El Al Sues Israel After Air India Flies Through Saudi Airspace

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El Al Sues Israel After Air India Flies Through Saudi Airspace Photo Israel’s national airline, El Al, is required to take a circuitous route to India that avoids the entire Arabian Peninsula. Credit Nir Elias/Reuters TEL AVIV — The Israeli government has hailed Air India’s new nonstop service from New Delhi to Tel Aviv as a historic breakthrough — the Indian carrier is the first commercial airline to take a geopolitical shortcut through Saudi Arabian airspace.
But Israel’s national airline, El Al, still has to take the long way and fears that it will suffer serious financial damage from what it views as aerial discrimination.
So in a first of its own, El Al petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court on Wednesday, filing suit against the government; the Civil Aviation Authority; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; the transportation minister, Yisrael Katz; and Air India.
Flying in a straight line cuts more than two hours off the usual flight time, and allows Air India to lower its ticket price. ..

Book Listing Hitler as a ‘Great Leader’ Is Removed from Publisher’s Website

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Book Listing Hitler as a ‘Great Leader’ Is Removed from Publisher’s Website NEW DELHI — An Indian publisher has removed from its online store a children’s book that included Hitler on a list of world leaders who “devoted their lives for the betterment of their country and people.”
The book, titled “Leaders” but previously listed on the publisher’s website as “Great Leaders,” spotlights 11 world figures “who will inspire you.” On its cover, Hitler is featured alongside Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela and Mohandas K. Gandhi, among others.
Published by the Pegasus imprint of B. Jain Publishing Group of India, the book came under fire this month after the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a global human rights organization researching the Holocaust and hate in historical and contemporary contexts, called the decision to include Hitler an “abomination.”
In a statement released this week, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate director of the center, hailed the removal of the 48-page book from the publisher’s ..

Is Your Waiter Rude, or Merely French? A Debate Is Revived

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Is Your Waiter Rude, or Merely French? A Debate Is Revived Photo “The line that ‘I am French so I am rude,’ well, that is not a defense,” said Edith Boncompain, of the French Institute Alliance Française in New York, after a fired waiter in Canada made headlines with such a claim. Credit Gabriel Bouys/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Few cultural stereotypes are more pervasive than the surly French waiter.
In the 1985 movie “European Vacation,” Chevy Chase and his family meet a Parisian garçon who, after insulting the brood, offers them dishwater to drink.
And who can forget the scene from Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life” when a French waiter, faced with his unfulfilling existence, swears at the camera then turns for home?
Well, in Canada recently, Guillaume Rey, a waiter at Milestones Bar + Grill in Vancouver, British Columbia, filed a complaint against the restaurant’s parent company, Cara Operations, after he was fired for being combative, aggressive and something of a bully…