The Senate has voted to allow the babies of its members into the tradition-bound chamber. The inspiration for the historic change of rules was Sen. Tammy Duckworth's daughter, born April 9. Duckworth wants to resume voting, and the Senate requires that votes be cast in person. So the Illinois Democrat, now on maternity leave, proposed that babies be allowed into the chamber. She says the vote Wednesday helps "bring the Senate into the 21st Century." Although no one objected, the idea didn't sit easily with some senators in both parties concerned that babies would disrupt "Senate decorum." Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar says she spent nearly two months privately reassuring Republicans and Democrats that the new rule would not mean diaper-changing or nursing in the Sena...
Miami, FL - Miami is at risk of a deadly yellow fever outbreak because the disease could thrive there but the city has no checks on travelers arriving from endemic zones, a study to be published by the World Health Organization showed. Yellow fever is spread by the same mosquito that causes Zika virus, which spread through the Americas after being detected in Brazil in 2015 and has been reported in southern Florida and southern Texas. The U.S. Centres for Disease Control advises that yellow fever is found in tropical and subtropical areas of Africa and South America, and is a very rare cause of illness in U.S. travelers. But the study, “International travel and the urban spread of yellow fever”, showed that almost 2.8 million people flew to the United States from endemic yel...
WASHINGTON (AP) — A bitterly-divided House panel Wednesday approved new work and job training requirements for food stamps as part of a five-year renewal of federal farm and nutrition policy. The GOP-run Agriculture Committee approved the measure strictly along party lines after a contentious, five-hour hearing in which Democrats blasted the legislation, charging it would toss up to 2 million people off of food stamps and warning that it will never pass Congress. The hard-fought food stamp provisions would tighten existing work requirements and expand funding for state training programs, though not by enough to cover everybody subject to the new work and training requirements. Agriculture panel chair Michael Conaway said the provisions would offer food stamp beneficiaries "the hop...
Baltimore, MD - Apr. 19, 2018 - Shiva is being observed at 3812 West Strathmore Ave Please no visitors between 1PM-2PM and 6PM-7PM Raezel (Tuvia Laks A"H) Laks will be sitting from Wed 8 PM-10PM PM Thurs 9:30 AM-10PM Fri 9:30 AM - 5 PM Motzaei Shabbos 9:30-11PM Gets up Sunday 9:30 AM Cronshi Englander will sit in Baltimore beginning Thursday PM but gets up Friday afternoon at 6PM ###Baltimore, MD – Apr. 16, 2018 - It is with sadness that BaltimoreJewishLife.com informs the community of the petirah  of Rabbi Chaim Bloxenheim, Z’L, father of Mrs. Cronshi (Yitzchak)  Englander and Mrs. Raezel (Tuvia a"h) Laks. Shiva will be observed at: Monday thru Thursday afternoon: 615 E. 3rd St, Brooklyn, NY From Thursday 5:30 pm- 9 pm, Friday until midday at 3812 W. Strathmore...
Philadelphia - The first reaction of Southwest Airlines passenger Marty Martinez when an engine exploded on the plane on Tuesday was to live stream what he feared might be his last minutes of life. It was possibly the first time someone who thought he was going to die in a plane crash live-streamed the experience. Martinez lived. One passenger, bank executive Jennifer Riordan, was killed when she was partially pulled through a shattered plane window. But while Martinez, who runs a Dallas marketing agency, said on Wednesday he wanted to communicate with loved ones, many social media users attacked him in expletive-laced postings, with one saying Martinez himself should have been the one who died. “Trying to contact loved ones is one thing, but to morbidly video and take pictures t...
FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — A California state university is investigating comments made on Twitter by an English professor who called former first lady Barbara Bush an "amazing racist" shortly after her death Tuesday at age 92. "Barbara Bush was a generous and smart and amazing racist who, along with her husband, raised a war criminal," Randa Jarrar wrote on Twitter. After people began to criticize her in online posts, Jarrar responded that she was protected from being fired because she has tenure at the university, the Fresno Bee reported. Her social media accounts have since been made private. University President Joseph Castro on Wednesday called Jarrar's comments disrespectful and said they went beyond free speech, the newspaper reported. "A professor with tenure do...
