Baltimore, MD - Aug. 24, 2016: Dear Community Members, During the overnight hours of 8/22/16 to 8/23/16 the Pikesville Precinct experienced 3 attempted thefts of motor vehicle in the Sudbrook Community. In each case, the target vehicle was left unlocked overnight, and the vehicle’s ignition was tampered with. The first case occurred in the 700 block of Greenwood Road, the second in the 700 block of Westover Road and the third in the 300 block of Upland Road. On 8/21/16 and 8/24/16, during the overnight hours, we also experienced two similar motor vehicle thefts in the Greens at Smith Community. The first case occurred in the unit block of Ironwood Circle, when the suspect(s) targeted an unlocked vehicle and discovered the keys to the victim’s other vehicle that was parked ne...
Washington - The Obama administration said Wednesday it paid $1.3 billion in interest to Iran in January to resolve a decades-old dispute over an undelivered military sale, two days after allowing $400 million in cash to fly to Tehran. State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau says the U.S. couldn’t say more about the Jan. 19 payments because of diplomatic sensitivities. They involved 13 separate payments of $99,999,999.99 and final payment of about $10 million. There was no explanation for the Treasury Department keeping the individual transactions under $100 million. The money settles a dispute over a $400 million payment made in the 1970s by the U.S.-backed shah’s government for military equipment. The equipment was never delivered because of the 1979 Islami...
Washington -  When President Barack Obama ran for re-election, Democrats made no secret of their disdain for Mitt Romney. That was all before Donald Trump. Horrified by the prospect of Trump in the White House, Obama and his party have changed their tune about Romney. As they denounce Trump as “unhinged” and unfit, they’re getting nostalgic about the 2012 Republican nominee they now describe as principled, competent and honorable. It’s a sharp reversal from four years ago. Back then, Democrats spent hundreds of millions of dollars portraying the former Massachusetts governor as a callous, unpatriotic, pet-abusing caricature of the uber-rich. Yet as Trump is proving, everything in politics is relative. “He was in it for the right reasons,&rdqu...
Amatrice, Italy - Rescue crews using bulldozers and their bare hands raced to dig out survivors from a strong earthquake that reduced three central Italian towns to rubble early Wednesday. The death toll stood at 120 but the number of dead and missing was uncertain given the huge number of vacationers in the area for summer’s final days. Residents wakened before dawn by the temblor emerged from their crumbled homes to find what they described as apocalyptic scenes “like Dante’s Inferno,” with entire blocks of buildings turned into piles of sand and rock, thick dust choking the air and a putrid smell of gas. The magnitude 6 quake struck at 3:36 a.m. and was felt across a broad swath of central Italy, including Rome, where residents woke to a long swaying f...
Brooklyn, NY - It was a monumental fine levied by the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board and ironically enough, it was slapped on an individual who serves as chief law enforcement and legal officer for one of the five boroughs. Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson was hit with a $15,000 fine, one of the highest ever levied by the COIB, for having asked police officers on his safety detail to buy him meals, paying for the food out of their own pockets, according to The New York Post. Thompson acknowledged that he asked the officers to buy lunch for him from approximately January 2014 through May 2014.  The total out of pocket cost laid out by the officers for those meals was just over $2,000. “They requested and received reimbursement for these expenditures ...
Israel has offered search and rescue assistance to Italy following the 6.2-magnitude earthquake in the Umbria region on Wednesday that killed dozens of people and caused mass destruction. A statement released by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office expressed condolences to the Italian people and wished a speedy recovery to those injured in the earthquake. Israel has a long history of providing post-disaster assistance across the world. In April 2015, as reported by The Algemeiner, Israel sent the second largest national delegation to assist Nepal following the massive earthquake sustained by the Himalayan mountain nation. In recent years, Israel has also sent aid delegations to Japan following the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster and to Haiti...
Amman - Officials have reported that oil has spilled from Jordan into the Gulf of Aqaba, but the size of the leak remains unclear. The civil defense chief in Jordan’s Red Sea port of Aqaba told a local news website that the leak was brought under control within 15 minutes, without saying how much oil had leaked. Israel’s Foreign Ministry says it was informed of the leak by Jordanian counterparts. The statement referred to 200 tons of oil having leaked, citing Jordanian media reports. However, a search Wednesday of news websites did not immediately turn up such an assessment. Israeli Environment Minister Zeev Elkin told Israel Army Radio from the Israeli resort of Eilat, across the gulf from Aqaba, that it appears currents were sending the oil toward Saudi Arabia.
Lakewood, NJ - Aug. 24, 2016 - When Nami & Avi Safer decided where to open their new Orthodontic practice they wanted a location where people would be knocking down their doors to make appointments. Today's crash was not exactly what they had in mind.B'H, there were no injuries and Safer Orthodontics welcomes all new patients to its high-tech and fun-filled office.
London - The developer of the world’s largest aircraft says the blimp-shaped airship sustained damage after it made a bumpy landing Wednesday on its second test flight in eastern England. Hybrid Air Vehicles said it is trying to figure out what caused the rough landing of the 302-foot (92-meter) Airlander 10 during its 100 minute flight Wednesday in Bedfordshire, north of London. “The Airlander experienced a heavy landing and the front of the flight deck has sustained some damage, which is currently being assessed,” the company said. “Both pilots and the ground crew are safe and well and the aircraft is secured and stable at its normal mooring location.” A hybrid of blimp, helicopter and airplane, the Airlander is able to stay aloft for days at a t...
