“In the midst of uncertain time, renewable energy remains consistent and steadfast in its expansion,” said Francesco La Camera, IRENA’s Director-General. “A more decentralised energy system, with a growing share of renewables and more market players, is structurally more resilient.”
Health insurance is a regulated financial product. Insurers operate under binding contracts, overseen by state insurance commissioners, that legally obligate them to pay claims meeting policy terms. Policyholders who believe a covered claim was wrongfully denied have legal recourse through state regulatory channels.
The New Zealand Merino Company, now rebranded as Zentera, has quietly removed the phrase “world’s leading ethical wool brand” from its website, a notable change that comes after a disturbing investigation by PETA Asia-Pacific into the company’s ZQ-certified wool supply chain, PETA reports to Green Prophet.
Somehow vegetables with short seasons excite the imagination and appetite more sharply than produce that’s available all year around. Good Middle Eastern cooks have many recipes for delicate fava beans, and this turmeric-fragrant soup is one.
“In the midst of uncertain time, renewable energy remains consistent and steadfast in its expansion,” said Francesco La Camera, IRENA’s Director-General. “A more decentralised energy system, with a growing share of renewables and more market players, is structurally more resilient.”
Health insurance is a regulated financial product. Insurers operate under binding contracts, overseen by state insurance commissioners, that legally obligate them to pay claims meeting policy terms. Policyholders who believe a covered claim was wrongfully denied have legal recourse through state regulatory channels.
The New Zealand Merino Company, now rebranded as Zentera, has quietly removed the phrase “world’s leading ethical wool brand” from its website, a notable change that comes after a disturbing investigation by PETA Asia-Pacific into the company’s ZQ-certified wool supply chain, PETA reports to Green Prophet.
Somehow vegetables with short seasons excite the imagination and appetite more sharply than produce that’s available all year around. Good Middle Eastern cooks have many recipes for delicate fava beans, and this turmeric-fragrant soup is one.
“In the midst of uncertain time, renewable energy remains consistent and steadfast in its expansion,” said Francesco La Camera, IRENA’s Director-General. “A more decentralised energy system, with a growing share of renewables and more market players, is structurally more resilient.”
Health insurance is a regulated financial product. Insurers operate under binding contracts, overseen by state insurance commissioners, that legally obligate them to pay claims meeting policy terms. Policyholders who believe a covered claim was wrongfully denied have legal recourse through state regulatory channels.
The New Zealand Merino Company, now rebranded as Zentera, has quietly removed the phrase “world’s leading ethical wool brand” from its website, a notable change that comes after a disturbing investigation by PETA Asia-Pacific into the company’s ZQ-certified wool supply chain, PETA reports to Green Prophet.
Somehow vegetables with short seasons excite the imagination and appetite more sharply than produce that’s available all year around. Good Middle Eastern cooks have many recipes for delicate fava beans, and this turmeric-fragrant soup is one.
“In the midst of uncertain time, renewable energy remains consistent and steadfast in its expansion,” said Francesco La Camera, IRENA’s Director-General. “A more decentralised energy system, with a growing share of renewables and more market players, is structurally more resilient.”
Health insurance is a regulated financial product. Insurers operate under binding contracts, overseen by state insurance commissioners, that legally obligate them to pay claims meeting policy terms. Policyholders who believe a covered claim was wrongfully denied have legal recourse through state regulatory channels.
The New Zealand Merino Company, now rebranded as Zentera, has quietly removed the phrase “world’s leading ethical wool brand” from its website, a notable change that comes after a disturbing investigation by PETA Asia-Pacific into the company’s ZQ-certified wool supply chain, PETA reports to Green Prophet.
Somehow vegetables with short seasons excite the imagination and appetite more sharply than produce that’s available all year around. Good Middle Eastern cooks have many recipes for delicate fava beans, and this turmeric-fragrant soup is one.
