Report: Palestinian Refugees from Syria in Lebanon

About 85% of Palestinian refugees living in Yarmouk camp near Damascus have fled?

Over 37,000 refugees from Syria have moved into Lebanon’s already over-crowded Palestinian refugee camps?

More than half of these refugees have seen their homes in Syria destroyed?

In Lebanon over 90% have no income?

Most families live with more than 10 people crammed into a single room?

Most families depend on the generosity of other poor families to survive in Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camps?

via Report: Palestinian Refugees from Syria in Lebanon.

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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Ned’s Second Line View of the World – Sources of new bird flu

They found that a virus carried by wild birds from the Republic of Korea and other east Asian regions mingled with the avian influenza virus carried by ducks and chickens in the Yangtze River Delta during migration.

What they do not look at or talk about is that the disease begins with overcrowding poultry farming and wild birds catch it from feeding on plants contaminated by farmed birds un-sanitized manure!

via Ned’s Second Line View of the World.

Shanghai Reports Two New H7N9 Cases – Total Now 33

Two more H7N9 infection cases reported in Shanghai

English.news.cn   2013-04-10 18:47:25

SHANGHAI, April 10 (Xinhua) — Two more cases of H7N9 bird flu infections were reported on Wednesday in Shanghai Municipality, bringing the total number of infected people in the country to 33, health authorities said.

via Shanghai Reports Two New H7N9 Cases – Total Now 33.

Women take over Kenya’s farming sector | Environment | DW.DE | 09.04.2013

According to the World Bank, women make up 80 percent of Kenya’s farmers. Despite their majority, they still have many challenges to overcome, like gaining ownership of the land they work.

Flanked by a poultry yard and several cows grazing just a few meters from her home, Linda Okal is busy in her vegetable garden in Kenya’s central Mbeere province – famous for its agricultural products.

Okal grows maize and cultivates fruit trees, rears dairy cows and numerous chickens. She also takes care of her two children. “I started farming when my husband moved to town to look for a white collar job,” Linda says. She was left behind to take care of the farm and the children – an increasingly common tale in Kenya, where more and more women take over farms.

Women traditionally used to stay at home to take care of the family and cook for the men on the farm, Okal told DW. “But there were no female farmers.”

Linda Okal

Now, more than 80 percent of Kenya’s farms are run by women. Only half of these women actually own their farms; the others work the land that belongs to their husbands. But not having ownership creates a lot of problems. Since the women don’t own the land, they cannot join farming cooperatives that would help them interact with other people who could help them improve production or sales.

via Women take over Kenya’s farming sector | Environment | DW.DE | 09.04.2013.

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!

“Plants communicate what type of light they want”

The project’s aim is to produce a system that employs the plants’ response to automatically regulate the lights in the greenhouse. Natural sunlight can then be supplemented with light from lamps to ensure the total lighting is that required by the plants, both in terms of brightness and light spectrum.

This can be achieved using advanced LED lamps, which consist of several groups of dimmable light emitting diodes with different colour spectra. This kind of lamp can also be programmed to provide lighting that is adjusted to the needs of the plants.

“The technology has enormous potential for energy savings,” says Torsten Wik. “We are counting on being able to save about 30 per cent by switching from sodium lamps to LED. Furthermore, it is possible to save 20 per cent by regulating the light’s intensity and spectrum using our method. This means that greenhouses in Europe alone would be able to save as much electricity as half of Sweden’s electricity consumption.”

via “Plants communicate what type of light they want”.

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