• Iraq displays 2,800-year-old stone tablet returned by Italy
• Ancient fortress found by archaeologists may be a lost royal city
• Iraqi olive farmers look to the sun to power their production

• Proven approach to stop sectarian violence in Iraq
• A statistically tested way to stop terrorism and boost Iraq's economy
• Meditating for peace in Iraq

• Undercover in the world's dirtiest oil field
• Iraq to reduce winter crop area by 50% due to water shortage - ministry statement
• Nowhere to go: Displaced Iraqis desperate as camps close

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Positive Trends
Short Summaries of Top Stories

Iraq displays 2,800-year-old stone tablet returned by Italy
20 June 2023 - A 2,800-year-old stone tablet has gone on display in Iraq after being returned by Italy following nearly four decades. The artifact is inscribed with complete cuneiform text -- a system of writing on clay in an ancient Babylonian alphabet. (more)

Ancient fortress found by archaeologists may be a lost royal city
28 July 2022 - A 2,000-year-old fortress built on a mountainside in what's now Iraqi Kurdistan could be part of a lost royal city called Natounia. (more)

Iraqi olive farmers look to the sun to power their production
3 February 2022 - Among olive groves that were once a front line between Islamic State militants and Iraqi forces, Yunis Salman and a few fellow farmers are harnessing what they believe should be the future of Middle East agriculture: the power of the sun. Solar panels installed last year between his family's 1,500 olive trees help to power water pumping and irrigation, providing enough for production and several hours of electricity each day for their home. (more)

The ancient tablets revealing the mysteries of Babylonia
25 November 2021 - Plimpton 322 is the name given to a 3,800-year-old clay tablet discovered in Iraq in the early 20th Century by archeologist Edgar J Banks, the man believed to have inspired Indiana Jones. Over time this tablet has become one of the most significant and most studied objects of the ancient world. Dr Daniel Mansfield, of the University of New South Wales, who has studied Plimpton 322 along with other similar tablets, argues that these are evidence that the Babylonians were solving real-world problems, such as surveying, using the basics of Pythagoras' theorem 1,000 years before the ancient Greeks. (more)

Ancient tablet acquired of Assyrian King going back to Iraq
23 September 2021 - A 3,500-year-old clay tablet discovered in the ruins of the library of an ancient Mesopotamian king, then looted from an Iraqi museum 30 years ago, is finally headed back to Iraq. The $1.7 million cuneiform clay tablet was found in 1853 as part of a 12-tablet collection in the rubble of the library of Assyrian King Assur Banipal. Officials believe it was illegally imported into the United States in 2003, then sold to Hobby Lobby and eventually put on display in its Museum of the Bible in the nation's capital. (more)

Iraq's marshes named world heritage site
17 July 2016 - A wetland in southeast Iraq, thought to be the biblical Garden of Eden and almost completely drained during Saddam Hussein's rule, has become a UNESCO world heritage site, Iraqi authorities said on Sunday, 17 July. Fed by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the marshlands of Mesopotamia are spawning grounds for Gulf fisheries and home to bird species such as the sacred ibis. They also provide a resting spot for thousands of wildfowl migrating between Siberia and Africa. (more)

Iraq: Kurds to fill the' bread basket' once again by restoring agriculture
14 June 2016 - After years of neglecting agriculture in favor of the many barrels of oil that were flushing Kurdistan's economy and fueling a financial boom, Kurdish authorities are taking a fresh look at agriculture. For many years the Kurdish region was considered the bread basket of Iraq due to its fertile land and agreeable climate. The ministry of agriculture welcomes the new government policy to revive the sector. (more)

In Basra workshop, Iraqi oud maker crafts sought-after instruments
18 April 2016 - In his small workshop in the Iraqi city of Basra, Thabit al-Basri carefully bends a slim piece of wood over a flame before placing it over the pear-shaped oud in the making. The 72-year-old craftsman is putting together the traditional string-instrument, popular in Middle Eastern music, a process that can take around a month. His finished product usually fetches $1,000 and is highly sought-after. (more)

Ancient Babylonians took first steps to calculus
29 January 2016 - Tracking and recording the motion of the sun, the moon, and the planets as they paraded across the desert sky, ancient Babylonian astronomers used simple arithmetic to predict the positions of celestial bodies. Now, new evidence reveals that these astronomers, working several centuries B.C.E., also employed sophisticated geometric methods that foreshadow the development of calculus. The Babylonians had developed 'abstract mathematical, geometrical ideas about the connection between motion, position, and time that are so common to any modern physicist or mathematician,' said astroarchaeologist (and astrophysicist turned historian) Mathieu Ossendrijver of Humboldt University in Berlin. (more)

Knowing all the angles: Ancient Babylonians used tricky geometry
28 January 2016 - Ancient Babylonian astronomers were way ahead of their time, using sophisticated geometric techniques that until now had been considered an achievement of medieval European scholars. That is the finding of a study published on Thursday that analyzed four clay tablets dating from 350 to 50 BC featuring the wedge-shaped ancient Babylonian cuneiform script describing how to track the planet Jupiter's path across the sky. Babylon was an important city in ancient Mesopotamia, located in Iraq about 60 miles (100 kilometers) south of Baghdad. (more)

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Success of Maharishi's Programmes
Short Summaries of Top Stories

