Update from Sky News: More than 250 people have reportedly been killed as Egyptian security forces cleared two protest camps loyal to deposed president Mohamed Morsi.

Sky’s Sam Kiley, reporting from the Rabaa al Adawiya camp in Cairo, said it was “under very heavy gunfire” and was a “massive military assault on largely unarmed civilians in very large numbers”.

He added: “There are machine gun rounds and snipers on the roof that are preventing people from getting any closer to the field hospital.

Egyptian police broke up a Muslim Brotherhood sit-in near the Giza zoo in Cairo, in an attempt to clear the other at Rabaa El-Adawiya square after dawn on Wednesday. Egypt’s caretaker government has pledged to disperse the thousands of Islamists who were gathered in both venues, al Ahram reports.

The Cairo ambulance authority said five were killed and at least 52 wounded, but the Brotherhood put the death toll at 121, citing reports from a makeshift hospital located near the Rabaa sit-in.

Egypt’s state television said two policemen were killed and six wounded during the attempt to clear out the two sit-ins. All entrances to the sites are blocked by security forces.

Some 200 protesters were arrested on charges of carrying firearms, knives and gas canisters, the state news agency MENA reported.

“In accordance with government instructions to take necessary measures towards the sit-ins at Rabaa Al-Adawiya and Nahda, and for the safety of the country, security forces started taking measures to disperse the sit-ins early Wednesday,” the interior ministry said in a statement.”

Live television footage showed riot police firing tear gas at protesters at one of the entrances of Rabaa El-Adawiya mosque in northern Cairo, where tens of thousands have been camping for six weeks to demand the reinstatement of ousted President Mohamed Morsi.

Brotherhood spokesman Gehad El-Haddad accused police snipers of firing at Rabaa protesters from the rooftop of surrounding buildings.

Al-Nahar and ONTV satellite channels said their cameras were confiscated by police.

At the Nahda camp, extending down a palm tree-lined boulevard next to the Cairo zoo in Giza, police used loudspeakers to urge protesters to leave as sounds of gunfire rang out.

“Armed men in both camps fired at police forces once they started dispersing the sit-ins … police were able to control Nahda and are still combing the surrounding area,” the interior ministry said in another statement on its official Facebook page.

“The police forces only used tear gas despite being attacked by live ammunition [from protesters].”

The Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Labor will allocate 500 million shekel ($140 million) to the integration of Haredim in the labor market, Minister Naftali Bennett announced today during a debate at the Knesset State Control Committee, ma’ariv reported.

“Integrating Haredim in the labor market is an acute national mission for the state of Israel,” the chair of the Jewish Home party said.

According to Bennett, “the dominant dynamic here is poverty. People who do not possess the economic ability to study Torah from morning till night would naturally seek a job. This is a blessed thing, and we must start working [to encourage it].”

Bennett added that his ministry is developing several axes along which to test the best way of integrating Haredim. “We want to direct Haredim to seek employment in areas where the market needs workers,” he said. “The current situation is that people are going to study and become proficient in areas the market doesn’t need. There’s a lack of coordination between what is and what’s needed.”

He gave one example: “Everybody is studying Law, instead of programming. There aren’t enough programmers out there, and any reasonably proficient programmer will be hired. The manufacturers are crying out, the hi-tech market is crying out for a workforce. That’s why we work all the time with the field and receive feedback. And the people in the field know well what works and what doesn’t, and we base our investment on their impressions.”

Bennett said the process will necessarily be one of trial and error, but his aim is to see in ten years the majority of Haredim integrated into the market.

Michal Tzuk, a Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Labor official in charge of employment, told the committee about a plan to create a prestigious program to prepare Haredim looking to work in hi-tech, which will include academic education and promoting Haredim as skilled workers.

Residents of southern Israel who need information on the availability of their regular daycare services, employee rights and responsibilities associated with the security situation, and essential worker schedules are encouraged to call a hotline established by the Ministry of Employment.

Dial 1-800-201-180.

President Obama on Friday renewed America’s 33-year-old state of emergency against Iran.

