Levitt Letter Extra News

By Cybele Weisser, www.TIME.com

While the recession hasn’t spared any age group, it’s been particularly brutal for older Americans who were counting on their (now shrunken) nest eggs to last through their retirement years. To supplement their stash, an increasing number of seniors are turning to reverse mortgages, which function essentially as a cash advance on their home equity, repaid only when they sell their home or die. The loans are available to those 62 and over, and lenders have to eat the difference if a home ends up declining in value. In the three months after February–when a provision in the economic-stimulus package raised the eligible home-value limit from $417,000 to $625,500–the number of federally insured reverse-mortgage originations jumped 10% compared with the same period last year. Industry experts predict that reverse mortgages will play an increasingly important role in the coming years as some 70 million baby boomers hit their 60s–often with a lot less saved than they’d hoped.

This has some folks in Washington concerned. In June, the Government Accountability Office said it had uncovered misleading marketing practices in the reverse-mortgage industry, and Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill, a longtime consumer advocate, chaired a hearing to investigate predatory lending tactics. A big no-no is cross-selling, e.g., trying to persuade a senior to get a reverse mortgage and use the funds to buy an annuity or other financial product.

Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan recently noted that reverse mortgages, like some flavors of the infamous subprime mortgages, are too complex for many seniors to understand. “Millions of older Americans still have a lot of equity in their homes, and it’s tempting for them to tap into this pot of money,” he says.

Still, under the right conditions, these loans can be a sensible solution to a tough financial situation. So if you or your parents are considering one, here’s what you need to know:

The amount you can borrow is based on interest rates, your age and the value of your home. (Use the calculator at www.rmaarp.com for an estimate.) There are no credit or income requirements to get a reverse mortgage, but you must be able to keep up with property taxes and insurance bills–or you could lose your home. The up-front costs are high. Generally, $10,000 to $15,000 in fees are lopped off the amount you can borrow. Finally, if someone is pressuring you to take one of these loans in order to buy something else, that’s a huge red flag. Walk away.

Lenders aren’t allowed to close on a federally insured reverse mortgage until borrowers meet with a HUD-approved counselor, who is required to help them explore alternatives such as selling their home or lowering their expenses. That’s because the greatest reverse-mortgage risk, especially for younger borrowers, may be that they will live longer than they expected and drain all the available equity from their home. Says reverse-mortgage specialist Bronwyn Belling: “If you borrow the money now, you may not have it when you need it later on.”

The USS New York sails down the Mississippi River through the Port of New Orleans in New Orleans, La., Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2009. The ship was built with about eight tons of steel from the World Trade Center site and is on its way to New York, its home port. (AP Photo/Bill Haber)

By Alan Sayre, www.Globe.com

AVONDALE, La.—A Navy assault ship built with tons of steel salvaged from the World Trade Center towers began its journey to New York on Tuesday, Oct 13, sailing down the Mississippi River in a pea-soup fog as watchers along the levee strained for a glimpse.

The USS New York, named to commemorate the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, left the Northrop Grumman shipyard where it was built for the trip to its namesake city. The $1 billion ship will be formally commissioned in New York in early November.

The New York is 684 feet long and can carry up to 800 Marines. It has a flight deck that can handle helicopters and the MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.

Four tugboats performed an intricate set of maneuvers to pull the warship from the dock at the New Orleans-area shipyard and turn it 180 degrees toward the waters of Gulf of Mexico. An armed Coast Guard speedboat and a helicopter flying overhead guarded the vessel. The ship will sail through the Gulf and around Florida before turning north and continuing to New York.

Deputy project manager Doug Lounsberry said the vessel was important to the builders, not only because it honors those killed in the terrorist attacks, but because workers were hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 during the early phases of construction.

“It’s like raising a kid,” Lounsberry said. “We’re sending this one off to college. But after they leave, they remain near and dear to your heart.”

Farther down the Mississippi, hundreds of people lined up along the river bank to watch the ship pass. Around 9:45 a.m., a man called “Here she comes!” prompting well-wishers to raise U.S. flags and camera phones, as the hulking warship emerged from the haze.

Tourists Dorice and Victor Brown and Christine Cox, of Sterling, Va., were getting coffee and pastries at a nearby cafe when they asked about the commotion and decided to check it out for themselves.

