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GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

Posted By on March 1st, 2020

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Breakthrough in fighting resistant bacteria and cancer. Researchers at Israel’s Ben Gurion University have used Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and AI to design new antibiotics and treatments for RNA viruses responsible for diseases such as hepatitis, HIV and many cancers.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/breakthrough-israeli-screening-method-could-lead-to-new-cancer-treatments-antibiotics/
 
Treatment for severe victims of coronavirus. As reported previously, (see here) the Allocetra treatment from Israel’s Enlivex cures patients suffering severe sepsis. Allocetra is now being offered to governments for the thousands of coronavirus patients suffering sepsis-induced organ failure due to overactive immune responses.
https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/Israeli-company-ready-to-assist-coronavirus-victims-with-novel-drug-617777
 
Faster diagnosis of coronavirus. New technology developed by researchers at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University reduces the time taken to test viruses from an hour down to 15 minutes. The enhanced test is already used in Sheba Medical Center for other viruses and is now undergoing testing for the COVID-19 coronavirus.
https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/Israeli-tech-may-help-drastically-reduce-coronavirus-diagnostic-time-617796
 
Israeli support for coronavirus patients. Israeli innovation organization INNONATION recruited 100 Israeli volunteer doctors to provide medical videos to people in quarantine for Coronavirus in China and globally. It has also raised funds to send 150,000 pieces of medical equipment to China. Please see the inspiring video.
https://www.innonation.io/videos?wix-vod-video-id=baeb7735a7c84a1e90db1b678b6ca7c2&wix-vod-comp-id=comp-k0ezbnr7  https://www.innonation.io/
 
Monitoring suspected coronavirus patients. 12 Israelis exposed to the deadly coronavirus (COVID-19) on the cruise liner in Japan have been quarantined at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center. Each patient uses a TytoCare, device (see here) for doctors to remotely check pulse, temperature, throat, lungs, ears, heart, abdomen and skin.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/with-handheld-device-israelis-exposed-to-coronavirus-monitor-their-own-conditions/
 
Working on a coronavirus vaccine. The MIGAL Galilee Research Institute has made several scientific breakthroughs (see here)but the latest may be a treatment for the coronavirus (COVID-19). They are adapting their effective vaccine against avian Coronavirus Infectious Bronchitis Virus (IBV). Approval target is 90 days.
https://worldisraelnews.com/coronavirus-breakthrough-israeli-researchers-make-discovery-that-could-lead-to-vaccine/
 
Let me see inside your shoulder. The innovative AI-based / CT technology from Israel’s RSIP Vision (reported here previously)can now assist with shoulder surgery – one of the most complex procedures with a long recovery time. The system provides a precise 3D anatomical model of the shoulder for better diagnosis.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/israeli-ai-tech-lets-surgeons-see-inside-of-shoulder/
 
Now we’re smiling. Israel’s Mavrik Dental develops dental devices that help automate dental treatments. Its Thera-Smile teeth-whitening system has been cleared by the US FDA. Mavrik has just raised $30 million to fund opening commercial operations in the U.S. while retaining its product development center in Israel.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3793850,00.html  https://mavrikdental.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wzi-_51FuyI
 
Israeli startups save lives. The 2020 OurCrowd Global Investor Summit attracted a record 23,000 delegates from 186 countries. They heard about three Israeli medical startups – Insightec, AlphaTAU and Surgical Theater and three of the patients whose lives they had saved with their groundbreaking technology.
https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/How-Israeli-technology-saved-78-years-old-Leah-from-skin-cancer-617514   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRTEdBuRURE
https://www.timesofisrael.com/this-israeli-tech-helped-grandpa-stop-spilling-his-drink/
 
3D-printing in the hospital. Israel’s Sheba Medical Center is using 3D printing alongside MRI and VR/AR as a precision tool to save lives and greatly improve surgical outcomes such as in knee replacements, heart bridges and facial reconstruction. Printing replicas of organs and bones also helps train new surgeons.
https://www.jewishpress.com/news/health-and-medicine/sheba-medical-center/printing-3d-dreams-the-future-of-operating-room-technology-has-arrived/2020/02/25/
 
Targeting solid tumors. Israel’s KAHR Medical (reported here previously) has just raised $18 million to advance its DSP107 treatment to combat solid tumors. DSP107 works by targeting CD47, a protein that is overexpressed by cancer cells. DSP107 prevents CD47 from suppressing the immune system.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3796430,00.html
https://kahr-medical.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/February-2020-KHAR-Round-D-financing-2020.pdf
 
Using bacteria to fight cancer. Israel’s NeoTX uses Selective T cell Redirection (STR) technology to enlist a powerful immune response against tumors. Mutated bacteria are fused with monoclonal antibodies which target the tumor’s 5T4 antigen, alerting T-cells to kill the tumor.  NeoTX has just raised $45 million of funds.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3794957,00.html
 

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Billy Joel: The New Chairman of the Board By Kyle Smith

Posted By on February 29th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/music-review-billy-joel-madison-square-garden/

Now 70, Billy Joel has all of the swagger & sangfroid of late-period Frank Sinatra.

