Security forces shot dead 16 protesters at several demonstrations across Syria on Friday demanding the removal of President Bashar Assad, a main activists\’ group coordinating protests said.
Dana Bash, a senior CNN correspondent, stepped down as a trustee of Jewish Women International because of its abortion rights advocacy. \”Bash came under scrutiny for her relationship with JWI due to the organization’s long held position on reproductive choice,\” the group said in a statement Friday.
In his story this week on the resignation of the congressman from New York, JTA\’s Ron Kampeas asked top Democratic leaders what made Anthony Weiner\’s transgressions more resignation-worthy than those of Bill Clinton or Sen. David Vitter, the Virgina Republican who remains in office after the public learned he frequented prostitutes. In the Weiner scandal, Democrats said, there was the \”ick\” factor of the photos making their way around the internet, the novelty of Weiner\’s transgressions and his indignant lies about it.
Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.) has made appeals to Egyptian officials on behalf of Ilan Grapel, the American-Israeli jailed in Egypt and the congressman\’s former intern. Grapel faces espionage charges as early as next week, reportedly for sending emails about his encounters in Cairo, where he was an interning for a nongovernmental organization that assists refugees from Sudan and elsewhere.
Someone keeps stealing an exhibition about Jewish heritage and the Holocaust in Romania from a subway station in the country’s capital city. The exhibition, created by Israeli photographer Shani Bar On and Austrian-born journalist Emil Rennert, was sponsored by the Austrian Culture Forum and installed on the walls of a major Bucharest subway station June 11, but within 24 hours all of its 22 text and photo panels had vanished.
A number of initiatives are circulating in Congress targeting the Palestinians in the wake of their diplomatic tensions with Israel. Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) this week circulated through the Republican Study Committee, the GOP\’s influential conservative caucus, a proposal to introduce a Palestinian Accountability Act, legislation that would condition support for the Palestinian Authority on its willingness to negotiate, its efforts to combat terrorism and incitement, and its recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. It cites as bad faith the P.A.\’s recent efforts to obtain recognition of statehood through the United Nations.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman warned that Israel would no longer be bound by past agreements if Palestinians ask the United Nations for recognition.
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