“It’s awesome for anything so tragic to be so uplifting here,” Cox said, just after the ship had passed.

Brian Corcoran, a mechanical contractor, brought his four children, who range in age from 12 to 5. He figured they might be a bit late for school but was OK with that, given the importance of the occasion.

“Hopefully, it’s going overseas to do damage to them like it did to us,” he said.

When terrorist hijackers crashed two jetliners into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, destroying the twin towers and killing nearly 2,800 people, the ship was already on the drawing board. In September 2002, the Defense Department announced the selection of New York as the ship’s name, honoring the city and state and those who died in the attacks.

About 7.5 tons of World Trade Center steel was melted at the Bradken Inc. foundry in Amite, La., and used in the New York’s bow.

The New York revives a name held by at least four other Navy ships, including a Spanish-American War-era cruiser, a battleship that served in World Wars I and II and a nuclear submarine retired from the fleet in 1997.

The ship is a San Antonio-class amphibious dock vessel. The first four ships in the series — the USS San Antonio, USS New Orleans, USS Mesa Verde and USS Green Bay — are in service. Four other ships in the class ate under construction: Somerset and Anchorage at the Avondale yard, and Arlington and San Diego at Northrop Grumman’s yard in Pascagoula, Miss.

Arlington and Somerset also carry names connected to the Sept. 11 attacks: Arlington for the attack on the Pentagon and Somerset for the Pennsylvania county in which United Airlines Flight 93 crashed after being hijacked.

Hadas Tzaban at the Ilan Ramon Center: ‘When I heard about the opportunity to conduct a research project at the Ramon Center... I jumped at the opportunity to broaden my horizons.’ Photo: Dani Machlis/BGU

By  Orli Gold-Haklay   www.JPost.com

Hadas Tzaban, an 18-year-old high school student from the development town of Netivot, recently won first place in the international “First Step to Nobel Prize” research project competition held in Warsaw, Poland. To compete, high school students submit projects – in Hadas’s case her final matriculation project – which are then judged by professors of physics for originality and academic excellence.

Tzaban prepared her project as part of a special program for high school students interested in physics at the Ilan Ramon Youth Physics Center at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, under the supervision of Prof. Natan Kleeorin from the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Three other students from the center took second place in the competition. “Israel is just a tiny dot on the globe, but we are proving that we are a much bigger dot on the scientific map,” says center director Prof. Victor Melamed. “These talented kids are our future.”

The Ilan Ramon Youth Physics Center, on the Marcus Family Campus in Beersheba, was established in 2007 by the Rashi Foundation of Israel, collaborating with the Department of Physics to advance hands-on learning activities to high-school pupils from Kiryat Gat to Eilat. The center, named in honor of Israel’s first astronaut, who is originally from Beersheba, is located in the Sacta Rashi Physics Building and includes sophisticated teaching laboratories, a planetarium and rooftop observatory.

In addition to offering applied studies for all southern high-school pupils matriculating in physics, the center also assists pupils in preparing individual projects in physics, and identifies and advances those who are gifted. It aims to increase the number of pupils who take physics at a matriculation level and improve their matriculation results; establish and operate physics centers in schools; and ultimately increase the number of physics and engineering students in academic institutions, explains Melamed.

The fascination for physics runs in the Tzaban family: two years ago, Hadas’ older sister Mor, now 20, took second place for her research paper in the same competition. Originally from Tunisia, the Tzaban family is well known in Netivot. Hadas and Mor’s great grandfather, Rephael Hadir Tzaban, was the town’s head rabbi. Hadas’s father owns a printing press and her mother is a first-grade teacher.

“My parents have always encouraged us to pursue our interests, to work hard in school and excel,” says Hadas, one of five girls. “Natural sciences has always fascinated me and that’s why I joined the physics track at school. When I heard about the opportunity to conduct a research project at the Ramon Center, and I saw how much Mor enjoyed it, I jumped at the opportunity to broaden my horizons.”

Hadas began her research project on “Turbulent Convection in Sciences and Nature” in November of 2008 and completed it this past January. Although professors at the center as well as at the Weizman Institute in Rehovot had told her they were impressed with her work, she never expected to actually win the contest. “One day, I sat down at the computer to check my e-mails. When I read the announcement about the prize, I couldn’t believe it! I wasn’t sure I read it right, so I kept reading it again and again to make sure!”

