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By Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyNew York, New York — December 30 … Lethal, Islamic terror attacks and the potential for a new Middle East war were avoided this evening as the UN Security Council defeated a Palestinian resolution calling for Israel to withdraw from Palestinian territories by late 2017. The UN resolution called for negotiations to be based on territorial lines that existed before Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the Six Day War. It also demanded that a peace agreement be reached within 12 months. If a bid for Palestinian statehood was...

The European Union’s (EU) foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said Tuesday's vote at the United Nations (UN) Security Council on Palestinian statehood underlined the need for Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) to urgently resume peace negotiations. The Security Council failed to adopt an Arab-backed resolution that would have paved the way to a Palestinian state, setting a 12-month deadline for Israel to reach a final peace deal with the PA and calling for a full Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria by the end of 2017. The vote "underlines once again the urgency of resuming meaningful negotiations between the...

The UN Security Council on Tuesday rejected a resolution on Palestinian statehood, with the Palestinians failing to get the minimum nine “yes” votes required for adoption by the 15-member council: Eight voted for the resolution and two voted against, with five abstentions. France, China and Russia were among the countries that supported the text setting a 12-month deadline for negotiations on a final peace deal with Israel and an imposed full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and East Jerusalem by the end of 2017. Argentina, Chad, Chile, Jordan and Luxembourg also voted for the resolution. Australia and the United...

The draft resolution by the Palestinians calling for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and East Jerusalem within three years and revised to include language declaring East Jerusalem as the future capital of a Palestinian state was presented to the UN Security Council late Monday. The draft resolution affirms the urgent need to achieve “a just, lasting and comprehensive peaceful solution” to the decades-old Palestinian-Israeli conflict within 12 months and sets a December 31, 2017 deadline for Israel’s occupation to end. Many of the changes to the draft are semantic, such as the addition of the word “just,” to...

PA's unilateral resolution calling on Israel to "end the occupation" fails to receive the nine required votes to pass. Only eight countries voted in favor of the resolution, two voted against, and there were five abstentions. The resolution needed nine votes in favor to have passed. Australia and the United States voted against.

Abbas ignored Kerry’s hints of sanctions and told him Jordan will present a resolution to the UN to force Israel to "Auschwitz borders.” Abbas, the one who is short in size and common sense, with Kerry, the one who is tall in size but short on common sense. Mahmoud Abbas is ignoring hints of American sanctions and a possible defeat in the U.N. Security Council which is set to consider a resolution from Jordan on Monday, ordering Israel to sign a peace treaty with the Palestinian Authority in one year. The resolution calls on Israel to surrender within three years...

Mahmoud Abbas: Failing the Palestinians and PeacePosted By Joseph Puder On December 29, 2014 @ 12:35 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments Mahmoud Abbas, (aka Abu Mazen) has been a failure as the Palestinian “Rais.” He failed to lead the Palestinian Authority (PA) toward peace with Israel, and he mismanaged the alleged goal to achieve statehood for the Palestinians. Instead of facing the tough issues and making compromises required in negotiating peace and statehood with the Israelis, Abbas chose an alliance with the Gaza controlled terrorist group Hamas. Following Abbas’ pact with Hamas last April, Israel broke off peace negotiations with the...

Skiers trying to make their way to and from French Alps resorts were plunged into chaos on Saturday night as 15,000 cars were trapped on the roads and emergency overnight centres were set up to shelter trapped tourists. Across the Savoie region, thousands of people were trapped in their cars, snowed in their chalets or stranded at airports as long-awaited snow finally dumped on the Alps - several feet, in some places.

The death toll following a fire on the Norman Atlantic ferry off Corfu has risen to 10, with the evacuation of all those on board now complete. One man was killed when trying to escape the ship, and a further nine bodies have since been found. More than 400 people were rescued amid gale-force winds and thick smoke. It is not clear if others are still missing. The Italian authorities said they could not verify the actual number of people originally on board. Rescuers are still searching the vessel. The ferry company operating the journey from the Greek city of...

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Why the Next Pope Needs to Be Italian By ROBERTO PAZZI Published: January 11, 2004 FERRARA, Italy--For years Vatican specialists in Italy have, in delineating the uncertain features of John Paul II's successor, been fueled by a silent question: will the new pope be Italian? Why, one might ask, should Italy hope for an Italian pope, given the almost universal praise for the pontificate of Karol Wojtyla? The origins of this question go back in time and deserve examination. I was watching on that unforgettable Roman evening of Oct. 16, 1978, when, on the state television network, RAI,...

Two painted chow chow dogs posing as pandas have been seized from a circus in northern Italy, after tricking children into handing over cash, police have said. The male and female dogs were seized by police after it became clear that they were not, in fact, pandas. To an unassuming child visiting the circus in Brescia, a small furry animal with white and black stripes may do the trick. But The Local readers may notice a distinct difference. Here is a real panda: Panda photo by Shutterstock. And here are the dogs-in-disguise: The police were not fooled, who said the...

