|
February 21, 2018 at 7:40 pm
Maryland lawmakers are considering their own version of the Affordable Care Act.
A long hospital stay without insurance could bankrupt some people. Others are faced with the choice of paying for medicine or bills. So on the table at the State House is legislation that creates an individual mandate to help more people afford health insurance.
Health insurance is Barbara Gruber's biggest expense. She has pre-existing conditions, and she has had open-heart surgery and broken bones. She is among hundreds of thousands of people who benefited from the Affordable Care Act, but the congressional tax overhaul signed by President Donald Trump got rid of individual mandates and reduced subsidies, resulting in skyrocketing premiums.
"We will call this the Trump effect on Maryland premiums. It&...
|
February 21, 2018 at 7:36 pm
A Prince George's County officer was hailed as a hero Wednesday after answering a neighbor's call for help in a domestic dispute that ended with him laying down his life.
The shooting happened in the area of Chadds Ford Drive and Chadsey Lane. Police say Cpl. Mujahid A. Ramzziddin was shot and killed while attempting to protect a neighbor at her request. He was home on his day off when she pleaded for his help at 10:18 a.m. Wednesday.
"He immediately responded to that plea for help and shortly thereafter found himself in a confrontation with a man armed with a shotgun," Chief Hank Stawinski said. "He lived a consequential life and he suffered a consequential death, but he saved her life by sacrificing his own."
Ramzziddin died at the scene. The neighbor was unhurt.
...
|
February 21, 2018 at 7:00 pm
Baltimore, MD - Feb. 18, 2018 - It has become traditional in communities throughout the Jewish world to observe an annual date on which the local Chevra Kadisha would fast, learn mishnayos and visit the cemetery. In the evening they would hold a Chevra Kadisha Seudah, a meal which would be attended by all members of the Chevra Kadisha. Although there is no universal date for this Chevra Kadisha day and each community would observe a date in accordance with local custom, the most popular date is the 7th of Adar, the date on which Moshe Rabbeinu was born and on which he died. The Torah, in describing Moshe Rabbeinu’s death (Devarim 24:6) states: “And He buried him in the valley.” Rashi explains that G-d himself buried Moshe. The...
|
February 21, 2018 at 5:08 pm
Jerusalem, Israel - Feb. 21, 2018 - The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations warmly welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak to their delegation meeting in the Inbal Hotel Jerusalem ballroom on Wednesday night.
Netanyahu began his remarks with three thank yous. Number one was to President Trump, "This is the first convening of the Conference of Presidents after his historic decision on Jerusalem, which touched all of our hearts." Two was to those sitting in the room who have supported Israel continuously over the years. Three was to Israeli intelligence forces for preventing the shooting down of an Australian plane today.
In English and Hebrew for emphasis, Netanyahu said,"The Israeli intelligence services thwarted ...
|
February 21, 2018 at 5:06 pm
New York - The latest variation of an Uber ride will require a short walk.
In eight U.S. cities, the ride-hailing company is rolling out a service called “Express Pool,” which links riders in the same area who want to travel to similar destinations. Once linked, riders would need to walk a couple of blocks to be picked up at a common location. They also would be dropped off at a site that would be a short walk from their final destinations.
Depending on time of day and metro area, Express Pool could cost up to 75 percent less than a regular Uber ride and up to half the cost of Uber’s current shared-ride service called Pool, said Ethan Stock, the company’s product director for shared rides. Pool, which will remain in use, doesn’t require any walking. Instead ...
|
February 21, 2018 at 5:02 pm
CAIRO – The Egyptian president declared on Wednesday that his country "scored a goal" by signing a $15 billion deal with an Israeli company to supply natural gas that will help turn Egypt into a regional energy hub.
President Abdel Fatah el-Sissi's televised remarks were the first high-level comments on the deal that fueled controversy on social media.
The project "has a lot of advantages for us (Egyptians). And I want people to be reassured," el-Sissi said.
The Egyptian government was not directly involved in the deal, however, but "provided several things to ... achieve this deal," he said. "By taking this decision, we scored a big goal."
Delek Drilling and its U.S. partner, Noble Energy, signed the agreement on Monday to sell a total of 64 billion ...
|
February 21, 2018 at 4:53 pm
Parkland, FL - Two students who survived the Florida school shooting and spoke publicly about it are not “crisis actors,” despite the claims of several conspiracy-oriented sites and an aide to a Florida lawmaker.