As part of her prize, Hadas will be traveling to Warsaw, Poland, in November of this year to spend a month pursuing her research. Upon her return home, she will resume her national service, where she plans to help organize after-school activities for school children in Jerusalem’s Katamonim neighborhood – “not teaching them physics, just helping them and taking a ‘time-out’ before I pursue my studies.

“Physics just does it for me,” says Hadas, who hopes to either go to medical school or study at BGU’s Department of Physics. “To me, its just amazing, to see the theories of nature’s wonders come to life. The Ramon Center really makes you want to study. It lets kids get involved. If it wasn’t for the Center, I wouldn’t have done any research, and I never would have believed I could get this far.”

Hadas insists the physics gene isn’t hereditary, “and it isn’t something my mother puts in the food, either!” she says. But the facts speak for themselves: her younger sister, Chen, 16, will join the physics track at school and begin studying at the Ramon Center this fall.

The Ilan Ramon Center is the unique brainchild of the Rashi Foundation, driven by the realization that physics is the key to all advanced sciences. The foundation decided to create a center for youth to develop physics in the Negev and try to get more young people passionate about this area, says Melamed. “The Rashi Foundation does things very scientifically: first they targeted their objective; then they went full-force ahead to make sure it was accomplished.”

Melamed, a physics teacher with many years of experience in local Beersheba high schools, says that the sooner pupils are exposed to physics, the better. “Kids need to taste and smell science, and physics is the ultimate gateway to all sciences. I think anyone can get excited about science if he is exposed to it the right way. It’s hard to say which kids have a ‘natural tendency’ for physics, but there are definitely a lot of talented kids out there who are highly motivated. They have a natural curiosity that just needs to be cultivated, and at the center that’s what we do.”

The center is already yielding results. Over the past three years, there has been a phenomenal 25 percent increase in high school physics track pupils involved in the center, says Melamed, who attributes this dramatic leap to the center and its exciting activities: “Pupils at the center tell their peers what a great learning experience they’re having, and it makes more and more of them want to pursue this path.”

www.Israel21c.org

In the U.S., the brilliant autumn foliage with its variations on red, orange, brown, and yellow never fails to delight the eye. In Israel and Europe, however, it’s mostly a one-color spread of yellow.

Researchers at the University of Haifa in Israel and the University of Kuopio in Finland have a new theory that stretches back 35 million years to solve the color riddle.

Their research, published in the journal New Phytologist, posits that during a series of ice ages and dry spells many tree species began an evolutionary process of producing red leaves to ward off insects.

In North America, north to south mountain chains enabled plant and animal “migration” with the advance and retreat of the ice, and the trees’ insect “enemies” migrated along with them.

In Europe and Israel, the mountains reach from east to west, so no protected areas were created. Many tree species did not survive the severe cold and the insects that depended on them for survival also perished.

At the end of the ice ages, most tree species that did survive in these areas had no need to cope with the insects because they were extinct, and therefore, over time, they no longer produced red leaves.

Agence France-Presse (AFP)

PARIS — A Paris swimming pool refused entry to a young Muslim woman wearing a “burqini,” a swimsuit covering most of the body, officials said recently, adding to tensions over Muslim dress in France.

The "burqini" was designed for Muslim women who want to swim without revealing their bodies

The incident came as French lawmakers conduct hearings on whether to ban the burqa after President Nicolas Sarkozy said the head-to-toe body covering and veil was “not welcome” in France, home to Europe’s biggest Muslim minority.

Officials in the Paris suburb of Emerainville said they let the woman swim in the pool in July wearing the “burqini,” designed for Muslim women who want to swim without revealing their bodies. [see pictures below]

But when she returned in August, they decided to apply hygiene rules and told her she could not swim if she insisted on wearing the garment, which resembles a wetsuit with built-in hood.

Pool staff “reminded her of the rules that apply in all (public) swimming pools which forbid swimming while clothed,” said Daniel Guillaume, an official with the pool management.

Le Parisien newspaper said the woman, identified by her first name Carole, was a French convert to Islam and that she was determined to go to the courts to challenge the decision.

