Direct flights from Denmark to resume after intifada halt

Article published by GLOBES Israel's Business Arena

October 24, 2010

By Globe's Correspondent

Cimber Air's direct flight will cuts the time of the trip in half.

Danish airline Cimber Air will operate three direct scheduled and charter flights a week from Copenhagen to Tel Aviv beginning November 1.

A Cimber Sterling Airlines Boeing 737-700

There has been a significant increase in the numbers of tourists visiting Israel from Scandinavia during 2010. This, together with the anticipated continued increase with the commencement of the new and reinstated flights is expected to return the Scandinavian countries to the incoming tourism map of Israel and generate a 25% increase in incoming tourism from these countries. In January-September 2010, 47,400 tourists arrived from Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark (16% more than the same period last year and 19% more than 2008.)

The direct flight cuts the time of the trip in half, as what was a nine-hour journey, including a changeover in Vienna or another European capital, is now about 4.5 hours.

Daily El AL and SAS flights between Israel and the Scandinavian countries ceased operating ten years ago with the onset of the intifada, after a significant drop in demand.

Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov said, “The Tourism Ministry will continue its marketing efforts in 2011 to bring back the tourism traffic from Scandinavia to Israel, as main source countries for incoming tourism."

Google to bring Dead Sea Scrolls online

Article published on Ynetnews October 21, 2010

By Associated Press

Technology giant, Israel announce plan to launch public viral database for ancient archaeological treasure.

The Dead Sea Scrolls, among the world's most important, mysterious and tightly restricted archaeological treasures, are about to get Googled.

The technology giant and Israel announced Tuesday that they are teaming up to give researchers and the public the first comprehensive and searchable database of the scrolls – a 2,000-year-old collection of Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek documents that shed light on Judaism during biblical times and the origins of Christianity. For years, experts have complained that access to the scrolls has been too limited.

Once the images are up, anyone will be able to peruse exact copies of the original scrolls as well as an English translation of the text on their computer – for free.

Officials said the collection, expected to be available within months, will feature sections that have been made more legible thanks to high-tech infrared technology.
"We are putting together the past and the future in order to enable all of us to share it," said Pnina Shor, an official with Israel's Antiquities Authority.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the late 1940s in caves in the Judean Desert and are considered one of the greatest finds of the last century.

After the initial discovery, tens of thousands of fragments were found in 11 caves nearby. Some 30,000 of these have been photographed by the antiquities authority, along with the earlier finds. Together, they make up more than 900 manuscripts.

For decades, access to 500 scrolls was limited to a small group of scholar-editors with exclusive authorization from Israel to assemble the jigsaw puzzle of fragments, and to translate and publish them. That changed in the early 1990s when much of the previously unpublished text was brought out in book form.

Restricted access
But even now, access for researchers is largely restricted at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where the originals are preserved in a dark, temperature-controlled room.

Shor said scholars must receive permission to view the scrolls from the authority, which receives about one request a month. Most are given access, but because no more than two people are allowed into the viewing room at once, scheduling conflicts arise. Researchers are permitted three hours with only the section they have requested to view placed behind glass.

Putting the scroll online will give scholars unlimited time with the pieces of parchment and may lead to new hypotheses, Shor said.

"This is the ultimate puzzle that people can now rearrange and come up with new interpretations," she said.

Scholars already can access the text of the scrolls in 39 volumes along with photographs of the originals, but critics say the books are expensive and cumbersome. Shor said the new pictures – photographed using cutting-edge technology – are clearer than the originals.

The refined images were shot with a high-tech infrared camera NASA uses for space imaging. It helped uncover sections of the scrolls that have faded over the centuries and became indecipherable.

If the images uploaded prove to be of better quality than the original, scholars may rely on these instead of traveling to Jerusalem to see the scrolls themselves, said Rachel Elior, a professor of Jewish thought at Jerusalem's Hebrew University.

"The more accessible the fragments are the better. Any new line, any new letter, any better reading is a great happiness for scholars in this field," she said.

'May spur new interpretations'
The new partnership is part of a drive by Google to have historical artifacts catalogued online, along with any other information.

"There are artifacts in boxes, in museum basements. We ask ourselves how much this stuff is available on the Internet. The answer is not a lot, and not enough," said Yossi Matias, an official from Google-Israel.

Google has worked to upload old books from European universities and pictures of archaeological finds from Iraq's national university. This project is different, Matias said, because access to the scrolls may spur new interpretations of the highly debated text and because the scrolls have a more universal appeal.

For the last 18 years, segments of the scrolls have been publicly displayed in museums around the world. At a recent exhibit in St. Paul, Minn., 15 fragments were shown.

Shor said a typical 3-month exhibit in the US draws 250,000 people, illustrating just how much the scrolls have fascinated people.

"From the minute all of this will go online, there will be no need to expose the scroll anymore," Shor said. "Anyone in his office or on his couch will be able to click and see any scroll fragment or manuscript that they like."

Much mystery continues to surround the scrolls. No one knows who copied these ancient texts or how they got there. The scrolls include parts of the Hebrew Bible as well as treatises on communal living and apocalyptic war.

Over the years, the texts have sparked heated debates among researchers over their origins.

Some believe the Essenes, a monastic sect seen by some as a link to early Christianity, hid the scrolls during the Jewish revolt of the first century AD, Others believe they were written in Jerusalem and stashed in caves at Qumran by Jewish refugees fleeing the Roman conquest of the city, also in the first century.

IAI presents new Panther UAV

Article published in Jerusalem Post October 5, 2010

By Yaakov Lappin

The new 65-kilogram UAV can stay in the air for up to six hours and fly at an altitude of 10,000 feet. It comes equipped with a specialized day and night camera with a laser range-finder on board.

Israel Aerospace Industries is set to unveil a new unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) during a conference in Latrun on Tuesday.

The Panther UAV “combines the flight capabilities of an airplane with helicopter- like hovering, a tilt-rotor propeller, and a fixed-wing vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) system, which enable a runway-free takeoff and landing on an unprepared area,” IAI said in a press release on Monday.

The Panther will go on display at the Association of the United States Army’s (AUSA) 2010 annual meeting and exposition in Washington, to be held October 25-27.

Itzhak Nissan, president and CEO of IAI, said, “The Panther’s intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities, along with its effective use of changing flight dynamics, make it a unique and invaluable asset on the tactical battlefield for the Israel Defense Forces and for foreign customers. We consider the innovative technology used in this system to be ground-breaking.”

The new 65-kilogram UAV can stay in the air for up to six hours and fly at an altitude of 10,000 feet. It comes equipped with a specialized day and night camera with a laser range-finder on board.