The status was instituted by President Jimmy Carter in 1979 following Iran’s Islamic revolution, and allows the President greater autonomy in imposing sanctions and dealing with “unusual and extraordinary threat[s] to the national security, foreign policy and economy”.

Obama’s announcement followed a Treasury Department decision to impose additional sanctions against Iranian officials and institutions oppressing and censoring Iranian citizens.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said sanctions against Iran were meant to keep Iran from cutting Iranians off from the world with an “electronic curtain”.

Officials being sanctioned include the Minister of Communication and Information Technology, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, and the Press Supervisory Board.

On Monday, United Torah Judaism MK Moshe Gafni, who is Chairman of the Finance Committee, spoke out against the saturated (multi-level) burial plan being advocated by the Ministry of Religious Services.

“According to a report presented to the Knesset Legislative Committee, multi-level burial is not economically acceptable, because of the exorbitant costs involved, as well as the fact that it is not beneficial to the public,” Gafni told the Minister of Religious Services Yaakov Margi (Shas), who was invited to a meeting dealing with budget allocations for the multi-level burial project.

“A large portion of the public would prefer traditional field burial, even if it entails going long distances [to visit the dead], and we must facilitate it,” Gafni added.

Minister of Religious Services Margi argued that his office “held several deliberations last year and we are exploring alternatives. There are several restricted sites which won’t be put to use in the next century, and so there’s no reason not to designate them for [conventional] cemeteries, and we plan to work towards this.”

In the state of Israel more than 35,000 Jews die each a year. The conventional cemeteries permit the burial of 270 persons per dunam (roughly 68 per acre), which means that about a thousand acres each year are converted into cemeteries.

Shortage of land for residential construction, as well as areas appropriate for burial is a strategic problem the state of Israel is facing these days.

Saturated Burial is the general name for a number of burial practices, all of which comply with the rules of Jewish halacha and have received the approval of the Chief Rabbinate, according to the Ministry of Religious services.

These methods are in use at this stage mainly in Jerusalem, Haifa and its surroundings, the Tel Aviv area and the Sharon. Saturation Burial has significantly reduced the amount of land required for burial.

The rationale behind these burial practices is that placing more dead bodies per acre of land (the numbers range from 250 to 600 per acre) would spare the most limited resource in Israel: land.

The campaign against multi-level burials has been ceaseless in recent months, after the Ministry of Religious Services embarked on its campaign to endorse multi-level burials. Protest posters (pashkvilim) against “the edict that is spreading to every city” were distributed in major Haredi neighborhoods.

Some Haredi authorities have prohibited multi-level burial, saying it isn’t considered burial at all.

The Ministry of religious Services has suggested that once multiple- and mausoleum-burials become common, families of the deceased would be required to pay a great deal more if they wish to stick with conventional burial.

Galei Tzahal reports that 22,470 Yordim (Israeli emigrants) returned to Israel in the past two and a half years because of of new initiatives taken by the Ministry of Immigration to help bring them back. The initiatives included special perks (unnamed) and a relaxed interpretation of what perks the Yordim were actually entitled to, in favor of the returning Israelis.

In Israel, it pays to be a woman if you want to get ahead as legal clerk, lawyer or judge.

In a quiet revolution, women have begun to outnumber men in the Israeli legal profession, and while, for the moment, there are still more active lawyers who are men (28,231) than women (22,670), that gap is quickly closing.

Here are some numbers that may surprise you:

New graduating lawyers: 54% women (1128), 46% men (961). (Source: Israel Bar Association)

Ministry of Justice employees: 69% women (2564), 31% men (1145) (Source: Ministry of Justice)

Court Presidents: 71.5% women (15), 28.5% men (6) (Source: Court Spokesperson)

Judges appointed in 2011: 51% women (321), 49% men (305)

Soon men may need to demand affirmative action if they want to move up in the legal world.

So where does it still pay to be a man?

The last holdout where men still outnumber women is that of partners in the top private Israeli law firms, where men make up 73% of the partners compared to the women’s 27% (Source: Dun and Bradstreet).

The other last bastion of male control is of course as Rabbinical Court judges.

But not to worry, women are working to take those over too.