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Iran

An Iranian boat in the Persian Gulf sailed too close to a U.S. Navy ship for the second time this week, prompting the American vessel to fire warning shots, a U.S. official told Fox News on Thursday. The Iranian boat came within 200 yards of the USS Squall on Wednesday before the American patrol ship fired three...

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MidEast

U.S. and European officials have expressed concerns about Syria’s chemical weapons program after a watchdog revealed that it found traces of deadly nerve agents at sites that were not previously declared by the Damascus regime. The director-general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Ahmet Uzumcu, wrote in a summary...

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Featured

Four patrol boats operated by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps harassed an American destroyer on Tuesday near the Straits of Hormuz, a U.S. defense official told Reuters on Wednesday. Two of the Iranian boats came within 300 yards of the USS Nitze in a manner that the unnamed official called “unsafe and unprofessional.” The IRGC boats harassed the Nitze...

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Israel

A group of African-American church leaders who represent some nine million worshippers criticized the anti-Israel elements of the Movement for Black Lives’ (MBL) recently published policy platform as “laced with misinformation and anti-Semitism” in a statement issued on Monday. MBL is a coalition of over 50 groups affiliated with the Black...

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Israel

The Israeli military has begun training infantry units to use advanced robotic systems in urban warfare situations, Ynet reported on Sunday. While the IDF’s Engineering Corps already employs surveillance robots to detect tunnels, this is the first time that a combat robot — called MTGR for “micro tactical ground robot” — will be used by the IDF’s infantry...

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Israel

The Zoological Center of Tel Aviv-Ramat Gan is celebrating the addition of a new baby white rhino to its growing 28-strong rhinoceros herd. Tanda, a 23-year-old mare, gave birth to the healthy male calf this week. It’s her fourth birth since arriving at the Israeli zoo 13 years ago. “She is nursing him...

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Iran

The State Department updated its travel warning to Iran on Monday, warning U.S. citizens that they can be “unjustly detained” if they travel to the Islamic Republic. The announcement, which replaced a travel warning issued on March 14, was meant “to reiterate and highlight the risk of arrest and detention of U.S. citizens, particularly...

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Diplomacy

Israel’s top diplomat secretly visited a Muslim country in Africa that has no formal ties with Jerusalem on Monday, Haaretz reported. A team of Israeli envoys led by Dore Gold, the director general of Israel’s foreign ministry, traveled from the West African Muslim-majority nation of Guinea, with which Israel re-established relations after 49 years last month, to the...

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Diplomacy

President Barack Obama didn’t support the pro-democracy “Green Revolution” protests that swept Iran after its disputed 2009 presidential election because he feared that they would “sabotage his secret outreach to Iran,” Bloomberg View columnist Eli Lake wrote on Wednesday. In his review of The Iran Wars, a new book by Wall Street Journal chief foreign correspondent...

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Israel

New York City’s mayor said that defending Israel is “consistent with progressive values” and that he looks forward to “challenging” fellow progressives who seek to boycott the Jewish state, Jewish Insider reported on Monday. “There are plenty of people who support [the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign] who have advanced degrees...

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