• Israel faced extremely harsh words over settlement-building from the European Union and several other groups at a press conference outside the U.N. Security Council, where the United States couldn’t veto it. The U.S. statement concerned direct talks. [FP Turtle Bay]
• The International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran are warily considering the former visiting the latter. [Reuters/Haaretz]
• According to the comptroller, Israel lacks the sufficient number of bomb shelters and is generally unprepared for war on the civilian front. [NYT]
• The value of Iranian currency has been in free fall over the past few days due to uncertainty and fears of sanctions. [AP/WP]
• Due to Israeli efforts, the Jordan River may once again flow rather than just quietly babble. [AP/WP]
• Yiddish is the hot new class on several college campuses. [AP/WSJ]
Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.