Explorer saw nature’s sheer beauty and power in Saudi Arabia’s Empty Quarter

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The Dubai-based Italian explorer Max Calderan crossed the vast, empty, undulating sand dunes of the Rub Al-Khali desert, the so-called Empty Quarter in the east of Saudi Arabia, on foot via an unexplored route. (Empty Quarter Studios)
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The Dubai-based Italian explorer Max Calderan crossed the vast, empty, undulating sand dunes of the Rub Al-Khali desert, the so-called Empty Quarter in the east of Saudi Arabia, on foot via an unexplored route. (Empty Quarter Studios)
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The Dubai-based Italian explorer Max Calderan crossed the vast, empty, undulating sand dunes of the Rub Al-Khali desert, the so-called Empty Quarter in the east of Saudi Arabia, on foot via an unexplored route. (Shutterstock)
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Updated 05 February 2020
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Explorer saw nature’s sheer beauty and power in Saudi Arabia’s Empty Quarter

  • Max Calderan has joined famous group of men who have crossed Rub Al-Khali desert
  • Calderan completed his 16-day journey on foot using unexplored West-East route

DUBAI: Rub Al-Khali, also known as the Empty Quarter, is the world’s largest uninterrupted sand mass, encompassing most of the southern third of the Arabian Peninsula.

It is a landscape of ever-changing endless dunes made famous by expeditions undertaken between the 1930s and 1950s by Bertram Thomas, Wilfred Thesiger and their Arab companions. Max Calderan, a long-time Dubai resident originally from Italy, has just become the latest man to join that famous group.

Previous explorers are known to have crossed shorter sections of Rub Al-Khali on camels or in off-road vehicles, whereas Calderan completed his journey on foot via an unexplored route.

With his latest feat, Calderan has realized at once a lifelong ambition and, as he puts it, “the dream,” not “a dream.” For the compulsive record-setter, the journey was also a humbling reminder of nature’s awesome power and beauty.

The father of three — and soon-to-be father of four — set off on his 16-day Empty Quarter expedition on Jan. 18 in Saudi Arabia, from Najran, located 880 km from Riyadh.

His plan was to cross on foot one of the world’s hottest and most-brutal deserts, one that covers about 650,000 square km and includes parts of Saudi Arabia, Oman, the UAE and Yemen.

“When I was only seven years old in 1974, I was reading the encyclopedia where it was written that Saudi Arabia’s Rub Al-Khali is the biggest sand desert around the world,” Calderan recalled during an exclusive interview with Arab News.

“No camels could enter that part of the desert, there was no water and even migratory birds were making diversions.

“So, I drew a picture and told my mother that I would be the first man to enter that area and understand why camels can’t. And on that day, I had a dream of an older man, just like me now, walking alone in the Empty Quarter.”

Calderan’s dream came true when he trekked through 1,100 km of desert from west to east, covering over 800 km of “virgin territory” armed with little more than a backpack and a sleeping bag.

He said on most days he trekked for an average of 18 hours in temperatures that ranged from 2.7 degrees Celsius in the early hours of the morning to 35 degrees Celsius during the daytime.

He routinely woke up at 1:30 a.m. and began his exploration in the darkness by 2 a.m., venturing out into the desert to cover about 80 km before setting up his sleeping bag for another night under the stars, often between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.

Despite planning 67 meeting points along his route, each 18km apart, his support team, which traveled by car and supplied him with food and water, was unable to ensure their paths crossed on a daily basis due to unpredictable weather conditions and diversions.

So Calderan’s exact location was tracked through his satellite phone every 15 minutes by a team based in London that oversaw his entire expedition.

FASTFACT

Rub Al-Khali is part of the larger Arabian Desert, covering 650,000 sq km and including parts of Saudi Arabia, Oman, the UAE and Yemen.

“From my previous experience, I was best prepared — and had the capability to stay totally alone in the desert — when I had enough food and water in my backpack to last at least 250 km,” he said.

About 200 km into his journey, Calderan encountered a community that he referred to as “original, pure and genuine Bedouin tribes.

“I stopped several times to talk to them because I needed as much information as possible about Rub Al-Khali, as what had been written in the books was not totally accurate,” he said.

He was advised to take either the north or south route across the Empty Quarter since these had been previously explored.

The tribesmen tried to convince him that walking straight down the middle of the largest continuous sand desert on Earth was extremely “unsafe” and nearly “impossible,” Calderan said.

“They said: ‘You have to understand that the more you will move ahead, the less you will find animals, trees and water. There’s nothing there.’”

