Laguna Niguel, CA - Locked in a safe is about all that remains of Walter Lachman's youth. A musty old cap. Unwashed and unworn in 66 years. He removes it from a bag and lets his fingers run over the faded blue-and-gray stripes. "It reminds me of how good things are now," says Lachman, 81, of Laguna Niguel. "I've had a good life. There's a certain sense of pride that I survived – I made...

Montreal - Members of a tiny Palestinian farming community will be in Quebec Superior Court Monday claiming two Canadian construction companies are committing war crimes by building condominiums and roads on the village’s land in the West Bank. It will be the first time that Canada’s War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Act, passed in 2000, will be used in a civil case. University of...

Beit Shemesh, Israel - A rabbis' committee in Beit Shemesh distributed over the weekend a detailed booklet instructing female residents to dress modestly in the city's ultra-Orthodox areas. In the pamphlets, women are ordered to keep their hair tied and their shirts buttoned up to the very end and to wear long sleeves. The "chastity squad" pamphlets were distributed in mailboxes in the city's...

Bangkok, Thailand - El Al airline passengers in Bangkok, Thailand were ordered off the plane due to the company's commitment not to desecrate the Sabbath. The 120 passengers, some of whom already were on the plane, were told that mechanical problems would prevent the flight taking off to Tel Aviv as scheduled. El-Al's CEO, decided to postpone the flight until Motzei Shabbas. Passengers were...

Amran, Yemen - A Yemeni court of appeals on Sunday sentenced a former air force pilot to death for the murder of a Jewish man, court sources said. The court in the north-western province of Amran convicted Abdul- Aziz al-Abdi, a 40-year-old retired Yemeni Air Force pilot, of premeditated murder. Al-Abdi has confessed to shooting dead Moshe al-Nahari, a member of the Jewish minority in the...

Riverdale, NY - Several years ago, six teenagers at the SAR yeshiva high school in Riverdale came to the principal with a request: They wanted to study Arabic. It was an unusual appeal in this heavily Orthodox neighborhood in the Bronx, with at least a half dozen congregations on tree-lined streets that can turn eerily quiet on the Sabbath. Among the kosher butcher shops, restaurants, bakeries...