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May 25, 2016 at 1:03 pm
Vietnam - U.S. President Barack Obama sought on Wednesday to ease growing Asian worries about the raucous election campaign to succeed him which has been dominated by the incendiary rhetoric of mogul Donald Trump, now the Republican Party’s nominee.
“I think other people sometimes look at our election system and say ‘what a mess’,” Obama told a townhall meeting with young leaders in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon.
“But usually we end up doing okay because the American people are good people ... Sometimes our politics doesn’t express all the goodness of the people,” he said, without referring specifically to any of the presidential candidates.
Obama made the comments just before ending a three-day trip to Vietnam...
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May 25, 2016 at 1:01 pm
This week's Parsha, B’har, underscores our relationship to the Land of Israel in very descriptive terms. Throughout the Parsha the message is clear that the Land belongs exclusively to HaShem and not to us. We are to ones to whom HaShem gave the rights to settle the Land for the purpose of building a nation that is devoted to Him. This week our community lost Mrs. Rachel Canterman, a woman whose entire life was the expression of her undivided devotion to HaShem and to His Torah. Many people in our community poured their hearts to HaShem in prayer that He should grant her a recovery. There are many who prayed for her who did not even know her. Those prayer sessions were so powerful that those in attendance knew HaShem was there as well. Did our prayers accomplish th...
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May 25, 2016 at 1:01 pm
San Francisco - Apple Inc, which has resisted pressure from U.S. law enforcement to unlock encrypted iPhones, this month rehired a top expert in practical cryptography to bring more powerful security features to a wide range of consumer products.
Jon Callas, who co-founded several well-respected secure communications companies including PGP Corp, Silent Circle and Blackphone, rejoined Apple in May, an Apple spokesman said.
Callas had worked at Apple in the 1990s and again between 2009 and 2011, when he designed an encryption system to protect data stored on a Macintosh computer.
Apple declined to detail his new role, and Callas declined to comment.
The Cupertino, California-based company has clashed with the U.S. government over whether Apple should help law enforcement access ...
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May 25, 2016 at 1:00 pm
San Francisco - You might start seeing more ads when getting directions from Google’s popular mapping service.
The ads, called “promoted pins,” will highlight restaurants and other merchants located along your way. They’ll show up inside the directions map as Google routes you to your destination.
Google has displayed text ads alongside its online maps for several years. But the change announced Tuesday marks the first time the Internet company has inserted the equivalent of a digital billboard into the directions map itself.
Google is importing the concept to its Maps app from Waze, a smaller traffic-navigation service that the company also runs.
Google Maps boasts more than 1 billion users worldwide, but not everyone will see the new ads right away.
The ...
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May 25, 2016 at 12:59 pm
Washington - Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald said Tuesday he regrets remarks he made comparing long wait times at VA health care sites to waiting in line at a Disney amusement park.
“It was never my intention to suggest that I don’t take our mission of serving veterans very seriously,” McDonald said in a written statement. “If my comments Monday led any veterans to believe that I, or the dedicated workforce I am privileged to lead, don’t take that noble mission seriously, I deeply regret that. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
McDonald’s statement came after a Republican senator called for his resignation and GOP lawmakers and veterans’ service groups slammed his remarks as insulting and inappropriate.
Sen. Roy ...
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May 25, 2016 at 12:57 pm
New York - Toyota said Tuesday it is investing in Uber, making it the latest car company to put money in a ride-hailing app.
The Japanese company did not say how much the investment is worth.
As part of the deal, Uber drivers can lease Toyota vehicles with money earned from their driving.
Investing in ride-hailing services can be a way for automakers to sell more cars. Earlier this year, General Motors Co. invested $500 million in Uber rival Lyft.
Uber relies on drivers who use their own cars to give customers rides. Riders request and pay for their rides through the Uber phone app. The company has entered more than four hundred cities around the world, despite pushback from regulators and the taxi industry about how it vets drivers.
Toyota is investing in San Francisco-based Ub...
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May 25, 2016 at 12:52 pm
Orange County, NY - A Harriman man has been sentenced to more than a decade in jail for shooting a Kiryas Joel teen in a robbery gone wrong this past fall.
As previously reported on VIN News (http://goo.gl/1eA9wD), 26 year old Matthew Bauman was desperate for money to buy drugs on the night of November 24, deliberately choosing the Quick Shop kosher convenience store as his target. Bauman demanded money from 18 year old Kiryas Joel resident Aron Weiss, shooting the teen in the shoulder when he turned to flee.
