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Reporting on the Middle East, Science, and Education for September 26, 2007 - י"ד תשרי תשס"ח
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By Dore Gold, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, September 25, 2007
When former U.S. negotiator Dennis Ross sought to understand the failure of the Oslo peace process of the 1990s, in which he was an active participant, he zeroed in on the need to bring about a “transformation” of political attitudes that the Palestinian leadership failed to encourage. Ross pointed to the education that Palestinian children received, concluding “that no negotiation is likely to succeed if there is one environment at the negotiating table and another on the street.” Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education Report, Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on September 26, 2007 - י"ד תשרי תשס"ח at 9:12 am
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Science Daily, September 24, 2007 — Researchers in California are reporting new evidence explaining pomegranate juice’s mysterious beneficial effects in fighting prostate cancer.
Juice from the pomegranate shows promise for fighting prostate cancer. (Credit: USDA Agricultural Research Service)
In a new study, Navindra Seeram and colleagues have found that the tart, trendy beverage also uses a search-and-destroy strategy to target prostate cancer cells.
In previous research, Seeram’s group found that pomegranate juice consumption had a beneficial effect for prostate cancer patients with rising prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels. Such increases in PSA signal that the cancer is progressing, “doubling time” a key indicator of prognosis. Men whose PSA levels double in a short period are more likely to die from their cancer. Pomegranate juice increased doubling times by almost fourfold. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Men's Health, Recent Posts on September 24, 2007 - י"ב תשרי תשס"ח at 12:15 pm
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by Safura Rahimi, Arabian Business, 23 September 2007
Israeli forces looking for proof that Syria and North Korea were collaborating on a nuclear program raided a military compound in northern Syria, seizing North Korean nuclear material before bombing the site on September 6.
The ground raid by the elite Sayeret Matkal forces was part of Israel’s plans to provide clear evidence of nuclear-related activities to the US to get the superpower’s go-ahead for the warplane air strike, British weekly The Sunday Times reported.
According to the report, Israel had been surveying the Dayr az-Zwar site for months, however no date for the raid was provided.
The report also gave no details about the material seized, however tests have shown that it was of North Korean origin. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, News Articles, Recent Posts on September 23, 2007 - י"א תשרי תשס"ח at 7:23 am
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By Israel Zwick, CN Publications, Yom Kippur 5768
See Also: Yom Kippur, Day of Friendship and Love
This year, Yom Kippur, the most sacred day in the Jewish calendar, falls on a Saturday. Since Yom Kippur can never fall on a Sunday, it is an uncommon event for Yom Kippur to fall on a weekend. That’s an extra incentive to attend synagogue services since Saturday is not a regular business day, there is no need to take a day off from work. So synagogues around America can expect a surge in attendance from what is commonly known as “The Yom Kippur Jews,” the Jews who attend synagogue services only once per year on Yom Kippur.
There may be a variety of reasons why these Jews, who generally do not practice any form of Judaism, are willing to buy a seat to attend synagogue services for one day per year. Some feel a need to honor a commitment to departed parents and participate in the Yizkor Memorial Service. For some it’s a nostalgia trip that brings back memories of the holidays with their parents and grandparents. Others may feel that they need this minimal connection with their faith to have some identification with the Jewish people. For some, it is a family reunion as they all gather to go to the same synagogue and then enjoy a family dinner afterwards. Still others may see it purely as a social event, an opportunity to meet and chat with others that they meet only at this annual event. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Judaism, Monotheistic Religions, Recent Posts, Zwick's Picks on September 19, 2007 - ז' תשרי תשס"ח at 9:27 pm
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BY ANNIE KARNI – Staff Reporter of the Sun
NY Sun, September 19, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/62901
Students at many of the country’s most prestigious colleges and universities are graduating with less knowledge of American history, government, and economics than they had as incoming freshmen, with Harvard University seniors scoring a “D+” average on a 60-question multiple-choice exam about civic literacy.
According to a report released yesterday by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the average college senior at the 50 colleges and universities polled did not earn a passing grade.
“At the most expensive colleges, they actually graduate knowing less,” the executive director of the Jack Miller Center at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Michael Ratliff, said. “Colleges and universities are not directing students to the courses that would educate them. We want to know whether after getting $300 billion to do their work, universities are actually educating their students.”
At universities such as Princeton, Yale, Cornell, Duke, and Berkeley, seniors scored lower on the test than freshmen, living proof of the broadening relevancy of the old Harvard adage that the university is a storehouse of knowledge because “the freshmen bring so much and the seniors take away so little.”
The average foreign student studying in an American college learned nothing about the country’s history and its civic institutions, according to the study. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education Report, Recent Posts on September 19, 2007 - ז' תשרי תשס"ח at 8:27 am
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By Craig Covault, Aviation Week, September 16, 2007
Military space reconnaissance capabilities are proliferating. This week, the U.S., Israel, India, China and Brazil could advance their commercial, technological and strategic interests with new milsats set to be launched.
Once aloft, the satellites will look into each other’s backyards and try to steal each other’s customers. And they all will be watching Iran.
