Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region’s current challenges for political and economic transformation. This MENA Trends Report focuses on the following issues: youth unemployment, gender, education, economy, the financial system, and the rule of law. It examines ten Arab countries: Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia, West Bank and Gaza, Syria, and Yemen. When comparisons ...

The new U.S. Army vision contends that heuristics are practical tools for achieving innovation. Overcoming complex terrain and adaptive hybrid threats in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan requires technological innovation. Supportability issues result from modifying deployed weapon systems with new technology for countering these types of threats. Collecting detailed data on deployed weapon systems ...

Introduction Grasspea (Lathyrus sativus L.) is produced as major crop in Bangladesh, China, India and Pakistan, and to a lesser extent in many countries of Europe, the Middle East, northern Africa, as well as in South America. It is extensively cultivated and naturalised in the Middle East countries of Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria and Lebanon and in Ethiopia, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Libya...

The world is engulfed in different social events and conflicts. These events can have serious repercussions, not only on the geographical entity or time in which it is involved, but can affect the entire world across different time spans. Considering the 2 great world-wars [1], the conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, Bangladesh and more recently in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Egypt [2], such social u...

We report gravel of the River Euphrates, capped by basalt that is Ar-Ar dated to ∼9 Ma, at Shireen in northern Syria. This gravel, preserved by the erosion-resistant basalt, allows us for the first time to reconstruct the history of this major river during the Late Miocene. In response to progressive regional surface uplift, the Euphrates extended SE by ∼800 km between the early Middle Miocene,...

ORIGIN AND HISTORY The pistachio is native to western Asia and Asia Minor, where it is still found growing wild in numerous hot, dry locations in Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Iran, Iraq, India, Southern Europe and the desert countries of Asia and Africa. It was introduced to Europe at the beginning of the Christian era. The first pistachio introductions to the United States were by the USDA plant...

This article provides a first attempt at evaluating the performance of German intelligence community when anticipating ISIS’ rise to power in Syria and Iraq its reach into Europe 2013–2014. It applies new analytical framework for postmortem exercises after foreign policy crises, which centres on nuanced discussions surprise contextualised assessments performance. finds evidence partial signific...