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Reporting on the Middle East, Science, and Education for April 29, 2008 - כ"ד ניסן תשס"ח
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Abed Rabbo pledged that “We have all missed opportunities in the past, but if this opportunity will be missed, it will not be our mistake. Our choice is quite clear: a state for us along the lines of 1967, that’s it.”
Palestine Media Center - PMC, April 29, 2008
Secretary General of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Yasser Abed Rabbo, repeatedly warned Israel against seeking “the partition of the West Bank,” which he said in a speech in Washington on April 25 that Palestinians “will never accept.”
At a briefing in Washington hosted by the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP) and the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institute, entitled “Is Peace Possible in 2008: A Palestinian Perspective,” Abed Rabbo reiterated the Palestinian commitment to peace with Israel and praised the U.S. Administration’s efforts to reach an agreement.
However Abed Rabbo told the audience at the Falk Auditorium that it is “Difficult to judge whether we are heading towards compromise or disaster, at least political disaster. I don’t know and I cannot predict the answer to this question that haunts me and others every day.”
He said that when he “compares what is being said at meetings and what is going on the ground, one feels schizophrenia.” This is because, “What is being said is that we need an agreement this year. This American Administration is doing its best to achieve that. The Israelis officially repeat the same thing. We are warning everybody that if this opportunity is missed, other forces will benefit, not only Israeli and Palestinian extremists, but extremists in the whole region.”
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, News Articles, Recent Posts on April 29, 2008 - כ"ד ניסן תשס"ח at 10:30 pm
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Reprinted from Science Daily, April 28, 2008
ScienceDaily (Apr. 28, 2008) — Imagine a technology that would not only provide a green and renewable source of electrical energy, but could also help scrub the atmosphere of excessive carbon dioxide resulting from the burning of fossil fuels. That’s the promise of artificial versions of photosynthesis, the process by which green plants have been converting solar energy into electrochemical energy for millions of years. To get there, however, scientists need a far better understanding of how Nature does it, starting with the harvesting of sunlight and the transporting of this energy to electrochemical reaction centers.
Graham Fleming, a physical chemist who holds joint appointments with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) at Berkeley, is the leader of an ongoing effort to discover how plants are able to transfer energy through a network of pigment-protein complexes with nearly 100-percent efficiency. In previous studies, he and his research group used a laser-based technique they developed called two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy to track the flow of excitation energy through both time and space. Now, for the first time, they’ve been able to connect that flow to energy-transferring functions by providing direct experimental links between atomic and electronic structures in pigment-protein complexes.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Alternative Energy, Evolutionary Biology, Recent Posts, Science and Technology on April 28, 2008 - כ"ג ניסן תשס"ח at 3:07 pm
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Bahrain Tribune - 22/04/2008
(MENAFN - Bahrain Tribune) With billions of dollars investments in the pipeline, the tourism and leisure sector has emerged as one of the strongest pillars of regional economies, a senior official at Sabre, Middle East, said yesterday. Ramzi Al Qassab, regional director, Sabre Network said the firm, with operations in 11 countries in the Middle East, views the region as a window of opportunity.
He said Sabre would make major announcements at Bahrain International Travel Expo and the Arabian Travel Market, in Dubai, both taking place next month.
“Sabre Travel Network, Middle East (STN-ME), has been at the forefront of the Middle East’s travel-industry phenomenal growth since its establishment in three years ago and has picked ATM to further solidify its standing in the region.
“The Middle East is the most rapidly growing region for air traffic globally, due mostly to the large-scale investments local airlines and airports are funnelling into the industry.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Business and Commerce, Middle East Report, News Articles on April 22, 2008 - י"ז ניסן תשס"ח at 5:41 am
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Khaleej Times - 22/04/2008
(MENAFN - Khaleej Times) Dubai Quality Group (DQG), an organisation dedicated to raising the general performance level of the local business environment, announced the start of the third annual Ideas.Arabia International Conference yesterday at Majlis Al Salam ballroom in Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai.
Shaikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, President of Dubai Civil Aviation Department, and the patron of DQG, under whose patronage the event is being held, inaugurated the conference.
The two-day conference will gather international experts and regional businesses to discuss best practices and current trends concerning ’suggestion schemes’, a human resource strategy that encourages ideas from non-management employees to enhance standardised procedures and improve quality.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Business and Commerce, Middle East Report, News Articles on April 22, 2008 - י"ז ניסן תשס"ח at 5:32 am
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By Michael Le Page, NewScientist.com , April 16, 2008
By weeding out harmful mutations and assembling beneficial ones, natural selection acts like an "improbability drive" that can, given enough time, produce results that appear utterly impossible at first glance
In a recent TV special shown in the UK, called The System, a mother with big debts was persuaded to borrow even more money to bet on a horse race. Having been sent correct predictions of six previous races, she believed illusionist Derren Brown really had come up with a foolproof system for predicting the outcome of races.
In fact, the producers of the show started by sending different predictions to nearly 8000 people. After each race, those sent predictions that turned out to be wrong were eliminated and another set of varying predictions sent to the remaining participants. What appears utterly extraordinary at first – sending someone correct predictions of the winners of six races – seems very ordinary as soon as you understand that thousands of people got wrong predictions.
Confronted by the marvels of the living world, many people jump to the same conclusion to the woman in the programme: they cannot be the result of chance alone. But what we don’t see are all the failures: the countless numbers of creatures that died in the egg or in the womb, or hatched or were born with terrible defects, or fell victim to predators or disease because of some weakness.
