Jerusalem

JERUSALEM -- Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister ousted by voters six years ago, recaptured leadership of the Labor Party yesterday. Barak's victory, by a margin of 53 percent to 47 percent over lawmaker Ami Ayalon in a party runoff, represents a remarkable political rebirth for the ambitious and strong-willed leader who lost in 2001 to the hawkish Ariel Sharon. "Today begins the journey toward restoration," Barak told supporters early today during a brief victory speech at party headquarters in Tel Aviv.

JERUSALEM -- Israeli police raided the grounds of Islam's third-holiest shrine yesterday, chained the compound's gates behind them, and fired tear gas and stun grenades into a crowd of thousands of Muslim worshipers to quell a rock-throwing protest over Israeli excavation work nearby. The clash outside Al Aqsa mosque set off protests across the Muslim world and scattered violence in the West Bank. It came a day after the rival Palestinian movements Hamas and Fatah agreed to end months of factional fighting, a step that some Israeli leaders believe could lead to stepped-up attacks against the Jewish state.

JERUSALEM -- Facing possible indictment on rape and sexual harassment charges, Israeli President Moshe Katsav angrily defied calls to quit but asked yesterday for a temporary leave while he fights to clear his name. Katsav's request was unlikely to quell calls for his resignation a day after Attorney General Menachem Mazuz said he was prepared to indict. Mazuz said his decision would depend on the outcome of a still-unscheduled hearing at which the president could rebut the charges, which involve former female staff members.

JERUSALEM -- Leaders of rival Palestinian groups Fatah and Hamas will meet today in a new venue, but they confront the same obstacles to a power-sharing arrangement that have torpedoed past negotiations. The two sides gather in the Muslim holy city of Mecca in what could be a final attempt to form a unity government aimed at ending their yearlong power struggle and breaking the Western aid embargo imposed after Hamas won parliamentary elections in January 2006. Stakes are high. The talks come after a new spate of factional clashes in the Gaza Strip that left more than two dozen Palestinians dead and dimmed hopes of resolving the deadlock through peaceful negotiations.

Excuse me? What was that I didn't hear? Journalists from around the world lined up early at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium yesterday to attend the one-day Israeli-Palestinian peace conference in Annapolis. After getting credentials, the reporters were sent through metal detectors, guided onto a waiting bus, schlepped down to the U.S. Naval Academy and directed into a gymnasium where they could view the statements of President Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on a giant screen.

JERUSALEM -- Israel's attorney general said yesterday that prosecutors have enough evidence to charge President Moshe Katsav with raping or sexually harassing female subordinates while serving in his current post and earlier as tourism minister. But Attorney General Menachem Mazuz said a decision on whether to issue a first-ever criminal indictment against an Israeli president would depend on the outcome of a hearing during which Katsav has the right to rebut the allegations. Mazuz said the hearing would be scheduled in coming days.

JERUSALEM -- In quarantine under protective netting, a palm sapling coaxed from a seed that's nearly 2,000 years old is growing in southern Israel. Researchers nurturing the plant, nicknamed Methuselah after the biblical figure said to have lived 969 years, are worried about the seedling's exposure to modern pests. "Things have changed in 2,000 years, and we have this plant that is frozen in time, like Rip Van Winkle," said Elaine Solowey, a horticulturist from the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies at Kibbutz Ketura in the southern Negev region.

Faith, folk songs and fund raising converged at the Annual Showcase & Presentation of Honors of the Baltimore Committee for Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. WJZ-TV news anchor Denise Koch was mistress of ceremonies for the event, held at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall.Cardinal William Keeler, archbishop of Baltimore, and Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg, spiritual leader of Beth Tfiloh Congregation, received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the committee, while Jerusalem Humanitarian Awards were given to Baltimore philanthropist Erna Prager and Robert C. Russel, president of R&H Motor Cars Ltd.After the awards ceremony, renowned folk singer Theodore Bikel entertained the audience of about 1,600 with a variety of songs and show tunes.

JERUSALEM -- In the Magic Kingdom, Jerusalem is the capital of Israel -- which suits the Israelis, but not the Arabs.So the depiction of Jerusalem in the Israeli exhibit at Walt Disney Co.'s millennium celebration set to open in Florida Oct. 1 has Arab leaders and Arab-American and Muslim organizations calling for a boycott of Disney theme parks and products.Israel, which has contributed about a third of the at least $6 million cost of the exhibit, argues that the display is nonpolitical and portrays Jerusalem as the seat of the three great religions, Islam included.

