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Reporting on the Middle East, Science, and Education for March 30, 2009 - ה' ניסן תשס"ט
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by Eli Lake (Contact), Washington Times, March 30, 2009
Jerusalem’s mayor is asking Americans to invest in upgrading his city – one of the poorest in Israel – in a plan he says also will benefit the capital’s 270,000 Palestinian Arabs.
“I’d like to see the world join forces to save the city of Jerusalem,” Nir Barkat told editors and reporters of The Washington Times on Friday.
“I told some members of the U.S. administration, ‘I think the world just raised $5 billion for Gaza. So you only invest after a war. … I will prepare the plans anyway because I believe we should invest in Arabs in East Jerusalem. And why just invest after a war? Maybe we eliminate a war and invest in infrastructure and enable people to improve the quality of life of Jerusalem.”
Mr. Barkat, however, said he could not promise to halt dismantlement of Palestinian housing in East Jerusalem built by Arab residents who have been unable to obtain permits.
“How can I guarantee anybody anything?” he said, asserting that illegal construction in the predominantly Jewish western part of the capital also has been demolished. He said, however, “The process of getting licenses [to build] in East Jerusalem is far from what it should be, and we will fix it.”
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized the demolitions during her recent trip to Israel. Palestinians living in targeted neighborhoods claim they own the land on which their houses sit.
Mr. Barkat, a high-tech millionaire who said he takes only a shekel a year in pay (less than 25 U.S. cents), is adamantly opposed to ceding any part of Jerusalem to the Palestinians in a peace agreement but insists his vision for redevelopment would benefit all of its citizens.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, News Articles, Recent Posts on March 30, 2009 - ה' ניסן תשס"ט at 8:51 pm
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by Rabbi Boruch Shlomo E. Cunin
Reprinted from L’Chaim, April 11, 2003
The festival of Passover was quickly approaching. I was in the middle of the Bronx and the train I was riding in broke down. I got out and began to walk. Heading in the general direction of Pelham Parkway, I kept asking people where a certain address was. I remember one helpful soul who told me, “Son, you’ve got a long way to go!”
Earlier that afternoon, a group of students in Brooklyn had finished baking the last of the Passover matza. It was 1958, and the Lubavitcher Rebbe had a custom of giving hand-baked matza to people as a spiritual gift before Passover. The Rebbe would stand for hours, greeting people and handing them matza. The mystical Jewish work, the Zohar explains that matza is the “bread of faith,” and simply eating it nourishes the soul.
The Rebbe would give matza first to the people who had to travel far, because riding in a car or subway is not permitted on Shabbat and Jewish holidays.
I was 16 years old and had to get home to 167th and Jerome Avenue in the Bronx, which was pretty far away. When I approached the Rebbe, he handed me matza and asked if I could deliver some to a certain family.
Ideally, I would have taken a taxi from the subway station, asked the driver to wait, delivered the matza, and gotten home in time for our family Seder. But life is seldom ideal; it was too late to take a cab. Eventually, I found the address, which turned out to be a housing project. I knocked on the door and out came a man with no shirt, tattoos and a pot belly.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Judaism, Monotheistic Religions, Recent Posts on March 29, 2009 - ד' ניסן תשס"ט at 10:10 pm
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by Hana Levi Julian, Arutz Sheva, 29 March 09
The prohibition against any form of peaceful co-existence with the rest of the Israel is a familiar theme among PA officials and local Muslim leaders.
(IsraelNN.com) Fatah-linked community leaders in the PA-controlled city of Jenin slammed the participation of 13 young local musicians aged 11 to 18 in a “Good Deeds Day,” held at the Holocaust Survivor’s Center in Holon.
The PA politicians made a point of using the issue of the young musicians’ performance as a platform upon which to launch a diatribe against participation in any integrative activity with Jewish Israelis.
Observers noted that Palestinian Authority leaders speak to United States officials about the “vision of two states for two peoples, living side by side in peace and security” but when it comes down to actually allowing their children to participate — let alone encouraging such activity with Israelis — they sing a different tune.
Some 30 elderly Jewish survivors of the Nazi genocide attended the event in question; they received with quiet courtesy the news that the performance would begin late because the musicians had been held up at a security checkpoint outside their town.
The conductor, 50-year-old Wafa Younis, was later attacked for her efforts towards co-existence, both verbally and in leaflets distributed throughout the area. Members of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction also sealed her apartment and banned her from entering the city. Although a resident of the village of Ara, an Arab village inside Israel, Younis had rented out an apartment locally in Jenin.
More ominously, Abbas’s loyalists also filed a complaint with the PA Police against the conductor, claiming she “misled” the young musicians in bringing them to perform at the Israeli concert.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Islam, Middle East Report, News Articles, Recent Posts on March 29, 2009 - ד' ניסן תשס"ט at 10:00 pm
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By Savo Heleta, Sudan Tribune, 26 March 2009.