Bauman, who admitted to stealing the gun from his father, pled guilty to attempted first degree robbery last month and was sentenced today by Judge Nicholas De Rosa, as reported by the Times Herald Record.
“You turned yourself into a drug zombie,” said D...
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May 25, 2016 at 12:39 pm
Washington - Former U.S. Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum on Tuesday endorsed Donald Trump for president, saying he was swayed by Trump’s list of possible Supreme Court nominees.
Santorum, who dropped out of the presidential race in February and threw his support to Senator Marco Rubio, told Fox News: “The most important issue is preserving the Constitution of this country and a liberal Supreme Court will destroy it.”
Last Wednesday, Trump unveiled a list of 11 judges he would consider, if elected, to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court.
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May 25, 2016 at 12:37 pm
Israel - A leading Israeli rights group said Wednesday it will stop seeking investigations of Israeli soldiers suspected of abusing Palestinians, arguing that internal military probes have failed to deliver justice and effectively help whitewash half a century of occupation.
In a rebuke to the military justice system, the Israeli group B’Tselem said military investigations are deeply flawed and create a “mere semblance of justice.”
Hagai El-Ad, the group’s executive director, said B’Tselem would stop cooperating with a system it cannot trust.
“The system’s real function is cover-ups,” he said. He said once the group reached that “painful conclusion ... we found it morally unacceptable for us to continue working in the same wa...
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May 25, 2016 at 12:34 pm
Tehran - Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan told reporters on Tuesday that the Iraq and Syrian conflicts are a result of a deep, long-term plot hatched by Israel and the United States, according to reports by Iran’s Press TV.
“What is today happening in Syria and Iraq is a deep-seated US-Zionist conspiracy that has triggered war in Muslim territories,” said Dehqan.
According to the defense minister, Israeli is responsible for equipping the terrorists who then lead attacks on innocent Muslims.
“Zionists are supporting terrorists and equipping them,” said Dehqan according to the report.
They are “pitting them against Muslims. What is important for them is to guarantee the Zionist regime’s security,” he added.
Last month, the ch...
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May 25, 2016 at 12:32 pm
New York - The removal of Moshe Ya’alon as defense minister and the elevation of Yisrael Beytenu chief Avigdor Liberman in his stead is the latest manifestation of a “dark hour” enshrouding Israel, leading foreign affairs commentator Thomas Friedman wrote in The New York Times on Wednesday.
The intense backlash thrown Israel’s way is a result of the country’s “desire to destroy itself” as evidenced by “Netanyahu’s steady elimination of any possibility that Israel will separate itself from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”
“Soon, this newspaper will have to call Netanyahu what he’s made himself into: ‘Prime Minister of the State of Israel-Palestine’,” Friedman, the Grey Lady’s f...
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May 25, 2016 at 12:32 pm
Baltimore, MD - May 25, 2016 - OU KASHRUTH ALERT
May 24, 2016
Chilean Sea Bass
Brand
Kirkland Signature
Product
Frozen Chilean Sea Bass
Company
Costco Wholesale Foods, Seattle WA
Issue
Unauthorized OU
The Orthodox Union does not certify Kirkland Signature Chilean Sea Bass. Some packaging was printed with an unauthorized OU symbol. Corrective actions have been implemented.
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May 25, 2016 at 12:15 pm
Jerusalem - Israel’s incoming defense minister once called for bombing Egypt, suggested just weeks ago that Israel kill Hamas’ leader in the Gaza Strip and opposed the prosecution of a soldier accused of killing a wounded Palestinian. These are just a few of the positions that could put former bar bouncer Avigdor Lieberman at odds with a military he is now to command.
While people close to Lieberman insist he is a pragmatist, his long history of incendiary statements bode poorly for him as he takes over one of the region’s most sensitive posts. As Israel’s defense minister, he will be responsible for overseeing military policy and handling delicate security matters with international allies whom he has antagonized in the past.
“We cannot take risks...
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May 25, 2016 at 12:11 pm
Italy - An underground water main break along Florence’s picturesque Arno River has created a 200-meter (yard) -long sinkhole that buried dozens of parked cars.
