Dubai International Airport (DXB) will overtake Heathrow as the world’s biggest international airport by 2015. What’s the environmental impact of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) decade of relentless aviation growth? In 2000, Dubai didn’t warrant mention on a register of the world’s Top 100 airports. By 2010, it had soared to 13th place, reaching […]
Sisters or the the Olive trees of Noah, are the 16 oldest olive trees in the world found in the community of Bechealeh, Lebanon. Some 6,000 years old, folklorists say these have Biblical origins.
They took their pilot run from Europe to Morocco, now the Swiss solar plane will fly across America. Sometime next summer, an airplane with the wingspan of an Airbus A340 but weighing not much more than a Toyota will fly from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., and on to New York. The history-making cross-country trip […]
Sugar wax, sugaring or Persian waxing, whatever you want to call it there is an old, tried and true way to wax, naturally.
Every year when farmers start harvesting their sugar cane, maize and other crops, Cairenes brace themselves for what is ominously known as “The Black Cloud.” Caused when seasonal meteorological conditions meet the smoke released by burning agricultural waste, the heavy black pollution settles over an already smoggy Cairo, and respiratory diseases flourish. Now a new […]
Why and how have migrant domestic worker’s rights been violated in Lebanon? Five decades after the development of the kefala (sponsorship) system, Lebanon’s two-hundred thousand migrant domestic workers continue to be denied central human rights like the right to self-realization which is interlinked with the right to freedom of movement, just conditions of work and […]
A group of Yemeni high school girls have created a suite of solar-powered gadgets to help illuminate their country’s post-revolution darkness. When the first revolutions began to sweep through the Arab world, we were all so hopeful about the changes to follow. So hopeful, we called this time the “Arab Spring.” But for people living […]
This grey Congo parrot could be at risk if exposed to cooking fumes from PTFE coated cookware Issues surrounding the safety of ceramic and other “non-stick” cookware have still clouded peoples minds in Israel and elsewhere. These issues followed an Israeli TV consumer watchdog program, Kolbotek warned viewers that some brands of ecolon ceramic coated […]
Can computer generated Bengal tigers help save the 1850 real ones which remain in the wild? The Life of Pi is a novel by Yann Martel, first published in 2001. It told the story of a boy whose family is shipwrecked while moving their private zoo’s animals from French India to Canada. It was thought […]
Government scored a massive win over the tobacco industry in 2012 when the Australian High Court ruled in favor of plain packaging for cigarettes, making this the first country to require all tobacco products to be sold in plain, standardized packaging.
Worldwide close to 50 million couples are unable to conceive after five years of trying, states a recent report. A recent World Health Organization report of 277 national surveys estimates that infertility rates have remained consistent over the past 20 years, with North Africa and the Middle East showing the strongest negative trends in reproductive […]
Land mines kill 42 people every month. They’re all over Egypt, where Bedouins frequently lose limbs while daring desert treks, and in 81 other countries around the globe. Pernicious and anonymous, these weapons of mass devastation are almost impossible to destroy without compromising human lives. Which means that any solution that attempts to do so […]
When 97 percent of a nation’s energy is imported, every renewable energy gift counts. Jordan received a $300 million grant from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which Minister of Energy and Transportation Alaa Batayneh says will be used to develop a host of solar and wind energy projects in southern Jordan, The Jordan Times reports.
Need incentive to eat healthier? Diabetes, stroke and heart disease, have become the dominant cause of death and disability worldwide. Obesity and its myriad complications produce health problems greater than those caused by hunger: according to a new report published in the British medical journal The Lancet, it’s the leading cause of disability around the […]
Land grabs are old news, but National Geographic has taken a closer look at Saudi’s African interests in particular and the resulting story is startling. The world’s favorite nature magazine visited two massive dairy farms, including the world’s largest, that were built in one of the driest and hottest parts of earth – roughly 100 […]