Excerpts: Oil glut,prices drop. Hi Tech to Gaza, Israeli intelligence
arrests Jordanian engineer. Israel hi-tech dairy yields May 20, 2015

+++SOURCE: Saudi Gazette 20 May ’15:”Oil prices drop amid glut”,Agence
France Presse
SUBJECT:Oil glut ,prices drop

FULL TEXT:LONDON – Oil prices fell on Tuesday[19 May] as a global supply
glut and soft demand overshadowed the impact of geopolitical tensions in the
crude-rich Middle East, analysts said.

US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for delivery in June slid 43
cents to $59 a barrel. Brent North Sea crude for July shed 63 cents to stand
at $65.64 a barrel in London afternoon deals.

"According to official data... Saudi Arabia exported just shy of eight
million barrels of crude oil per day in March – the highest export volume in
more than nine years," said analysts at Commerzbank in a note to clients on
Tuesday[19 May].

Bernard Aw, market strategist at IG Markets Singapore, said "global
oversupply with weak demand" continues to put a cap on prices despite
geopolitical unrest raising concerns about a disruption in the Middle East.

He said the crude market is already "used to" unrest in the region, where
Islamic State fighters on Sunday[17 May] captured the key Iraqi city of
Ramadi.

Yemen is also engulfed in violence that analysts fear could escalate and
draw in neighboring Saudi Arabia and Iran, which are backing the warring
factions.

Yemen is not a major oil-producing country, but its coast forms one side of
the Bab El-Mandeb Strait, the key strategic entry point into the Red Sea
through which some 4.7 million barrels of oil pass each day on ships headed
to or from the Suez Canal.

"Fears that the fighting in Iraq and Yemen could hamper the oil supply have
clearly given way to a more sober appraisal, for the past twelve months have
demonstrated that such concerns are exaggerated," Commerzbank analysts
added.

"In actual fact, the oil supply from the region has continued to grow." Oil
supplies from leading OPEC producers Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United
Arab Emirates are already near their highest levels in three decades, the
International Energy Agency (IEA) said last week.

Crude futures have fought back a little in recent weeks after prices
plummeted more than 60 percent between June and January, as the Organization
of the Petroleum Exporting Countries refused to cut production despite a
global glut.

The move by the 12-nation OPEC, which pumps about 30 percent of global
crude, was widely taken as an attempt to push US shale producers, which have
higher costs, out of the market. — AFP


+++SOURCE: Naharnet (Lebanon 20 May ’15:”Gazans Reach beyond Blockade
Through Start-up , AFP

by Naharnet Newsdesk 20 May 2015

Dozens of workers sit with their eyes glued to computer screens and fingers
clicking away on keyboards writing code and tapping in data for clients
around the globe.

It could be a scene at any software firm, but these programmers are
Palestinians based in the Gaza Strip, which has been under an Israeli
blockade since 2006.

"Here we are opening a gap in the blockade and showing that Gazans are
capable of achieving big things," says Saadi Luzun, 33, co-founder of Unit
One, a Gaza-based outsourcing firm which also develops web and mobile
applications for clients in the Gulf and Europe.

Ten years ago Luzun hooked up with fellow software engineer Ahmed Abu
Shaaban to form "a small start-up in a tiny room" in Gaza City.

Their company now employs 89 people, most of them young women who are busily
engaged in data entry inside the spacious office.

"Gaza has no oil or gas but we have human resources -- plenty of young
people who are just waiting to be offered an opportunity," Luzun says as he
walks past rows of staffers in front of their screens.

Recruiting women is a "social responsibility", says Luzun, whose next
objective is to start employing people with disabilities. After three wars
with Israel in the past seven years, there should be no shortage of
recruits.

During last year's 50-day conflict with Israel, huge swathes of the
territory were razed and around 2,200 Palestinians were killed while more
than 10,000 were wounded.



- 10 jobs, 400 applicants -

"Gaza is not just war, blood and bombs," says Luzun.

