A millennium-old Jewish practice that warns against water consumption during specific calendar transitions continues to spark debate among contemporary religious authorities.

The Hebrew calendar divides the year into four seasonal periods – Tishrei, Tevet, Nisan, and Tammuz. During the transitions between these seasons, some communities traditionally abstain from drinking water, believing it could pose serious health risks.

The practice's origins trace to the Geonic period over a thousand years ago, documented in Responsa literature that offers two primary explanations: the changeover of guardian angels between seasons, and a symbolic avoidance of beginning new periods with water, considered an elemental substance.

Rabbi David Stav, chairman of the Tzohar Rabbinical Organization, points to several factors that have diminished the custom's observance in modern times. "The Yaavetz [Rabbi Yaakov Emden] established that customs absent from the Talmud carry no binding obligation. Additionally, modern plumbing systems, which use iron pipes, may nullify the original concerns."

Contemporary religious authorities remain divided along traditional lines. While Ashkenazi leaders like Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky noted the custom's absence in prominent households such as that of the Chazon Ish, significant Sephardic authorities maintain its relevance.

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef advocated continuing the practice, recommending abstention from water thirty minutes before and after seasonal transitions. His position reflects broader Sephardic adherence to the custom, which persists in communities from Jerusalem to Tunisia.

The debate extends beyond mere tradition. Rabbi Meir Mazuz, citing his father Rabbi Matzliach Mazuz, suggests modern health issues might stem from disregarding this practice. Meanwhile, Kabbalist Rabbi Yitzchak Basri emphasizes its mystical significance, referencing the Zohar's teaching about heightened divine judgment during these transitions.

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Sicily is facing the worst in over two decades, with lost harvests and dried-up rivers. Economic losses are estimated at 2.7 billion euros.

Water is rationed for almost a million residents, with flowing water limited to only a few hours a week, according to AP. For many, the solution is owning a private cistern, according to AP.

The region's wheat harvest is expected to drop by over 50%, and wildfires have ravaged 5,800 hectares of agricultural land.

The drought has been exacerbated by relentless high temperatures, with Sicily currently 2 degrees Celsius warmer than average.

The Italian government declared a state of emergency, allocating funds for water tanker trucks, drilling wells, renovating pumping and desalination stations, and delivering water via navy tankers.

Despite the water shortage, water is still gushing copiously for tourists, with flowing fountains in archaeological parks and pools in hotel rows remaining full, contrasting with the dry conditions elsewhere on the island.

Sources: AP News, Finance & Commerce, Meteo Giornale, Express, Southwest Iowa News Source, Mirror, RSOE EDIS, FOX 41 Yakima, FOX 28 Spokane, Devdiscourse, BSS News, UrduPoint, Caledonian Record

This article was written in collaboration with Generative AI news company Alchemiq.

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Insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes risk may be increased by exposure to BPA, a chemical found in plastic water bottles and canned foods.

A study presented at the American Diabetes Association suggests that BPA exposure, even at levels considered safe by the EPA, can reduce insulin sensitivity in healthy adults within 4 days.

Most BPA exposure (93% of the U.S. population) comes from canned foods. While the FDA considers low levels of BPA in food containers safe, some argue these guidelines are outdated.

The European Commission is moving to ban BPA in products that contact food or beverages.

Concerns are growing about the health impacts of everyday exposure to substances like BPA and microplastics, which have been found in various human body parts.

To reduce potential risks, experts recommend avoiding containers with BPA and using alternatives like stainless steel or glass bottles.

Healthcare providers could advise patients on reducing BPA exposure.

Understanding how daily substances affect long-term health could help in reducing the risk of chronic conditions like diabetes.

Sources: Business Insider, Tech Times, Medical Research, DocWire News

This article was written in collaboration with Generative AI news company Alchemiq.

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Dr. Adi Radian and post-doctoral student Dr. Samapti Kundu of the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have developed an innovative technology for removing dangerous pollutants from drinking water.

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PFAS (Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substancesis) is a family of pollutants also known as "forever chemicals" because of their chemical stability and environmental persistence. PFAS substances can be found in various products ranging from non-stick pan coating to water-repellant additives. The forever chemicals find their way into groundwater through agricultural irrigation that uses treated wastewater and when fire-fighting substances seep into the soil.

Once in the ground, PFAS pollutants contaminate drinking water sources, leading to increased human exposure, which according to international studies can lead to cancer, heart and liver disease, fertility problems, birth defects, and damage to the immune system.