Up to this day, not one Arab or Muslim leader has publicly criticized Sudan’s actions and atrocities in Darfur.
March 25, 2009 — The recent conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza created fury and protests around the globe and especially in the Arab and Muslim world. A number of countries in the Middle East and North Africa saw some of the largest demonstrations in their history that condemned the killings of civilians and children by the Israeli forces.
At the same time, the Middle Eastern media, such as Al Jazeera, had a 24/7 coverage of the conflict.
One has to wonder why the Darfur conflict has never received similar attention.
Since 2003, Sudan’s western province of Darfur is an epicenter of a conflict between the mainly African rebels and the Arab-controlled government of Sudan and its proxy militias.
As in Gaza, the civilians in Darfur are paying the highest price. It is estimated that over the last six years about 200,000 people have died in Darfur from fighting, starvation, and diseases. The United Nations and aid agencies estimate that over two million Darfurians, out of a population of about six million, are currently living in refugee camps.
Even in the grimmest moments in Darfur, in 2003 and 2004, when the entire communities have been brutally destroyed by the government forces and their militias, a very few people in the Arab and Muslim world protested and condemned the killings of innocent Darfurians. Up to this day, not one Arab or Muslim leader has publicly criticized Sudan’s actions and atrocities in Darfur.
Suffering in the hands of an Arab regime
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Islam, Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on March 27, 2009 - ב' ניסן תשס"ט at 5:40 pm
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By Shankar Vedantam, The Washington Post, March. 27, 2009
New data from a large federal study have reignited a debate over the effectiveness of long-term drug treatment of children with hyperactivity or attention-deficit disorder, and have drawn accusations that some members of the research team have sought to play down evidence that medications do little good beyond 24 months.
The study also indicated that long-term use of the drugs can stunt children’s growth.
The latest data paint a very different picture than the study’s positive initial results, reported in 1999.
One principal scientist in the study, psychologist William Pelham, said that the most obvious interpretation of the data is that the medications are useful in the short term but ineffective over longer periods but added that his colleagues had repeatedly sought to explain away evidence that challenged the long-term usefulness of medication. When their explanations failed to hold up, they reached for new ones, Pelham said.
“The stance the group took in the first paper was so strong that the people are embarrassed to say they were wrong and we led the whole field astray,” said Pelham, of the State University of New York at Buffalo. Pelham said the drugs, including Adderall and Concerta, are among the medications most frequently prescribed for American children, adding: “If 5 percent of families in the country are giving a medication to their children, and they don’t realize it does not have long-term benefits but might have long-term risks, why should they not be told?”
The disagreement has produced a range of views among the researchers about how to accurately present the results to the public. One e-mail noted that an academic review of the group’s work, called the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children With ADHD (MTA), asked why the researchers were “bending over backward” to play down negative implications for drug therapy.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education Report, Health Sciences, Mental Health, Recent Posts, Special Education on March 27, 2009 - ב' ניסן תשס"ט at 7:16 am
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Conservation International, March 25, 2009
Arlington, VA – Jumping spiders, a tiny chirping frog and an elegant striped gecko are among more than 50 species believed new to science discovered during a Conservation International (CI) Rapid Assessment Program (RAP) expedition to Papua New Guinea’s highlands wilderness.
The discoveries were announced today following analysis of the species that were found in July and August of 2008 during a month-long exploration of Papua New Guinea’s central mountains. CI scientists were joined by scientists from Papua New Guinea and the University of British Columbia (UBC) and Montclair State University to explore the region alongside members of local communities.
IN DEPTH: The Discovering Species Site
PHOTOS: View photos of the species from this RAP expedition.
More than 600 species were documented during the expedition. Of those, a total of 50 spider species, two plants, three frogs and one gecko are believed to be new to science. The three frogs include a tiny brown frog with a sharp chirping call (Oreophryne sp.), a bright green tree frog with enormous eyes (Nyctimystes sp.), and a torrent-dwelling frog that has a loud ringing call (Litoria sp.). The gecko (Cyrtodactylus sp.) was the only specimen of its kind found in the dense rainforest.
“The vast Kaijende Uplands and nearby valleys represent one of Papua New Guinea’s largest undeveloped highlands wilderness areas, and all of it is under the tenure of local clan landowners. These forests are essential to their traditional lifestyles,” said CI scientist Steve Richards, who led the expedition.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Evolutionary Biology, Recent Posts, Science on March 26, 2009 - א' ניסן תשס"ט at 10:43 am
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26 Mar 2009, IMFA
On March 26, 1979, the historic peace treaty between Israel and Egypt was signed at the White House in Washington D.C.
Thirty years ago, on March 26, 1979, the historic peace treaty between Israel and Egypt was signed at the White House in Washington D.C.
Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat shook the hand of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and, under the patronage of US President Jimmy Carter, a new era began in the Middle East. Even today, the peace treaty is considered a watershed event in the geopolitical situation in the Middle East, opening the gateway to peace between Israel and the Arab world, and ushering in a new agenda of diplomatic relations in the region.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, News Articles, Opinion, Recent Posts on March 26, 2009 - א' ניסן תשס"ט at 9:55 am
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By Hasan Zillur Rahim, American Muslim, March 22, 2009
It is a pity that the media always portrays religion and science as a battle between inflexible creationists and arrogant atheists. But between these two extremes dwell the vast majority of us – scientists, theologians, laypersons – who find no conflict between faith and reason.
“To honor a living person who has made an exceptional contribution affirming life’s spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works,” the Templeton foundation awarded its 2009 prize to a French physicist.
Bernard d’Espagnat, 87, is a theoretical physicist and philosopher of science at the University of Paris-Orsay. He was recognized for his pioneering contributions to the nature of physical reality and making the daring suggestion that matter everywhere is caught in a web of “veiled reality” that lies beneath time, space and energy.
What has “veiled reality” got to do with spirituality? In simple terms, it means that there are limits to what science can explain. Once we acknowledge this, it opens the door to the mysterious and the transcendent.
There is an abundance of writings on spirituality and faith. What sets apart the work of scientists like D’Espagnat is that they use science to show the limits of science, thus allowing for the possibility that there is more to life than the acceptance of only that which can be seen or measured and rejection of that which cannot.
D’Espagnat’s quest was driven by a single, profound question: “What insight does science reveal about the nature of reality?” His research tool consisted of quantum physics, a subject he learned from one of its founders, another Frenchman named Louis de Broglie, winner of the 1929 Nobel Prize in physics. Broglie showed that matter had wave-like properties and waves had properties that classical physics attributed only to matter. What this meant was that reality was different and more subtle than what it appeared to be. D’Espagnat devoted seven decades of his creative life trying to figure out the deepest aspects of this reality.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Islam, Judaism, Monotheistic Religions, Opinion, Recent Posts on March 22, 2009 - כ"ו אדר תשס"ט at 10:17 pm
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by Omar Shaban, CG News, 19 March 2009
For 20 years, the Gaza Strip had become famous for planting and exporting flowers, strawberries and vegetables, like cherry tomatoes. Some years ago, there were more than 1,000 dunams (250 acres) of planted flowers, and 3,000 dunams (750 acres) of strawberries. These cash crops were generating thousands of sustainable, high-quality jobs for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
GAZA CITY – Israelis and Palestinians have been prevented from looking deeper into hidden and untapped opportunities, stuck in the limiting perspective afforded by the prolonged conflict, continued Israeli occupation, and failed peace talks. Both sides burn their energy managing and sometimes escalating the conflict rather than solving it. Very few Palestinians and even fewer Israelis know or can imagine that this small place called “the Gaza Strip” can provide endless opportunities.
The Gaza Strip is seen by many people as a poor place, full of violence. However, there are many good examples of productive relationships between Israelis and Palestinians, which indicate, without any doubt, the high potential of this area. Unfortunately, the media covers mostly the news of conflict and hatred rather than the good news. Following is but one example of what a just and fair peace could bring to both sides.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Business and Commerce, Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on March 21, 2009 - כ"ה אדר תשס"ט at 9:58 pm
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By Jeff Wallach, Forbes Traveler.com, March. 19, 2009
Bicycling has come a long way since you pedaled the old neighborhood on your Sting Ray with the sissy bar and purple banana seat.
Just as you eventually graduated to a 10-speed, road bikes have evolved significantly, and then there’s the highly popular category of mountain biking, which combines the pleasures (and pain) of road trips with the yee-haw attitude of wilderness adventure.
Whether you choose a mountain bike or a road bike, isn’t it time for you to venture outside of the neighborhood and take on some of the terrific bike trails scattered across the nation?
From dirt tracks to converted railroad tracks, great trails throughout the U.S. provide a variety of terrain, scenery, amenities, challenge and overall experience for riders of differing abilities and intentions.
We’ve rounded up 10 of the best for your leg-pumping pleasure.
For many riders, surface is a key ingredient of a great trail. These cyclists want to pedal happily and enjoy the scenery without looking at the ground to avoid bumps, roots, potholes and other potential hazards.
Sixty-eight-year-old Polly Mayberry, of Winston-Salem, N.C., is such a rider. Mayberry and her husband pedal about 1,000 miles annually, and provide descriptions, logistical information and links to additions sources about their favorite trails on their Web site. Mayberry chooses Missouri’s Katy Trail as one of the nation’s best, in part because of its great surface.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences on March 20, 2009 - כ"ד אדר תשס"ט at 10:37 am
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