NEW YORK (AP) -- A Wisconsin woman running to replace Democratic U.S. Rep. Ron Kind has been charged with scamming a jewelry store in New York City. Thirty-six-year-old Juliet Germanotta was charged with grand larceny Wednesday. Investigators say Germanotta bought a ring online from Manhattan's Diamond District worth $4,800 -- then returned a fake ring for a full refund from the jeweler. Germanotta told the New York Post on Thursday she acknowledges sending back a fake ring, blaming the decision on personal issues clouding her judgment. She contends the charges are a misunderstanding. She is due back in court April 2. Germanotta, who lives in La Crosse, Wisconsin, says she is running in the Democratic primary against the incumbent Kind.
PARKLAND, Fla. (AP/WFLA) — Florida Governor Rick Scott is calling for the resignation of FBI director Christopher A. Wray following news the agency failed to investigate a tip regarding the suspect in the Florida school shooting. The FBI received a specific report last month that Nikolas Cruz had a “desire to kill” and access to guns and could be plotting an attack, but agents failed to investigate the tip, the agency said Friday. A person who was close to Cruz called the FBI’s tip line on Jan. 5 and provided information about Cruz’s weapons and his erratic behavior, including his disturbing social media posts. The caller was concerned that Cruz could attack a school. In a statement issued Friday, the agency acknowledged that the tip should have been s...
Washington - U.S. President Donald Trump will host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a meeting at the White House on March 5, two U.S. officials said on Friday. “The president has a great relationship with the prime minister and looks forward to meeting with him,” a White House official said. The meeting comes as Netanyahu faces a political firestorm. Police have said they had found sufficient evidence for the prime minister to be charged with bribery in two corruption cases. Netanyahu has denied wrongdoing.
Beirut - Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri told a U.S. envoy on Friday that Lebanon rejects current proposals over the disputed marine borders with Israel, state media said. U.S. diplomats have been mediating between Lebanon and Israel over tensions including an Israeli border wall and Lebanon’s decision to begin exploring for offshore energy near a disputed patch of water, officials said. Acting Assistant U.S. Secretary of State David Satterfield also met Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil and Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri on Friday. Advertisement: “What is proposed is unacceptable,” Lebanon’s NNA cited Berri as saying in a meeting with Satterfield. This was an apparent reference to a maritime demarcation line proposed by U.S. diplomat Frederic Hof in 201...
A senior aide to Jared Kushner is leaving the White House to return to his family's real estate company. Reed Cordish is a central figure in the Kushner-led Office of American Innovation. Cordish will be replaced by Brooke Rollins, a former aide to Texas ex-Gov. Rick Perry who heads the Texas Public Policy Foundation on Prison Reform. Kushner sent out a statement praising his longtime friend Cordish as "invaluable to the administration," citing his efforts on workforce development and reforming veterans services. Rollins will join the White House in the coming weeks. Kushner says, "We are grateful to have her join the Office of American Innovation."
lyssa Alhadeff, one of the 17 people killed in the Parkland shooting, was warmly remembered by her family, friends and the community during her funeral Friday in South Florida. About 400 people attended her funeral and burial at Star of David Memorial Gardens Cemetery and Funeral Chapel in North Lauderdale. The 14-year-old Stoneman Douglas High School student was described as a go-getter and a great soccer player. She took advanced classes and was destined for law school. Anything she set her mind to, she did. In a Facebook post after the school shooting, her mother, Lori Alhadeff, remembered her as a talented soccer player, who was smart, had an amazing personality, was an great creative writer, and “all she had to offer the world was love.” Some of the warm ...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's inauguration committee paid two private companies more than $50 million for event planning while donating $5 million to charitable causes after the January 2017 event in Washington, according to new federal tax documents filed by the nonprofit committee. The filings for the Presidential Inaugural Committee show that the organization paid nearly $26 million to an obscure event planning firm based in Southern California. The company, WIS Media Partners, is described in the tax filings as an "event production" firm, but California state incorporation records do not list the firm's owner. But The New York Times reported Thursday that the firm was started by Stephanie Winston-Wolkoff, a New York event planner who has been an adviser t...
The Rav Shulchan Aruch, written by Rav Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the first Rebbe of Lubavitch, has always been a favorite Acharon of various Gedolim and Poskim.  The reason for this is that there are entire gems and nuggets of Torah thought that can be revealed in the Rav Shulchan Aruch’s re-statement of a halachic topic. Now, for the first time, these remarkable nuggets have been gathered and examined by a brilliant Talmid Chochom in an aptly named new sefer entitled, “Yesodei HaShulchan v’Zikukei Orosav.”  There are 693 pages in this Sefer. This Halacha Sefer, written by Rav Shmuel Zaiontz, is concerned mostly with understanding the Rav Shulchan Aruch’s (the Graz) positions on the laws of Amira L’Akum.  It is a remarkably well written se...
Towson, MD — Video obtained Thursday by 11 News from inside Loch Raven High School shows the moment when SWAT officers arrested a student during a lockdown. The video shows SWAT officers swarming a third-floor classroom and taking a 14-year-old student away in handcuffs. Greggor Hines, a senior at Loch Raven High School, shot the video. He said it was otherwise a normal day in his Advanced Placement economics class. "They came over the intercom and said, 'All teachers lock down,' and there was no indication of a drill, so that was the first kind of indication that something was actually happening," Hines said. Hines said the teacher looked in the hallway and told a student there to get inside the classroom for safety. Hines said that's protocol in a lockdown. ...
Thirteen Russians and three Russian entities were charged Friday with an elaborate plot to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, federal prosecutors announced Friday. The indictment, brought by the office of special counsel Robert Mueller, alleges that Russians used bogus social media postings and advertisements fraudulently purchased in the name of Americans to sway political opinion during the race between Republican Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent. The charges are the most direct allegation to date of illegal Russian meddling in the election. The goal, the indictment says, was to "sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 presidential election." Charges include conspiracy, wire fraud, bank fraud and aggravated i...
