In the Middle East, date palms are a natural element of the landscape. The towering trees adorn streets and march down road medians. They sprout out of private gardens and public parks. Come late summer, their gracefully swaying green heads send forth sturdy branches laden with heavy fruit clusters.
Move over Billy bookcases and Ektorp sofas because something more earth-friendly is about to be sold at IKEA. This Swedish-owned big box company is finally making some common sense for the planet: the company’s UK chain of otherwise throwaway furniture, will begin selling flat pack solar panel kits to its UK customers.
The deadly coronavirus behind Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) has been isolated in a bat in Saudi Arabia, according to a report in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. The virus was found in a the feces of an Egyptian tomb bat, or Taphozous perforatus, a creature known to roost in abandoned buildings.
Green Prophet applauds libraries-without-walls and mosques-minus-minarets for their minimalist environmental impact. Does it follow then that we view the tattooed or henna’ed body as the most earth-friendly art gallery?
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.
Inspired by the “love lock” phenomenon that covers the Parisian bridge Pont des Arts, three Algerian journalists have kicked off conversion of a bridge in Algiers popular with suicides into a “bridge of love”.
International media is streaming updates on Syria, Big Brother antics by USA and UK intelligence services, and British buildings that can melt cars, but hardly a word on continuing protests in Turkey. And they are continuing despite chronic under-reporting by Turkish press.
The 2013 America’s cup will be long remembered as one of the closest matches in sailing history and one of the most unlikely comebacks in sporting history when Emirates Team New Zealand came within seconds of securing the America’s cup; but eventually lost when Oracle’s team USA followed a two race penalty and six race losing streak with nine straight wins.
Just when the weather was cooling down in the Middle East a little, we get woke up again with the usual alarm and this time from a United Nations panel: humankind is to blame for global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns in a new report just out.
En route to aid thousands of people injured and displaced by a devastating earthquake in Pakistan that killed at least 350 people on Tuesday, a military helicopter dodged two rockets fired from the ground.
Almost as soon as Qatar won the bid to host the 2022 World Cup with a suite of swanky solar-powered stadiums, activists started clambering about the emirate’s terrible working conditions. Turn’s out, their warnings were dead on.
Volkswagen’s “hippie van” was the preferred mode of transportation for peace lovers during the 1960s, but Brazil is shutting down the last production line this year to meet rigorous new safety requirements. See our nostalgic photo tour of VW vans in the Middle East.
In my last post I described how I had discovered the remains of a defunct development known as the ‘Arabian Canal’ in the desert some 30km outside Dubai. This time I’m featuring one of these remaining waterways which is still, mysteriously, flooded, despite having been abandoned some 4 years ago.
We interviewed Karl Amman about illegal wildlife trafficking at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi about two years ago. Since then, increasingly violent poaching incidents have been linked to terrorist groups such as al-Shabaab, which recently claimed responsibility for an armed attack on the Israeli-built shopping center in Kenya.
Sharks hauled from the Persian Gulf provide fodder for shark fin soup in Hong Kong, and the endangered bluefin tuna is popular there too. But now the government has instituted a new ban that could reduce consumption of both.
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