An Austrian Airlines Airbus A320-200 flying from Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport (TLV) to Vienna International Airport (VIE) was forced to divert to Vasil Levski Sofia Airport (SOF) in Bulgaria Sunday night due to a bomb threat. The Bulgarian Air Force dispatched MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter jets to escort the airliner to Sofia Airport.

On the ground in Bulgaria authorities carried out a search of the aircraft as well as its passengers and crew. No bomb was found. The flight was able to continue to Vienna as planned after a lengthy delay.

Austrian Airlines flight OS82 is a regularly scheduled service from Tel Aviv to Vienna. According to Flightradar24, it currently operates twice a week on Thursdays and Sundays. Sunday’s flight was a 13-year-old Airbus A320-200 bearing the registration OE-LZE. The flight took off late at 7:04 P.M. instead of the planned 6:40 P.M. take-off.

by Geoff Vasil

One of the only things independent Lithuania didn’t reject from the Soviet Union was the name of the country as the Republic of Lithuania. Of course the pre-war Lithuania was also a republic, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was as well. All in name at least.

In truth, though, a republic is supposed to serve its people. Specifically, a republic is supposed to serve and protect the minority. This was the major concern of the founders of the United States of America: they wanted democracy, but limited democracy, not mob rule. They wanted to protect minority opinion, minority religions, ethnic minorities and so on. This is why the idea of a state religion was poisonous to them. As was a state-controlled media, the press, and no one until recently even wanted America to have an official language.

by Zev Stub, October 14, 2026

Dublin’s Herbert Park Hotel nixed reservations for 70 guests after learning the conference they were holding would focus on combating anti-Semitism

The hotel canceled a reservation for 70 rooms for delegates attending an international conference on combating anti-Semitism after learning the purpose of their visit, according to a senior representative of Ireland’s Jewish community.

Chairman of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland Maurice Cohen spoke of the incident at a reception at the Irish Foreign Ministry Tuesday night marking the opening of a meeting of the Special Envoys and Coordinators Combating Antisemitism (SECCA), a group supported by the World Jewish Congress and the European Commission.

The Nobel Prize Committee awarded South African Indian Navanethem aka Navi Pillay the Nobel Peace Prize for 2026. She served as UN high commissioner for refugees, was a jurist on the International Criminal Court and has special guest-judge status on the UN’s International Court of Justice.

Israel National News wrote the following:

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in Oslo on Friday to South African jurist Navi Pillay, known for her anti-Israel positions. Pillay served as the UN’s fifth High Commissioner for Human Rights and held senior positions in the international judicial system over the course of her career.

Pillay also served as president of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and as a judge at the International Criminal Court. She is known in Israel for her radical positions against the Jewish state.

The Šiauliai Jewish Community marked the third anniversary of Hamas’s attack against the Jewish people in southern Israel in the central square in the northern Lithuanian city with Israeli flags, candles, flowers and lights representing the colors of the Israeli flag.

On October 3, 2023, Hamas murdered 1.221 people and took 251 hostage. Almost all of the hostages were tortured and the IDF says less than half made it out alive. CNN reported only 206 people were taken alive, the remaining 45 taken as corpses into Gaza, and that 40 of those 206 were killed in captivity.

The Šiauliai Jewish Community remembers all the victims with their whole heart and mourns with the families and loved ones of those murdered. Memory and light will always prevail over darkness, members of the Community said. The Šiauliai Jewish Community thanks the city for making the square available for the commemoration and for expressing support and solidarity.