JERUSALEM -- Israel's new prime minister personifies the country's warrior hero and the creative intellect of the early statesmen of the Jewish democracy.A soldier-politician in the tradition of the late Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak grew up on a kibbutz that his parents helped establish before the founding of Israel in 1948.He served in an elite combat unit that assassinated terrorists in Lebanon, freed passengers from a hijacked jet in 1972 and rescued Jewish hostages in a famous raid on a hijacked airliner in Entebbe, Uganda.

EPHRAIM KATZIR, 93 Israel's fourth president Ephraim Katzir, Israel's fourth president and an internationally recognized biophysicist, died Saturday, several weeks after his 93rd birthday. Dr. Katzir's 1973-1978 tenure spanned two seminal events in Israeli history: the 1973 Mideast war and the visit of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to Jerusalem in 1977. He left the presidency after one term to return to scientific research. Born in Kiev in 1916, Dr. Katzir immigrated at age 6 with his family to British-ruled Palestine and studied biology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, receiving his Ph.D.

Pelosi backs bill to aid ailing auto industry WASHINGTON: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for "emergency and limited financial assistance" for the battered auto industry yesterday and urged the outgoing Bush administration to join lawmakers in reaching a quick compromise. Four days after dismal financial reports from General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co., Pelosi backed legislation to make the automakers eligible for help under the $700 billion bailout measure that cleared Congress in October.

In Israel, some people want to know if Barack Obama will visit Jerusalem on his way to Tehran. It's shorthand for concerns about the president-elect's interest in engaging Iran rather than continuing to isolate the Islamic Republic. In the Arab world, some might well complain that Mr. Obama doesn't need to stop in Jerusalem; he's been there. That telegraphs a different concern, that as president, Mr. Obama will favor the Jewish state over the Palestinians, as did his predecessors in the White House.

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Car hits Israeli soldiers, injuring 13; driver shot JERUSALEM: A driver plowed a BMW into a group of soldiers at a busy intersection near Jerusalem's Old City late yesterday, injuring 13 of them before he was shot to death, Israeli police and the rescue service said. Jerusalem police commander Ilan Franco said a soldier in the group killed the driver, who was not immediately identified. Franco said he was a Palestinian resident of east Jerusalem who apparently acted alone. Israel TV said the car was registered to a resident of Jabel Mukaber, an Arab village inside the city limits.

The pictures were beautiful, the words were elegantly cast and the reception inspiring. But watching Sen. Barack Obama's pilgrimage from terrorist-fraught Afghanistan to Iraq, Jerusalem, Berlin and Paris had an otherworldly quality for Americans back home wrestling with depressing economic problems, shoddy treatment of injured veterans, plunging home prices and iconic corporations suffering record losses. There is no doubt the Democratic presidential candidate signaled inspirational change for many Europeans, just as he has for many Americans.

JERUSALEM - A Palestinian driver of a large construction vehicle plowed into traffic on a busy Jerusalem street yesterday, hitting a bus, mangling cars and injuring at least 24 people before the driver was shot dead by an off-duty soldier and a border police officer. The attack, the second in Jerusalem this month involving a construction vehicle, took place on King David Street near the Liberty Bell Park in Jerusalem's upscale hotel district, close to the King David Hotel. Local news media reports said Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate for president, was due to stay at the hotel last night.

JERUSALEM - A 3-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars say they believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a Messiah who will rise from the dead after three days. If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, because it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.

JERUSALEM - A New York fundraiser and businessman testifying in a corruption investigation told an Israeli court yesterday that he gave $150,000, mostly in cash, to the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert. The businessman, Morris Talansky, 75, who is at the heart of the investigation involving Olmert, told the court that he believed the money was used for Olmert's political campaigns and also for his expenditures on hotels and first-class flights. But Talansky said he never received anything in return for the cash and other money, such as payment of credit card bills.

JERUSALEM -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, pressing for progress in peace talks ahead of a visit next week by President Bush, said yesterday that an Israeli-Palestinian agreement by the end of the year is an "achievable goal." Rice's upbeat remarks contrasted with more pessimistic assessments voiced by leaders on both sides, and her talks in Israel were overshadowed by a new corruption investigation against Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Talks were revived in November at a conference hosted by Bush in Annapolis with the goal of reaching an agreement by year's end. But since then, there have been no visible signs of progress.