MOSCOW (AP) — Russian investigators say they have traced back the steps of a poisoned Russian spy's daughter from her Moscow home to the airport before she flew to London, and found no traces of poison. Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned in Britain with a military-grade nerve agent last month. Yulia Skripal lives in Moscow and was visiting her father, which led British investigators to believe that she might have unwittingly carried the substance with her. Britain blames Russia for the attack, which it says was carried out by smearing the Soviet-developed nerve agent on a door handle at Skripal's house in Salisbury. Moscow denies involvement. Russia's Investigative Committee late Wednesday released online CCTV footage from Moscow's Sheremetyevo...
NEW YORK (AP) — Some of the world's wealthiest people have apartments in the half-dozen new skyscrapers built along a stretch of Manhattan's 57th Street known as "Billionaires Row." And soon they may have an unwanted new neighbor: a homeless shelter. The city has approved a plan to house 140 single men in what was once the budget Park Savoy Hotel on West 58th Street, a modest building right next door to the back entrance of One57, one of the sleek new towers springing up in Manhattan to serve the superrich. Unit owners at One57 include billionaire Michael Dell, who set a record for the most expensive home ever sold in New York City when he paid $100 million for his apartment in 2014. The placement of the shelter in such a location is in line with campaign promises by Dem...
Geneva - North Korea has expressed its commitment to “complete denuclearisation” of the Korean peninsula and is not seeking conditions, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said on Thursday, as the United States vowed to maintain “maximum pressure” on Pyongyang. Moon said big-picture agreements about denuclearisation, establishing a peace regime and normalisation of relations between the two Koreas and the United States should not be difficult to reach through summits between the North and South, and between the North and the United States. “I don’t think denuclearisation has different meanings for South and North Korea. The North is expressing a will for a complete denuclearisation,” Moon said during a lunch with chief executives of Korean media c...
BERLIN (AP) — A 19-year-old Syrian asylum-seeker has turned himself in to police after his violent attack on a man wearing a yarmulka in Berlin caused outrage across Germany. Police spokesman Winfrid Wenzel said the young Syrian showed up with his lawyer at a police precinct Thursday. The 21-year-old victim, an Arab Israeli, caught Tuesday's assault on video. It quickly went viral and reopened a debate about growing anti-Semitism in the country. Even Chancellor Merkel condemned the assault sharply. The video shows the attacker whipping the Israeli with a belt while shouting "Yehudi!" or Jew, in Arabic. The victim, Adam Armoush, said he's not Jewish but wore the skullcap as an experiment because he didn't believe a friend who told him it's too dangerous to wear ...
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The largest manufacturer of bump stocks, which allow semi-automatic weapons to fire rapidly like automatic firearms, announced Wednesday that it will stop taking orders and shut down its website next month. The announcement comes about a month after President Donald Trump said his administration would "ban" bump stocks, which he said "turn legal weapons into illegal machines." The devices became a focal point of the national gun control debate when they were used in October when a man carried out the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. About a dozen bump stocks were found among the weapons used by Stephen Paddock when he unleashed a hail of bullets from his high-rise Las Vegas hotel suite, killing 58 people and leaving more than 800 others injured. ...
Passaic, NJ - A four alarm fire that broke out in the early morning hours in Passaic injured several firefighters and shuttered a popular kosher eatery. NorthJersey.com (https://njersy.co/2vqC2Hk) reported that smoke alarms went off at 5:30 AM in the basement of the three story building on Main Avenue that was home to King of Delancey, a well loved kosher restaurant that was known for both its food and its friendly atmosphere. Chief Patrick Trentacost of the Passaic Fire Department said that most of the flames were in the rear of the basement when his crews arrived. Firefighters rescued two people who lived on the second floor of the building before tackling the blaze, which quickly escalated to four alarms.  The fire could be seen leaping through the roof of the building, parts o...
