U.S. Report

NEW YORK (JTA) -- A group of Jewish activists traveled this week to Albany, N.Y., to "monitor" the police brutality trial of four officers who last year killed Amadou Diallo, a West African immigrant.

The family of Gidone Busch, an Orthodox man killed by police in Brooklyn, was expected to join the activists, organized by Jews for Racial and Economic Justice.

The activists want "to lend some support to the Diallo family," said JFREJ's associate director, Cynthia Greenberg.

State senator backs Christian history

NEW YORK (JTA) -- A Republican state senator who says Kentucky schools are censoring Christianity's influence on American history is sponsoring legislation that would exclude non-Christian religions from lessons on colonial America.

"When the boat came to these great shores, it did not have an atheist, a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Christian and a Jew," state Sen. Albert Robinson said. "Ninety-eight percent of these people were Christians."

Rep. Kathy Stein, the Kentucky General Assembly's only Jewish legislator, said she is tired of the attempts to "impose a majority faith."

Bush feels reluctant on troops to Golan

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush said he would be reluctant to deploy U.S. troops on the Golan Heights to monitor a peace deal between Israel and Syria.

Appearing on PBS' "Newshour with Jim Lehrer," the Texas governor said he would have to see the terms of the deal first but stressed that "I would hope that we'd be able to achieve an agreement without the use of troops."

Syrian Jews seeking citizenship in U.S.

NEW YORK (JTA) -- Some 2,000 Jews who fled Syria in the 1980s have not been able to obtain U.S. citizenship because of a technicality, according to a Sephardi rights group.

Noting that the refugees came to the United States on tourist visas because that was the only way that Syrian President Hafez Assad would allow them to leave, the Sephardic Voters League called on Congress to pass a bill that would grant them citizenship.