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“There are more than 200 digital health start-ups in Israel, and funding reached record levels in 2014,” said Shapiro. MHealth Israel will, he hopes, enhance that performance, and “connect promising entrepreneurs with senior healthcare industry executives from around the globe.”

Tel Aviv has tech start-ups, but Jerusalem, already a center of life-science technology, is the perfect place to develop a digital health infrastructure, according to Ori Choshen, CEO of VLX Ventures.

“Digital health applications is a growing field, and there is not yet a national or even world center for an ecosystem to develop those apps. Jerusalem has a strong medical and academic research community, so we think this is the right place to build that ecosystem.”

Part of that ecosystem-in-formation will be on display next week at the second annual mHealth Israel Conference, the biggest digital and mobile health-tech event in the country. Entrepreneurs, experts, academics, and industry representatives will gather to discuss topics such as how pharmaceutical firms are using digital health apps, regulatory issues, health trends, digital health tech and wearable technology, and more.

“MHealth Israel is meant to encourage a broader community of Israeli entrepreneurial talent to address healthcare challenges,” said Levi Shapiro, organizer of the event.

To help bring that digital health ecosystem to life, VLX Ventures — a cooperative project of Van Leer Ventures and the Xenia Venture Capital Fund, specializing in early-stage investments — is investing in start-ups that marry digital technology with health solutions.

In a deal that Economy Ministry officials say benefits Israelis, the state will give the firm a large grant to be spent locally.
Intel has promised to spend at least $550 million in Israel in the next five years. The sum is part of a commitment by the company to spend a total of $6 billion to upgrade its Kiryat Gat plant for the manufacture of new advanced chips for its next generation devices. Intel and the Economy Ministry’s Industrial Cooperation Authority announced the deal on Sunday.

The $550 is part of Intel’s offset purchase arrangement with the state, which is providing the company with grants of up to $600 million over the next five years as well as a major tax break through 2023. Intel is set to receive two $300 million grants, distribution of which will be spread over five budget years. More valuable for Intel is likely to be the fact that it will have to pay a corporate tax of only 5% through 2023 (the standard rate of company tax in Israel in 2014 was 26.5%). In return, Intel committed to hiring at least 1,000 new employees, at least half of whom will be residents of communities in southern Israel. In addition, the company promised to spend at least $550 million over the period.

Some might point out that Intel is basically committing to spend what it is getting from the government in direct grants, but statements by Economy Ministry officials were enthusiastic about the benefits of the deal to the Israeli economy. “This arrangement will have a very positive effect on hundreds of small businesses and suppliers,” said Ziva Eiger, director of investments at the Industrial Cooperation Authority.

“Offset agreements such as this are platforms for leveraging public expenditures for the benefit of the Israeli economy, both for training and encouraging further expansion of small suppliers for the local and world market, and to enhance Israel’s brand as an attractive place for foreign investment,” Eiger added. “As a result of this agreement, Israelis can look forward to thousands of more jobs being available. It is a model for offset agreements that can provide benefits to all sides.”

A decade ago, a Danish publication posted cartoons of the prophet Mohammed that roiled the Muslim world, resulting in death threats for the editor whose life was subsequently lived under constant security watch. Although this was international headline news, The New York Times refused to publish any of the cartoons, buckling in fear for the security of its own establishment. So of course it’s ironic and amusing that their editorials have been so self-righteous about the need to uphold our absolute freedom of speech in the wake of No Korea’s hacking of SONY and threats to theater owners of a 9/11 type of retribution for screening The Interview. The most sensible suggestion I have read is that the government pay SONY for the rights to the film and then air it free on television and over the internet. It seems patently unfair to call for greater courage from commercial theater owners than the Times was able to summon in its role as dispatcher of all the news that’s fit to print.

In considering the sequence of events, I’m troubled by the notion that private businesses, in this case theater owners, should be expected to pay the penalty for the foolishness of other for profit private ventures. Even if no act of terrorism resulted from the hackers’ threat, wouldn’t audiences stay away from that possibility and wouldn’t theater owners suffer a financial loss? And what would their liability have been if any act of violence had occurred? Would Seth Rogen’s movie have been any different with a fictitious name for an Asian dictator? Is any work of fiction justified in using the real name of a living head of state or public personality? At what point does freedom of speech clash with the right to live without being threatened? What would the reaction of American pundits have been to a satiric movie about President Obama being lynched? We live in a society where you cannot say or print the word nigger without euphemizing it with just its initial – does that represent freedom of speech? Is one word more inflammatory than a movie whose plot concerns a political assassination?

