Hamas: The Future Is Ours

[P F Tinmore]

GAZA, (PIC)-- Palestinian premier Ismail Haneyya is to embark on a new tour of a number of Arab and Islamic countries in late January, his political advisor Dr. Yousef Rizka said.

He told Palestine newspaper published Thursday that the tour would include Qatar, Iran, and other countries.

He said that the international political siege imposed on the government formed by Hamas after winning the 2006 elections was over after the countries in the first tour received him as the premier of a government elected by the people.

The official reception accorded to Haneyya posed as an Arab and regional declaration that the world was wrong in condoning the Israeli siege on Gaza and in labeling Hamas as a “terrorist” movement, Rizka said.

Rizka: Haneyya to embark on fresh tour by end of January

 

[JStone]

Hamas no future creativity. That is for Israel.

Tel Aviv: One of the World's Most Creative CitiesThe world's most creative cities - The Globe and Mail

Innovation can happen anywhere. It shouldn’t be solely entrusted to Cupertino or Mountain View nor should it be limited to self-styled visionaries in New Balance sneakers. But it does seem to happen in clusters. Why Silicon Valley? Why Waterloo? Because creativity is cultural. For the better part of a decade, the Martin Prosperity Institute at U of T’s Rotman School of Management has been studying the complex web of factors that encourage and sustain innovation in regions around the world. First published in 2004, the institute’s Global Creativity Index measures a nation’s innovation potential, focusing on what it calls the Three Ts: technology, talent and tolerance. We used this index, but also dove deeper, to choose cities that are best positioned to nurture their creative edge into the future. "The GCI is really trying to help regions understand where they are," explains Kevin Stolarick, research director of the Martin Prosperity Institute. "Even when times are good, you have to worry about what comes next." Here are five cities —and some of their start-ups—that we think have very bright futures.

Here’s how we form start-ups in Israel: A bunch of guys meet up, usually over beer; one of them comes up with an idea, everybody gets excited and, minutes later, there’s a company,” says Gil Hirsch, who founded Face.com in Tel Aviv with three colleagues. The idea to create a fast, highly accurate facial recognition platform—one that can identify faces in digital photographs, even at varying angles and orientations—grew out of a recurring techie meet-up that Hirsch led for several years out of a Tel Aviv auto garage.

“The most important piece was the technology,” he says. Officially launched in March of 2009, Face.com’s software spoke for itself when it was presented to early investors. A $200,000 seed investment came first, followed by $1 million in the company’s first significant stage of funding. In 2010, another $4.3-million round of financing included a substantial investment from Russian search engine specialist Yandex.

But Face.com really made waves when Facebook integrated its site. Two Facebook-specific apps—Photo Finder and Photo Tagger—spawned calls from other developers eager to work with the technology. To gain market traction, Face.com offers its base API code for free, and currently has 30,000 developers using the platform, including an increasing number of mobile developers. Large-scale users, namely those who want to process more than 5,000 images per hour, pay a per-usage rate.

While Hirsch now spends about one week per month in California, the company’s 10 employees remain based in Tel Aviv. “When it comes to things like facial recognition, Israel’s engineering talent is huge, and the prices are sane,” says Hirsch. “There’s also no fear of failure here. Just a fear of not trying"

 

[JStone]

HAMAS KILL FATAH PEAPLE IN GAZA