Tel Aviv

A 45-year-old Israeli man woke up in the middle of the night to find a leopard staring at him and dangling his cat between its teeth, Israeli newspapers reported on Tuesday. But rather than fleeing, the man jumped on to the leopard, which let go of the cat. He wrestled with it and held it down for about 20 minutes until help arrived.

An Israeli couple who bought sandals for an impoverished man has learned the hard way that no good deed goes unpunished. They were ordered to pay damages when the recipient of their gift said the footwear caused him back problems. They bought a needy fellow resident a pair of Italian-made orthopaedic sandals in April last year.

A new radio station targeting both Israeli and Palestinians will take to the airwaves this week based on a format that pioneered debate in apartheid-era South Africa. From Wednesday, 93.6 RAM FM will broadcast 20 news bulletins a day from studios in Jerusalem and the West Bank to a target audience of half a million people.

In October 1973, with its forces battling to repel invasions by Egypt and Syria, Israel did what had previously been unthinkable: It briefly wheeled its nuclear-capable Jericho-1 missiles out of their secret silos. That, historians believe, was picked up by United States spy satellites and stirred up fears in Washington of a catastrophic flare-up between the Jewish state and the Soviet-backed Arabs.

Israel has authorised the transfer of weapons to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel Army Radio reported on Friday. Defence Minister Amir Peretz made the decision after a ”rise” in intelligence alerts that radical or rival Palestinians could assassinate the moderate president, the radio said.

Nine people were killed and dozens wounded in Israel’s commercial capital Tel Aviv on Monday when a Palestinian bomber blew himself up in the deadliest suicide attack of the last 20 months. The blast took place hours before the swearing in of the new Israeli Parliament and prompted a pledge by prime minister designate Ehud Olmert that its perpetrators would not go unpunished.

Israel’s Agriculture Ministry confirmed on Monday that the bird flu virus which hit the country on Friday was spreading, with two new communities affected by the virus. The latest two locations, in southern Israel, to be hit by the bird flu are within a 10km radius of the four communities already affected by the deadly virus.

The Palestinian Authority will postpone parliamentary elections if Israel bars Palestinian residents of Jerusalem from participating. Israeli officials said they would not allow voting in East Jerusalem as part of the elections scheduled for January 25 if the Palestinian Islamic militant group Hamas was involved.

Claiming her marriage has — literally — gone to the dogs, or at least to one in particular, an Israeli woman is demanding her husband pay her alimony since he devotes more attention to the family Dobermann than to her. Media reports said that in a claim the 39-year-old woman submitted via her attorney, she says the Dobermann ”is the centre of the husband’s life”.

Tens of thousands of anti-pull-out protesters filled a square in downtown Tel Aviv, vowing that Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and part of the West Bank will not happen, but most settlers were leaving a village in northern Gaza. The demonstrators filled the square in front of Tel Aviv City Hall, named after prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was gunned down there after a peace rally in 1995.

Adi Barkan, an Israeli photographer and model agent, became acutely aware of the pervasiveness of anorexia when he interviewed 12 000 females, aged 13 to 24, in a televised search for Israel’s next supermodel. He estimated that between 35% and 40% of these aspiring models were anorexic. This realisation persuaded him to launch a crusade to combat it within his industry.

Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, on Wednesday ordered ”a relentless attack” on the leadership of Islamic Jihad following Tuesday’s suicide bombing in the Israeli seaside town of Netanya, which killed two women and two teenage girls.

It’s far from a case of looking a gift horse in the mouth, but a present from the Jordanian royal stables has nonetheless seen Israeli officials galloping around trying to prevent a diplomatic row.

Tentative hopes of reviving the Middle East peace process were jolted on Friday night when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a seafront karaoke nightclub in Tel Aviv, killing at least three people and wounding dozens. An air of palpable shock hung heavy over Israel’s second city after the first suicide bombing in Israel for almost four months.

Trusting in God may make people with strong religious beliefs take more risks when crossing the road, according to a team of scientists in Israel. They found that devout Orthodox Jews were three times more likely to put themselves in danger from traffic than their secular neighbours.