Crush at Israeli religious festival kills 44
RAMI AMICHAY AT least 44 people were crushed to death at an over-crowded religious bonfire festival in Israel on Friday, medics said, in what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as a "heavy disaster". The crush occurred as tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews thronged to the Galilee tomb of 2nd-century sage Rabbi Shim Bar Yochai for annual Lag B'Omer commemorations that include all-night prayer, mystical songs and dance. Witnesses said people were asphyxiated or trampled in a tightly packed passageway, some going unnoticed until the PA system sounded an appeal to disperse, as crowds packed the Mount Meron slope in…