By Reuters
The European Union will give a financial boost on Wednesday to the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority to help Prime Minister Salam Fayyad pay
public sector salaries, EU and Palestinian officials said.
The 40 million euro injection of funds comes on top of the 256 million euros in budget support disbursed so far this year by the European Union. 
Fayyad has struggled in recent months to pay government workers because many Arab donors have not met their financial commitments. "The situation is very, very tight, for sure," a top official from Fayyad's office said this week.
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Indian group believes its lineage includes biblical patriarch Joseph
By Aaron Klein
Bnei Menashe men in India reciting traditional Jewish prayer (photo: Shavei Israel)
JERUSALEM – After years of diplomatic wrangling, the Israeli government has given permission to a community of Indian citizens who believe they are one of the "lost tribes" of Israel to move legally to the Jewish state.
This decision, first reported in Israel's Maariv newspaper, clears the way for the arrival here of 7,232 members of the Bnei Menashe. They believe they are the descendants of Manasseh, one of the biblical patriarch Joseph's two sons and a grandson of Jacob
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Saudi Arabia has delivered $100 million in aid to the government of Palestinian Authoirty President Mahmoud Abbas, a Palestinian diplomat said Saturday.
The Palestinian ambassador in Saudi Arabia, Jamal Shobaki, said the Saudis made the donation in response to an appeal from Abbas. He said the money was part of an aid package promised by the Saudis two years ago, and came in addition to regular monthly stipends that Saudi Arabia sends each month.
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When one observes what is happening in today's world things look very, very, serious indeed. 
On one side we see the rise of the exceedingly sly and ruthless dictator, Vladimir Putin, who although he has allowed Dmitry Medvedev - his former trusted chief aide - to become president, remains virtually Russia's sole ruler as prime minister and also as chief of the ruling party. He now threatens the whole free world with his Soviet-like aggressive designs - much in accordance with Putin's former KGB past.   
So, as Putin has just brutally invaded pro-western and pro-Israel, Christian Georgia, and threateningly holds out the possibility of an attack on peace-loving, democratic Poland - in wily response to the just-signed agreement between Poland and the U.S. to have a defensive missile shield placed on Polish soil - it all looks very much like it was at the beginning of the Second World War. 
On the other side we see in America, unbelievably, the rise of presidential forerunner Barack Obama, a former Muslim and a man who - like British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain on the eve of World War Two - promises wonderful change in our times, much as Chamberlain promised Britain ...   more »