US F-18-C Hornets preparing to “visit” Libyan military forces When embattled Libyan leader Muamar Gadaffi completed the first major stage of his Great Man Made River project, many heralded it as “the 8th Wonder of the World.” The massive project began in August 1984, and the first water began to flow in September, 1989, to […]
This is more than a building with a ragged mountain backdrop. This architecture creates the ultimate in sensory education for Jordan’s film students. The Red Sea Institute of Cinematic Arts in Aqaba, Jordan taps into natural light, sounds, and shadows to create a sensorily vivid learning experience for film students. Albeit minimalist and respectful of […]
A planned dam in southeastern Turkey would submerge Hasankeyf’s 10,000-year-old cultural relics and displace 50,000 people from the region. How many kilowatt hours is that worth? Electric energy demand in Turkey is projected to more than double over the next decade, to approximately 450 billlion kilowatt-hours. Traditional sources of power, such as coal- and natural […]
You thought meat glue was gross? Miriam ventures further into the dark world of food industry. An article in the Huffington Post by Dr. Joseph Mercola caught my attention recently. It was about McNuggets, the chicken-based fried food that caused a drunken woman to riot when denied her nugget fix last year. Those amused by […]
Amnesty International has called on the Egyptian authorities to investigate serious allegations of torture, including forced ‘virginity tests’, inflicted by the army on women protesters (we've written about in Egypt) arrested in Tahrir Square earlier this month.
The ‘Green Mosques’ project hopes to help conserve water and electricity at 300 mosques- and save around US$1.5 million every year Water scarcity in the Middle East is nothing new- in fact, the region has been struggling to cope with drought and water shortages for centuries. The only problem is that today, modern urbanisation and […]
New parks will give relief to Tel Aviv’s crowded beaches, and save the environment! Israel’s announcement that it will create a new network of land and sea parks in order to protect its coastal escarpment is a boon for beach-lovers too. A harbinger of what might happen should the Gaza artificial island project take root, […]
MezooMe puts the “zoom” back in organic textile design. Like other designers who have turned their energies towards organic baby product design, Israeli designer Anat Biala’s inspiration for MezooMe Designs – a line of organic linens for babies – was her firstborn son, Jonathan. In 2008, shortly after Jonathan’s birth, Biala had a strong urge […]
Waterfalls on the Blue Nile. Ethiopia has plans to grab hold of a bigger share of the river despite Egypt’s long held monopoly. Defiant of Egypt’s historic monopoly over its flow, Ethiopia is pushing ahead with a controversial plan to build a massive dam on the Nile river. Egypt and Sudan have maintained control of the […]
Chinese biotech researchers hope consumers will develop a taste for their GM-altered bovine milk. Attitudes towards public breastfeeding in Israel are more relaxed, in general, than in the USA where the sight of mom’s nursing babies is often met with squeamishness (or worse) as various factions debate the utilitarian vs. pleasure functions of the female […]
Destroyed reactor: Dead Zone for 100 years? Three of Japan’s stricken Fukushima nuclear reactors may now be in a meltdown situation according to nuclear energy experts studying the ongoing situation and the amount of radiation in reactor core water leaking into the sea. What’s worse, workers at the plant who have been exposed to high […]
These four gentlemen are developing piezoelectric technology that harvests power from noise. While some researchers wrack their brain over how to make solar energy more affordable, or to extract energy from a ruthless ocean, four students from the American University of Sharjah are testing a more benign kind of renewable energy. They have developed a […]
We speak to Ibrahim Al Zu’bi from the Emirates Divers Association about why the ban on shark finning in the UAE hasn’t worked and what ordinary people can do to stop the horrific trade In 2008, shark finning in the United Arab Emirates was banned. For many environmentalists and conservationists this was a time to […]
The CEO of a Dubai-based company says growing organic food in the UAE is “stupid.” No one would ever expect an organic food distributor to favor importing food to locally-grown produce, except in the Middle East. Despite efforts from people like Baker & Spice’s Yael Mejia, who is working furiously to improve the quality of […]
A classical Iranian dish, Fesenjan is chicken cooked in a rich walnut and pomegranate sauce. Scientists from the University of Scranton, Pennsylvania, now proclaim that walnuts aren’t only tasty, they’re also good for you. According to studies cited by an article in the BBC News, the rich-tasting nut is so high in antioxidants that small […]