By moving to Galilee, settlers will turn from national problem to a solution
Yair Lapid
One of the most well known arguments advanced by settlers is that it doesn’t matter whether they would be evacuated or not – after all, once the struggle for Judea and Samaria ends, the battle for the Galilee will get underway (they also really like to add “and the battle for Jaffa as well” in order to scare the Tel Avivians, but it’s just a case of hilltop humor.)  
Based on figures published by the Central Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday, this argument is well founded. At this point already, 53.1 percent of Galilee residents are Arab, while only 46.9 percent are Jewish, and the gap has been growing consistently for a decade now.  
Those concerned about Israel’s existence as a Jewish state cannot ignore this trend. In order to change it we need a very specific type of Israelis: People who are not interested in living in urban centers and who prefer small communities, while being able to adjust to new places. We need people who love mountain air as fresh as a Galilee-made cabernet wine and know how to battle our ...   more »

Kuwait based Al-Jarida newspaper reports Hamas' Khaled Mashaal met with Iranian officials, asked for backing when organization exacerbates attacks on Israel
Roee Nahmias
Hamas has asked Iran to allow the organization to escalate its altercations with Israel, carry out more suicide attacks and if need be – threaten kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit with execution, Kuwait's Al-Jarida newspaper reported Friday.  
The report, citing senior Hamas officials, Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashaal recently met with a senior Iranian intelligence official, who accompanied Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his visit to Qatar last week.     
The two reportedly discussed Hamas' retaliation to a possible large-scale IDF operation in Gaza, which may leave Hamas debilitated.  
Mashaal, said the report, told the Iranians Hamas will need their political support, as well as Iran and Syria's go-ahead to carry out a series of major attacks on Israel.   
Al-Jarida further reported that Mashaal told the Iranians Hamas wants to kidnap more Israeli soldiers, as well as threaten Gilad Shalit's well-being in order to "stir Israeli public opinion, pressure Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and hinder the Israeli-Palestinian peace process."
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By Michael Young  
To better understand the assassination of General Francois Hajj on Wednesday morning in Baabda, one has to view it against the backdrop of the statement by Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa a day earlier. At a conference of Syria's National Progressive Front, Sharaa declared that "Syria's friends in Lebanon represent a true force on the ground, and no one in Lebanon is able to harm Syria and Lebanon."
One of the things most disturbing to the Syrians about the decision of the March 14 coalition to support army commander Michel Suleiman was that this was apparently preceded by commitments on both sides. One such commitment appeared to have been agreement on a new army commander, or a list of potential army commanders. Hajj, despite the opposition's effort to paint his killing as a blow against Michel Aoun, was actually Suleiman's man and was reportedly one of those on the list.
The message, therefore, was that for Suleiman to become president, he has to, first, renounce all previous commitments reached with March 14 and enter into new arrangements with the "true force on the ground."
The Syrians are accelerating their return to Lebanon, and the disastrous French ...   more »

By Caroline B. Glick      
Israel is only the latest example of governments throughout the free world that, sadly, share a common malady that continues to put our lives at risk
 Life in southern Israel is unbearable. Since last January, on average, 6.3 mortars and rockets have been fired from Gaza on southern Israel every day. As Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilna'i warned the heads of the communities around Gaza last week, due to the improvements in the Palestinian arsenal since Israel vacated Gaza two years ago, the Palestinians now field missiles and rockets with extended ranges that place 130,000 Israelis under threat of missile attack.
Wednesday, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi made clear that if Israel wishes to secure its citizens there is only one thing it can do. It can conquer Gaza.
In a speech at Tel Aviv University Ashkenazi explained, "It is impossible to defeat a terrorist organization without eventually controlling the territory. The good situation in Judea and Samaria is the result of our control over the area and we will not be able to achieve victory in the conflict [in Gaza] simply with indirect fires and attacks from the air."
Presumably ...   more »

For a patient with a chronic health condition, it's impossible to know if something's wrong until a symptom crops up.
But doctors are working on a technology that one day will continuously monitor a patient's health from the inside.
Aisha O'Mally loves her walks, but a few years ago, her heart was failing.
"I remember being just tired. Tired. I couldn't go up the stairs, I was coughing a lot. I couldn't sleep lying down," she recalled.
Aisha's heart deteriorated to the point she needed a heart transplant.
"There's so many things that are going on in your body that you're not aware of, and sometimes the doctors aren't aware of until blood work or until you're feeling completely sick."
Detecting these changes before symptoms is the goal of researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center. They're developing an implantable sensor that reads internal chemistry.
"Those things that we're looking at are hormones and proteins that get released into the blood stream and into the tissues when the heart's under stress, when the body wants to make a change," Dr. Spencer Rosero, a researcher, said.
A so-called "living chip" containing a patient's cells will be placed in a device ...   more »

 The future of Russia studied
A report called “Alternative Futures for Russia” will be issued in Washington today by the authoritative nonprofit Center for Strategic and International Studies. Besides the usual criticism of democracy in Russia, some parts of the report are downright fantastic. One of the alternative futures the report contains is a scenario built around the possible assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin on January 7, 2008, in Moscow. Kommersant Washington correspondent Dmitry Sidorov has read the report.
The authors of the 59-page report are director of the CSIS Russia and Eurasia program Andrew Kuchins, former senior director for Russian affairs at the National Security Council Thomas Graham, Assistant Professor of International Affairs at George Washington University Henry Hale, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics Anders Aslund and others. On the report’s cover are five photographs: Russian President Vladimir Putin with the G8 leaders, Putin with the Chinese President Hu Jintao, the recent arrest of Other Russia leader Garri Kasparov, snow-covered oil wells and children in a computer class.
Although the scenarios for Russian development suggested by the American experts differ noticeably from each other in accordance with their personal points of view, they hold ...   more »

Vladimir Putin may be popular in Russia for saving the nation from the chaos of the 1990s, but a sect in the country has taken its devotion a step further by praying to 'presidential icons.'
The Bolshaya Elnya village in the Nizhny Novgorod Region is home to the "Rus' Resurrecting" sect, a group of local residents who believe that President Putin was both the Apostle Paul and King Solomon in previous lives.
Rus' is the term used for the medieval East Slavic nation that gave its name to modern Russia.
"We didn't choose Putin," Mother Fontinya told the Moskovsky Komsomolets paper, expounding on the first time she laid eyes on the "holy one."
"It was when Yeltsin was naming him as his successor [during a live New Year's Eve TV broadcast in 1999]. My soul exploded with joy! 'An ubermensch! God himself has chosen him!'" I cried.
"Yeltsin was the destroyer, and God replaced him with his creation," claimed Fontinya.
The sect possesses a President Putin icon that Fontinya claims miraculously appeared one day.
"He has given us everything," she said, pointing to the sky.
A special newspaper published by the sect - 'The Temple of Light' - features interviews ...   more »