Albeit huge advocates of urban cycling, we have been sensitive to the fact that – mostly because of culture – the practice hasn’t taken off in the Middle East. But a You Tube video from Saudi Arabia challenges all the naysayers.
Star Wars fans lovingly restored Luke Skywalker’s Tatooine home in Tunisia recently, but the former home of young Anakin, who would eventually become Darth Vader, is about to be engulfed by fast-moving desert sand dunes.
Does a vision of rich, creamy, sweet and cheesy dessert with a crunchy topping totally seduce you? Well, it seduces people with a sweet tooth everywhere in the Levant. In Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Greece and Turkey, good housewives make knafeh, the most luxurious dairy dessert.
Ask yourself: if you lived in the deep desert, where the sand burns your soles at midday, would you run outside and play soccer? No sane person should. But Dick Sweeney has sent us thought-provoking images of soccer posts in extreme environments that reveal just how much Arabs love their football.
Refrigeration is perhaps one of the greatest inventions of modern man, but it has come at a price. Not only do they require a great deal of energy to stay cool, but they also rely on ozone-depleting chloro-fluorocarbons (CFCs), or freon, though some countries have phased these out. As an increasing number of people walk […]
In Egypt, people often have to line up for hours to fill their cars and trucks with diesel fuel – particularly during summer months when it comes at a premium. Concerned to ease these shortages, as well as pollution and climate change, Egyptian agricultural engineer Wadad Khaireddine is pushing to grow a desert full of […]
Although the Sahara desert used to be a green retreat for giraffes and hippos 5,000 years ago, it is now a giant, sometimes rolling landscape of sand. A lot of sand. In fact, roughly two thirds of Algeria is made up of sand, according to the authors of a study published in the Arabian Journal […]
With the advent of modern agriculture and technology, it is no longer necessary for most people to shoot their dinner. Yet the taste for the sport of tracking and shooting an animal has persisted, and in some countries, hunting is carefully regulated to maintain a sound balance between predator and prey. Working with the local […]
Anyone who loved the 3D Solar Sinter that uses the sun’s energy to turn sand into functional glass objects will love the Sun Cutter. Also designed by Markus Kayser, this homemade laser cutter carves pre-programmed industrial designs into a variety of materials – including cardboard, paper and even thin slabs of plywood – and it […]
When he first began his career as a young biologist, Allan Savory basically ordered the culling of 40,000 elephants. He and other scientists in Zimbabwe observed that former grasslands set aside as national parks were turning to desert and decided, after considerable research, that elephants were responsible. But it didn’t help to kill them. In […]
Researchers from Eindhoven University of Technology (EUT) and Hong Kong Polytechnic University have developed a fabric that traps water molecules present in fog. This clever new technology could have applications in dry coastal zones throughout Africa and the Middle East, where lack of water is increasingly both a humanitarian and security concern. To make the […]
By the end of the decade, Morocco hopes to generate a full 2,000 megawatts of wind energy, but for now, the North African country needs all the help it can get from foreign investors. No stranger to wind, GDF Suez from France inked a 20 year deal with to build and operate a 300 MW […]
This is the first time celestial navigation has been seen in insects but the scientists believe it is common.
It’s strange that a farmer’s market should make news, but when it’s in Qatar, one of the driest and least food secure nations on earth, a farmer’s market is a big deal. So much so that local professional photographer Mohammed Ismail stopped by for a shoot. Located 30 kilometers outside of the capital Doha, where […]
A suite of mobile solar-powered lamps have completely changed the lives of hundreds of villagers in Mali. Approximately 90 per cent of the desert country’s residents lack access to an electrical grid, such that many children are unable to learn after dark and mothers stay up late using the light of paraffin lamps to complete […]