San Francisco – The Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook plans a cryptocurrency-based payment system that it could launch for billions of users worldwide. The system would use a digital coin similar to bitcoin, but different in that Facebook would aim to keep the coin’s value stable. Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies have been susceptible to [...]

Jerusalem – For 20 years, Hala Kashour has lived with her husband in what she called “paradise,” a bucolic meadow that rolls through a Palestinian neighborhood of east Jerusalem. The coveted pasture, which Israel calls the “Peace Forest,” lies in the crosshairs of a long-simmering conflict between the city government and its Palestinian residents that [...]

Washington – White House senior adviser Jared Kushner said on Thursday the Middle East peace proposal he is working on will be a “good starting point” to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Kushner, who is married to U.S. President Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, has been working on the peace plan for some two years and is [...]

Oswiecim, Poland – On his first visit to the Auschwitz memorial museum, 17-year-old Armando Broja already knew a fair amount about the Holocaust. The Jewish genocide is taught in schools in his native United Kingdom, and a spate of anti-Semitic incidents at sports matches across Europe in recent years has made it the subject of [...]

Caracas – One night years ago, when a Jewish man was driving to his parents’ house in Caracas, Venezuela, two cars blocked off the street he was on and held him up at gunpoint. He got into their car and began answering questions: who he was, where he lived, how much money he could give [...]

New York – In New York City, more than half of all hate crimes reported in 2018 and so far in 2019 were anti-Jewish. According to the NYPD on Thursday, of the 145 hate crimes reported in January through April 2019, 82 incidents – nearly 57 percent – were anti-Jewish. In 2018, there were 353 [...]

Harrisburg, PA – A Pennsylvania state lawmaker protesting a natural gas liquids pipeline project in her neighborhood apologized Thursday for saying “Nazis were just doing their jobs too” and drawing a comparison to pipeline workers. After condemnation grew during the week, Democratic Rep. Danielle Friel Otten, of Chester County, said on Twitter that her language [...]

Boston – A panel discussion about Palestinian rights at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst will be allowed to move ahead following a challenge by a group of Jewish students at the school. A Superior Court judge on Thursday ruled against the students who argued the forum was anti-Semitic and should be forced off campus. The panel, [...]

Washington – Attorney General William Barr portrayed himself as an apolitical elder statesman at his confirmation hearing. He declared he’d rather resign than be asked to fire special counsel Robert Mueller without cause and insisted the prosecutor he’d known for decades would never involve himself in a witch hunt as the president claimed. But now [...]

New York – New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio will announce this month whether he is joining the growing list of candidates seeking the Democratic nomination for president, he said Thursday. “I’m going to make my decision in the month of May and as soon as we have something to tell you we’ll tell [...]