WATERVILLE, Maine (AP) — Rabbi Rachel Isaacs spent the days leading up to Passover overseeing the preparation of ceremonial foods at Beth Israel Congregation, a synagogue in central Maine where membership has quadrupled over the last 15 years. These days, growing congregations is very much on Isaacs' mind, as she's leading a movement to strengthen rural synagogues and Jewish communities around the country. They've reached dozens, and they're hoping for many more. “Rural Jewish life is for...

WASHINGTON (AP) — NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte is expected to meet with President Donald Trump on Wednesday to try to smooth over the president's anger with the military alliance over the Iran war. Trump had suggested the U. S. may consider leaving the trans-Atlantic alliance after NATO member countries ignored his call to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping waterway, as Iran effectively shut it and sent gas prices soaring. The Republican president's meeting with Rutte, a...

HOUSTON (AP) — Still aglow from their triumphant lunar flyby, the Artemis II astronauts made more history Tuesday: calling their friends aboard the International Space Station hundreds of thousands of miles away as they headed home from the moon. It was the first moonship-to-spaceship radio linkup ever. NASA's Apollo crews had no off-the-planet company back in the 1960s and 1970s, the last time humanity set sail for deep space. "We have been waiting for this like you can’t imagine,” II a...