“Quite simply, this is segregation,” the newspaper quoted her as saying. “I will fight to try to change things. And if I see that the battle is lost, I cannot rule out leaving France.”

A woman surfs a website which sells "burqinis", a swimsuit that covers most of the body

The newspaper ran a photo of the woman sporting her three-piece “burqini” which she said she purchased in Dubai during a recent holiday.

“I bought it thinking that I could enjoy swimming without having to uncover myself,” she said.

Local mayor Alain Kelyor said “all this has nothing to do with Islam,” adding that the “burqini” was “not an Islamic swimsuit; that type of suit does not exist in the Koran,” the Muslim holy book.

France has set up a special panel of 32 lawmakers to consider whether a law should be enacted to bar Muslim women from wearing the burqa.

In an address to parliament in June, Sarkozy said the burqa was not a symbol of religious faith but a sign of women’s “subservience” and declared that it was “not welcome” in staunchly secular France.

The country has had a long-running debate on how far it is willing to go to accommodate Islam without undermining the tradition of separating church and state, enshrined in a flagship 1905 law.

In 2004, it passed a law banning headscarves (hijab)or any other “conspicuous” religious symbols in state schools to defend secularism.

The burqa debate in France has drawn chilling warnings from Al-Qaeda that it was ready to “take revenge for the honor of our daughters and sisters.”

Communist MP Andre Gerin, who heads the National Assembly’s burqa commission, called the “burqini” ridiculous and said pool administrators were right.

“We can’t allow this. This is proof that there is a political agenda behind such dress,” Gerin told Le Parisien.

Sir Nicholas Winton, 100, with fans at Liverpool Street Station, London. Photo: PA

By Stephen Adams, www.Telegraph.co.uk

Seventy years ago they rode in silence, travelling on trains from Prague, not knowing if they would ever see their parents and siblings again. None of them did.

But by virtue of the foresight, humanity, and sheer bloody-mindedness of a young British stockbroking clerk called Nicholas Winton, 669 Jewish children were saved from the clutches of the Nazis.

Last September, 22 of them were reunited with their 100-year-old savior – now Sir Nicholas – who has come to be known as the “British Schindler.”

A steam engine specially requisitioned to re-enact the last stage of their journey pulled into the very same platform at Liverpool Station in London where as virtual orphans they had disembarked in 1939.

The emotional ceremony marked what is likely to be the final chapter in the odyssey begun by Sir Nicholas as a 29-year-old.

He was packing to go skiing just before Christmas in 1938 when he received a call from a friend working in a refugee camp in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia.

“Cancel your holiday,” said the friend, Martin Blake. “I need you in Prague. Don’t bring your skis.”

The young banker was so moved by what he saw that he immediately set about persuading the British authorities to let in refugee children. The response was sluggish. But after much work by Winton, a Christian whose family had Jewish roots, the paperwork for each child was painstakingly put in order.

Finally the wheels began to move.

Between March and August 1939, eight trains carried to Britain 669 children who otherwise would probably have perished in the death camps. Fifteen thousand Czechoslovakian children died in the war.

Three weeks ago, on September 4, Sir Nicholas, who was knighted in 2002, stepped off the Peppercorn A1 Pacific class steam engine to loud applause from those he had saved, now grey-haired, and their families.

The train had travelled from Harwich in Essex, containing 22 evacuees about 150 other passengers, on the last leg of the 800 mile journey from Prague.

Each survivor was given a moment to talk to Sir Nicholas.

Speaking to the crowd, Sir Nicholas, from Maidenhead, Berks, joked: “This is much harder work that it was 70 years ago.

“Seventy years ago it was a question of getting a lot of little children together with the families who were going to look after them.

“It all worked out very well and it’s wonderful that it did work out, because after all history could have made it very different.”

He added: “It’s wonderful to see you all after so many years – don’t leave it quite so long until we meet here again.”

His grandson, Laurence Watson, 21, who recently graduated from Cambridge University with a degree in physics, spoke of his pride at his grandfather’s actions.

He said: “There has always been bad things going on in the world and there has always been wars and conflicts.

“You see it every day in the newspapers. Very occasionally you meet someone who has read those same articles but who decides to do something about it.

