The London Array is Masdar’s largest renewable energy project to date, but the government-supported research and development group have no intention of stopping there. With a 20 percent stake in the offshore wind project that will generate enough energy to power half a million UK homes, the group is ready to keep up the momentum.
Planning on a trip to Dubai before intense summer heat hits? Or maybe this coming summer to visit the World Expo 2020? Brush up on how to act to avoid holiday disasters far worse than sunburn and frizzy hair. Among the seven member states of the United Arab Emirates, Dubai – if it was a Disney dwarf – could be called “Tolerant”. That’s modern Middle East tolerant, a term that benefits from a bit of clarity.
Tips to help navigate Dubai-acceptable conventions:
Outrageous Dubai: where you can illegally scale soaring skyscrapers, and hit a Guinness Record holder every time you spit (but don’t – it’s not allowed!) – but where you’d best save attention-grabbing antics like Parkour for another trip to Hawaii or San Tropez.
Unmarried visitors in particular should get wise to acceptable rules of behavior. Public displays of affection (including kissing and holding hands) and all forms of nudity are verboten. And all those single ladies (and men) – keep your music volume on low.
The guidelines have just recently been re-broadcast and are absolutely in play, with rules strictly enforced. They appear to be aimed at the Emirate’s world-record-breaking shopping malls which act as magnets for tourists (and all manner of unrestrained cultural habits), but you can be fined or imprisoned for violating them anywhere.
Kissing on the shores of Dubai Creek, suggestive caresses in the Gold Souk and blasting your iTunes on a sightseeing bus can land you in big trouble with the police. Rules soften in Western-style bars and resorts, but why confuse things with the double-standard? Heed that classic advice to the amorous, and get a hotel room.
The Tawajed clause in Sharia (Islamic) law technically forbids an unmarried couple to share bedroom, or even a car. In Dubai, where foreigners outnumber natives nine to one, enforcement on this point gets pretty limp. Hotels typically require only one guest to register, and never ask for a marriage certificate. So relax a bit, but don’t flaunt your ring-less status.
Discretion is always the smarter choice. And contact a local travel expert in your language before you fly. They will be sensitive to the rules “your people” might be more likely to break. Like burping is encouraged in China, but not at all in America. So, use common sense.
Keep your clothes moderate, which will also help you cope with oppressive heat and humidity. Opt for loose-fitting and opaque fabrics; top that camisole or skinny tee with an overshirt or sun-blocking shawl. Keep limbs maximally covered (and be grateful for how much better your protected skin will look when you are seventy).
Women’s beachwear should scream “college swim team”, not “Ipanema Beach”.
I’m OK with these rules, they’re nothing that a dozen years of Catholic school hasn’t already tattooed on my psyche. But if they drive you to drink, stick to any of the long list of nightclubs, restaurants and hotels that legally serve alcohol.
And drop Green Prophet a postcard to tell us how the trip went.
Water scarcity is probably the most pressing environmental concern in the Middle East region and current desalination technologies are too costly and energy-intensive to rely on as a sustainable solution. But a new nano “water chip” that uses the power of a store-bought battery holds promise.
Israel’s security is renowned for being particularly tight, but officials failed to detect a 3-D printed gun when a local TV show snuck it into the Knesset – the country’s parliament building in Jerusalem. Twice.
The same Italian design firm that designed a fleet of eco-schools for Gaza has won an international competition to design the headquarters of Algeria’s telecommunications firm ARPT (Autorité de Régulation de la Poste et des Télécommunications).
Here in Amman, Jordan, personal mail gets delivered painfully slow to post office boxes rarely filled. My banking and bill-paying happens online and does anyone receive letters anymore? Recall those handwritten messages slipped into envelopes and slapped with a pretty stamp? There’s a paradox afoot that might bring them back from extinction.
Albeit better than neighboring Dubai’s skyline of what renowned architect Frank Gehry calls “cheap” and “anonymous” architecture, Abu Dhabi has grown into a dense urban environment with precious few green spaces. The municipality aims to rectify that, however, starting with a 19,000 square foot green-roofed “urban oasis.”
Amid the snipers, the rubble and the misery on many Syrian streets is another ugly phenomenon: garbage. In Adel’s* hometown of Janoub al Malaab, a district of Hama city, piles of waste give off an odour that is nearly unbearable.