"Gazans want to do business and not just sit around waiting for humanitarian
aid."

The proof, he says, is in the numbers: the last time they held a recruitment
drive, they were overwhelmed with 400 applicants for 10 jobs.

One young woman looking to find work at Unit One is Sadine al-Ayubi, who is
about to finish her degree and is desperate to avoid the unemployment that
affects more than two-thirds of young Gazans.

"Most young people have a degree but they never find work," the smartly
dressed 21-year-old says, holding a smartphone with a sparkly cover.

For Lina, 23, who has been with Unit One for three years, the fault lies
with "the political and economic situation" in Gaza, which is effectively
ruled by the Islamist Hamas movement and cut off from the rest of the world
by the Israeli blockade.

Until last year, Palestinians were able to leave via the Rafah crossing with
Egypt, but since October the frontier has been closed as Cairo struggles
with a growing insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula.

Last summer's war brought Gaza's already battered economy to its knees, with
IMF figures showing GDP declined by about 15 percent in 2014.

During the bombardment, 128 businesses and workshops were destroyed,
according to the Palestinian Federation of Industries.



- Sense of freedom -

Programmer Mohammed al-Banna, 27, says working in technology offered him a
sense of freedom because it is "the only area" where Israel cannot cut
Gazans off from the outside world.

In fact, Israel controls all of Gaza's cable communications which are routed
through the Jewish state, and also controls the bandwidth of its Internet
lines, meaning that it has the technical ability to completely sever the
territory's digital link to the rest of the world.

In the perpetually-connected world of technology, having electricity is also
crucial, but far from certain in Gaza, which suffers from hours-long power
cuts every day.

In order to ensure its servers are never down, the firm has invested in
solid backup generators to provide an uninterrupted power supply.

"Even during the war, we were able to continue working," Luzun says.

Such a step is crucial, particularly for reassuring clients who are
"sometimes nervous about signing a contract with a company in a war zone,"
he adds.

Unable to leave Gaza, Luzun has not met most of his clients, instead using
Skype for conference calls.

Unit One has come a long way and Luzun harbours dreams of creating a company
culture like Google.

"We would like to do what Google does. We even thought of organising fun
days for our staff," he says with a smile, recalling a visit to the
California-based offices of the Internet giant.

But with the instability in Gaza unlikely to change any time soon, it is not
such a straightforward prospect.

"We haven't done it yet -- we never know when a war can break out and force
us to stop working," Luzun says.

SourceAgence France Presse



+++SOURCE: Jordan Times 20 May ’15:”Israeli intelligence arrest Jordanian
engineer –Fedaa”, by Jordan Times
AMMAN — The Israeli intelligence arrested Malek Khabbas, a Jordanian
engineer, on April 30 while he was returning from a visit to relatives in
Palestine, according to a statement issued on Tuesday[19 May] by Fedaa, the
media team supporting Jordanian prisoners in Israel.

Khabbas' mother told Fedaa that she was coming back to Jordan with her son
after attending a relative's wedding, when Israeli forces at the King
Hussein Bridge summoned him for questioning.

The mother noted that she waited for around three hours before she was told
that Malek had been apprehended, without the Israelis giving any reasons,
according to the statement.

Malek graduated from the Jordan University of Science and Technology's civil
engineering department last year, the statement quoted her as saying.

Malek's brother told Fedaa that the family has had no news about him since
the day he was detained, adding that the family is worried about his health
condition.

Malek is a Jordanian citizen and has a national number, the brother pointed
out, calling on the government and the Jordanian embassy in Tel Aviv to
follow up on his brother's case and work for his release.

The brother stressed that Malek did not commit any crime that is worth being
detained for.

Fedaa noted that the total number of Jordanian prisoners in Israeli jails,
following the detention of Malek and businessman Ibrahim Siyam two weeks
ago, now stands at 26.



+++SOURCE:Jordan Times20 May ’15:”Israel applies hi-tech methods to increase
dairy yields” by Reuters

SUBJECT: Israel hi-tech dairy yields

QUOTE: Israeli technologies have not gone unnoticed.”

