Halloween landed on a Friday this year, meaning your “I have to work tomorrow” excuse for not dressing up becomes as flimsy as a ghost. So, with a few hours to prep before tonight’s parties begin, how do you devise a spooktacular costume without buying more polyester (most likely shipped over from China) to crap […]
Mostly we hear stories of pain and tragedy from Syrian refugee camps. But the Za’atari Syrian refugee camp in Jordan, a place where Green Prophet’s Laurie Balbo is knitting together and flying hope, there are new sprigs of hope. The non-profit organization Save the Children is teaching some of the camp’s 800,000 refugees how to garden. […]
We love grandmothers and we love what they do, especially when they know how to cook well using traditional recipes. While we like to support the food and lifestyle of yore, we do not think that not everything fast is bad for you.
Jordan is becoming a heavyweight on the global stage, but this is nothing to puff up about. The kingdom is among the world’s worst countries for obesity according to Oxfam’s World Food Index 2013, with 33% of standing Jordanians unable to see their feet. Over 14% of the population is also diabetic.
If a tree falls in the woods, it will be immortalized as amazingly clever artwork if Fu’ad Khasawneh is anywhere nearby. The Assistant Dean and his colleagues at the University of Jordan transformed the detritus of a powerful winter storm into a remarkable display of public art.
Jordan is cleaning up its act, at least in terms of laundry detergent, with a project entitled Concentrate for the Environment. The voluntary, industry-led initiative aims to reduce the negative environmental impact of powdered laundry soap. Seems the soap industry excels at greenwashing; this looks like corporate cost-shaving spun into environmental (fool’s) gold.
Extreme winter weather has been causing severe climate changes all over. The includes the Middle East, where a freak December winter storm paralyzed Jerusalem and Amman and brought snow to Cairo for the first time in 100 years. Will the Middle East experience a Polar Vortex?
Sunday was Mawlid an-nabī, the observance of the birth of the Islamic Prophet Mohammed, but unlike Eid al-Fitr (Little Eid) or Eid al-Adha (Big Eid), Mawlid is a low-key celebration marked by a quiet focus on the prophet’s life and an uptick in eating and charitable acts.
When you think of Jordan’s Wadi Rum, Lawrence of Arabia and a hot and dry desert might come to mind. And Petra too. Well when Jordanian teens need to make lemonade from lemons, or snow castles from the freak snowstorm last week, they made a castle relevant to their region! Petra.
Cash is King. An essential ingredient of charitable giving; it greases the wheels when moving goods. A month after 4,000 hats were collected and shipped from Ireland to Jordan, they’re finally keeping some of Syria’s refugees a bit warmer. But in the end, it took money to drop the curtain on this act of giving.
I’ll bet snow-capped pine trees and ice-crusted cars don’t spring to mind when you think of the Middle East, but that’s what we’re seeing in Amman as we tuck into the second straight day of fierce blizzarding. A perfect setting to tuck in with some simple knitting.
Who says you can’t make the desert bloom? The desert regions of Israel and Jordan have for years been the subject of numerous agricultural projects. Some of these projects include creating community gardens by residents of desert towns; and being involved in epic Sahara forest projects. Now let’s look at what’s happening in Wadi Rum.
How relevant will OPEC be 10 years from now? Does the rapid expansion of new technologies like fracking threaten the future of eco-friendly energy alternatives such as wind and solar energy?
Jordan is pushing ahead with the largest commercial scale wind farm in the Middle East region, the Tafila Wind Farm, seemingly without care for the massive bird migration population that passes through Jordan twice a year. Green Prophet called Israel’s Bird King, bird migration specialist Prof. Yossi Leshem.
With no appreciable amounts of oil or natural gas, Jordan, like Syria is a Middle East anomaly when it comes to its fossil fuel rich neighbours like Saudi Arabia and Israel. But new energy is blowing into Jordan. The Tafila project for the wind