When westerners go on holiday they tend to think of Mexico, Costa Rica, or for more exotic locations maybe Thailand. But in some spots in the Middle East, the sun always shines, well mostly, and getting away can be a lot more interesting than sitting in a pool bar drinking Coronas all day.
A species of shark, a sand tiger shark, thought to be extinct for over a century has surfaced in a Kuwaiti fish market. Step aside, Team Zissou; looks like local fishmongers are joining the elite biological teams researching the world’s oceans.
Scientists have discovered the first dinosaur bones in Saudi Arabia that are identifiable – a huge discovery that has proved very difficult until now. The bones are said to be roughly 72 million years old.
Jisr al-Zarka, Israel’s only remaining coastal Arab town and nearly forgotten by both local and foreign visitors has made a small beginning to promote tourism to the town with the completion of the first tourist guest house called Juha’s.
Egypt can offer more to desert tourists than camels: In the ancient land of the Pharaohs, desert-dwelling invertebrates have often been part of Egyptian folklore, including scarab or dung beetles which are known to navigate by the stars. Now spiders join the story.
Sunday was Mawlid an-nabī, the observance of the birth of the Islamic Prophet Mohammed, but unlike Eid al-Fitr (Little Eid) or Eid al-Adha (Big Eid), Mawlid is a low-key celebration marked by a quiet focus on the prophet’s life and an uptick in eating and charitable acts.
At last, Dayma is offering the kind of eco-tour we’ve long dreamed of. The same people who showed students what scorpions and camels can teach us about sustainable design have now developed two new, affordable tours that put nature at the heart of the Egyptian experience.
Like rings on a tree, layers of pollen can tell researchers much about climate patterns unrecorded in the centuries before there was science.
It’s illegal to serve this disgusting delicacy in restaurants, but despite being outlawed some 1.5 million songbirds will have been killed in Cyprus this year to make a dish called ambelopoulia.
The United Nations now classifies the illegal trafficking of exotic wildlife as second only in scale to the illegal drug trade, with Dubai emerging as a major smuggling center for the world’s most rarefied creatures.
Jordan’s King Abdullah II helped push a car that was stuck in the snow while touring Amman after a major winter storm called Alexa pummeled the region.
Some more convincing evidence that the effects of global warming are real and now. Nasa’s satellites have recorded the coldest temperature ever recorded on earth this week –– a freezing -94.7C.
An awe-inspiring sight, as one departs Abu Dhabi towards Saadiyat and Yas Islands, these pylons seems to disappear into the distant sea. But we are actually looking inland and they are delivering energy to, rather than from, the city center.
Me and my family stayed at the Fauzi Azar Inn in Nazareth last year. Normally tourists, even backpackers don’t put Nazareth top on the list for visits. Somewhere between hostel, hotel and your best friend’s secret the Fauzi Azar Inn is changing the way people see Nazareth and the Israeli peace process. A new research paper proves it. […]
Birds have a terrible time in the Middle East and North Africa. We’ve seen men posing with a bonnet full of dead ones, one million migrating songbirds killed for a pickled dish, and other horror stories.
Now that the turkey and its trimmings have digested in your belly, time to start planning a spring eco holiday!
The Arabian Gulf has waters that are some of the world’s most saline; and where water temperatures often reach as high as 35 degrees Celsius during the hot summer months. Despite these harsh realities, the waters of the Gulf contain a variety of aquatic plants and animals.
Jordan is pushing ahead with the largest commercial scale wind farm in the Middle East region, the Tafila Wind Farm, seemingly without care for the massive bird migration population that passes through Jordan twice a year. Green Prophet called Israel’s Bird King, bird migration specialist Prof. Yossi Leshem.
Our favorite peace-water NGO Friends of the Earth Middle East have just held a conference in Jordan last week and there had faith leaders sign the “Covenant for the Jordan River” to save the Jordan River.
The European Space Agency (ESA) publishes satellite photos of Earth (and photos of space taken from Earth) in an incredible archive that’s updated weekly. Each image is paired with a brief explanation about what you’re looking at. Check out this selection – if the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) could take “selfies”, these would […]
In 1989, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 carrying 155 passengers and 15 crew members exploded over the Sahara Desert. 18 years later, family members built a memorial shaped like a plane in Niger, to which Libya contributed $170 million.
Artisinal olive oil. It has an attractive ring, but think what “artisinal” means. You associate it with ancient traditions that living people continue to maintain – with the material products of those traditions.
Watch your step, kibbutzniks and spa-mavens! Diminishing water levels in the Dead Sea are causing changes to surrounding groundwater flows. Freshwater moves through the aquifer, dissolving subterranean salt deposits and creating underground voids, which cause surface collapse. Dramatic and unpredictable, sinkholes appear at the alarming rate of nearly one a day.
A man who belongs to Ethiopia’s chapter of the Global Power Shift youth environmental activism network biked nearly 500 miles in just two months in order to draw attention to the nation’s shrinking forests.
It’s easy for us to think of modern humans as the sole destroyers of all things living, but ancient humans also competed with other predators, using traps. This includes nomadic people from what is now Israel’s Negev Desert. A 5,000 year-old leopard trap, made from piles of stone, was just identified in Israel.
