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May 23, 2016 at 10:01 pm
Circuit Judge Barry G. Williams acquitted Officer Edward Nero on Monday of all four charges against him in connection with the arrest of Freddie Gray.
Below are his full comments from the bench, as transcribed by The Baltimore Sun.
WILLIAMS: All right, this court has been asked to render a decision in this matter and will give the information as follows.
The state has charged the defendant with assault, misconduct in office by corruptly performing an unlawful act, reckless endangerment and misconduct in office by corruptly failing to do an act that is required by the duties of his office.
In order to convict the defendant of assault, the state must prove that the defendant caused offensive physical contact with Freddie Gray, that the contact was a result of an intentional or rec...
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May 23, 2016 at 9:30 pm
Washington - The head of security for the U.S. Transportation Security Administration has been removed from his position, according to an internal TSA memo on Monday seen by Reuters, after the agency was criticized for long lines at airport security checkpoints.
Kelly Hoggan, who had served as TSA assistant administrator for security operations since May 2013, was replaced by his deputy, Darby LaJoye, who will serve on an acting basis, according to the memo from agency head Peter Neffenger.
Long security lines at U.S. airports this spring have frustrated travelers and caused thousands of passengers to miss flights. TSA has blamed the problem on a lack of security screeners and an increase in passenger volumes.
Hoggan came under fire at a U.S. House Oversight Committee hearing o...
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May 23, 2016 at 9:28 pm
Rabbi Yoshiyahu Pinto, who entered prison about four months ago, has been targeted by criminals in a nearby cell who have been threatening the rav to extort money from his chassidim.
According to the Channel 10 News report, the matter began with requests for large sums of money to keep an eye out and make certain no harm comes to Rabbi Pinto in prison. Not wishing to gamble with the rav’s well-being, especially due to his weakened condition, chassidim made certain the sum was paid.
However, a short time later a third person become involved and began his own threats against the rabbi, seeking money for guaranteeing his safety.
During Pesach things took a turn for the worse as the mother of one of the imprisoned inmates arrived at the rav’s home on seder night, asking to join ...
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May 23, 2016 at 9:26 pm
Rosh Kollel Mikdosh Sholom HaGaon HaRav Shalom Tanji, Shlita, a well-known talmid chacham who lives in the Har Nof neighborhood of Yerushalayim is in need of the tzibur’s tefilos. The rav returned from a visit to Argentina six weeks ago where he traveled to deliver his inspirational Torah to the various communities. It appears he contracted a potentially deadly virus in S. America and is now battling for his life.
The rav complained of back pain a few days following his return and visited his HMO where the family doctor did not detect the potentially fatal virus. A few days later the rav departed for Chicago, where he collapsed suddenly and was transported to a local hospital, diagnosed with meningitis and arthritis. The rav’s condition deteriorated and he lost consciousness a...
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May 23, 2016 at 9:19 pm
A French ship joined the international effort to hunt for the black boxes and other wreckage of EgyptAir Flight 804 Monday, searching for clues to what brought the plane down, as Greek and Egyptian authorities diverged on what happened to the plane during the crucial final minutes before it crashed into the Mediterranean, killing all 66 people on board.
Five days after the air disaster, questions remain over what happened to the doomed jet before it disappeared off radar at around 2.45 a.m. local time Thursday.
Egyptian authorities said they believe terrorism is a more likely explanation than equipment failure, and some aviation experts have said the erratic flight reported by the Greek defense minister suggests a bomb blast or a struggle in the cockpit. But so far no hard evid...
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May 23, 2016 at 8:09 pm
Dutch-Jewish woman stabbed at a kosher restaurant in the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam. The background to the incident is unclear.
A Dutch-Jewish woman was stabbed at a kosher restaurant in the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam on Monday night.
She suffered lightly to moderate injuries and was taken to a local hospital for treatment.
The attacker turned himself in to police, according to local reports. The background to the incident is unclear, and it remains to be determined whether it was an anti-Semitic attack.
In January, the home of a Jewish family in Amsterdam became the target of an anti-Semitic attack.
Dutch media reports said that during the New Year festivities held in the city, a number of local youth began rioting and sought to release their anger on Jews.
While shouting "Jew...
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May 23, 2016 at 8:08 pm
Member of band ordered by King David Hotel to remove kippot and tuck in tzitzit tells Arutz Sheva about the shocking discrimination.
Aviya Grushko, the percussionist of the Inbalim band, spoke to Arutz Sheva on Monday about how the prestigious King David Hotel in Jerusalem last Wednesday demanded that members of his band remove their kippot and tuck in their tzitzit during a performance.