FULL TITLE: Nurse Who Killed 100 Patients Because They Were “Annoying” May be Second Biggest Serial Killer Ever LifeNews has twice profiled Daniela Poggiali, an Italian nurse who was arrested in October for allegedly killing up to 38 patients because she found them or their relatives annoying. Later, reports indicated she may have killed as many as 96 patients. One of her victims, Rosa Calderoni, brought her crimes to light after she died from an injection of potassium. Officials suspect that Ms. Poggiali may have killed two more patients on the same day of Calderoni’s death. Under Italian law, killing...

This Brilliant Graphic Shows You Which Country Discovered Every Element In The Periodic Table Alex Heber, Business Insider Australia April 28, 2014 When it comes to discovering elements the United Kingdom is at the top of the table. This periodic table graphic was posted by Google Science Fair on Sunday and shows which nations discovered each element on the periodic table. Leading the charge, the UK has discovered 24 elements, closely followed by the US with 21, Sweden with 20 and Germany with 19. A number of old favorites including gold, mercury and copper are listed as “ancient discovery” and...

ROME (Reuters) - An underwater volcano with a base larger than Washington D.C. has been discovered just off the shores of Sicily, a scientist with Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology said on Thursday. The volcanic structure, which incorporates peaks previously thought to be separate volcanoes, was named Empedocles after the Greek philosopher who named the four classic elements of earth, air, fire and water. Legend has it that the philosopher died by throwing himself into Mount Etna, the nearby Sicilian volcano. Giovanni Lanzafame, who works at the institute and led the research, said Empedocles was at least 400...

The Russians called the EU’s bluff by pulling out of the project instead of accepting the EU’s conditions and are cutting deals with China and Turkey instead.By Alexander Mercouris ~ Russia Insider The reaction to the cancellation of the Sound Stream project has been a wonder to behold and needs to be explained very carefully. In order to understand what has happened it is first necessary to go back to the way Russian-European relations were developing in the 1990s. Briefly, at that period, the assumption was that Russia would become the great supplier of energy and raw materials to Europe....

By ROB KENNEDY, Associated Press Writer BANGKOK, Thailand - A German statesman, a Czech supermodel and a Swedish Olympic ski champion were among the vacationers whose search for peace and sun in tropical southern Asia was shattered by the tsunamis that spared neither rich nor poor. AP Photo   Petra Nemcova — who appeared on the cover of 2003 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue — was carried away with her boyfriend, the fashion photographer Simon Atlee, after a huge wave plowed into southern Thailand on Sunday. Nemcova's New York spokesman, Rob Shuter, said the model and her boyfriend had been vacationing...

An Italian historian has unveiled a previously unknown document that sheds fresh light on explorer John Cabot’s discovery of Canada — a brief entry in a 516-year-old accounting ledger that shows Cabot had financial backing from a Florence-based bank in England and, most intriguingly, may have had prior knowledge of the distant land his famous 1497 voyage would put on the world map. The Italian-born Cabot is known to have sailed from England in search of the New World three times between 1496 and 1498. He is believed to have reached Newfoundland aboard the Matthew in 1497, but Cabot disappears...

Yesterday, June 28, 2014, marked the 100th anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Assassin Gavrilo Princip fired the first shot in what was to become a horrific years-long bloodbath. However, after the sound of gunfire was silenced on Armistice Day, the deaths continued to mount. Revolutions spawned in Russia and Germany, arbitrary redrawing of national borders set the stage for decades of conflict, harsh reparation demands inspired the rise of Nazi Germany and the onset of World War II. The first World War continues to kill to this day - just this past March, two Belgian construction workers...

There's only one real way to compare military strength, and thankfully the world hasn't had many opportunities lately. Despite the potential powder keg in the South China Sea, standoffs in Ukraine, and proxy wars throughout the Middle East, inter-state warfare between the world's military powers has been all but banished from the global scene (for the time being, at least). For a simpler evaluation of military power, we turned to the Global Firepower Index, a ranking of 106 nations based on more than 50 factors including overall military budget, available manpower, and the amount of equipment each country has in...

Beginning of an Italian Civil War against Immigration, Enza Ferreri's Blog, December 15, 2013 Does the situation seem familiar to that in the Obama Nation? This article is published by permission from the author. ************** For once we have riots that are not by anti-white black protesters — to whose violence Ferguson, among others, has accustomed us — but by indigenous Europeans defending their land against invaders. In Rome, on the night of 10–11 November, a group of residents of the Tor Sapienza suburb living in public housing attempted to assault the local centre for refugees and asylum seekers incongruously...