The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students, David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez, are among those targeted by conspiracy theories about the Feb. 14 shooting that killed 17 people.
Similar hoaxes were spread online following other mass shootings, including the 2012 assault on Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.
In Florida, an aide to a state representative on Tuesday emailed a Tampa Bay Times reporter a screenshot of them being interviewed on CNN and said, “Both kids in the picture are not students here but actors that travel to various crisis when they...
|
February 21, 2018 at 4:47 pm
Can one even begin to imagine the helplessness of being in a plane thousands of feet in the air when the plane is no longer responding to the control mechanisms? You – a tiny speck in the vast sky – and the hitherto dependable controls now no more than bits of disconnected metal and plastic… alone… exposed…powerless. David Ivry, former Israel Ambassador to the United States, the ninth commander of the Israel Air Force and the first director of the Israel’s National Security Council was a man used to being in control. Yet, he tells of his experience in the scenario described above. “It seemed to be all over. Then I remembered I had one chance: the ejection seat. I used it and I was saved.”
Mr. Ivry compares his...
|
February 21, 2018 at 4:40 pm
Jerusalem - Intel Corp plans to invest $5 billion to expand production at its Kiryat Gat plant in southern Israel, Israeli Economy Minister Eli Cohen said on Wednesday after talks with the U.S. chipmaker.
Intel, would start expanding the plant this year and work would be completed in 2020, the minister said in a statement.
A spokesman for Intel in Israel declined to comment.
The U.S. semiconductor firm has said it planned to upgrade the facility to 10-nanometer technology from 22-nanometer, making chips that are smaller and faster.
Intel received a state grant worth 5 percent of the $6 billion it invested in upgrading the plant in 2014, when it was also granted a reduced corporate tax rate of 5 percent for 10 years.
Intel is expected to receive a further grant of up to 10 percent of t...
|
February 21, 2018 at 4:40 pm
Los Angeles - A security officer overheard a student threaten to open fire at his Southern California high school, allowing officials to thwart the plot just days after a deadly shooting in Florida, authorities said Wednesday.
The 17-year-old student at El Camino High School near the city of Whittier was arrested on suspicion of making criminal threats, and his adult brother was arrested on five weapons charges after two assault rifles, 90 high-capacity magazines and other handguns were found in their home.
A security officer on Friday heard the teen “say that he was going to shoot up the school sometime in the next three weeks,” Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell said at a news conference.
The school reported the teen, and deputies found an assault rifle at the home r...
|
February 21, 2018 at 4:26 pm
Madrid - A language still spoken by the descendants of Jews expelled from Spain 500 years ago is getting a helping hand from the Spanish Royal Academy to keep it alive.
Ladino, a language taken abroad by Spanish Jews expelled from Spain in the late 15th century, uniquely preserves many elements of medieval Spanish, but some fear it is dying out.
The Spanish Royal Academy has given it a lift by taking a first step toward creating a distinct academy for Ladino that will nurture the archaic language.
“I feel this is a very important moment, a historic moment,” said Tamar Alexander-Frizer, president of the Autoridad Nasionala del Ladino i su Kultura (National Authority of Ladino and its Culture), established by Israel in 1996 to support and foster the language.
Alexander-Frizer...
|
February 21, 2018 at 4:25 pm
Donald Trump Jr. is rejecting the idea that his family is profiting from his father's presidency.
Trump Jr. told Indian television channel CNBC-TV18 that when people say the family is "profiteering from the presidency and all this nonsense," they aren't addressing "the opportunity cost of the deals that we were not able to do."
He said the family is actually losing out on some opportunities because his father vowed not to do any new foreign business while in the White House.
“It’s sort of a shame,” he said, according to The Associated Press. "Because we put on all these impositions on ourselves and essentially got no credit for actually doing that ... for doing the right thing."
The comments come as Trump Jr. is s...
|
February 21, 2018 at 4:17 pm
A prominent Jewish-American foundation sparked outrage in Poland and beyond on Wednesday with a video calling on the United States to sever its ties with Poland to protest a controversial new Holocaust law, and by repeatedly using the historically inaccurate term "Polish Holocaust."
The private Ruderman Family Foundation put out the video in reaction to the new Polish law, which criminalizes falsely attributing the Holocaust crimes of Nazi Germany to Poland. The measure has angered Israel, where it is seen as an attempt to whitewash the actions of Poles who killed Jews during World War II.
