A blogger on the Los Angeles fashion scene apologized for posting photos of herself in front of a Jewish mausoleum on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Rachel Nguyen wrote Wednesday on her That’s Chic blog, “I owe everyone a big humble apology,” calling the blog post of two days earlier “really poorly timed.” Nguyen, 23, had…
Democratic U.S. Representative Henry Waxman of California, a leading liberal who helped craft President Barack Obama’s landmark healthcare overhaul, said on Thursday he will retire from Congress at the end of this year. “In 1974, I announced my first campaign for Congress,” Waxman, 74, said in a statement. “Today, I am announcing that I have…
The Economist apologized for a cartoon that was published in its weekly print and Internet editions that was characterized as anti-Semitic. The cartoon had been removed on Jan. 21, several days after it was published alongside an article, with a brief note that the cartoon “caused offense to some readers.” The cartoon published with the…
Documents from the Nuremberg Trials found in a flea market in Israel were sold at auction. The trove of 500 pages, including documents used to convict top Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials, sold on Wednesday for $10,000, a spokesman for the Kedem Auction House in Jerusalem told the Associated Press. An American collector bought the…
The president of Belgium’s parliament condemned the actions of a lawmaker who said that Zionists were responsible for the Holocaust and performed a quasi-Nazi salute in parliament. “I would like to reinforce my condemnation of these hateful acts,” Andre Flahaut said on Jan. 23 in reference to the actions of Laurent Louis, who on Jan….
Israel’s newly fortified Egyptian border has delivered a severe blow to drug smugglers, forcing its hashish and marijuana smokers to deal with a new kind of high – soaring prices. The ravines that snake past rocky red mountains once provided a popular, low-risk route for traffickers to run drugs, women and African migrants into Israel…
Heavy snows caused the partial collapse of the roof of the State Jewish Theater, paralyzing one of Romanian Jewry’s foremost cultural institutions. A snowstorm on Jan. 25 devastated about a third of the roof of the 19th century building that houses the theater, the institution’s director, Maia Morgenstern, told JTA. “Unfortunately, the part of the…
Actress Scarlett Johansson has ended her relationship with Oxfam, saying she and the humanitarian organization have “a fundamental difference of opinion in regards to the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.” The announcement Wednesday evening comes after a protracted debate over her role as spokesperson for SodaStream, which operates a factory in the West Bank. Johansson…
A sex offender was arrested about a month after being turned away from a Jewish day school campus in California. Theodore Lorigo, 42, a registered sex offender for kidnapping a child under the age of 14 “with intent to commit lewd or lascivious acts,” according to the Megan’s Law website, arrived at the the South…
Representatives of European Jewish groups defended ritual circumcision at a hearing of the Council of Europe. Officials from the European Jewish Congress and the Conference of European Rabbis presented facts and defenses of Jewish male ritual circumcision during the hearing on Tuesday. The hearing was called after the council’s Parliamentary Assembly, or PACE, passed a…
A second Cuban spy of five whose release from prison is seen as critical to the freedom of Alan Gross will likely soon be in Cuba. Fernando Gonzalez, one of the “Cuban Five” convicted of spying offenses in 2001, will be transferred to immigration lockup at the end of February to await deportation to Cuba,…
