The family of slain journalist Daniel Pearl said the Pakistani Supreme Court judges who last month ruled to free his killers harbor anti-American bias associated with conspiracy theories around Pearl’s death.

Judea Pearl, Daniel Pearl’s father, told The Forward that the family believes two members of the three-judge panel that voted to free Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh are “anti-U.S.,” a sentiment that Pearl said was associated with a belief that the United States fabricated his son’s murder.

Daniel Pearl was a Jewish Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped by terrorists and beheaded while on assignment in Karachi in 2002. Pearl’s Jewish faith is widely believed to have played a role in his murder. Three accomplices were acquitted by a lower court last April.

Israel’s Ariel University in Samaria has announced that it will award its first honorary doctorate to outgoing U.S. Ambassador to Israel David M. Friedman “in recognition of his extraordinary contributions to the diplomatic international relations between the USA and Israel.”

Friedman said in response that he was “deeply honored to be the first recipient of an honorary doctorate from Ariel University, an academic institution that serves students of all faiths and nationalities. Ariel brings a future of peaceful coexistence right to the here and now.”

Friedman served as ambassador to Israel from May 15, 2017 to Jan. 20, 2021. He was appointed to the post by President Donald Trump, who had been represented by David Friedman in connections with bankruptcy negotiations.

Janice Weinman, chief executive officer/executive director of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization for the past nine years, will step down as the organization’s leader on July 1. During her tenure at Hadassah, Weinman helped the organization realize its missions to support Israel, facilitate the work of its two hospitals in Jerusalem; fight antisemitism, and advance the cause of women’s health.

Before joining Hadassah, Weinman served as president of K.I.D.S., an organization supporting children in need around the world; also corporate vice president for external affairs of the Mount Sinai Hospital/NYU Medical Center and Health System in New York City; also executive director and CEO of the American Association of University Women; and executive vice president of the College Board. She also served as the assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Education in the Carter and Clinton administrations.

Two Jews played prominent roles in the second impeachment trial of former president Donald J. Trump. David Schoen, a modern Orthodox Jew from Atlanta, represented Trump at the Senate trial, which began on Feb. 9. Schoen has represented reputed mobster figures; the alleged head of the Russian mafia in this country; Israeli mafia and two Italian bosses.

Most recently, he represented Roger Stone, a longtime Republican operative and an ally of Trump. Stone was convicted of obstructing a congressional investigation into the allegations of Russian collusion during the 2016 presidential election. Days before Stone, who is Trump’s longtime friend and political confidant, was to report to prison in July, the president commuted the 40-month prison sentence.

Leading the House impeachment managers in the trial was Jamie Raskin, who made the case with eight other members of the House of Representatives that the former president had incited insurrection when his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC on Jan. 6.

Raskin, an American lawyer, has served as the U.S. Representative for Maryland’s 8th congressional district since 2017. He also played a role in Trump’s first impeachment trial.

Andy Jassy has spent the past 15 years converting Amazon from an e-commerce giant into a highly profitable technology company, creating and then dominating the cloud infrastructure market. Now, he’s about to become CEO of the third-most valuable U.S. company after Apple and Microsoft. Amazon has announced that Jassy will succeed Jeff Bezos at the helm in the third quarter, becoming only the second CEO in the company’s 27-year history. Bezos will become executive chairman.

Jassy, 53, is a member of Bezos’ elite group of executives called the S-team. Jassy has been CEO of AWS (Amazon Web Services). As of mid-2020, Amazon controlled 33% of the global cloud infrastructure services market, followed by Microsoft at 18% and Google at 9%, according to Synergy Research. Amazon said that AWS revenue in the fourth quarter jumped 28% to $12.7 billion. Operating income increased 37% to $3.56 billion, accounting for 52% of Amazon’s total operating profit.

President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. has appointed Dr. Rochelle Walensky as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, succeeding Dr. Robert Redfield, who served from March 26, 2018 to Jan. 20, 2021. Dr. Walensky will lead the CDC’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. 

Before her appointment to the CDC, Dr. Walensky was chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of medicine at Harvard. Medical School.

She told The Forward, “I’m motivated by the Jewish teachings of tikkun olam. Tikkun olam for me has been giving at the individual patient level — not to judge, not to react, but to give, to heal and to repair.”