A comprehensive analysis published by AstroTurf experts on turf field safety identifies several critical factors that separate premium synthetic surfaces from standard installations.
Opioid drugs including oxycodone, heroin and fentanyl have fueled an ever-worsening epidemic in the US. And after giant events in New Orleans they are popping up in the wastewater.
Neom, a bombastic collection of futuristic cities and resorts, has flopped as Saudi oil prices roll back reality. The Saudi plan of hosting the 2029 Asian games to be held at Trojena, a ski report in the desert, has been cancelled.
A comprehensive analysis published by AstroTurf experts on turf field safety identifies several critical factors that separate premium synthetic surfaces from standard installations.
Opioid drugs including oxycodone, heroin and fentanyl have fueled an ever-worsening epidemic in the US. And after giant events in New Orleans they are popping up in the wastewater.
Neom, a bombastic collection of futuristic cities and resorts, has flopped as Saudi oil prices roll back reality. The Saudi plan of hosting the 2029 Asian games to be held at Trojena, a ski report in the desert, has been cancelled.
A comprehensive analysis published by AstroTurf experts on turf field safety identifies several critical factors that separate premium synthetic surfaces from standard installations.
Opioid drugs including oxycodone, heroin and fentanyl have fueled an ever-worsening epidemic in the US. And after giant events in New Orleans they are popping up in the wastewater.
Neom, a bombastic collection of futuristic cities and resorts, has flopped as Saudi oil prices roll back reality. The Saudi plan of hosting the 2029 Asian games to be held at Trojena, a ski report in the desert, has been cancelled.
A comprehensive analysis published by AstroTurf experts on turf field safety identifies several critical factors that separate premium synthetic surfaces from standard installations.
Opioid drugs including oxycodone, heroin and fentanyl have fueled an ever-worsening epidemic in the US. And after giant events in New Orleans they are popping up in the wastewater.
Neom, a bombastic collection of futuristic cities and resorts, has flopped as Saudi oil prices roll back reality. The Saudi plan of hosting the 2029 Asian games to be held at Trojena, a ski report in the desert, has been cancelled.
A comprehensive analysis published by AstroTurf experts on turf field safety identifies several critical factors that separate premium synthetic surfaces from standard installations.
Opioid drugs including oxycodone, heroin and fentanyl have fueled an ever-worsening epidemic in the US. And after giant events in New Orleans they are popping up in the wastewater.
Neom, a bombastic collection of futuristic cities and resorts, has flopped as Saudi oil prices roll back reality. The Saudi plan of hosting the 2029 Asian games to be held at Trojena, a ski report in the desert, has been cancelled.
A comprehensive analysis published by AstroTurf experts on turf field safety identifies several critical factors that separate premium synthetic surfaces from standard installations.
Opioid drugs including oxycodone, heroin and fentanyl have fueled an ever-worsening epidemic in the US. And after giant events in New Orleans they are popping up in the wastewater.
Neom, a bombastic collection of futuristic cities and resorts, has flopped as Saudi oil prices roll back reality. The Saudi plan of hosting the 2029 Asian games to be held at Trojena, a ski report in the desert, has been cancelled.
A comprehensive analysis published by AstroTurf experts on turf field safety identifies several critical factors that separate premium synthetic surfaces from standard installations.
Opioid drugs including oxycodone, heroin and fentanyl have fueled an ever-worsening epidemic in the US. And after giant events in New Orleans they are popping up in the wastewater.
Neom, a bombastic collection of futuristic cities and resorts, has flopped as Saudi oil prices roll back reality. The Saudi plan of hosting the 2029 Asian games to be held at Trojena, a ski report in the desert, has been cancelled.
A comprehensive analysis published by AstroTurf experts on turf field safety identifies several critical factors that separate premium synthetic surfaces from standard installations.
Opioid drugs including oxycodone, heroin and fentanyl have fueled an ever-worsening epidemic in the US. And after giant events in New Orleans they are popping up in the wastewater.
Neom, a bombastic collection of futuristic cities and resorts, has flopped as Saudi oil prices roll back reality. The Saudi plan of hosting the 2029 Asian games to be held at Trojena, a ski report in the desert, has been cancelled.
The British fast-food chain hid up to 30% horse meat in its juicy burgers, then denied it.
The British, most of whom regard eating horse as something like eating dogs, were rocked by the news that the burgers they loved were filled out with cheap horse meat.
Burger King’s supplier in Ireland, ABP/Silvercrest, supplied the “contaminated” meat. Tracing it back as far as possible, it seems to have originated in Poland. Frozen meat of murky origin, hauled in refrigerated trucks from country to country before being served to the public. Hardly sustainable food.
