Category Archives: Uncategorized

Understanding Sukuk

When it comes to money – be cautious!

Nervana

Sukuk Photo

(Photo, Grand Sheik of al-Azhar: Egypt Independent)

In an effort to develop Islamic alternatives to conventional investments, Muslim scholars have advocated new economical instruments, which fit with Sharia prohibition of usury and encouragement of shared risks. Islamic banking is growing, not just in Islamic countries, a number of multinational banks in the European continent, have opened branches or windows dedicated to the practice of Islamic banking.

Sukuk, or Islamic bonds, is one example of what such banking can offer; it is the Islamic answer to conventional bonds, an assets-based investment that can provide sovereign governments and corporations with a huge liquidity pool, or in a simpler terms, it is a kind of remortgage deal, but 3with a profit-sharing scheme, instead of a debt with a fixed interest rate.

The word “bond” is misleading as sukuk offers the investor partial ownership of the assets, and represents shares in the underlying…

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Egyptian Aak: Week 15. The Week of Kheba

Nervana

morsi Sissi

(Photo: President Morsi, and Minister of Defense Abdel el-Fattah el-Sissi AP)

Main Headlines

Monday

 Tuesday

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ATOS tell woman with mental age of 3 yrs to get a job (not satire – please share)

Pride's Purge

MEENA’S FAMILY HAVE ISSUED A STATEMENT ASKING EVERYONE TO NOW RESPECT THEIR PRIVACY:

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Meena’s family are asking for their privacy to be respected. A genuine misunderstanding has been made, no thanks to the aggressively worded letter the family received. They will be pursuing the matter with the appropriate bodies and ask you all to respect their wishes.

Thank you.

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Combating desertification with tree tunnels (Avantgardens /Willem Van Cotthem)

DESERTIFICATION

Seen at :

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=621090494571382&set=a.573121939368238.146332.531746770172422&type=1&theater

Tunnel - willow - Photo Avantgardens - 575749_621090494571382_833796101_n

Suppose we create thousands of these tunnels in the Sahel countries. That would be combating desertification at its best. And we would create a fantastic carbon sink !

Maybe a suggestion for the Great Green Wall : why not using the drought-tolerant Navajo willow (Salix matsudana var. Navajo) for setting up a maximum of these tunnels, in which people could also grow their own fresh food ?

It would be killing several birds with one stone.

Don’t let me preach in the desert ! Just try it !

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Egypt’s ‘Daily Show’ has provoked the worst in Islamist ideology

Nervana

Bassem Youssef Photo

(Photo: YouTube Screengrab)

This piece initially published in The Globe and Mail

Many Egyptians still remember the eagerly awaited speeches of presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat, and the intense debate that usually followed. Nowadays the eagerness and the debate are still alive. But now Egyptians are not waiting to watch their president, Mohamed Morsi, but rather the man who is poking fun of him – the satirist Bassem Youssef.

Mr. Youssef has become Egypt’s most popular comedian with his Friday night TV show El Bernameg (“The Program”). Modeled on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, his merciless, biting jokesabout Mr. Morsi’s poor performance, bad English and Islamic fundamentalism have earned him million of fans – and also many enemies.

Last week’s arrest of Mr. Youssef for “insulting the president, denigrating Islam and disturbing the peace” has created a public outcry inside and outside Egypt, and even a…

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The Relativity of Freedom of Speech in Lebanon

A Separate State of Mind | A Blog by Elie Fares

The last few days have taught me that the statement: “I believe in freedom of speech” has to be amended to become the following: “I believe in freedom of speech as long as I agree with the speech.” Beyond that point of agreement, all bets of civility of discourse are off. Bigot, ignorant, racist, condescending, extremist, hypocrite, illiterate or any derogatory word of choice gets dropped in order to counter a point, regardless of what that point may be.

Santa Muerte, Santa Ejre:

I didn’t want to go over anything related to this issue again. It was blown way out of proportion. But my words were taken out of context. Lebanon’s self-anointed blogging police started to ridicule what I had to offer. Somehow this blog being nominated for Blog of the Year at the Social Media Awards became a mark of shame for some people – as if that changed…

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US: Yield lettuce which sprout in hot weather discovered

Guard your non-GMO lettuce seeds!

In the new study, researchers turned to lettuce genetics to better understand the temperature-related mechanisms governing seed germination. They identified a region of chromosome six in a wild ancestor of commercial lettuce varieties that enables seeds to germinate in warm temperatures. When that chromosome region was crossed into cultivated lettuce varieties, those varieties gained the ability to germinate in warm temperatures.

Further genetic mapping studies zeroed in on a specific gene that governs production of a plant hormone called abscisic acid — known to inhibit seed germination. The newly identified gene “turns on” in most lettuce seeds when the seed is exposed to moisture at warm temperatures, increasing production of abscisic acid. In the wild ancestor that the researchers were studying, however, this gene does not turn on at high temperatures. As a result, abscisic acid is not produced and the seeds can still germinate.

The researchers then demonstrated that they could either “silence” or mutate the germination-inhibiting gene in cultivated lettuce varieties, thus enabling those varieties to germinate and grow even in high temperatures.

via US: Yield lettuce which sprout in hot weather discovered.

 

Guard your non-GMO lettuce seeds!