President Obama enacted a three-year extension to a visa program for religious workers. Obama on Sept. 28 signed the law, passed by Congress with overwhelming margins earlier in September, extending the Special Immigrant Non-Minister Religious Worker Program until Sept. 30, 2015. The legislation, first passed in 1990, has a built-in sunset provision and has been…
Israel’s “go-it-alone” option to attack Iran’s nuclear sites has set the Middle East on edge and unsettled its main ally at the height of a U.S. presidential election campaign. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exudes impatience, saying Tehran is barely a year from a “red line” for atomic capacity. Many fellow Israelis, however, fear a unilateral…
Two Cuban Jewish leaders visited jailed American contractor Alan Gross and said they found him in “good spirits.” Adela Dworin, head of Cuba’s Jewish Community, and David Prinstein, president of the Patronato Synagogue and Jewish community vice president, spent two hours with Gross on Sept. 27 in the military hospital where he is imprisoned, according…
Israel expressed “disappointment” over the Argentinean decision to accept an Iranian invitation to bilateral talks. “The Government of Israel received with great disappointment the news about the Argentine acceptance of a meeting with the Islamic Republic of Iran on a Foreign Ministers level. Iran does not come with clean hands to this dialogue about global…
Billionaire George Soros has pledged $1 million to a Super PAC supporting President Obama. The donation reported over the weekend by the New York Times will go to Priorities USA Action. The donation reportedly was announced Sept. 27 at a luncheon held by the Democracy Alliance, a group of liberal donors, by Michael Vachon, a…
Former New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, who led the company for 34 years in a period of growth that made it a multibillion-dollar media enterprise, died on Saturday at the age of 86, the newspaper said. Sulzberger, whose family bought the Times in 1896, died at his home in Southampton, New York, after…
The Obama administration reaffirmed its commitment to current levels of funding for Egypt’s military while announcing new civil assistance programs. “The U.S. Government’s Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program, which has amounted to $1.3 billion annually, underpins strong U.S.-Egyptian security relations and works to develop the Egyptian military as a professional and disciplined defense force,” said…
President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday expressed solidarity on the goal of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, the White House said, amid signs of easing tensions over their differences on how to confront Tehran. Obama, who opted not to meet Netanyahu on his U.S. visit, spoke by phone…
The United Nations on Friday called on all sides in the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program to tone down “shrill war talk,” the first U.N. reaction to clashes at the world body this week between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “It’s obvious that harsh tones and rhetoric are not going…
BERLIN—Germany’s Ministry of Justice has presented a draft law to permit circumcisions by doctors and mohels in response to uncertainty about the procedure fueled by a Cologne court’s ban on the procedure. The Cologne court’s June ruling, which angered many among the country’s 4 million Muslims and 100,000 Jews, held that circumcision deprives a child…
A leader of Germany’s Jewish community reportedly showed a verbal assailant a pistol after being taunted on Yom Kippur. The secretary general of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Stephan Kramer, told AFP the incident occurred on Wednesday afternoon as he walked home during Yom Kippur with his four children near the Kurfuerstendamm, one…
