WASHINGTON (JNS) — Contrary to public perception, the White House has insisted that U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision this week to withdraw U.S. forces along the Syria-Turkey border isn’t a “green light” for Ankara to massacre Syria Kurds. A senior Trump administration official told reporters on a call Monday night that 50 to 100 U.S. […]

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Tens of thousands of Jewish worshippers gathered at the Western Wall in Jerusalem for the final selichot, or penitential prayers, before Yom Kippur. The services began after midnight on Tuesday morning, and brought worshippers from around the country. Yom Kippur begins at sundown on Tuesday and lasts for 25 hours. In Israel, […]

JERUSALEM (JTA) — About 60 percent of Jewish Israelis plan to fast on Yom Kippur, a poll found, but synagogue attendance for Judaism’s holiest day is not nearly as widespread. According to the special Yom Kippur survey by the Israel Democracy Institute’s Guttman Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research, 42 percent of Jewish Israelis […]

NEW YORK (JNS) — A total of 311 hate crimes were reported in New York from January through September, an increase compared to the 250 reported during the same period last year, according to Deputy Inspector Mark Molinari, head of New York Police Department’s Hate Crimes Task Force. Molinari said 163 of the reported hate […]

HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam warned Tuesday that the Chinese military could step in if an uprising for democratic reforms that has rocked the city for months “becomes so bad” but said the government still hopes to resolve the crisis itself. Lam urged foreign critics to accept that the four months […]

NEW YORK (AP) — The Trump Administration is blocking shipments from a Chinese company making baby pajamas sold at Costco warehouses, after the foreign manufacturer was accused of forcing ethnic minorities locked in an internment camp to sew clothes against their will. The government is also blocking rubber gloves sold by industry leader Ansell whose […]

GENEVA (AP) — Two Swiss scientists are celebrating their Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering a planet outside our solar system orbiting a solar-type star. The University of Geneva has quoted Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz as saying that “this discovery is the most exciting of our whole career and for it to be rewarded […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump cast his decision to abandon Kurdish fighters in Syria as fulfilling a campaign promise to withdraw from “endless war” in the Middle East, even as Republican critics and others said he was sacrificing a U.S. ally and undermining American credibility. Trump declared U.S. troops would step aside for an […]

JERUSALEM (JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proposed an advanced air-defense system in a cabinet meeting on Sunday that would counter the Iranian threat, reported Israel radio Kan. After the strikes against Saudi oil facilities last month allegedly carried out by Iran, the defense system would focus on protecting against such cruise-missile attacks at […]

JERUSALEM (JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s four days of hearings with the state prosecution are coming to an end, and all indications yield that the attorney general will move forward with his decision to indict the prime minister on corruption charges. Justice Ministry officials involved in the hearings have revealed that “no contrary […]