This video of a drone flight over Tel Aviv and Yafo is almost as amazing and relaxing as actually sitting there on the beach.
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Sunday, May 11, 2014
Israeli LGBT community’s “Opportunity to Give”
Tel Aviv is known as the world’s most gay-friendly city for tourists, but few people realize the extent of social and societal action in which Israel’s LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual) community is involved.
One organization of particular note is Adam L’Adam Hizdamnut Latet (Human to Human – An Opportunity to Give). For the last 10 years, it has operated anonymously, providing different kinds of assistance to anyone who asks for it, regardless of sexual orientation, religious observance, ethnic background or age.
“Normally, the LGBT community is perceived as demanding something, such as equal rights, or complaining about something, such as discrimination,” key LGBT leader Avi Soffer tells ISRAEL21c. “The idea of Adam L’Adam is that it is all about giving, both within the community and outside of it.”
It is, claims Soffer proudly, “an LGBT endeavor that is unique to the state of Israel.”
Adam L’Adam Hizdamnut Latet is run exclusively by volunteers — 10 full-time staffers, another 100 or so who donate their time when called upon to do so, and hundreds of others who work per project. Donations are spent fully on the charitable work itself, rather than on overhead and salaries.
The organization tries to fulfill all requests, whether delivering daily meals to the elderly, performing home repairs for someone whose apartment was damaged in a fire, or purchasing school supplies for underprivileged kids or the children of foreign workers.
“We rarely give money to people, but rather its equivalent in goods and services or in facilitating trade-offs,” says Soffer. “One person needs something and another has it. We assist in matching them up.”
Free bazaar
One of Adam L’Adam’s regular undertakings is a secondhand bazaar, held four to five times a year at Gan Meir in Tel Aviv. The public is invited not only to donate clothes and other items, but to come and take them, as well.
“It’s a big happening,” says Soffer. “And we encourage everybody to participate – even millionaires. It prevents differentiating between rich and poor, and removes any stigma attached.”
This attitude distinguishes Adam L’Adam from other charitable organizations.
“I’ve been warned that people are liable to take advantage of our bazaars to make money by reselling the items they received for free,” Soffer explains. “And my answer to them is that nothing makes us happier.”
He tells the story of an impoverished woman from the Congo who did just that, at Soffer’s recommendation.
“We suggested she open a used-clothing store in her apartment, using the merchandise we provided her at no cost,” he says. The woman took the advice, and then disappeared for about a year.
“One day she turned up with a suitcase, in which were 12 pairs of brand-new jeans with the labels still on them,” Soffer recounts. “She told me that it was time for her to give something back.”
It emerged that the shop she had opened was now the source of income for her and her entire family, even those in Africa.
This is one of many instances of business empowerment that Adam L’Adam considers a heart-warming achievement.
Recently, Soffer and his life partner, Elisha Alexander, established within Adam L’Adam a sub-organization called “Ma’avarim” (“transitions” or “crossings,” a play on the word “transgender” and its process).
It’s headed by Alexander and aims to help transgendered people like himself to “come out” and take their rightful place in society.
According to Soffer, while gays and lesbians have become more accepted and mainstream within their own families and in society as a whole, transgendered people have a long way to go.
Ma’avarim lobbies the Israeli Health Ministry to change its policy regarding the process that transgenders must undergo in order to have sex-change operations.
Though such surgery is free in Israel, would-be patients must present their case to a committee of experts who can approve or refuse their request.
According to Soffer, however, the greater issue is transgendered people’s difficulties making it to adulthood with proper educational and life skills.
This is due to the ostracism most of them face as a result of their gender identity. Indeed, many transgendered people in Israel – particularly from religious Jewish or Muslim households — end up running away or being kicked out of their homes in their early teens.
Beit Dror (Freedom House), a shelter for LGBT youth up to age 18, provides a roof over their heads as well as professional counseling. Ma’avarim is working with the Tel Aviv municipality on a project called “Dirat Hemshech” (follow-up housing) for those ready to leave the shelter.
“Israel leads in innovations relating to the LGBT community,” concludes Soffer. “This is because organizations like Adam L’Adam Hizdamnut Latet have no agenda other than outreach and compassion.”
