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August 30, 2016 at 9:55 am
The FBI is warning state elections officials in Maryland and around the country to be on their guard against hackers after the breach of a voter information database in Illinois and an attempted attack in Arizona.
Maryland officials said they are already prepared to fight off the type of attack the FBI warned about.
The hack in Illinois marked the first confirmation that such a breach could be executed successfully, said Nikki Baines Charlson, deputy administrator of the Maryland Board of Elections.
"This is the type of activity we watch for," she said. She said the state has deployed the type of cybersecurity needed to fend off such threats.
Federal officials have been taking steps to help states ensure the security of their elections systems, amid growing concern about the vu...
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August 30, 2016 at 9:45 am
A change may be coming to a Baltimore County Schools closing policy that has already lead to two days of closures this school year.
According to the Baltimore Sun, the Baltimore County School board is expected on Tuesday to revise the policy that requires the county to shut down the non-air-conditioned schools if the heat index is forecast to reach 90 degrees at any time during the school day.
School board member Marisol Johnson told the Sun that she will propose closing schools only when the heat index is forecast to reach 90 degrees by 11 a.m.
Other options include bringing in generators to cool the schools that don't yet have air conditioning, or raising the heat index limit to 95 or some other figure.
According to the Baltimore Sun, parents say the new...
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August 30, 2016 at 9:38 am
With great sadness and deep pain we inform you of the untimely passing of Rabbi Avrohom Yeshayohu Groner OBM, a much loved educator and rabbi in London, England. He was 43 years old.
Avremi was well known as a kind, sensitive and talented man who has dedicated the past 12 years to inspiring our youth with a love of Judaism through innovative and original programs that enabled everyone to be involved, to grow and develop a true love of life.
He also served as a Rabbi for a United Synagogue Shul in Sutton where he led his community with true dedication.
Recently it was discovered that he was suffering from a terrible illness and this morning came the news of his untimely passing.
He is survived by his wife Shternie and their five children.
He is also survived by his parents Rabbi Sho...
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August 30, 2016 at 9:38 am
Geneva - The U.N. human rights office says local bans in France on burkini swimwear amount to “a grave and illegal breach of fundamental freedoms” and a “stupid reaction” to recent extremist attacks.
OHCHR spokesman Rupert Colville says the rights agency wants local officials to “immediately” lift the bans, saying they don’t increase security.
A French high court has struck down on French town’s ban on the burkini, effectively invalidating such bans in about 30 towns, though many remain.
Colville says such bans “fuel religious intolerance and the stigmatization of Muslims,” and “have only succeeded in increasing tensions.”
He said people who wear burkinis — body-covering beachwear worn by some Muslim...
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August 30, 2016 at 9:34 am
Brussels - EU antitrust regulators ordered Apple (AAPL.O) on Tuesday to pay up to 13 billion euros ($14.5 billion) in taxes plus interest to the Irish government after ruling that a special scheme to route profits through Ireland was illegal state aid.
The massive sum, 40 times bigger than the previous known demand by the European Commission to a company in such a case, could be reduced, the EU executive said in a statement, if other countries sought more tax themselves from the U.S. tech giant.
Apple, which with Ireland said it will appeal the decision, paid tax rates on European profits on sales of its iPhone and other devices and services of between just 0.005 percent in 2014 and 1 percent in 2003, the Commission said.
“Ireland granted illegal tax benefits to Apple, wh...
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August 30, 2016 at 9:34 am
Tehran, Iran - Iranian authorities have released a man jailed while home from his graduate studies in Texas after nearly five years, state media reported Tuesday.
The report by the government-owned IRAN daily quoted Saeed Khalili, the lawyer for Omid Kokabee, as saying the country’s judiciary will allow Kokabee to enjoy “conditional freedom” for the rest of his 10-year sentence.
Khalili said Kokabee was released from jail in April to undergo medical treatment on his kidneys and “will not return to prison, anymore.”
Kokabee, an Iranian citizen, had been studying optics in the physics department at the University of Texas. He was arrested in February 2011 and convicted of having “relations with a hostile country” and receiving “ill...
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August 30, 2016 at 9:19 am
Jerusalem - Israel’s military says its forces demolished the home of a Palestinian involved in the ambush of a family car in the West Bank that killed an Israeli and wounded his wife and two of their children.
It said the residence in Dura near the West Bank city of Hebron Bank was razed Tuesday. It said the man “assisted in the planning and execution” of the July 1 attack that killed Miki Mark, a 48-year-old father of 10 children.
