Israellycool

United Press International reports:

Scientists at Israel’s Hebrew University in Jerusalem say they have discovered a new species of invertebrate animals.

Just what we need in this country - more spineless creatures.

Khadiga el-Gammal, the fiancee of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s son, and actress Minnie Driver.

At approximately 01:00 on Friday, 26 May 2006, unknown gunmen fired shots at the Palestinian Stock Exchange located in the Qasr Hotel building, in the Rafedia Quarter of western Nablus.  The attack caused material damage to the exchange.  Sources from the stock exchange indicated that the attack was motivated by losses incurred by some individuals, due to the decline in stocks of some companies.

Saudis hit by a recent stock market crash are resorting to car stickers to vent their anger at the wealthy speculators who have been blamed for the decline.

 

The English-language stickers reading “Big Thieves!” show a stock market ticker and the names of some popular listed firms. The bourse has fallen by almost 50 percent since the end of February and up to 9 million out of the 17 million Saudis are thought to have owned shares.

Wow. Those Hollywood celebrities visiting Israel are becoming more and more low key.

Hollywood actor Dan Aykroyd has made an appearance in Jerusalem on a visit to some of the city’s landmark Jewish sites.

 

Aykroyd, who starred the NBC’s Saturday Night Live in the seventies and cinema blockbusters such as the “Blues Brothers” and “Ghost Busters”, told Reuters he arrived in Jerusalem to appreciate and absorb the Jewish heritage and to pay tribute to its traditions.

 

“Being in comedy I have always had an interest in Jewish culture and I owe a great deal of my career to the foundations laid by the Jewish culture,” Aykroyd said in Jerusalem.

 

“I have always wanted to come to Israel because I believe that right now it is the linchpin of western security,” he added.

 

Aykroyd toured the Jewish Quarter of the walled old city of Jerusalem and laid a wreath at “Yad Vashem”, Israel’s Holocaust museum.

 

Aykroyd is due to hold a “Sabbath welcoming” ceremony at the Western Wall, revered by Jews as a last remnant of the ancient Jewish Temple. The ritual includes Friday evening prayer service which commemorates the holiness of the Jewish Saturday.

“I say to anyone now that it’s important, especially at this time, to come and see this beautiful dream that is much more than an experiment. It is now a reality, and is going to be for all the ages.”

At a meeting aimed at assessing the progress and work of the Security Council’s three anti-terror committees, Israel’s UN Ambassador Dan Gillerman said that World War III had already begun and urged the former Allied forces from World War to act against the axis of terror, consisting of Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hizbullah.

 

He called the four entities the “greatest state sponsor of terrorism and the largest threat to international peace and security.”

 

Gillerman also lashed out at the oft-repeated argument by Iran and many Arab states that a distinction must be made between terrorism and armed resistance movements - namely the Palestinians’ fight against the Jewish state.

 

The ambassador said Israel has “an intimate awareness of the need to fight international terrorism,” and stressed that there can be no justification for terrorism.

 

Syria responded that Israel was the one precipitating a third world war, saying that “If we examine the matter, we will find that Israel was behind the eruption of both World War I and World II.”

French actor Gerard Depardieu, and fictional character Sir Les Patterson.

It’s a question that has baffled scientists, academics and pub bores through the ages: What came first, the chicken or the egg?

 

Now a team made up of a geneticist, philosopher and chicken farmer claim to have found an answer. It was the egg.

 

Put simply, the reason is down to the fact that genetic material does not change during an animal’s life.

 

Therefore the first bird that evolved into what we would call a chicken, probably in prehistoric times, must have first existed as an embryo inside an egg.

 

Professor John Brookfield, a specialist in evolutionary genetics at the University of Nottingham, told the UK Press Association the pecking order was clear.

 

The living organism inside the eggshell would have had the same DNA as the chicken it would develop into, he said.

 

“Therefore, the first living thing which we could say unequivocally was a member of the species would be this first egg,” he added. “So, I would conclude that the egg came first.”

 

The same conclusion was reached by his fellow “eggsperts” Professor David Papineau, of King’s College London, and poultry farmer Charles Bourns.

 

Mr Papineau, an expert in the philosophy of science, agreed that the first chicken came from an egg and that proves there were chicken eggs before chickens.

 

He told PA people were mistaken if they argued that the mutant egg belonged to the “non-chicken” bird parents.

 

“I would argue it is a chicken egg if it has a chicken in it,” he said.

 

“If a kangaroo laid an egg from which an ostrich hatched, that would surely be an ostrich egg, not a kangaroo egg.”

 

Bourns, chairman of trade body Great British Chicken, said he was also firmly in the pro-egg camp.

 

He said: “Eggs were around long before the first chicken arrived. Of course, they may not have been chicken eggs as we see them today, but they were eggs.”

On Monday the Ontario division of Canada’s largest union voted to support an international campaign to boycott Israel over its treatment of Palestinians, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported on its website this weekend.

 

The decision to join the campaign, until Israel recognizes the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, was supported by an overwhelming majority of the delegates to the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) at the Ontario convention in Ottawa this Saturday. The Ontario body represents more than 200,000 workers.

 

The global anti-Israel campaign, which started last July, has received support from many North American churches and some 20 Quebec organizations, the CBC reported.

 

According to the report, CUPE also condemned what they called Israel’s “apartheid wall,” saying it is illegal under international law.

 

“Boycott, divestment and sanction worked to end apartheid in South Africa,” Katherine Nastovski, chairwoman of the CUPE Ontario international solidarity committee, said.

 

“We believe the same strategy will work to enforce the rights of Palestinian people, including the right of refugees to return to their homes and properties,” she added.