Baltimore, MD - Apr. 28, 2016 - Temporary roadwork completed on I-295 S in DE. Lanes are reopened and traffic moving smoothly
Baltimore, MD - Apr. 28, 2016 - April 26, 2016 was no ordinary day in the 5th Council District of Baltimore City. While for some of the District it was the 4th day of Pesach, for others it was Election Day in Maryland for all the City's residents. There were several very serious decisions to be made by the voters. From picking the primary's candidates for US Senator to Mayor, the voters of Baltimore City were exercising their civic duty at the polls. One political race however, grabbed the imagination of the voters in Northwest Baltimore. Could a young, energetic, community activist take on the establishment? What were the chances of prevailing over a candidate that had the endorsement of unions and seasoned politicians? To the untrained eye probably a long shot at best. B...
We are currently in the midst of our beautiful holiday Pesach, the period of our freedom. Pesach is an eight day holiday whose first and last days have the status of Shabbos in which driving and other forms of creative activities are prohibited. The middle days are somewhat like weekdays on which we may drive and do several other forms of creative activity. The question is what is the function of the eight days. The first days naturally celebrate the freedom from the Egyptian servitude. But what is the significance of the extension of seven more days? Among the things that make Pesach unique is the mitzvah of eating matzah and the prohibition of eating chometz. Pesach’s primary staple, matzah, is the food that represents freedom. There is however a paradox. On one hand matzah is cal...
Lebanon, CT - A fire at a Connecticut egg farm that killed an estimated 80,000 chickens was likely caused by an overheated electric motor. Fire Marshal Scott Schuett said the official cause of the fire Tuesday at Kofkoff Egg Farms in Lebanon will likely remain undetermined, but it appears to have started in a motor that powers conveyor belts that move chicken waste, food, water and eggs in and out of the coops.   No people were reported injured in the blaze, which drew about 125 firefighters from 25 departments across the region. Schuett says the blaze was limited to one of the farm’s 13 roughly 32,000-square foot coops. A blaze at the same farm 27 years ago to the day killed 216,000 chickens. That was also ruled an accident.
Berlin - Germany’s foreign minister says Donald Trump’s foreign policy ideas are unclear and contradictory. The Republican presidential front-runner declared Wednesday that he would put “America first” as part of his foreign policy if elected. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier responded Thursday by saying he hoped “that the election campaign in the United States doesn’t ignore reality.” Steinmeier says Trump’s claims “aren’t entirely free of contradictions,” such as when he pledges to “make America great again” and simultaneously suggests the U.S. should withdraw. Steinmeier said he “couldn’t see a clear line” in Trump’s policies, adding: “It doesn’t seem...
Israel is facing a major environmental crisis as the Palestinian Authority (PA) continues to pollute the country’s main waterways with sewage, despite funding and a commitment to cease the practice, a Knesset member told The Algemeiner in an interview.  MK Sharren Haskel — at 32, the Likud party’s youngest member and the second youngest member of the current Knesset — explained: “The Palestinians agreed under the Oslo Accords to build treatment plants and recycle their sewage water. The PA committed to deal with these issues and has received hundreds of millions of dollars in international funding from Europe and the US to do so,” Haskel said. “However, Palestinian runoff water — both household...
Former Bush administration ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton and Jaime Turner, former National Security Council staffer under Bush and Obama both react positively to Donald Trump’s first major foreign policy address, REAL CLEAR POLITICS reports. “I thought it was a very strong and impressive speech,” Bolton said. “It was an impressive first statement of his thoughts –not all of which I agree with. I thought his analysis of the many failings of the Obama adminsitration were right on target,” he concluded.
 Trump: Obama’s Snubbed Israel and Treated Iran With ‘Tender Love and Care’
A rare procedure performed at the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem has prevented a 3-year-old Palestinian boy from the Gaza Strip from becoming paralyzed. The boy was released from the hospital walking on his own. Sliman, 3, had developed a benign tumor in his chest, which not only interfered with his respiratory system but also caused a malformation in his spine and limited his range of motion. The tumor posed a risk of causing permanent paralysis in the lower extremities in the future. This tumor is very rare with only a handful of recorded cases in medical history. It was the first such case to be seen in Israel. The doctors at the Hadassah Medical Center agreed to confront the challenge and decided on a two-stage approach. The first stage involved a “stretching&...
London - Britain’s main opposition Labour Party, which has faced growing criticism over perceived anti-Semitism in its ranks, suspended a lawmaker on Wednesday for making anti-Israel posts on social media before she was elected to Parliament. The party said Naz Shah had been barred from taking part in the party’s activities or in participating in the grouping of Labour lawmakers in Parliament. Shah was under pressure over comments including a 2014 Facebook post in which she shared a graphic that showed the outline of Israel superimposed on a map of the U.S. under the headline “Solution for Israel-Palestine Conflict - Relocate Israel into United States.” She was elected to Parliament last year for Bradford West, a northern England constituency with a larg...
