A thaw in the frozen Mideast peace talks may be in the works as Ehud Barak puts the finishing touches on his new government, but it apparently hasn’t touched Egypt. That was apparent on Monday when a group of Jewish leaders held a chilly session with President Hosni Mubarak, here for a round of top-level meetings including a Thursday session with President Bill Clinton.
Several participants described the meeting as contentious, combative and frustrating.

In the wake of the worst attack on synagogues in the United States in at least two decades, federal investigators are feverishly tracking leads in last week’s coordinated firebombings of three of the five temples in Sacramento, Calif.
Meanwhile, an unprecedented outpouring of support continues to stream into the California state capital’s Jewish community from local citizens, national politicians and horrified American Jewish organizations, all vowing to help rebuild the severely damaged buildings torched in a pre-dawn raid last Friday by still unknown persons.