Paris - French schools will now hold three security drills a year — including one in which an alleged assailant enters their premises — as the French government ramps up security measures after a string of deadly extremist attacks. Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve announced a series of measures Wednesday to improve how French schools and children handle terror threats. Students will be taught how to hide or to escape, depending on the situation and where they are. All students aged 13-14 and class representatives will also get a basic training on life-saving measures. Vallaud-Belkacem said, as of now, only 30 percent of students are trained. In pre-school and kindergarten, for children aged 2 to 6, no mention of an at...
GunKabul - Gunmen attacked the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul on Wednesday, with explosions and gunfire reported inside the campus, an Afghan interior ministry official and a student said. “Several gunmen attacked the American University in Kabul and there are reports of gunfire and explosions,” the official said. “They are inside the compound and there are foreign professors along with hundreds of students.” Ahmad Shaheer, a student at the university, told Reuters by telephone that he was trapped inside the university. “We are stuck inside our classroom and there are bursts of gunfire,” he said.
New York - A U.S. court on Wednesday rejected an appeal by victims of Hezbollah rocket attacks in Israel who sought to hold Lebanese Canadian Bank SAL liable for financing Hezbollah through its New York account with American Express Bank. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said it lacked jurisdiction over the Lebanese bank because customary international law immunized corporations from liability from claims brought under the federal Alien Tort Statute. It said this was true even though the bank’s alleged conduct “touched and concerned” the United States, displacing the presumption against applying the Alien Tort Statute to foreign conduct.
Brussels - Brussels Airlines has taken halva off the menu, after a passenger reportedly alerted its staff that the product was made in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank. The disgruntled diner informed the airline staff that the Vanilla halva he had been served for dessert, came from an Israeli settlement on occupied Palestinian territory. Belgian media cited the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign as saying that the airline “had not been aware of the nature of the product and the violent and illegal institutions behind it.” The airline Tweeted Wednesday that the presence of the offending item in the in-flight meal was due to a mistake by the supplier. “We have stopped serving that product on our flights as it was not what we had ordered,” the airline Tweet...
Baltimore County Schools will not close for Muslim holidays. The county school board voted against the move by a six-to-five margin last night. The board denied a similar request two years ago. In the past year, Howard and Montgomery counties moved their professional development days for teachers to coincide with the Muslim holidays to make sure Muslim students were off without completely changing their calendars. 
Levayah of Rebetzin Esther Jungreis, a'h Click here to watch
Warsaw, Poland - A spokesman for explorers searching for a legendary Nazi “gold train” in Poland says there is “no train, no tunnel” at the site where they have dug extensively. Last week explorers moved in with heavy equipment and dug deep at a site in the southwestern town of Walbrzych, following comments by residents and tests using earth-penetrating radar. Local legend says the Nazis hid a train with valuables in a secret tunnel there in 1945. But the explorers’ spokesman, Andrzej Gaik, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that they found “no train, no tunnel” there. The machines are now covering over the pits that cost 140,000 zlotys ($37,000) to dig. Gaik said “hope dies last” and a search using probes will resume at ...
Washington - Hillary Clinton met or talked by phone with at least 154 people from private interests, such as corporations, during her time as secretary of the state. More than half those people had donated either personally or through companies or groups to the Clinton Foundation or pledged to donate to specific programs through the charity’s international arm. Among them: —Joseph Duffey, who once worked for Laureate Education, a for-profit education system based in Baltimore, was one of 20 people at a higher education policy dinner with Clinton in August 2009. Weeks earlier, Clinton emailed her staff looking for Duffey’s phone number. Duffey, whom Bill Clinton appointed as director of the U.S. Information Agency, gave between $10,000 and $25,000 to the founda...
Traveling as an observant Jew is no easy task. Kashrut is one thing, but think about all the smaller issues. Eruvs, sliding doors, and automatic faucets are a few more points of concern. What about being in a hotel with a key card opener? How do you get in if there is no physical key alternative? Leave a towel in the door? Get a shabbos goy and hint that you can’t get in your room? David Woolf posted the following video to YouTube showing a very creative way to make sure you can open your door from the outside without breaking shabbos. Make sure to take notes! Watch below:
Weehawken, NJ - A new ferry soon will be carrying commuters between New Jersey and New York City. New York Waterway’s 400-passenger Betsy Ross is open for inspection Wednesday at the Port Imperial Ferry Terminal in Weehawken. The Betsy Ross will go into service next week. The 109-foot vessel has climate-controlled cabins and heated handrails. A marble bar serves coffee in the morning and cocktails in the afternoon. The ferry’s sister ship, Molly Pitcher, began service last year carrying commuters from Middletown to Paulus Hook in Jersey City, the World Financial Center in Lower Manhattan and West 39th Street in Midtown Manhattan. The Betsey Ross and Molly Pitcher were built by Yank Marine in Cape May County.
Pyongyang - North Korea fired a submarine-launched missile on Wednesday that flew about 500 km (311 miles) toward Japan, a show of improving technological capability for the isolated country that has conducted a series of launches in defiance of UN sanctions. The missile was fired at around 5:30 a.m. (4:30 p.m. ET) from near the coastal city of Sinpo, where satellite imagery shows a submarine base is located, officials at South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Defence Ministry told Reuters. The projectile reached Japan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ), an area of control designated by countries to help maintain air security, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported. The distance of the flight indicated the North’s push to develop a submarin...
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