At least three Jews were taken to hospital as a result of the clashes the erupted; synagogue briefly besieged.

Attacks against Jews by anti-Israel demonstrators around the globe since the start of Israel’s Gaza offensive on July 8 are excuses for those biased against Jews to “vent their anti-Semitic hatred,” the president of the European Jewish Congress said on Monday.

In a statement issued in response to an attack on a Parisian synagogue on Sunday, Dr.

Moshe Kantor said that those involved in such incidents are “using the current conflict between Israel and Hamas to attack Jews.”

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NEW YORK – Thousands of people took to the streets of New York City on Friday evening to protest Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip and demand an end to the violence that has reportedly killed nearly 850 Palestinians.

Police scrambled to corral the demonstrators, which officers estimated numbered between 2,000 and 3,000, as they flooded into the busy streets around Times Square.

Waving Palestinian flags and signs condemning Israel for the offensive, many called for an end to US aid to the country.

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London (CNN) — An Air Algerie flight with 116 people on board has dropped off radar, prompting a search for the missing plane, the airline’s operator said Thursday.
Flight 5017 lost radar contact 50 minutes after takeoff from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, early Thursday. It was supposed to arrive at Algiers’ Houari Boumediene Airport about four hours later.
The plane, an MD-83, was carrying 110 passengers, two pilots and four crew members. The MD-83 is part of the McDonnell Douglas MD-80 family of twin-engine, single-aisle jets.
The plane belongs to a private Spanish company, Swiftair, but it appears to have been operated by Air Algerie.
Map: Ouagadougou, Burkina FasoMap: Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
What is a black box anyway?
“We have lost contact with the plane,” Swiftair said.

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The mystery surrounding two white flags that appeared on top of the Brooklyn Bridge today deepened as the New York City Police Department admitted they don’t know who committed the security breach or how they accomplished it.

White flags, which are symbols of surrender, flew from poles on the stone supports atop the famed bridge that connects Brooklyn and Manhattan over the East River.

“I’m not particularly happy about the event,” said NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama’s health care law is snarled in another big legal battle, with two federal appeals courts issuing contradictory rulings on a key financing issue within hours of each other Tuesday.
But the split rulings don’t necessarily mean another trip to the Supreme Court for the Affordable Care Act.
And White House spokesman Josh Earnest immediately announced that millions of consumers will keep getting financial aid for their premiums — billions of dollars in all — as the administration appeals the one adverse decision.
In that first ruling, a divided three-judge panel in Washington called into question the subsidies that help millions of low- and middle-income people afford their premiums, saying financial aid can be provided only in states that have set up their own insurance markets, or exchanges.
About 100 miles to the south in Richmond, Virginia, another appeals court panel unanimously came to the opposite conclusion, ruling that the Internal Revenue Service correctly interpreted the will of Congress when it issued regulations allowing health insurance tax credits for consumers in all 50 states.

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Thousands march through French cities in protest of Israeli operation in Gaza Strip; French president says will not allow violence to spill over into France.

Protesters run by a fire barricade near the aerial metro station of Barbes-Rochechouart, in Paris, on July 19, 2014.

REUTERS – Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters marched in French cities on Saturday to condemn violence in Gaza, defying a ban imposed after demonstrators marched on two synagogues in Paris last weekend and clashed with riot police.

A Reuters photographer said demonstrators in northern Paris launched projectiles at riot police, who responded by firing teargas canisters and stun grenades.

“We must show that as Muslims, we’re all united” // Shirli Sitbon reports for Haaretz from Paris

Demonstrators also climbed on top of a building and burned an Israeli flag. At least one car was set on fire.

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In huge demonstration, protesters denounce Israel as terrorist state, castigate PM Cameron for backing right to self-defense

Tens of thousands protested in London Saturday afternoon against Israel’s military operations in Gaza, denouncing Israel as a terrorist state and castigating British Prime Minister David Cameron for backing Israel’s right to self-defense against Hamas rocket fire

Led by speakers on a podium, protesters holding placards and banners chanted pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel slogans

At one point, a woman on the podium shouted “from the river to the sea” — a call for the elimination of Israel — and protesters responded by yelling “Palestine will be free.”

The crowd also directed shouts of “Shame on you” at Cameron, who publicly backed Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas rocket fire aimed at the Israeli civilian population.

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“I am profoundly shocked and revolted. This aggression towards the Jewish community has taken an absolutely unacceptable turn,” Joel Mergei, president of the Israelite Central Consistory of France, told AFP.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo called for “calm in the face of tensions” in the Middle East.

“They are bombing innocent people. There are missiles being launched by Hamas, but the Israeli response is disproportionate. They are attacking the civilian population and not Hamas officials.”

The crowd, very young, shouted slogans such as: “We Are All Palestinians!” and “Only One Solution, End the Occupation!”.

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Jeffrey MacMillan for The Washington Post

My Post colleague Lyndsey Layton has written an illuminating story about the role Bill Gates and his money played in the Common Core State Standards initiative and its adoption by 45 states and the District of Columbia. In great detail, she explains how on one summer day in 2008, two men — Gene Wilhoit, then-director of the Council for Chief State School Officers, and David Coleman, at the time an educational consultant and an “emerging evangelist for the standards movement” — persuaded Gates to fund the creation and marketing of what became the Common Core.

The article makes a few things clear if they weren’t before:

*The Core wasn’t Gates’s idea, but his willingness to underwrite the effort — to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars — made it happen. Perhaps another billionaire might have done the same thing had Gates declined, but it wasn’t necessary for Wilhoit and Coleman to look for other funding.

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