Word: waters
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...Yemen is close to becoming a failed state like Somalia - just across the Red Sea. But there are warning signs that things could get worse: the Houthi rebellion, secessionists in the south, Somali pirates menacing the coast, an economy that is overreliant on declining oil production, and a looming water crisis...
Fighting poverty in Yemen is no easy task. Education levels are abysmal, and the country is awash in guns. It also struggles with a severe water shortage, in large part because of the national addiction to khat, a shrub whose young leaves contain a compound with effects similar to those of amphetamines. The top estimate is that no less than 90% of men in Yemen and 25% of women chew the leaves, storing a wad in one cheek as it slowly breaks down and enters the bloodstream. Astonishingly, most of the country's arable land is devoted to the plant...
...global craze for alternative energy sources, hundreds of farmers turned over acres of their small farms to jatropha. But it didn't take them long to realize what scientists have come to realize in recent months: what was once touted as a miracle plant that needed almost no water has turned out to be anything but that. (See pictures of a global food crisis...
...jatropha had not done [their] research ... because we have realized that the crop is getting moisture stress just like any other crop," he says. A study published in June in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a Washington-based scientific journal, found that jatropha actually requires more water per liter of biofuel produced than most other biofuel plants. That's bad news in Kenya, a country in the middle of a full-blown food crisis due to the lengthy drought. The World Food Program said in August that 3.8 million Kenyans had been affected by the drought...
...Amused Padang residents watch as orange-jumpsuited foreigners gently pour water over the dogs in a makeshift tub, whispering endearments at the animals. Hornisbesger says that when she worked in Turkey, some people threw stones at the dogs because they are considered unclean and unwelcome beasts by some Muslims. (Islamic tradition does not generally embrace keeping dogs as pets.) But she has been impressed by how welcoming Indonesians, living in a Muslim majority nation, have been of the Swiss menagerie. "Everyone has been very friendly and tolerant," she says. "I think they realize that these dogs may be the ones...