At the Western (or Wailing) Wall in Jerusalem, men and women soon will be allowed to worship together in a designated space. In addition, at the wall, women will be allowed to lead prayers and wear religious clothing traditionally meant for men. The new rules were approved by the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in January. Construction of the special section was expected to take two to three months. (Separation of the sexes is not practiced at other public sites in Israel, though some bus...

My wife, Bonnie, and I returned from a trip to Cuba in January 2016. If you are an American planning to visit, take US dollars with you, and the communist government there wants them to be new, clean and pristine. The official exchange rate was $1 to 0.87 Cuban Convertible Pesos (CUCs). In other words, $100 would buy you CUC87. Don’t worry about where to get the best exchange rate. The dollar-to-CUC rate is fixed, so it’s the same at the airport, at exchange houses, in banks and in hotels....

After reading about an Apple app called OffMaps² in a subscriber’s article (“A Self-Drive Tour of Croatia Plus A Cruise Along the Dalmatian Coast,” Aug. ’15, pg. 30), I immediately downloaded the app to my iPad, since my wife and I were planning a trip to Cusco and Machu Picchu. I must say that I was underwhelmed by the map of that area of Peru. I was so disappointed that I went searching for other apps in the Apple app store. I found one called “City Maps 2 Go,” by Ulmon (Vienna, Austria;...