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June 28, 2016 at 11:21 am
Jerusalem -An Israeli military official says the army will no longer employ the tactic of using overwhelming fire to prevent the capture of a soldier, even at the risk of killing the soldier.
During Israel’s 2014 war with the militant Islamic group Hamas, troops used the Hannibal Procedure after soldiers feared militants had captured an officer. Israel unleashed heavy shelling and airstrikes on the southern Gazan town of Rafah, killing some 100 Palestinians.
The Association of Civil Rights in Israel called on the military to cancel the practice, saying it endangered the lives of soldiers and civilians.
The military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the matter, said Tuesday the military is working on a new protocol fo...
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June 28, 2016 at 11:18 am
New York - Several online travel sites have seen a jump in queries from Americans about travel to the United Kingdom since it voted to leave the European Union, a sign so-called “Brexit” and the resulting drop in the value of the pound currency may spur U.S. visits to Britain.
One site found that more Britons were also asking about flights to the United States.
Travel agents, hotel chains and airlines say it is too early to tell if the vote has impacted bookings. Financial analysts at the Buckingham Research Group had predicted a “Brexit” would slow the British economy and airline sales. But some U.S. travel agents are advising travelers to book U.K. trips now and expect to see a bump in bookings with time.
On June 24, the day after Britain voted to leave ...
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June 28, 2016 at 11:14 am
Istanbul - Turkey and Israel signed a deal on Tuesday to restore ties after a six-year rift, formalizing an agreement which U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said sent a “hopeful signal” for regional stability.
The accord, announced on Monday by the two countries’ prime ministers, was a rare rapprochement in the divided Middle East, driven by the prospect of lucrative Mediterranean gas deals as well as mutual fears over growing security risks.
It was formally signed on Tuesday by Turkey’s Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioglu in Ankara and Israel’s Foreign Ministry Director General Dore Gold in Jerusalem, officials said.
Relations between Israel and what was once its principal Muslim ally crumbled after Israeli marines stormed an act...
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June 28, 2016 at 11:11 am
Gaza - Shortly after Turkey and Israel forged a reconciliation deal, six years after the Mavi Marmara incident, senior Hamas officials revealed on Monday their opposition to the deal, claiming that the Palestinian terror organization was not a party to its consolidation.
Hamas’s foreign relations Chief Osama Hamdan brushed off a remark written by a prominent Turkish reporter on Twitter, according to which Hamas gave its blessing for the Israeli-Turkish deal. The accord ends a diplomatic rift between Ankara and Jerusalem that began six years ago after a number of activists were killed in an Israeli raid of the Turkish Mavi Marmara flotilla attempting to breach Gaza’s naval blockade.
The Turkish journalist, Hamze Tekin, wrote that Hamas authorized the deal after Turke...
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June 28, 2016 at 11:08 am
Ramallah - UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon called on Israel on Tuesday to lift the “suffocating” blockade on the Gaza Strip, a day after Israel said the naval blockade of Gaza would continue under a deal with Turkey to normalize ties.
Moon called Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip “collective punishment for which there must be accountability.”
During a visit to the coastal strip, Ban told reporters: “The closure of Gaza suffocates its people, stifles its economy and impede reconstruction effort, it is a collective punishment for which there must accountability,”
During a 48 hour visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories, Ban met with Israeli President Rivlin and is scheduled to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem...
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June 28, 2016 at 11:05 am
Jerusalem - Israeli police on Tuesday banned non-Muslims from a contentious Jerusalem holy site until the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan following repeated clashes with Palestinians rioters.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said rocks and other objects were hurled toward police forces Jewish worshippers in a nearby plaza. He said a 73-year-old woman was lightly wounded and police arrested 16 suspects in the disturbances. As a result, police decided to close access to Jewish worshippers and other visitors for the remainder of the week to prevent tensions with Muslim worshippers until Ramadan is over. Throughout the week Palestinians had holed themselves up in the Al-Aqsa Mosque atop the mount and attacked officers with fireworks and other objects they had stockpile...
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June 28, 2016 at 11:02 am
West Bank - As Palestinians in the West Bank fast from dawn to dusk in scorching heat during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, tens of thousands of people have been affected by a drought that has greatly reduced the flow to their taps.