“That’s what my granddad did. He said ‘Something needs doing and I am going to do it’.”

The timing of the reunion contains a sad epitaph, however.

The ninth train, containing 250 children, was due to leave Prague on 3 September 1939, the day Britain declared war.

The Germans never let it leave the station, and most of the children never lived to see 1945.

Almost as remarkable as the scheme itself, and a mark of Sir Nicholas’s modesty, was that he chose to conceal his achievements for decades.

It was only when he wife Greta unearthed a briefcase in the attic contained lists of the children he saved and letters to the parents did he admit his part.

He said in 1999: “My wife didn’t know about it for 40 years after our marriage, but there are all kinds of things you don’t talk about even with your family.

“Everything that happened before the war actually didn’t feel important in the light of the war itself.”

He also rejected the comparison with Oskar Schindler, who saved about 1,200 Jews in the war, saying unlike the German his actions never put him in danger.

By Yoram Ettinger, www.YNetNews.com

‘War-torn’ land is in fact an economic, scientific, cultural powerhouse

1. Bankruptcy rate in Israel is one of the lowest in the world (19% increase during the first half of 2009), compared with the US – 45% increase, Spain – 58%, Spain – 75% and Switzerland – 15% (Yedioth Ahronoth, July 27, 2009).

2. The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange has rebounded to its September 10, 2008 (meltdown) level, scoring a 50% surge (Yedioth Ahronoth, July 27).

3. Sequoia Capital and Tanya Capital led a $15.5MN round of private placement by Israel’s Kontera (Globes, July 24). Intel Capital, Cisco, Greylock Ventures and Menlo Ventures participated in a $13MN round by Israel’s AeroScout (Globes, June 29). The Boston-based media giant, Medtronics, invested over $10MN in the Israeli VC fund, TriVentures (Globes, June 23). Motorola Ventures, Stata Venture Partners, Argonaut and Walden participated in a $10MN 4th round by Israel’s Amimon (Globes, July 15). Arts Alliance Digital Ventures invested $9MN in Israel’ YCD Multimedia (Globes, June 23). Innogest, Italy’s largest venture capital fund, invested $8MN in the Israeli-Italian company, beeTV (Globes, June 4). The Boston-based Globespan Capital and Spark Capital invested $7.5MN in Israel’s 5min, their 3rd investment in Israel (Globes, July 24).

4. Intel Vice President for Technology and Manufacturing Group and General Manager of Intel Israel (6 plants, 6,500 employees!), Maxine Fassberg: “We have developed breakthroughs in Israel that have changed the face of computerization…In Israel, we are developing and manufacturing network and communication products as well as microprocessors – in parallel to spearheading the mobile domain in Intel Corp. Among the technologies developed here are MMX, which constitutes the basis of the Pentium processor, platforms for Intel Centrino mobile computers and the Intel Core 2Duo processor. In addition, the first fast Ethernet and first wireless LAN (Local Area Network) were developed here…(Jerusalem Post, May 23, 2009).

5. The Med’s best-kept secret (excerpts of Willy Stern, The Weekly Standard, July 27, 2009):

“Perhaps nowhere else on the globe does there exist a greater discrepancy between perception and reality than Israel. The press portrays the country as a savage land racked by war and terrorism… The reality, though, is a country of 7.4 million people whose stock market and economy are humming along quite nicely (at least in contrast to the rest of the globe) and whose citizens revel in their chic Mediterranean lifestyle…

“In Israel, life goes on. The Western newspapers just don’t notice… Israel today has become a vibrant, functioning jewel of a nation tucked into the eastern flank of the Mediterranean. Tel Aviv looks more like San Diego or Barcelona than Baghdad or Kabul. On a recent five-mile run along Tel Aviv’s Gordon Beach, I saw Israeli yuppies cycling the boardwalk on $1,500 Italian mountain bikes, teenagers in full-body wetsuits surfing the breakers, a deep-cleavaged Russian model (nobody seemed to know her name) doing a photo shoot in a skimpy bikini whilst middle-aged Israeli men with potbellies and hairy chests shamelessly gawked, rows of high-priced yachts docked at the Tel Aviv marina, an endless stream of private planes on final approach to small Sde Dov Airport, and two Israeli soldiers in drab green uniforms making out in the sand and drinking Heineken. A nation at war? It seemed more like high season at Coney Island…

