Smart Israeli ID project underway
Ministry of Interior awards HP with new ID contact, tasks company with manufacturing five million cards. Project estimated at $67.49; pends Knesset approval of biometric database bill. After a decade of deliberations and tenders, the Ministry of Interior has finally decided to award Hewlett-Packard with the "smart ID card" contract.

FAO calls for new world order for agriculture
The World Food and Agriculture Organization's director-general Jacques Diouf has appealed to the world leaders to meet next year to design a new world agricultural order

Teflon terrorists
Were it not for last week's Islamist battering of Mumbai, the big story in Israel would be Friday night's mortar attack from northern Gaza against an IDF base near Kibbutz Nahal Oz. Eight troops were wounded, two seriously. Doctors were forced to amputate the leg of one of the soldiers.

The UN's obsession with demonizing Israel
THE PRESIDENT of the UN General Assembly, Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann of Nicaragua, last week denounced the policies of a certain Middle Eastern nation. They are "so similar to the apartheid of an earlier era," he said, "that the world must unite against them

EU paper on solving Mideast conflict worries Israel
Israeli officials are deeply concerned over an internal European Union document outlining the EU's plans for advancing an Israeli-Palestinian deal in 2009. Inter alia

Lebanon recognizes state of Palestine!!
The Lebanese government has approved forming full diplomatic relations with what it calls the "state of Palestine," and is elevating the office of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Beirut to the status of an embassy.