Sharia Law: Draconian Legal System — on The Glazov Gang
Dr. Edward L. Dalcour unveils the nightmare spawned by Islamic “theocracy.”
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/sharia-law-draconian-legal-system-on-the-glazov-gang/

Is a “lone wolf” terrorist merely a “damaged goods individual,” a “social misfit” – or an unrepentant, death-loving killer?

“Lone Wolf” Terrorists are Not “Alone”

A “lone wolf” is still as much a predator as it would be in a pack. Its predatory, programmed instincts, behavior and actions are shared with those of a pack. It may be a “lone wolf” because of conflicts between it and the wolf pack. But it is still a wolf.

Wikipedia notes about the behavior of the “lone wolf”:

As an animal, a lone wolf is a wolf that lives independently rather than with others as a member of a pack.

In the animal kingdom, lone wolves are typically older wolves driven from the pack, perhaps by the breeding male, or are young adults in search of new territory. Many young wolves between the ages of 1 and 4 years leave their family to search for a pack of their own (this has the effect of preventing inbreeding), as in typical wolf packs there is only one breeding pair.

Some wolves will simply remain lone wolves; as such, these lone wolves may be stronger, more aggressive and far more dangerous than the average wolf that is a member of a pack. However, lone wolves have difficulty hunting, as wolves’ favorite prey, large ungulates, are nearly impossible for a single wolf to bring down alone. Instead, lone wolves will generally hunt smaller animals and scavenge carrion.

“Lone wolves” or packs of wolves kill to survive. They eat their prey.

“Lone wolf” jihadists and terrorists, by the same token, are still Islamic supremacists. They need not be “soldiers” of any particular group, such as Hamas, ISIS, Hezbollah, the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood, or Al-Qaeda. They need not run with a pack. They need not have had any close or social contact with any of those groups, other than perhaps attending a mosque that preaches violent jihad against the West.

Many “lone wolf” terrorists are converts driven to “prove” their new religious convictions. Their “independence” of action may not even be approved by any of those groups, although their fascination with Islam may be fueled by what a “lone wolf” sees those groups approve of as seen on the Internet and in the MSM in the way of beheadings, dismemberment of victims’ bodies, rapes, and “random” killings. Not to mention the chest-beating claims by terrorists that Islam will rule the world. All this answers an element in a “lone wolf’s” makeup, a malevolent loneliness. He responds. He is not alone.

“Lone wolf” terrorists do not kill to survive. They kill for the sake of killing. Islamic terrorists, alone or in packs or gangs, are in essence nihilists. They boast:

“We love death more than you love life.” – Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 and wounded 30 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, TX

http://www.openthebooks.com/

Since May, our teams and allies have investigated the second largest college in Illinois- College of DuPage (COD). We’ve found a “Junior College Gone Wild.” Click here for details.
Since May, our teams and allies have investigated the second largest college in Illinois- College of DuPage (COD). We’ve found a “Junior College Gone Wild.” Click here for details.

In May, we advocated three policies: 1. Freeze Property Taxes, 2. Freeze Tuition, 3. Bring unneeded construction dollars into the Classroom.

We’ve had a lot of success during the past seven months:

Stopped a corrupted $20 million state construction grant
Froze student tuition for the first time in fourteen years
Exposed $100 million in hidden “Imprest” spending- mostly to insiders- since 2009. Much of the spending was on no-bid contracts.
Froze property taxes.
But, it hasn’t been an easy ride.

After we exposed tens of thousands of dollars spent by President, Senior Management, and Trustees on dining, drinking, partying and accepting gifts at student and taxpayer expense, COD Trustee Dianne McGuire compared us and our allies to … Nazi Tyranny. Watch 20 minute diatribe here. When your opponents invoke Nazi’s in a spending debate… You’re Winning.

According to a confidential French intelligence document leaked to Le Figaro, a form of Muslim ghettoization is gaining ground within the French school system. The report says that Muslim students are effectively establishing an Islamic parallel society completely cut off from non-Muslim students.

More than 1000 French supermarkets, including major chains such as Carrefour, have been selling Islamic books that openly call for jihad and the killing of non-Muslims.

A report estimates that 60% of the prison population in France, or 40,000 prisoners, are “culturally or originally” Muslim.

The Fresnes Penitentiary near Paris launched an experiment that involves isolating radical Muslim prisoners in a separate unit to prevent the radicalization of other prisoners. Muslim prisoners clashed with prison guards to protest the new measure.

