Latest news with #LBV
Telegraph
10-04-2025
- Lifestyle
- Telegraph
The 20 best wines for Easter, from as little as £6.50
If you're gathering friends or family around you over the long Easter weekend, now's a good time to think about what wine you'd like to be drinking. In the hope of a little sunshine, I've gathered together a few brisk whites and sparkling wines that would be good to pour on a warmish, light early evening. Since so many of us sit down to a roast leg or shoulder of lamb on Easter Sunday, there are also recommendations for more luxurious, feasting red wines (all of which would go well with roast beef, too). I also spent more time than was strictly necessary checking out which sweet wines taste best with chocolate. Ruby port was the winner with CDM-level (Cadbury's Dairy Milk) Easter eggs but if you have more serious chocolate and/or a richer pudding like a plain chocolate mousse or cocoa-heavy chocolate cake then go for a good LBV port. The maury recommended here, which has a savoury edge despite being sweet, was superb with good plain chocolate and plain chocolate truffles. Tawny port, meanwhile, goes well with any chocolate dessert to which you might add sweet, brandy-soaked raisins or dates – hence its affinity with milk chocolate mousse.
Ya Biladi
18-03-2025
- Science
- Ya Biladi
Dreams of a Sahara Sea : The ambitious canal project that could have transformed the Maghreb
The idea of creating a Sahara Sea has fascinated some of the boldest minds for nearly 150 years. As early as 1878, French geographer François Élie Roudaire, supported by Ferdinand de Lesseps, the man behind the Suez Canal, proposed flooding the chotts (salt lakes) of Algeria and Tunisia by digging a canal from the Gulf of Gabès. The goal was to make the region more fertile. However, topographical errors and prohibitively high costs quickly put an end to the project, as historian Jorge Álvarez details in an article for LBV. A few years earlier, Scottish engineer Donald Mackenzie had an even more ambitious vision: he proposed bringing the Atlantic Ocean into the Sahara by digging a canal from southern Morocco, near Cape Juby (Tarfaya region). He believed the El Djouf region, now part of Mauritania, was below sea level and could be flooded naturally. In time, the new sea could stretch all the way to the Niger River, reshaping trade routes and creating opportunities for agriculture. However, Mackenzie, who had never visited the area, relied on incorrect data. Contrary to his assumptions, the region he aimed to flood was actually 320 meters above sea level. His project ultimately collapsed under the weight of scientific errors and colonial tensions, with France and Spain resisting any potential British influence in the region. The Sahara Sea Dream Despite these failures, the idea of creating a sea in the Sahara never fully disappeared. In the 1930s, German and American engineers revived similar projects in Tunisia, inspired by the mysterious Lake Tritonis mentioned by ancient writers. In the 1950s, newly independent Tunisia established ARTEMIS, an association tasked with studying the feasibility of a Sahara canal. Egypt also pursued a similar idea with the Qattara Depression, located west of the Nile Delta. In the 1960s, the United States even proposed using nuclear explosions to dig a canal that would eventually create a man-made lake, but the project was abandoned due to environmental concerns and diplomatic issues. In the 1980s, a Swedish study commissioned by Tunisia concluded that the climatic impact would be minimal, and evaporation would render the water too salty for practical use. The estimated cost of the project, between 11 and 86 billion dollars, was deemed unjustifiable. A Buried Project... or Just Waiting? In 2018, a new initiative called «Cooperation Road» brought the concept back into discussion. The plan was to flood Chott el Djerid in Tunisia to create an artificial sea suitable for aquaculture, tourism, and agriculture. But like previous projects, it faces significant economic and environmental challenges. As for a canal from Morocco, it is more science fiction than a viable reality today. However, as climate change and desertification continue to threaten the region, yesterday's utopian dreams may inspire tomorrow's solutions. In the absence of a grand canal to the Sahara, Morocco has already launched the first phases of its water highway project, which aims to transfer water between the Sebou and Bouregreg hydraulic basins. This ambitious project could eventually transfer 860 million cubic meters of water per year from Rabat to Marrakech.
