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Reporting on the Middle East, Science, and Education for April 29, 2007 - י"א אייר תשס"ז
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By Batya Medad, Shiloh Musings, April 29, 2007
Dawns and sunsets are usually very beautiful, with glorious spectrums of color. The key word here is “usually.”
Here in Israel the transition between winter and summer is sometimes grey and depressing.
Usually, when I focus my camera on the west at the end of the day, I photograph gorgeous colors. Not now. Dawn and dusk are dull at best, and sometimes even frightening.
Is Israeli society also going through some sort of winter to summer transition? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, Opinion on April 29, 2007 - י"א אייר תשס"ז at 10:02 am
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Submitted by Rabbi Chaim Yisroel Blumenfeld, Yeshiva Neveh Zion
Only recently while writing about Israel’s day of remembering it’s fallen soldiers, I mentioned last summer’s war in Lebanon. The Winograd Commission will soon publish its report. It’s not going to be easy but we have to learn from our mistakes. But as in all the conflicts, there are stories that depict the heroic efforts of our young men. Recently, Rabbi Noach Hall was kind enough to send me this story from the Aish HaTorah website. I hope it will inspire you as it did me.
DIVINE EMISSARY
In his new book, Am Yisrael Chai [Hebrew, published by Todah Tzahal], Reserve Major Moshe Kenan relates a story that gives us a glimpse behind the scenes of the Jewish army at war last summer. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Judaism, Middle East Report, Monotheistic Religions on April 29, 2007 - י"א אייר תשס"ז at 9:51 am
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Photo: IRIN 
Palestinian refugees at another camp, outside Baghdad
BAGHDAD, 29 April 2007 (IRIN) - Hundreds of Palestinian refugees stranded in makeshift camps in no-man’s land between the desert borders of Iraq and Syria must be moved to a safer place to avoid any human tragedies, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said last week.
The 25 April statement came a day after a fire swept through the al-Tanf refugee camp - which hosts 389 Palestinian refugees, mainly women and children - during the night and left 28 people injured and seven tents destroyed.
“This is the second time a fire has broken out in this camp. It is an example of how inappropriate and dangerous this place is for humans to live in and underlines the need to move these refugees to an appropriate and safe place,” Laurens Jolles, UNHCR’s representative in Syria, said. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, News Articles, Recent Posts on April 29, 2007 - י"א אייר תשס"ז at 9:08 am
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Photo: Tom Spender/IRIN
A fisherman in Gaza City shows his frustration at the Israeli ban on fishing off Gaza, which is exacerbating the lack of food in the Strip
JERUSALEM, 29 April 2007 (IRIN) - A recent United Nations report reveals that the humanitarian situation in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) continued to deteriorate in the second half of last year, largely because of a collapsing economy.
Many Palestinians fell further into poverty. The Gaza Strip was the hardest hit with about 80 percent of households earning less than US $1 a day, twice the percentage of those earning that little in the West Bank.
Published by the UN Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the report indicates that the international boycott on the Palestinian Authority (PA), coupled with Israel’s withholding of tax revenues destined for oPt had the harshest affects on the PA’s ability to offer basic services. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, News Articles, Recent Posts on April 29, 2007 - י"א אייר תשס"ז at 9:02 am
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Plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions may create other problems
Financial Times, April 26, 2007
Europe’s dash for biofuels could accelerate the destruction of tropical rainforests, the European Commission admitted on Thursday.
The EU’s executive arm said that the 27-member bloc’s decision to increase tenfold its consumption of vehicle fuel made from crops by 2020 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would increase the pressure on virgin land, especially in Asia.
However, it said it was working on laying down minimum standards for sustainable fuels.
Chris Davies, a British Liberal Member of Parliament whose question elicited the response, cast doubt on the effectiveness of such a policy. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Alternative Energy, Biomass fuels, Recent Posts on April 26, 2007 - ח' אייר תשס"ז at 6:06 pm
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A new blood test for prostate cancer, currently being tested, could one day revolutionize the way the disease is diagnosed and treated.
By Anne Underwood, Newsweek, April 26, 2007
April 26, 2007 - Prostate cancer is the second leading cancer killer among men, after lung cancer. The American Cancer Society projects that in 2007 there will be 219,000 new cases and 27,000 deaths. Yet detecting the disease early has always been problematic. The only blood test available now—a test for prostate-specific antigen (PSA)—is not good at distinguishing malignancies from benign prostate enlargement (BPH). And it’s useless for separating aggressive cancers from others that are so slow-growing they will likely never cause problems.
