The state will permit a Palestinian man to travel to Germany to complete a Ph.D. in engineering, in a reversal of its earlier decision, government attorneys announced this week. Luay Kfafi, a Gaza native who has been studying at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank since 2000, was barred by the Shin Bet security service from going abroad due to "intelligence information linking him to terror activity." But on Sunday, the day before the High Court of Justice was scheduled to hear a petition against the travel ban that was filed on his behalf by the civil rights organization Gisha, the state informed him that it will permit him to leave, on condition that he remain abroad for at least two years. (Amira Hass)

Some 1.6 million Israelis, almost half of them children, were living below the poverty line in 2006, according to data from the National Insurance Institute's poverty report for 2006, which will be released shortly. Israel is apparently still the industrialized country with the highest rates of poverty and economic inequality, but in 2006, as a result of increases in welfare allowances, employment rates and the minimum wage, poverty declined somewhat. Economic inequality - the disparity between rich and poor - did not shrink. (Ruth Sinai)