Washington - Donald Trump strained to lay out a clear vision of his “America first” foreign policy on Wednesday, vowing to substitute hard-headed realism for what he called a post-Cold War era replete with U.S. national security failures. Yet the Republican presidential front-runner outlined no strategy for how he’d make the United States at the same time a “consistent” and “unpredictable” force in the world. And he didn’t appear to allay the concerns of U.S. and international critics - Republicans at home as well as Democrats - who see him as unfit for the responsibilities of commander in chief. “‘America first’ will be the major and overriding theme of my administration,” Trump declared, echoing motifs fro...
Bronx, NY -  Law enforcement rescued a housing project with the biggest gang takedown in city history, and now officials are investigating whether the city’s 400,000 public housing residents were being protected in safe conditions as required by federal law, a federal prosecutor announced Wednesday. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara told a news conference that nearly 700 New York Police Department officers and federal agents accompanied by helicopters and armored trucks executed pre-dawn raids, taking down two rival drug gangs from top to bottom. By late afternoon, 88 people were in custody and more were sought in what Bharara described as the biggest gang takedown ever in New York City. The arrests stemmed from charges brought against 120 gang members. “We bring the...
Richmond, VA - Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign co-chairman in Virginia has traveled to Syria and promised support for the government of President Bashar Assad, who U.S. officials have repeatedly said has lost the legitimacy to rule the war-torn country. Virginia state Sen. Dick Black’s trip to a Middle Eastern country in the midst of a civil war and his comments in the face of official U.S. foreign policy are highly unusual for a state lawmaker. Black, an outspoken Republican, is a part-time state senator who has no role in official U.S. foreign policy. Still, he has met with Assad government officials and said he would advocate for better relationships between Assad and the U.S., according to the official Syrian news agency. “I will be Syria’s voice,” Bl...
New York, NY - Aides to Mayor Bill de Blasio have been subpoenaed by state and federal prosecutors amid investigations into his campaign fundraising operation, his administration said Wednesday. City Hall received subpoenas from the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan and from the Manhattan district attorney’s office, mayoral counsel Maya Wiley said. A statement issued by Wiley said de Blasio had not been “personally served,” but it didn’t reveal the subject or recipients of the subpoenas. Follow-up inquiries to the mayor’s office went unanswered Wednesday night. De Blasio, a Democrat serving his first term as mayor, has not been accused of any wrongdoing and has said he and his team did not violate any campaign finance laws. The mayor and hi...
Berlin - The Bavarian parliament was debating Thursday whether an annotated version of Adolf Hitler’s opus Mein Kampf should be authorized for educational use in schools and other establishments. The 2,000-page version of the text, which climbed to the top spot on Der Spiegel’s nonfiction bestseller list this month, includes 3,700 annotations that attempt to provide context to Hitler’s anti-Semitic rhetoric and lay bare his Nazi propaganda. It was first released in January after the copyright handed over to a Bavarian ministry by the Allies after World War II expired. The ministry had refrained from republishing the text for seven decades for fear of stoking anti-Semitism. Opposition parties in Bavaria, including the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Free V...
London -  Britain’s main opposition Labour Party has suspended former London Mayor Ken Livingstone over comments about anti-Semitism. Livingstone, who sits on Labour’s National Executive Council, said in a radio interview that he had never heard any anti-Semitic views expressed by Labour members, and claimed Adolf Hitler had supported Zionism before the Holocaust. He was defending lawmaker Naz Shah, who was suspended Wednesday over anti-Israel social media posts she made before she was elected. The party said in a statement Thursday that Livingstone had been suspended “pending an investigation, for bringing the party into disrepute.” Jewish groups and some Labour members accuse party leader Jeremy Corbyn of not clamping down on anti-Semitism in the ...
It is with great sadness that Matzav reports the passing of R’ Yechiel Mechel (Michael) Karfunkel, z”l. He was 72 years old. Mr. Karfunkel was born during World War II and grew up as a poor Jewish boy in Sighet, Hungary, managing to survive the Holocaust only to be swept up in a bitter revolt against the Soviet government. He ultimately managed to leave the bloodshed behind and immigrate to New York. With remarkable Hashgachah Elyonah, Mr. Karufunkel managed to rebuild his life, as he, like his younger brother George, became noted on Wall Street and in the real estate and the insurance industries, while maintaining tremendous anivus and an aversion to publicity. Mr. Karfunkel, a resident of Boro Park, Brooklyn, was the founder of National General Holdings Corp. and c...
Indiana - Democratic presidential candidate BernieSanders offered a list of reasons why Republican candidate Donald Trump will not become the next President of the United States ranging from his views on climate change to his views on a host of Americans. “The American people are not going to vote for Donald Trump for President because he thinks that climate change is a hoax,” Sanders told supporters in Indiana. “He thinks it is a hoax created by the Chinese, which was very confusing to me because I would have thought he would have thought it was a hoax created by Muslims or Mexicans,” Sanders said. He also said the American people would not vote for a candidate for President who insults Mexicans and Latinos, Muslims, women,vetera...
Baltimore, MD - Apr. 28, 2016  20 Nissan 5776  - Daily Dvar Halacha - Eruv Tavshilin?
Baltimore, MD - Apr. 27, 2016  Nissan 5776  - Daily Dvar Halacha - Is The End Of Pesach Different Than The End Of Sukkos? 
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