The provocative use of the term "Polish Holocaust" in the video was seen as hugely offensive to many in Poland. Many of Nazi Germany's death camps, like Auschwitz, were lo...
|
February 21, 2018 at 2:46 pm
Jerusalem - An Israeli judge ordered the chief executive of Bezeq Israel Telecom to remain in police custody for another six days on Wednesday as part of an investigation into the country’s largest telecoms group.
Bezeq CEO Stella Handler was arrested on Sunday in connection with an Israel Securities Authority (ISA) investigation of Bezeq over possible fraud and financial reporting offences.
Handler and another Bezeq executive were initially scheduled to be detained until Wednesday but police requested the court to extend their detention another six days.
A lawyer for Handler said she is cooperating fully with the investigation and denies the allegations.
Israeli media reported investigators were now looking into allegations that Bezeq received benefits in return for enabling fav...
|
February 21, 2018 at 2:44 pm
Fears grew in north-east Nigeria on Wednesday about the fate of potentially scores of girls who have not been seen since attack on their school by suspected Boko Haram fighters two days ago.
Militants stormed the Government Girls Science secondary school in Dapchi, Yobe state, on Monday evening. Locals initially said the girls and their teachers had fled the attack, but many were still missing on Wednesday.
Boko Haram gained notoriety in April 2014 when its fighters abducted 276 girls from their school in Chibok, in neighbouring Borno state. Fifty-seven escaped in the immediate aftermath and since May last year, and 107 have either escaped or been released as part of a government-brokered deal, but 112 are still being held. Read more at The Guardian.
|
February 21, 2018 at 2:42 pm
Leaked Twitter messages reportedly written by Julian Assange, the controversial founder of Wikileaks, included a disturbing attack on a journalist.
In August 2016, Associated Press journalist Raphael Satter had helped to write a story about the damage done to individuals by Wikileaks’ unredacted disclosures, and when he tweeted about it, Mr Assange reportedly wrote a message in a private Twitter messaging group using the Wikileaks verified Twitter account: “He’s always been a rat. But he’s Jewish and engaged with the ((()))) issue.”
The round brackets refer to a neo-Nazi device called “echoes” whereby they placed Jewish people’s names between three sets of round brackets in order to identify them for targeting. In r...
|
February 21, 2018 at 2:02 pm
A dozen public safety officers received the nation’s highest honor for bravery from President Donald Trump on Tuesday, including six individuals who responded after a married couple shot and killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, more than two years ago.
“Through your service and sacrifice we are reminded that America’s greatest treasure is her people,” Trump said at a White House ceremony before he clasped the Medal of Valor around each man’s neck. “In your courage we see America’s strength and in your character we see America’s soul.”
The Medal of Valor is the nation’s highest award for public safety officers who risk their lives attempting to save or protect others.
Six of the individuals who were recognized b...
|
February 21, 2018 at 2:00 pm
It's a week of reckoning for White House senior advisor Jared Kushner and dozens of other officials who have been working without permanent security clearances for the better part of a year.
Those who have been operating with interim access to top-secret information since before June are set to see that access halted Friday under a new policy enacted last week by Chief of Staff John Kelly. Some officials are expected to leave their posts as a result, while others will continue working with reduced — or no — access to classified information.
The White House maintains that Kushner's work will be unaffected by the change, but won't explain why.
"Nothing that has taken place will affect the valuable work that Jared is doing," Press Secretary Sa...
|
February 21, 2018 at 1:55 pm
Former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke Jr. insinuated Wednesday that student survivors of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting were being manipulated by Democratic billionaire George Soros to organize for gun control.
“The well ORGANIZED effort by Florida school students demanding gun control has GEORGE SOROS’ FINGERPRINTS all over it. It is similar to how he hijacked and exploited black people’s emotion regarding police use of force incidents into the COP HATING Black Lives Matter movement,” Clarke wrote on Twitter.
Read more at The Hill.
|
February 21, 2018 at 1:54 pm
Companies should avoid doing business with Iran for fear of inadvertently subsidizing terrorism, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said this past weekend.
In his speech at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, McMaster cited the power of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has been sanctioned by the US for involvement in terrorism.
The IRGC wields considerable political and economic influence in the Islamic Republic.
“When you invest in Iran, you’re investing in the IRGC,” McMaster said. “You might as well cut the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a check and say, ‘Please use this to commit more murder across the Middle East.’”
Since the signing of the Iran nuclear deal in 2015, international sanctions have bee...
