- The Times’ Opinionator blog notes a Ha’aretz story from last week about Israel’s attempts to compiles a database of Israeli settlemtn construction in the West Bank and includes a link to a Google map that shows the extent of the settlement activity.
- Out of Detroit, the Times has a story about former Silicon valley exec Shai Agassi, an Israeli-born entrepeneur whose company, Better Place, is working on a network of "filling stations" that will switch batteries for electric cars. Israel has embraced Agassi’s idea, according to this earlier Times story, which is offering significant tax incentives to fuel the conversion to electric cars.
- Ralph Kaplowitz, a Jewish basketball player who appeared in the first NBA game in history — in an era, the Times says, "when Jewish players were often showered with anti-Semitic catcalls" — died last week in Queens.
- The murder trial of a Bukharan Jewish doctor has transfixed the Bukharan community of Forest Hills, Queens.
- Reporting from Jenin, in the West Bank, Thomas Friedman writes that Barack Obama should focus not only on reforming the banking system in United States, but helping build state institutions in the West Bank.
- Egyptian writer Alaa Al Aswany says that Barack Obama has more support than any other American president he can remember, and the reason is that he represents fairness — "precisely what we are missing in Egypt."
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