Five years following its ban on smoking in restaurants and other public spaces, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan will start enforcing the rules. By year end, government will also revoke licenses which allow an estimated 6,000 coffee shops to serve sheesha (the Middle Eastern water pipe used for tobacco smokes).
Jordan is cleaning up its act, at least in terms of laundry detergent, with a project entitled Concentrate for the Environment. The voluntary, industry-led initiative aims to reduce the negative environmental impact of powdered laundry soap. Seems the soap industry excels at greenwashing; this looks like corporate cost-shaving spun into environmental (fool’s) gold.
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire; but you can still get burned with smokeless, say critics of electronic cigarettes. They look just like a teensy personal sheesha pipe. You’d guess it’s safe, right? Think again.
Extreme winter weather has been causing severe climate changes all over. The includes the Middle East, where a freak December winter storm paralyzed Jerusalem and Amman and brought snow to Cairo for the first time in 100 years. Will the Middle East experience a Polar Vortex?
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.
When you think of Jordan’s Wadi Rum, Lawrence of Arabia and a hot and dry desert might come to mind. And Petra too. Well when Jordanian teens need to make lemonade from lemons, or snow castles from the freak snowstorm last week, they made a castle relevant to their region! Petra.
Listen up. Several Syrian children froze to death this past week because they lacked adequate clothing. The UN predicts that more Syrians will die this winter from exposure to the elements than from the violence of the last three years. There needs to be more sustainable ways of treating refugees. But let’s start with the […]
Nearly 7 million people have fled their homes to escape the violence in Syria, and 2 million refugees in Jordan and Lebanon face a wet, cold winter with nothing – not even a safe lamp to light their way. Which is why WakaWaka launched the Solar for Syria campaign.
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.
Pressured to knock off your Christmas shopping? Need a uniquely sustainable gift? Online marketplaces Etsy and Dawanda let you browse quirky, handmade items without burning any petrol, and offer a decent alternative to glitzy energy-guzzling “lifestyle centers.”
Cash is King. An essential ingredient of charitable giving; it greases the wheels when moving goods. A month after 4,000 hats were collected and shipped from Ireland to Jordan, they’re finally keeping some of Syria’s refugees a bit warmer. But in the end, it took money to drop the curtain on this act of giving.
I’ll bet snow-capped pine trees and ice-crusted cars don’t spring to mind when you think of the Middle East, but that’s what we’re seeing in Amman as we tuck into the second straight day of fierce blizzarding. A perfect setting to tuck in with some simple knitting.
Some good news out of the Middle East region for a change: It was announced at the Israel Business Forum that Israel has signed an historic water-sharing agreement with Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. But not all parties are happy with political manoeuvrings around the announcement.
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.
Guess who might be the culprit carrying a new SARS-like virus to people in the Middle East?