Palestinian DC Chef, Senegalese Restaurant in New Orleans Win Coveted James Beard Awards 

Chef Michael Rafidi of Albi in Washington, DC, stands on the red carpet before the James Beard Awards ceremony Monday, June 10, 2024, in Chicago. Rafidi won the James Beard award for Outstanding Chef. (AP)
Chef Michael Rafidi of Albi in Washington, DC, stands on the red carpet before the James Beard Awards ceremony Monday, June 10, 2024, in Chicago. Rafidi won the James Beard award for Outstanding Chef. (AP)
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Palestinian DC Chef, Senegalese Restaurant in New Orleans Win Coveted James Beard Awards 

Chef Michael Rafidi of Albi in Washington, DC, stands on the red carpet before the James Beard Awards ceremony Monday, June 10, 2024, in Chicago. Rafidi won the James Beard award for Outstanding Chef. (AP)
Chef Michael Rafidi of Albi in Washington, DC, stands on the red carpet before the James Beard Awards ceremony Monday, June 10, 2024, in Chicago. Rafidi won the James Beard award for Outstanding Chef. (AP)

A Palestinian chef using ancient cooking techniques a Senegalese restaurant in New Orleans and an upscale Thai restaurant in Oregon won coveted James Beard awards Monday at a red carpet awards ceremony in Chicago.

More than 100 restaurants were finalists across 22 categories for the culinary world’s equivalent of the Oscars with diverse range of cuisine and chef experience, a recent shift following turbulent, pandemic-era years for the James Beard Foundation. Just being a finalist can bring wide recognition and boost business. The most anticipated categories included awards for outstanding restaurateur, chef and restaurant.

Michael Rafidi, whose Washington, DC, restaurant Albi was awarded a coveted Michelin Star in 2022, won outstanding chef among five finalists. Albi, which is Arabic for "my heart," pays homage to Rafidi’s Palestinian roots by using Old World food preparation techniques. Everything is cooked over charcoal, including grape leaves stuffed with lamb and sfeeha, a meat pie.

"This is for Palestine and all the Palestinian people out there," Rafidi told The Associated Press after winning the award. Rafidi, who wore a traditional black and white checkered keffiyeh, said he kept thinking of his Palestinian grandfather, who was also a chef, and how he paved the way for him.

Restaurants apply for the awards. Judges, who mostly remain anonymous, try the cuisine before voting. Nominees are reviewed for the food as well as for a behavioral code of ethics, including how employees are treated. On Monday, winners announced at the Lyric Opera of Chicago venue were given engraved medallions.

The award for best new restaurant went to Dakar NOLA, a Senegalese restaurant in New Orleans.

"I always knew that West Africa has something to say," said chef Serigne Mbaye. "That kept me going."

The James Beard Foundation has bestowed awards since 1991, except in 2020 and 2021 when the organization scrapped them as the restaurant industry was reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic. The foundation was also facing criticism over a lack of racial diversity and allegations about some nominees’ behavior. Foundation officials vowed to improve ethical standards and be more "reflective of the industry."

An upscale Thai restaurant that uses Pacific Northwest ingredients, Langbaan won outstanding restaurant, while Chicago restaurant Lula Cafe, a bistro that opened in 1999 on the city's North Side, won an award for outstanding hospitality.

Erika and Kelly Whitaker, a Colorado couple, won outstanding restauranteur.

Their Id Est Hospitality Group runs several Colorado restaurants including The Wolf’s Tailor, which serves wild game like smoked venison. Their restaurants have a focus on zero waste and sustainability practices.

"We don't particularly chase these awards," Kelly Whitaker said. "But we definitely chase the platform this brings."



UN: Most World Heritage Sites at Risk of Drought or Flooding

Muslim devotees offer Eid al-Adha prayers inside the complex of the Taj Mahal in Agra on June 7, 2025. (Photo by Punit Lal / AFP)
Muslim devotees offer Eid al-Adha prayers inside the complex of the Taj Mahal in Agra on June 7, 2025. (Photo by Punit Lal / AFP)
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UN: Most World Heritage Sites at Risk of Drought or Flooding

Muslim devotees offer Eid al-Adha prayers inside the complex of the Taj Mahal in Agra on June 7, 2025. (Photo by Punit Lal / AFP)
Muslim devotees offer Eid al-Adha prayers inside the complex of the Taj Mahal in Agra on June 7, 2025. (Photo by Punit Lal / AFP)

Almost three quarters of the globe's cultural and natural heritage sites are threatened by too little or too much water, the UN's cultural agency said on Tuesday.

As a result of rising temperatures, extreme weather events including hurricanes, droughts, floods and heatwaves have become more frequent and intense, scientists warn.

Seventy-three percent of all 1,172 non-marine sites on the UNESCO Heritage List are exposed to at least one severe water risk -- including water stress, drought, river flooding or coastal flooding, UNESCO said.

"Water stress is projected to intensify, most notably in regions like the Middle East and North Africa, parts of South Asia and northern China — posing long-term risks to ecosystems, cultural heritage, and the communities and tourism economies that depend on them," it added, according to AFP.

Cultural sites were most commonly threatened by water scarcity, while more than half of natural sites faced the risk of flooding from a nearby river, the UNESCO study showed.

In India, the Taj Mahal monument in Agra, for example, "faces water scarcity that is increasing pollution and depleting groundwater, both of which are damaging the mausoleum," the study said.

In the United State, "in 2022, a massive flood closed down all of Yellowstone National Park and cost over $20 million in infrastructure repairs to reopen."
The report gave four more examples.

Iraq's southern marshes -- the reputed home of the biblical Garden of Eden -- "face extremely high water stress, where over 80 percent of the renewable supply is withdrawn to meet human demand", it added.

And competition for water is expected to increase in the marshes, where migratory birds live and inhabitants raise buffalo, as the region grows hotter in coming years.

On the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, the Victoria Falls -- originally called Mosi-oa-Tunya ("the smoke that thunders") before it was renamed by Scottish explorer David Livingstone -- has faced recurring drought and is sometimes reduced to a trickle.

In Peru, the pre-Colombian city of Chan Chan and its delicate 1,000-year-old adobe walls face an extremely high risk of river flooding, UNESCO said.

In China, rising sea levels driven in large part by climate change are leading to coastal flooding, which destroys mudlands where migratory waterbirds find food, it added.