Firefighters asked residents of nearby palazzi to evacuate voluntarily, as there was no water or lighting in the area. Hours after the pre-dawn break, authorities were trying to determine Wednesday whether the weakened asphalt could withstand the weight of a crane to extract the waterlogged cars that fell into the hole.
Mayor Dario Nardella stressed that the underground flooding was the result of a gash in a 60-centimeter (two-foot) diameter pipe, one of the major water conduits in the neighborhood, and not a leak in the banks of the Arno.
The scene is near the famed Ponte Vecchio bridge, a favorite spot for touri...
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May 25, 2016 at 12:11 pm
Israel - Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan has order a halt on the return of bodies of Palestinians killed while carrying out terror attacks, following a funeral in East Jerusalem Monday night that he said violated understandings reached between police and the families of the attackers.
In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Erdan wrote “I just saw the outrageous photos from the funeral overnight in east Jerusalem which violated the police stipulations given to the family of the terrorist, who held a funeral with a large number of attendees and calls for violence and support for terrorism.”
He continued “the families of terrorists lied to the High Court when they vowed to adhere to the police stipulations and it’s a shame that the High Court believed them, an...
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May 25, 2016 at 12:09 pm
Amman - The National Committee against Normalization, an organization aimed at resisting Jordan’s relations with Israel, has heavily criticized Jordanian officials who participated last week in the Israeli Independence day ceremony that took place at the Israeli Embassy in Jordan.
On May 17, the Israeli embassy in Amman hosted an official reception on the occasion of Independence Day. About 200 foreign diplomats and Jordanian officials attended the special ceremony.
During the ceremony, Israeli Ambassador to Amman Einat Shlain delivered a speech in which she touted Israeli-Jordanian relations and the bilateral collaboration between the countries in a myriad of fields.
In a statement issued on Monday, the anti-normalization committee strongly denounced “everyone...
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May 25, 2016 at 11:44 am
Jerusalem - An extraordinary archaeological excavation has been going on in Israel for over a week now, with more than 500 volunteers from Israel and abroad sleeping and living in a camp in desert field conditions – this, in an attempt to save priceless as-yet undiscovered fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which include the oldest surviving manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, from being looted.
The complex excavation kicks off a national plan to conduct comprehensive archaeological excavations in the Judean Desert caves in order to extract and preserve the scrolls from antiquities looters.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are among the most important archeological finds ever unearthed – a collection of hundreds of biblical and apocalyptic texts in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek discov...
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May 25, 2016 at 11:43 am
New York - The windows of Eric Trump’s office in the Trump Tower offer breathtaking views of some of Manhattan’s most expensive real estate. It’s there the youngest of Donald Trump’s adult sons is reflecting on eye-opening moments from a world far away.
“Having to speak at a Pizza Ranch in Iowa, you hear things you never would,” he says from the 25th floor office in Trump Tower, steps from the offices of siblings Ivanka and Don Jr. and one floor down from their father. “For us, the learning curve was exponential.”
As his father’s seemingly quixotic campaign caught fire, Eric Trump, 32, an admitted political neophyte, found himself thrust into the heart of it all. He barnstormed across small towns in Iowa and New Hampshire, ga...
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May 25, 2016 at 11:41 am
An audit by the State Department inspector general has concluded that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton violated her agency's own records policy by withholding all of her government-related communications.
"Secretary Clinton should have preserved any federal records she created and received on her personal account by printing and filing those records ... because she did not do so, she did not comply with the department's policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act," the watchdog report said, according to an excerpt in Politico.
Clinton has faced multiple investigations into her use of a private server to shield her official emails, including an FBI probe and an internal State Department review.
The inspector general report, which ...
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May 25, 2016 at 10:26 am
OLYMPIA, Wash. -- Donald Trump handily won Washington state's Republican presidential primary Tuesday, even as he shared the ballot with three other candidates who had already dropped out of the contest.
As counties started posting their results shortly after 8 p.m., Trump took a commanding lead with 76 percent of the vote, followed by John Kasich and Ted Cruz, with 10 percent each. Ben Carson garnered 4 percent of the vote in early returns.
Even though Trump is the only candidate remaining in the GOP contest, Kasich and Cruz were still on the ballot because they suspended their campaigns after the ballots were printed. Carson's name also appeared because he never submitted a withdrawal of candidacy.
Republicans in Washington state will allocate all 44 delegates to th...
