Coalition talks between the Likud and Yisrael Beytenu parties resumed after Liberman said earlier they reached a “dead end”. Coalition talks between the Likud and Yisrael Beytenu parties resumed late Monday evening, after Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman had said earlier they reached a “dead end”. The main issue of contention between the sides remains the issue of pensions for immigrants, at an estimated cost of 3 billion shekels. The move would also provide rent to immigrants and is opposed by the Finance Ministry due its sectarian nature. Liberman, however, emphasized earlier on Monday that the pension reform isn't only intended for new immigrants. "We are talking about a pension reform for everyone, not only for immigrants from the Co...
Rabbi Yehuda Glick to be sworn in on Wednesday; continued threats on his life prompt special security measures. On Monday the Knesset Guard Sergeant-at-Arms Brigadier General Yossi Grif assigned a bodyguard to Israel’s newest MK, Temple Mount activist Rabbi Yehuda Glick, following threats upon his life. Glick, who was shot and severely wounded in an assassination attempt in 2014, has been the subject of regular death threats by Arab terrorists. He will be one of the few Knesset members to have regular protection by an armed guard. Replacing out-going Likud MK and former Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, Glick will be sworn in to the Knesset at a ceremony on Wednesday. In light of a prohibition established by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu against MKs visiting the Temple M...
Queens, NY - A group of professional bank robbers struck again over the weekend, this time hitting the Maspeth Federal Savings Bank in Rego Park, Queens. The thieves got away with the contents of several safe deposit boxes in a heist police believe is likely connected to at least ten other robberies, including one in April at the Borough Park branch of HSBC where $280,000 in cash and valuables were stolen. The latest theft and missing deposit boxes was discovered by a bank employee at around 8:30 this morning. Adding to the mystery surrounding the robbery, the robbers left 36 empty safe deposit boxes on the roof of the bank, as well as the ladder they used to climb up. A hole was cut into the roof and the bank’s fence, and the feed to the security cameras had been cut as ...
Detroit - Hillary Clinton said Monday that Donald Trump’s economic policies would lead to lower wages, fewer jobs and more debt — warning unionized workers that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee could “bankrupt America like he’s bankrupted his companies.” “Ask yourself,” the likely Democratic nominee told thousands at the Service Employees International Union international convention in Detroit, “how can anybody lose money running a casino, really?” Trump has accused Clinton of using the “the woman’s card” to win votes. Clinton said if fighting for equal pay, paid family leave, a higher minimum wage and affordable child care is “playing the woman card, then deal me in.” Trump’...
New York - Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump skipped a debate in January and held a fund-raiser instead, claiming to have raised $6 million for veterans. Now a group of vets is asking: where’s the money? About a dozen rallied outside Trump Tower in New York, charging Trump has been less than forthcoming about what’s being done with the money raised. The Trump campaign admitted recently the total was more like four and a-half million. But the vets’ objections to Trump were more than financial. “Veterans are not Props for hate” read one poster at the rally. Alexander McCoy, the ex-Marine who organized it, says Trump is a fraud who owes vets an apology.
Chesed Chesed
Mclean, VA - The Romanian hacker known as Guccifer, who is charged with breaking into computer accounts of the Bush family, Secretary of State Colin Powell and others, is scheduled to plead guilty to federal charges. A change-of-plea hearing is scheduled Wednesday at U.S. District Court in Alexandria for Marcel Lazar, 44, of Arad, Romania, according to court records. He pleaded not guilty last month to charges including cyberstalking, unauthorized access to computers and obstruction of justice. The court records do not specify which charges Lazar will plead to. His court-appointed lawyer did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment Monday. Lazar is best known for alleged hacks into accounts held by the Bushes that revealed private family photos and paintings connect...
Washington - Donald Trump wants to build another huge wall, this time to keep out the rising seas threatening to swamp his luxury golf resort in Ireland. The Republican presidential candidate has called climate change a “con job” and a “hoax.” But in an application filed this month in County Clare, Ireland, the Trump International Golf Links and Hotel cites the threat of global warming in seeking a permit to build a nearly two-mile-long stone wall between it and the Atlantic Ocean. The beach in front of the 18th green is disappearing at a rate of about a yard each year. Trump’s application, first reported Monday by Politico, cites local regulations pertaining to “rising sea levels and increased storm frequency and wave energy associated with ...