“In the midst of uncertain time, renewable energy remains consistent and steadfast in its expansion,” said Francesco La Camera, IRENA’s Director-General. “A more decentralised energy system, with a growing share of renewables and more market players, is structurally more resilient.”
Health insurance is a regulated financial product. Insurers operate under binding contracts, overseen by state insurance commissioners, that legally obligate them to pay claims meeting policy terms. Policyholders who believe a covered claim was wrongfully denied have legal recourse through state regulatory channels.
The New Zealand Merino Company, now rebranded as Zentera, has quietly removed the phrase “world’s leading ethical wool brand” from its website, a notable change that comes after a disturbing investigation by PETA Asia-Pacific into the company’s ZQ-certified wool supply chain, PETA reports to Green Prophet.
Somehow vegetables with short seasons excite the imagination and appetite more sharply than produce that’s available all year around. Good Middle Eastern cooks have many recipes for delicate fava beans, and this turmeric-fragrant soup is one.
“In the midst of uncertain time, renewable energy remains consistent and steadfast in its expansion,” said Francesco La Camera, IRENA’s Director-General. “A more decentralised energy system, with a growing share of renewables and more market players, is structurally more resilient.”
Health insurance is a regulated financial product. Insurers operate under binding contracts, overseen by state insurance commissioners, that legally obligate them to pay claims meeting policy terms. Policyholders who believe a covered claim was wrongfully denied have legal recourse through state regulatory channels.
The New Zealand Merino Company, now rebranded as Zentera, has quietly removed the phrase “world’s leading ethical wool brand” from its website, a notable change that comes after a disturbing investigation by PETA Asia-Pacific into the company’s ZQ-certified wool supply chain, PETA reports to Green Prophet.
Somehow vegetables with short seasons excite the imagination and appetite more sharply than produce that’s available all year around. Good Middle Eastern cooks have many recipes for delicate fava beans, and this turmeric-fragrant soup is one.
“In the midst of uncertain time, renewable energy remains consistent and steadfast in its expansion,” said Francesco La Camera, IRENA’s Director-General. “A more decentralised energy system, with a growing share of renewables and more market players, is structurally more resilient.”
Health insurance is a regulated financial product. Insurers operate under binding contracts, overseen by state insurance commissioners, that legally obligate them to pay claims meeting policy terms. Policyholders who believe a covered claim was wrongfully denied have legal recourse through state regulatory channels.
The New Zealand Merino Company, now rebranded as Zentera, has quietly removed the phrase “world’s leading ethical wool brand” from its website, a notable change that comes after a disturbing investigation by PETA Asia-Pacific into the company’s ZQ-certified wool supply chain, PETA reports to Green Prophet.
Somehow vegetables with short seasons excite the imagination and appetite more sharply than produce that’s available all year around. Good Middle Eastern cooks have many recipes for delicate fava beans, and this turmeric-fragrant soup is one.
“In the midst of uncertain time, renewable energy remains consistent and steadfast in its expansion,” said Francesco La Camera, IRENA’s Director-General. “A more decentralised energy system, with a growing share of renewables and more market players, is structurally more resilient.”
Health insurance is a regulated financial product. Insurers operate under binding contracts, overseen by state insurance commissioners, that legally obligate them to pay claims meeting policy terms. Policyholders who believe a covered claim was wrongfully denied have legal recourse through state regulatory channels.
The New Zealand Merino Company, now rebranded as Zentera, has quietly removed the phrase “world’s leading ethical wool brand” from its website, a notable change that comes after a disturbing investigation by PETA Asia-Pacific into the company’s ZQ-certified wool supply chain, PETA reports to Green Prophet.
Somehow vegetables with short seasons excite the imagination and appetite more sharply than produce that’s available all year around. Good Middle Eastern cooks have many recipes for delicate fava beans, and this turmeric-fragrant soup is one.
