Energy-poor Jordan said on Sunday a Russian firm and a French-Japanese consortium are to compete to build the kingdom’s first nuclear plant.

“Following a thorough examination, the offers provided by Russia’s Atomstroyexport and a consortium by France’s Areva and Japan’s Mitsubishi were the best proposals that meet Jordan’s requirements,” Atomic Energy Commission said in a statement.

Saboteurs blew up a pipeline carrying natural gas from Egypt to Israel and Jordan on Monday, forcing the line to shut down, Egyptian security sources said.

The explosion took place in the early morning at a station in the northern Sinai Peninsula at Bir Abd, 37 miles east of the Suez Canal, the sources said.

It was the third attack this year on the pipeline, which also supplies local cement

An invasive alien weed, silverleaf nightshade, is threatening cotton and wheat crops in Syria and Iraq and could spread to Lebanon and Jordan, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Tuesday.

More than 60 percent of the farmland in Syria, growing mainly cotton and wheat, has been infested with the weed, originally from the American tropics, which sucks nutrients from

The once mighty Jordan river, where Christians believe Jesus was baptised, is now little more than a polluted stream that could die next year unless the decay is halted, environmentalists said on Monday.