Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko criticized a Jewish regional governor for not keeping the country’s Jewish population “under control.” In a three-hour televised address on Wednesday, Lukashenko called out Semyon Shapiro, governor of the Minsk region, for not chastising Yuri Zisser, the Jewish head of the Tut.by website. Tut.by has criticized Lukashenko’s tax on those who…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed up his first partners on Wednesday for a new coalition government, a lawmaker and spokeswoman said, putting him on course to lead a heavily right-leaning cabinet. The deals with the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism (UTJ) party and centrist Kulanu give Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud control of 46 of parliament’s 120…
Jean Nidetch, the 91-year-old co-founder of Weight Watchers died early Wednesday morning in her Fort Lauderdale, Florida home. Born Jean Evelyn Slutsky in Brooklyn in 1923, Nidetch, was the daughter of a cabdriver and a manicurist. After she married, the unhappy and overweight Nidetch tried fad diet after fad diet to no avail, but when…
According to the lawsuit filed Tuesday in New York State Supreme Court, Matthew Luke was fired in February 10 days after he complained about the behavior of his supervisor, Osman Mahmud, to human resources. Luke worked as Al Jazeera America’s supervisor of media and archive management beginning in May 2013, before the news channel had…
Two foreign nationals were found dead after an avalanche hit a village in a popular trekking destination north of the Nepalese capital Kathmandu, the interior ministry said on Wednesday, but aid workers were able to locate hundreds of others reported missing. Up to 250 trekkers were feared missing after an avalanche on Tuesday hit a…
(JTA) — The Student Senate at Earlham College, a liberal arts school in Indiana, passed an Israel divestment resolution. The resolution, which passed last week by consensus, calls for divestment from three companies that operate in the West Bank: Motorola Solutions, Hewlett Packard and Caterpillar. The Student Senate “agreed that passing the resolution was in…
Jewish communities will mark the first anniversary of the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens by Palestinian terrorists with a Unity Day. The commemoration, set for June 3, was developed by the parents of Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shear and Eyal Yifrach in conjunction with Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat and the Gesher organization. Organizations representing…
(JTA) — So, the Israel Defense Forces won’t be drafting haredi Orthodox Israelis, after all. That’s the upshot of a coalition deal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will reportedly sign with United Torah Judaism, Israel’s Ashkenazi haredi Orthodox party. The agreement, which Likud and UTJ could ink as soon as Wednesday, would repeal a spate…
Argentina’s foreign minister has resigned his membership in the Buenos Aires AMIA Jewish Center that was targeted by a terrorist bomb in 1994. Hector Timerman, who is Jewish, sent a letter on Tuesday to the president of AMIA expressing his “indeclinable resignation” due to the “obstructionist actions” that the institution has made against a deal…
Russian bookstores began removing a graphic novel about the Holocaust from their shelves due to the large swastika on its cover. The stores reportedly removed the book “Maus” by Art Spiegelman over concerns about raids by the authorities to remove the symbol ahead of May 9, when Russia will observe 70 years since the victory…
The president of the International Committee of the Red Cross attacked his organization’s World War II record, saying it “lost its moral compass.” Peter Maurer, presenting the keynote address Tuesday at a Geneva commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Nazi death camps, said the ICRC “failed to protect civilians and, most notably,…
