Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday called on Israelis to choose peace over settlements, urging them not to waste this opportunity.

“To the Israeli people I say: Making peace is more important than settlements,” said Abbas as tens of thousands of Palestinians from all over the West Bank rallied at his headquarters to mark the sixth anniversary of the death of his predecessor Yasser Arafat, founder of Fatah movement.

“Let us make peace before this opportunity is lost,” he urged the Israelis. “We pray to God that they would take this opportunity, but hopefully not too late.”

When Russia imposed an embargo on wheat exports this year, soaring wheat prices raised concern about the possibility of a new food crisis. Importing countries rushed to avoid supply shortages, producers hesitated to market their reserves, and brokers speculated about what would happen next, all of which created tensions in the wheat market and fueled concerns that threatened to turn the potential crisis into a real possibility.

Arab countries are the primary importers of cereal — a wheat product — in the world. In fact, around 60 million tons are imported annually to Arab countries totaling 335 million people, while other Asian countries, home to more than 2 billion people, import fewer than 50 million tons of cereal.

The limited number of suppliers on the global cereal market increases dangers faced by importing countries in the Arab region. Furthermore, the demand for cereal in Arab countries is expected to increase along with an annual population growth of more than 2%, while global population rises only 1.1%.

An unprecedented number of female candidates is running for parliamentary elections later this month following the passage of a new law that guarantees a certain percentage of seats to women. 

Sponsored by the ruling National Democratic Party and approved by parliament in June 2009, the quota bill designates 32 new seats in parliament for women. Though the official number of female candidates won't be announced until next week, the Higher Elections Commission stated that 379 women applied to run for the new seats.

These figures do not include hundreds of other women running against men in many districts across the country.  

The United States on Wednesday proved once again that it is a friend the Palestinian Authority can rely on in times of difficulty, at least economically. Politically, the Palestinians are not so sure.

After a brief signing ceremony at Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s office in Ramallah, the U.S. forwarded to the Palestinian Authority $150 million for budget support.

Even though the amount is only a fraction of what Israel gets every year from the U.S., which amounts to billions of dollars, Fayyad nevertheless warmly welcomed the support, considering it a lifesaver.

“We really appreciate this assistance because it is highly responsive to our needs,” said Fayyad. “We have faced quite serious financial difficulty for the past few months that made our life extremely difficult,” he said.

One would think that Octavia Nasr would have had enough of Twitter.

Nasr lost her long-time position at CNN this past summer after tweeting her "respect" for Sheik Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, a Lebanese cleric known for his militant politics and progressive social stances.

But during a recent lecture to students at the Lebanese American University in Beirut, Nasr spoke passionately about the importance of using social media to subvert stale media narratives.

"Don't say 'I'm not going to go there because too many people are getting fired over this,' " Nasr told students. "I'm seeing [social media] as an opportunity to bring change."

Egypt has earned notoriety for being one of the worst countries in the Middle East when it comes to sexual harassment, and women's rights groups have previously described the harassment on the street as Egypt's "cancer."

What to do? A group of activists has decided to fight the leering and groping with a new private venture that, beginning in the near future, will use open-source mapping technology to identify harassment hot spots in Cairo and allow women to instantly report incidents of sexual abuse through text messaging and on social media sites.

It's called HarassMap and will reportedly run off the open-source software platform Ushahidi, which was first used to report violence in Kenya in 2008. 

Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi has ordered the  release of 20 detained journalists working for media outlets affiliated with his reform-minded son amid apparent rising tensions between moderates and the nation's old guard.

Kadafi also asked that an investigation be opened into the matter, reported Libya's Jamahiriya News Agency, or JANA.

The reporters, who include six women and Egyptian and Tunisian citizens, were reportedly picked up by the Libyan security forces in arrest sweeps late last week in Tripoli and the city of Benghazi.