Israel admits it’s been forced to cut water supplies to the parched area, saying that nearby Jewish settlements have also been affected. But Palestinian areas appear to have been hit much harder, and both sides are blaming each other for the painful situation.
The water shortage has harmed farmers, forced people to bathe less and created a booming business for tanker trucks that travel from house to house delivering water.
Israel blames it on the unusually early summer heat and the Palestinians’ refusal to cooperate with Israel on ren...
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June 28, 2016 at 10:57 am
New York - From the moment he first declared it, the plan has been a signature of his campaign for president: “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”
Yet from that first moment, the Republican White House candidate has evaded questions when pressed for details. Now that he’s a presumptive nominee with sliding poll numbers, his spokeswoman says he’s no longer seeking the ban at all.
In its place, he’s offering an approach based on a standard of terrorism that he and his campaign refuse to define.
The ban idea originated with 28 direct and forceful words, issued immediately after the December shootings in San Bernardin...
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June 28, 2016 at 10:56 am
Washington - The House Benghazi Committee, in a politically charged report, faulted the military on Tuesday for responding too slowly to send help to Benghazi, Libya, during the deadly 2012 attacks despite clear orders from President Barack Obama and the Pentagon.
Republicans have repeatedly criticized the response as a serious failure by the Obama administration and by Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time and now is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.
The panel’s chairman, Rep. Gowdy, R-S.C., said the report was not aimed at Clinton, though Democrats have accused the panel’s Republican majority of targeting her throughout.
Republicans on the panel released the 800-page report on the attacks that killed four Americans, including U.S....
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June 28, 2016 at 6:19 am
Brussels - English, the world’s second language and the main working tongue of EU institutions, may no longer be an official language of the European Union once Britain leaves the bloc, a senior EU lawmaker said on Monday.
The symbolic, if impractical, move would further reduce London’s influence on the continent, and infuriate the Irish.
Each member state has the right to nominate one EU idiom. Although English is the most spoken language in Europe, and an official language in three member states, only Britain legally chose it in Brussels. Ireland chose Gaelic. Malta picked Maltese.
“English is our official language because it has been notified by the UK. If we don’t have the UK, we don’t have English,” Danuta Hubner, chair of the European Pa...
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June 28, 2016 at 6:19 am
Dallas - A Muslim student who moved to Qatar with his family following his arrest at a suburban Dallas high school when a homemade clock he brought to class was mistaken for a possible bomb has returned to the United States for the summer.
KDFW-TV reports (http://bit.ly/29iv20v ) 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed returned to Texas on Monday.
The teenager says he’s happy to be back home and seeing his friends and family is his first priority. He will stay in Irving, the Dallas suburb where he used to live, before traveling around the U.S.
Mohamed was arrested in September after a teacher mistook his homemade digital clock for a bomb, but he was quickly released. His family questioned whether he was mistreated due to his religion and eventually left Irving after reporting threats.
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June 28, 2016 at 6:06 am
A 73-year old Jewish woman who came to pray at the Western Wall was wounded Tuesday morning by Arab stone-throwers on the Temple Mount above the Western Wall Plaza.
The woman, who was lightly wounded, was treated on the scene before being evacuated to the Hadassah Ein Karem hospital.
Police are still searching for the attackers.
On Tuesday, Israeli authorities closed the Temple Mount to Jews and other non-Muslim visitors, noting that Arab rioters had clashed with police the past two days.
MK Yehuda Glick (Likud) criticized the decision to shut down the holy site to Jews and tourists.
“We cannot allow a situation where dozens of tourists and Jews wanting to visit the Temple Mount, from which the call of 'Nation shall not lift up sword against nation' is supposed to ...
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June 27, 2016 at 8:37 pm
Baltimore, MD - June 27, 2016 - We have received updated information that effective this Friday, July 1, 2016, all beers sold in Maryland that were part of our previous alert of being Chometz Sheavar Alav HaPesach, can be assumed to be from after Pesach and are permitted.
Note that all flavored beers or hard beverages require reliable Hashgocho. Check our beer listing for kosher approved beers and beverages
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June 27, 2016 at 8:35 pm
Concord, NH - The mother of a 19-year-old Michigan man shot by police in New Hampshire says she is still struggling to understand just how her son was killed.
