A passenger who fell off a cruise ship near the coast of Croatia treaded water for 10 hours before her rescue.

The 46-year-old British woman, Kay Longstaff, fell off a Norwegian Cruise Line ship around midnight Saturday, plunging into the Adriatic Sea. She told Croatian news channel HRT that she was sitting at the back of the deck before the fall. She was roughly 60 miles away from the Croatian coast.

Longstaff floated and sang to stay awake, rescuers said. The Croatian Coast Guard launched an air and sea search early Sunday morning.

She was rescued by the Croatian coast guard 10 hours after her fall on Sunday and taken to a hospital in the town of Pula. Longstaff was released from the hospital on Monday.

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Source: USA Today

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American Jews donate at high levels to charity. One way they support causes in the U.S., Israel and other places is collective, often through large grant-making organizations.

In researching this organized philanthropy, I’ve observed that the proportion of Jewish institutional giving to Israeli causes has fallen since 2009. I believe that several factors, including demographic and social changes, a diminishing perception of Israel as being in need and concerns over the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have probably been driving this decline for years.

More recently, Israel’s increasingly conservative policies on social and religious issues, which are often at odds with what most American Jews support, might also be playing a role.

Some 2 million Muslim pilgrims gathered on Monday in the valley of Mount Arafat in Saudi Arabia for a day of prayer that marks the pinnacle of the annual hajj.

Pilgrims stood shoulder to shoulder for an emotional day of repentance and supplication at the site Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad delivered his final sermon, calling for equality and for Muslims to unite. According to the hadiths, traditional collections of the prophet’s sayings and anecdotes about his life, Muhammad also reminded his followers of women’s rights and that every Muslim life and property is sacred.

Muslims believe prayer on this day at Mount Arafat, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) east of the holy city of Mecca, is their best chance to erase past sins and start anew.

The Australian Senate came within two votes last week of allowing its territories to legalize euthanasia, but multiple lawmakers changed their minds at the last minute.

The bill would have erased a 1997 law prohibiting Australia’s territories from allowing euthanasia. Sen. Steve Martin, one of at least three Liberal Party senators to swing the vote 36-34 against the bill, said his conscience would not allow him to support the bill “without ensuring that appropriate safeguards were in place,” The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Last year, Victoria became the first Australian state to legalize euthanasia, shortly after New South Wales narrowly avoided it. But the 10 territories, over which the federal government has more oversight and control, have been barred from legalizing euthanasia since Parliament reversed the Northern Territory’s 1995 law allowing it.

Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, told me that a vote in favor of the bill would have made the legalization of euthanasia “almost automatic” in the Northern Territory.

“I think in the end, they had to make a decision, if we do this, if we vote this way, it essentially meant that the Northern Territory would once again allow euthanasia,” he said.

The Australian Capital Territory could also have legalized it. Catholic Health Australia CEO Suzanne Greenwood told Sight news this month that the dearth of palliative care specialists in the country made the bill dangerous. She cited recent data that showed only four specialists serve the 244,500 people in the vast…