Mohammed Mustapha, a waiter in a Cairo cafe, likes to smoke, but he's not fond of the pictures the Egyptian government stamps on each pack of cigarettes: teeth rotted from gum disease, a limp cigarette suggesting impotence or a man with emphysema tethered to an oxygen mask.

With graphic advertising, new bans and taxes on tobacco, the Egyptian government seems serious about curbing the nation's epidemic number of smokers. But, as with many things in this country of 80 million, contradictions undermine appearances. Most Egyptians smoke Cleopatra cigarettes, manufactured by a company controlled by the government.

Egypt leads the Arab world in tobacco consumption. In 2009, the World Health Organization reported that 38% of Egyptian males use tobacco of some sort and that 32% smoke cigarettes. Females admit to much less smoking -- below 1% -- because it is taboo in this patriarchal culture.

Saudi archaeologists recently discovered the first royal pharaonic inscription on a mountain face near the ancient oasis city of Tayma, evidence, experts say, of the major trade networks that criss-crossed the region thousands of years ago.

The discovery comes on the heels of a major push by Saudi authorities to foster wider appreciation for the Arabian peninsula's pre-Islamic history, which has often been glossed over or ignored in official narratives. In September, the Louvre in Paris wrapped up an exhibition of pre-Islamic Saudi artifacts, most of which had never been displayed before, according to an article in Le Monde at the time (a translation appeared in the Guardian).

The attention on the country's pre-Muslim past has proved controversial in the ultra-conservative kingdom. Some Saudis believe that displaying non-Muslim artifacts, whether Pagan, Jewish or Christian, should be forbidden, even if these artifacts pre-date Islam. In 2009,  the well-known Saudi cleric Mohammad al Nujaimi said such artifacts should be "left in the ground."

Egypt’s spiralling threat of hepatitis C virus – already the highest incidence rate in the world -- is alarming researchers who fear a potential epidemic of the blood-borne disease could spread across the most populous Arab country.

The findings of a recent study published in the National Academy of Sciences showed that more than 500,000 new HCV infection cases occur in Egypt every year.  Much of the problem behind the soaring infectious rates is poor healthcare oversight and erratic medical hygiene.

"Nearly seven out of every 1,000 Egyptians acquire HCV infections every year. This is the highest level of HCV transmission ever recorded at a national level for a disease transmitted by use of non-sterile medical instruments," says Dr. F. DeWolfe Miller, lead author of the study.

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah held a news conference in August  blaming Israel for the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. His evidence — footage from Israeli drones — was dismissed in Israel as a mishmash of unrelated incidents in an attempt to deflect the increasing heat from the U.N. tribunal investigating Hariri's death.

The announcement may not have helped with the tribunal, but Nasrallah's appearance did shed light on an old incident and has forced the Israeli army to finally acknowledge something that has been a bit of an open secret.

In 1997, an Israeli commando operation in south Lebanon was over before it began when an elite force walked into an ambush in Ansariya. Eleven commandos and an army doctor were killed in an ill-fated operation that became known as the "Shayetet disaster," for the "Shayetet 13" naval commando unit, which was also involved in the deadly raid on a Gaza aid flotilla this May.

In a place as volatile as Lebanon, it can be hard to say what particular event or accusation will be the spark needed to ignite existing tensions and send the whole country and possibly the region up in flames.

Until recently, the United Nations-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon was considered low-level background noise to the grander drama of Lebanese politics.

But as the anticipated indictments of some of its members draw closer, Hezbollah has drawn a clear line in the sand for its political rivals in government: civil peace or the tribunal investigating the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Hezbollah has made it clear that it considers the tribunal an attack on its existence and will not hesitate to do what is needed to defend itself. That, coupled with a report [Arabic link] in the sympathetic Lebanese daily Al Akhbar that Hezbollah is conducting military drills in preparation for possible indictments, leaves no room for doubt that Hezbollah is willing to use force against what it sees as a plot against its armed resistance to Israel.