Rwanda – Chabad has opened its first center in Rwanda, which becomes the African nation’s first synagogue served by a permanent rabbi. Rabbi Chaim and Dina Bar Sella, and their 8-month-old son, Shneur Zalman, arrived last week in Kigali and managed to gather a minyan for Shabbat prayers, Chabad.org reported. They will serve under the […]

Washington – The Trump administration imposed sanctions Tuesday on Iran’s space agency for the first time, accusing it of developing ballistic missiles under the cover of a civilian program to launch satellites into orbit. The sanctions announced by the State and Treasury departments targeting the agency and two of its affiliates follow the explosion Thursday […]

London – The pound on Tuesday touched its lowest level against the dollar since 1985, excluding a brief “flash crash” in 2016 that may have been caused by technical glitches, as international investors fret over a political showdown over Brexit this week. The British currency fell as low as $1.1960, down almost a cent on […]

London – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is seeking an early election on Oct. 14, which falls on the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. Johnson will aim to have elections held then if lawmakers block the option of leaving the European Union without a deal, a senior government source told Reuters on Monday. What it means: […]

Iraqi authorities on Monday suspended the license of a U.S.-funded TV station for three months after it aired a program on alleged corruption within Iraq’s Sunni and Shiite religious establishments. The investigative report that aired on Saturday on Alhurra accused senior religious figures of benefiting from businesses as a result of their connections with the […]

An attacker killed eight students and injured two others at an elementary school in central China on the first day of the new semester, police said Tuesday. The attack occurred around 8 a.m. Monday in Chaoyangpo village of Enshi city in Hubei province, Enshi police said in a statement. The suspect is a 40-year-old man […]

Former Guatemalan first lady and presidential runner-up Sandra Torres was arrested Monday on charges of campaign finance violations, the latest high-profile political figure to face allegations of malfeasance even as a U.N. anti-graft commission is set to shut down. Investigators searched Torres’ Guatemala City home in the morning and transported her to court, handcuffed, with […]

Hurricane Juliette has formed in the eastern Pacific far off Mexico’s west coast, but forecasters say it isn’t likely to pose any threat to land. At midafternoon Monday, the storm had top sustained winds of 80 mph (130 kph). It was centered about 450 miles (725 kilometers) south-southwest of the southern tip of the Baja […]

The Lebanon-Israel border was mostly calm with U.N. peacekeepers patrolling the border on Monday, a day after the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group fired a barrage of anti-tank missiles into Israel in response to earlier attacks, triggering Israeli artillery fire. The missile attack into Israel on Sunday did not inflict any casualties on the Israeli side. […]

Germany – The head of Germany’s Jewish community is urging democratic political parties to clearly distance themselves from the right-populist Alternative for Germany Party, which made large gains in two state elections. The anti-immigrant party, with some politicians who also have suggested that Germany is too obsessed with the Holocaust, achieved second place in elections […]