Calderan said he remained undeterred by the tribes’ advice, having made up his mind to stay the course even as he began what he described as a “spiritual conversation with mother nature.”

He told Arab News: “I asked permission from Rub Al-Khali. “I said: ‘Please let me go inside, let me explore your land.’

“The desert replied: ‘Now I will gift you something so you can start to understand who I am.’”

After watching a beautiful sunset, Calderan was caught in a severe sandstorm and was unable to meet his support team at the next agreed point.

“During the sandstorm, you couldn’t see more than two meters in any direction,” he said.




It took Max Calderan 16 days to cross the Empty Quarter. (Photo by Max Calderan/Empty Quarter Studios)

“If you took seven steps and turned around, you could just about see your fifth footstep and, for sure, your seventh would be gone.”

Once the storm had passed, Calderan said he once again called out to nature.

“Dear Rub Al-Khali, I now understand your power,” he said as he as he ventured into a terrain that, to this day, has stayed largely out of humanity’s sight.

Calderan said the landscape was now barren and the silence was deafening.

“This section of the desert was totally empty,” he recalled.

“I didn’t see a single animal track. I didn’t see any other footprints or camel waste. I didn’t even see or hear the sound of an aircraft in the sky.

“If I tried to shout, the sound came out from my mouth, but within a meter from me it would be absorbed by the sand.”

Calderan said it was difficult to form clear thoughts about daily life during the journey. He felt the power of nature had had the effect of silencing his mind.

“The power of the mind cannot do anything in front of thousands of kilometers (of empty desert). You stop thinking and start communicating with nature,” Calderan said.

“I thanked nature for the sights I was witnessing and, at a certain point, I said to it: ‘Do as you want with me — clean my mind, clean my body, clean my thoughts. I have only one mission and that is to see myself with my family again.’ That was indeed my goal.”

After notching up over 100 Empty Quarter sites on his GPS instrument — areas that included waterbeds, wolf footprints and an oryx corpse — Calderan began what he calls the “toughest” trek of all: The final 200km of the expedition.




Max Calderan’s location was tracked through his satellite phone every 15 minutes by a team based in London. (Empty Quarter Studios)

He was mentally prepared for encounters with dangerous creatures ranging from wild cats to deadly scorpions. But what turned out to be the biggest danger was the desert itself, Calderan said, recalling a moment when he stood before a “mountain of dunes” as high as 300 meters.

“It was as if I had travelled to hell — and it was the first time in my life I started to pray in order to come out,” he said.

Reaching the finishing point involved negotiating many more monstrous sand dunes, as a result of which Calderan often found himself exhausted, dehydrated and in a hallucinatory state.

“I was destroyed, but what happened is I got the awareness to understand that we as human beings, with all our arrogance and technology, are nothing in front of nature,” he said.

“We are searching for water in Mars while we are destroying our water resources on Earth.

“At this point, all my training, my strength and my previous experience amount to nothing. All I can understand is that it is time to start giving back to the environment.”

As he poured out his thoughts and emotions about his epic journey during the interview, Calderan said he is still overwhelmed and will need time to fully absorb the lessons of the last couple of weeks.

His hope is that his feat will go down in history alongside other famous expeditions of the Empty Quarter, but with an important difference: The newly created west-east "Calderan Line" will be used by generations of explorers to come.


Israel’s warfare in Gaza consistent with genocide, UN committee finds

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Israel’s warfare in Gaza consistent with genocide, UN committee finds

  • Committee’s report states ‘Israeli officials have publicly supported policies that strip Palestinians of the very necessities required to sustain life’
  • It raises ‘serious concern’ about Israel’s use of AI to choose targets ‘with minimal human oversight,’ resulting in ‘overwhelming’ casualties among women and children

NEW YORK: Israel’s methods of warfare in Gaza, including the use of starvation as a weapon, mass civilian casualties and life-threatening conditions deliberately inflicted on Palestinians in the territory, are consistent with the characteristics of genocide, the UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices said in a report published on Thursday.

“Since the beginning of the war, Israeli officials have publicly supported policies that strip Palestinians of the very necessities required to sustain life: food, water and fuel,” the committee said.

Statements from Israeli authorities and the “systematic and unlawful” blocking of humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza make clear “Israel’s intent to instrumentalize life-saving supplies for political and military gains,” it added.

The committee, the full title of which is the UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian people and other Arabs of the Occupied Territories, was established by the UN General Assembly in 1968 to monitor the human rights situation in the occupied Golan heights, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. It comprises the permanent representatives to the UN from three member states, currently Malaysia, Senegal and Sri Lanka, who are appointed by the president of the General Assembly.