But a new blood test, described this week in the journal Urology, could change all that. In a study of 385 men, the new test was able to distinguish BPH from prostate cancer, and it pinpointed men who were healthy, even when their PSA levels were higher than normal. It also did the reverse—singling out men with cancer, even when their PSA levels were low. It may also distinguish cancer confined to the prostate from cancer that has spread beyond the gland. And it has the potential to dramatically reduce the number of biopsies performed every year. More trials are required, but if they’re as promising as this initial study, the new test could reach the market in two to three years.NEWSWEEK’s Anne Underwood spoke with the study’s senior author, Dr. Robert Getzenberg, director of urology research at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Excerpts: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Men's Health, Recent Posts on April 26, 2007 - ח' אייר תשס"ז at 1:08 pm
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By Daniel Estrin, JTA, April 24, 2007
Radio All for Peace, an Israeli-Palestinian station, broadcasts a message of hope in both Hebrew and Arabic.
JERUSALEM (JTA) — As they usually do, Israeli radio stations marked this year’s Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism by switching their playlists to somber tunes.
But Radio All For Peace, a Jerusalem-based, Israeli-Palestinian station whose listeners are split about evenly between Israel and the Palestinian territories, extended its Memorial Day commemoration across borders: It broadcast a daylong marathon of interviews with bereaved families on both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The interviews were taken from the station’s weekly show “New Direction,” hosted in Hebrew and Arabic by Israeli Sharon Mishiker and Palestinian Aziz Abu Sarah, each of whom lost a brother in the conflict. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, News Articles on April 26, 2007 - ח' אייר תשס"ז at 10:28 am
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Carved bone and ivory tools, excavated in Russia,
made by early humans more than 40,000 years ago
(Click on image to enlarge)
(Courtesy of A.A. Sinitsyn)
It has been widely assumed that modern humans—Homo sapiens—first traveled out of Africa and settled in central and Western Europe before heading to Eastern Europe. That may not be the case. Recent finds from a site in Russia about 250 miles south of Moscow suggest that the first humans in Europe were Eastern European.The discoveries include bone and carved ivory artifacts. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Evolutionary Biology on April 25, 2007 - ז' אייר תשס"ז at 9:37 am
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By Israel Zwick, CN Publications, April 24, 2007
Written in honor of Israel Independence Day, 5 Iyar 5767
Since the establishment of the State of Israel in May, 1948, thousands of articles and millions of words have been written about the “suffering of the Palestinian people”. It has been well established that many of the 4 million people who now identify themselves as Palestinians, are living in poverty and squalor in over 50 UNRWA “refugee camps” scattered around the Israeli territories, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. There is universal agreement that the “plight of the Palestinian refugees” needs to be resolved in order to bring peace and stability to the Middle East.
Before developing a suitable intervention to resolving a problematic situation, it is first necessary to do a thorough assessment to determine the cause of the problem. When the Palestinian spokesmen are interviewed about the problem, they are adept at using CYA techniques to explain the reasons for the “suffering of the Palestinian people.” As most Americans know, CYA is the initialism for Cover Your Derrière. It is a common expression used when the blame for wrongdoing is ascribed elsewhere to avoid the possibility of personal liability. CYA techniques are among the first lessons that journalists and diplomats learn on the job. So if something goes wrong, “It can’t be my fault, I followed all the appropriate procedures, you need to look elsewhere to find fault.”
Using CYA techniques, the reason for the “suffering of the Palestinian people” can be readily determined: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Fun Stuff, Humor, Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts, Zwick's Picks on April 24, 2007 - ו' אייר תשס"ז at 10:46 pm
Reprinted from Ya Libnan, April 22, 2007
See also: http://cnpublications.net/2007/04/24/cya-and-make-money/#more-554
Beirut- In 12 years of selling household goods to Lebanese and Palestinian customers, Khaled Saadi says he has never seen the market place in Nahr al-Bared, a Palestinian refugee camp in north Lebanon, as quiet as it is today.
“This used to be a key shopping market for all of north Lebanon. I used to sell around US $4,000-worth of goods every day,” said the Palestinian refugee who is a father of six.
“Today, the most I sell is $1,000. I have six children, a wife and an elderly father to look after. Things can’t go on like this for long.”
Through the winding alleys of this one-kilometre-square camp, home to up to 40,000 people and one of 12 official camps where Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee population live in varying degrees of squalor and struggle, lies the source of Saadi’s current woes: the office of Fatah Islam, a Islamist militant group formed as an offshoot of the Damascus-based Palestinian Fatah Uprising. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Business and Commerce, Middle East Report, News Articles on April 24, 2007 - ו' אייר תשס"ז at 2:00 pm
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