One in six BBC stars ‘must be gay or lesbian or disabled’ by 2020 says new staff-hiring guidelines: Zio-Watch, April 24, 2016

Angry residents in a Turkish town near the Syrian border have rallied to condemn government policies after coming under a fresh rocket attack by Daesh terrorists.

The protesters marched on the streets of of Kilis, which is located approximately 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) north of the border with Syria.

The protest rally came after two rockets slammed into a poor neighborhood of the town earlier on Sunday, killing one person and injuring 26 others.

The demonstrators converged in front of the governor’s office, where Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan was holding talks with local authorities at the time.

Scuffles broke out when riot police intervened, spraying the protesters with water cannon and firing tear gas canisters to disperse them as they hurled stones in response.

The protest came only a day after Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu pledged to protect residents of Kilis against repeated rocket attacks by Daesh militants.
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U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel attend the opening ceremony of the Hannover Messe in Hanover, Germany April 24, 2016. © Nigel Treblin / Reuters

US President Barack Obama wants to complete talks on a US-EU free trade deal before his term ends in January. However, while he enjoyed the warm support of German Chancellor Merkel in Hannover, public support for the highly secretive deal is waning.

“I don’t anticipate that we will be able to complete ratification of a deal by the end of this year, but I do anticipate that we will have completed the agreement,” Obama said at the industrial trade fair in Hannover during a Sunday briefing with Angela Merkel.

The US president warned that time was ticking, claiming that things would become unpredictable once he is out of office.
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Protestors hold a banner during a march organized by Belgian branch of the German xenophobic and anti-Islamic ‘Pegida’ movement on April 23, 2016, in Antwerp © Luc Claessen / AFP

Activists from the anti-Islamic PEGIDA movement in Belgium’s northern city of Antwerp have clashed with police, local media reported, adding that at least one protester was arrested for performing a Nazi salute.

At least 400 of the PEGIDA supporters staged a demonstration against opening borders for asylum seekers in Hendrik Conscience Square in the city center on Saturday evening, Flemish media reported.

“With this march we want …to close borders [for refugees] and we demand to stop Islam,” one of the protesters told Nieuwsblad newspaper. “It is clear what Islam is capable of…. Our lives are in danger.”
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Archeological researchers find no evidence that the biblical Exodus as recounted in the Passover story happened, but rather the Egyptians ruled Israel during that period and that it was they who eventually left, though gradually.

Contrary to the biblical story that recounts the tale of the people of Israel leaving Egypt, the common view among mainstream archaeologists is precisely the opposite: the ancient Egyptians were the ones who ruled the land of Canaan, and they are the ones who left the Land of Israel to return to Egypt.
Prof. Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University, an internationally renowned expert in biblical archaeology, explained the historical

background of the biblical Exodus story as revealed from archaeological excavations: “In the Late Bronze Age, from the 15th century to the 12th century BCE, Egypt dominated the Land of Israel. Of course, after 350 or 400 years of Egyptian rule in Israel, influences of Egyptian culture entered the Land of Israel in various areas of everyday life. Then two things happened that are related to that same issue: there was a complete collapse of urban centers and of kingdoms and empires in the ancient Middle East, and Egypt withdrew from Israel!”

Based on the archaeological finds, the biblical Exodus story’s the time period, it was actually the Egyptians who ruled the Land of Israel. There is much material evidence scattered across the country. A prominent example of the Egyptian regime in Israel is the large Ramses fortress, the remains of which are hidden beneath the hilltop of Old Jaffa.
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(JTA) — Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders at a campaign stop in Baltimore compared poverty in areas of the city to conditions “in the West Bank in Palestine.”

“Poverty in Baltimore, and around this country, is a death sentence,” Sanders, the Independent governor of Vermont, said Saturday. RealClearPolitics published a video of the speech on its website.

“Fifteen neighborhoods in Baltimore have lower life expectancies than North Korea. Two have a higher infant mortality rate than the West Bank in Palestine… Baltimore teenagers between the ages of fifteen and nineteen face poorer health conditions and a worse economic outlook than those in distressed cities in Nigeria, India, China and South Africa,” Sanders said.

Maryland is one of five states holding primary elections on Tuesday. In addition to Maryland, voters will go to the polls in Connecticut, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

(JTA) — The graduate student union at New York University voted to approve a motion o support a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions resolution against Israel.

The resolution was approved by two-thirds of the 600 union members who voted on Friday, according to reports citing the Graduate Student Organizing Committee. The committee represents more than 2,000 graduate teaching and research assistants at the university.

The resolution called on the union and its parent union, the United Auto Workers, to divest from Israeli companies. It also calls on NYU to close its program at Tel Aviv University, which it alleges violates the NYU non-discrimination policy. Fifty-seven percent of the voting union members also took a personal pledge to boycott Israeli government and academic institutions.

The resolution calls for the boycott to remain in place “until Israel complies with international law and ends the military occupation, dismantles the wall, recognizes the rights of Palestinian citizens to full equality, and respects the right of return of Palestinian refugees and exiles.”
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Palestinian 12-year-old Dima al-Wawi, imprisoned by Israel for allegedly attempting to carry out a stabbing attack, is greeted by her mother Sabha al-Wawi and her father Ismail al-Wawi after her release from an Israeli prison, at Jabara checkpoint near the West Bank town of Tulkarem on April 24, 2016 (AP)

See pictures of Israel’s youngest prisoner reunited with her family after being freed from jail. The 12-year-old Palestinian girl, named Dima al-Wawi, had been imprisoned over an alleged stabbing attack.
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