Lane Lesko, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, died of a single gunshot wound June 21 in Peterborough in rural New Hampshire.
The New Hampshire attorney general’s office has released scant information in its investigation, saying only that the shooting followed a brief pursuit along Route 136. It has not said which department was involved nor released the name of the officer responsible for the shooting.
Lesko’s mother, Patricia Lesko, told The Associated Press that her son was autistic and bipolar. She said she was told by the attorney general’s office that he was “brandishing” a BB gun and running away...
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June 27, 2016 at 8:32 pm
Cairo - Egypt investigators said on Monday that the flight data recorder of crashed EgyptAir flight MS804 had been successfully repaired, paving the way for investigators to analyze data that may explain why the jet plunged into the Mediterranean last month.
The investigators added in a statement that the doomed plane’s cockpit voice recorder would begin to be worked on “within hours” also.
The recorders arrived in Paris from Cairo on Monday to remove salt deposits. They will be sent back to a laboratory in Cairo to analyze the data once the repairs are completed, the statement added.
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June 27, 2016 at 8:31 pm
Washington - An additional 165 pages of emails from Hillary Clinton’s time at the State Department surfaced Monday, including nearly three dozen that the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee failed to hand over last year that were sent through her private server.
The latest emails were released under court order by the State Department to the conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch. The batch includes 34 new emails Clinton exchanged through her private account with her deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin. The aide, who also had a private email account on Clinton’s home server, later gave her copies to the government.
The emails were not among the 55,000 pages of work-related messages that Clinton turned over to the agency in response to public records ...
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June 27, 2016 at 8:29 pm
New York - Diet Pepsi made with aspartame is returning to shelves in the U.S., after PepsiCo saw sales plummet following its reformulation of the drink last summer to remove the artificial sweetener.
PepsiCo says it will offer “Diet Pepsi Classic Sweetener Blend” made with aspartame starting in September, in 12-ounce cans, 2-liter bottles and 20-ounce bottles. The move is intended to appease fans who don’t like the taste of the reformulated drink, which is made with the artificial sweetener sucralose.
But PepsiCo Inc. said Diet Pepsi made with sucralose, commonly known by the brand name Splenda, will remain its primary diet soda offering. Those cans will be silver, while the “classic” Diet Pepsi with aspartame will be come in light blue packaging.
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June 27, 2016 at 6:43 pm
As New York City works out the details that will make children in nonpublic schools just a bit safer, Agudath Israel provided testimony today at the New York City Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) public hearing on the proposed rules for the NYC Security Reimbursement Program.
This program will reimburse qualifying nonpublic schools for the cost of procuring security guard services. The proposed rules set forth the criteria and process for the selection of qualified providers of security services, define the eligibility criteria of the nonpublic schools that seek to participate in the program and establish a process for schools to obtain reimbursement for procuring security guard services.
Avrohom Weinstock, Esq., Associate Director of Education Affairs, Agudath Israe...
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June 27, 2016 at 5:38 pm
The student union at University of York in the United Kingdom will pay £1,000 ($1,370) in compensation and issue a public apology to a York law student who experienced anti-Semitic abuse.
Zachary Confino accused the university of failing to deal with two years of anti-Semitic attacks, including 20 incidents in his second and third years at York. Confino said he was called a “Jewish prick” and an “Israeli twat.”
“The experience has been so depressing,” Confino told The Sunday Times. “It ruined my experience at university. I can never get that time back.”
The compensation for Confino is reportedly the first time a British university has ever made a payment of this kind. A university spokesman said the “token payment&rdquo...
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June 27, 2016 at 5:33 pm
The doors of the the Waldorf-Astoria, arguably the world’s most iconic hotel, will close for up to three years while its new Chinese owners turn the majority of its rooms into luxury condos, reports THE DAILY MAIL.
The classic interior of this famous New York building may be unrecognizable when it reopens, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Of the 1,413 hotel rooms, all but 300 to 500 will remain and the rest will be turned into luxury condominiums.
The Anbang Insurance Group Co, a Chinese company bought it for a record $1.95 billion in 2014, the highest ever for a US hotel, reportedly plans a complete overhaul. It is expected to be closed and gutted in spring 2017.
The Waldorf Astoria is one of the most famous hotels in the world.
All the company would say about the Waldorf&...