Half a century ago, Chubby Checker (ironically) popularized the waist-whittling dance, “The Twist”. Twenty years on, Jennifer Beals’ Flashdance foot-stomping fueled record-breaking sales of leg warmers: required apparatus for burning off surplus 1980’s calories. Micro-shorted Richard Simmons challenged TV audiences to “Sweat to the Oldies”. Suburban strip malls spawned Jazzercise classes.
Americans were not the only ones dancing their way to fitness: Middle Eastern belly-dance and Colombian Zumba hopped onto the scene. The Indian dance sequence that wraps Slumdog Millionaire hatched a zillion imitators on YouTube from tween-age sleepovers to formal wedding parties: the music is infectious and near-impossible to endure without some nerdy head nodding or shoulder popping. A good tune can be more motivating than medical data to get us moving.
Now aspiring dancers in Dubai can log off YouTube and learn fancy footwork straight from a master Bollywood dancer. This summer, Hindi film star Meghna Naidu is establishing a Bollywood dance academy in the United Arab Emirates.
Have you received an email saying your car’s air con could kill you? The jury is still out until more scientific evidence comes in.
Car and home air conditioning units provide a cooler internal environment, and may also be a possible source of drinking water in emergency situations . But there is another side to air conditioning, especially car AC units, if turned on immediately after the car has been parked for a period of time on a hot summer’s day. This is especially worrying in Middle East countries where it’s hot almost year round. Consider the following scenario:
You’ve left your car in the parking lot of a shopping mall on a scorching July or August day; and now after returning to it, and with an inside temperature is more than 70 degrees Celsius (158 degrees Fahrenheit) and you immediately turn on the car’s AC unit. Turning on the AC Unit without first opening the car windows for a few moments can result in your body receiving dangerous benzene fumes from plastic and other synthetic materials in the car’s dashboard, linings, and upholstery.
Rising acid levels in the world’s oceans now threatens everything from coral reefs to global food security, Jane Lubchenco, the head of America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Monday. The level of acid in oceans now rivals climate change as its “equally evil twin,” she told AP.
“We’ve got sort of the perfect storm of stressors from multiple places really hammering reefs around the world.”
This was announced at the International Coral Reef Symposium in the northeast city of Cairns, near the Great Barrier Reef: “It’s a very serious situation,” she added.
As humans pump excessive carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from industry, travel, consumption of meat, and heating and cooling their homes, the oceans absorb it, leading to an increased acidity in the water. This acidity literally melts the bodies of animals made from shells, and it prevents coral from laying down new exoskeleton.
Rising acidity has also found to impair the sense of smell of some fish, like in salmon and clown fish. It’s not known what will happen to the ecology of the sea should reefs die-off altogether.
While there is no quick fix to removing carbon dioxide gas from the seas and oceans, we can do our part by finding ways to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide pollution, Lubchenco noted.
The news is depressing and if you are not a politician you can fight in other ways by supporting Greenpeace or by starting or joining a sustainable sea circus.
During a recent trip to Iran, EuroNews correspondent Ali Sheikholeslami found that many Iranians are becoming unwitting vegetarians as they can no longer afford to buy meat. Following international sanctions against the country’s nuclear ambitions, inflation has soared, the Rial has crashed to about half its former value against western currencies, and locals are feeling the pinch.
Nichoas Kristof from the New York Times saw a different Iran filled with one night stands and thrill-seekers, but the newest round of sanctions will be felt by those who are already living on the margins.
When commissioned to transform Izmir’s Orfi furniture store into an inspiring and atmospheric new space, Turkish designer Nail Egemen Yerce was presented with three concepts that needed to be incorporated: the garden, the plaza and the street.
The existing office was endowed with an incredible excess of daylight, which needed to be diffused without shutting out the potential for connection between the interior and exterior, so the studio installed a striking curvilinear wall laid with perforated bricks. This unusual interior addition not only partitions space but also diffuses natural light that pours into the building.
