RSS
Jewish sailor Bill Pinkney, first Black person to circle the globe solo, dies at 87
(JTA) — Captain Bill Pinkney, a Jewish sailor who became the first African American to sail around the world solo, died Thursday. He was 87 and had suffered a fall.
Starting in 1990, the Chicagoan’s 22-month, 27,000-mile journey aboard a 47-foot cutter captivated thousands of schoolchildren who followed his trip via an educational television channel. The footage was used in an award-winning documentary, “The Incredible Voyage of Bill Pinkney,” that aired on the Disney Channel, National Geographic and PBS stations.
The former cosmetics executive also wrote a children’s book in 1994, “Captain Bill Pinkney’s Journey.”
A very different journey also captivated readers in 2019, when Pinkney and his former wife, Ina Pinkney, were featured in a New York Times photo essay about their marriage and extremely amicable divorce. Bill, who grew up poor on Chicago’s South Side, and Ina, who grew up Jewish in Brooklyn and Long Island, married in 1965. It was his second marriage.
Ina was 21 years old when she met Bill at a coffee place in Greenwich Village. “As soon as I spotted him across the crowded room, I said to my friend, ‘Susan, I’m going to marry him,’” Ina told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday. “And I sat down and I talked to him for a little bit, and we went out and we had something to eat. And that was it. It was a done deal for me. And what even helped more is that he was Jewish.”
Yet although Bill considered himself Jewish starting in childhood and converted to Judaism as an adult, her parents broke off contact with the couple and none of her relatives attended the wedding.
According to Ina, Bill was 12 years old when he came home from church with his mother, who divorced his father when Bill was 6. “He said, ‘I can’t go there anymore.’” When his mother asked why, Bill explained, “Because all I hear about is that everything gets better after you die. It can’t be that way.” His mother encouraged him to discover something he could believe in, and after a visit to the library, the preteen announced, “I’m Jewish.”
When Ina, who grew up in a Conservative Jewish home, and Bill were engaged, Bill decided to go through a formal conversion, choosing the Hebrew name “Barak ben Avraham Avinu.” When Ina asked why he felt he needed a formal conversion, Bill explained, “Because without this I could not be buried in a Jewish cemetery next to you.” Ina said that, late in life, Bill would regularly Zoom into services held at the Hebrew Congregation of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and she would occasionally join him online.
The two were married for 36 years. The couple went their separate ways in 2001, when Bill decided to continue to pursue his sailing dreams and Ina her career as a celebrity baker and chef in Chicago.
“My life was on the sea, hers was on the land,” Bill told the New York Times in 2019. According to Ina, Bill would say, “If it doesn’t have a lobby, it would never be her hobby” – that is, she preferred a hotel or a cruise ship over the sail boats he favored. Ina used saltier language to describe how bored she felt on the water.
He later married Migdalia Vachier Pinkney. She survives him, along with his sister, Naomi Pinkney, as do a daughter from his first marriage and two grandchildren.
William Pinkney was born Sept. 15, 1935, in Chicago. After serving eight years in the Navy, he became a makeup artist and designed a line of women’s cosmetics, eventually working as a marketing manager for Revlon and director of cosmetics marketing for Johnson Products Company. He became director of marketing for the Chicago Department of Human Services in 1980, according to the History Makers.
Pinkney first learned how to sail small cargo skiffs while stationed in Puerto Rico with the Navy in the 1950s. He began sailing in earnest on Lake Michigan when working in Chicago.
Pinkney also served, starting in 2000, as the first captain of the reconstructed Amistad, the Spanish schooner whose crew was killed in a revolt by enslaved Africans in 1839. The reconstruction of the ship was inspired by Steven Spielberg’s 1997 film, “Amistad,” about the revolt; as captain, Pinkney took schoolteachers to Africa on a route tracing the Middle Passage crossing by which enslaved Africans were taken from Senegal to the Americas.
In recent years he ran a charter boat business in Fajardo, Puerto Rico.
Pinkney was also a senior advisor for National Geographic. In 2021, he was inducted into the National Sailing Hall of Fame.
Discussing his round-the-world voyage on a boating website, Pinkney said that one of the highlights was sailing past South Africa two weeks after Nelson Mandela had been released after 27 years behind bars. “I sailed past Robben Island, where he’d been imprisoned, flying a red, black, and green spinnaker, the colors of the African liberation movement,” said Pinkney. “As an afterthought, I should’ve put a big yellow Star of David on there as well [laughing], because I’m Jewish.”