Its latest report, which covers the period from October 2023 to July 2024, mostly focuses on the effects of the war in Gaza on the rights of Palestinians.

“Through its siege over Gaza, obstruction of humanitarian aid, alongside targeted attacks and killing of civilians and aid workers, despite repeated UN appeals, binding orders from the International Court of Justice and resolutions of the Security Council, Israel is intentionally causing death, starvation and serious injury, using starvation as a method of war and inflicting collective punishment on the Palestinian population,” the committee said.

The “extensive” Israeli bombing campaign has wiped out essential services in Gaza and caused an “environmental catastrophe” that will have “lasting health impacts,” it adds.

By early 2024, the report says, more than 25,000 tonnes of explosives, equivalent to two nuclear bombs, had been dropped on Gaza, causing “massive” destruction, the collapse of water and sanitation systems, agricultural devastation and toxic pollution. This has created a “lethal mix of crises that will inflict severe harm on generations to come,” the committee said.

The report notes “serious concern” about Israel’s use of artificial intelligence technology to choose its targets “with minimal human oversight,” the consequence of which has been “overwhelming” numbers of deaths of women and children. This underscores “Israel’s disregard of its obligation to distinguish between civilians and combatants and take adequate safeguards to prevent civilian deaths,” it adds.

In addition, Israel’s escalating censorship of the media and targeting of journalists are “deliberate efforts” to block global access to information, the committee found, and the report states that social media companies have disproportionately removed “pro-Palestinian content” in comparison with posts inciting violence against Palestinians.

The committee also condemned the continuing “smear campaign” and other attacks on the reputation of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, and the wider UN.

“This deliberate silencing of reporting, combined with disinformation and attacks on humanitarian workers, is a clear strategy to undermine the vital work of the UN, sever the lifeline of aid still reaching Gaza, and dismantle the international legal order,” it said.

It called on all states to honor their legal obligations to stop and prevent violations of international law by Israel, including the system of apartheid that operates in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and to hold Israeli authorities accountable for their actions.

“Upholding international law and ensuring accountability for violations rests squarely on member states,” the committee said.

Failure to do this weakens “the very core of the international legal system and sets a dangerous precedent, allowing atrocities to go unchecked.”

The committee will officially present its report to the 79th Session of the UN General Assembly on Monday.


UN to bolster UNIFIL for post-truce support in Lebanon, peacekeeping chief says

Updated 7 min 20 sec ago
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UN to bolster UNIFIL for post-truce support in Lebanon, peacekeeping chief says

  • “I think that has to be very clear. Implementing the 1701 is the responsibility of the parties,” said Lacroix
  • Lacroix said the peacekeeping mission would work with the Lebanese army to “support the implementation of a settlement

BEIRUT: The United Nations intends to bolster its peacekeeping mission in Lebanon to better support the Lebanese army once a truce is agreed but would not directly enforce a ceasefire, UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix said on Thursday.
The peacekeeping mission known as UNIFIL is deployed in southern Lebanon to monitor the demarcation line with Israel, an area that has seen more than a year of hostilities between Israeli troops and Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters.
Diplomatic efforts to end the fighting have centered on UN resolution 1701, which ended the last round of conflict between the two heavily-armed foes in 2006 and requires Hezbollah to remove fighters and weapons from areas between the border and the Litani River, which runs about 30 km (around 20 miles) from Lebanon’s southern border.
Israel has for years accused UNIFIL of failing to implement the resolution, and now says peacekeepers must get out of the way as Israeli troops fight Hezbollah. UNIFIL troops have refused to leave their posts, despite repeated Israeli attacks that have wounded peacekeepers.
“I think that has to be very clear. Implementing the 1701 is the responsibility of the parties,” said Lacroix, speaking to reporters on a three-day visit to Lebanon. “UNIFIL has a supportive role, and there is a lot of substance in that supporting role.”
Lacroix said the peacekeeping mission would work with the Lebanese army to “support the implementation of a settlement” and was already in discussions with contributing nations to assess UNIFIL’s needs, including with advanced technology, without necessarily increasing troop numbers.
Following a truce, UNIFIL’s capacities could be expanded to include clearing explosive devices and reopening roads.
“We don’t necessarily think in terms of numbers, we think in terms of what would be the needs and how could they be fulfilled,” he said.
Lacroix said the UN and several member states have repeatedly called on all parties to ensure the safety of peacekeepers and that while incidents had not stopped, they had not increased following international condemnation.