FULL TEXT:TEL AVIV — Decades ago Israeli dairy farmers confronted a
quandary: how could they provide milk to a fast-growing population in a
country that is two-thirds desert, with little grazing land?

They turned to technology, developing equipment that boosted output, from
cooling systems to milk metres and biometrics, and have made Israeli cows
the most productive in the world.

Science rules today, with cows' health, output, genetics and fertility
closely monitored by management systems.

In kibbutzes, or communal farms, across the country, they line up by the
dozens to enter climate-controlled sheds, awaiting the latest innovations in
robotic milking that drive up efficiency.

This has put the country's agricultural tech, and the companies that provide
it, in demand around the world as, with populations and dairy consumption on
the rise, traditional farming methods are no longer cutting it.

Smallholder and grazing farms are, for the most part, not competitive.
Large, mechanised farms that intensely monitor production and maximise
yields are the order of the day.

In the United States, for example, milk production has risen by almost half
since 1970, even though the number of cows has declined by about a quarter.

Developing countries, particularly in Asia, want to upgrade their outdated
dairy industries and are looking to Israel for products and expertise. So
are foreign investors hoping to stay ahead of the curve.

India is the biggest milk producer in the world, but most of it comes from
farmers with few resources. Average production levels per cow are low, to
the frustration of policymakers.

We're missing a huge export opportunity to Europe and other countries," said
Devendra Fadnavis, chief minister of Maharashtra state, who came to Israel
to find a solution.

"I think with Israeli technology we can take our farms to the next level,"
he added.

In Vietnam, a group of Israeli companies led by systems developer Afimilk is
building a $200 million dairy farm, one of the largest projects of its kind
in the world. It will eventually supply half the milk in Vietnam.

Israeli agriculture has benefited from a boom in the country's wider hi-tech
industry, which has become a major growth engine and investment magnet.

The country leads the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) when it comes to research and development, spending 4.3 per cent of
the gross domestic product (GDP) on it, nearly twice the OECD average,
according to Ernst & Young.

Companies often tap into the skills of workers trained in the military or
intelligence sectors and start-ups benefit from tax breaks and government
funding.

Milk cloud

The global market for dairy farming technologies is worth about $850 million
a year, industry sources pointed out.

Israel exports in the sector totalled $110 million in 2014, up 7 per cent
rise from a year earlier, according to the country's export institute.

Software company Akol runs a database that monitors the output, health,
genetics and fertility of every cow in Israel. The database helped lift
productivity to a world record of 12,083 kilogrammes per cow in 2014.

By comparison, in the United States the average was 10,097 kilogrammes.

Akol has partnered with Microsoft in a joint venture to bring the technology
to the developing world.

"We understood that to reach the world we need a strong cloud computing
system that analyses every component of the quality of the milk. Microsoft
saw this could be a breakthrough," said Akol Chief Executive Ron Shani.

He would not disclose how much the software giant invested in the venture,
but Akol has put in more than $10 million.

Start-up miRobot wants to take milking to the next level and says it has
developed a prototype of an inexpensive, lightweight robotic arm that can
clean, stimulate and attach the milking pump to the cow's udder entirely on
its own.

It can be added on to existing systems, cutting the need for extra manpower.

Such Israeli technologies have not gone unnoticed.

France-based Allflex, a designer of animal identification systems with
factories in the United States, Brazil, New Zealand and China, bought
Israeli milking technology company SCR in December for $250 million.

In another vote of confidence, China's vast Bright Food conglomerate bought
Tnuva, Israel's largest dairy firm, for $1.1 billion earlier this year.

"The macro-conditions, are very favourable for Israel's dairy tech
industry," said Arama Kukutai, managing director of California-based
Finistere Ventures that has a $150 million agtech fund.

"The country's high-tech pedigree extends into agriculture, and we've been
looking at opportunities to invest," he added.
=====================
Sue Lerner - Associate, IMRA