Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who survived an assassination attempt at the hands of a gunman met yesterday with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, discussed Bloomberg’s efforts to push for additional gun-control regulations in the wake of the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., a City Hall source told the New…
Russian President Vladimir Putin has granted citizenship to Gerard Depardieu, the French movie star who is quitting his homeland to avoid a tax hike on the rich, the Kremlin said on Thursday. The “Cyrano de Bergerac” actor bought a house across the border in Belgium last year to avoid a new tax rate for millionaires…
A Chabad-affiliated yeshiva in Worcester, Mass., has launched a last-ditch effort to prevent its imminent closure. The Yeshiva Academy is hoping to raise $472,000 in donations before Friday, when the building in which it is housed will be auctioned off by the Internal Revenue Service. By Wednesday afternoon, the academy had raised $35,564 in online…
They are young and they are driven. They got half a million Israelis out on the streets demanding social justice. Now they want their votes. The leaders of a grassroots social protest movement that swept Israel in 2011 have shot to the top of a rejuvenated Labour party that polls say will at least double…
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was discharged from a New York hospital on Wednesday after being treated for a blood clot near her brain and her doctors expect her to make a full recovery, the State Department said. Clinton, who has not been seen in public since Dec. 7, was at New York-Presbyterian Hospital under…
Speaker John Boehner made a U-turn on Wednesday to clear the way for approval of $60 billion in Superstorm Sandy relief by mid-January after drawing withering fire from fellow Republicans, including New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, for canceling an earlier vote. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives will now vote on Friday on a $9 billion…
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on Wednesday blamed U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, a fellow Republican, for delaying a vote on federal disaster aid for Superstorm Sandy, calling the inaction “disappointing and disgusting.” “There is only one group to blame for the continued suffering of these innocent (storm) victims – the House majority, and their…
Most Americans believe in love at first sight, have never read their partner’s email and think good sex is very important to a successful relationship, a poll released on Wednesday showed. They also cited a partner’s TV choices as the most annoying source of strife – more than household chores, bedside reading or cleaning the…
Governors Chris Christie of New Jersey and Andrew Cuomo of New York excoriated the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday for delaying action on a $60.4 billion Superstorm Sandy disaster aid bill, according to a joint statement. Lawmakers ended their session on Tuesday night without voting on the measure, a move that Cuomo and Christie…
An Austrian lawmaker accused the Vienna Philharmonic of attempting to conceal the institution’s sympathy for the country’s Nazi leadership during World War II. Harald Walser, a historian and Parliament member for the Austrian Greens, made the accusations in a recent interview for the ORF national public service broadcaster. Walser cited a listing on the Philharmonic’s…
A Tunisian minister wished a Merry Christmas to the country’s tiny Jewish community. “I want to wish all the Jews of Tunisia a happy holiday tonight, it is a big holiday all over the world,” Houcine El Jaziri, Tunisia’s state secretary for immigration and Tunisians living abroad, said while participating in the talk show “Attasia”…