Lebanon says at least three killed in Israeli strike on Baalbek

Updated 14 November 2024
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Lebanon says at least three killed in Israeli strike on Baalbek

  • A ministry statement said body parts were recovered from the site

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s health ministry said at least three people were killed in an Israeli strike Thursday on the main eastern city of Baalbek.
“The Israeli enemy strike... in Baalbek killed three people, in an initial toll,” a ministry statement said, adding that “body parts were recovered from the site and their identities are being verified.”


Cafe in Libya champions recycling and sustainability

Updated 14 November 2024
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Cafe in Libya champions recycling and sustainability

  • Lamma, which means “gathering” or “hangout” in Arabic, has become a cultural hub for locals and other visitors
  • Its central mission, its owner said, is raising awareness of an eco-friendly lifestyle in Libya

TRIPOLI: In Libya’s capital, a cafe’s sleek exterior gives little hint of the vibrant space inside, built entirely from recycled materials to promote sustainability in a country recovering from years of war.
Lamma, which means “gathering” or “hangout” in Arabic, has become a cultural hub for locals and other visitors, featuring an art gallery that showcases Libyan artists, and hosts events and workshops.
But its central mission, its owner said, is raising awareness of an eco-friendly lifestyle in Libya, where green initiatives are scarce as people grapple with the aftermath of a gruelling conflict.
“We use materials that were abandoned in the streets, such as rubber from tires, wood from trees and construction waste” to build the cafe, said Louay Omran Burwais, an architect who designed and founded Lamma.
“The idea is to show people that what is thrown in the street and may seem ugly or useless is actually still valuable,” he told AFP.
Libya was hurled into war after a NATO-backed uprising led to the overthrow and killing of dictator Muammar Qaddafi, followed by years of fighting between militias, mercenaries and jihadists.
Power remains split between a UN-recognized government and a rival authority in the east.
Behind the long, narrow door into Lamma, visitors are greeted with a kaleidoscope of colors and shapes.
The plant-covered walls contrast with a web of suspended metal scraps, alcoves and slide tunnels that children swoop down through.
“There are no places like this in Libya,” said Roula Ajjawi, Lamma’s art director. “We base everything on one aspect that we consider very important: recycling.”
Families gather at Lamma on Thursdays, the start of the Libyan weekend, when the cafe holds art workshops for children.
Others borrow books from the venue’s small library.
Burwais says his team hopes recycling and other eco-friendly practices, which remain rare, start up in Libya, which currently has no recycling facilities.
Visitors to Lamma will recognize familiar everyday objects repurposed throughout the space, Burwais said, but they will “start seeing them differently. We are here to foster a new mindset.”
In Libya, the plastic, metal, and glass left from over a decade of civil war destruction are rarely, if ever, reused or recycled, Ajjawi said.
More often, they are abandoned in nature and on the streets, occasionally washed into the Mediterranean by rain and wind.
But with initiatives like Lamma, objects once destined for the landfill are transformed into works of art — a concept now catching on with locals.
“I love this place,” said Riyad Youssef, now a Lamma regular. “The food is great, the service is excellent, and I appreciate the commitment to reducing waste. Every idea here is amazing.”


Turkiye probes event spending in opposition-run cities

Updated 14 November 2024
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Turkiye probes event spending in opposition-run cities

  • The office said late on Wednesday it would investigate “irregular spendings“
  • The Ankara chief prosecutor’s office has also launched an investigation into two concerts

ISTANBUL: The Istanbul chief prosecutor’s office has opened a probe into allegations of illicit expenditures at some public events organized by the Istanbul municipality, marking the latest legal challenge to opposition-run districts in Turkiye.
The office said late on Wednesday it would investigate “irregular spendings” to determine whether the public experienced financial harm, without elaborating.
The Ankara chief prosecutor’s office has also launched an investigation into two concerts organized by the Ankara municipality on Republic Day celebrations on Oct. 29.
The municipalities, which are Turkiye’s two largest cities and both run by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), deny the allegations.
Speaking at a career fair on Thursday, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu — who is seen as a potential future challenger to President Tayyip Erdogan — said the probes amounted to “reputation assassination.” The Istanbul municipality did not comment further on the probe when contacted by Reuters.
Late last month the CHP mayor of Istanbul’s Esenyurt district was arrested and accused of belonging to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), charges he and his party reject.
Since then, the interior ministry dismissed and replaced elected mayors from the pro-Kurdish DEM party in some southeastern cities for alleged ties to militants, charges they and their party also deny.