Monday Night News Briefs from Eretz Yisrael

Health officials want increased regulations for eateries, including wedding halls and restaurants. Officials explain food handlers do not have sufficient regulations and as a result, there are too many avoidable incidents of infection and illness.

**Rami Levy, who owns a major supermarket chain across Israel, is expressing interest in buying out the ailing Ohf Ha’emek factory.

**A 36-year-old male was stabbed and moderately wounded near the Shfaram office of Bituach Leumi on Monday afternoon. Police are investigating.

**Government agencies report a sharp increase in visits to ministry and official government websites in 2008. More than 2.3 million payments were made online in 2008, representing a 76% increase from 2007. Online payments in 2008 totaled NIS 6.3 billion.

**40 people are registered for the Transportation Ministry’s first Chinese language driver training course which will last for five months.

**Israel’s Counter-Terror Bureau on Monday released an alert warning of a planned Hizbullah kidnapping plot to mark a year since the death of the organization’s deputy commander Imad Mughniyeh. The alert emphasizes the danger to Israeli businessmen in Arab/Islamic countries.

18:30: Firebomb attack against an Israeli vehicle near Beit Omer, southwest of PA-occupied Bet Lechem. No injuries.

**An Israeli vehicle was bombarded with rocks east of PA Kalkilye. No injuries. There were reports of damage.

** Arabs on Monday desecrated the shul in the Ma’arat HaMachpelah, damaging seforim and siddurim.

**Responding to Purim celebrations at the kever of Dr. Baruch Goldstein, the army declared the Kiryat Arba site a closed military zone on Thursday night.

**The family of missing IAF airman Ron Arad on Monday night visited the Shalit family tent opposite the Prime Minister’s Residence.

**Hizbullah deputy commander Sheikh Naim Kassam on Monday night announced the chance of another military conflict with Israel in the near future is slim, adding one can never know what the long-term future will bring.

20:10: Two Arab males stopped by security forces in Jerusalem’s Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood on Monday night were found to be on their way to a stabbing attack. One was carrying a commando knife.

**Syria insists the site bombed two years ago by Israel was not a nuclear facility as America and Israel claimed. Damascus told UAE media that it has begun rebuilding the site which is a “security facility”.

**DM Ehud Barak on Monday night visited the Shalit vigil tent opposite the Prime Minister’s Residence.

**A 15-year-old female sustained moderate injuries on Monday night in a fall from a first story on Jerusalem’s Bar Ilan Street. She was transported to the trauma unit of Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital.

**A skull was found in a carton in a room for rent in Kibbutz Gesher. Experts believe the skull is quite old. It was transferred to the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute for examination.