Artists in Tel Aviv Just Found the Greatest use of Israeli Sand
A dozen international sand sculptors make magic with 700 tons of sand. Give a dozen talented sand sculptors 700 tons of Israeli sand, and what do you get? Fifteen awesome works of art at Tel Aviv’s Eretz Israel Museum. “Every sculpture was made by one sculptor in 16 days,” says artist Baldrick Buckle. “The sand is a mixture of some sand that’s close to the Dead Sea and some of the local quarry towns to give us the best formula for working in sculpture.” Designs were inspired by the Bible, popular fairy tales and super heroes. The exhibit was organized through the Sand Sculpture Academy from the Hague, Netherlands.
Grey’s Anatomy Spotlights Israeli Med Tech
The physicians on Grey’s Anatomy are all actors, of course, but the space-age medical imaging technology recently featured on an episode of the popular ABC medical drama is for real.
Viewers of the show saw how RealView Imaging, based in the small Israeli northern city of Yokneam, is making it possible for surgeons to use three-dimensional holography in planning the steps of delicate, complex procedures.
The unique display and interface system projects hyper-realistic, dynamic 3D holographic images “floating in the air” without the need for special eyeglasses or even a conventional 2D screen.
The projected 3D volumes appear in free space, allowing the doctor to literally touch and interact precisely within the image — a breakthrough giving surgeons an unprecedented opportunity for guidance before taking a knife to the patient.
In the episode, Dr. Cristina Yang (played by Sandra Oh) comes across this Israeli cutting-edge technology when she is visiting a wealthy Swiss hospital.
Her former love interest and fellow heart surgeon, Dr. Preston Burke (Isaiah Washington), explains that the holographic reproduction of a beating heart – enhanced with digital the data from X-ray, MRI or ultrasound imaging — can be manipulated and even sliced open virtually,
In real life, the RealView system was incubated at the Trendlines Group’s Misgav Innovation Accelerator and successfully tested at Schneider Children’s Medical Center in Petach Tikva in a trial together with Royal Philips’ interventional X-ray and cardiac ultrasound systems. The company was founded by a urologist and the technology is meant to improve outcomes for all sorts of surgical procedures.
The Grey’s Anatomy shout-out isn’t the first time Israeli med tech from Yokneam has been featured on TV. In 2010, Argo Medical’s ReWalk exoskeleton helped a wheelchair-bound character on Glee to walk for the first time.
Sunday, May 4, 2014
Michael Levin - Fallen Soldier of Israel
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Staff Sgt. Michael Levin, raised in Philadelphia, was on leave in the US when the Second Lebanon War started. He could not watch from afar. He returned to his Paratroopers company and died fighting by their side. Today, he would've been 30. We remember his brotherhood & bravery.
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Carmen at Masada
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In the heart of the Judean Desert, at the foot of Masada, one of the most familiar and beloved operas of all times is coming to life - Carmen, by French composer Georges Bizet.
Breathtaking, enchanting views of the Judean Desert overlooking the Dead Sea and the clear starry sky serve as the backdrop to the fiery Carmen's songs of freedom and liberty while she falls in love with the soldier Don José, who in turn loses her love to the glamorous toreador Escamillo. Intoxicating arias and turbulent Spanish dance unite in a spectacular celebration, as, under the baton of renowned conductor Daniel Oren, hundreds of performers bring to life the love, burning passion and intense hatred that constitute the famous opera.
View the exciting documentary on the building of the impressive stage, rehearsals deep in the wilderness and the fascinating debut performance through the eyes of the opera singers, flamenco dancers, the director, the conductor and the people who created the vision of Carmen in the desert.
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Intel May Spend up to $6 Billion on Israeli Fab Upgrade
Intel said on Wednesday that it presented the government with an investment program to upgrade its giant semiconductor-manufacturing facility in the southern town of Kiryat Gat. Economy Minister Naftali Bennett says the investment could reach $6 billion.
The U.S. company, one of the world’s biggest maker of computer chips and a major source of Israeli exports, did not provide further details. “At this stage, Intel is not providing any details about investing in upgrading the Intel plant, including time frames, costs or the nature of the upgrade,” the company said in a statement mostly devoted to reviewing the company’s long history in Israel.
As a result, it is not clear how many employees it may take on or its wider impact on the Israeli economy.
However, government sources who asked not to be identified said that the company would probably spend $5 billion to $6 billion on the plant upgrade and hire between 800 and 1,000 new employees. Bennett said Intel would be spending at the upper limit of that range and was committed to remaining in Israel at least until 2030.
