After Wendy Shanker published her first book, “The Fat Girl’s Guide to Life,” she thought she had fought and won her battle for self-acceptance. But after being diagnosed with Wegener’s disease, a life-threatening autoimmune disorder, she found that her struggle to come to terms with her body — a body that was now slowly deteriorating — was far from over.
“Decolonizing Architecture,” an exhibition on view at REDCAT, the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater in downtown’s Walt Disney Concert Hall, assumes that the current residents of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank will ultimately have to evacuate their homes. The three architects behind the show appear to have no doubt that those areas will be transferred to Palestinian control.
The Australian government is appealing a court ruling that spared an alleged Nazi war criminal from being extradited to Hungary. Home Affairs Minister Brendan O\’Connor approved the extradition of Charles Zentai in 2009, but a Federal Court judge overturned the decision last year. The government on Tuesday appealed the ruling that said Zentai, 89, of Perth, was not eligible for extradition. Zentai, a former soldier in the Hungarian army, is wanted for questioning in the murder of an 18-year-old Jewish man in Nazi-occupied Budapest in 1944.
New York City snow removal trucks dumped tons of snow from the area\’s recent blizzard into the city\’s largest Jewish cemetery, toppling 21 headstones. An iron fence around Brooklyn\’s Washington Cemetery also was damaged when crews from the Sanitation Department dumped the snow into the cemetery over New Year\’s weekend, the New York Post reported Wednesday. The damage was discovered Sunday. Family members of some relatives buried in the cemetery have visited in recent days to check on the graves. Several cars parked next to the cemetery also were buried; some were damaged.
Lebanon has asked the United Nations to make sure that Israel does not encroach on energy resources in its territorial waters. In a letter sent Tuesday to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Lebanon Foreign Minister Ali al-Shami called on the international body to ensure that “Israel does not exploit Lebanon’s marine and oil wealth, which lies within its exclusive economic zone,” Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported. The letter follows an announcement last week by the Houston, Texas-based Noble Energy that a natural gas field dubbed Leviathan discovered in Israel\’s territorial waters contains an estimated 16 trillion cubic feet of the natural resource.
In the half century that this reporter has been writing about Hollywood, the Oscars and domestic and foreign films, not a year has gone by without prominent movies and documentaries focusing on the Holocaust, the Nazi era or World War II.
Israel\’s Knesset voted to form a parliamentary committee to investigate left-wing Israeli organizations that criticize the Israeli military\’s actions. The initiative, proposed by the Yisrael Beiteinu Party, passed Wednesday by a vote of 47 to 16. The committee will be charged with determining if the groups are funded by foreign countries or by other groups with links to terrorism. Israeli human rights groups have criticized the initiative.
Money woes apparently have caused the shutdown of the Vineland Kosher Poultry plant in southern New Jersey. A union official representing 160 workers at the plant told the Daily Journal newspaper that the factory halted production Dec. 30. Plant management did not return a reporter\’s phone calls. Financial troubles are believed to be behind the closure. In October, the company warned the city it might lay off 50 workers, or 25 percent of its workforce, by the end of the year. Plant owners also had looked to sell the company.
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