Powerful explosions sent thick smoke billowing from the Nairobi mall where militants from Somalia’s al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab group threatened to kill hostages on the third day of a raid in which at least 59 have already died. The blast was followed by other smaller detonations and volleys of gunfire but there was no indication…
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the Civil Administration on Sunday night to take the necessary action to allow Jewish settlers back into a contested house in the West Bank city of Hebron. In April 2012, a group of settlers moved into the house, claiming that they had purchased the property, which is located not…
Kenyan security forces launched a “major” assault late Sunday on the upscale Nairobi mall where an unknown number of hostages are being held by al-Qaida-linked militants, in an operation officials said would end the two-day standoff that had already killed 68 people. Within a few hours, a military spokesman said most of the hostages had…
The World Jewish Congress slammed a Polish magazine report that alleged corrupt practices in the restitution and management of Jewish property in Poland. In a statement issued Sept. 18, WJC President Ronald Lauder called the report in the Polish edition of Forbes magazine “littered with factual errors” and “sensationalist,” and its allegations “unfounded and slanderous.”…
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives are on course to win a historic absolute majority in Sunday’s election, according to a projection based on exit polls and some results from broadcaster ARD. The projection put Merkel’s conservatives on 42.5 percent, a whisker over the combined total for the left parties who together scored 41.6 percent. The…
An Israeli was seriously wounded on Sunday in a shooting attack near the West Bank city of Hebron. He was evacuated to the Hadassah Hospital Ein Karem for treatment. Initial details revealed that the victim had been standing at the Pharmacy District checkpoint near the Tomb of the Patriarchs. Clashes erupted in the area and…
Israel for the first time in six years on Sunday allowed building materials for private projects to enter the Gaza Strip via its border crossings. Ninety truckloads of cement, gravel and iron passed through the border, said Raed Fattouh, the Palestinian Authority liaison at the Kerem Shalom crossing. It marked a easing of Israel’s of…
Some eighty thousand men gathered at the Western Well for the holiday priestly blessing. Some 100 kohanim blessed the men gathered for morning prayers on Sunday, according to a statement issued by the office of the Rabbi of the Western Wall. Among those in attendance at the prayer service were the chief rabbis of Israel,…
French police have arrested a young man suspected of making death threats against staff of a Jewish school in Toulouse. The unnamed 20-year-old was arrested over the weekend near Vesoul, a city in eastern France, for allegedly threatening last week to kill people at the school where the Islamist extremist Mohammed Merah last year gunned…
A motion introduced by a Jewish legislator in Ontario to reaffirm the Canadian province’s commitment to religious freedom passed unanimously. The motion introduced by Monte Kwinter, a veteran Liberal Member of the Provincial Parliament was specifically meant to distinguish Ontario from neighboring Quebec’s proposed ban on religious symbols in the workplace. The proposed Charter of…
A town near Strasbourg has unveiled dozens of precious Judaica items that were recently discovered during renovation of a former synagogue. The items were presented to the public Sunday and were hidden before the Holocaust at what is now the new cultural center of Dambach-la-Ville, a town of 2,000 residents near Strasbourg in eastern France,…
