The map above is a part of a recently released world map that shows, in blue, the presence of the underground water. I’ve cropped the part that shows the Middle East and North Africa. The part that are shaded in red show aquifers that have been infiltrated by seawater, i.e. where the water salinity is [...]

Egyptian health officials have been gearing up for anti-smoking campaign for a few months, and a few weeks ago new warning labels appeared on the humble Masri pack of Cleopatras and other local and international brands. It’s a big marketing shift in a country of permanent smokers where the state-owned monopoly cigarette manufacturer, Oriental Tobacco, [...]

Middle East Online has a translation of a Monde Diplomatique article I’d previously linked to on the reversal of agrarian reform in Egypt. This excerpt deals with the new law passed in the 1990s that has led to many farmers losing land and helped former landlords regain land they had been forced to sell under [...]

A little over a month ago, With/Without: Spatial products, Practices and Politics in the Middle East, a collection of essays about contemporary Arab urban issues, was released at the Dubai International Design Forum. Published by Middle Eastern cultural magazine Bidoun and the Forum’s organizer, Moutamarat, it has contributions from writers across the Arab world, including [...]

Today, one of the nastiest Khamseen in years is blowing through Cairo. My balcony is covered in dust, and the old doors and windows of my 1940s apartment are letting the fine red sand carried by the wind blow in, covering everything in the house with a thin sliver of dust. Your mouth feels dry [...]

Half way through the Presidential campaigns, another French champion national is threatened by foreign powers. A study has found out that relics attributed to Jeanne d’Arc are actually bones of an Egyptian mummy.

The charred bones that were long believed to be remains of St. Joan of Arc don’t belong to the French heroine but are [...]

The US Embassy in Cairo has apparently released the following advisory:
Periodic routine testing by a U.S. military laboratory of “Safi” brand bottled water showed results of elevated radiological readings for alpha and beta particles. Laboratory protocol now requires specific follow-on testing. Although initial testing levels fell within the safety margins of the U.S. [...]

That’s the population density of Cairo. More at Fustat.

This has been playing out for a few years already, and is worth keeping an eye on. For Egypt, Sudan’s political future is crucial to this issue and is one reason Cairo is so adamantly opposed to the partition of Sudan and to foreign intervention in Darfur. The thing is, this year had the biggest [...]

A neat story:
TENERIFE, Canary Islands — It rains little on this island. There are no natural rivers, and the air is full of the dry heat of the nearby Sahara.
But in a ravine on the island’s northern tip, tree limbs drip with water and a tropical forest flourishes, sustained almost entirely by condensation from the [...]

This is intriguing:
The scientists from the University of Leeds, one of the largest universities in the UK, say millions of years from now, the pulling apart of the Arabian and Nubian tectonic plates will let waters to rush into and widen the Red Sea. The Leeds scientists have also been able to get an unprecedented [...]

On top of it all, there is now an oil slick on the shores of Beirut:
Beirut Mayor Abdel Monem Ariss, who toured the area, has stated that the source of the diesel oil could either be the heavy traffic of ships and boats that have come to Lebanon to evacuate foreigners, or the Israeli warship [...]

I’ve linked before to Maria Golia’s Daily Star columns, in which she’s currently exploring Egypt’s catastrophic and little-discussed land problems — the way it is administered, what’s being farmed on it, what’s being built on it, and what the government is doing about planning for the future of an ever scarcer resource. In her latest [...]

Pro-democracy activist Ahmad El Droubi is to take legal action against his company, after he was dismissed for his political activism. Droubi had sent a letter of complaint to his management protesting his unfair dismissal, but as of the moment, WorleyParsons Komex has NOT replied. Droubi has joined the ranks of the ever-growing army of [...]

It’s a few days old, but don’t miss Maria Golia’s latest column for the Daily Star. It’s about one of the most important issues facing Egypt today — an existential one of greater long-term concern than even democratic reform — but one that the government seems to do little about. It’s about land, and how [...]

I love this kind of stuff:
SPACE.com — Huge Crater Found in Egypt:
Scientists have discovered a huge crater in the Saharan desert, the largest one ever found there.
The crater is about 19 miles (31 kilometers) wide, more than twice as big as the next largest Saharan crater known. It utterly dwarfs Meteor Crater in Arizona, which [...]

Although the locust plague that hit Mauritania a few months ago has now passed, the consequences remain:
Locusts and drought have obliterated agricultural production in Mauritania, leaving 400,000 people in urgent need of food aid, the UN food agency says.
Mauritania was the country worst hit by last year’s locust invasion in West Africa - the most [...]

Aretz Sheva, the far-right Israeli website and radio station, seems to be implying in this article Egypt of deliberately doing nothing to stop last week’s locust invasion to ensure they would reach Israel. You gotta love the paranoia.

If you need another proof of why putting faith in fatwas is stupid:
Faced with an invasion of locusts, the highest Islamic religious institution in Egypt has reportedly issued an edict allowing people to eat locusts.
The independent al-Masri al-Yawm newspaper said al-Azhar Institute has decreed it is permitted by religion to eat the red desert locusts [...]

Moritz left a comment in a previous post asking about the locust swarm that came over Cairo a couple of days ago and is making its way to the Mediterranean. I didn’t see it myself — they didn’t come to my neighborhood — and I think it was pretty localized. My pals over at Reuters [...]