Israeli firm to supply gas
JERUSALEM — An Israeli energy company on Monday announced a $15 billion deal to supply natural gas to Egypt, in the largest export agreement to date for Israel’s nascent natural gas industry.
Delek Drilling and its U.S. partner, Noble Energy, signed a deal to sell a total of 64 billion cubic meters of gas over a 10year period to Egyptian company Dolphinus Holdings.
Yossi Abu, chief executive of Delek, predicted the deal could pave the way for wider cooperation and help turn Egypt into an export hub for Israeli gas.
Israel maintains quiet security ties with Egypt, which is battling an Islamic militant insurgency in its Sinai desert, near the Israeli border.
Mystery hum in Canada
A persistent noise of unknown origin, sometimes compared to a truck idling or distant thunder, has bedeviled a Canadian city for years, damaging people’s health and quality of life, numerous residents say.
Those who hear it have compared it to a fleet of diesel engines idling next to your home or the pulsation of a subwoofer at a concert. Others report it rattling their windows and spooking their pets.
Known as the Windsor Hum, the sound in Windsor, Ontario, near Detroit, is unpredictable in its duration, timing and intensity, making it all the more maddening for those affected.
Since reports of it surfaced in 2011, the hum has been studied by the Canadian government, the University of Western Ontario and the University of Windsor.
Scholarships go global
Forthe first time in the 116-year history of the Rhodes Scholarship, studentsfrom anywhere in the world— even Britain, which hadn’t been included —can qualify for the award to study at Oxford University, the Rhodes Trust announced Monday.
The news culminates a multiyear push by the trust to raise money from philanthropists, expand the number of scholarships and broaden the program — which until recently was limited to a fairly short list of countries — into something global. The result is removed from the legacy of Cecil Rhodes, a South African diamond magnate and British imperialist who saw the scholarships he endowed as very much an Anglo-Saxon and male privilege.
When Rhodes died in 1902, he left instructions and money in his will for more than 50 students from a few current or former British possessions to study at Oxford, and five scholarships were soon allocated for German students. From the start, some scholarships were set aside for students from southern Africa, but for decades all the recipients from those countries were white.
For generations, as the scholarships became among the most prestigious in the world, countries were added to the list gradually — British possessions, or former ones, in Africa and Asia, though some were later removed. The Rhodes scholarships finance up to four years of postgraduate study at Oxford. Students traditionally pursued a second bachelor’s degree, but in recent years most have enrolled in graduate degree programs.