- As if we didn’t know, Israel is experiencing a boom – of the monetary kind – with the State of the Economy Index rising 6.4% in the first half of 2007, which is better than good for an economy such as ours. In addition the government is behaving itself with regard to the way they are spending the taxpayers’ money, and the result is a whopping NIS5.6bn.surplus. Now if they disburse all that lovely money wisely that will be really very GN.
-
 - Just in case you were worried, and we’re sure you weren’t, travelers consider Ben Gurion Airport to be safer and more secure than any European airport according to a report published by the International Airport Council. Nice to know, but there is a price to pay in terms of time-consuming security checks and what have you. So the GN is, apart from feeling really safe that is, that the Airport Authority is about to install all sorts of electronic gizmos that will speed up the checking process dramatically.
- Put up your hands if you thought that Warren Buffet overpaid when he forked out $5bn. to acquire Israeli company Iscar Cutting Tools. If that’s what you thought, you were wrong. Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway increased income in its production sector by 33% to reach nearly a billion dollars. The vast majority of the increase coming from Iscar.
 - The thirtieth International Arts and Crafts Fair is on the go right now outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls with 150 artists from all over the world displaying their wares in 30 international ethnic pavilions, including Morocco. In addition Israel’s best bands and artists will be performing nightly at no charge, and the cherry on the top is the international food fair with scrumptious cuisine from all over the world, including many of the Arab countries.
- Israeli companies will participate in a project to develop the city of Nagpur in India. They will be involved in building the airport, transportation, communication, as well as agricultural projects. The contracts will be worth more than $40m.
- Still in India and it seems that it’s a good place to be, Israel Chemicals have joined forces with India’s Zuari Industries to produce water soluble fertilizer. For the last 4 years the market for this product has doubled each year. While ICI is not at liberty to disclose the exact value of this deal, its worth is purported to be a whole lot of money.
- We make no apology for reporting yet again on the arrival of 210 new olim from the US. and Canada. In addition to the 34 families and their 88 children there are 31 singles, 27 of whom have enlisted in the IDF. Each and every one of them hoping to get into an elite combat unit. Among the others are 4 holocaust survivors. What can we say but welcome home.
-
 Electra Real Estate has just purchased an office building in London for NIS1.18bn (?134.7m). The company, together with local partners, bought a portfolio of seventeen properties in Cologne, Germany for €191m (NIS1.13bn) earlier this week. - While on the subject of overseas real estate acquisitions, Yitschak Teshuva the Israeli entrepreneur owns 18,000 apartments in Canada and Florida, 530 in New York with a further 5000 under construction, and that’s just for starters. He and a partner are building a hotel in Las Vegas and they’re converting part of New York’s Plaza Hotel, which he bought for $675m, into up-market apartments. Whew! Makes your head spin.
- A nice item about sibling cooperation involves a brother and sister team. He is an orthopedic surgeon and she is a mechanical engineer and together they have developed a collar to protect accident victims from spinal injury. What’s new about that we you hear you ask? Well, ingeniously they’ve incorporated a device that keeps the victims airways open as well, avoiding intubation which is a high risk procedure.
-
 Hot off the press Mr Tshuva, through his Delek Company, announced last night that he has acquired 860 gas stations, 406 convenience stores, 95 car wash facilities and a franchise consisting of 72 diners attached to the gas stations, and all this for $471m. Sounds like a bargain to us. The properties by the way are in Luxembourg, Belgium and Holland. - It’s extremely difficult to find words that adequately express just how good the GN generated by the following people is. Suffice it to say that the light of goodness radiating from their souls suffuses humanity with its intensity and warmth.
-
 Yael and Jim Putney married about ten years ago, both of them for the second time, he with four children and she with five and both of them looking forward to a fulfilled retirement. But all that was to change. Without going into the why’s and wherefores, these two remarkable people adopted four girls over a period of time, all of them with special needs, all of them abandoned by their respective parents. A while ago the Putneys made Aliyah. Like delicate flowers turned to the sun, the girls have blossomed to the extent that their medical conditions have improved remarkably and it seems that three of them will be able to join the educational mainstream. Read it and realize that GN doesn’t get much better than this. - It seems that philanthropy doesn’t really have age limits and to prove it Samantha Resnick decided that she would forego personal gifts for her bat mitzvah and ask her guests (all five hundred of them) to donate to the Jewish National Fund instead. Well everybody seemed to enter into the spirit of the moment and Samantha collected $500,000- put in other words, that’s half a million greenbacks. What with one thing and another Samantha was in Israel this week to officially open the playground built with the donation. On Samantha’s insistence the facility caters for children with special needs along with the others. Samantha’s comment: ‘I want it to be huge’ so we obviously haven’t seen the end of her contribution to the right causes. GN indeed!
- Tuesday of this week saw the ground breaking ceremony for the Shalva facility for children with special needs whose parents have taken the difficult decision to care for them at home. The $28m center will be the largest of its kind in the Middle East and will eventually be able to provide day care for 1500 children and give supportive services to thousands of family members. It all started when Kalman Samuels and his wife Malky, whose own son Yossi had become multi-handicapped as a result of a routine inoculation, gave an undertaking that they would help others in the same situation. They started with a duplex in a Jerusalem suburb with two therapists and the facility just kept on growing, with the Samuels keeping pace until the historic ground breaking this week. Their dream for helping others has been realized. What special people these are.
![]() | Outstanding House in the East
Measuring 570 sqm on 590 sqm plot, Swimming pool, Elevator
For further information contact Joe +972-9-7744133 or info@angloraanana.co.il | |