H e is 70, and expansive across the midsection, and with his shaved head he could be a barroom bouncer. There is a line running up from his right eye into his forehead. That eye looks like it took a punch, or maybe it’s just being squeezed by the years. Billy Joel used to race around the stage in tennis shoes, sometimes jumping up on his grand piano. “Don’t take any s*** from anyone!” would be his Long Island valedictory at the end of an evening. Now he limits his movements, spends nearly the entire evening seated at the piano, which is on a turntable that does a half-turn once in a while. He brought on a surprise guest — “the world’s greatest violinist!” Itzhak Perlman added his beautiful violin to two numbers. Perlman is 74. We’re none of us as young as we used to be.

So: Let’s party? The crowd was non-young on February 20 at Joel’s 118th Madison Square Garden concert, but 40,000 creaky knees got a workout beneath that giant sports-style banner in the rafters (currently reading JOEL 118) up there with the Knicks and Rangers jerseys. Joel spoke for all of us who are old but feisty: “Last time I was here they hit my house!” he cried at the top of the show. “They knew I wasn’t home, so . . .” Joel was referring to the strange break-in at his Centre Island, Long Island estate (14.6 acres) the weekend of January 25. The burglars didn’t steal anything; they merely damaged several specimens of Joel’s prized motorcycle collection. Who breaks into a man’s home and beats up on his bikes? “This time I got dogs, I got guns, I got everything,” Joel said. “I hope they come back.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Oxford Should Keep Homer and Virgil on the Syllabus By Seth Cropsey

Posted By on February 29th, 2020

https://www.hudson.org/research/15764-oxford-should-keep-homer-and-virgil-on-the-syllabus

The Oxford Student, the largest student newspaper of the nearly thousand-year-old teaching institution, reported in mid-February that the classics faculty has recommended that Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid be removed from the literae humaniores, an undergraduate program in ancient literature, history, and philosophy. The program has been criticized because of the difference in scores between male and female students, as well as because of differences in how much previous training its students have had in classical languages. This is an absurd standard. What will be taught if equality of grades between the sexes becomes the standard of choosing course material? The classics faculty would solve the grade-difference issue by shedding two of Western civilization’s core works.

A student studying classics at Oxford opposes removal of the two epic poems and is gathering signatures for a petition to end debate on their future at Oxford. Note that cutting off debate on difficult issues is not restricted to American universities.

The Oxford Student quotes the student’s objection to Homer-exit. It means, he says, that “Oxford would be producing Classicists who have never read Homer and never read Virgil, who are the central authors of the Classical tradition and most of Classical literature, in one way or another, looks back to Homer and interacts with the Iliad.”

It’s worse than that. Homer and Virgil are fundamental not only to classics majors or students who will eventually teach classics to other students. Homer, by himself, is the keystone of Western literature.

The Iliad is a story about human passions: anger, pity, remorse, compassion, revenge; men’s relations to forces greater than themselves; war and its horrors (and it is very horrible in Homer’s supremely elegant lines); and the beauty of art and nature. It is a complex and deeply insightful exploration of the soul, human fate, and immortality. 

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Fact-Check: Obama Waited Until ‘Millions’ Infected and 1000 Dead in U.S. Before Declaring H1N1 Emergency

Posted By on February 29th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/trending/fact-check-obama-waited-until-millions-infected-and-1000-dead-in-u-s-before-declaring-h1n1-emergency/

“Let’s call it Trumpvirus,” urged a New York Times opinion writer conspiratorially. Nancy Pelosi groused that President Trump waited too long to attack the coronavirus (COVID-19) and then impetuously declared he couldn’t have leftover and unspent Ebola virus money to fight it, while Senator Chuck Schumer looked down his nose and over his glasses to intone that it was the end of the world and the president hadn’t spent enough money to stop the scourge. Joe Biden and Michael Bloomberg have both been called out for politicizing the virus.

By their lights, Trump’s doing it all wrong. They won’t be able to tell you why, but (stomps foot) they just know. They’re praying for a pandemic filled with infected people and decimation of the stock market just to fix Trump’s wagon in his re-election campaign, now that the whole Russian-secret-agent and peeing-hooker story went belly-up.