Israel now monitors these substances, and last summer stopped pumping potable water in the region surrounding Haifa after a large concentration of PFAS was identified in the area.

It is fairly simple and inexpensive to remove PFAS chemicals from drinking water. The downside of the existing methods is that they are inefficient, and also that they do not eliminate the pollutants – they transfer them from the water to absorbent material.

Another disadvantage to the technology currently in use is that they can wind up removing substances that are essential for public health.

The new Technion research, published in Chemical Engineering Journal, examined the possibility of combining two new solutions – the use of oxidation processes and targeted polymers – that to date have not demonstrated satisfactory results, then applying advanced oxidation processes to eliminate the chemicals.

The findings indicate that proper planning leads to high efficiency under a wide range of acidity (pH) and salinity. The method depicted in the article demonstrates the removal of seven types of PFAS – even when all of them are found in the same unit of fluid – at a level of efficiency that approaches 90%, within a few minutes.

The system described in the article is based on safe and inexpensive natural materials. The researchers used soil minerals – iron oxides and clays – in combination with cyclodextrin polymers. The clay-iron-polymer composites act as accelerators that confine the PFAS on the water surface and then accelerate the oxidation process that reduces the pollutants into non-toxic substances (fluoride ions, water, and carbon dioxide). This combination efficiently removes the PFAS and does not release unwanted substances in water used for drinking.

In their article, the researchers show that this system makes complementary processes such as heating, UV radiation, and using sound waves unnecessary.

The research was conducted in the Soil Chemistry Laboratory in the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering. The researchers wish to thank the Lady Davis Foundation for Samapti Kundu's post-doctoral research grant.

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Head of the Shin Bet security agency Ronen Bar has recently made a secret visit to Jordan, where he met with leaders of the Jordanian security apparatus.

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The trip to Jordan marks Bar's third visit with counterparts in the Middle East since he entered the position five and a half weeks ago. He has also visited Egypt and the Palestinian Authority.

Recent years have marked a low point for Israeli-Jordanian ties, due to an awkward relationship between Jordan's King Abdullah and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This March, tensions hit a new peak when a spat over carrying weapons led to the cancellation of Jordanian Crown Prince Hussein's planned visit to the Temple Mount.

In response, Jordan refused to allow an Emirati aircraft to take off for Israel, where Netanyahu had been scheduled to board so he could travel to the United Arab Emirates.

However, despite this crisis and others, Israel's security and defense organizations – the IDF, the Mossad, and the Shin Bet – continued to work closely with their opposite numbers in Jordan. Former Shin Bet director Nadav Argaman visited Jordan a few times, and Bar chose to make Amman one of his first official visits to underscore how important he sees Israel's ties with the kingdom.

Israel shares its longest border with Jordan, and it is largely unfenced. Close security and defense cooperation serves the interests of both countries, preventing terrorists and weapons from entering the West Bank and Arab Israeli communities from the east as well as keeping pro-Iranian elements from approaching Israel's eastern border from Iraq. Jordan benefits from additional stabilization and help dealing with its own threats. One such example is Jordan's successful handling of the threat posed by the Islamic State.

Recently, there has been a rise in the number of attempts to smuggle weapons from Jordan into Israel. Israel's security establishment attributes this to growing demand for weapons, which has led to increased prices, as well as greater obstacles to weapons smuggling from Egypt and Lebanon. Bar's meeting in Amman probably addressed this issue, since representatives of both sides would naturally have discussed various terrorist threats.

Last week, Bar was in Egypt with National Security Adviser Eyal Haluta. He has also visited Ramallah, where he met with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and heads of the PA security apparatus. The Shin Bet continues to maintain close ties with PA security forces, and over the years, these ties have helped smooth out a number of rough patches in relations between Israel and the PA.

Bar is not the only Israeli official to visit Jordan recently. In the past few months, President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Defense Minister Benny Gantz, and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid have all made secret visits to Jordan, which preferred to keep the meetings at a low profile.

However, some high-ranking officials think Jordan could adopt a more welcoming stance to cooperation with Israel, especially now that the two countries have signed a deal that will increase the amount of water Israel supplies to Jordan.

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Approximately 80% of drinking water in Israel is desalinated water, coming from the Mediterranean Sea. Now, scientists from the Technion- Israel Institute of Technology and Wageningen University and Wetsus (European center of excellence for sustainable water) in the Netherlands have developed a way to improve the quality of desalinated water, while reducing the costs of the process. The findings of the international team's study were published in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America).