An Ipsos survey found that 66% of French people believe there are too many foreigners in France, and 59% believe “immigrants do not try hard enough to integrate. According to the poll, 63% of French people think that Islam “is not compatible with French values.”

On December 5, 2014, Interpol issued a “Red Notice” alert, seeking the arrest of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, at the request of the Egyptian government, on charges including, “Agreement, incitement and assistance to commit intentional murder, helping…prisoners to escape, arson, vandalism and theft.” Qaradawi’s support of terrorism led the United States to ban him from entering the country in 1999. Britain barred his entry in 2008, and France in 2012.

Ten days after the Interpol alert was issued, 300 Muslim scholars, members of the International Union for Muslim Scholars, announced: “We reject all the false accusations against Qaradawi.” The Doha-based organization, which is headed by Qaradawi himself, urged Interpol to “rapidly” remove Qaradawi from its most-wanted list, because the warrant is an “insult to Islam and Muslims.”

After a half-century of activity in Europe, the most intriguing recent event involving the Muslim Brotherhood occurred in 2003, when Qaradawi, the Egyptian exile and Ikhwan “spiritual guide” and Chairman of the Sunna and Sira Council, in the new home he found in Qatar, proposed the founding of the World Council of Muslim Clerics.

Qaradawi was already head of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, a Dublin-based private foundation founded in London in March 1997 on the initiative of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe. The Federation is the heart of the Muslim Brotherhood movement in Europe.

Anthony J. Sadar, a Certified Consulting Meteorologist, is author of In Global Warming We Trust: A Heretic’s Guide to Climate Science (Telescope Books, 2012).
College students indoctrinated to believe that there is no legitimate doubt on anthropogenic global warming.

With the close of another college semester, the long holiday break can give educators a chance to ponder the dismal state of science literacy in the U.S. The sad decline in robust science education is certainly part of the problem and is perhaps most obvious in environmental science classrooms. Contributing to the issue is the skewed content in many college textbooks on the environment and ecology.

While a part-time college professor of the physical, environmental, and atmospheric sciences since 1986 and a practitioner in the field since the late 1970s, I have had the opportunity to review and use numerous popular textbooks.

I was disappointed to read in one of the latest textbooks — Essential Environment: The Science Behind the Stories, 5th edition (2015) by Jay Withgott and Matthew Laposata — the following distorted statement about those of us who dare to challenge the current groupthink on climate change.

“Public debate over climate change has been fanned by corporate interests, spokespeople from think tanks, and a handful of scientists funded by fossil fuel industries, all of whom have aimed to cast doubt on the scientific consensus” (page 322).

This typical misrepresentation is found within Chapter 14 of the book, titled “Global Climate Change.” The subsection of the chapter is labeled “Are we responsible for climate change?” and contains a mere six long sentences crafted to convince students that there are no real honest skeptics to the “consensus” view.

It has been a pretty typical week on the hate Israel front. A European Union Court has decided that Hamas is not a terrorist organization, and their previous designation as such had not been justified by real evidence that Europeans had developed, as opposed, say, to information supplied by the United States or Israel. An international court in Geneva is hearing evidence of Israeli human rights violations. The United Nations Security Council has been considering a resolution developed by the Palestinian Authority, as well as one by the French that would effectively lay out the terms for Israel’s capitulation over the next few years. Israel’s peace camp has been working with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, encouraging a delay in consideration of the Security Council resolutions, since any action before the upcoming Israeli parliamentary elections could benefit the right-wing parties in Israel. In other words, there is not even an attempt to hide anymore that the United States is putting its foot down for one particular side in the Israeli election. Various European countries are endorsing Palestinian statehood on the terms demanded by the Palestinian Authority. Academic groups, unions, and churches in Europe and the United States are endorsing the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. Certain European communities are now “Israeli-frei” – free of Israeli goods (or at least those they can identify and care to avoid). The U.N. Human Rights Council and the General Assembly, as well as specific agencies whose only task is to bash Israel, are set to get back to work, creating more resolutions and condemnations of the Jewish state.

As Joshua Muravchik makes clear in his outstanding new book, Making David Into Goliath, this obsession with Israel by most nations of the world and the United Nations – or as they are collectively known, “the international community” – as well as by “the global left,” could not have been imagined a half-century back, prior to the Six-Day War. At that time, Israel was championed by Socialist political parties, and viewed sympathetically as a beleaguered democracy fighting for its existence against a collection of larger anti-Western Arab tyrannies. There was residual sympathy for Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, many of whom had moved to Israel. There was no movement for Palestinian nationhood, though certainly violent actions by Arabs aimed at Israel and Jews in the region had been going on for decades.