Let down by world leaders (again) at Rio+20, green Arab researcher Mohamed Abdel Raouf says it’s time for a less top-down approach to solutions
It’s been over a fortnight since the Rio+20 summit which was supposed to look at sustainable development (and in later years ‘sustained growth’ – something which is very different) whimpered to an end. The was so little progress at the climate summit that I feel sorry for those journalists who attended and were asked to write up some ‘news’. Nobody thought it was going to be as ground-breaking as the initial summit twenty years ago which saw world leaders sign up to protect biodiversity and champion sustainability but the outcome was more depressing than many hoped.
It seems climate change has fallen spectacularly off the world agenda and, with it, our chances of an international agreement with the grit to steer the planet back onto the right track. I caught up with Mohamed Abdel Raouf, a green researcher based in the Middle East after a busy and frustrating time at the Rio+20 conference to get his take on events.
There’s just one week left to win a beautiful organic cotton dress from MuMu Organic and help Green Prophet get to 6,000 likes on Facebook. We have a ways to go, so we definitely need your help. Here are three easy steps you need to take to stand a chance to win the dress of your choice from Greece’s first organic clothing line.
i. First, tell us in the comment section at the end of this post why you think that buying organic clothing made in accordance with fair-trade principles is so important.
ii. “Like” us here on Facebook and help us get to 6,000 likes by July 15th. (If you already like us, be sure to comment and share this post with friends.)
We will announce the winner of the dress on July 20th. And the first five people who commented on our first post will be notified at the same time how to claim their 50% discount on MuMu Organic’s e-store. Don’t delay, the competition ends on July 15th.
Rich spices and heavy wintertime comfort food: this is what often springs to mind when people think of recipes from the Middle East and North Africa. But with temperatures in parts of the region rising to 50 degrees Celsius in the shade, who wants to eat rich dishes that end in a food coma? Not to worry, regardless of what the mercury dials in, people here like to eat, so there are numerous healthy and heartwarming summer dishes to try as well. If you want to expand your culinary horizons beyond such staples as baba ghanoush, hummus, and tehina, check out these five less well-known recipes made with signature Middle Eastern flavors.
Marine drone, by Elie Ahovi Industrial design, cleans the sea of plastic
This Marine Drone could clean up our dirty work. Can a wealthy Saudi fund this prototype to clean our seas? Fourteen billion pounds of garbage, 90 percent of which is plastic, is dumped into the ocean every year and there is no sign of plastic waste reducing – in fact plastic waste has been increasing about 10% each year for the past 20 years.
In the Red Sea, Arabian Sea, Gulf of Oman, Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Aden, dumping untreated sewage and Industrial waste directly into the sea is unfortunately an extensive practice, but an additional recent threat is the increasing number of landfill sites located near the coast which are resulting in considerable plastic pollution near coasts and coral reefs. One solution, the Marine Drone Elie Ahovi Industrial Design, could clean up our waste.
The drone is basically a propelled oversized pool net with special sensors that keep aquatic animals away and high-powered batteries that allows it to stay in the water for more than 2 weeks. Not much has been discussed regarding how much plastic each drone would be able to collect, the costs involved and whether the drone is capable of capturing the insidious nurdles which are the greatest problem.
Ten percent of all plastic ends up in the ocean, and has resulted in the largest landfill in the world: the Great Pacific Garbage Patch which is estimated to be twice the size of France. The Mediterranean is not spared from floating plastic garbage islands. Seventy percent of this ever-accumulating plastic sinks to the sea floor. In 2006, The United Nations Environment Program estimated that every square mile of ocean hosts 46,000 pieces of floating plastic and in some areas, the amount of plastic outweighs the amount of plankton by a ratio of six to one.
Americans buy over 29 million bottles of water every year, this uses 17 million barrels of crude oil annually, which would be enough fuel to keep 1 million cars on the road for one year. Only 13% of those bottles are recycled. The United Arab Emirates has the world’s largest per-capita ecological footprint; it currently consumes 25% of global plastic bags.