“We competed with the whole world and Intel chose us,” Bennett said. “In the next few days it will submit a business plan for immediate and direct investments of $6 billion. I can’t think of a better Independence Day gift,” he said. Israel will celebrate its 66th Independence Day on Tuesday.
In all events, the sources said they expected Intel to submit a detailed proposal to the Economy Ministry’s Investments Center, which administers capital-spending subsidy programs, some time in the next several days.
The government has offered the company an investment grant of about $700 million if Intel decides to build an entirely new $10 billion facility to produce 10-nanometer computer chips in Israel, but it also offered as its less preferred option $200 million in government aid for expanding its existing facility. In the past, Intel has said that it was not certain it would build a new facility alongside an upgraded plant.
Assuming that the estimates offered up on Wednesday are correct, Intel would be entitled to government aid amounting to 5% of its spending, or as much as $300 million. The source said the percentage is based on an analysis that the finance and the economy ministries conducted to gauge the impact of the plant expansion on the wider economy.
Finance Minister Yair Lapid welcomed Intel’s plan. “This is a vote of confidence in the Israeli economy,” he said in a statement. “Investment like this will create thousands of workplaces directly and tends of thousands indirectly all for the Israeli middle class.”
Intel is a major player in the Israeli economy. In 2012, for example, Intel Israel’s exports more than doubled to $4.6 billion, or 10% of the country’s total industrial exports. Last year exports dropped to $3.8 billion due to the timing of the orders, but the company still remains far and away the country’s single biggest source of export receipts, the company said. In addition, Intel Israel currently employs a staff of 9,855 around the country, including four research and development centers Haifa, Petah Tikva, Jerusalem and at Kibbutz Yakum, near Netanya, as well as manufacturing facilities in Kiryat Gat and Jerusalem. It purchased some $850 million locally produced goods and services last year alone.
As a result, Intel’s decision whether to upgrade and expand operations in Israel or do so in another country is critical for the country’s economy. In an earlier round of the global competition for an Intel plant, the company chose Ireland over Israel as the site for a new 14-nanometer plant. This was after Ireland offered the company better terms, but also due to the fact that the facilities in Ireland were older and in more urgent need of upgrading.
In September, Intel bought an aging chip-making facility next to its Kiryat Gat plant from another U.S. company, Micron, reportedly with an eye to turning the facility and its 800-strong workforce into the foundation of a new plant. Intel’s Kiryat Gat semiconductor plant, which uses 22-nanometer technology, is facing obsolescence within several years if it isn’t upgraded to the latest 10-nanometer technology. Intel headquarters in Santa Clara, California also must decide where to locate the new 10-nanometer plant.
:: Haaretz.com
Israeli Tech Companies Raise $643 Million in First Quarter of 2014
Israeli technology companies raised $643 million in new capital in the first quarter, up 53 percent from the $439 million raised a year earlier, according to a report by KPMG Israel and IVC Research Center published by Globes on Wednesday.
The capital was raised by 160 Israeli companies. The investment volume was the second-highest quarterly amount ever, exceeded only by the fourth quarter of 2013, when $801 million was raised.
“This is the third quarter in a row that capital raising exceeded $650 million. These are great figures that show a sustained, positive momentum for the Israeli high-tech industry,” said Koby Simana, an author of the report.
Investments by Israeli venture capital funds in the first quarter was $106 million, the lowest quarterly share ever, 16%, down from 25% the preceding quarter and 33% from a year earlier, as foreign investment grows.
Ofer Sela, another author of the report, said, ”This is an indicator of the maturity of the Israeli technology market and signifies that Israeli VC-backed companies are market leaders, providing more than just a ‘great technology solution.’”
“These later stage rounds are being led by investors who tend not to be venture capital investors,” Sela said. “They are bestowing significantly higher valuations and lower risk to deals, similar to the private equity industry.”
Internet start-ups raised the most capital in the first quarter, $260 million, or 39% of the total – the highest amount and share by the sector since 2000, Globes said. Late-stage companies raised $227 million in the first quarter – 34% of the total raised – mid-stage companies raised $221 million, and seed-stage companies accounted for 6%.
Israeli Start-Up Invents Pocket-Sized Printer
ZUtA Labs, an Israeli start-up, has created a pocket-sized printer to help denizens of the mobile economy print their memos and presentations on the go, according to the company’s founders.
Featured at Microsoft’s prestigious ThinkNext event and funded over Kickstarter, the 4-inch-long device is basically a printer head in the middle of two opposing sets of wheels, which allow it to print across and then down a page. The ZUtA Pocket Printer will be part of a full range of micro-printers on the market by January, 2015, the company said.