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Desalination removes mineral particles (salts) from saltwater, making it fit for human consumption and irrigation. The chemical properties of some particles make them more challenging to remove than others. Boron, which is naturally found in high quantities in the Mediterranean Sea, is among the hardest to remove, as change in acidity causes it to change its properties. Boron is toxic in high concentrations, and it harms plant growth, which is a problem in the context of irrigation. The normal process of boron removal involves dosing the water with a base in order to facilitate removing the boron, followed by removal of the base.

The most commonly used method of desalination is by means of a membrane – a sort of sieve that allows water to pass through it, while blocking other particles, based on their size or charge. This membrane, however, is expensive, and needs to be replaced periodically.

Ph.D. students Amit Shocron and Eric Guyes, under the supervision of Professor Matthew Suss of the Technion Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, together with their collaborators from Wageningen University and Wetsus, have developed a new modeling technique to predict the behavior of boron during desalination by means of capacitive deionization.

Deionization is an emerging technique for water treatment and desalination that uses relatively cheap porous electrodes, as opposed to the expensive membrane. When an electric current is applied, charged particles (like boron under high pH conditions) are absorbed by the electrodes and hence removed from the water.

Shocron formulated the theoretical framework that allowed this breakthrough, while Eric Guyes constructed the experimental setup. Working together, they were able to develop the novel system. Shocron and Guyes found that for optimal boron removal, the positive electrode should be placed upstream of the negative electrode – counter to the accepted wisdom in their field. They also calculated the optimal applied voltage for the system, finding that higher voltage does not necessarily improve the system's effectiveness.

The method the group developed could be used to solve other water treatment challenges, such as the removal of medicine residues and herbicides from water sources.

Prof. Suss is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and the Wolfson Department of Chemical Engineering at Technion- Israel Institute of Technology and is affiliated with the Nancy and Stephen Grand Technion Energy Program and Stephen and Nancy Grand Water Research Institute at Technion.

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Water electrolysis is an easy way of producing hydrogen gas. While hydrogen is considered a clean, renewable fuel, efficient electrolysis requires high electric potential, high pH and in most cases, catalysts based on ruthenium and other expensive metals.

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As detailed in an article in The Journal of the American Chemical Society and reported on the university's website, Technion researchers have developed a unique system for producing hydrogen from water using little energy and inexpensive materials. Led by Professor Galia Maayan, head of the Biomimetic Chemistry Laboratory at the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, along with doctoral student Guilin Ruan, this is the fastest system of its kind reported to date that uses available copper catalysts.

Maayan and Ruan designed and developed a system in which the catalyst is soluble in water. The system is based on three elements: copper ions; a peptide-like oligomer (small molecule) that binds the copper and maintains its stability; and a compound called borate whose function is to maintain the pH in a limited range.

The major innovation in this work is the researchers' discovery that the borate compound helps stabilize the metallic center and helps catalyze it.

Maayan explained that the inspiration for the new system came from enzymes (biological catalysts) that use the protein's peptide chain to stabilize the metallic center and by natural energetic processes such as photosynthesis, which are driven by units that use solar energy to transport electrons and protons.

The research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) and the Nancy and Stephen Grand Technion Energy Program.

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The United Nations warned on Friday that more than four million people in Lebanon, including one million refugees, risked losing access to safe water as shortages of funding, fuel and supplies affect water pumping.

"UNICEF estimates that most water pumping will gradually cease across the country in the next four to six weeks," a statement by the UN body said.

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Lebanon is battling an economic meltdown that has propelled more than half of its population into poverty and seen its currency lose over 90% of its value in less than two years.

UNICEF said that should the public water supply system collapse, water costs could jump by 200% a month as water would be secured from private water suppliers.

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Protesters angry about water shortages took to the streets of southwest Iran for the sixth night in a row on Tuesday, with mounting violence, while Tehran residents chanted anti-government slogans, according to videos posted on social media and Iranian news outlets.

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Videos uploaded by social media users Wednesday showed security forces using tear gas to disperse protesters. The semi-official Fars news agency said "rioters" shot dead one policeman and injured another in the port city of Mahshahr in the oil-rich Khuzestan province.

In the town of Izeh, demonstrators chanted "Reza Shah, bless your soul" in a video, referring to the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty that was overthrown by the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Activists called for demonstrations to support the Khuzestan protesters and videos surfaced late Tuesday and early Wednesday showing women chanting "Down with the Islamic Republic" at a Tehran metro station.