At first Burger King denied any connection with horse meat, but then did some clumsy back-pedalling when it withdrew millions of frozen patties. Then the chain issued a statement to the effect that some items would be missing from its menus until a new supplier was found. There are claims that horse meat had been mixed with beef for as long as a year before the news broke. Bad enough, right? But it got worse.
According to a recent report, 81% of Egyptians don’t have enough to cover their monthly food bill
A recent government survey has revealed an increasing number of Egyptians are struggling to clothe and feed themselves whilst keeping a roof over their heads. The report by the Egyptian Food Observatory found that of the 1680 households surveyed in September 2012, 86% said their income was insufficient to cover their monthly food, clothes and shelter bill. This marked a rise from 74% back in 2012. In an effort to cope with this growing food divide, many families reported adopting extreme coping strategies such as borrowing food and money. Indeed, overall 81.4% of households surveyed said their income was insufficient to meet their monthly food needs.
Anyone who has been paying attention will have noticed that a host of exciting new green projects are popping up all over the Middle East, including the soaring vertical garden at the Al-Sultan Ibrahim restaurant in Maameltein, Lebanon.
Designed by Green Studios Beirut and Gatserelia, the 96 square meter living wall in one of Lebanon’s most well-known seafood restaurants surpasses the West Elm green wall in Kuwait in both size and scope, making it quite possibly the largest of its kind in the entire Middle East/North Africa region.
Got internet access? Then you also have admission to university-level education, absolutely free and with fully flexible class times.
Been itching to up your game in an area of science or energy? Want to be more confident when jumping into the climate change debate? Check out some of the excellent university courses offered free and on-line.
No more books to buy, no rigid class schedule; these campus-less classrooms could shake up higher learning.
Green Prophet’s Brian Nitz introduced me to wildly addictive Coursera (my unwalked dog and idle treadmill thank you, sir). This self-described ‘social entrepreneurship company” partners with top universities to offer free online courses, giving anyone anywhere access to world-class education.
Web-based technology enables preeminent professors to teach tens of thousands of students via video lectures, pdf course books you can drop onto your e-reader, links to articles and supplemental video. (The videos – typically TedTalks or obscure YouTube uploads – are brilliant).
Created by two Stanford University scientists, Coursera offer seminars from dozens of elite American and European universities including Princeton, Stanford, University of California, and Johns Hopkins University, as well as Edinburgh University and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne. (Last year, Caltech and the University of Pennsylvania announced a combined $3.7m investment in Coursera.)
You can grow a living medicine chest in your garden with little effort.
The old song says, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Let’s add echinacea, garlic and basil. Most are culinary herbs with poetic histories. All are green medicines that you can harvest at will.
The herbs don’t take up much space, if not much space is what you have. I myself grow about 15 kinds of herbs on my little apartment balcony, in containers. A culinary/medicinal herb I love to have there is chickweed, a wild herb that’s easy to grow at home.
You can get creative and recycle an old sink or worn-out buckets as containers, but herbs thrive in ordinary plant pots. Weeding and adding organic plant food to the water every 2-3 weeks guarantee thriving, healthy plants. Seed packets provide information on how deeply to sow, the right months of the year for sowing, and the best sun/shade conditions. If buying little starters, consult the plant nursery. Or start your herb garden with upcycled supermarket herbs. You’ll love picking fresh, green medicine that you grew yourself.
Parsley
Curly or flat like in the Middle East: Chew a few leaves of fresh parsley to give your breath a healthy freshness.
A bunch of parsley, simmered 20 minutes (covered) in plenty of water, makes a diuretic tea that’s much healthier than “water pills.”
Two big parsley roots, chopped and cooked the same way with a handful of corn silk added, make a tea strong enough to move gravel from the kidneys and bladder.
Sage
Strong sage tea is antiseptic and an effective tissue healer. Gargle with it to relieve a scratchy throat. Wet a clean cloth or cotton with the infusion and apply to chafed, sore skin to prevent infection. Allow to dry naturally. Do this several times a day. The tea forms little white, floating particles. This is normal. Warning: drinking medicinal sage tea may bring menstruation on early, or cause menses to return during menopause.
Rosemary
A sprig of rosemary in hot water, with lemon and honey, makes a pleasant tea that will cure a tension headache. Rosemary stimulates blood circulation and warms the body. A bath with fresh or dried rosemary leaves will leave you feeling relaxed, but awake and alert. Tie the herb into a big handkerchief or a square of cheesecloth and chuck into a very hot bath. Swish it around a few times. When the water has cooled down enough to be pleasant, jump in. Warning: rosemary is not safe to use as medicine in pregnancy.
