Qatar’s Culture Minister’s daughter is among five people who have been arrested in connection with the fire that swept through Doha’s elite Villaggio Mall on Monday. Imran al-Kuwairi owns the Gympanzee nursery where the fire erupted, killing 19 people. Among the dead are triplets from New Zealand, three Spanish siblings, two firefighters and four caretakers.
If you’ve ever had the experience of driving through a vast, mostly uncluttered landscape that is suddenly interrupted by a large, ill-fitting manmade structure, then this project by MZ Architects will appeal to you. Sustainability experts with offices in Lebanon, Morocco, Abu Dhabi and elsewhere, the designers have pushed the stadium underground and set it […]
Galmidi Yitzhar and the industrial designer Yaksein Eliran won first place in a design competition for a new underground train station in one of Israel’s most vibrant cities – Tel Aviv. Borrowing inspiration from some of the city’s most iconic features, such as its ubiquitous collection of Bauhaus architecture and the Ficus Microcarpa trees planted […]
Seeing a prototype Better Place EV car is a lot different than the real thing on the road. Photo by Maurice Picow More than five months have passed since Shai Agassi’s Better Place electric car company put its first 100 Renault Fluence EV on Israeli roads. The event was covered with a certain amount of […]
In wealthy Western countries, renewable energy developments are a source of progress, pride and smart business. For Israel and Jordan, two Middle Eastern countries severely lacking in water and energy resources, renewable energy is a matter of survival. That’s why there’s been a new green twist to the Trilateral Industrial Development Foundation (TRIDE), founded in 1996 as […]
Authorities have issued arrest orders following Monday’s fire that engulfed Doha’s Villaggio Mall, killing 19 people. The owner of the mall and a handful of officials accused of failing to properly respond to the emergency face arrest, and the owner of the daycare facility where 13 children, including two-year old triplets from New Zealand and […]
Jordan’s Independence Day rolls around every May 25, celebrating when British command over this land once called Transjordan ended back in 1946. So, last weekend in Amman, the streets dressed up in banners and flags and fireworks blazed in evening skies. Jordan’s party pretty much mirrors America’s July Fourth: less fun on the waterfront, but plenty of […]
Will there be less public peeing on the streets now there’s a high tech public toilet in Tel Aviv? Haaretz reporter Roy Arad recently wrote that in all his career as a journalist he has never seen people so happy as the Israelis that have just used 2 The Loo on King George Street in […]
If you want naturally beautiful hair (or temporary tattoos), turn to henna. Anyone living in the Middle East has often seen little old ladies with kerchiefs tied under their chins and long, orange-colored braids falling down their backs. They dye their hair with henna, the dried and powdered leaves of Lawsonia lythraceae. But modern women […]
In Israel the organic food market is still comparatively small and underdeveloped. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz organic food only comprises one and half percent of Israel’s agricultural output. A whopping 90% of it is exported abroad, mainly to European markets. An annual Agriculture Ministry survey in 2011 discovered that 37.4% of the organic […]
Headphones kill pedestrians and cyclists who can’t hear traffic. Israel proposes new legislation to ban the music while cycling. Israel is rapidly becoming a nation of bikers, from cycle-tourism to the bike-sharing program that earned Tel Aviv municipality a Green Globe Award this year. But it has proven a risky method of transit on crowded streets. Sunday, […]
Your reusable totes may be full of bacteria and can turn you seriously “green”. Time to practice good bag hygiene. Researchers at the University of Arizona tested 84 reusable shopping totes and found over half were contaminated with harmful bacteria, including the dangerous E.coli. Contamination occurs when fluids such as fruit juices and meat blood leak […]
Ten minutes after a fire broke out in Doha’s Villaggio Mall yesterday, an expatriate and Doha News reader Paula Rodrigues Duarte claimed that officials failed to discourage her from entering the mall. “Not security or police. I was actually walking towards it unknowingly till I saw people running back and turned around and left. No alarms, […]
Saudi Prince Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah – the son of King Abdullah and deputy Foreign Minister – has sued the city of Los Angeles. In 2009 the King’s third son purchased a 5 1/4 acre plot of land in a wealthy Beverly Hills neighborhood for $12 million through his firm Tower Lane Properties. But once […]
It may look like a castle, but this beautiful red-earth building is actually an 11-roomed hotel that receives 80% of its energy from the sun. And like the eco-lodge, Hassan and his wife Hélène of the Atlas Kasbah are no run-of-the-mill owners. He is Berber, she is French, and they both possess Masters Degrees in Sustainable […]