The hotel had invited the band to play for its workers, the vast majority of whom are Arabs, and made the discriminatory demand claiming that the sight of the Jewish garb would "hurt the feelings of our Arab workers."
Grushko told Arutz Sheva that no one from the hotel told the band members in advance that they were expected to appear before an Ara...
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May 23, 2016 at 8:08 pm
Coalition talks between the Likud and Yisrael Beytenu parties resumed after Liberman said earlier they reached a “dead end”.
Coalition talks between the Likud and Yisrael Beytenu parties resumed late Monday evening, after Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman had said earlier they reached a “dead end”.
The main issue of contention between the sides remains the issue of pensions for immigrants, at an estimated cost of 3 billion shekels. The move would also provide rent to immigrants and is opposed by the Finance Ministry due its sectarian nature.
Liberman, however, emphasized earlier on Monday that the pension reform isn't only intended for new immigrants.
"We are talking about a pension reform for everyone, not only for immigrants from the Co...
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May 23, 2016 at 5:25 pm
Rabbi Yehuda Glick to be sworn in on Wednesday; continued threats on his life prompt special security measures.
On Monday the Knesset Guard Sergeant-at-Arms Brigadier General Yossi Grif assigned a bodyguard to Israel’s newest MK, Temple Mount activist Rabbi Yehuda Glick, following threats upon his life.
Glick, who was shot and severely wounded in an assassination attempt in 2014, has been the subject of regular death threats by Arab terrorists. He will be one of the few Knesset members to have regular protection by an armed guard.
Replacing out-going Likud MK and former Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, Glick will be sworn in to the Knesset at a ceremony on Wednesday.
In light of a prohibition established by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu against MKs visiting the Temple M...
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May 23, 2016 at 5:22 pm
Queens, NY - A group of professional bank robbers struck again over the weekend, this time hitting the Maspeth Federal Savings Bank in Rego Park, Queens.
The thieves got away with the contents of several safe deposit boxes in a heist police believe is likely connected to at least ten other robberies, including one in April at the Borough Park branch of HSBC where $280,000 in cash and valuables were stolen. The latest theft and missing deposit boxes was discovered by a bank employee at around 8:30 this morning.
Adding to the mystery surrounding the robbery, the robbers left 36 empty safe deposit boxes on the roof of the bank, as well as the ladder they used to climb up. A hole was cut into the roof and the bank’s fence, and the feed to the security cameras had been cut as ...
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May 23, 2016 at 5:20 pm
Detroit - Hillary Clinton said Monday that Donald Trump’s economic policies would lead to lower wages, fewer jobs and more debt — warning unionized workers that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee could “bankrupt America like he’s bankrupted his companies.”
“Ask yourself,” the likely Democratic nominee told thousands at the Service Employees International Union international convention in Detroit, “how can anybody lose money running a casino, really?”
Trump has accused Clinton of using the “the woman’s card” to win votes. Clinton said if fighting for equal pay, paid family leave, a higher minimum wage and affordable child care is “playing the woman card, then deal me in.”
Trump’...
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May 23, 2016 at 5:19 pm
New York - Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump skipped a debate in January and held a fund-raiser instead, claiming to have raised $6 million for veterans.
Now a group of vets is asking: where’s the money?
About a dozen rallied outside Trump Tower in New York, charging Trump has been less than forthcoming about what’s being done with the money raised. The Trump campaign admitted recently the total was more like four and a-half million.
But the vets’ objections to Trump were more than financial.
“Veterans are not Props for hate” read one poster at the rally.
Alexander McCoy, the ex-Marine who organized it, says Trump is a fraud who owes vets an apology.
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May 23, 2016 at 5:19 pm
Mclean, VA - The Romanian hacker known as Guccifer, who is charged with breaking into computer accounts of the Bush family, Secretary of State Colin Powell and others, is scheduled to plead guilty to federal charges.
A change-of-plea hearing is scheduled Wednesday at U.S. District Court in Alexandria for Marcel Lazar, 44, of Arad, Romania, according to court records. He pleaded not guilty last month to charges including cyberstalking, unauthorized access to computers and obstruction of justice.
The court records do not specify which charges Lazar will plead to. His court-appointed lawyer did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment Monday.
Lazar is best known for alleged hacks into accounts held by the Bushes that revealed private family photos and paintings connect...
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May 23, 2016 at 5:18 pm
Washington - Donald Trump wants to build another huge wall, this time to keep out the rising seas threatening to swamp his luxury golf resort in Ireland.
