Boy found dead on Hizkiyahu Street; mother admits to drowning him in tub. Neighbor: She would always play with him outside, there was nothing unusual 

The High Rabbinical Court has ruled that a woman who stripped in public is still entitled to receive monetary benefits afforded her in her ketuba (marriage contract), the court announced on Monday. The court granted the woman a divorce because the couple repeatedly fought. In one instance, police had to be called after she tore down a photograph of her's husband's deceased wife that he insisted on keeping in their bedroom and the couple came to blows.

President Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Ehud Barak broke Israel's boycott of Al-Jazeera when they each granted interviews to the Qatar-based network this week. Foreign Ministry officials said there was an understanding in the Prime Minister's Office, Foreign Ministry and Defense Ministry not to speak to Al-Jazeera due to its coverage that the officials called "anti-Israel."

Before it was known whether there would be new elections, or if the winner of the Kadima primary could stitch together a government from the available patchwork, it was clear that the choosing of the next prime minister would be personal. It is almost comical, after the political system needlessly switched from the party election system to the direct election of the prime minister, and then back again, to behold how one's vote is cast for the individual and not the party. The choice is for a set of traits, rather than beliefs or positions on an issue, let alone a party platform.

Likud chairman Binyamin Netanyahu is considering several different options to allow several well-known public figures to make the party's list for the next Knesset, sources close to Netanyahu confirmed on Tuesday.

Philippe Petain and his colleague, politician Pierre Laval, are considered the most abominable traitors in the history of their country, France. They collaborated with the Nazi occupier during World War II and established the Vichy regime, which danced to Hitler's tune. Vidkun Quisling played a similar role in Norway during the same period, and he has been so disgraced that his name has become an international synonym for traitor.

A fifth round of indirect peace talks between Israel and Syria are scheduled to begin on September 7 in Istanbul, according to reports in the London-based Arabic dailies on Wednesday.

The IDF's Military Intelligence has dramatically increased its relevance and capabilities since the Second Lebanon War, when some field units went into combat with outdated maps of Hizbullah strongholds, IDF Chief Intelligence Officer Brig.-Gen. Yuval Halamish told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

The murder of two children, Rose Pizem and Alon Borisov, at the hands of their parents prompted MK Nadia Hilou to call an urgent meeting of the Knesset's Committee on the Rights of the Child. Convening hearings devoted to the murder of children makes you look mighty fine on television if other members of Knesset attend, and it makes you look even better if they do not show up and can thus be blamed for indifference to the plight of children at risk. In response to the killings, MK Hilou also submitted a particularly bizarre bill. She wants to require every mother and father to take a crash course in parenting as a requisite for receiving a childbirth grant from the National Insurance Institute. Such proposals, like the urgent committee meetings, do not make children at risk any safer, and it is a pity that such an important matter was turned into a useless media exercise.

All of a sudden, everyone is swearing allegiance to Jerusalem: Tzipi Livni, who has already discussed dividing Jerusalem with the Palestinians every which way; Shaul Mofaz, who has known about it for more than a year but is still clinging to his cabinet seat; and Eli Yishai, too. But what is really irritating is that both those whose conduct is dictated by devotion to power rather than to Jerusalem and those who understand that dividing Jerusalem is an unparalleled risk, one that will melt the glue that has held the Jewish people together for generations, are relying on formalistic arguments.

As a group of second graders ran shouting and cheering into the classroom in Kibbutz Ashdot Yaakov Meuhad's Mul Gilad school, Nikolazh Mamashvili stood quietly outside, waiting until everyone had gone in before sitting down.

An Israeli political activist with lots of connections swore the story is true: Two weeks ago Kadima representatives arrived in the Russian capital to reach an unprecedented agreement under which Kadima would open an office in Moscow and Vladimir Putin's United Russia party would open an office in Israel.

Once upon a time there were two young lieutenant colonels, who took part in joint missions, one as commander of the undercover Dudevan commando unit while the other commanded the raider squadrons in Flotilla 13, the naval commandos. They moved on, Uri Bar-Lev to the police and Yoav Galant to top ranks of the Israel Defense Forces, until they met up again in the south, the first as the Israel Police district commander, and the other as GOC Southern Command. Watching what his friend Bar-Lev is going through, Galant must surely wonder whether someone in the army is already planning something similar for him.

The first personal solar power station in an agricultural community was hooked up to the electricity grid yesterday. It was erected on the rooftop of Moshav Moledet member Gad Meron, and will feed electricity into the national network. The Electricity Corp. installed a meter in the family home, and the state will pay the household for the electricity it produces

Thousands of asylum-seekers have been released from the Ketziot detention center in the Negev without being tested for tuberculosis, or receiving preventive treatment or vaccinations for other serious infectious diseases.

The policemen, rescue workers and municipal inspector standing around the entrance to apartment block 1073 in the Shikun Dalet neighborhood of Tiberias on Tuesday did not have much to do. A quick glance at the body of the elderly woman that was found in a third-floor apartment in the block made it immediately clear that her death was natural and not the result of suicide or assault.

The supply of natural gas from Egypt to Israel was halted on Friday and has yet to be resumed. Concern is mounting in Jerusalem: Sources there believe Egypt is struggling to supply all its clients, and has chosen to cut back its supply for its neighbors, including Israel, some of which pay especially low prices for the fuel.

Egypt opposes an Israeli-Palestinian partial agreement because Cairo doesn't think such a deal would end the conflict in the region, and Jordan fears that such an agreement would force it to take in hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees.

Middle East peace envoy Tony Blair's sister-in-law, who arrived in Gaza with a boatload of activists protesting an Israeli blockade last month, said Tuesday she was stranded because both Israel and Egypt had denied her entry.

A 4-year-old boy was found dead in a Tel Aviv apartment Tuesday evening; police were called to the scene by the boy's mother, whom the police suspect drowned her son.