“Israel has a world class cultural scene. Want to see Franco Zeffirelli and Daniel Barenboim? No problem. The Alvin Ailey Dance Company visits. The opera plays to audiences at 97 percent capacity. Even at lower pay, (Israel) attracts the best talents from around the globe…

“Israel enjoys top universities, upscale restaurants, million-dollar homes, hoity-toity architecture, and the like. In the fourth quarter last year, when the global economy went all to hell, Israel’s annual, quarter-over-quarter rate of GDP was only off 0.5 percent, the best figure in the industrialized world. (The United States was off 6.3 percent and Japan 12.1 percent.) ‘Think about the resistance of our economy in recent times,’ suggests Zvi Eckstein, deputy governor of the Bank of Israel. ‘Our prime minister (has a stroke). The war in Gaza. The war in Lebanon. The government gets replaced. But we’ve maintained a stable macroeconomic structure and a strong high-tech sector…’

What’s the secret? A very conservative banking system…No mortgage crisis…A current account surplus since 2003…Negligible inflation…Prudent governmental fiscal policy… Healthy integration into the world economy. Last year, 483 Israeli high-tech companies raised a whopping $2.08BN (only US companies raised more). All the major tech players – Google, Microsoft, IBM – have large research centers in Israel. They go where the talent is…’Israel is today the third-hottest spot (after Silicon Valley and Boston) for high-tech venture capital in the world…’ Israel produces more science papers per capita than any other country. Israel lags behind only the United States in number of companies listed on NASDAQ. Twenty-four percent of Israel’s workforce has a university degree; only the United States and Holland have a higher number. Israel leads the world in scientists and technicians per capita…

“The cell phone? Developed in Israel. Ditto for most of the Windows NT operating system and for voice mail technology. Pentium MMX Chip technology? Designed in Israel. AOL Instant Messenger? Developed in Israel. The list goes on. Firewall security software originated in Israel. The latest breakthrough is the “PillCam,” a video camera that can be swallowed and aids physicians in diagnosing intestinal cancer…it seems the other Israel — the land not of terrorists but of milk and honey and goats — may finally be being discovered.”

Below, Stephen Schwartz updates information that Zola wrote in the February 2005 issue of the Levitt Letter (pp. 28-30). You can read Zola’s article in the levitt.com archives.

By Stephen Schwartz, www.AmericanThinker.com

In an important development in the fight against extremist Islam in the West, the Dutch city of Rotterdam and Erasmus University Rotterdam recently dismissed Tariq Ramadan, the Swiss-born Islamist academic, from his two local jobs.

Born in Switzerland, Ramadan is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the radical Muslim Brotherhood.  He is a close associate of the fundamentalist Muslim theologian Yusuf al-Qaradawi, with whom he collaborates in the so-called European Council for Fatwas and Research [ECFR], a Brotherhood-oriented body.   Al-Qaradawi is the leading theorist of a “European Islam” that would abuse Western standards of religious freedom by erecting a parallel system of sharia law alongside established civil law, coupled with aggressive da’wa or Islamic proselytizing.  Ramadan has endorsed this strategy. The ECFR scheme, and Tariq Ramadan’s involvement in it, are documented in the recent Center for Islamic Pluralism report, A Guide to Shariah Law and Islamist Ideology in Western Europe, 2007-2009.

Ramadan has been barred from entry into the U.S. since 2004, when he was invited by the University of Notre Dame to become the Henry R. Luce Professor at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.  That ruling was based on Ramadan’s financial contributions to two Palestinian groups designated by the U.S. Treasury as fundraising agencies for the terrorists of Hamas.  Early in July of this year, however, given the new atmosphere of outreach to Muslim radicals under President Barack Obama, the Second Circuit U.S. Appeals Court reversed the lower-court ruling, effectively nullifying the prohibition on an American visa for Ramadan.

Meanwhile, Britain in 2005 allowed Ramadan to take up a position at Oxford University, where he is the His Highness Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Chair in Contemporary Islamic Studies.

