Jordan // Current TV

2K12 Baltimore Sneaker Show Staring MMG Artist Stalley (Live Performance)

BALTIMORE SNEAKER SHOW WITH A LIVE PERFORMANCE FROM MMG ARTIST STALLEY. CHECKOUT SOME... more

SmittyRobinson1
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23 days ago
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Arab Spring Refugees in Jordan Live in Desperate Limbo

Jordan's open hosting policy has made it a magnet for thousands of refugees. They... more

Womens_eNews
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1 month ago
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Former NY Congressman Anthony Weiner Redux - Life Goes On

Threesome on the boulevard

mfb1949
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2 months ago
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US Special Forces Mass on Syrian Border

http://www.israelifrontline.com/2011/12/us-special-forces-mass-on-syrian-border.html... more

mjsmith11
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6 months ago
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15 comments

I Hate My Kids: The Decoy

Jordan uses his dad as a distraction.

TonyDiGerolamo
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6 months ago
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Evicting the Bedouin People

In September of 2011, the Israeli cabinet approved a plan to relocate up to 30,000... more

mab001
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7 months ago
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3 comments

Jordan's $1.5 Billion Star Trek Theme Park to be Powered by Alternative Energy

There are a lot of famous Star Trek fans out there — Olivia Wilde, Mila Kunis... more

lordsbassman
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10 months ago
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2 comments

Review – Our Last Best Chance: The Pursuit of Peace In A Time of Peril | Scholars and Rogues

The still-unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict bookends Abdullah’s story, in... more

hoosierdaddy
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11 months ago
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1 comment

Babies Barcoded For Security. « Ramani's blog

To be relieved because of the action of the Hospital or disturbed at the decay of... more

ramanan50
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1 year ago
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Environment at risk as parched Jordan taps water

Excerpt:

"In its desperate efforts to battle chronic water shortages, Jordan, one of the world's 10 driest countries, is mulling "unconventional" and "environmentally unfriendly" plans, experts say. The challenge is huge for this tiny country where desert covers 92 percent of the territory and the population of 6.3 million is growing.

Critics say the government's efforts to manage the country's limited water resources and generate new ones are being hindered by a strategy which at best is chaotic. Jordan is tapping into the ancient southern Disi aquifer, despite concerns about high levels of radiation, while studies are underway to build a controversial canal from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea. "Unconventional projects, like Disi for example, are environmentally unfriendly," water expert Dureid Mahasneh, a former Jordan Valley Authority chief, told AFP. The 990-million-dollar project seeks to extract 100 million cubic metres (3.5 billion cubic feet) of water a year from the 300,000-year-old Disi aquifer, 325 kilometres (200 miles) south of Amman, officials say. The plan is to provide the capital Amman with water for 50 years, said water ministry official Bassam Saleh, who is in charge of the project that was launched in 2008 and is due to be completed in 2012.

A 2008 study by Duke University, in the United States, shows that Disi's water has 20times more radiation than is considered safe, with radium content that could trigger cancers. "Our research shows that the Disi aquifer is heavily contaminated with radium," according to the study done by the Durham, North Carolina team which tested 37 pumping wells in the aquifer. Mahasneh said "Disi water should not be touched." "How can you go for a non-renewable water resource that is contaminated with radiation and needs treatment?" But the government has brushed aside such concerns. "We know there is radiation in Disi because it is underground water but we will treat it by diluting it with an equal amount of water from other sources," said Saleh. Jordan University professor Elias Salameh agreed. "The radioactivity can be treated, and it is not a complicated matter."

Munqeth Mehyar, of the Jordanian-Israeli-Palestinian non-governmental group Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME), warned against abusing the water resource. "If we overpump the Disi water, we will suffer from problems like sinkholes for example. And there are no studies that tell you for sure how long the aquifer water would last," he said. Jordan has also agreed in principle to build, along with its Palestinian and Israeli neighbours, a four-billion-dollar pipeline from the Red Sea to refill the rapidly shrinking Dead Sea. But the world's lowest and saltiest body of water lies below the Red Sea and the pipeline must cross higher land in order to reach it -- a project that will entail a major pumping effort. A desalination plant would also be built to remove the salt and provide 200 million cubic metres of potable water to Jordan each year.

"This project is worrisome. It will cause indescribable damage," Mehyar warned. A feasibility study is being carried out by the World Bank but environmentalists fear that an influx of seawater could undermine the Dead Sea's fragile ecosystem. The degradation of the Dead Sea began in the 1960s when Israel, Jordan and Syria began to divert water from the Jordan River -- the Dead Sea's main supplier. Over the years 95 percent of the river's flow has been diverted by the three neighbours for agricultural and industrial use, with Israel alone diverts more than 60 percent of it, according to FoEME. The impact on the Dead Sea has been compounded by a drop in groundwater levels as rain water from surrounding mountains dissolved salt deposits that had previously plugged access to underground caverns. Industrial and tourist operations around the shores of the lake exacerbate the situation.

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____Excerpt: "In its desperate efforts to battle chronic water shortages, Jordan,... more

JanforGore
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1 year ago
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Hidden energy crisis in the Middle East

While most of the world is preoccupied with the impact of instability in the Middle East on oil prices and the world economy, a different kind of energy crisis is unfolding practically unnoticed. An ongoing reshuffle in natural gas supplies has left at least two countries - Israel and Jordan - without much of the gas they need.

In general, the politics of Middle Eastern gas will probably be just as dramatically affected by the upheaval as those of oil, but will follow a separate trajectory. Their effect will, at least initially, be more local in nature, and will vary for each country. However, the energy status quo in the region is slated to change dramatically.

On February 5, at the height of the uprising against then-president Hosni Mubarak, a massive explosion rocked a gas terminal near the Egyptian town of El-Arish. The head of the Egyptian natural gas company, Magdy Toufik, blamed it on ''a small amount of gas

leaking',' but it soon emerged that the most likely cause was an act of terror - in some accounts, two separate terrorist attacks. According to reports in the Associated Press, ''The terminal's guards testified that [four masked gunmen] stormed the terminal in two cars, briefly restrained the guards and then set off the explosives by remote control.''

The terminal lay on the Arab gas pipeline carrying Egyptian gas to Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and even Turkey. The section that branches off of that pipeline into Israel was not affected, but Egypt shut off gas supplies to the Jewish state as well. Egyptian authorities claimed that the system needed ''to cool off',' and that they would resume supplies within a week or so.

Over a month and US$150 million of losses later (for Israel and Jordan combined), the gas is still not flowing. Egyptian authorities are quickly changing their tune: having missed at least two self-imposed deadlines to resume the supplies, until a few days ago they continued to insist that the pipeline would be activated very shortly.

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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MC12Ak02.htmlWhile most of the world is preoccupied with the impact of instability in the Middle... more