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An emergency summit meeting of governors from six northeastern states this weekend to coordinate coronavirus restriction.... Bars and restaurants restricted to take out only, gyms closed, indoor and outdoor social gatherings limited to no more than six people from two households, churches limited to 25 people for indoor services, customers at grocery stores and pharmacies limited in numbers. All those measures in effect for at least two weeks in Oregon... When the mayor of St. George, Utah cancelled the Veterans Parade this year... Philadelphia looking at imposing new coronavirus restrictions... A highly contentious issue voted on in Montgomery County Pennsylvania......

Orthodox Jewish religious schools (yeshivas) carry on in spite of New York state orders to shut down in coronavirus "hotspots".... In Israel new less strict coronavirus lockdown rules laid out.... Today police in Thailand trying to put down anti-monarchist protesters with stinging liquid fired from water cannons.... Turkey firing a missile today along its northern coast in what is believed to be a test of the Russian S-400 anti-aircraft missile system..... European Union leaders condemning "unilateral actions and provocations" by Turkey in the Eastern Mediterranean.... In a Paris suburb a decapitation attack on a middle school teacher the attacker shouting...

The private-equity tycoon Stephen A. Schwarzman, backed by an array of mostly western blue-chip companies with interests in China, is creating a $300 million scholarship for study in China that he hopes will rival the Rhodes scholarship in prestige and influence. The programme, whose endowment represents one of the largest single gifts to education in the world and one of the largest philanthropic gifts ever in China, was announced by Mr. Schwarzman in Beijing on Sunday. The Schwarzman Scholars programme will pay all expenses for 200 students each year from around the world for a one-year master’s programme at Tsinghua...

Former French President Nicholas Sarkozy has spoken out in defence of his country’s Jewish population as he was honoured for protecting France’s Jews at a dinner in central London on Sunday night. The Conference of European Rabbis presented the politician, who is expected run for a second term in office in 2017, with an award in honour of his efforts to support French Jewry as interior minister and later president. He said: “We do not want French Jews to leave France because they are afraid. We want them to be comfortable to wear a kippah. We must stand up to...

He added, "the world needs Russia."

A French appeals court ruled Thursday that former president Nicolas Sarkozy should stand trial on charges of illicit financing of his failed 2012 presidential campaign. Sarkozy, 63, will appeal the decision before the Cour de Cassation, France’s court of final appeal, his lawyers said Thursday. It is one of several legal inquiries which have dogged the rightwing politician since he left office. In upholding last year’s decision by a judge to put Sarkozy on trial, the appeals court in Paris rejected arguments from his legal team seeking to avoid a potentially embarrassing public ordeal of a trial as well as...

Nicolas Sarkozy, who is fighting to regain the presidency that he lost to François Hollande in 2012, has finally come out of the closet as a climate skeptic. Speaking in front of business leaders, Sarkozy, a candidate for Les Republicains party primary in November, told them that man alone was not to blame for climate change. “Climate has been changing for four billion years,” the former president said according to AFP. “Sahara has become a desert; it isn’t because of industry. You need to be as arrogant as men are to believe we changed the climate.” …

French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy has proposed that Europe apply a carbon tax on American imports if Donald Trump pulls the United States out of the Paris climate pact. More than 100 countries have ratified the Paris global emissions deal, which was inked in December after marathon talks to cap greenhouse gases that cause global warming. “Donald Trump has said — we’ll see if he keeps this promise — that he won’t respect the conclusions of the Paris climate agreement,” Sarkozy said late Sunday on the TF1 television channel. “Well, I will demand that Europe put in place a carbon...

On May 17, I published an article in the Italian newspaper La Verità about pope Benedict’s abdication. A few days before, in a renowned Italian geopolitical magazine called Limes, Professor Germano Dottori had argued that Joseph Ratzinger’s 2013 abdication, and the former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s resignation in 2011, after a financial storm sold to public opinion as a “public debt” crisis, were the result of pressures on the part of Obama administration in the United States. According to Dottori, Obama was eager to dethrone Benedict XVI for two reasons. On the one hand, his presidency was close to...

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was placed in custody on Tuesday as part of an investigation into allegations he received millions of euros in illegal campaign financing from the regime of the late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. A judicial source with direct knowledge of the case told The Associated Press that Sarkozy was being held at the Nanterre police station, north-west of Paris. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Sarkozy has vehemently and repeatedly denied wrongdoing in the case, which involves funding for his winning 2007 presidential campaign. Though...