Ramadan is an indefatigable self-promoter.  Few who have observed him paid attention to his work in The Netherlands as an integration adviser for the city of Rotterdam and a professor of “Citizenship and Identity” at Erasmus University.

Yet while the U.S. authorities now seem inclined to allow him on our shores, and Britain appears untroubled by his presence – although the UK bars his associate al-Qaradawi — the Dutch have taken action to curb Ramadan’s ambitions.

His simultaneous dismissal from the Rotterdam city post and the Erasmus appointment was announced on August 19.  The specific reason: his weekly television program on PressTV, an Iranian government media network which operates studios in Britain and the U.S. in addition, of course, to the Middle East.  PressTV also employs British politician George Galloway of the leftist-Islamist electoral alliance known as the Respect Party, and Yvonne Ridley, a former captive of the Taliban who became Muslim after her kidnapping.

Ramadan’s PressTV show was titled “Islam and Life” — not very different, one might note, from the notorious “Shariah and Life” feature run by al-Qaradawi on Al-Jazeera.  Al-Qaradawi has used that platform for outrageous sermons against Jews and Judaism, among other objectionable opinions that support the British decision to keep him out.

In an official statement, Erasmus University stated:

The Municipality of Rotterdam and the Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) have decided to terminate the appointment of Dr. Tariq Ramadan… The reason for this is his involvement in the Iranian television channel PressTV, which is considered to be irreconcilable with his positions in Rotterdam…

….

Press TV is a channel financed by the Iranian government. The excessive force used by this government in June against demonstrators, many of whom were students, prompted a number of journalists to cut their ties with the channel. However, Tariq Ramadan chose not to do so, and has since justified his decision in a statement…

[T]here is no longer the essential public support for the contribution to the city and the university and…the credibility of Dr. Ramadan’s continued work for the city and the university has suffered lasting damage.

Tariq Ramadan has always been extremely capable in his manipulation of Western public opinion, but the problematical items on his CV are not limited to his link with PressTV.  As if his association with Al-Qaradawi were insufficient, Ramadan was also criticized in France in 2003 when he published a Jew-baiting attack on several leading French intellectuals, including Bernard-Henri Lévy and André Glucksmann.  Ramadan claimed it was “curious” that that these two individuals were the most important Western European defenders of the Bosnian Muslims during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, as well as of the human rights of the Chechens, but also supported the U.S. intervention in Iraq.  According to Ramadan, the removal of Saddam Hussein was intended to guarantee “a greater security for Israel with assured economic advantages.”

In the same article, Ramadan falsely alleged that Israeli military advisers participated in the Iraq war, and labeled Paul Wolfowitz the “notorious Zionist” allegedly responsible for the invasion of Iraq in the interest of Israel.  He accused Lévy and Glucksmann of abandoning universal principles and acting “as Jews, or nationalists, as defenders of Israel.”  Publication of this screed was refused by the Parisian dailies Le Monde and Libération,  but it was eventually posted on an Islamist website, http://www.oumma.com/.

Tariq Ramadan hides his extremist views in plain sight.  Why do the British and now, unfortunately, the American authorities fail to comprehend the evidence in front of them?  The U.S. ban on him should be reviewed again… and upheld.

By Gil Ronen, www.IsraelNationalNews.com)

The Israeli Air Force’s F-15 fleet is undergoing an upgrade, with systems that make it better equipped for complex long-distance attack scenarios. The systems are being installed in both the F-15 and the F-15I — a model of the F-15 that was developed by its U.S. manufacturer specifically for the IAF.

According to Israel Defense Forces (IDF) journal BaMachaneh, the F-15I model is currently being fitted with two new systems – one called “Barad Pelada” (“Steel Hail”), and another named Lightning.

The Barad Pelada advanced weapons system has been operational in the IAF’s F-16s for almost four years, but had to be modified in order to fit the F-15.

Barad Pelada is an advanced Israeli armament that operates like a smart bomb. “The system is unique in that it is able to plan the bombing in an accurate way by identifying the target from above,” a knowledgeable source in the IAF explained. “After the identification, the system carries out guidance to the target and only then is impact made.”

The Lightning advanced attack system has also been in use in the IAF’s other jets. Until now, the F-15I jets had to rely on the older Inbar system, which used to be fitted in all of the IAF’s jets but was gradually phased out.

