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May 29, 2016 at 8:47 am
The final of the nation’s most prestigious spelling bee took a Yiddish turn Thursday night.
Scripps National Spelling Bee finalist Jairam Hathwar, a 13-year-old from Corning, New York, was asked to spell the word “chremslach” in the ultimate rounds of the competition.
Not up on your Yiddish and wondering what the word means? You probably aren’t alone. Chremslach are small, flat fried matzah meal cakes traditionally eaten by Jews during the Passover holiday.
Mazel tov to Jairam, who spelled the word correctly and went on to be crowned spelling bee co-champion, along with Nihar Janga, an 11-year-old boy from Austin, Texas. (After 39 rounds, the contest ended in a tie for the third consecutive year.)
Jairam and Nihar were among ten spelle...
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May 28, 2016 at 9:57 pm
Baltimore, MD – May 26, 2016 - The Not Just a Sta"M Event this past Sunday, was not like any other, it was NOT STAM! On a rainy Sunday afternoon, adults and children convened for a wholesome, educational and engaging program built from scratch around the theme of STa"M: Sefer Torah, Tefillin and Mezuzah, under the auspices of Shearith Israel Congregation, also known as the Glen Avenue Shul.
It is NOT STAM when teenage boys sit beside experienced Sofrim practicing how to form safrus letters as they appear in a mezuzah.
It is NOT STAM to see a display of Wimpels (pronounced vimpels) dating back to 1906 – as was the Wimpel of Mr. Martin Bamberger, Z’L, patriarch of the chashuva Baltimore Bambergers - or the original vimpel of TA’s popular Rebbi, Rabbi...
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May 28, 2016 at 9:57 pm
The pilot of a World War Two-era plane killed in a crash in the Hudson River off Manhattan on Friday evening was trying to execute an emergency landing, the museum that owned the vintage aircraft said.
The P-47 Thunderbolt crashed just south of the George Washington Bridge. The New York Police Department identified a body recovered from the plane as that of William Gordon, 56, of Key West, Florida. Police would not comment on a cause of death.
The American Airpower Museum, which owned the plane, said in a statement on Facebook on Saturday that Gordon was an "extraordinary" aviator who brought the plane down in a "forced emergency landing" on the Hudson.
Gary Lewi, a spokesman for the museum in Farmingdale, New York, told Long Island newspaper Newsday that the aircraft...
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May 28, 2016 at 9:54 pm
Terrorist killed after being neutralized was laid to rest in Hevron on Saturday, as residents waved Hamas flags calling for revenge.
The family of Abedel Fattah al-Sharif, the Arab terrorist who was neutralized and later killed by IDF soldier Elor Azariya during a terror attack in Hevron in March, buried al-Sharif in Hevron on Saturday, amid demands for revenge.
The body of al-Sharif was returned to his family on Friday, before it was examined at the Al Ahli hospital in Hevron.
Relatives of the dead terrorist called upon Arab residents of Hevron to join in a mass demonstration during al-Sharif’s funeral, which included demands for revenge and the waving of Hamas flags. The body of al-Sharif was also wrapped in a Hamas flag.
Relatives of the soldier now standing trial for k...
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May 28, 2016 at 9:54 pm
Baltimore City Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said the new software announced this week to make sure police officers know the latest policies expected of them, will "move the police department into the 21st century."
Speaking on the Jimmy Mathis Show on Saturday, said the plans for this software were in the works last fall.
The question of whether officers were aware of a new policy requiring prisoners to be put in seat belts in police transport vans has come up in the trials of the six officers accused in the death of Freddie Gray.
On Monday, in announcing the acquittal of Officer Edward Nero, Judge Barry Williams said it was not clear if Nero was aware of the polciy, and therefore could not be convicted of two crimes, reckless endangerment and misconduct, for viola...
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May 28, 2016 at 9:53 pm
Anthony Graziano attacked New Jersey synagogues, home of rabbi with firebombs in 2012. He could now face life imprisonment.
A 24-year old Lodi, New Jersey man was convicted of terrorism on Friday for his 2012 attacks on two synagogues and the home of a local rabbi.
Anthony Graziano, who carried out the attacks in January 2012 with an accomplice, Aakash Dalal, is the first person convicted under New Jersey’s anti-terrorism law, which was enacted after the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
Dalal has yet to be tried for his involvement in the attacks.
Graziano and Dalal had previously been arrested for spray-painting anti-Semitic graffiti on several synagogues in 2011.
On January 3rd, 2012, the pair hurled firebombs at a Paramus, New Jersey synagogue. Four days later the pair planned to ...
