Youths clashed with police in Cairo on Saturday as protests at new powers assumed by President Mohamed Mursi stretched into a second day, confronting Egypt with a crisis that has exposed the split between newly empowered Islamists and their opponents. A handful of hardcore activists hurling rocks battled riot police in the streets near Tahrir…
Israel eased restrictions on Gaza fishermen and farmers on Saturday, Palestinian officials said, advancing a three-day-old truce brokered by Egypt after a week of fierce fighting. Gaza’s children also headed back to school in their hundreds of thousands, in another indication normal life was returning after eight days of fierce cross-border fighting in which 166…
Larry Hagman, who created one of American television’s most supreme villains in the conniving, amoral oilman J.R. Ewing of “Dallas,” died on Friday, according to a co-star. He was 81. Hagman died at a Dallas hospital of complications from his battle with throat cancer, the Dallas Morning News reported, quoting a statement from his family….
The body of the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat will be exhumed on Tuesday, eight years after his death, in an investigation to establish if he was murdered, a Palestinian official said on Saturday. A French court opened a murder inquiry in August into Arafat’s death in Paris after a Swiss institute said it had discovered…
As conflict erupted in Gaza last week, Israel’s officials and supporters embarked on what proved a successful diplomatic and media campaign to ensure the United States remained right behind them. Israel’s ambassador to Washington Michael Oren became a regular fixture on cable news channels and talk shows. Pro-Israel lobby groups such as the American Israel…
Spain has announced that it will ease the naturalization of Sephardic Jews whose ancestors were expelled 500 years ago. Sephardic Jews already benefit from a preferential naturalization procedure that requires them to live in Spain for only two years before claiming citizenship. But the change, which was announced on Thursday, means that Jews will have…
The United States is concerned about Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi’s decision to assume sweeping powers, the U.S. State Department said on Friday. Mursi on Thursday issued a decree that puts his decisions above legal challenge until a new parliament is elected, causing angry protests by his opponents and violent clashes in central Cairo and other…
The Oslo Jewish Museum will open an exhibition on the Holocaust in Norway exactly 70 years after hundreds of Norwegian Jews were shipped to Auschwitz. The museum will open the exhibition on Nov. 26 at exactly 2:55 p.m., the time of departure 70 years ago of the passenger ship Luna, which carried 552 Jews destined…
Israel’s domestic security agency arrested several Palestinians for allegedly blowing up a bus in Tel Aviv. The Shin Bet revealed that its agents had arrested the suspects, including an Arab Israeli, for the attack earlier this week on a bus, Israeli media reported. The security service did not say how many suspects were arrested. The…
Both on the diplomatic and military front, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will draw some comfort from his offensive against Gaza as he switches his gaze once more to his main strategic challenge – Iran. Israel views Iran’s nuclear programme as an existential threat in a totally different league to the problems posed by the…
Hamas Islamists enforced a fragile two-day-old truce on Friday by evacuating Palestinians from a “no-go” border zone after Israel shot dead a Gaza resident there in the first fatality since the ceasefire. The rare move by the group in control of the Gaza Strip followed intervention by Egyptian mediators who urged both sides to take…
