Author of the hugely popular cookbook Plenty, Yotam Ottolenghi teamed up with co-chef Sami Tamimi to produce a cookbook that will dazzle, inspire, and satisfy your senses. Both men were born the same year in Jerusalem; Ottolenghi in the western Jewish side and Tamimi in Arab east Jerusalem. They never met until they were in […]
Magnificent public art or environmental boondoggle? Oil drums stacked to the height of the Giza pyramids. Christo, the artist who temporarily wrapped acres of fabric around the Pont Neuf and the Reichstag, now plans to stack thousands of empty oil drums in the Abu Dhabi desert in his first ever permanent installation. The finished work […]
Ordering a foul or falafel sandwich at any fast food chain or street vendor in Cairo puts consumers one step closer to triple bypass surgery. This has less to do with the food itself than it does with how it is prepared, since Egyptian cuisine, a fluid, nebulous thing fraught with the influence of so many […]
Investing in African Agriculture This past April, MASHAV, Israel’s agency for international development cooperation, signed a memorandum of understanding with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The memorandum is aimed at addressing food security through partnerships with farmers in Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Rwanda. Israel will contribute expertise in irrigation, water technologies, agricultural […]
Online and remote controls for smart energy solutions for heating, cooling and office space lighting. About 20 percent of the operational expenses in office buildings, schools and hospitals goes toward energy — HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) and electricity. Usually a default temperature is set for all year round, and the HVAC system and […]
A sea level rise of 100 inches or eight feet in Ar Ru’ays, a city at the northern tip of Qatar, would render 100 percent of the population homeless. Considered one of the top ten developing nations that is most vulnerable to rising seas, the host of the 18th Conference of the Parties to the […]
Egypt’s youth are an inspiring bunch. They have taken down a dictator, and withstood the subsequent uncertainty, but their hardest battle may come in convincing the country that the natural surroundings are worth saving. But they are not being deterred. A few dedicated environmentalists in the country gathered this month to continue to build the […]
In a bid to highlight our water use and waste, photographer Peter Holmes has created a series of memorable portraits of water use in different countries. “Statistics about water consumption are difficult to comprehend and are un-relatable to everyday life – this project attempts to make water consumption visible in a meaningful way.” Well, that’s […]
Israel now has relations with 44 African nations, more than at any time in the country’s history. “This is the dawning of a new era in relations between Israel and African states,” according to Lynn Schler, director of the Africa Centre at Ben-Gurion University. During summer 2012, a vast array of high-profile African leaders visited Israel, […]
Spanish fast fashion company Zara has come under intense fire recently for failing to address a Greenpeace report released last year outlining the textile industry’s deleterious impact on China’s waterways. Called Dirty Laundry, the report unveiled that persistent and bio-accumulative hazardous chemicals with hormone-disrupting properties are released into the same water that residents rely on […]
Gaza fishermen are now able to sail further out to fish but commercial fish farming may be a better option Environmental and economic issues facing Palestinians living in Gaza have gone from bad to worse since the previous Cast Lead conflict between Gaza and Israel in 2008 – 2009. This is especially true following the […]
In the Middle East, recipes for stuffed vegetables and leaves evolved from a simple, thrifty way with meat to a culinary passion. Careful housewives have long known that a little ground meat goes a long way when artfully seasoned and combined with rice. But it took imagination and care to develop the recipes of stuffed […]
A SARS-like respiratory illness has claimed the life of a second person from Saudi Arabia, the World Health Organization (WHO) recently announced. The coronavirus sparked worldwide attention in September when an initial alert was sounded, but now a total of six cases have been reported, two of which have been fatal.
A new marketplace for Casablanca – complete with rainwater harvesting and a clever trash chute? While the souq or market is integral to Moroccan culture, they are frequently crowded and polluted as population density expands throughout the North African country. TomDavid Architecten from The Netherlands submitted a proposal as part of an international design competition […]
More and more studies highlight the truly drastic action we need to take at Doha to avoid four degree warming – but is it too late? According to a new report, heat waves in the Middle East with temperatures consistently above 40 degrees could seem like ‘a pleasant prospect in a few decades’ if we […]