Taking a cue from its neighbor city Tel Aviv Lebanon’s regional “landmark”, Sidon’s notorious garbage mountain, will now become a city park. Sidon’s stench was once so bad that locals used to say that “you smell it before you can see it.” This hideous site, the result of garbage trucks dumping straight into the sea […]
DUBAI — Mention Dubai, and people immediately think of soaring skyscrapers, enormous shopping malls and insanely expensive sports cars. But 30 kilometers south of this world-class city-state — along the E66 highway towards Al Ain, and just past a Chuck-e-Cheese outlet — the glitz gives way to desert. Here at Umm Nahad, there are no […]
NASA scientists are using the Suomi NPP satellite to photograph the earth at night. They are studying natural phenomenon as well as light pollution. They found that manmade lights shine noticeably brighter during the holidays of Ramadan, Christmas and New Year. Some Middle Eastern cities shone more than 50% brighter during Ramadan. Find out how […]
As olive groves across Turkey are falling victim to energy projects, one construction company decided to buck the trend, turning a coal mine into an award-winning olive plantation. Protests erupted in the disaster-struck coal capital Soma last month after a construction company felled 6,000 olive trees to make way for a power plant. The case […]
Islamic versus non-Islamic or simply Western style architecture is an issue in many parts of the Middle East where locals, kingdoms and sheikdoms refuse or steadfastly hold onto their identity. Look at the Arab Gulf States like Dubai where giant, glass fronted skyscrapers dominate the skyline. These futuristic structures are being called cheap and anonymous by prominent architects […]
Maybe you’ve heard of the Million Man March? Or the Million Mom March? Or last year’s Million Muslim March? Brace yourself for a macabre riff on that theme. A team of archaeologists from Utah’s Brigham Young University (BYU) discovered an ancient Egyptian cemetery that has more than 1 million mummies. Presumably, they don’t march. Facebook Comments
This is the amazing tale of Derby the dog. The life of this little pup born with withered front legs took a radical turn when he met an animal lover named Tara Anderson. See the power of tech to change lives – all species welcome. Facebook Comments
Project Pressure has created the first open source glacier archive, recording the environmental impact of climate change by documenting the world’s changing glaciers. Danish photographer Klaus Thymann launched this not-for-profit in 2008, garnering impressive street-cred with official links to the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). What’s this got to do […]
An Italian design student dreamed up a gizmo that he claims can heat a room for 10 cents a day. I just paid $700 to half-fill an oil tank that, if I’m Scrooge-like with that “on” switch, will heat my 3-bedroom Amman flat for maybe 6 weeks. Could Marco Zagaria’s Egloo heater really work? As I […]
The most powerful family in Jordan is tapping into the most powerful energy source in the Universe to electrify their private residence. Prince Muhammad bin Talal, brother of Jordan’s King Hussein I, has installed what is the largest, self-use photovoltaic (PV) array in the Middle East. Prince bin Talal is an active pursuer of environmental solutions. Below […]
Engineers at Lockheed-Martin recently developed and patented a molecular filtration membrane called Perforene which can desalinate seawater using only 1/100th the energy of the best existing desalination systems. Perforene is made from graphene, the exciting new nanomaterial which comes in the form of one-atom thick sheets of carbon atoms. Like an overzealous nanotechnology, graphene seems […]
The Middle East and Africa subsidiary of Tokyo-based Sony Corporation officially launched an outrageous shopping experience for its Xperia products this month, with a pop-up store located just offshore from the environmentally dubious World Islands in Dubai – and 4 meters under the sea. It’s the world’s first underwater store. Facebook Comments
Hummus, the centuries-old Middle Eastern bean paste, is ready for its close-up. According to a report released by food industry trend-trackers Baum and Whiteman, hummus will emerge as America’s “it” food in 2015. “Once a niche product here, eaten primarily by Arab and Israeli immigrants,” says the report, hummus is matching the meteoric trajectory of Greek yogurt […]
Italian architect Arturo Vittori and his colleague Andreas Vogler designed a low-tech machine, based on passive design, that can produce between 50 and 100 liters of clean drinking water daily, without electrical equipment and independent of land-based water sources. This inexpensive, easily assembled tower was designed specifically for rural communities in Ethiopia that lack access to safe […]
Luca Curci architects studio presents Desert City, a project proposal for a sustainable way to live in the desert. It surely beats the maze of crazy unsustainable cities we see in regions in the United Arab Emirates, save for Masdar the zero energy city outside Abu Dhabi. The architects say that their theoretical project was born from […]
Investments in solar energy innovations are not dead! Remember those weird and wonderful solar energy harvesting tulips planted in Israel and Spain? Seen miles away the sky-high tulips have found a new commercial home – in Ethiopia, the company announced last week in a press statement. We’ve covered Aora over the years and thought possibly […]
Last weekend, a gang of antiquities thieves were caught in the act of cave-robbing by inspectors of the Unit for the Prevention of Antiquities Robbery (UPAR) of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), with help from the Arad Rescue Unit. It was the first time in 30 years that relic robbers were captured while plundering. The suspects are six men from […]
A stunning series of portraits by American photographer Kevin Horan casts barnyard regulars into supermodels, resulting in anthropomorphic images that capture the personalities of these oft-overlooked animals. I showed them to a Jordanian photographer friend – he says he’ll never eat goat tagine again. Look into the faces of these animals and tell me if you […]
British economist Milton Friedman once warned that if you put the government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years you’d have a shortage of sand. Whether governments or free markets are to blame, it is possible to deplete abundant resources such as Irish rain. Now thanks to global obsessions with concrete icons, fracking […]
A United Arab Emirates-based firm has just concluded what it says is the region’s first water and energy audit of a large-scale housing facility for over 1,000 guest workers. Facilities management company Farnek assessed performance of their staff accommodation center in Al Quoz, Dubai, identifying opportunities to slash annual utility bills by 20 per cent (an estimated […]
Arabs eat hummous with religious fervour. And it’s true: mamma usually does best. As this Arab American in this video points out, if it comes in a plastic container, it is not hummous. Not the kind you want to eat any way. For a great laugh watch the video above. And for a great hummous recipe […]
Israel’s worst environmental accident, possibly worse than the devastating Carmel fires of 2010, happened yesterday morning. An estimated 600,000 gallons of crude oil (3 million liters) is causing severe damage to the southern port city area of Eilat, endangering also those close to the Eilat border, media outlets confirm. The damage was caused by a […]
Not so long ago, forests of majestic mangrove trees fringed the eastern shores of Saudi Arabia. Official stats now estimate that only 10% of the forest remains. Decades of landfill operations in support of growing urbanization destroyed the rest. Now a group of female environmental activists are battling to protect what remains. Facebook Comments
Stroll around the ruins of Gaza on a late afternoon and you may catch sight of airborne young men, jumping off mountains of rubble and rolling from rooftops. Their extraordinarily athletic running and climbing, swinging and vaulting makes for an urban ballet. This is parkour and free running and this is the best crew in the Arab […]
Have you met the quince? You might have come across it in a market and passed it by. It’s yellow, but not yielding like an apple. It looks like a bumpy pear. Raw, it’s inedible. What do you do with it? The simple answer is: cook it. Quinces under heat become sweet and tender, with […]
