Expand Women protest to demand stronger government action to fight the spread of intimate photos and footage taken by hidden cameras in Seoul, South Korea, July 7, 2018. © 2018 Ryu Hyo-lim/Yonhap via AP We only know her as “A,” and she is dead. The court ruled this week in the case of a young woman in South Korea who killed herself after learning she had been secretly filmed in a changing room of the hospital where she worked. She had suffered “nightmares and trauma,” her family said, driving her to an “extreme choice.” Her suicide came three months before her planned wedding. The man who… (Full Story)

The conservative, law-and-order state of Oklahoma is releasing 462 people convicted of drug possession crimes from state prisons in what is among the largest single-day commutations of sentences in U.S. history. In 2016, Oklahoma voters approved a ballot question that reduced drug possession offenses from felonies, carrying potential prison sentences, to misdemeanors, with much shorter local jail sentences. This year, Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a law streamlining the process for people already sentenced to prison for these crimes to apply for commutation and reduction of their charge to misdemeanors.  … (Full Story)

By Ephraim Kam

Against the backdrop of its military involvement in Syria, Iran has taken a series of steps since 2014 to reinforce its standing in Syria and Lebanon and enhance its military preparedness there, as well as that of its proxies – first and foremost Hezbollah. These steps are of two types. One consists of steps designed to influence Syria’s internal situation and bind it to Iran for the long term, including economic agreements on reconstruction, resettlement of Shiites in Syria, introduction of Iranian religious and cultural values into the country, and establishment of Syrian Shiite militias modeled on Hezbollah in Lebanon. (Full Story)

The British nation has been dealing with the Brexit issue since 2016. British people are fed up of hearing the ¨Brexit¨ word on a daily basis. Brexit divides families and friends; everyone has an opinion on the issue. Besides, Brexit also has triggered a constitutional crisis and Brexit pushed the executive branch and the legislative branch to be on a different page. The new Prime Minister does not work with MPs to find common grounds on Brexit. The head of government does not want to respect the will of Parliament. For instance, Parliament enacted the Benn Act to compel the Prime Minister to ask Brussels for a Brexit delay. In sum, Boris Johnson fails to unite the nation with his Brexit deal. The U.K. is still deeply divided over the Brexit issue. Hard Brexiteers do not agree with soft Brexiteers who prefer that the country keeps some free trade and a border with limited restrictions with the European Union. Northern Ireland unionists want that their British region leaves the European Union with the rest of the United Kingdom while the European Union is concerned that Brexit does not respect the Good Friday Agreement. Boris Johnson introduced a withdrawal agreement to Parliament which gives a veto power to the Northern Ireland Assembly to protect the Good Friday Agreement, but the unionist Democratic Union Party is strongly against Johnson`s deal. Prime Minister Johnson strongly believes in Brexit and he thinks that the best way to get Brexit done is to have a general election in order to get more Conservative MPs elected to support his Brexit plan. Johnson wants to get his deal ratified by Parliament. In short, Johnson desperately needs to get a majority government to make his Brexit plan happen. (Full Story)

Every year for several weeks before November 11, a field of scarlet poppies appears on coat lapels across Canada. This wearing of the poppy has a complex history ... (Full Story)

By Orna Mizrahi

A popular protest erupted in Lebanon on October 17, 2019 on a scale unprecedented in recent years. Mass demonstrations grew steadily stronger in successive days, and have so far numbered between tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of participants as they spread from Beirut to the country's other principal cities. For now, the protests continue. The trigger for the demonstrations - in the sense of "the straw that broke the camel's back" - was an unusual decision (rescinded immediately, one day after the protest erupted) to tax WhatsApp voice calls.  (Full Story)

New York - Southern (Inner) Mongolian poet Mr. Zhao Baahuu, who goes by the pennames Soliyoot Shulegchin (“Crazy Poet” in Mongolian) and Cao Yuan Nu Huo ( “Fury of Grassland” in Chinese), was detained and placed under house arrest after publishing poems online criticizing China’s ethnic policies toward Southern Mongolians, Tibetans and Uyghurs over the past 70 years.  (Full Story)

As Egypt formulates and implements its economic reform program, “the Chinese development model” is mentioned with increasing frequency in official Egyptian discourse as a supreme positive example. The Chinese model is identified in Egypt with modernization, scientific advances, foreign investments, integration into the global economy, and mega-projects that stand to yield high economic growth rates and enable a response to the challenges of a rapidly growing population and dire poverty. (Full Story)

There are nominated candidates of all races and religions in our Party. the PPC. With names like Salim Mansour, Rocky Dong, Jigna Jani, Tahir Gora, Jude Guerrier, Jing Lan Yang, Salomon Rayek, and many, many others. (Full Story)

Valentine’s Day rituals often begin in the classroom, where the holiday serves both as an enjoyable arts and crafts activity and as a pedagogical tool, teaching children about structuring love and friendship into a concrete, prescribed form. The ritualization of love continues throughout our lives, not only on Valentine’s Day, but through weddings, anniversaries, and Mother’s and Father’s Day. (Full Story)

Montreal Jews rely on non-Jewish academics, writers and filmmakers to present and even explain, in French, Jewish realities to the Quebecois public and within Francophone academia. The considerable number of publications on Jewish themes, both in fiction and non-fiction, written in French by non-Jews is certainly unequaled in the Francophone world and most likely in the West, contends writer Victor Teboul. But do these works encourage or dissuade critical assessment of Quebec and of Quebec–Jewish relations, asks Tolerance.ca’s editor, whose most recent book also questions Quebecois identity. (Full Story)

Despite his dedicated work on behalf of Jewish refugees in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s, James G. McDonald (1886-1964) is little known today. Come discover this highly unusual and outspoken maverick through Shuli Eshel’s inspiring documentary, “A Voice among the Silent,” followed by comments and discussion led by Neil Caplan. (Full Story)

The Canadian government's recent announcement that it will be providing more than CDN $600 million (USD $455 million) over the next five years to bail out the country's financially strapped media outlets -- as part of the fall fiscal update about the federal budget ahead of the 2019 federal election -- is not as innocent as it may seem. (Full Story)

By David Barzilay

The intriguing tale of the location and fate of a Jewish baby placed in the Municipal Foundling Home of Thessaloniki during WWII.

It is March 4th 2016 an email pops onto my screen from some unknown group of researchers based in Thessaloniki, Greece. They introduce themselves: “ We are a group of researchers in Thessaloniki working on a common academic project related to the Shoah. Aliki Arouh, genealogist and researcher archivist of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki, , Aigli Brouskou, an anthropologist, researcher of the Municipal Foundling Home of Thessaloniki ‘Agios Stylianos’ and Areti Makri, archivist at the State Archives in Thessaloniki and a researcher”. (Full Story)

To many observers, the Jewish community in Quebec is highly integrated into Quebec society, yet to others it appears insular. How can this apparent contradiction be explained? How do religious groups, including Jews, deal with the trend towards secularization in Quebec? We raised these questions and others with Dr. Morton Weinfeld. Professor of Sociology at McGill University in Montréal, Dr Weinfeld holds the Chair in Canadian Ethnic Studies. He is the author of Like Everyone Else, but Different: The Paradoxical Success of Canadian Jews (McClelland & Stewart, 2001), a study of the Jewish community in Canada. Dr. Weinfeld is also a recognized authority on Quebec’s Jewish community. (Full Story)

On Thursday, April 19, 2018 at 7:00 pm at the Gelber Centre, veteran British journalist Ian Black will be speaking on “Israelis and Palestinians: Contested Past, Uncertain Future.” (Full Story)