(Reuters) – President Barack Obama has asked former White House official Ron Klain to coordinate the U.S. government’s response to the Ebola outbreak, an administration official said on Friday. Klain will report to homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco and national security adviser Susan Rice, the official said. “Klain, an attorney, comes to the job with…
(Reuters) — Trekkers battling a Himalayan blizzard were left helpless after porters fainted from the cold, a survivor of one of Nepal’s worst mountain disasters said on Friday, as rescue teams resumed a hunt for 10 missing hikers and the death toll reached 29. The dead included trekkers from Canada, India, Israel and Poland, as…
Israel is holding an Ebola identification training exercise at Ben Gurion Airport. The exercise Friday will simulate the arrival of a passenger with Ebola, including initial questioning as well as evacuation and hospital treatment. On Thursday night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held additional consultations to evaluate the readiness of state agencies to fight Ebola….
The leader of the Palestinian group Hamas on Thursday called on Muslims to defend the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, saying Israel was trying to seize the site, revered in Islam and Judaism and focus of a Palestinian uprising in 2000. Khaled Meshaal, speaking in the Qatari capital Doha where he lives in exile, said:…
Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian boy in a village in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, local medics and residents told Reuters. Bahaa Badr, 13, was shot in the chest as Israeli forces entered Beit Liqya near the dividing line with Israel and were pelted with stones by local youths, the sources said….
Comedian Joan Rivers, who passed away last month at the age of 81, died of a complication during a medical procedure, the New York Chief Medical Examiner’s Office said on Thursday. Rivers was having an examination of the back of the throat and vocal cords at a New York clinic when she stopped breathing and…
Rabbi Avi Weiss, a religiously progressive voice within Orthodoxy who has spearheaded the push to give women a greater role in the faith, announced he is stepping down on Thursday. Speaking from the pulpit of his Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, Weiss told the packed congregation of his plans to end his tenure as rabbi. Many…
Nearly three-quarters of the New York City listings of private homes for rent on Airbnb, a popular online marketplace, violate state zoning and sublet laws, the state’s attorney general said on Thursday. Commercial users are also illegally using the website to run multi-million-dollar, large-scale rental operations, according to a report by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman….
Five nights a week, Florida Democrats work the phones from a half-empty strip mall in this conservative Gulf Coast community, their tables cluttered with call sheets and cookie plates. “Charlie Crist for Governor” signs are taped to the walls beside framed photographs of Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy. Famously purple in presidential races, the…
Rabbi Barry Freundel recorded secret videos of at least six women women showering at the mikvah in his synagogue, according to allegations filed by authorities at his arraignment on Wednesday afternoon. Freundel, 62, pleaded not guilty to a charge of voyeurism, a misdemeanor, and was freed without bond. The details from the charging documents were…
The validity of religious conversions performed by the rabbi charged with videotaping women in his mikveh may be challenged, an email from the rabbi’s synagogue suggests. Rabbi Barry Freundel was charged October 15 with secretly recording at least six women in the changing room and shower of the mikveh at Kesher Israel, his Washington, D.C….
