News Briefs

Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who is under investigation for links to a prostitution ring, and his wife, Anne Sinclair, say they're filing a lawsuit against the French magazine Closer after it posted a report online Thursday saying they've been living apart and planning a divorce.

Mario Balotelli, who scored two amazing goals against Germany June 28, to take Italy into the Euro 12 soccer championship final against Spain on Sunday (which they lost 4-0, and were totally outclassed by the world champion) – grew up as the foster son of a Jewish mother. Balotelli talked about his adoptive Jewish mother when the Italian national squad visited Auschwitz ahead of the start of the games.

British police reported that the shots fired in front of Manchester’s Yeshivat Shaarei Torah around 2 AM last night were aimed at the yeshiva and did not happen by accident. The yeshiva is located in the mostly Jewish neighborhood of Broughton Park.

The Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which is set to open next year, will receive a $7 million grant from two Jewish...

The price of gas was lowered overnight Sunday by 2.15%, making the maximum price of self-serve 95-octane gasoline 16 agorot per liter less - NIS 7.27.

A series of violent storms sweeping the mid-Atlantic region have left 13 dead and three million people without power in oppressive summer heat.

The day after the disappearance, a police spokesman told reporters that Aguiar got into the boat alone, “but that’s not to say he didn’t meet up with anyone.” Now the attorney for Guma Aguiar's wife is saying that the Brazilian born billionaire could have staged his own disappearance to flee his marital and financial problems.

Peter Madoff, the younger brother of jailed Ponzi scheme operator Bernard Madoff, has been taken into custody by the FBI. Peter Madoff, 66, surrendered himself...

The president of the Austrian parliament announced that the country can prepare to close its General Settle Fund for Victims of Nazi Socialism. The independent...

Former Prime Minister Yithak Shamir passed away on Saturday night at age 96. As member of the Mossad Shamir directed the assassinations of former Nazi rocket scientists working on the Egyptian missile program.He served several terms as prime minister throughout the 1980s. He maintained a hard political line, which strained his relations with the U.S.

Laurence Gavron was born in France to a Jewish family. She's lived in Dakar, Senegal, for the past ten years, where she is a film director and a writer. And she's running for parliament, a white, Jewish woman in a black, African country. “If all the people who have said they will vote for me really do vote for me, then I shall certainly be elected," she said. We urge our readers in Senegal to get out early to vote this Sunday.

Nobel Prize winner author Günter Grass was asked not to visit the synagogue in Gdansk, his birthplace.

The Americafest celebration next week, which will bring campers from the Orthodox Camp Darom in Grenada, Miss., to the Union for Reform Judaism's Henry...

The brownstone housing the Chabad Lubavitch of the Loop, Gold Coast and Lincoln Park was to have gone on the auction block Wednesday, but...

Chief Justice John Roberts joined the Democrat-appointed justices to rule 5-4 that Congress has the power to impose the healthcare mandate under its power to levy taxes.

A Hamas leader was assassinated in Damascus on Wednesday night, a member of the party's politburo announced, according to the Palestinian Ma'an news agency.. Izzat...

Head of the Religious Community of Islam in Germany Ali Demir predicted that a ban on circumcisions in Germany would lead to the development of "circumcision tourism in neighboring countries in Europe." ADL's Abe Foxman called on Germany's parliament to change the law, lest Jews again feel unwanted in Germany.

The sweetness of Israel has seeped into the lives of unsuspecting Iranians, in the form of cherries grown in the Holy Land.

Alexander Müller has resigned from the Swiss People’s Party after a tweet sent from his account called for a repeat of the Night of the Broken Glass, this time targeting Muslims. His tweet read: “Maybe we need another Kristallnacht… this time for mosques.”

Eliyahu Werdesheim will serve three years probation for assaulting a black teenager in Baltimore in 2010, when he was a member of an Orthodox...

The 78 year old who took part in the liberation of Temple Mount in 1967 is banned from entering the holiest Jewish site by Israeli Police, who say he will face charges.

The European Union for Progressive Judaism and Hungary’s two Reform congregations took their case against Hungary’s new law on religion to the European Court...

Great Jewish screenwriter Nora Ephron died on Tuesday at age 71. Alfred A. Knopf, her book publisher, said in a press release that Ephron...

A whistle-blowing Budapest rabbi was questioned by police for what has been described as misuse of sensitive private information stemming from a personal conflict...

It looks like someone went up to Charles Barron and slapped him. The former member of the City Council and the Black Panther party was handily defeated by Hakeem Jeffries for the newly redrawn 8th Congressional District. The new district is mainly African-American, with a significant percentage of Russian Jews and Hispanics. Jeffries won in a landslide with more than half the precincts reporting, taking 75 percent of the vote.

A man in an Elmo costume was ejected from Central Park and hospitalized after going on an anti-Semitic rant in the middle of the...

The NY Post reports that Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel overcame demographic changes in his district to win the Democratic nomination for what will be...

A couple in their late 40's were detained on Sunday after police conducted themselves violently and would not display an arrest warrant. They used fists instead.

Andy Statman says the time of Klezmer has passed. Having just received the NEA National Heritage Fellowship in June for his work in bluegrass and Klezmer music, Statman admits Klezmer used to be his substitute for Jewish observance. Now that he is an Orthodox Jew, he no longer feels the need to play the music.

A Cologne district court ruled on Tuesday that parents may not have their sons circumcised for religious reasons, essentially criminalizing religious circumcisions.