Aside from being a quantitative disaster in our sea, plastic has terrible properties. Once in the ocean there is no way plastic can completely biodegrade. Instead, plastic photodegrades breaking into smaller and smaller pieces of plastic called mermaid tears or nurdles. These tiny plastic particles can get sucked up by filter feeders and are ingested by marine animals which can poison them and lead to death. Nurdles also tend to soak up toxic chemicals which result in biomagnification a process whereby persistent organic pollutants and concentration of toxins increase as we move up trophic levels.
The issue of plastic waste in our sea cannot be stressed enough, the figures are shocking.
But if this prospective Marine Drone project is eventually engineered who would pay to clean up the sea? The sea is a public good and water pollution is the result of several countries dumping so my question is: Are there the right incentives for countries in the Middle East to decide to invest in such ideas and maintain the common sea clean?
It’s mission accomplished. The Solar Impulse, the world’s longest solar powered flight has landed back home in Madrid, Spain. The flight took 17 hours from Rabat, Morocco. The plane’s maiden voyage was from Spain to Morocco, proving that a solar-powered plane could fly both day and night. Next, say its owners Swiss pilots Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg, is a flight around the world.
In order to address this issue, the wineries of the Golan region in Israel recently teamed up with the Industrial Design Department at the Holon Institute of Technology (HIT) to challenge young designers to find ways to upcycle used oak wine barrels. Assisted by Ori Ben Zvi of Tel Aviv’s upcycling Studio Ubico, the designers came up with a bunch of creative ways to use the wooden barrels, prototypes of which will be exhibited this week in Tel Aviv.
Toni Polo, founder of Radio Groovalizacion explains how music and migration are shaping contemporary culture in the Middle East and North Arfica.
As an avid “world music” listener – although I don’t like this term but I still haven’t found a better one- it is always an immense pleasure to discover hidden musical gems. One organization that feeds you with just these jewels is radio Groovalizacion. Greenprophet interviews founder Toni Polo to find out why and how radio Groovalization and its music is a successful medium through which people from the Middle East and North Africa can express, communicate and continue traditions.
Convinced that art and culture can raise social awareness, Ton Polo has been coordinating various intercultural schemes since 2006, either as a film director, radio journalist, DJ or cultural manager of his project “Migratory Music ”. He has been involved in various activities in relation with music, immigration, identities and integration collaborating with several NGOs and associations in Argentina, Spain, Senegal, Morocco, Turkey, Portugal and Mali.
Emigration from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) to Europe has been an important political and economic topic in the past ten to fifteen years- in 2010 the stock of documented migrants was 18.1 million or 5.3% of the MENA region population. However little is discussed on the cultural, traditional and artistic impact migration is having on the country of origin and departure.
Japan is seeking Israeli clean tech experts to help rebuild Fukushima, which was devastated by both an earthquake and a tsunami last year.
The Japanese company in charge of rehabilitation recently sent a delegation to Israel looking for experts and entrepreneurs, especially in the fields of water management and recycling. According to the company’s liaison in Israel, Lior Daeri, Israeli groups that participate will receive tax breaks worth NIS 50 million (roughly $12.8 million dollars).
Vivian Salameh, a Christian, was assistant manager of corporate operations at the Jordan Dubai Islamic Bank since 2010. She told The National: “We are not in Iran, we are in Jordan, and we must continue to enjoy personal and religious freedoms as stipulated by our constitution. I respect the hijab (headscarf), but it represents Muslim women and I’m Christian.”
Christians make up nearly 4% of Jordan’s 6 million people.
When Britain’s own financing institutions staggered under the weight of the 2008 economic crisis, a Qatari consortium stepped in to finance The Shard in London- it’s a sleek pyramidal skyscraper designed by Italian starchitect Renzo Piano.
Officially inaugurated amid great pomp and circumstance, the building is small when compared to Dubai’s 2,717 foot Burj Al-Khalifa, but at 1,016 feet, it dwarfs the London Bridge Quarter in which it was built. But far from being a monument to Britain, the latest tallest building in western Europe is 95% owned by the government of Qatar.