The shooting was one of a wave of attacks since September 2015. Palestinians have killed 34 Israelis and two visiting Americans. Some 208 Palestinians died in that time, most identified as attackers by Israel.
Israel says house demolitions are an effective deterrent against attacks. Critics counter the tactic amounts to collective p...
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August 29, 2016 at 10:47 pm
Banja Luka, Bosnia - A Bosnian Serb factory on Monday presented two pairs of shoes as a gift for the wife of U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Slovenian-born Melania, in a gesture of support for Trump’s White House campaign.
Many Serbs in the Balkans back Trump, ill-disposed to rival Hillary Clinton whose husband Bill backed NATO air strikes on Bosnian Serb positions toward the end of the 1992-95 Bosnian war. He also advocated a 1999 NATO bombing of then-Yugolsavia to halt the killing and expulsion of ethnic Albanians.
Marinko Umicevic, technical director at the Banja Luka shoe factory Bema, said the gift countered what she called a “dirty campaign” against the aspiring First Lady whose homeland, like Bosnia, was a part of Yugoslavia when sh...
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August 29, 2016 at 10:45 pm
Egg Harbor Township, NJ - A shootout on a New Jersey highway on Monday afternoon left one person dead, four others hurt and a sport utility vehicle riddled with bullet holes.
The people in the two cars knew each other and the incident was not a random act, state police Capt. Stephen Jones said. He said that no other vehicles were hit by bullets.
Police said they received reports of a shooting on the Atlantic City Expressway, followed a short time later by calls for medical assistance about 5 miles away on the Garden State Parkway and at a convenience store 2 miles away.
Authorities investigated a car on the parkway in Egg Harbor Township and an SUV covered with bullet holes in the parking lot of a Wawa store near a highway exit.
There were bullet holes in the front windshield ...
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August 29, 2016 at 10:05 pm
Atlanta - An Olympic champion is thanking a 7-year-old Atlanta girl who found his gold medal in a pile of trash weeks after it got stolen.
Joe Jacobi won the medal in men’s canoe double slalom at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. Jacobi says it was stolen when somebody broke into his car in June.
Weeks later, Chloe Smith was walking with her father when she spotted the gold medal discarded in a pile of garbage. Chloe returned the medal to Jacobi, who had posted about the theft on social media. The former Olympian then promised to visit Chloe’s school and let her classmates know about her good deed.
Jacobi spoke Monday to Chloe’s first-grade class at Woodson Park Academy. WSB-TV reports (http://2wsb.tv/2bEaJw3) the Olympian brought his recovered gold medal with h...
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August 29, 2016 at 9:51 pm
Jerusalem - When Israeli soccer agent Tzvi Kritzer decided to build a monument in the Lithuanian town of Molėtai (Malat in Yiddish), where most of his family was murdered during the Holocaust, and to bring the relatives of the victims to the town for a memorial march, he was told to expect 20 to 30 people.
A year later, on August 29, 2016, more than a thousand people, including the president of Lithuania, arrived in Molėtai for the largest memorial ceremony in the country’s history to honor Jews murdered during the Holocaust.
The relatives of the victims from Israel, Canada, the United States, and elsewhere walked about two kilometers from the local synagogue, where Jews were kept during the Holocaust for three days without food and water, to the location of the massacr...
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August 29, 2016 at 9:50 pm
Baltimore, MD – Aug. 29, 2016 - It is with deep sorrow that BaltimoreJewishLife.com informs the community of the petirah of Mr. Moshe Weiss, son of Mrs. Weiss and brother of Mrs. Esta Sitrin
Shiva is being observed at 3212 Bonnie Rd. Hours are Tuesday - Thursday 11 AM - 8:30 PM, and Friday 11 AM - 3 PM.
Bila HaMaves LaNetzach...
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August 29, 2016 at 9:09 pm
Baltimore officially has had 200 homicide victims in 2016 after an autopsy confirmed a 42-year-old man found dead Friday just west of downtown had been fatally stabbed.
The victim, identified Monday as Franswhaun Smith, was found Friday about 7:50 a.m. in the 700 block of Murphy Lane, in the Heritage Crossing neighborhood that was formerly the site of the Murphy Homes public housing development.
Smith was pronounced dead at the scene. Police said an autopsy confirmed he had been stabbed in the back.
It is the fifth consecutive year Baltimore's homicide tally has reached 200 after recording 197 in all of 2011. That was the first time the city had recorded fewer than 200 victims since the late 1970s.
Last year, 344 people were killed in Baltimore, the city's highest hig...