The Republican presidential candidate has called climate change a “con job” and a “hoax.” But in an application filed this month in County Clare, Ireland, the Trump International Golf Links and Hotel cites the threat of global warming in seeking a permit to build a nearly two-mile-long stone wall between it and the Atlantic Ocean. The beach in front of the 18th green is disappearing at a rate of about a yard each year.
Trump’s application, first reported Monday by Politico, cites local regulations pertaining to “rising sea levels and increased storm frequency and wave energy associated with ...
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May 23, 2016 at 5:18 pm
Pakistan - Senior members of the Afghan Taliban met to choose a successor to their former leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour on Monday after U.S. President Barack Obama confirmed his death in a drone strike inside Pakistani territory at the weekend.
The Taliban themselves have made no official statement, but two senior members of the movement said Pakistani authorities had delivered Mansour’s badly burned remains for burial in the western city of Quetta.
Pakistani officials, however, denied handing over a body.
On a three-day visit to Vietnam, Obama called the death “an important milestone”, saying Mansour had rejected peace talks and had “continued to plot against and unleash attacks on American and Coalition forces”.
The president authorized the drone s...
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May 23, 2016 at 5:18 pm
Jerusalem - Israel’s leader on Monday reiterated his support for the establishment of a Palestinian state, seeking to persuade critics that he remains committed to peace as he prepares to bring a polarizing hardliner into his Cabinet.
Benjamin Netanyahu said he would seek peace with the Palestinians, even while giving a cool reception to a new French peace initiative.
“The Palestinians will have the possibility to build a state of their own, but this state must be demilitarized and recognize Israel as the Jewish state,” he told parliament.
Since taking office in 2009, Netanyahu has repeatedly said he supports a “two-state solution” with the Palestinians. But U.S.-led peace efforts have made little headway due to wide gaps between the Israeli and Pa...
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May 23, 2016 at 5:17 pm
Washington - The Supreme Court ruled decisively in favor of a death-row inmate in Georgia on Monday, chastising state prosecutors for improperly keeping African-Americans off the jury that convicted him of killing a white woman.
The justices ruled 7-1 in favor of death row inmate Timothy Tyrone Foster in underscoring the importance of rules they laid out in 1986 to prevent racial discrimination in the selection of juries.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court that Georgia “prosecutors were motivated in substantial part by race” when they struck African-Americans from the jury pool.
But the court did nothing to limit peremptory strikes, lawyers’ ability to reject potential jurors without offering any reason. The late Thurgood Marshall once said that ra...
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May 23, 2016 at 5:16 pm
New York - Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump met with Bob Corker in New York on Monday, intensifying speculation that the U.S. senator from Tennessee may be on Trump’s vice presidential shortlist.
Speaking to reporters following the meeting, Corker described the get-together at Trump Tower in Manhattan as “a meeting between two people who didn’t know each other except over phone calls getting to know each other.”
He said he has no reason to believe he’s being vetted as a potential Trump running mate or for a Cabinet position should Trump win the general election.
“I have no reason whatsoever to believe I am being considered for a position like that,” Corker told reporters who pressed him about various possible po...
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May 23, 2016 at 5:16 pm
Jerusalem - The Center for Women’s Justice has called on the Religious Services Ministry to prohibit gender segregation at the approaches to the site of the tomb of the Talmudic sage Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai on Lag B’Omer.
Every year on the minor holiday of Lag Ba’Omer, tens of thousands of people, mostly from the haredi community, flock to the tomb, adjacent to the town of Meron, to commemorate the anniversary of the death of the revered rabbi.
Massive crowds are formed in the areas leading up to the site, and since 2012 a temporary bridge has been constructed for the celebrations to provide an alternative route to from the carparks to the tomb complex itself.
The pathway utilizing the bridge is called the “Mehadrin Bridge,” meaning it is only to b...
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May 23, 2016 at 5:09 pm
Washington - FBI agents probing whether Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server imperiled government secrets appear close to completing their work, a process experts say will probably culminate in a sit-down with the former secretary of state.
The FBI has already spoken with Huma Abedin, a Clinton confidant who was among the Democratic presidential front runner’s closest aides at the State Department. Former chief of staff Cheryl D. Mills is also cooperating with the investigation, according to her lawyer.
That signals that agents will probably seek to interview Clinton soon, if they haven’t already, former Justice Department officials told The Associated Press. The FBI’s standard practice is to save questioning the person at the center of an inve...