Thyme
A good cure for coughs is thyme infusion: 1 oz. of the dried herb infused in 1 pint of boiling water. Take 1 or 2 tablespoons, 3-5 times daily. I treated my own child with weak, sweet thyme tea when she had whooping cough as a baby. When she refused to drink any more, I put thyme in her bath. It was the only thing that helped.
Echinacea
The purple coneflower grows tall and handsome, and all parts of it are antiviral and antimicrobial. I suggest drying the flowers and leaves and storing them in glass, in a dark place. When you feel a cold coming on, pour a cup of boiling water of a teaspoon of the dry herb and cover the cup. Wait 15 minutes to drink.
Drink 3-5 cups of echinacea tea daily, sweetened with honey and flavored with cloves and/or lemon. It will help the virus to move along.
Garlic
A plant from the Quran. Ordinary garlic bulbs will sprout and make new bulbs with sturdy shoots and delicate flowers. It’s known to lower blood pressure and cholesterol somewhat, but it’s most famous as a natural antibiotic.
To clear away an ear infection, chop 3 large garlic cloves. Heat 3 tablespoons good olive oil and add the chopped garlic to it. Stir, cook 1 minute and remove from heat. Allow to steep 20 minutes. Strain the oil and drop 3 drops into the afflicted ear.
The oil is best applied warm. Re-heat it by passing a teaspoon half-filled with it over a lit match. Test the heat by dropping some on your inner wrist – you don’t want to drop hot oil into someone’s ear! Warm garlic oil relieves the pain and clears up mild ear infections.
I have also killed a cold by eating fresh garlic flowers several times.
Basil
This distinctive culinary herb has its uses as medicine, and surprising ones, too. Steep a jarful of the fresh, clean leaves in enough vodka to cover and leave, covered, in a dark place for three weeks. Drink a spoonful every morning to chase away fuzzy thinking. This simple tincture will also relieve headaches and help digestion.
Hydroponic gardening
If you live in a very cold, long-lived winter place with little sunshine, consider an indoor hydroponic kitchen counter grow machine. If you use it for years it will be worth it, but you need to commit.
Indoor hydroponic herb garden, for essential herbs and medical cannabis
A small piece of plastic can save lives, preserve local eco-systems, and cut greenhouse gas emissions: finally, positive press for plastics.
A Swiss-based company has developed portable water purifiers called LifeStraw that can be deployed at point-of-use to instantly convert water from hazardous to drinkable, without electricity and side-stepping the age-old practice of boiling.
Nearly a billion people lack access to safe drinking water. The problem’s particularly acute in sub-Saharan Africa, but nowhere is immune. (I’ve drunk Amman tap water for over a year, a recent confession that earned me a wicked tongue-lashing on the perils of rooftop-tank water, the primary method of water delivery here). Live and learn.
Diarrhea kills about 1.5 million children annually, more than AIDS, malaria and measles combined.
Unsafe drinking water is largely responsible for worldwide diarrheal diseases, particularly affecting the young and poor. Treating water at point-of-source is insufficient as it can be recontaminated during collection, transport, and domestic use; it must also be made safe at the point-of-consumption.
Water filters are the most effective interventions for reducing disease amongst all point-of-use (POU) water treatment methods.
POU treatment allows people to take immediate control over their domestic water quality, and home water treatment is fractionally expensive to conventional infrastructure (such as piped water connections to communal storage tanks). The filters are environmentally attractive too, since household demand for wood drops (no more water boiling), use of the devices slows local deforestation.
Cold weather and a booming industrial economy is making it hard to breath in the Middle East says NASA
Air pollution is a big problem in the Middle East particularly in cities such as Tehran, Cairo and the rich Gulf nations. The latest images from NASA, however, reveal the true extent of the problem with high concentrations of nitrogen dioxide lingering over cities and hospitals full of people with lung ailments.The NASA map above highlights the concentration of nitrogen dioxide in the atmosphere in the first week of January 2013. Dark patches of orange reflect a high concentration of nitrogen dioxide which is a key emission from burning fossil fuels by cars, trucks, power plants and factories. I was really struck by these findings as Green Prophet writer Joseph Mayton published an article in late January after struggling with asthma attacks in Cairo. Surely not a coincidence?
Not long after firing its replacement CEO, the Israeli electric car company Better Place has alluded to Forbes that it will likely close its its North American and Australian operations. Evan Thornley was the CEO of Better Place in Australia and was hired to be the global CEO of Better Place soon after the company’s visionary founder Shai Agassi was sacked last October. A third and acting CEO is now in place to put the pieces of the ailing startup car company back together. In an aim to cut costs, Forbes is reporting that Better Place‘s global ambitions to electrify the world have now shrunk to two countries only – Israel and Denmark – as Better Place looks to funnel its investment resources into these two markets.
