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World News in Brief
Facebook CEO says he has become more religious
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg told a live audience at the Silicon Slopes Tech Summit tech conference recently that he has “become more religious” in recent years.
JTA
He attributed his evolution to the issues his company has faced over the past few years, and the birth of his two daughters, now aged four and two, according to Deseret News.
Zuckerberg once defined himself as an atheist. He has since posted a photo of his daughter using a family heirloom kiddush cup, and photos of homemade challah and hamentaschen.
Metro passengers prevent anti-Semitic attack
Passengers aboard a metro train in northeast Paris stopped four Arab men from pursuing a Jewish man they were harassing over his faith, the victim said.
According to the National Bureau for Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism, or BNVCA, four men asked a Jewish man wearing a yarmulke for a cigarette, said the report. When he said he didn’t have one, one of the men told him, “You Jews have enough money to buy some.”
The Arab men then cornered the man against the wall of the train car, but he escaped. The men pursued him, but were blocked by other passengers.
Chinese embassy apologises for Holocaust comparison
A Chinese diplomat invoked the Holocaust in urging Israel to not close its doors to Chinese people seeking refuge from the deadly coronavirus.
“This is reminiscent of World War II, the Holocaust, the darkest days of human history. Millions of Jews were murdered, and many were banned from entering countries. Some countries opened their gates, one of them was China,” Dai Yuming said on Sunday during a news conference at the Chinese Embassy in Tel Aviv.
The Chinese Embassy later apologised for the remarks, clarifying that, “there was no intention whatsoever to compare the dark days of the Holocaust with the current situation and efforts taken by the Israeli government to protect its citizens”.
As of Wednesday, about 24 000 people in China had contracted the virus, and about 490 had died.
JLo uses Koolulam arrangement at Super Bowl
About 102 million people watched Jennifer Lopez and her daughter, Emme, lead a choir of children singing her 1999 hit song Let’s Get Loud at the Super Bowl.
What the viewers probably didn’t know was that the arrangement was created by Israeli-founded group Koolulam, which led more than 2 000 women and men of all ages and backgrounds to record the song in October to mark Breast Cancer Awareness.
JLo’s producers got in touch with the organisation to ask if they could use the arrangement for Sunday’s big game between the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs.
Insurance company wins appeal against terrorist’s wife
The wife of a Palestinian terrorist who hijacked an Israeli El Al airplane cannot collect on her husband’s $75 000 (R1.1m) life insurance policy because he did not disclose his terrorist past when he took it out in 1987.
The Ontario Court of Appeals last week overturned a lower court decision and ruled against Fadia Khalil Mohammad., the wife of Mahmoud Mohammad Issa Mohammad, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who stormed an Israeli airliner in Athens in 1968 shooting and throwing grenades, killing one passenger. He was convicted of manslaughter, and sentenced to 17 years in prison by the Greek courts.
Later that year, however, Mohammad was freed when Palestinian terrorists stormed another plane and demanded his release. He moved to Lebanon and then, under an alias, to Canada in 1987.
Mohammad was deported to Lebanon in 2013, nearly 15 years after proceedings began to strip him of his citizenship for lying about his terrorist past in order to emigrate to Canada. He died there of cancer in 2015.
Sudan leader defends meeting Israeli prime minister
Sudan’s cabinet didn’t know that the country’s leader was going to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss normalising relations between the two countries.
Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the chief of Sudan’s transitional administration, the Sovereignty Council, briefed cabinet only on Tuesday. Netanyahu and al-Burhan had met the previous day in Entebbe, Uganda, at the residence of its president, Yoweri Museveni.
“I took this step from the standpoint of my responsibility … to protect the national security of Sudan and achieve the supreme interests of the Sudanese people,” Burhan said after briefing the council.