They just know that he’s such a dummy that it wouldn’t ever occur to him to stop air travel from an infected nation, increase screenings, involuntarily quarantine those infected with the virus when they were repatriated and seek a vaccine now.

Oh, wait, he has done all of those things and was called a racist for doing it.

We’ve had several creepy viruses emerge over the past two decades. There’s been MRSA, SARS, and H1N1 (swine flu), to name a few. But it’s been the H1N1 flu that has been most compared to this outbreak.

Surely, St. Barack of Obama would have dealt with this horrible pandemic better than Orange Man Bad, right? No-Drama-Obama had this whole thing under control, of course!

Well, let’s compare and contrast.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Has Trump Helped Women? Let Me Count the Ways By Mary Vought –

Posted By on February 29th, 2020

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/02/29/has_trump_helped_women_let_me_count_the_ways.html

Last month, radical leftists held their annual Women’s March in Washington. They claim the Trump administration doesn’t represent women, but the facts indicate otherwise. In reality, women have benefited from huge gains, financial and otherwise, during the past three years.

Take the most important issue for families: The economy. Our nation has created more than 7 million jobs since the 2016 election — and women have filled over half, or more than 4 million, of those vacancies. The unemployment rate for women stands at a minuscule 3.2%, and last September reached its lowest level since 1953. And as the unemployment rate has declined, so too did the number of women in poverty, decreasing by 1.5 million in President Trump’s first two years in office. 

Likewise, President Trump and his administration continue to work to improve our health care system. As the mother of two young daughters, one of whom suffers from cystic fibrosis, I know that Donald Trump is fighting to help the sickest among us. That’s why the  administration recently released a series of regulations that could lead to 28,000 new organ transplants every year, not only saving lives but also, saving up to $13 billion in taxpayer funds over five years.

Efforts like the organ donation rules don’t win much press, but they show how the president is committed to reform health care. His administration has approved record numbers of generic drugs, making once costly prescriptions more affordable for patients. Individuals also have new ways to achieve portable health insurance coverage, providing them with additional and better coverage options to choose from.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

German Court Rejects Attempt to Enshrine Sharia Law by Soeren Kern

Posted By on February 29th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15658/german-court-rejects-attempt-to-enshrine-sharia

“From a constitutional-law perspective, the legislature’s decision to establish a duty of neutral conduct with respect to ideological and religious matters for legal trainees must therefore be respected….” — Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court

“The proper functioning of the justice system requires that society not only place trust in individual judges, but also in the justice system in general.” — Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court

“With this groundbreaking decision, the court sent an important signal in favor of the ideological neutrality of state institutions. Especially in today’s society, in which people from many countries around the world live with different cultural biographies and also with different religions, the state order must place more value than ever on its ideological neutrality. This is only possible if the state parties to judicial proceedings are not allowed to show religious insignia.” — Hesse’s Minister of Justice Eva Kühne-Hörmann

Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court has ruled that the constitutionally guaranteed religious freedoms of Muslims can be curtailed if public displays of religiosity — in this case wearing Islamic headscarves in German courtrooms — endanger the ideological and religious neutrality of the state.

The court’s landmark ruling effectively smashes a backdoor effort to enshrine Sharia law into the German legal system.

ISRAEL, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Democratic Majority for Israel Waves the White Flag in Presidential Contest Joshua Sharf

Posted By on February 29th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/28/democratic-majority-for-israel-waves-the-white-flag-in-presidential-contest/

Jewish Democrats have let their distaste for Donald Trump warp American Jewish organizations’ responses to his overwhelmingly pro-Israel presidency. They have acted in the interests of partisanship over the people whose interests they are supposed to represent.

Word is that the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) is waving the white flag in the presidential race, will spend no more money on it, and will not endorse a candidate. DMFI had been running ads against Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)

Democratic Majority for Israel does not intend to run any more televised ads against Sen. Bernie Sanders . . . beyond the Nevada caucuses on Saturday, DMFI CEO Mark Mellman confirmed to Jewish Insider. “We don’t have plans to be further involved in the presidential race—against Sanders or anyone else, for that matter,” Mellman told a gathering in New York City earlier this week.

Instead, the group will focus on down-ticket races, supporting pro-Israel Democrats in the primaries and general election.

It’s hard to overstate how bad this news is for those who want a strong U.S.-Israel relationship. And given that anti-Zionist is usually only a thin disguise for broader Jew-hatred, it’s hard to overstate how bad this news is for American Jewry.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Earth to Climate Alarmists: Warming Is Good By Jeffrey Folks

Posted By on February 29th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/02/earth_to_climate_alarmists_warming_is_good.html

In terms of global food security, it is cold we should fear, not heat.

