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<p>Officials at Fort Sam Houston say they’ve taken into custody the driver of a vehicle that military officials say contained explosive materials, and which sparked a lockdown at the San Antonio Army base.</p> <p>The Bexar County Sheriff’s Department said on Twitter that the lockdown was being handled by military police, and the sheriff’s department had no units assigned to the case.</p>

Iran’s President, Hassan Rouhani, on Monday welcomed the extension of talks between his country and six world powers, and hailed it as “victorious” for Iranians. “We have neither compromised over Iran’s nuclear rights, nor will ever do so, and there is no doubt that the Iranian nuclear technology will remain functioning,” he said, according to the IRNA news agency. Rouhani once again repeated the slogan he used during his presidential campaign that the centrifuges will never cease rotating, while the wheels of the people’s lives, too, will rotate more smoothly. "Our nation has emerged victorious and will be victorious," emphasized...

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon predicted on Monday that the “momentum” of countries recognizing the “state of Palestine” will grow. Ban, who spoke before a UN committee on Palestinian rights, urged Israel and the Palestinian Authority to "step back from the brink" and return to peace talks. "The Israeli and Palestinian people face a shared fate on shared land. There is no erasing the other," Ban said, according to the AFP news agency. "Governments and parliaments are taking action. That momentum will grow," said Ban, referring to recent moves by governments in Europe to recognize “Palestine”. British lawmakers voted overwhelmingly...

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Monday the international community’s failure to advance a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is spurring governments and parliaments to take action to recognize the state of Palestine—and “that momentum will grow.” The U.N. chief said at the U.N. commemoration of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People that the international community must assume “a collective failure” for not being able to get a peace deal. “Indeed—as we see around the world—governments and parliaments are taking action,” Ban said. …

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Saturday that the outcome of Iran’s nuclear talks with six world powers was “completely open”. Despite huge gaps in the negotiations, “we have never been closer in more than 10 years,” Steinmeier said as he joined the talks in Vienna. “If Iran is ready to take this opportunity, then movement is possible … Whether we can get a result is right now completely open,” he said. …

The possibility of the U.S. and five other nations reaching a nuclear deal with Iran by this week’s deadline began to fade Sunday with reports that diplomats are now discussing an extension. Secretary of State John Kerry and the other world leaders have started internal discussions on extending the talks—one day before the Monday deadline for a deal attempting to cap Iran's nuclear activities in exchange for lifting sanctions on the Islamic Republic. Two diplomats said Sunday that formal extension discussions have not yet started with Iran. But the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany have started talks among...

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi said in remarks published Sunday that Egypt is prepared to send troops into a future Palestinian state to assist local police and guarantee Israel’s security. In comments to Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera, el-Sissi said the troops would be stationed there temporarily to establish confidence. In a clarifying statement later, his office said the idea is a way to encourage Israel to accept a two-state solution. …

A four-year-old Jewish boy was attacked by an anti-Semitic thug in New Zealand—the latest such incident in a wave of anti-Semitism in the country. According to the New Zealand Herald, the boy, who was walking home from preschool with a friend and his brother, were approached by a man “of Middle Eastern appearance”, said to be in his twenties, who slapped him—hard—in front of the boy’s mother. He was apparently targeted because he was wearing a yarmulke, or Jewish skullcap. According to New Zealand Jewish Council president Stephen Goodman, the man then left in a car with four other men—while...

The European Parliament will next Thursday (27 November) add its voice to the debate on whether EU states should recognize Palestine. The motion was initiated at the 11th hour by the left-wing GUE and S&D groups in the EU assembly. It is too early to say what the final text of the resolution will propose. The GUE group’s draft text “urges all EU member states … to recognize the State of Palestine on the basis of the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as the capital”. …

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri justified a foiled plan to assassinate Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu) on Friday, claiming that while he does not personally know of information regarding the plot, “all the leaders of the occupation are considered legitimate targets for resistance.” “The leaders of the occupation, who are responsible for the killing of women and children and the desecration of holy places, are legitimate targets,” he said, in remarks translated by Channel 10 news. On Thursday, the Israeli Security Agency (ISA or Shin Bet) revealed that three Hamas terrorists had been planning to assassinate Liberman during Operation...

In the wake of the horrific terror attack on a Jerusalem synagogue this Tuesday, the rabbi of the Jewish community in Gothenburg, the second largest city in Sweden, has received deaths threats to burn down his synagogue—with him inside of it. Rabbi Hillel Ḥayyim Lavery-Yisraëli made aliyah (immigration) to Israel at the age of 19 from Canada. After graduating the Merkaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem, he has served as Gothenburg’s rabbi since 2012. The married father of four serves in the city’s Great Synagogue, which was built in 1865 and is the oldest in the country, and which has now...

