Los Angeles – The relationship between a Japanese woman and a U.S. Army captain stationed in Syria started online, through an international social network for digital pen pals. It grew into an internet romance over 10 months of daily emails. It ended with the woman $200,000 poorer and on the verge of bankruptcy after borrowing [...]

Pittsburgh – Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life congregation will hold its High Holiday services in an Episcopal church located just down the street. The Calvary Episcopal Church reached out to the congregation just days after the Oct. 27 attack that left 11 Jewish worshippers dead, offering its building for any of the congregation’s needs, the Episcopal [...]

San Francisco – The CEO of Overstock.com has resigned, saying he’d become “far too controversial” to helm the e-commerce company known for selling discounted sofas and jewelry. Patrick Byrne’s resignation Thursday came after the company issued a bizarre statement last week in which the former CEO referred to the “Deep State,” called federal agents “Men [...]

Kabul – A United States envoy and the Taliban resumed negotiations Thursday on ending America’s longest war after earlier signaling they were close to a deal. A Taliban member familiar with, but not part of, the talks that resumed in Qatar said U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad also met one-on-one Wednesday with the Taliban’s lead negotiator, [...]

Mexico City – Prosecutors in Mexico said Thursday they have arrested six federal police officers in connection with a series of shootings in 2015 in which at least eight demonstrators died. They are the first arrests under the current administration of federal police, a force that President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has downsized and criticized [...]

New York – Lawyer Michael Avenatti says charging Nike $25 million to probe corruption at the sportswear giant was a bargain rather than extortion. An attorney for Avenatti told a judge Thursday that a November extortion trial should be postponed until January so he can gather more proof. Attorney Scott Srebnick said at a Manhattan [...]

Wall Street – A wobbly day on Wall Street left stock indexes mostly lower Thursday as investors turned cautious ahead of a widely anticipated speech by the Federal Reserve chairman. Losses by health care, technology and energy companies, among other sectors, outweighed gains by banks, consumer goods makers and elsewhere in the market. Bond prices [...]

New Jersey – A New Jersey state employee who is also head of a local NAACP chapter was fired over several anti-Semitic and racist social media posts. Jeffrey Dye, president of the Passaic NAACP chapter, was fired Tuesday from his job as a state Labor Relations representative. He was hired in February by Democratic Gov. [...]

New York – Federal prosecutors have subpoenaed up to 20 staff members at the jail where Jeffrey Epstein killed himself, amid mounting evidence that guards failed to keep watch on the financier as he awaited trial on charges of sexually abusing teenage girls, a person familiar with the investigation told The Associated Press on Thursday. [...]

Russia – A 25-year-old girl who has dual American-Israeli citizenship, was charged with smuggling narcotics into Russia after nine grams of cannabis were found in her checked baggage, which was being transferred through to Israel, The Jerusalem Post reports. Naama Issachar was on her way back from a trip to India in April, and was [...]