The Inbar system is capable of providing an operational solution in some ranges, but other attack scenarios require advanced systems like the Lightning, IAF sources said. “The need for the new system led to an accelerated procedure of development of advanced means,” a source in the IAF’s Weapons Department explained. “Once the testing at the Flight Experiment Center is finished, we will complete the system’s integration in the aircraft.”

A combination of two systems

For the time being, however, the F-15I jets will not part with the older Inbar systems. “From now on, the aircraft will enjoy a combination of both attack systems and will enjoy a meaningful advantage in their operational activity,” the sources said.

The F-15 jets, meanwhile, recently received a new weapon system named “Barad Kaved” (“Heavy Hail”) and used it for the first time during operation “Cast Lead” in Gaza in early 2009. IAF sources said the use was a success. The F-15 fighters used Barad Kaved in attacks with zero malfunctions, and “we are very pleased with its performance in the operation,” the sources said.

Sharp as a razor

“The reelection of Iran’s president, his grave utterances regarding his will to harm the state of Israel, and Iran’s continual effort to achieve unconventional weapons require us to maintain an army that is coiled and ready to spring into action, and an air force that is skilled and sharp as a razor, that will stand up to any enemy and remove any threat from our citizens and residents,“ IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi said at the Hatzerim Air Force Base.

(Patrick Hertzog) The tomb of St Paul in Rome

By Richard Owen, www.timesonline.co.uk

Pope Benedict XVI has announced that bone fragments found inside the tomb of St Paul in Rome had been carbon dated for the first time, “confirming the unanimous and uncontested tradition that they are the mortal remains of the Apostle Paul”. 

He said that archaeologists had inserted a probe into the white marble sarcophagus under the Basilica of St Paul’s Outside the Walls which has been revered for centuries as the tomb of St Paul. 

The pontiff said: “Small fragments of bone were carbon dated by experts who knew nothing about their provenance and results showed they were from someone who lived between the 1st and 2nd century. This seems to confirm the unanimous and uncontested tradition that these are the mortal remains of Paul the Apostle.” 

The Pope, who said the discovery “fills our souls with great emotion”, made the unexpected announcement during Vespers at St Paul’s Basilica last night, marking the end of the Pauline year held in honor of the apostle. He said that as well as bone fragments, archaeologists had found grains of red incense, a piece of purple linen with gold sequins and a blue fabric with linen filaments in the tomb. 

Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo, the archpriest of St Paul’s, said that he had known for more than a year that the tests had shown that the bones were those of a man of the 1st century, but had been sworn to secrecy because it had been “up to the Holy Father to make this public”. He said this was why the Vatican press office had denied last week that the bones had been identified. “Only the Pope can make such an important and solemn announcement,” he said. 

The cardinal said he was now waiting for permission from the Pope to open the tomb, which would be a “long and delicate operation” in order to avoid any “structural damage” to the sarcophagus. Andrea Tornielli, the papal biographer, said that Pope Benedict’s announcement recalled Pope Paul VI’s declaration 41 years ago that the bones of St Peter had been identified. 

At the weekend L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, announced the discovery of a fresco in a 4th-century Christian catacomb depicting St Paul. Archaeologists believe it is the oldest known icon of the apostle. 

St Paul is believed to have been beheaded in Rome in the 1st century during Nero’s persecution of Christians. Tradition holds that fragments of his skull are in kept in St John Lateran but that his other remains are inside the sarcophagus at St Paul’s. 

The seven-foot-long tomb is buried under layers of mortar and plaster beneath the main altar at St Paul’s Basilica and covered by an iron grate. It survived the disastrous 19th-century fire which destroyed much of the building, but is hidden from view. Vatican archaeologists began to unearth it in 2002 after many pilgrims to Rome during the 2000 Holy Jubilee year expressed disappointment at not being able to visit or touch it. 

The Pope marked the feast day of Saints Peter and Paul on Monday, June 29, by bestowing palliums on recently appointed archbishops, including Monsignor Vincent Nichols, the new Archbishop of Westminster. The pallium, a band of white lambs wool decorated with black crosses, is symbol of an archbishop’s pastoral role as shepherd of his flock and of the authority he derives from the pontiff.