—
The post Jewish sailor Bill Pinkney, first Black person to circle the globe solo, dies at 87 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
RSS
Germany’s Halt to Arms Exports to Israel Is Response to Gaza Expansion Plans, Chancellor Says
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz attends a cabinet meeting at the Chancellery in Berlin, Germany, Aug. 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Liesa Johannssen
Germany’s decision to curb arms exports to Israel comes in response to Israel’s plan to expand its operations in the Gaza Strip, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Sunday in an interview with public broadcaster ARD.
“We cannot deliver weapons into a conflict that is now being pursued exclusively by military means,” Merz said. “We want to help diplomatically, and we are doing so.”
The worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza and Israel’s plans to expand military control over the enclave have pushed Germany to take this historically fraught step.
The chancellor said in the interview that the expansion of Israel’s operations in Gaza could claim hundreds of thousands of civilian lives and would require the evacuation of the entire city of Gaza.
“Where are these people supposed to go?” Merz said. “We can’t do that, we won’t do that, and I will not do that.”
Nevertheless, the principles of Germany’s Israel policy remain unchanged, the chancellor said.
“Germany has stood firmly by Israel’s side for 80 years. That will not change,” Merz said.
Germany is Israel’s second-biggest weapons supplier after the US and has long been one of its staunchest supporters, principally because of its historical guilt for the Nazi Holocaust – a policy known as the “Staatsraison.”
RSS
Newsom Calls Trump’s $1 Billion UCLA Settlement Offer Extortion, Says California Won’t Bow
California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks at a press conference, accompanied by members of the Texas Democratic legislators, at the governor’s mansion in Sacramento, California, U.S., August 8, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
California Governor Gavin Newsom said on Saturday that a $1 billion settlement offer by President Donald Trump’s administration for UCLA amounted to political extortion to which the state will not bow.
The University of California says it is reviewing a $1 billion settlement offer by the Trump administration for UCLA after the government froze hundreds of millions of dollars in funding over pro-Palestinian protests.
UCLA, which is part of the University of California system, said this week the government froze $584 million in funding. Trump has threatened to cut federal funds for universities over anti-Israel student protests.
“Donald Trump has weaponized the DOJ (Department of Justice) to kneecap America’s #1 public university system — freezing medical & science funding until @UCLA pays his $1 billion ransom,” the office of Newsom, a Democrat, said in a post.
“California won’t bow to Trump’s disgusting political extortion,” it added.
“This isn’t about protecting Jewish students – it’s a billion-dollar political shakedown from the pay-to-play president.”
The government alleges universities, including UCLA, allowed antisemitism during the protests and in doing so violated Jewish and Israeli students’ civil rights. The White House had no immediate comment beyond the offer.
Experts have raised free speech and academic freedom concerns over the Republican president’s threats. The University of California says paying such a large settlement would “completely devastate” the institution.
Large demonstrations took place at UCLA last year. Last week, UCLA agreed to pay over $6 million to settle a lawsuit by some students and a professor who alleged antisemitism. It was also sued this year over a 2024 violent mob attack on pro-Palestinian protesters.
RSS
Trump Nominates State Dept Spokeswoman Bruce as US Deputy Representative to UN
FILE PHOTO: U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce speaks during her first press briefing at the State Department in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
President Donald Trump said on Saturday he was nominating State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce as the next US deputy representative to the United Nations.
Bruce has been the State Department spokesperson since Trump took office in January.
In a post on social media in which Trump announced her nomination, the president said she did a “fantastic job” as State Department spokesperson. Bruce will need to be confirmed for the role by the US Senate, where Trump’s Republican Party holds a majority.
During press briefings, she has defended the Trump administration’s foreign policy decisions ranging from an immigration crackdown and visa revocations to US responses to Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s war in Gaza, including a widely condemned armed private aid operation in the Palestinian territory.
Bruce was previously a political contributor and commentator on Fox News for over 20 years.
She has also authored books like “Fear Itself: Exposing the Left’s Mind-Killing Agenda” that criticized liberals and left-leaning viewpoints.
In a post after Trump’s announcement, Bruce thanked him and suggested that the role was a “few weeks” away. Neither Trump nor Bruce mentioned an exact timeline in their online posts.
“Now I’m blessed that in the next few weeks my commitment to advancing America First leadership and values continues on the global stage in this new post,” Bruce wrote on X.
Trump has picked former White House national security adviser Mike Waltz to be his U.N. envoy. Waltz’s Senate confirmation for that role, wherein he will be Bruce’s boss, is still due.
Waltz was Trump’s national security adviser until he was ousted on May 1 after he was caught up in a March scandal involving a Signal chat among top Trump national security aides on military strikes in Yemen. Trump then nominated Waltz as his U.N. ambassador.