President Obama’s re-election campaign announced last month the launch of “Rabbis for Obama,” a group whose stated goal is to rally grassroots support for the President in the Jewish community. The announcement came amid reports that Jewish support for Barack Obama, while still strong, is dwindling when compared to his numbers in 2008; as well as some hard-hitting ads for GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney targeting Jewish concerns, especially regarding support for Israel. [Picture] Rabbis for Obama: Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, Rabbi Brant Rosen, with Ayatollah Bojnoordi from 2008 trip to Iran. Photo from Shalom Rav blog [Picture] Rabbis for Romney:...

"Can you clarify your end of the “hot mic” conversation with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, as it involved Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu?" asked MSNBC's Chuck Todd yesterday about Obama's embarassing moment last week. "With respect to the “hot mic” in France, I’m not going to comment on conversations that I have with individual leaders," said Obama, "But what I will say is this: The primary conversation I had with President Sarkozy in that meeting revolved around my significant disappointment that France had voted in favor of the Palestinians joining UNESCO, knowing full well that under our laws,

As part of damage control after US, French leaders overheard ridiculing Israeli premier, deputy national security advisor tells reporters 'Obama has taken security cooperation with Israel to unprecedented levels' WASHINGTON – US President Barack Obama has a "very close working relationship with Prime Minister Netanyahu. They speak very regularly," Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said Wednesday, days after Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy were overheard ridiculing the Israeli leader during a private exchange at the G20 summit in Cannes. Briefing reporters at the White House, Rhodes said, "I think they've probably spent more time one on one than...

Well, I’ll say one thing for him: Obama certainly has been transformative when it comes putting the “personal” into personal diplomacy. According to reports coming from last week’s G20 meeting, Obama was caught by reporters on an open microphone commiserating with French president Nicholas Sarkozy over their disdain for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.Although there are differing accounts of the conversation, Reuters has reported that the translation overheard by reporters had Sarkozy calling Netanyahu a liar: "I cannot bear Netanyahu, he's a liar," Sarkozy told Obama, unaware that the microphones in their meeting room had been switched on, enabling reporters...

JERUSALEM — The president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, told President Obama that he could no longer bear Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, and went on to call Mr. Netanyahu a “liar” in a private conversation overheard by several French journalists last week at the Group of 20 summit meeting in Cannes. “You are fed up with him, but I have to deal with him even more often than you,” Mr. Obama replied, according to reports that flooded the main Israeli news sites on Tuesday. The Israeli prime minister’s office refused to comment. An Israeli official, speaking on the...

On one level, none of this is surprising. Obama’s irritation with the Jewish state and personal distaste for Netanyahu have been apparent nearly from the start of his presidency. This is just as we would imagine Obama would sound in private. It’s nearly impossible to image Presidents George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan saying such a thing for the simple reason that neither held our democratic ally is such low esteem. They looked upon the democratically elected leader of our ally with respect and affection. Obama’s comment put liberal Jews once again in a tight spot. It seems like only...

The conversation then drifted to Netanyahu, at which time Sarkozy declared: "I cannot stand him. He is a liar." According to the report, Obama replied: "You're fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day!" The remark was naturally meant to be said in confidence, but the two leaders' microphones were accidently left on, making the would-be private comment embarrassingly public. The communication faux pas went unnoticed for several minutes, during which the conversation between the two heads of state – which quickly reverted to other matters – was all but open to members the press,...

The Israeli press was abuzz on Tuesday after a Monday night TV report stating that, in their meeting in Paris last week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy had told Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to “get rid of” Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Although the French leader’s faux pas stunned Israel, it wasn’t his first aimed at leaders of democracies. Sarkozy has unleashed a mass of insults towards Western leaders that are way outside normal diplomatic protocol, while at the same time showing high regard and cutting sweet deals with some of the Middle East’s cruelest dictators. In this latest contretemps,...

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to "get rid" of hard-line Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Channel Two reported on Monday. The Foreign Ministry responded to the report by lambasting the French leader for his "intolerable intervention in internal Israeli affairs." Sarkozy spent a good portion of his meeting with Netanyahu last Wednesday discussing the composition of the Israeli official, according to the report. The presence of three other Israeli officials at the meeting did not deter the French leader from expressing his true opinion of the foreign minister, said Channel Two. The French president reportedly told...

As part of its exclusive series on Libya during the rule of late leader Moammar al-Gaddafi, Asharq Al-Awsat examines the regime’s ties with local and foreign powers, including its attempts to finance western presidential campaigns, particularly in France, the United States and Ukraine. Witnesses from the former regime said that Tripoli had spent some 50 million euros in 2007 to fund the campaign of French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy. Lebanese businessman Ziad Takeieddine, who was present at Sarkozy’s meetings with Gaddafi revealed that the “figures were much higher than that.” Tripoli also pumped 5 million dollars in the presidential campaign...