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August 29, 2016 at 9:00 pm
A new kuntres has been recently been released addressing a simcha, chosson and kallah and how one should act. The kuntres was released by HaGaon HaRav Chaim Kanievsky Shlita.
The kuntres has a disclaimer, stating that while the rulings reflect the position of Rav Kanievsky, one should not rely on them “הלכה למעשה” without asking privately regarding each matter. The kuntres includes:
· The father of the chosson speaking with the kallah, with Rav Chaim stated it is permissible if there is a need, and one may say “Gut Shabbos” and “How are you”.
· Regarding the minhag of Sephardim to have a ‘Shabbat Chatan’ after the chasenah, if the case deals with a Sephardi chosson learning in a Ashkenazi yeshiva, the Shabbos should ...
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August 29, 2016 at 8:50 pm
Chicago - A former Chicago transportation official was sentenced on Monday to 10 years in prison for using his influence to expand contracts for the city’s red light traffic camera program in a $2 million bribery scheme.
John Bills, 55, was convicted in January on every charge he faced connected to the scheme, including mail fraud, wire fraud, filing false tax returns and bribery.
In addition to the 10-year sentence, U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall ordered Bills to make more than $2 million in restitution payments, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois.
According to the Chicago Tribune newspaper, Bills told the judge before sentencing that he committed “immoral” acts and had a “broken moral compass,&rdq...
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August 29, 2016 at 8:48 pm
San Jose, CA - Apple Inc has been sued by owners of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus smartphones who say a design defect causes the phones’ touchscreens to become unresponsive, making them unusable.
According to a proposed nationwide class-action lawsuit filed on Saturday, Apple has long been aware of the defect, which often surfaces after a flickering gray bar appears atop the touchscreens, but has refused to fix it.
The plaintiffs linked the problem to Apple’s decision not to use a metal “shield” or “underfill” to protect the relevant parts, as it did on versions of the iPhone 5.
“The iPhones are not fit for the purpose of use as smartphones because of the touchscreen defect,” according to the complaint filed in federal court in San J...
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August 29, 2016 at 7:44 pm
Washington - A fellow real estate billionaire of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has revoked his support for the candidate after incurring blowback for planning a fund-raiser in his name this weekend.
Martin Selig, a Jewish property developer who fled Nazi Germany with his family in 1939, originally cast his support for Trump as the default choice of a career member of the Republican Party.
“The fact that these are the two people who have been nominated for president, you have to live with that,” he said, in his tepid endorsement of the candidate.
Selig has now reversed course, stating that he will not participate in the planned August 30 fund-raiser, ever donate money to Trump’s cause, or even vote for the GOP nominee come November.
“Do yo...
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August 29, 2016 at 7:28 pm
Orlando, FL - Orlando’s major theme parks are now offering free bug repellant to visitors as concerns about mosquito-transmitted Zika virus mount in Florida.
Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando Resort and SeaWorld Orlando on Sunday began offering the mosquito spray and lotion free of charge at their parks.
No mosquito-transmitted case of the Zika virus has been found in central Florida. But theme park officials say they’re offering the repellant as a precaution and to ease the fears of visitors.
The Department of Health is investigating mosquito-transmitted Zika cases in Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties in South Florida, as well as in Pinellas County in the Tampa area.
Zika causes a mild illness in most people but can lead to severe brain-related birth defects i...
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August 29, 2016 at 7:04 pm
Washington - Hillary Clinton is telling supporters that she doesn’t know “which Donald Trump” will show up at the presidential debates.
Clinton told supporters at a private fundraiser in New York’s East Hampton Monday that she is “running against someone who will say or do anything.” The Democratic presidential candidate said her Republican opponent may try and convey “gravity” or he could seek to “score points.”
Clinton called this year “the most unpredictable electoral season.” Her remarks were audible to reporters held in a nearby room.
She stressed that the race was not over yet and said that she had recently been warned that many people “will be paying attention for the first time” when they ...
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August 29, 2016 at 7:04 pm
Washington - The United States on Monday met President Barack Obama’s goal of admitting 10,000 Syrian refugees into the country, the White House announced.
Obama sought a sixfold increase in the number of Syrian refugees provided safe haven in the United States. After a slow start, the administration was able to hit the goal about a month early and just a few weeks before Obama convenes a summit on refugees during the 71st session of the United Nations General Assembly.
Obama would have been hard-pressed to make the case for other countries to do more with the U.S. failing to reach a goal that amounts to only about 2 percent of the 480,000 Syrian refugees in need of resettlement. Millions more Syrians have fled to neighboring states such as Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon and ...
