position:high-ranking official

  • Palestinian with Israeli citizenship shot dead in Galilee-area town
    Nov. 19, 2016 3:21 P.M. (Updated: Nov. 19, 2016 4:01 P.M.)
    http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=774036

    GALILEE (Ma’an) — A Palestinian with Israeli citizenship was shot dead in the town of Kafr Kanna in northern Israel on Saturday.

    Israeli police spokeswoman Luba al-Samri identified the slain Palestinian as 48-year-old Anan Hakroush, adding in her statement that Hakroush was shot while in a private vehicle near the Mercantile Bank in the Galilee.

    According to al-Samri, he was found with several gunshot injuries in his vehicle and was evacuated to a hospital near Tiberias, where he was later pronounced dead.

    Local sources in Kafr Kanna told Ma’an that the victim’s uncle Jamal Hakroush is a high-ranking official in the Israeli police, in charge of improving police services in Palestinian neighborhoods in Israel.

    Palestinian-majority neighborhoods in Israel have seen an increase in gun violence in recent years, while members of the Arab Joint List of Israel’s parliament, the Kneseet, have called on authorities to crack down on illegal weapons in Israel’s Palestinian communities, where there is a disproportionate lack of policing compared to Jewish-majority neighborhoods.

    MK Yousef Jabareen of the Joint List has warned against a rise in policing of Palestinian communities in the form of punitive action such as housing demolitions, rather than protecting Palestinian citizens of Israel from criminal violence.

    “This is an issue that desperately requires reform rather than punishment,” Jabareen told Ma’an in April.

    “It is important that the police adopt a new policy and attitude towards the Arab community. [...] Without this, the mere establishment of additional police stations and an increase in policing may result in increased tension and confrontation between our community and the police, rather than effective policing of crime and violence.”

  • The Three Mawangdui Maps: Early Chinese Cartography – SOCKS
    http://socks-studio.com/2014/03/02/the-three-mawangdui-maps-early-chinese-cartography

    Between 1972 to 1974 three tombs in the archaeological site of Mawangdui, China, were excavated. In one of them, the archaeologists discovered three of the most ancients maps in China, contained in a lacquer box: a topographic, a military and a prefecture planimetry, oriented with south at the top. The maps, drawn on silk, display the Hunan, Guangdong and Guangxi regions and depict the political boundary between the Han and Nanyue Dynasty. The person buried in the tomb was probably a high-ranking official in the state; as his burial took place in 168 B.C. the maps must have been drawn earlier.

    All three maps have been valued for their “modern” appearance: they use a planimetric projection, with the depiction tending towards conventionalization (of settlements, mountains and trees), and shows an early use of scale mapping. The scale varies between 1:150,000 and 1:200,000 in the central portion of the topographic map and between 1:80,00 and 1:100,000 in the central portion of the military map, a remarkably small scale error.

    The prefecture map was in tatters when it was found and because of its conditions, its interpretation is difficult. Despite gaps, in the lower part it is still possible to recognize a city with an outer and inner wall.

    #cartographie #Chine

  • Olive grove destruction bill needed for nuclear plant construction
    http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/olive-grove-destruction-bill-needed-for-nuclear-plant-constructio

    According to a report on news website Bianet, a high-ranking official from the Energy Ministry defended the draft during the debate of the bill in the Agriculture and Forestry Commission at Parliament and said the bill change should be adapted to secure the construction of the nuclear plant in the Akkuyu district of the southern province of Mersin.

    “If this law remains as it is, there will be a serious danger of not receiving the construction license, which means the construction of a $20-billion nuclear plant will be risked because of those groves,” deputy undersecretary İlker Sert reportedly said during the Commission session.

    Noting the construction is aimed to begin in 2016, he said there are several olive groves three kilometers around the area where the nuclear plant will be built and these scattered groves are owned by private people, which requires a law for the expropriation of those lands.

    Turkey’s first planned 4,800 megawatt (MW) plant, being built by Russia’s Rosatom and is aimed to beef up the country’s energy output, is already falling behind schedule, with the first reactor unlikely to be operational by 2019 as planned.

    The project has already been the target of harsh public criticism for the destruction of green spaces, as well as endangering life at land and sea, where some endangered species, including Mediterranean monk seals loggerhead sea turtles, live

    #Centrale_nucléaire
    #Akkuyu
    #Eco-système
    #Résistance

  • Don’t cancel sale of Apaches to Egypt, Israel urges U.S.
    Israël soutient le nouveau régime en Egypte

    Haaretz By Barak Ravid | Mar. 19, 2014
    http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.580617

    Don’t stop the supply of 10 advanced Apache combat helicopters to the Egyptian army, Israel is urging Washington and a number of senior congressmen. A high-ranking official in Jerusalem said Israel clarified that supplying the helicopters is crucial to Egypt’s fight Against jihadist organizations in the Sinai, and will improve regional security.

    Since the coup in 2013, during which the army headed by the present defense minister, Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, ousted President Mohammed Morsi and outlawed Morsi’s movement, the Islamic Brotherhood, American military aid to Egypt has been on ice. Since signing the peace treaty with Egypt, each year it had received $1.3 billion from the United States.

    However, there is considerable opposition in Congress to renewing military aid to Egypt and supplying the copters. The opponents, a rainbow coalition of Democrats and Republicans, say that to get back the aid, Egypt should be required to hold democratic elections and the army has to transfer the reins to an elected democratic government in an orderly fashion.

    Collaboration on security between Israel and Egypt has improved since Morsi’s ouster. In recent months Israel has been intensely lobbying on behalf of Egypt’s interim government. Israel tried to prevent the U.S. from suspending military aid to the Egyptian army; failing at that, now it’s trying to persuade the government and Congress to resume the aid, so the helicopters deal can go through.