It’s cold tonight, and I sit at my desk, wishing it were warmer.  Even with central heat and air, winter is a difficult time.  My sinuses are inflamed, my knuckles are dry and red, and my joints are sore with the cold.  Every year I dread it more.  And now environmentalists like Jeff Bezos want to make it colder.

It’s no accident that Shakespeare wrote of “the winter of our discontent” (Richard III) and of “the icy fang / And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind” (As You Like It).  Shakespeare, who lived through some of the coldest decades of the Little Ice Age, found nothing to like about winter.  Nor did Dickens, who wrote often of “the winter of despair,” or, in a line about the short days of winter that applies to today’s liberals, “Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it.”  Turn off the lights — you’re burning too much fossil fuel!

The fact is that cold is more damaging than heat.  Long, cold winters followed by cold, damp springs and summers diminish crop yields, leading to global hunger.  If the Earth were a few degrees warmer, that heat would expand corn and wheat belts to the north.  In terms of global food security, it is cold we should fear, not heat.

In the Little Ice Age, roughly from the 14th through the mid-19th century, global cooling limited food production, resulting in widespread hunger, disease, and economic stagnation.  In northern Europe, for instance, population growth was stagnant until the 19th century, and for most people, there was little improvement in daily life until after 1800.  In Britain, for example, population has soared from 10 million in 1800 to over 66 million today.  That would not have been possible in a period of cooler temperatures.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran’s parliamentary election was a test of survival By Hamid Enayat

Posted By on February 29th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/irans_parliamentary_election_was_a_test_of_survival.html

You can probably guess whether the Islamic Republic passed or failed

The Ministry of the Interior finally announced the results of the election on Sunday, after a prolonged delay.  According to Interior minister Rahmani Fazli, out of approximately 58 million eligible voters, only 24.5 million participated in the election.  This means that tonly 42.5% of citizens voted, the lowest level of turnout in the last 41 years.  The Ministry of Interior added that the turnout in Tehran was 25%, meaning that 75% of the population did not participate at all.

The state-run newspaper Jahan-e San’at wrote on February 23: “The government avoids presenting any statistics that directly or indirectly show the total number of voters[.] … What comes to mind, however, is that the total number of votes cast by Iranian citizens was not significant.  The regime is keen to increase this number to prove its legitimacy.”

This is precisely the proof of the claims from the Iranian opposition, the MEK, about fake statistics during all elections.  Another state-run newspaper wrote, “Tehran has gone through one of the most unprecedented and low-profile elections in history.” 

Reporters who had traveled to Iran at the time of the election testified to widespread boycotts, despite visiting pre-determined constituencies.  The international community has doubts about the Iranian regime’s heavy defeat in this election.  This is while the Islamic Republic of Iran has continuously tried to say during the elections — presidential and parliamentary — that these elections are a referendum, and citizens are voting yes to the system with their participation.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Kurdistan After the U.S. Pullback Facing Turkey, Iran and ISIS’ regrouping remnants, the fighters are as determined as ever. By Bernard-Henri Lévy

Posted By on February 29th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/kurdistan-after-the-u-s-pullback-11582935154?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

Qamishli, Syria

It’s my first time in Kurdistan since the U.S. pulled back and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his proxies invaded last October. How is the situation on the ground? Is Islamic State reappearing? And is the West doing anything to support the Kurdish fighters who are its most reliable allies not only in Syria but in Iraq and Iran? I came here to see with my own eyes.

I’m in the northeastern corner of Syria, at a modern prison in Derik (known in Arabic as Al-Malikiyah), in a cell that smells like an old basement and is filled with stale, garishly colored bedding. A Turkish missile just landed close by, as if to warn the detainees to flee.

I find myself face to face with a dozen French jihadists who were, I was told, among the most vicious assassins of Raqqa. Here they look like poor wrecks in dirty sweatpants and polo shirts—except for one, who was wounded when his legs got caught in a scrap-metal trap. “We know who you are!” he shouts at me in his northern French accent. This is followed by a general clamor of pitiful complaints along the lines of, “Do you know who is going to try us and when?”

These monsters who terrorized the world are now cut off from it. Deprived of daylight, of cellphones, of the single television set that was taken away when the Turkish offensive began, they don’t even know that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, their leader, is dead, killed in an Oct. 26 U.S. air raid. They have but one thing in mind: not to end up in Baghdad to face capital punishment, and instead to return to France, the homeland of the rights of man, including the right to a legal defense.

A few miles away is a cloister lined with arcades and only recently converted into a detention facility for the minor children of terrorists. One, a New Yorker named Nelson, says he’s never committed any crime except to have a father who was a terrorist.