The United Nations has warned that the Gaza Strip, the small slice of land bordering Egypt and Israel that has been the scene of so much political tension, could be “uninhabitable” as soon as 2016 if serious action isn’t taken to address a chronic water shortage, The Independent reports. If that happens, where will its 1.6 million residents go?
Life on the streets has never been easy for stray animals, especially in the Middle East where animals are often targets. There are stray dogs that get shot dead in Lebanon and stray dogs that kicked around in Jordan.
Spain’s super solar giant Abengoa has teamed up with Israel’s Shikun & Binui Renewable Energy (SKBN) to build a concentrating solar power plant in the Negev desert. When the company announced their win of the BOT tender of the Ashalim plant, they also claimed it will be the largest of its kind in the country.
The Negev desert comprises more than half of the entire country, which enjoys an annual solar irradiance of 2,000kWh per square meters.
That’s a lot of sun, and aside from Arava’s solar plants, a BrightSource pilot project, and a few other relatively small installations, this energy has gone largely untapped.
But now the Israeli government is stepping up its solar program with plans to ensure that by 2020, 10 percent of its overall energy mix will come from renewable sources.
Negev Energy, the new partnership between the Spanish and Israeli companies, will build and operate the 110 MW Parabolic Trough plant under a 25 year power purchase agreement. The energy they produce will sell for NIS0.76 per kilowatt hour, or $0.21.
Parabolic troughs are deployed less and less as photovoltaic cells become less costly, however the benefit of using this technology, which tracks the sun throughout the day to concentrate heat on a heat transfer fluid, is its ability to store the energy for use after dark.
Recall that Abengoa is the company behind the first solar power plant that can operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, regardless of weather conditions.
Although Israel doesn’t have much of an eco-conscience, seeing as it will do anything it can to get energy no matter how it comes, the Ashalim plant will divert 300,000 carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere every year once it is online.
Construction is expected to begin in 2014.
:: Bloomberg
More on Solar in the Negev:
Arava Power Signs Solar Deals with Negev Bedouins
Arava to Power One Third of Touristy Eilat
Zenith Solar Produces Dish That Concentrates the Light of a Thousand Suns
More setbacks for Middle East solar or the only way a big dream can move ahead? DESERTEC has canceled its commercial partnership to build a solar super-grid with Dii GmbH, according to a press release issued by DESERTEC.
The world’s first tablet cafe has opened in Dakar and already Google’s latest experiment is turning out to be a major game changer. Bordered by Mauritania and Mali in West Africa, Senegal battles with frequent power outages and sluggish internet connections that cut into any cyber cafe’s bottom line, but tablets circumvent both problems.
Lady’s Fingers – a poetic name for a day-to-day vegetable, also known as okra. Maybe the lovely pale yellow flower sheds a little poetry over the seed pod that grows out of its heart, and which we eat as a vegetable. In the Middle East, we call it bameeyah.
Pollution of fresh water supplies in large Asian countries is becoming more and more serious due to increasing populations and rapid industrialization. This is especially true in countries like India, where it’s largest river system, the Ganges, is one of the world’s most polluted. China, the world’s most populated in now in serious “water” trouble.
China’s fresh water purity problems may have a chance to be improved, thanks to a unique water analyzing device produced by an Israeli bio-technology company, Blue I Water Technologies , which was developed a device to analyze the types of impurities in water designated for drinking and other purposes.
The device, called Prizma, uses an electro-optic test strip technology to monitor the water’s chemical levels for various impurities that include mold and harmful bacteria, caustic chemicals, and even poisons caused by decomposition of dead fowl or other animals.
The device also measures water content parameters such as Chlorine, pH, conductivity, and the like.
Pollution of fresh water supplies, which only comprises 3.5% of the earth’s total water amount – the rest being salt water, is a very serious problem that affects all the earth’s inhabitants.
China stands to lose the most if its fresh water supplies are not improved.
More on fresh water environmental issues:
NASA Watches Underground Fresh Water Sea Vanish From the Middle East
ZARA Fashion Retailer Under Fire for Polluting Chinese Waterways
Water Pollution in Israel Threatens People, Animals, Plants
Israel to Help India Clean Up the Ganges River
Photo Environmental Pollution Research by Shutterstock:
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