Good news from the 100th smallest country, with less than 1/1000th of the world's population.

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Israeli researchers help stem mental retardation in Arab village. A team of Israeli scientists is helping to turn around the high rate of mentally retarded babies born in an Israeli Arab village. The team has developed a blood test they bring to the village to determine if adults are carriers of the gene that causes the defect.

Israeli Police to advise French on riot control. Internal Security Minister Gideon Ezra and Police Insp.-Gen. Moshe Karadi traveled to Paris on Sunday for three days of "classified meetings" with senior government and law enforcement officials including French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. Per France's request, Karadi brought along with him Asst.-Cmdr. Ya'acov Nehemia, head of the police's Special Forces, who police said would advise and train the French police in riot-control techniques.

New terminally ill law provides breakthrough for synagogue-state relations. Wednesday the Knesset completed legislation on the issue, based on a proposal by a committee of dozens of experts, doctors, rabbis, philosophers, and theologians representing a wide swath of Israeli society. Orthodox and Reform, atheists and religious Jews, doctors and nurses worked together in unprecedented fashion, under the guidance of Committee Chairman Rabbi Dr. Steinberg to create a proposal text for a revolutionary law on a sensitive and painful issue. Israel is the first country in which "religious" and "secular" elements managed to produce a document agreeable to virtually all sides about treatment of the terminally ill.

How an Israeli scientist changed the piscine world. In the late 1950s, however, Tel Aviv University zoologist Prof. Lev Fishelson developed a hybrid of Saint Peter’s fish that was highly tolerant to salt water as well as high temperatures. This made it ideally adaptable to growing in ponds in arid desert areas where the available underground water is usually unuseable because of its high salinity.

Israel signs South American trade agreement. Israel signed an agreement to expand trade with a South American free-trade alliance. The deal is aimed at eventually creating a free-trade area between Israel and MERCOSUR, which encompasses Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela. “MERCOSUR countries will benefit from Israel’s sophisticated technology, and Israel will be able to introduce its goods to a market of hundreds of millions people,” said Dr. Eduardo Kohn, director of Latin American Affairs for B’nai B’rith International, which had lobbied for the accord.

Israeli Professor Wins 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics. After dashing to Stockholm's Concert Hall with 27 members of his immediate family from the hotel where they stayed over Shabbat, Hebrew University mathematics Prof. Robert J. (Yisrael) Aumann accepted the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics. Robert John (Israel) Aumann of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem holds his granddaughter before a press conference at the Givat Ram campus following the announcement that he won the Nobel Prize in economy.

New Israeli mobile phone to detect breast cancer. An Israeli psychologist has reportedly developed a radical new technology which would enable an ordinary mobile phone to diagnose breast cancer and various type of heart disease. By installing new software and adding a basic infrared camera, a mobile phone could be transformed into a highly-effective diagnostic tool, offering far more accurate results than the self-checks many women do themselves.

New Israelis invent world's toughest material. Israeli scientists have have discovered a material 40 times harder than diamonds. The team broke the world hardness record by combining quantum mechanics, chemistry and mechanical engineering.

Israel's Scud buster test a success, as Israel becomes the first nation to have a national missile defense shield. The Air Force held the 14th test of the Israeli-designed Arrow 2 anti-ballistic missile on Friday, successfully intercepting an incoming rocket at a higher altitude than ever before. An F-15 fighter jet flying over the Mediterranean dropped a Black Sparrow test missile specially designed to simulate an incoming Iranian Shihab 3 missile headed toward the Israeli shore. The radar detected the Black Sparrow missile and relayed its data to a battle management center, which issued the command to launch the Arrow 2 interceptor. "The interceptor performed successfully and intercepted the target," a Defense Ministry statement said. "The test's success is a major step in the system's operational improvements to deal with future ballistic missile threats.' Air Force Patriot batteries also participated passively in the test, following the incoming missile with their radars and simulating interceptions. This tested the entire missile defense screen of the country, the only nation in the world to have a national missile defense shield.

Facts about the 100th smallest country, with less than 1/1000th of the world's population.


  • Israel has the highest ratio of university degrees to the population in the world.
  • Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East.
  • In 1984 and 1991, Israel airlifted a total of 22,000 Ethiopian Jews at risk in Ethiopia to safety in Israel.
  • When Golda Meir was elected Prime Minister of Israel in 1969, she became the world's second elected female leader in modern times.
  • When the U. S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya was bombed in 1998, Israeli rescue teams were on the scene within a day - and saved three victims from the rubble.
  • Israel has the third highest rate of entrepreneurship - and the highest rate among women and among people over 55 - in the world.
  • Relative to its population, Israel is the largest immigrant-absorbing nation on earth. Immigrants come in search of democracy, religious freedom, and economic opportunity.
  • Israel was the first nation in the world to adopt the Kimberly process, an international standard that certifies diamonds as "conflict free."
  • Israel has the world's second highest per capita of new books.
  • Israel is the only country in the world that entered the 21st century with a net gain in its number of trees, made more remarkable because this was achieved in an area considered mainly desert.
  • Israel has more museums per capita than any other country.
  • Israel leads the world in the number of scientists and technicians in the workforce, with 145 per 10,000, as opposed to 85 in the U.S., over 70 in Japan, and less than 60 in Germany. With over 25% of its work force employed in technical professions. Israel places first in this category as well.
  • Israel has the highest per capita ratio of scientific publications in the world by a large margin, as well as one of the highest per capita rates of patents filed.
  • In proportion to its population, Israel has the largest number of startup companies in the world. In absolute terms, Israel has the largest number of startup companies than any other country in the world, except the US (3,500 companies mostly in hi-tech).
  • Israel is ranked #2 in the world for VC funds right behind the US.
  • Israel has the highest percentage in the world of home computers per capita.
  • Outside the United States and Canada, Israel has the largest number of NASDAQ listed companies
  • Israel has the highest average living standards in the Middle East. The per capita income in 2000 is over $17,500, exceeding that of the UK.
  • With more than 3,000 high-tech companies and start-ups, Israel has the highest concentration of hi-tech companies in the world (apart from the Silicon Valley).
  • With an aerial arsenal of over 250 F-16s, Israel has the largest fleet of the aircraft outside of the US.
  • Israel's $100 billion economy is larger than all of its immediate neighbors combined.
  • The cell phone was developed in Israel by Motorola-Israel. Motorola built its largest development center worldwide in Israel.
  • Windows NT software was developed by Microsoft-Israel.
  • The Pentium MMX Chip technology was designed in Israel at Intel.
  • Voice mail technology was developed in Israel.
  • AOL's instant message program was designed by an Israeli software company.
  • Both Microsoft and Cisco built their only R&D facilities outside the US in Israel
  • The city of Beer Sheva in Israel has the highest percentage in the world of Chess Grand Masters per capita – one for every 22,875 residents.
  • On a per capita basis, Israel has the largest number of biotech start-ups
  • Israel has the largest raptor migration in the world, with hundreds of thousands of African birds of prey crossing as they fan out into Asia.
  • Twenty-four percent of Israel's workforce holds university degrees -- ranking third in the industrialized world, after the United States and Holland -- and 12 percent hold advanced degrees.