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Amazon has persuaded more than 100 million shoppers to subscribe to its Prime service that offers free two-day shipping and other perks that help bind people to the company and its ever-expanding empire. CEO Jeff Bezos quantified the size of Amazon's Prime membership for the first time Wednesday in his annual letter to the Seattle company's shareholders. Before Bezos' revelation, analysts had been left to guess how many people had been willing to pay $99 per year for the Prime service, which Amazon launched 13 years ago as a way to foster customer loyalty. The scope of Prime's success stunned even the most optimistic of analysts, such as GBH Insights' Daniel Ives. He had previously estimated Amazon had 92 million Prime subscri...
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Marian Kalwary can still hear the faint chant of a thin little girl trying to sell insoles to people on a street of the Warsaw ghetto and get food. No one bought them and some days later the girl vanished from the street. "Maybe she was too weak to come, or maybe she just died" of hunger, says Kalwary who spent two years in the ghetto as a boy before he was daringly led out in 1942, several months before the occupying Nazi Germans liquidated the ghetto, killing or sending its residents to a death camp. On Thursday, the 87-year-old Kalwary will take part in daylong 75th anniversary observances honoring the fighters of the Warsaw ghetto uprising who took up arms to oppose the German troops as they were moving in to end the ghetto's existence. The uprising ...
Baltimore, MD - Apr. 18, 2018 - Kehilas Kol Torah (Rabbi Berger’s shul) social hall was host to a magnificent gathering of approximately 150 men and women from throughout our community who came together this past Sunday evening, April 15, to celebrate the siyum of Seder Nezikin by those who learn Daf Yomi.  Several of our community’s rabbonim graced the gathering with their presence.  The community-wide siyum was the idea of the Daf Yomi Commission of Agudath Israel of America which coordinated similar siyumim on Sunday in 10 communities across the United States. Rabbi Hillel Tendler, served as MC and thanked the generous sponsors who enabled the siyum to be open to all at no charge.  He noted the confluence of the conclusion of Seder Nezikin with the Parshiyo...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt flew in coach-class seats on at least two trips home to Oklahoma when taxpayers weren't footing the bill, despite claims he needed to travel in first class at government expense because of security threats. Copies of Pruitt's official schedule released this week following a public records request show flights made in August and October to Tulsa on Southwest Airlines, a budget carrier that doesn't offer premium-class seats. The Associated Press reported earlier this month that an EPA official said the administrator sat in coach on personal flights to watch college football games using a companion pass obtained with frequent flyer miles accrued by Ken Wagner, a former law partner Pruitt hired ...
Baltimore, MD - Apr. 18, 2018 - In the 5th aliyah of Parshas Tazria, the plague of tzaraas is discussed. There is a specific prohibition relating to removing the tzaraas from one's hair of skin, as a person should not reject any punishment that he receives from Hashem. This fundamental idea is critical to us in golus (exile), and to anyone experiencing a difficulty. Although we are required to approach good and bad situations with a positive attitude and understanding that Hashem runs the world, we are not supposed to dismiss difficult situations. We need to recognize when something is bad, and respond with a different bracha than in a good situation. Understanding the distinction between good things and difficult things can help ...
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — There was a loud boom, and the plane started shaking violently. Air whooshed through the cabin, and snow-like debris floated down the aisle as oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling. Some passengers wondered if they would ever hug their children again. At least one bought in-flight Wi-Fi as the jet descended so he could say goodbye to his loved ones. A blown engine on a Southwest Airlines jet Tuesday hurled shrapnel at the aircraft and led to the death of a passenger who was nearly blown out of a broken window of the Boeing 737. The terrifying chain of events on Flight 1380 brought out acts of bravery among the 149 passengers and crew members and drew across-the-board praise for the cool-headed pilot who safely guided the crippled jet to an emergency landing in P...
ATLANTA (AP) — A Delta jet that departed Atlanta for London on Wednesday reported smoke coming from one of its engines and returned safely to the airport where firefighters doused the engine with powerful sprays, authorities said. A Delta Air Lines spokeswoman, Liz Savadelis, said via email that there were 274 passengers and 14 crew members aboard the flight, which experienced an issue with its Number 2 engine before returning to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and being met by emergency crews. Airport spokesman Andrew Gobeil told The Associated Press no one was hurt. Tweeted photographs on social media showed airport firefighting trucks blasting the jet's right wing with billowing white sprays. Airport tweet said "shortly after 6pm, smoke was reported coming...
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