Pakistan - Senior members of the Afghan Taliban met to choose a successor to their former leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour on Monday after U.S. President Barack Obama confirmed his death in a drone strike inside Pakistani territory at the weekend. The Taliban themselves have made no official statement, but two senior members of the movement said Pakistani authorities had delivered Mansour’s badly burned remains for burial in the western city of Quetta. Pakistani officials, however, denied handing over a body. On a three-day visit to Vietnam, Obama called the death “an important milestone”, saying Mansour had rejected peace talks and had “continued to plot against and unleash attacks on American and Coalition forces”. The president authorized the drone s...
Jerusalem - Israel’s leader on Monday reiterated his support for the establishment of a Palestinian state, seeking to persuade critics that he remains committed to peace as he prepares to bring a polarizing hardliner into his Cabinet. Benjamin Netanyahu said he would seek peace with the Palestinians, even while giving a cool reception to a new French peace initiative. “The Palestinians will have the possibility to build a state of their own, but this state must be demilitarized and recognize Israel as the Jewish state,” he told parliament. Since taking office in 2009, Netanyahu has repeatedly said he supports a “two-state solution” with the Palestinians. But U.S.-led peace efforts have made little headway due to wide gaps between the Israeli and Pa...
Washington - The Supreme Court ruled decisively in favor of a death-row inmate in Georgia on Monday, chastising state prosecutors for improperly keeping African-Americans off the jury that convicted him of killing a white woman. The justices ruled 7-1 in favor of death row inmate Timothy Tyrone Foster in underscoring the importance of rules they laid out in 1986 to prevent racial discrimination in the selection of juries. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court that Georgia “prosecutors were motivated in substantial part by race” when they struck African-Americans from the jury pool. But the court did nothing to limit peremptory strikes, lawyers’ ability to reject potential jurors without offering any reason. The late Thurgood Marshall once said that ra...
New York - Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump met with Bob Corker in New York on Monday, intensifying speculation that the U.S. senator from Tennessee may be on Trump’s vice presidential shortlist. Speaking to reporters following the meeting, Corker described the get-together at Trump Tower in Manhattan as “a meeting between two people who didn’t know each other except over phone calls getting to know each other.” He said he has no reason to believe he’s being vetted as a potential Trump running mate or for a Cabinet position should Trump win the general election. “I have no reason whatsoever to believe I am being considered for a position like that,” Corker told reporters who pressed him about various possible po...
Jerusalem - The Center for Women’s Justice has called on the Religious Services Ministry to prohibit gender segregation at the approaches to the site of the tomb of the Talmudic sage Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai on Lag B’Omer. Every year on the minor holiday of Lag Ba’Omer, tens of thousands of people, mostly from the haredi community, flock to the tomb, adjacent to the town of Meron, to commemorate the anniversary of the death of the revered rabbi. Massive crowds are formed in the areas leading up to the site, and since 2012 a temporary bridge has been constructed for the celebrations to provide an alternative route to from the carparks to the tomb complex itself. The pathway utilizing the bridge is called the “Mehadrin Bridge,” meaning it is only to b...
Washington - FBI agents probing whether Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server imperiled government secrets appear close to completing their work, a process experts say will probably culminate in a sit-down with the former secretary of state. The FBI has already spoken with Huma Abedin, a Clinton confidant who was among the Democratic presidential front runner’s closest aides at the State Department. Former chief of staff Cheryl D. Mills is also cooperating with the investigation, according to her lawyer. That signals that agents will probably seek to interview Clinton soon, if they haven’t already, former Justice Department officials told The Associated Press. The FBI’s standard practice is to save questioning the person at the center of an inve...