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May 28, 2016 at 9:51 pm
San Diego - Donald Trump brought his message of walls and deportations to the doorstep of America’s busiest border crossing on Friday as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee greeted supporters in San Diego, amid one of the largest counter-protests organized against him.
The scene inside the San Diego Convention Center during Trump’s speech was relatively placid, while outside demonstrators opposed to his controversy-ridden White House bid marched and chanted, carrying signs criticizing his rhetoric against illegal immigration.
Waving U.S. and Mexican flags, more than 1,000 people turned out for anti-trump rallies in San Diego, a city on the U.S.-Mexico border whose San Ysidro port of entry sees nearly 300,000 people a day cross legally between the countri...
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May 28, 2016 at 9:51 pm
Los Angeles, CA - Newly released autopsies of the 14 victims of the San Bernardino terror attack reveal horrific details of the carnage.
The autopsies were released Friday as part of a public records request by The Associated Press. They confirm all victims were shot at least twice and died quickly.
The reports also detail the chaos inside the large conference room where most took their last breaths. They had been attending an annual training of San Bernardino County health workers on Dec. 2.
The body of 46-year-old Harry Bowman was nearest the northernmost door of the conference room. Bowman, who had only recently been hired by the county, was shot five times.
Other bodies were more than 50 feet from where Bowman lay. Three victims were found clustered near a Christmas tr...
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May 28, 2016 at 9:50 pm
Research in rats is re-igniting the long-running debate over whether mobile-phone use can cause cancer.
Two types of tumors — one in the brain, one in the heart — were spotted in some male rats exposed to radiofrequency radiation at levels used by the U.S. telecommunications industry, according to a 74-page report on partial findings from the U.S. government-funded study. The study follows a flurry of reports published in 2011 that confused more than clarified the cancer risk faced by the world’s billions of mobile-phone users.
“These findings appear to support the International Agency for Research on Cancer conclusions regarding the possible carcinogenic potential of radiofrequency radiation,” the researchers wrote in the report. “Given the w...
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May 27, 2016 at 6:25 pm
Longtime Jewish leader Abraham Foxman sharply rebuked the Guggenheim Museum on Friday for publishing an article on its website accusing Israel of a litany of serious crimes.
Foxman — who was tapped to head a new center on the study of antisemitism at New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage following his retirement as national director of the Anti-Defamation League — was commenting on an article by Israeli artist and curator Chen Tamir, titled “Censorship in Israel,” which accuses “racist and lopsided” Israel of failing to uphold freedom of speech, oppressing Palestinians and acting as an occupying power.
“The metanarrative in Israel is one of continuous existential fear and victimization, which leads to the increased just...
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May 27, 2016 at 6:06 pm
Toronto - Toronto’s Trump tower is close to being sold and may not bear the name of presumptive U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump after it changes hands, a lawyer for its owner said on Friday.
Symon Zucker, who represents Talon International Development Inc, said the 65-storey hotel and condominium building in the city’s financial district has found a potential buyer and the sale will conclude “hopefully shortly.”
The tower is operated for Talon by the Trump Hotel Collection, presided over by billionaire businessman Trump and his children.
Zucker said Talon’s contract with Trump Hotel would not apply to the new owner, which would be free to change the building’s name, though he declined to comment on whether it may do so or the ...
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May 27, 2016 at 6:04 pm
New York - A New York City man has been sentenced to six years in prison for calling 911 more than 50 times to report fake emergencies.
Ronald DeShields was sentenced Thursday.
The calls, made between January and February 2014, included false claims of police-involved shootings, law enforcement in need of assistance and fires with people trapped. DeShields had the phone used for the calls when he was arrested.
Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown says his actions put lives at risk by preventing rescuers from responding to real emergencies.
DeShields was convicted in April on charges of falsely reporting an incident and reckless endangerment.
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May 27, 2016 at 6:02 pm
Cairo - The search for the EgyptAir plane which crashed last week killing all 66 people on board has narrowed to a 5-kilometer-wide area in the Mediterranean Sea, based on signals from the craft’s emergency beacon, Egypt’s chief investigator said.
The chief investigator, Ayman al-Moqadem, said late Thursday that Airbus had given Egyptian authorities information on the Emergency Locator Transmitter, or ELT, from the doomed aircraft.
An official from the Egyptian investigation team on Friday clarified that the beacon information was from the day of the crash, May 19, and that no new signal had been found. An Airbus official said he was unaware of any ELT received or given to the Egyptians.
Both officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because h...