In the wild, most individuals die long before they get a chance to reproduce. The living organisms on Earth are the result not just of six rounds of selection, as in the TV programme, but of trillions. This, not chance, is the crucial factor in evolution.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Evolutionary Biology on April 18, 2008 - י"ג ניסן תשס"ח at 9:45 am
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IRIN, April 16, 2008
We need a multi-level solution, including conservation and changes in use in the agriculture sector.
JERUSALEM, 16 April 2008 (IRIN) - Israel is suffering from a water crisis and immediate steps must be taken to resolve the problem, Uri Shani, the head of Israel’s Water Authority, told the cabinet on 13 April. He said there was a gap between supply and demand that needed to be closed.
Over the next five years, the country would be below the “red lines” at all water sources, and there would be a need to significantly increase the amount of water produced by desalination, he said.
The government recently issued a tender for bids to build a new desalination plant to produce 100 million cubic metres of water a year. Officials told IRIN this was only one of several new plants to be constructed in the coming years.
However, some experts say desalination is only part of a wider change needed.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Air & Water, Middle East Report, Science and Technology on April 18, 2008 - י"ג ניסן תשס"ח at 6:12 am
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Four reasons why final-status agreement with Palestinians is unfeasible
By Giora Eiland, Ynet News, April 16, 2008
The prime minister continues to meet with Mahmoud Abbas often, high-ranking American guests visit here constantly in order to advance an agreement with the Palestinians, and Foreign Minister Livni explains that the only obstacle to a final-status agreement is the existence of the radicals opposed to it.
Seemingly everything is clear about the deal being discussed – two stations between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea, with the border being more or less the 1967 lines. Anyone who goes into detail will reach more or less what President Clinton proposed seven and a half years ago.
Back then, conditions were better than they are today. The US president threw his full weight, personally, behind the process’ success, Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Barak was determined to succeed, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, as problematic as he was, was at least recognized by its people as a leader. In addition, at the time, before the second Intifada, greater trust prevailed between the sides.
So why should we believe that what failed back then will succeed now? There are four reasons why such final-status agreement is unfeasible in the foreseeable future.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on April 16, 2008 - י"א ניסן תשס"ח at 1:26 pm
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By Stewart Weiss , THE JERUSALEM POST, Apr. 14, 2008
Our goal is not to dominate or rule the world, but to change it for the better. To study God’s ways so as to understand them, and then do our best to teach those values - by example, ideally - to humanity at large. That is precisely why we have survived - and suffered - through it all.
The most widely-published of all Jewish books is the Haggada. Each year, numerous new editions are released, offering probing insights into this marvelous work. Most fascinating, I think, is the halachic requirement that - for at least one night in the year - parents and children must speak to each other. Sad to say, despite all the labor-saving devices which mankind has created, we seem to have less and less quality time to spend with those we love the most.
Pessah provides a rare opportunity to review the Jewish experience with our entire family, and convey essential truths to our kids about who and what we are all about. Here is what I consider to be the Top 10 Talking Points of Pessah:
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education, Judaism, Monotheistic Religions, Opinion on April 15, 2008 - י' ניסן תשס"ח at 3:01 pm
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Editor’s Note: While this article is not directly related to the Middle East, it is still very pertinent.
See Also: Al-Quds Times (satire)
“many Tibetans reject the Dalai Lama’s approach because of the inherent implausibility that Chinese leaders would willingly set in motion a process likely to bring about their political demise.”
If Tibet were granted autonomy or independence, as thousands of protesters have demanded during the recent Olympic torch relays through Paris, London, and San Francisco, China’s Communist regime could face an existential threat, according to a range of experts on the region.
While many in the West think of Tibet simply as the picturesque area around Lhasa that lures tourists, Buddhists, and mountain climbers, the territory claimed by Tibetan activists is more than twice as extensive as the land Beijing designated in 1965 as the Tibet Autonomous Region. So-called Greater Tibet includes all of China’s largest province, Qinghai, as well as portions of three other Chinese provinces.
The government in exile of Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, has laid claim to about 965,000 square miles in all, or roughly a quarter of China’s total land mass.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, News Articles, Recent Posts on April 14, 2008 - ט' ניסן תשס"ח at 10:59 am
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By Stephanie L. Freid, Israel 21C, April 08, 2008
“Ben Gurion University and several NGO’s have joined forces with an initiative to support Palestinian olive oil producers so that they are part of the local industry upgrade process,”
Israelis and Palestinians have a tough time getting along. That’s not rocket science. Turn on any news program virtually any hour of any given day of any week and the proof is in the rolling footage.
But the footage often doesn’t show the many ways in which the two sides tend to cooperate, particularly behind closed doors. In certain industries, like those relating to water use and preservation, or desertification and staunching its global spread, cooperation is abundant. And while not always 100% smooth or easy, it does exist.
The olive oil export industry is another Israeli-Palestinian meeting ground which has been fueled in recent years by growing demand for olive oil, now considered a gourmet offering along the likes of wine.
Traditionally a predominantly Arab-owned and operated industry in the region, Israel is partnering with Arab sectors by bringing technological advances to the table and raising standards for competing globally in major olive oil consumer markets.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Middle East Report, News Articles, Science and Technology on April 11, 2008 - ו' ניסן תשס"ח at 8:50 pm
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