The missions—scheduled for Sept. 17-20—have been developed by a diverse set of companies and thousands of engineers and technicians whose efforts will benefit their respective military programs beyond the intelligence operations the spacecraft will support.
The programs show how military space is maturing around the world and, with it, the growing capability of nations to make their own decisions based on in-house space intelligence data—not massaged information from the major space powers—the U.S., Russia and China. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, Opinion, Science and Technology on September 18, 2007 - ו' תשרי תשס"ח at 9:58 am
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Reuters, Sept 18, 2007
WASHINGTON – Weight training works just as well as running on a treadmill or biking to help the most important symptom of type-2 diabetes — long-term control of blood sugar — Canadian researchers said on Monday.
Doing both aerobic and resistance training lowered blood sugar levels better than either alone, researchers said — and both appeared to be safe.
At least 194 million people worldwide have diabetes, and the World Health Organization expects the number to rise to more than 300 million by 2025.
Most have type-2 diabetes, caused by a combination of genetic predisposition, lack of exercise and rich diet.
Exercise — the type that makes people breathe a little heavily — is known to reduce the risk of type-2 diabetes and can improve the body’s control of sugar. But there were doubts about the safety and effectiveness of weight training. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Nutrition & Fitness on September 18, 2007 - ו' תשרי תשס"ח at 8:34 am
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By Batsheva Pomerantz, Israel 21C, September 17, 2007
When underachieving fourth graders in Bridgeport, Connecticut recently spent three days undergoing a battery of educational tests, they not only had fun but they perceived themselves in a totally new and positive way. One of the students, Tyheem, wrote in appreciation: “…thanks for everything. You made my brain strong.”
These students of African American and Hispanic background were part of a pilot project using a novel Israeli-developed system of cognitive assessment developed by the Jerusalem-based International Center for the Enhancement of Learning Potential (ICELP)
The testing preceded the recently signed partnership between the ICELP and the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education (NUA). Plans are underway to start implementing the partnership in 20 US cities in the near future. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education Report, Mental Health, Middle East Report on September 17, 2007 - ה' תשרי תשס"ח at 9:24 pm
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By Victor Davis Hanson, Washington Times, September 15, 2007
Who recently said: “These Jews started 19 Crusades. The 19th was World War I. Why? Only to build Israel.” Some holdover Nazi?
Hardly. It was former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan of Turkey, a NATO ally. He went on to claim that the Jews — whom he refers to as “bacteria” — controlled China, India and Japan, and ran the United States.
Who alleged: “The Arabs who were involved in September 11 [2001] cooperated with the Zionists, actually. It was a cooperation. They gave them the perfect excuse to denounce all Arabs.” A conspiracy nut? Actually, it was former Democratic U.S. Sen. James Abourezk of South Dakota. He denounced Israel on a Hezbollah-owned television station, adding: “I marveled at the Hezbollah resistance to Israel…. It was a marvel of organization, of courage and bravery.”
And finally, who claimed at a U.N.-sponsored conference that democratic Israel was “much worse” than the former apartheid South Africa and that it “undermines the international community’s reaction to global warming”? A radical environmentalist wacko? Again, no. It was Clare Short, a member of the British Parliament and Tony Blair’s international development secretary. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Judaism, Middle East Report, Monotheistic Religions, Opinion, Recent Posts on September 16, 2007 - ד' תשרי תשס"ח at 9:20 am
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Submitted by florian schneider on Thu, 2007-07-19 11:40.
following are reviews from: The Nation, The Independent, London Review of Books, Financial Times, RIBA Journal, The New Humanist, Architects’ Journal, Harpers, Architectural Review, Modern Painters, Contemporary, Counterpunch, Socialist Worker, Blueprint and more… (scroll down for more articles)
Behind the Wall, Edwin Heathcote, Financial Times, August 4 2007
Hollow Land is more like an extraordinary new drawing than a conventional piece of architectural literature. It is a document that allows you to see a physical landscape overlaid with politics, sociology, religion and history, as if one were using architectural x-ray specs. It posits the contemporary urban war zone with its cocktail of violence, media, politics and extremism as the ultimate postmodern environment. It is also the most astonishing book on architecture that I have read in years. Eyal Weizman analyses the use of architecture in his homeland, Israel, as a hugely sophisticated political and cultural tool. Although the new security wall may seem like the primitive construction of a nation bereft of political solutions, Weizman looks deeper, above and below the wall, high into the sky and into the formerly impenetrable world of avant-garde architectural theory as adopted by the Israeli army. The book is effectively a section cut through the area, revealing a series of layers and territories, each manipulated by the Israeli authorities. He explores the one-sided porosity of those borders, passable by settlers but not by Arabs. He looks at how inland archipelagos have been created by the cordoning off of settlements within Arab territories. He examines the use of archaeology to justify Jewish settlement in some areas while fragments of ancient Islam are trodden over and left in the rubble. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, Opinion on September 13, 2007 - א' תשרי תשס"ח at 9:49 pm
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