TEMPUS, a European Union program aimed at supporting higher education in neighboring countries, awarded Israel's Sami Shamoon Academic College of Engineering (SCE) a 1 million Euro grant to teach innovation.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Israel Space Agency (ISA) Director General Zvi Kaplan signed a joint statement to expand cooperation in civil space activities, including in Earth and space science, life sciences, space exploration and other areas of mutual interest.

Technion leads almost all European engineering-technology universities in the rankings

 According to Shanghai Jiao Tong University's annual rankings, The Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, was ranked 38th among the world's top universities in technology in 2010, advancing two spots since 2009.

Professor Elon Lindenstrauss from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Einstein Institute of Mathematics was awarded the prestigious Fields Medal for 2010.

In order to encourage large financial services companies and international banks to set up financial R&D centers in Israel, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Labor may pay as much as 50 percent of the workers’ wages at the financial R&D centers for up to five years.

Storwize Inc., a data compression hardware and software company focused on improving storage, has been acquired by IBM Corp.

French digital security company Gemalto bought Israel's Trivnet, one of the leading players in the growing Mobile Financial Services space, enabling mobile payments, mobile commerce, mobile wallet "banking the unbanked", and mobile money transfer. Through Trivnet's system, communications providers can offer their subscribers financial services.

Goldman Sachs projects higher economic growth for Israel in 2011 than Israeli leaders have so far estimated. Goldman Sachs analyst Ahmet Akarli predicts 3.5% real GDP growth for Israel in 2010 and 4.3% growth in 2011.

Kesselman and Kesselman PricewaterhouseCoopers in a recent report shows investments in Israeli start-ups rose 21% from the first quarter to $206 million in the second quarter of 2010, and 27% from the corresponding quarter of 2009.

In a joint initiative, Amdocs, which develops billing and customer management relations solutions for telecommunications providers, and US telecommunications giant AT&T are setting up the Amdocs Innovations Center, which will enable Israeli companies to develop products and solutions with Amdocs for AT&T.

A record 1.6 million tourists visited Israel in the first half of 2010, up 39% compared with the first half of 2009 and up 10% compared with the first half of 2008 - the previous record. Like previous months, tourism in June also set a new record with 259,000 tourists visiting, up 24% from 2009 and 8% from June 2008.

The Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee unanimously approved a bill to establish an economic court separate from the Tel Aviv District Court to deal solely with economic cases.

International investors and innovation aficionados are invited to rejoice with the launching of a new publication celebrating Israel's innovative success including a compilation of some of Israel's most revolutionary technological breakthroughs across several industries, including in Cleantech, Agrotech, Life Sciences, IT, Communications, and Homeland Security.

Israel's ECI Telecom has won its largest ever contract, an $800 million deal with British Telecom's Openreach to help establish a large-scale super-fast broadband network in Britain.

The Swiss Institute for Management Development (IMD) ranked Israel 17th out of 58 of the world's most economically developed nations in its 2010 World Competitiveness Yearbook, raising it by seven spots from its 2009 ranking.

Israel became the first non-European state to head the EUREKA Network, the leading industrial R&D initiative in Europe and the largest of its kind in the world with investments of 1.5 billion euros every year. Israel's Office of the Chief Scientist head Eli Opper will serve as the organization's chairman.

Intel Corporation acquired Israeli WiMAX fables semiconductor vendor Comsys Communication and Signal Processing Ltd for $30 million.

Israel's Makhteshim Agan, the world's biggest generic agrochemical maker, is acquiring Iowa-based Albaugh, a leading US producer of glyphosate and other generic herbicides, two of Makhteshim's core businesses.

Kamada won U.S. approval for its treatment of Alpha-1 Antitrypsin deficiency (AATD), a lung-damaging condition that is mainly found in Europe and North America.

"The Israeli science has a special zest to it, one which we are thrilled to encounter time and time again. Together with Merck Serono, this special zest can create the next blockbuster drug" - Inter-Lab Chief Executive Regine Shevach

Patent applications recognized in Israel will be accepted internationally as well

Intel Capital, Intel Corporation's investment arm is investing $11 million in Israeli Jordan Valley Semiconductors Ltd.