In the port city of Bandar Ganaveh in Iran's Bushehr Province, videos posted to social media captured locals burning tires and blocking roads in solidarity with demonstrators in Khuzestan.

July 23—Bandar Ganaveh, S #Iran
Locals set tires on fire to block this intersection as they stand in solidarity with their compatriots in Khuzestan protesting severe water shortages.#IranProtests #خوزستان_تنها_نیست pic.twitter.com/UEaPViBJuo

— Heshmat Alavi (@HeshmatAlavi) July 22, 2021

At least two young men have been shot dead in the protests. Officials have blamed armed protesters, but activists said on social media they were killed by security forces.

Iran's ethnic Arab minority, who mostly live in Khuzestan, have long said they face discrimination. An Arab woman protester could be heard shouting at security forces in one video: "Sir! Sir! The demonstration is peaceful. Why do you shoot? No one took your land and water."

Iran's worst drought in 50 years has triggered power blackouts.

Iran's economy has been blighted by sanctions imposed by former US President Donald Trump in response to Iranian aggression and the COVID-19 pandemic. Workers, including thousands in the key energy sector, and pensioners have protested for months amid discontent over mismanagement, unemployment, and inflation.

In Washington, US State Department spokesman Ned Price said the United States was closely following the protests, including reports security forces had fired on protesters.

"We support the rights of Iranians to peacefully assemble and to express themselves. Iranians ... should enjoy those rights without fear of violence, without fear of arbitrary detention by security forces," he told reporters.

At least 31 protests took place across Iran on Monday and Tuesday, including rallies by workers and farmers, according to the dissident Human Rights Activists News Agency.

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Prime Minister Naftali Bennett met secretly with Jordan's King Abdullah II last week, an Israeli official confirmed Thursday, as the two countries announced new agreements on water and trade.

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The agreements, concluded during a meeting between the countries' foreign ministers, signaled improved relations with Israel's new government following years of strained ties under former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Under the deal, Jordan will purchase an additional 50 million cubic meters of water from Israel and increase its exports to Palestinian Authority-controlled areas of the West Bank from $160 million a year to around $700 million, the countries announced in official statements.

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and his Jordanian counterpart Ayman Safadi met at the King Hussein Bridge between Jordan and the West Bank on Thursday.

The deals came in the wake of a secret meeting last week between Bennett and Abdullah in Amman, the Jordanian capital. Bennett took office last month, ending Netanyahu's 12-year rule.

Hebrew-language news site Walla, which broke the story, described the meeting as positive and said the two leaders agreed to open a "new page" in relations. An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter on the record, confirmed the meeting had taken place.

While the Prime Minister's Office refused to comment, it would mark the first meeting between an Israeli prime minister and the king of Jordan in more than five years.

Jordan said technical teams will iron out the details of the trade deal in the coming days, and that talks on implementing the export ceiling will be held among Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian officials.

Safadi called for renewed efforts to achieve a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and for Israel to halt "illegal" measures that undermine such efforts.

He stressed the importance of maintaining the status quo at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on the Temple Mount, a flashpoint holy site in Jerusalem that is under Jordanian custodianship. He also said it would be a "war crime" to evict Palestinian families from their homes in east Jerusalem.

Lapid called Jordan an "important neighbor and partner" and said Israel would work to strengthen ties and expand economic cooperation. He had highlighted the importance of mending fences with Jordan when he took office last month.

"We will broaden economic cooperation for the good of the two countries," Lapid said in a statement.

The United States welcomed the agreements. "It is these kinds of tangible steps that increase prosperity for all and advance regional stability," State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement.

Gidon Bromberg, the Israeli director of EcoPeace Middle East, a Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli environmentalist group, said the deal marks a "dramatic increase" in water exports from Israel, which he said had not exported more than 10 million cubic meters per year until now.

He said Jordan still faces a water deficit of 500 million cubic meters a year and would have to import considerably more to ensure a continuous supply for all its needs. Jordan is one of the driest countries on earth and its water shortages are expected to worsen with climate change.

Israel and Jordan made peace in 1994 and maintain close security ties.

Abdullah is set to visit the White House on July 19 and meet with US President Joe Biden. Those talks would be "an opportunity to ... showcase Jordan's leadership role in promoting peace and stability in the region," the White House said.

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