Images of Tadashi Kawamata’s extraordinary installation entitled Chairs for Abu Dhabi has been circulating the blogosphere the last few days. A follow up of a similar project featured in France, the piece consists of hundreds of chairs – mostly vintage and recycled – stacked on top of one another like a giant hollow mountain of seats. Or a beehive.
If we hadn’t seen the footage, we would never have believed that Tel Aviv’s municipal workers would paint a fake handicap sign around a woman’s parked car in order to collect on the illegal parking and towing fines they then levied. Even worse, they believed they would get away with it.
Unluckily for them, they picked on the wrong woman. Hila Ben-Baruch has been using the same parking spot on Yehuda Halevi street for well over a year, so on the day in question, when municipal workers eventually had her vehicle towed and charged her over $350 for the privilege, she got herself some evidence, The Jerusalem Post reports. See below for the video.
33 exotic Moroccan recipes from the women who make and cook with argan oil.
The argan tree is a Berber identity icon, and production of its oil is traditionally a woman’s job. But as with many folkways, interest in argan began to dwindle. It’s a finicky process with low yield. Unless marketed wisely, it’s hardly worth the effort to produce.
Argan oil is now considered a culinary and cosmetic treasure in upscale homes world-wide. Consequently, preserving the native argan forests has become an important economic issue in Morocco – just in time to prevent erosion of their environment. Recent successful efforts to cultivate the argan tree in Israel also improve the species’ chances for survival.
Hopefully this cookbook, written in charmingly accented English and lavishly illustrated with beautiful watercolors, will inspire you to do some exotic argan oil cooking.
Historical notes and traditional stories polish the recipes, which cover sauces, salads, couscous, soups, tajines and desserts. Scattered throughout the text are little gems like advice on how to tell if saffron is good quality; how to cook with a tajine pot; what oudi butter is (a type of ghee, or smen).
You can download the PDF for The Gold of Arganeraie by clicking on this link. <—update 2021, and the link no longer works. And to give you a taste, here’s a simple dessert.
It would make a good finger-food for a party too.
Dates Filled WithCheese and Walnuts
Adapted from The Gold of Arganeraie
For 15 dates
15 stoned dates
30 grams walnuts, finely chopped
100 grams ricotta cheese
80 grams Roquefort cheese
1 teaspoon argan oil
salt
Preparation time: 1⁄2 hour
Mix the ricotta with the Roquefort and argan oil using a whisk. Salt to taste.
Add half the chopped walnuts and put in a pastry bag.
Fill the stoned dates with the cheese mixture and finally decorate with the remaining walnuts.
Greenpeace Jordan recently launched its first report specific to the Arab World entitled Jordan’s Energy Future (pdf link) to a packed audience of environmentalists, activists and political stakeholders in Amman. The report demonstrates Jordan’s potential to achieve full energy independence through renewable sources whilst campaigning against kingdom ambitions to develop nuclear energy. “This report shows the renewable power scenarios that can be implemented in Jordan without the need of a nuclear power plant. [It also] shows the obstacles and risks that can face the nuclear power plant in Jordan if implemented, “said Safa’ Al Jayoussi, Greenpeace Climate and Energy Campaigner in Jordan.
A new study has found that afternoon sun is five times riskier than than sun caught in the morning hours.
Are you one of those people who slather sunscreen all over your face come high noon, but remove the T- shirt later in the day to catch those warming, vitamin D-making rays? Well if you are one of those people (which was me until I read this study) who take joy in basking in the “safe” late day sun drinking a beer or sailing your sailboat, be warned: according to a relatively recent study published in PNAS (links to PDF), afternoon sun ups your risk of getting skin cancer five fold.
And it’s not because of anything the sun did: according to the researchers it’s all about our internal circadian clocks and our DNA’s ability to fend off the damaging effects of UV radiation. It turns out that our DNA is less protected to mutations late in the day. Simply put: our body works less good after a long day on the job. The bad news: more DNA damage is found to occur. This damage can result in skin cancer.
Once just a small company with a negligible following, SodaStream has caused a resounding splash with its recent Super Bowl advertising debut. Following up on its earlier strategy of comparing its brand to soda giants like Coca Cola and Pepsi, which waste billions of plastic bottles every month, the Israeli company made a bold move by targeting the companies on one of their biggest selling days, an American institution, the Super Bowl.
Their advertising agency Pale Dot Voyage initially featured both Coke and Pepsi products in the original advertisement, but CBS, concerned to offend their advertisers, banned it. SodaStream was forced to submit an advertisement featuring generic products instead but the impact was still clearly felt. The central message? By using their carbonated machines instead of coke or pepsi, consumers can save 15 million plastic bottles on game day alone.
The British fast-food chain hid up to 30% horse meat in its juicy burgers, then denied it.