The 53-year-old, identified as an Israeli tourist, was called a ‘dirty bloody Jew’ and a ‘[expletive] Jew’ by his assailants, one of which beat him with his own umbrella in Williamsburg at the Marcy Ave. station before 4 p.m. Monday. The three fled on a Manhattan-bound train after a bystander intervened and was also attacked.Three brutes beat a man while hurling anti-Semitic insults at him at a Brooklyn train station, cops said Tuesday. The 53-year-old Orthodox Jewish man was waiting for a train at the Marcy Ave. station near S. Ninth St. in Williamsburg just before 4 p.m. Monday when...

German anti-Semitism and resentment towards Israel have risen sharply in recent months, a new survey has found. More than one in four respondents in the new poll equated the Jewish state’s treatment of Palestinian Arabs to Nazi persecution of Jews during World War Two, Reuters reported on Thursday. The bi-annual survey on xenophobia in Germany by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation showed broad measures of anti-Semitism on the decline over the past decade. However, it also showed a spike in negative views towards Israel and Jews in general between June and September, coinciding with the conflict between Israel and Hamas in...

An Egyptian court on Thursday acquitted a doctor charged with committing female genital mutilation that led to a 13-year-old girl’s death in a Nile Delta village, the country’s first trial on charges of breaking the ban on the practice. The verdict surprised activists against the practice, who had been hoping for a conviction and tough sentence to serve as a deterrent for doctors and families. Egypt has one of the highest rates of female genital mutilation in the world and criminalized the practice in 2008, but it remains widespread. …

The Obama administration is open to limits on the duration of its military efforts in Iraq and Syria and on the potential use of ground forces in a new war authorization against the Islamic State, a top presidential adviser said Wednesday. Tony Blinken, currently President Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser, said discussions would continue with Congress on updating the legal basis for the U.S. intervention. There has been no progress on an authorization in the two weeks since Obama vowed to coordinate with lawmakers on establishing a stronger legal basis for military action. That has prompted growing frustration among...

Justice Minister Tzipi Livni on Wednesday said that Israeli society is becoming more and more right-wing and religious. Speaking at a conference of the leadership of the Kibbutz movement, Livni said that while she served as foreign minister, one of her colleagues told her that in the past there were only a few countries that were not sympathetic to Israel, but in the present there are only two or three European countries that are still ready to stand up for Israel, but are finding it difficult to do so...

Israel is set to launch new ID cards for the children of same-sex couples. The cards will permit both fathers or mothers to be registered as the child’s parents—regardless of whether they are the biological parent or not. Ynet has learned that the Population, Immigration and Border Authority (PIBA) will mint the new ID cards by the end of the month and they will have gender appropriate titles for both parents, with “Father’s name” or “Mother’s name” appearing twice instead on once each. Until now, in the case of same-sex parents, both could be registered on the child’s ID, as...

From mistaking the Har Nof synagogue where Tuesday's terror attack took place for a mosque, to deleting references to Palestinian perpetrators, some of the international media continued to report on the events in Israel in an eyebrow-raising manner on Tuesday. The website of British newspaper The Guardian ran a story about the attack from Reuters. The wire dispatch the agency sent included the headline 'Palestinians kill four in Jerusalem synagogue attack' and led with the sentence: ''Two Palestinians armed with a meat cleaver and a gun killed four people in a Jerusalem synagogue on Tuesday before being shot dead by...

CNN has apologized for one of several errors in its reporting of Tuesday morning’s brutal terrorist attack in Jerusalem. In one particularly jarring error, the headline presented for the story broadcast live to tens of millions of viewers read: “Israeli… Police Shot, Killed 2 Palestinians.” The headline sparked outrage, with one prominent Israeli activist calling for the CNN reporter responsible to have his press credentials removed. Several hours and countless angry responses later, the international news corporation finally apologized. “As CNN updated its reporting on the terrorist attack on the synagogue in Jerusalem earlier today, our coverage did not immediately...

President Barack Obama on Tuesday strongly condemned the attack at an Israeli synagogue that killed four people, including three U.S. citizens. He called the attacks “horrific” and without justification. He said too many Israelis and too many Palestinians have died in recent months, and he urged leaders and ordinary people from both sides to work “cooperatively” to lower tensions, reject violence and seek a path forward towards peace. …