US & World News

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The Florida man who confessed to setting fire to the mosque of Orlando nightclub shooter Omar Mateen has ties to Messianic Judaism.

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Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said that Benjamin Netanyahu cost Israel $4.5 billion in defense aid because of Netanyahu’s strained relations with President Barack Obama.

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An employee of a Belgian state-funded charity who was denied entry into Israel said Israel’s supporters were “inflating” Belgium’s anti-Semitism problem to distract from the Palestinian issue.

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JERUSALEM — The world’s oldest man, 113-year-old Yisrael Kristal, a Holocaust survivor living in Israel, will celebrate his bar mitzvah soon.

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WASHINGTON — A congresswoman whose office was set to sponsor the first conference in a congressional building backing the movement to boycott Israel withdrew her support, canceling the event.

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A large majority of American and Israeli Jews say that Israel should recognize marriages and conversions performed by Reform and Conservative rabbis.

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Anti-Semitic incidents in France have decreased by 64 percent in the first half of 2016 compared with a year ago, according to a French official who credited his government’s policing around Jewish institutions.

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Greta Zimmer Friedman, the Jewish refugee whose Times Square kiss from a sailor on the day World War II ended became an iconic photo, has died.

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A week after police in Paris discovered a booby-trapped car near a tourist attraction, a suspect vehicle containing gas canisters was found outside a Jewish community center in the southern city of Marseille.

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JERUSALEM — An Israeli rabbi said that the collapse of a parking garage under construction in Tel Aviv that killed six was due to lack of Sabbath observance.

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A prominent neo-Nazi activist from Berlin was spotted holding up a banner at a demonstration organized by the city’s chapter of the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment movement against Israel.

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WASHINGTON — Norman Podhoretz, a founder of the neoconservative movement, said that he backs Donald Trump for president.

Activists from the Limmud project in the United States and Canada have established an official hub in North America. The volunteers voted to form a representative council, and set up a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization to encourage more support for local groups and enable the groups to share software and other organizational systems. Limmud International sponsors Jewish learning festivals in cities around the world.

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Natan Sharansky announced he will be stepping down from his position as chairman of The Jewish Agency for Israel in June.

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NEW YORK — Muslim and Jewish students rallied with lawmakers in support of a bill that would provide kosher and halal food options in New York City public schools.

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JERUSALEM — A school atlas that labels Jerusalem as the capital of Israel will not be removed from Czech schools, as originally announced.

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JERUSALEM — The body of a worker was pulled from the rubble of the collapse of a four-level underground parking structure under construction in Tel Aviv, bringing the death toll to four.

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KAZAN, Russia — Hundreds of Israeli and European Jews convened in the capital of the predominantly Muslim Russian state of Tatarstan for an annual Jewish music festival as well as a Jewish learning Limmud FSU conference.

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A Jerusalem rabbi said he would seek royalties from Japan’s delegation to the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro for its allegedly unauthorized use of a melody he composed.

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Benjamin Netanyahu is adhering to a strict policy of silence on the U.S. elections to avoid a repeat of his 2012 troubles over perceived meddling, the New York Times reported.

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King Mohammed VI of Morocco thanked a Jewish composer from Casablanca who had written a song in the monarch’s honor.

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A U.S. court canceled a $655.5 million verdict against the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority in a case brought by American families of victims of terrorist attacks that occurred in Israel in the early 2000s.

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WASHINGTON — The Obama administration expressed “concern” over the deployment of powerful anti-aircraft missiles near an Iranian enrichment facility ostensibly shuttered under the Iran nuclear deal, but said it did not violate embargoes.

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JERUSALEM — An Israeli planning committee approved the construction of hundreds of housing units in four West Bank settlements.