Cyprus has one of the worst fresh water shortage than other regional countries, including Lebanon, Israel and Syria. The problem is so bad that reservoirs have gone dry and trees are dying.
As Trees Die, Cyprus Republic Looks to Lebanon for Water Import
Hövding, An Invisible Inflatable Air Bag Bike Helmet (video)
Bicycle riding in the Middle East is thwarted by challenging climate and terrain, and to lesser extent by culture. A new invisible helmet, akin to an airbag, and pictured above, could incite more Middle Eastern cycling.
Wearable Boutonnière Vase Keeps Floral Scents Close to Your Chest
Israeli designer Omer Polak has designed an adorable wearable vase that keeps a flower or herbs close to the wearer’s chest. The Boutonnière is a lapel pin made from blown glass attached to clothing via a small brass pin.
Naive Israeli Startup Tricks Beirut Designers into Doing Illegal Business
Creativity, like nature, knows no borders, and we’re all about putting politics aside for the greater good, but a pair of naive American women behind the Israeli startup ArtSetters pulled a stunt that could have put Beirut artists in serious danger.
The Ultimate Upcycle: Saving Syrian Children’s Lives in Jordan, With Hats
In Ireland we know about cold bones. This is a story about how we started collecting hats in Ireland for cold kids in a Syrian refugee camp.
Israeli Firm to Mine Dutch Sewers for the New Gold
Israel’s Applied CleanTech has found a way to turn sewers into gold mines, and now the company has signed an agreement with a Dutch wastewater treatment facility (WWTP) and paper mill to test its revolutionary Sewage Recycling System (SRS).
Green and Black Olive Spreads – The Ultimate Recipes
With the Middle Eastern olive season in full swing, it’s natural to think of cooking with those fleshy, savory olive morsels. If you’ve been lucky enough to get olives pickled on the farm, as I did at the Olive Branch Festival, most of your work has been done for you.
But if raw olives turn up at your local market, don’t just walk past them – pickle them yourself. And we even show you how to choose the best raw olives. This way you can avoid any poisons or pore
You can consider olive spreads as vegetarian alternatives to meat-based patés. But where olive trees grow, people naturally make farmhouse olive spreads for slathering on fresh bread. These recipes hearken back to centuries of olive farming and the traditional resources of the farm wife’s kitchen. Olive oil is, of course, one of the 60 must-haves of the Middle-Eastern pantry.
You can make these spreads too, even if you live far from any olive tree. Pitted canned or jarred olives work fine.
The following recipes are translated from “The Olive Cookbook” by Ruth Keenan.
Make Black Olive “Caviar”
Ingredients:
100 grams black olives, pitted
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
Pulse all ingredients in a food processor or blender until you have a grainy, spreadable paste. Remove to a jar and store in the refrigerator up to a week.
Make Green Olive Spread
Ingredients:
100 grams green olives, pitted
1 garlic clove, peeled
100 grams unsalted butter, softened
1/2 teaspoon salt
Pinch black pepper
1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley
Pulse the olives and garlic in the food processor until fine grains. Add the remaining ingredients and pulse until a spreadable paste. Store in glass jars, in the refrigerator. Remove from the fridge 30 minutes before serving.
Some of our delicious recipes with olive oil:
The Right Way to Eat an Apple (video)
Well, your mom has been teaching you wrong. The right way to eat an apple is not from its sides. There is another more complete way of eating an apple, a trick you need to teach the kids.
Bridgette Meinhold Showcases Urgent Architecture Sustainably
How best to provide adequate housing when disaster strikes?  Weather-related calamity can be sudden – think earthquakes and tsunamis. It can be forewarned – as in hurricanes, floods, and droughts. And it can creep up slowly through rising sea levels and civil unrest.
The Tragic Story Behind Haunting Plane-Shaped Memorial in the Sahara Desert
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.
Israeli Sunshine Girl Gets United Nations Prize for Jewish Heart (video)
Seeing the enormous potential for Israeli clean technologies in solar energy and water for the developing world, Sivan Yaari-Borowich started an NGO to help Africa. She puts two and two together by taking Israeli technologies and matching them with Jewish donors in the United States to fund real world green energy projects in Africa.
Breasts Age Faster Than Faces! 5 Tit Tips To Help Stem Sag
In the race towards old age, our “girls” cross the finish line first! Maybe not a prize you want to win, but breast tissue ages faster than the rest of our body according to a study published in the journal Genome Biology.
Saudis Show “Love” Using Car Art Bumper Stickers, With a Twist
Hand-holding, smooches and inter-gender chitchat between strangers are prohibited in Saudi Arabia, as are all public demonstrations of amor. So passionate Saudis stymied by morality laws are turning to their cars to show some love.
4,000 Handmade Hats Collected for Syrian Refugees by this Green Prophet
What started as a few throwaway balls of yarn to a tiny knitter in Jordan’s Zaatari Syrian refugee camp inspired a goofball idea: I asked crafty folks everywhere to toss a few hats in the ring. The reaction has been jaw-dropping. So far we have collected some 4,000 handmade hats for Syrian refugees.
Dubai Prince Snuggles Rare White Tiger Cub in Home Movie (VIDEO)
Is this the right kind of message you should be sending to your kingdom? That large wild felines should be kept in captivity as pets? We ask ourselves these questions all the time, now an almost unbelievable Instagram video of a Dubai prince surfaces.