· Let’s hear it for the Blue and White: A huge majority of Israelis, 87% of them in fact prefer locally made products and believe that goods made in Israel are better than the imported article. According to the survey, 63% of Israeli consumers also feel that buying local products would minimize unemployment in the country. So, buy Israeli and you get a better product while helping to get our fellow countrymen back to work. What more could you ask.

· Starbucks eat your heart out, America loves the way Israelis brew their favorite cuppa and after Aroma Israel opened its first branch in the US of A, which happened to be in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood, the chain is inaugurating a first in Miami at an investment of almost $1 million. The new espresso bar will be opened officially round about now, in a recently constructed mall in the luxurious Sunny Isles neighborhood and will measure 300 square meters or 3,229 square feet if you’re still imperial. Six more branches are slated to hit the Java scene in Florida.

· Continuing this year’s trend of record-breaking numbers of incoming tourists, March 2010 boasted the highest March monthly total ever, with 313,000 foreign visitors entering Israel throughout the month. On Tuesday, the Tourism Ministry announced a rise of 56% over March 2009 figures and 17% over March ‘08. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, in the period of January to March 2010, 747,000 tourists visited Israel, an increase of 54% over the same period last year and an increase of 15% over the year before.

· In a joint venture with Thales UK, defense electronics firm Elbit Systems Ltd. won a $70 million contract to provide Contractor Logistics Support (CLS) services for the Watchkeeper project designed to supply the UK armed forces with essential intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance (ISTAR) capabilities.

· Nefesh B’Nefesh, the organization that oversees North American immigration to Israel, says it has seen a gradual rise over the past four years in the number of older people making aliyah from North America. Once here, mature olim tend to tap into a rich cultural scene of concerts, classes and travel, often geared specifically for English speakers. Call them senior citizens, [the oldest of them is over 90], golden agers, mature olim or simply the elderly, they bring with them two valuable assets - skills and experience, and they are more than welcome.

· Specialty foundry, Tower will produce a second-generation RFID chip [No, we didn’t know what that is either, but patience dear reader and all will be revealed] for European aircraft manufacturer Airbus. RFID stands for Radio-frequency identification and it entails the use of an object [typically referred to as an RFID tag] installed in/on a product, animal, or even a human being for the purpose of identification and tracking using radio waves. Airbus will use the TegoChip, a high-memory chip for their new A350 XWB fleet. Said chip will tag more than 1,500 parts and components on the aircraft to improve maintenance, warehouse logistics, and other processes. A point of interest is that the RFID chip will be so extensively used in the near future that total revenue will reach US$3.5bn per year

· When is gas GN? When shares in oil and gas exploration companies traded on the TASE rocket skywards like they did this week, that’s when. The reason for the rises, apart from the positive general market trend? Apparently they lie in a US government report published on Thursday of last week after trading in Tel Aviv had closed. According to this document, there is potential for finding huge quantities of natural gas in a region of which Israel and its economic zone form a considerable proportion. An estimated 122 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas are in the Levant Basin Province, located in the Eastern Mediterranean region, and which is comparable to some of the other large provinces around the world and here comes the kicker so read carefully; its gas resources are bigger than anything ever assessed in the United States. In addition, the report finds that in the same region, there is potential for finding some 1.7 billion barrels of oil. Who would have believed!

· No wonder then that representatives of Russian energy giant Gazprom were in Israel this week to meet with all the relevant people and discuss the possibility of our Russian friends being part of the group operating Sarah and Mira, and we’ve introduced you to those two ladies before, they are the huge natural gas fields situated just off our west coast and belonging to us. A number of other European power suppliers are also showing an interest in the Israeli energy and infrastructure sector.

· The swimming season started on Wednesday. The weather is magnificent. The life-savers are not on strike, which certainly is GN. The Mediterranean is waiting like it always is. Ah, but are the beaches clean and pollution free? Affirmative! A report just released tells us that between 2007 and 2009 the number of pollution-induced beach closures dropped dramatically, from 64 to 12. Moreover, the total closure time last winter was only half of that the winter before. So all that remains is to take the plunge and enjoy, enjoy.

· A study by the Clalit health maintenance organization found that honey is an effective cough remedy for children ages 1 and up. [What took them so long we hear you ask? Grandma knew that more than sixty years ago and she learnt it from great-grandma and so on]. The study tested three kinds of honey [we don’t think bobbe was aware that there were three types of honey] on children with nighttime coughs caused by upper respiratory infections. Each of three groups was given a different kind of honey: citrus honey, eucalyptus honey and mint flower honey. The three groups were compared to a control group, which was given date syrup. The results: the honey, all three kinds, worked, the date syrup didn’t and OTC cough mixtures are definitely no-no’s. Read it up in your favorite medical journal.

· Oil is all very well but you can’t drink the stuff so H²O still has its uses, therefore we’re delighted to report that last month, the Water Authority announced that consumption of the precious liquid fell 18.5% [now, that’s a whole lot of water] between mid-2008 and the end of 2009. Bear in mind too that Israel purifies almost 100% of its ‘grey’ water, so …

· No surprise then that others are thirsty for our water control techniques. A major delegation of senior Chinese executives led by APCO (Air Pollution Control Officers) Worldwide associate director and chief representative of the Guangzhou office, Ouyang Jun visited Israel this week to meet with water technology companies eager to enter the Chinese market. Israeli companies heard about the opportunities in the sector in China due to pollution of groundwater and regional droughts.

· A sports brief to end with: Israel’s national rugby team humiliated Bulgaria on Monday by 50 points to10 to put itself in position to move to the top of the European Group 3 standings this week. In front of over 800 vociferous fans at Wingate Institute, Nimrod Kaplan scored a pair of tries in his debut as team captain.