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October 19, 2017 at 5:00 am
IDF forces and Shin Bet agents during the night raided a number of PA (Palestinian Authority) TV stations and shut them down for broadcasting and distributing inciteful material.
The raids too place Tuesday night, the eve of 28 Tishrei, as soldiers confiscated communications equipment and closed down eight PA TV stations and production facilities.
PA reports stations that were shut include al-Quds in Hebron, Pal Media in Bet Lechem, the al-Aqsa & Palestine Alyum channels in Ramallah, as well as the offices of the Trans Media & Pal Media production companies.
Two PA residents were arrested during the raids.
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October 19, 2017 at 4:59 am
President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the CIA’s independent watchdog has told Congress that he’s never read the Senate’s so-called torture report, an exhaustive, classified report of the agency’s treatment of terror suspects after 9/11.
Christopher Sharpley, who has been deputy inspector general at the CIA since July 2012, told the Senate intelligence committee Tuesday that the classified disc containing the 7,000-page report was lost for a time and later found, but that he never took time to read the full document.
The Senate intelligence committee spent years investigating the CIA’s detention and harsh interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists captured by the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on U.S. soil. The techniques au...
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October 19, 2017 at 4:58 am
Toyota Motor Co. is recalling 347,120 Sienna minivans worldwide because they can shift out of the “park” position and roll away.
The recall involves Siennas from the 2005-2007 and 2009-2010 model years. Most are in the U.S. Toyota also is recalling 24,000 in Canada, 13,000 in Mexico, 100 in Europe and 20 elsewhere.
Toyota says the grease used in the shift lever assembly could transfer to other components, causing them to work improperly. In particular, the shifter can move out of “park” even if the driver isn’t pressing the brake pedal. It won’t move out of position if the parking brake is activated.
Toyota won’t say if it knows of any accidents related to the defect.
The company will notify owners by mid-December. Dealers will repair the...
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October 19, 2017 at 4:57 am
A Hungarian who printed thousands of passports allowing Jews to flee the country during World War II has been honored with a memorial plaque.
Emil Wiesmeyer’s printing company initially made 4,000 of the basic passports, part of efforts by Swedish special envoy Raoul Wallenberg to save Jews from Nazi death camps.
He then produced about 20,000 more on his own to help Jews make it out of Hungary.
The plaque honoring Emil Wiesmeyer was unveiled Wednesday in Budapest by Szabolcs Szita, director of the Holocaust Memorial Center, and Swedish Ambassador Niclas Trouve
Some 550,000 Hungarian Jews were killed in the Holocaust.
Wiesmeyer later suffered persecution and was jailed in the 1950s, during Hungary’s communist era.
Wiesmeyer died in 1967. His son Gabor attended the ce...
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October 19, 2017 at 4:56 am
A Charedi family from Jerusalem accidentally entered Shechem this afternoon while on their way to the Jewish town of Har Bracha located nearby. The family, who quickly understood that they had made a mistake in directions, called Israeli security forces and told them that they were in the heart of Shechem. Only after some very long and tense moments were the family evacuated from the city by security forces. In the meantime, the father had drawn and cocked his gun.
The family was comprised of Avraham Levi, the Gabbai of Beit Knesset “Zechor l’Avraham” in Jerusalem, his wife, and their daughter. Levi said: “I was traveling with my family towards Har Bracha in the Shomron, the trip was relatively uneventful. I had been given directions that told me that I needed to p...
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October 19, 2017 at 4:51 am
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October 18, 2017 at 8:20 pm
An especially lenient plea bargain agreement was accepted between a police officer who drove drunk, crossed an intersection on a red light, hit and injured a victim and then fled the scene without calling for help, Shelly Tapieroof of Israel News reports on Kikar Shabbos News.
The accident occurred in February this year, in Tel Aviv, and this week, the Transportation Court was presented with a plea bargain according to which the defendant would send six months of community service only in addition to his license being suspended for four years. This is a particularly lenient punishment, since the punishment prescribed by law for a hit-and-run accident is three years in prison.