Proven approach to stop sectarian violence in Iraq
23 June 2014 - With regard to growing sectarian violence in Iraq, President Barack Obama recently said, 'I don't rule out anything,' and 'my national security team is looking at all the options.' He should consider Invincible Defense Technology (IDT), a scientifically-validated approach to effectively, efficiently, and quickly end the turmoil, writes Dr David Leffler in an editorial published today in The Hill, a top US political website widely read by Washington policymakers. This IDT approach to reducing stress and violence is already part of the training of America's future commanders at Norwich University, and has been field-tested by foreign militaries. It is validated by 23 peer-reviewed studies carried out in both developed and developing nations in the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Independent scientists and scholars endorse it, based on 25 years of research. (more)

A statistically tested way to stop terrorism and boost Iraq's economy
14 June 2014 - NBC News reports that U.S. President Barack Obama said ''I don't rule out anything,'' and ''my national security team is looking at all the options'' with regard to the rapidly growing unrest in Iraq. Even if The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, is defeated, the problem of terrorism will not likely be solved for long, particularly if Iraq's economy does not improve, write the authors of an article that has been reprinted in many countries. Obviously, it is a dangerous time in Iraq. There is a scientifically-validated approach--known as Invincible Defense Technology--validated by 23 studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, that has been statistically proven numerous times to decrease and prevent violence and terrorism. If President Obama really means that he will not rule anything out, then he should request that Iraq establish Preventive Wings of the Military to ease high tensions and prevent further terrorism and war. If they promptly act, Iraq could create lasting peace, boost its economy and gain international prestige. (more)

Meditating for peace in Iraq
19 February 2007 - A recent editorial suggests a solution to the war in Iraq. If just 1,500 of the 133,000 US troops in Iraq practised Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation and its advanced techniques, an influence of peace and harmony would be created in the region. (more)

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Flops
Short Summaries of Top Stories

Undercover in the world's dirtiest oil field
11 November 2022 - Far removed from the world leaders making climate pledges at COP, are people like Ali Hussein Julood, a young leukaemia survivor living on an Iraqi oil field co-managed by BP. When the BBC discovered BP was not declaring the field's gas flaring, Ali helped us to reveal the truth about the poisonous air the local community has to breathe. ... We discovered through satellite data that Rumaila in Basra, southern Iraq, is the world's worst offender for gas flaring. Gas flaring is not only a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions, it is also known to emit benzene -- which heightens the risk of cancer, particularly childhood leukemia. (more)

Iraq to reduce winter crop area by 50% due to water shortage - ministry statement
17 October 2021 - Iraq's agriculture ministry said on Sunday it would reduce its 2021-2022 winter crop planting area by 50% due to a water shortage. (more)

Nowhere to go: Displaced Iraqis desperate as camps close
12 November 2020 - Iraq has started closing camps housing tens of thousands of people, including many who fled their homes during the final battle against Islamic State, but aid groups warn this could create a second wave of displacement with dire consequences. (more)

Nowhere to go: Displaced Iraqis desperate as camps close
12 November 2020 - Iraq has started closing camps housing tens of thousands of people, including many who fled their homes during the final battle against Islamic State, but aid groups warn this could create a second wave of displacement with dire consequences. (more)

Shrinking water supplies threaten to put fragile Iraq 'on the edge'
9 July 2020 - As lower oil prices and a coronavirus-driven downturn batter Iraq's economy, availability of safe water is eroding and could fuel greater tensions, security experts warned on Wednesday [8 July]. (more)

After years of war and drought, Iraq's bumper crop is burning
20 June 2019 - Since the harvest began in April, crop fires have raged across Diyala, Kirkuk, Nineveh, and Salahuddin provinces while the government, battered by years of war and corruption, has few resources to counter a new hit-and-run insurgency. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for burning hundreds of hectares of farmland in Diyala, Kirkuk, and Salahuddin provinces as well as Syria. (more)

Several dead, thousands flee homes in Iraq floods
23 November 2018 - At least seven people died and thousands fled their homes in flash floods around the northern Iraqi town of Shirqat on Friday (23 November), its mayor said. The floods, after unusually heavy and early rainfall in recent weeks, have piled more pressure on Iraq's new government to provide services and fix infrastructure in provinces hard-hit by the 2014-17 war against Islamic State militants, and by years of neglect that critics blame on corruption. (more)

Water shortages to cut Iraq's irrigated wheat area by half
11 September 2018 - Drought, water shortages have reduced Nineveh, Iraq's former breadbasket, to a dust bowl. Iraq, a major Middle East grain buyer, will cut the irrigated area it plants with wheat by half in the 2018-2019 growing season as water shortages grip the country, a government official told Reuters. An investigation by Reuters in July revealed how Nineveh, Iraq's former breadbasket, was becoming a dust bowl after drought and years of war. (more)

Water crisis salts the earth in Iraq's long-neglected south
2 August 2018 - Qassim Sabaan Ali has spent the past 15 years tending to orchards in southern Iraq, only to see them wither or die as saltwater has seeped into the once-lush soil. The southern city of Basra was once known as the 'Venice of the East' because of its freshwater canals, and Iraq itself is still known as the 'Land Between the Two Rivers' -- the Tigris and the Euphrates -- which have nourished civilizations since antiquity. (more)

Iraq bans farming summer crops as water crisis grows dire
5 July 2018 - Iraq has banned its farmers from planting summer crops this year as the country grapples with a crippling water shortage that shows few signs of abating. Citing high temperatures and insufficient rains, Dhafer Abdalla, an adviser to Iraq's Ministry of Water Resources, told The Associated Press that the country has only enough water to irrigate half its farmland this summer. But farmers fault the government for failing to modernize how it manages water and irrigation, and they blame neighboring Turkey for stopping up the Tigris and Euphrates rivers behind dams it wants to keep building. (more)