Parshas Terumah / Baltimore Zmanim / Eruv is UP! Baltimore, MD – Feb. 16, 2018 Parshas:  Terumah Today:    1 Adar (2nd day Rosh Chodesh Adar)   Chatzos: 12:21 PM Hadlakas Nairos: 5:26 PM Shkiah:                   5:44:44 PM Tzais HaKochavim:  6:35 PM Kiddush Levanah: Sunday, Feb. 18, 7:48 AM – Friday, March 2, (Shushan Purim) 2:10 AM Kiddush Levanah may only be said at night  
The FBI revealed Friday that they received a tip last month that Nikolas Cruz, the 19-year-old accused of killing 17 people on Valentine's Day, had a gun, wanted to “kill people” and had the “potential of him conducting a school shooting.” The FBI admitted it did not follow proper protocol as the information was not provided to the Miami field office and "no further investigation was conducted at the time." “We are still investigating the facts.  I am committed to getting to the bottom of what happened in this particular matter, as well as reviewing our processes for responding to information that we receive from the public.  It’s up to all Americans to be vigilant, and when members of the public contact us with concerns, we must act p...
President Donald Trump said Friday he will head to Florida later in the day to meet with those affected by the school shooting that left 17 dead in southern Florida. “I will be leaving for Florida today to meet with some of the bravest people on earth — but people whose lives have been totally shattered,” Trump tweeted Friday morning. “Am also working with Congress on many fronts.”  Read more at CNN.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal judge in San Francisco on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to implement energy-use limits for portable air conditioners and other products that were adopted during the last days of the Obama presidency. The U.S. Department of Energy was required to put the energy efficiency standards into effect after a 45-day period to identify any errors and did not have the authority to continue to assess them, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria said. The ruling came in two lawsuits — one filed by New York, California and other states and the other by environmental groups. The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately comment. The lawsuits over the energy standards are among a spate of legal actions challenging decisions by the Trump administra...
Former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon would only answer questions pre-approved by the White House during an interview Thursday with the House Intelligence Committee, lawmakers said. Members from both parties were fuming after the interview, which lasted roughly three hours, saying Bannon had refused to answer any questions that touched on his work for President Trump after the 2016 election. "The only questions he would answer were questions that had been scripted, literally scripted, for him by the White House. A set of 25 questions that had been written out for him to which the answer to each must be 'no,'" said Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.), the panel's ranking Democrat.  Bannon invoked executive privilege when asked questions that ext...
Rav Shimon Baadani, a member of the Moetzet Chachmei Hatorah of Shas, attacked those who claim that there is a serious concern of giyus banos, a decree of the enlistment of girls, in Israel. Rav Baadani, who is also the rosh kollel of Kollel Torah V’Chaim in Bnei Brak, said that there is no decree of enlistment of religious girls in Israel and that every religious girl is exempted. In a conversation with his talmidim about arguments being made about the recruitment of girls, Rav Baadani presented what he said are the full facts and the answers to many questions posed to him. “We are concerned about the yeshiva students as to what the [draft law] will be,” said Rav Baadani, “but regarding the girls, the law is simple: In every&nb...
Chris McKenna, a freshman at the Florida high school where 17 people were gunned down Wednesday, says the alleged shooter urged him to flee moments before the deadly rampage. Speaking to The Sun-Sentinel on Thursday, McKenna said he ran into Nikolas Cruz in a second-floor hallway at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Cruz was loading his weapon when McKenna spotted him, he said. “You’d better get out of here,” he recalled Cruz saying. “Things are gonna start getting messy.” McKenna said he heeded Cruz’s warning and ran out of the building, where he warned assistant football coach Aaron Feis. Feis drove him away from the area before heading back into the school to “check it out,” McKenna said. Feis later died in the shooting...
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued a statement blaming “Schumer Democrats” after the Senate rejected legislation based on President Trump’s immigration plan in a 39-60 vote. She accused Democrats of not being serious about finding a solution for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients. “Today, the Schumer Democrats in the Senate demonstrated again that they are not serious about DACA, they are not serious about immigration reform, and they are not serious about homeland security,” Sanders said. “They filibustered a proposal with an extremely generous path to citizenship because it also contained reforms that secured our border and secured our immigration system.” “While radical Schumer Democrats align thems...
A 25-cent gasoline tax, reportedly endorsed by President Donald Trump, would help wipe out 60 percent of the benefit from the tax breaks he recently signed into law for individuals, according to Strategas Research, CNBC reports. Daniel Clifton, Strategas’ head of policy research, said the increase in gasoline prices would also be nine times larger than the estimated $4 billion workers are receiving from employers due to the corporate tax cut. The gasoline tax, now 18.4 cents per gallon, has not been raised since 1993 when Bill Clinton was in the White House. Gary Cohn, White House economic advisor, has been discussing a gasoline tax raise. Government data already show an increase in gasoline prices of 20 cents per gallon this year, costing consumers about $34 billion, Cl...
The former Massachusetts governor is aiming for the seat held by Republican Orrin Hatch. The cat has been out of the bag for a while, but now it’s official: Mitt Romney is running for Senate in Utah, where he’s a clear favorite to win. “I am running for United States Senate to serve the people of Utah and bring Utah’s values to Washington,” he wrote in a tweet. The Republican and former Massachusetts governor had been expected to run for the seat vacated by Sen. Orrin Hatch, who said in January he would retire. Romney even provided a few not-subtle clues about his intentions. And then, after delaying an announcement following the school shooting in Florida, Romney finally came out with it Friday morning. ...
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