As noted, only Tuesday, 27 Tishrei, the sentence of the driver David Amar, who struck a child at Bar Ilan J...
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October 18, 2017 at 8:20 pm
Iran’s supreme leader on Wednesday urged Europe to do more to back the 2015 nuclear deal after President Donald Trump refused to re-certify the pact.
European companies have rushed into the Iranian markets since the landmark accord, which lifted international sanctions in exchange for restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program.
“The European governments have underlined the nuclear deal’s issue and condemned the U.S. president’s remarks,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, according to comments posted on his official website. “We welcome this approach but it is not enough that they only tell him not to tear up the deal.”
“The nuclear deal is to their benefit”, Khamenei said.
Khamenei also said of Trump: “I will not spend time...
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October 18, 2017 at 8:19 pm
Twitter vowed to crack down further on hate speech and sexual harassment, days after CEO Jack Dorsey said in a tweet-storm that the company was “still” not doing enough to protect its users.
The policy changes were specifically aimed at protecting women who unknowingly or unwillingly had nude pictures of themselves distributed online or were subject to unwanted sexual advances. They would also aim to shield groups subject to hateful imagery, symbols and threats of violence.
In an email Twitter shared with The Associated Press Tuesday, Twitter’s head of safety policy outlined the new guidelines to the company’s Trust and Safety Council, a group of outside organizations that advises the company on its policies against abuse.
The company said it would enact th...
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October 18, 2017 at 8:17 pm
Police Chief Roni Alsheich was warned a number of weeks ago in a telephone message that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is dissatisfied with him. According the Ynet report, the police commander was phoned by an associate, warning him persons in the Prime Minister’s Office view him today as a “traitor” and being “ungrateful”, and that PM Netanyahu has him in his crosshairs.
It is further report that the belief if that Alsheich, who was deputy director of the Shin Bet when tapped to become police chief, was angry because he was not appointed director of the Shin Bet. Alsheich contradicts this, explaining once he was selected for the top police slot, he phoned Mr. Netanyahu and told him he was giving up on the Shin Bet leadership slot.
Ynet adds that Al...
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October 18, 2017 at 6:33 pm
Steve Bannon leveled a blistering attack on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other top Republicans at an Arizona fundraiser for a GOP primary challenger to incumbent Sen. Jeff Flake.
The former chief strategist to President Donald Trump heaped disdain on McConnell and other incumbent Republicans, saying they are failing the country by not backing Trump’s agenda and are openly critical of their own president.
Bannon said McConnell and Republicans such as Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee and Arizona Sen. John McCain “are trying to destroy him every day” and fueling the populist revolt Bannon is pushing. His comments came at a Tuesday night campaign kickoff fundraiser for Flake challenger Kelli Ward in Scottsdale, Arizona, headlined by Bannon and talk show host...
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October 18, 2017 at 5:46 pm
Cheverly, MD - Oct. 17, 2017 - Maryland CAPE (Maryland’s state chapter of the Council for American Private Education), the coalition which represents Maryland's nearly 1,400 nonpublic schools, presented Governor Larry Hogan with its 2017 Champion of Education Award on Tuesday. The event marked the fourth time the award has been given. The award, whose recipients represent a bipartisan group of Maryland elected officials committed to providing the best educational options for all of Maryland's school children, was given prior to the Governor's visit to his childhood elementary school, the Saint Ambrose Catholic School in Prince George’s County. The event also featured the presentation of the 2017 Civic Achievement Awards to Ms. Barbara Bice and Mr. Jim Clark,...
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October 18, 2017 at 4:06 pm
Baltimore, Md - Oct. 18, 2017 - With continued economic and political unrest in Venezuela, life has become increasingly difficult for Jewish teen, Mojilif Benzaquen, and his family. Many in his Jewish community have fled looking for a better future elsewhere and he admits he is often scared that things will get worse.
That’s why, this summer, provided a rare glimmer of hope for this young man, fortunate to travel to Baltimore to participate in Or Haner, a month-long summer camp in Baltimore for Latin American teens. He, along with eight other Venezuelans, were part of a group of 94 campers and counselors from Costa Rica, Monterrey, Mexico and Mexico City, here to interact with one another and deepen their Jewish identities.