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May 27, 2016 at 6:00 pm
Detroit - Eight automakers are recalling more than 12 million vehicles in the U.S. to replace potentially dangerous Takata air bag inflators.
Documents detailing recalls by Honda, Fiat Chrysler, Toyota, Mazda, Nissan, Subaru, Ferrari and Mitsubishi were posted Friday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
They’re part of a massive expansion of Takata air bag recalls announced earlier this month. Seventeen automakers are adding 35 million-to-40 million inflators to what already was the largest auto recall in U.S. history.
In addition, the Japanese transport ministry on Friday announced 7 million more Takata-related recalls covering air bag inflators without a chemical drying agent.
Friday’s U.S. recalls include passenger air bags in older model...
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May 27, 2016 at 5:59 pm
Jerusalem - A piece of 21st century technology may help address a historical wrong from the 15th century whose consequences still reverberate today. Descendants of the Jews who were forcefully converted to Christianity under the Inquisition – variously called anusim, marranos, or “secret jews” – can now connect with their Jewish heritage via the new online project Reconectar, meaning “reconnect” in Spanish and Portuguese.
“Our people was divided by force more than 500 years ago, with hundreds of thousands of Jews needing either to escape or to convert. Now we can bring their descendants back to their roots,” Ashley Perry, president of the Reconectar project, (http://reconectar.co/ ) told Tazpit Press Service (TPS).
Himself a d...
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May 27, 2016 at 5:57 pm
New York - During the height of the primary season, a sense of Donald Trump overload in the media united a divided electorate.
Now, as things pivot toward a general election campaign almost certain to match Trump against Hillary Clinton, television news producers will be watched to see whether traditional notions of fairness and equal time will take hold in a political season that has been anything but traditional.
The expected Republican nominee so dominated campaign coverage that by late March a Pew Research Center survey found that 75 percent of Americans said the media had given him too much attention.
“Donald Trump does make news and he does drive ratings,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylva...
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May 27, 2016 at 5:55 pm
Mesa, AZ - A 23-year-old man who set out for a peaceful hike in an Arizona park died after being stung by more than 1,000 bees, a swarm so threatening it thwarted rescuers’ repeated attempts to reach him.
Alex Bestler visited Usery Mountain Park with a friend on Thursday and was hiking the Merkle Trail when the unprovoked attack occurred, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.
It is unclear whether Bestler was allergic to bees. His Facebook page says he was raised in Elton, Louisiana, but has since moved to North Dakota.
It was also not immediately known whether his assailants were Africanized “killer” bees that have been migrating north from Brazil and have been blamed for a string of deadly attacks in Arizona and other states.
As...
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May 27, 2016 at 5:52 pm
Santa, NM - It was a stunning rebuke — even by Donald Trump’s standards — aimed at the nation’s only Latina governor at a political rally in her home state of New Mexico.
Trump chastised Republican Gov. Susana Martinez for not doing her job when it came to unemployment, federal food aid and even containing the Syrian refugee crisis while he stumped at a raucous political rally this week in the nation’s most Hispanic state. Martinez, who has not endorsed the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, skipped the event in Albuquerque, citing a busy schedule.
The public spat dampened any lingering speculation that Martinez might be picked as vice president to attract more female and minority voters to the Republican ticket. It also thrust the second-term go...
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May 27, 2016 at 5:51 pm
New York - New York City police say they’ve made an arrest in the death of an aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo who was caught in the crossfire between two gangs last year.
Carey Gabay (guh-BAY’) was shot in the head in September during a pre-dawn party celebrating the West Indian Day Parade.
The 43-year-old Harvard-educated lawyer was a first deputy general counsel at the Empire State Development Corp.
Micah Alleyne was arraigned Friday and held without bail. The name of an attorney who could comment on his behalf was not immediately known.
Ken Taub of the Brooklyn district attorney’s office said more arrests are expected in the case.
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May 27, 2016 at 5:49 pm
Cincinnati - Dr. Henry Heimlich, the 96-year-old Cincinnati surgeon credited with inventing the lifesaving technique named for him, used it for the first time this week to save a fellow senior center resident who was choking on a hamburger, a center spokesman said on Friday.
Heimlich, who in multiple national television appearances had demonstrated the technique commonly known as the “Heimlich Maneuver” to dislodge food from an airway, had never employed it in an emergency, said spokesman Ken Paley.
But on Monday, Heimlich was sitting at a communal dining table at Cincinnati’s Deupree House, an upscale senior living center where he lives, and noticed fellow resident Patty Ris, 87, in distress while eating an open-faced hamburger.
He dashed out of his sea...
