long, and food is hard to come by. But out of such a place emerged a fascinating […]
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Image of flooding in Fares by Abu El Fadl, Egypt Independent Port Said and Cairo have been dominating Egyptian headlines of late, while Fares, a small agricultural community 75 km north of Aswan, has gone completely unnoticed despite enduring a humanitarian tragedy of epic proportions. Since 2009, after DanaGas began to drill pilot hydraulic fracturing wells […]
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A natural retreat from the traffic and crowds of Istanbul, the 296-hectare Atatürk Arboretum, above, receives few visitors. But it contains more than 2,000 foreign and native plant species, including some species that can’t be found anywhere else in Turkey. Situated within the city’s Belgrade Forest, the arboretum is a research site for Turkish and foreign scientists, […]
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Omar Samra was the first Egyptian to summit Mt. Everest in 2007 and now he is hoping to be the first Egyptian man in space! The founder of Wild Guanabana and one of the most recognizable faces in Egypt as a result of extensive media coverage surrounding his mountaineering exploits, Samra is participating in the […]
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Loggers get $5 a tree in Syria now that the heat of conflict is on, and the cold winter has set it in. In Darkush, Syria, civilians must turn to their environment for the basic need of warmth. Day after day, freezing temperatures prevail, and tree after tree is cut down. The national park to […]
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This is the first time celestial navigation has been seen in insects but the scientists believe it is common.
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The Jewish version of Arbor Day Tu B’Shevat is more relevant today than ever. Transformed from a general agricultural holiday into a dedicated arboreal conservation initiative in the early 1900’s, this celebration takes place towards the end of January during the Hebrew month of Shevat. This holiday addresses the travesty that trees previously revered by […]
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Just two hour’s drive east of Dubai, the Al Hayl Fort or Palace paints a succinct picture of Emirati life before artificial islands and enormous skyscrapers became “normal.” Located in a wadi among the Hajar mountains, the remarkable earthen compound was built in 1932 by then ruler of Fujairah Sheikh Abdullah Bin Hamdan. It’s a […]
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The journal Nature reports that a team of ocean researchers have captured the world’s first video of a giant squid (Architeuthis dux) in its natural environment. The video was captured 700 meters (2300 feet) beneath the Pacific near the Ogasawara archipelago, about 1000 kilometers south of Tokyo Japan. The mission was funded by Japan’s NHK broadcasting […]
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The chairman of the Jordan Green Building Council Mohammad Asfour tells us why nature inspires him to deliver a practical message of action If you have been keeping an eye on the green scene in Jordan, then there’s no chance that you could have missed Mohammed Asfour. As well as the chairman of the Jordan […]
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Tel Aviv University professors tell Green Prophet that it’s just a matter of time: Tel Aviv will flood again. It’s warming up again this week in Israel, just after a series of storms last week that began with major flooding on the Mediterranean Coast and ended with Jerusalem of Gold turned to white after a […]
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The Kishon River where it enters the Haifa Bay Unlike pastoral rivers in Europe where bathers can jump in without alarm, Israeli rivers are all too toxic to swim in. Most toxic of all is the Kishon River. The Kishon was once a notorious dumping ground for seven chemical plants, with the result that the entire […]
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A few short decades ago, the ladies of Lakiya had a very different life. Their traditional Bedouin clans lived in encampments throughout the Israeli Negev Desert, herding animals. When their families were relocated to government-built towns, the women became aware of how their illiteracy, and their society’s rule against mingling with men who are not […]
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An absurd situation where one ministry approves the marine reserve and and another gives a license for oil drilling. Nothing new for Israel. If Greenpeace has won the battle against Zara and its use of toxic chemicals, this new potential environmental threat should have the Greenpeace Mediterranean headquarters on full alert: the Israeli government eager […]
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Are Jordan’s snow and Israel’s floods signs of climate change or are they simply flukes of weather? People might argue this for decades there is strong evidence that Mideastern climate has changed dramatically over thousands of years and there is evidence that humans can negatively impact their environment over a much shorter time period. The […]
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