Jerusalem News (27 April, 2015, 8 Iyar, 5775)
Contents:
1. ISRAEL'S POPULATION GROWS 2% OVER 2014 TO 8.345 MILLION
2. Last, but not least, BlackBerry acquires Israeli R&D center
3. Israel is the 11th-happiest country in the world, ranking behind Switzerland, Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Canada, and above the United States, which placed 15th, according to the UN�s 2015 World Happiness Report, released last week. by Stuart Winer
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1. ISRAEL'S POPULATION GROWS 2% OVER 2014 TO 8.345 MILLION
by Tova Dvorin
Israel's population stands on the eve of Israel's 67th Independence Day at 8.345 million people, the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) stated Tuesday - compared to just 806,000 in 1948.
Of the 8.345 million, 6.251 million are Jews (74.9% of the population); 1.73 million are Arabs (20.7%); and 364,000 (4.4%) are defined as "other" (non-Arab Christians, other religious sects, and atheists according to the population registry).
Since 2014, Israel's population grew by 162,000 - a 2% increase. Israel's population grew by about -162 thousand, an increase of 2.0%. During this period, 176,000 babies were born; 44,000 people died; and 32,000 people immigrated.
In 2014, about 75% of the Jews were "native" - born in Israel - compared to only 35% in 1948.
In 1948, Israel only had one city with more than 100,000 residents - Tel Aviv-Yafo. Today, 14 cities number more than 100,000 residents.
Six cities number more than 200,000 residents: Jerusalem, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Haifa, Rishon LeZion, Ashdod and Petah Tikva.
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2. Last, but not least, BlackBerry acquires Israeli R&D center
With the acquisition of WatchDox, the device maker joins Apple, Google, Samsung, and other majors doing development in Israel
http://www.timesofisrael.com/last-but-not-least-blackberry-acquires-israeli-rd-center/
Extracts:
In a pre-Independence Day 'gift' to Israel, Canadian device maker BlackBerry announced Tuesday that it was acquiring Israeli security start-up WatchDox. The deal is worth $100 million, according to industry reports.
With the acquisition, the company joins the other device technology companies with R&D centers in Israel, Â a list that includes all the major device makers in the world.
Once at the top of the cellphone heap, BlackBerry saw its dominance as the preferred communications device in the business world quickly shot down when the iPhone came out in 2007. The company is seeking to restore its fortunes by concentrating on value-added services for customers.
WatchDox provides security for documents, with a system that can limit access to data based on dozens of criteria. The system, which works on any device from smartphones to network servers, prevents users from opening documents unless they have the right credentials, including login name, location, IP address, operating system, device, date the document is being accessed. The system scrambles document data using a top encryption scheme and keeps it scrambled until the user can prove they have the rights to access it.
Apple, Google, and Samsung all have multiple R&D centers in Israel. Nokia has a center in Israel as well, Â which is set to get even bigger in the near future, if, as planned, the Finnish firm acquires Alcatel-Lucent, which has a substantial operation in Israel as well. Other communications tech firms with Israeli operations or who are heavy users of Israeli tech include AT&T, Huawei, ZTE, and Verizon
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3. Israel is the 11th-happiest country in the world, ranking behind Switzerland, Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Canada, and above the United States, which placed 15th, according to the UN's 2015 World Happiness Report, released last week. by Stuart Winer
http://www.timesofisrael.com/un-ranks-israel-11th-happiest-country-worldwide/
Extracts:
The results come from 2012-2015 Gallup polling data, which included between 2,000 and 3,000 respondents from each country.
The top 10 happiest countries were Switzerland (7.587), Iceland (7.561), Denmark (7.527), Norway (7.522), Canada (7.427), Finland (7.406), the Netherlands (7.378), Sweden (7.364), New Zealand (7.286) and Australia (7.284). Israel ranked in 11th place, with a rating of 7.278. The United States placed 15th, with 7.119.
The survey found that six main factors determined the level of happiness in the countries surveyed: level of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, individual freedom, generosity and perceptions of corruption.