JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

Updated 05/22/12 @ 10:37AM EST

• A Talmud that took Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz 45 years to translate from ancient Hebrew and Aramaic into modern Hebrew is being published in English.
• The head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog said his agency expects to sign a deal with Iran to allow an investigation into the Islamic Republic's nuclear program.
• U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman introduced legislation to allow Israel into the U.S. Visa Waiver Program.
• U.S. Reps. Nita Lowey and Eliot Engel introduced a resolution calling on the International Olympic Committee to honor the Munich 11 with a moment of silence at the London Games this summer. 
• Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli was voted the world's most beautiful woman on the annual Maxim Hot 100 list.

• A complaint leveled against the Guardian over Israel's capital city was decided in favor of the British newspaper.
• A Lithuanian synagogue was vandalized shortly after a memorial ceremony for the country's wartime prime minister, a Nazi collaborator.
• A South African university canceled a lecture by Israel's deputy ambassador to the country following a pro-Palestinian campaign of "intimidation and threats."
• Tamara Brooks, a noted choral conductor, and the wife and musical partner of singer-actor Theodore Bikel, has died.
• Austria's Foreign Ministry renounced a statement by the country's defense minister calling Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's participation in the government "unbearable."

• An Israeli climbing Mount Everest abandoned his quest to rescue a Turkish climber.
• Three women were detained after attempting to pray at the Western Wall in Jewish prayer shawls.
• A top American Jewish Committee official decried to an Arab audience advocacy of a "one-state solution" from the pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian perspectives.
• Federal authorities are investigating campaign contributions made by employees of an Ohio company to Republican U.S. Senate candidate Josh Mandel.
• The Knesset passed a bill that provides tax benefits to Israelis who donate to West Bank settlements.

• Orthodox conversions in Israel are down by 31 percent over the past two years, according to a new report.
• Israel's Foreign Ministry summoned the South African ambassador to Israel over the publication of a notice announcing a ban on labeling as Israeli products that originate from the West Bank.
• Google will donate office space to the new applied science graduate school of Cornell University and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.
• The public editor of The New York Times said the paper should have credited Jewish news outlets with leading the way on coverage of the handling of haredi Orthodox sex abuse cases by Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes.
• Lillian Jacobs, who was recently featured in a New York Times article for living on the same block for 100 years, has died.

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