For many, this once-in-a-lifetime experience was possible ...
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October 18, 2017 at 3:15 pm
After her Army son died in an armored vehicle rollover in Syria in May, Sheila Murphy says, she got no call or letter from President Donald Trump, even as she waited months for his condolences and wrote him that “some days I don’t want to live.”
In contrast, Trump called to comfort Eddie and Aldene Lee about 10 days after their Army son was killed in an explosion while on patrol in Iraq in April. “Lovely young man,” Trump said, according to Aldene. She thought that was a beautiful word to hear about her boy, “lovely.”
Like presidents before him, Trump has made personal contact with some families of the fallen, not all. What’s different is that Trump, alone among them, has picked a political fight over who’s done better to honor ...
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October 18, 2017 at 3:13 pm
President Donald Trump’s ranking in the Forbes list of wealthiest Americans has dropped, as the magazine said the value of some of his Manhattan real estate holdings has declined recently.
Forbes ranked the first billionaire president as the 248th-wealthiest person in America and put his wealth at $3.1 billion . The year before, he was ranked 156th and Forbes said he was worth $3.7 billion.
As a candidate, Trump said his net worth was more than $10 billion, but Forbes pegged that figure at $4.5 billion in September 2015. By Forbes’ estimates, Trump’s wealth has fallen 31 percent in two years.
According to Forbes, half of Trump’s wealth comes from New York City real estate. It says the value of luxury real estate is down, especially around Fifth Avenue. That...
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October 18, 2017 at 3:12 pm
President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Wednesday to revive his long-standing complaint about the FBI’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email server investigation, alleging that then-Director James Comey had protected the Democratic presidential nominee by prematurely “exonerating” her before the 2016 election.
“Comey stated under oath that he didn’t do this — obviously a fix?” Trump wrote. “Where is Justice Dept?”
Trump’s latest online burst came in response to the FBI’s release of heavily blacked out draft statements from May 2016 by Comey in preparation for closing the Clinton investigation without criminal charges.
Trump tweeted that the draft statements, whose existence was previously known, show the FBI had ...
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October 18, 2017 at 3:12 pm
In the first 48 hours since the end of Yom Tov, Misaskim trucks, vans, and SUVs, manned by volunteers and staff, fanned out across the tri-state area, delivering shiva-related materials to over 86 homes, encompassing more than 434 new aveilim, r’l.
Although it was not totally unexpected, as this post-Yom Tov demand occurs every 6 months, it nevertheless pushed Misaskim over the limit, both in terms of materials and Sifrei Torah, as well as manpower.
For the very first time, Misaskim’s warehouses were bare to the walls.
In addition, there were several unexpected deaths that required Misaskim interaction with the Medical Examiner’s office, to ensure their burials in record-breaking time.
And all of this while “recuperating” from a massive Chol Hamoed o...
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October 18, 2017 at 1:01 pm
Agudath Israel of America has commended U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions for issuing a Memorandum clarifying and enhancing religious liberty protections in federal law.
The Attorney General issued the Memorandum on October 6, 2017 in response to an Executive Order from President Trump. As October 6 coincided with Succos, Agudath Israel was not able to respond to it immediately, but wanted to take the first opportunity to thank the Attorney General for this important contribution.
In a letter, authored by Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, Executive Vice President of Agudath Israel, the Orthodox organization thanked the Attorney General for producing “a legal document that staunchly defends the rights of individuals and organizations to receive accommodation for their religious beliefs a...
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October 18, 2017 at 12:51 pm
Jerusalem city officials were in Meah Shearim posting a number of new signs resulting in changes in traffic patterns. The turn from Meah Shearim Street to Salant Street is now a do not enter and one will only be able to leave Meah Shearim via the Shivtei Yisrael -Meah Shearim interchange.
One is advised to be extremely cautious. Many, if not most motorists, are unaware of the change and are likely to act as they did in the past, which could lead to collisions.