Washington - Before deciding if she’ll vote for Donald Trump, Martha McSally says she’ll spend time “determining what kind of man he is.” Mia Love says some comments by the presumptive Republican presidential candidate need “some sort of explanation,” while Renee Ellmers backs him because he’s “a problem solver.” McSally, Love and Ellmers are hardly random women. They’re Republican members of the House, part of a sorority of five GOP congresswomen facing competitive re-election races whose reactions highlight the hard choices Trump’s provocative statements are forcing on his own party. Each of the five must confront a question with political and personal implications: Will you support your party’s standard-be...
Cairo - The head of Egypt’s state-run provider of air navigation services says that EgyptAir flight 804 did not swerve or lose altitude before it disappeared off radar, challenging an earlier account by Greece’s defense minister. Ehab Azmy, head of the National Air Navigation Services Company, told The Associated Press on Monday that in the minutes before the plane disappeared it was flying at its normal altitude of 37,000 feet, according to the radar reading. He says, “that fact degrades what the Greeks are saying about aircraft suddenly losing altitude before it vanished from radar.” According to Greece’s defense minister Panos Kammenos the plane swerved and dropped to 10,000 feet before it fell off radar. Greek civil aviation authorities say all a...
Israel - The “Hebron shooter,” Elor Azaria, on Monday denied all of the manslaughter allegations against him for shooting Abdel Fatal al-Sharif in Hebron on March 24 after he had attacked security forces but was then neutralized. The incident was picked up on a video distributed by B’Tselem, went viral online and has dominated the airwaves with a war of words over Azaria’s guilt or innocence. It has pitted outgoing defense minister Moshe Yaalon and IDF Chief-of-Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, who condemned Azaryah, against incoming defense minister Avigdor Liberman and various politicians on the Right, who say they rushed to judgment. Many analysts even cite a dispute over the issue between Ya’alon and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the beginni...
Gaza Strip - Hamas announced on Sunday that they will begin executing criminals in public in the Gaza Strip, according to AFP.. “I ask that they (the executions) take place before a large crowd,” Hamas Attorney General Ismail Jaber was quoted as stating.  The families of the men awaiting their public execution were reportedly rallying on Sunday in support of the execution of their relatives. On Friday, an official from the terrorist organization that controls Gaza announced during the weekly Muslim prayers that 13 men, mostly convicted for murder in connection with robbery, were set to be killed While Hamas has implemented capital punishment in the past for crimes such as collaborating with Israel, the most recent public execution was in 2014 after Operation Prot...
Iraq - Iraqi government forces on Monday pushed Islamic State militants out of some agricultural areas outside of Fallujah as they launched a military offensive to recapture the city from the extremists, officials said. Backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes and paramilitary troops, Iraqi government forces launched the long-awaited military offensive late Sunday. The city, located about 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Baghdad, has been under the militants’ control since January 2014. The commander of the Fallujah operation, Lt. General Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi, could not say how long the offensive would take, citing terrain, the number of civilians in the city and bombs planted by the militants. Al-Saadi added that the first phase aims to surround and bomb IS positions. Fe...
Question #1: The Missing Speaker The audience waited patiently for the guest speaker from America who never arrived, notwithstanding that he had marked it carefully on his calendar and was planning to be there. What went wrong? Question #2: The Missing Reading "I will be traveling to Eretz Yisroel this spring, and will miss one of the parshiyos. Can I make up the missing kerias haTorah?" Question #3: The Missing Parshah “I will be traveling from Eretz Yisroel to the United States after Pesach. Do I need to review the parshah twice?” Question #4: The Missing Aliyah “May I accept an aliyah for a parshah that is not the one I will be reading on Shabbos?” Introduction: The Jerusalem audience is waiting for the special guest speaker. The scheduled time comes and...
Today, Mr. Martin Nachimson, President, and Mr. Allen Fagin, Executive Vice President, of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, issued the following statement in response to a public statement made last week by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt: “Last week, President el-Sisi publicly called for direct negotiations between the leaders of Israel and the Palestinians to work toward resolving their conflict.  The Egyptian president said he is prepared to ‘make every effort’ in support of bilateral negotiations and cited the landmark Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty as a model.  We are deeply gratified by President el-Sisi’s bold and enlightened leadership.  Such a public statement by the President of Egypt is obviously significant and...
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