In 2009 during the height of the swine flu epidemic, Egyptian law officials ordered the culling of thousands of pigs belonging to the Coptic Christian community in Cairo. The pigs were used to chomp down the city’s organic waste, which grew to disgusting new heights in garbage city when they were killed. But now they’re back – in hiding.
Imagine for a second that Washington D.C., London, Brussels or Denmark ran out of power for up to nine hours every single day for the last week or so. And then imagine (if it will stretch that far)that most of the country has been experiencing such cuts for the last eight years. This is Lebanon’s reality right now, and it offers a cautionary tale.
With the hot days, the desire to spend time cooking in the kitchen dwindles, although the desire to eat remains. This past salad recipe works for hot summer days.
The safety of the balloon industry is again questioned in the wake of a hot air balloon crash near Cappadocia, Turkey today that killed two, officials announced. Some 23 other tourists from Brazil, Spain and Argentina have been injured as the hot air balloon hit another’s basket mid-air while drifting over volcanic rock formations.
Cartoonist Charles Schulz wrote, “Life is like a ten speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.”
A group of women in the mountains of Afghanistan, who likely never read his strip, don’t agree.
Wearing full body clothing might not be the thing for everyone in the Middle East: but cover up the very young – especially those with light skin. Middle East sun exposure in the young leads to higher rates of skin cancer later in life.
A business man in the Gaza Strip has found a lucrative way of satisfying the urge for KFC by smuggling it through underground tunnels. It may be four hours cold, with a side of soggy chips, but for Gazans it is a taste of freedom.
Just months after announcing that the ruinous scheme to construct a land and sea bridge between Saudi Arabia and Egypt is still on track, officials from both countries have jointly pledged to protect the Red Sea and its compromised ecological bounty.
When authorities discovered a lab full of marijuana plants in a bomb shelter beneath an all girls Orthodox Jewish school south of Tel Aviv, they proposed that outsiders must be responsible – because Haredim girls would never smoke pot, right?
The Lower Jordan River, the baptismal river of Jesus, has been dead at its source for some time. For the first time in ages, Israel is releasing native waters via a pump back to the historic waterway.
The irony here is clear: the first international LEED certified housing complex is built by an oil research facility in Saudi Arabia.
With Dubai’s government close to finalizing legislation, property owners in the Emirate may soon have the option to feed solar power into the grid so they can make money from feed-in tariffs.
As of recently, there has been much encouragement from industry sources for the use of solar power on rooftops. Mounting photovoltaic panels on rooftops of residential and office buildings or industrial facilities can be beneficial for they can provide electricity and create a surplus that can be fed into the grid.
“In the next 12 months, we will see a constant increase of solar infrastructure. Not only standalone facilities, but to actually power our villas, our parks, our residential communities,” said Ivano Iannelli to The National. He is the chief executive of the government-owned advisory company Dubai Carbon Centre of Excellence.
However, the legislation may reach some hurdles. Other countries that receive solar energy from small-scale sources, suppliers receive a feed-in tariff from the government. This is a tactic that is under consideration in Dubai. Feed-in tariffs are usually above the market rate, making installation for the solar technology profitable.
“Feed-in tariffs are part of the different activities that are being looked upon,” he noted.
Despite the tariffs being under consideration, industry players are still interested in the appeal for Dubai’s move towards solar energy. SolarWorld, one of Germany’s biggest solar panel producers, opened a showroom in Dubai Creek where its product will be sold by local distributor PTL Solar.
Reliant on fossil fuels, solar energy is a possible alternative energy source for Dubai to take advantage of. The Emirate is already seeking to generate five percent of its electricity from the sun by 2030 and last year, the Dubai Supreme Council for Energy announced its plans for the Mohammad bin Rashad Al Maktoum Solar Park; the contract was awarded for the first plans to take place in October.
Solar energy will also divert attention away from Dubai’s power plants’ reliance on natural gases, which are imported.
The expense is especially high during the summer months when air conditioning is frequently used and the emirate must turn to costly liquefied natural gas.
This expense is then passed on to consumers with a fuel surcharge. Fortunately, solar panels are becoming cheaper as the technology advances and fierce competition controls the prices.
Thanks to the emergence of solar energy, Dubai can also reach its goal of reducing the carbon footprint of its power generation – like Abu Dhabi, which launched the Shams1 Concentrated Solar Plant (CSP) in March 2013.
Shams, impressively, at 100 megawatts, is the largest solar installation in the Middle East. Green Prophet visited Shams earlier this year and you can see pictures here. This installation will contribute to the Emirate’s plan to derive seven percent of its electricity from renewable resources by 2020.
We are rooting for them.
They can’t read or write but a couple of brave Bedouin women from Jordan travelled far and wide to help their villages become solar powered.
Kuwaiti graphic designer Mohammad Sharaf serves up powerful pictures based on current events, salted with modern Middle Eastern humor and instantly provocative.
Tel Aviv’s Nir Meiri recently unveiled Marine Light – a curious lamp shade made entirely of seaweed wrapped around a spindly metal frame.
Eaten by coastal people all over the world and prized for its gelatinous and nutritional properties (see bottled algae superfood), and its use is being investigated for seaweed as biofuel, marine algae is harvested for everything from dental moulds and wound dressings to deserts.
But we’ve never seen a seaweed lamp shade before.
“Ancient cultures have appreciated and utilized seaweeds for different uses,” Meiri says on his website.”Today, seaweeds are cultivated and harvested on a commercial scale, as a result of a growing interest driven by environmental concerns.”
Meiri encloses the shade’s metal frame with seaweed that is still wet, according to the designer. Then, once it dries, the marine algae shrivels down and conforms to the shade’s shape.
Once dry, he applies a preservative to the seaweed so that it doesn’t completely rot or flake off; the resulting lamp shade produces a luminescent glow that brings the sea indoors.
“Through the unconventional use of seaweed as a main material for a domestic environment, the product plays on the tension between the artistic and the commercial,” says Meiri.
Materially, the Marine Light is a sensible environmental choice as well since there are no algae shortages in the world and it reproduces very quickly.
This is the second funky lamp we’ve featured this week. If you haven’t already seen it, check out this clever lamp powered by the kinetic energy of shifting sands.
:: Gizmag
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