The idea came from classmates Matan Caspi and Tuvia Elbaum at the Jerusalem College of Technology, which provided the initial funding for their prototype.
Watch a video of the Israeli start-up’s pocket-sized printer:
Finally! Mobile printing is really here! A printer that goes where you go & prints from your phone on any size page! The future is now!
Everything today has gone mobile. Thanks to our smartphones, tablets and laptops we can leave our office while staying fully connected by doing work on the go. Well, almost...
There is one device that got left behind and seemed to miss the "mobile revolution train"- The Printer.
You can see students, lawyers or entrepreneurs working efficiently outside of their homes of offices but then suddenly struggling to find a place to print. Our vision is to change that. We have created a mobile printer that is easy and fun to use, can be taken anywhere, prints from any device (laptop, tablet, smartphone, you name it!) onto any sized page.
Print machines now-a-days are essentially a printhead running left and right on a moving piece of paper. We asked ourselves, why not get rid of the entire device, just put the printhead on a set of small wheels and let it run across a piece of paper. By doing so, we allow the printer to really be as little as possible.
Our printer is entirely fitted for our day to day life. It has a rechargeable battery with an on\off switch, it connects directly to smartphones and to PCs, and it allows the user to print on any size piece of paper.
Israeli Lab Develops Technology to Rapidly Detect Breast Cancer
An American-based technology business, with an office near Jerusalem in Moshav Ora, has developed a way to quickly and easily detect breast cancer in its earlier stages through a simple blood test. According to Times of Israel, this method will be an “accurate, cost-effective, immune system-based means of detecting the presence of cancer in the breast tissue”. These tests are designed to detect cancer before it becomes visible by mammograms.
Read More at Times of Israel
24 Hours in Israel
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66 Women You Should Know… for Israel @66
Haaretz put together a list of 66 Israeli women you should know… and we agree.
See more at Haaretz.com.
Israel Ranks Second in World in Self-Made Billionaires
When it comes to making something out of nothing, Israel ranks second in the world. A new study by the London- based Center for Policy Studies found that next to Hong Kong, Israel has more self-made billionaires than any other country.
The report looked at 1,000 self-made billionaires, termed “SuperEntrepreneurs,” from 15 years’ worth of Forbes annual lists and calculated how many each country around the world produced in proportion to their total population.
Those who inherited their fortunes were excluded.
Hong Kong led the list with 2.831 SuperEntrepreneurs per million inhabitants, followed by Israel with 1.788, the United States with 1.388, Switzerland with 1.229 and Singapore with 1.053.
Funnily, the study found strong correlations between SuperEntrepreneurship and several factors for which Israel is not known: “There is a strong correlation between high rates of SuperEntrepreneurship in a country and low tax rates. Equally, a low regulatory burden and high rates of philanthropy both correlate strongly with high rates of SuperEntrepreneurship.”
The World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index, which ranks things like regulation and tax burden, put Israel at 35th in the world in 2014.
Similarly, Israel ranked 54th on the 2010 World Giving Index, which measures how charitable people in different countries are.
Israel’s self-starting nature is only part of the picture. Countries such as Greece, Turkey, Spain, Portugal and Italy had many self-employed people, but few self-made billionaires. The reason, according to the study, is that self-employed people also have to be innovative, developing new products and approaches to business.
Yet Israel excels in other fields associated with the trait.
SuperEntrepreneurs tend to be well-educated, the study found. In the US, for example, SuperEntrepreneurs were five times more likely to hold a PhD as a member of the general population.
Israel also has free markets and strong property rights based on the English legal system, which was more strongly correlated with SuperEntrepreneurs.
Critics of the study could note that with such a small number of SuperEntrepreneurs, the numbers could swing wildly with the addition or subtraction of just one individual. While the US boasted 411 self-made billionaires, Israel had just 13, and New Zealand, ranked 12th, had just two.
To counter this problem, the study also looked at trends by region.
“The US is roughly four times as entrepreneurial as Western Europe and three times as entrepreneurial as Japan, measured either in terms of SuperEntrepreneurs, large-firm founders or venture-capital investment as percentage of GDP,” it found.
Overall, the report recommended that governments lower taxes, especially capital-gains taxes, and reduce burdensome regulation to unleash innovative entrepreneurs.
:: JPost.com
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