Following is an excerpt from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's remarks today (Thursday, 19 April 2018), Independence Day, at the President's Residence in Jerusalem: "There are two things that you can do to help Israel celebrate this great Independence Day. The first thing is – speak out against Iran. Iran is the enemy of us all – of Israel, the Arab world, Civilization. It openly speaks today, 2018, the 21st century, it openly speaks about liquidating Israel, openly! It encircles the whole Middle East which it wants to conquer, it fires rockets into Riyadh and Saudi Arabia, it is occupying Lebanon effectively, it’s trying to inflame Gaza again, it is in Iraq, and it is trying to establish a military base in Syria, which all peace loving nations should re...
ROCKFORD, Mich. (AP) — There will be no shortage of hand-me-downs for this Michigan kid. The Grand Rapids Press reports that Kateri and Jay Schwandt welcomed the birth of their 14th son on Wednesday, five days before he was due. They have no daughters. WOOD-TV reports that the boy weighs 8 pounds, 4 ounces (about 3.7 kilograms) and is 21 inches (53 centimeters) long. His name wasn't immediately announced. As with their last few children, the couple from Rockford, north of Grand Rapids, didn't want to know the baby's sex ahead of time. Jay Schwandt said earlier this year that he would have loved to have a girl, but didn't think would be in the cards. He was right. Kateri Schwandt has said she's used to large families, as one of 14 children herself. The co...
Crowd of Thousands Expected at Boro Park’s Largest Lag B’Omer Bonfire Boro Park—Preparations are underway once again at the Niklesburg Beis Medrash to accommodate the annual Lag B’Omer festivities. This year’s celebration will take place on Wednesday evening May 3rd in front of the shul at 4912 16th Avenue, and will feature live music with a band, singer and expanded sound system. The hadlaka and dancing is presided over by the beloved Grand Rabbi Mordechai Jungreis shlit”a of Niklesburg. The Niklesburg bonfire fast became the central Lag B’Omer event in Boro Park, drawing thousands of participants each year. The joyous celebration and spiritually charged atmosphere have earned the event the popular title of Meron—Niklesburg. The festiviti...
MOSCOW (AP) — The Russian Foreign Ministry says increasing delays by the United States in issuing visas could result in flagship airline Aeroflot ending flights to the U.S. State-owned Aeroflot is the only airline with scheduled year-round U.S. flights. A ministry statement Thursday complained that the waiting time for interviews for U.S. visa applicants has stretched to 250 days. "In other words, it's senseless to apply for a visa," it said. Aeroflot "may be forced to stop (flights) because the crews are experiencing growing difficulty in obtaining American visas," the statement said. State news agency Tass cited the company as confirming visa problems, but didn't give details. The ministry said the recent closure of the U.S. Consulate in St. Petersburg shouldn't...
EU organization takes rare step of condemning both Hamas and Israel, notes Hamas terrorism, but calls for lifting partial blockade. For the first time, the European Parliament voted to condemn the Hamas terrorist organization for its acts of terrorism and its use of human shields. The motion, which also criticized Israel, was passed by an overwhelming majority of 524 “yes” votes to 30 “no” votes, with 92 abstentions. The three-page document notes that Hamas is considered a terrorist organization by the European Union (EU), that it repeatedly calls for the destruction of Israel, and continues to fire rockets at Israel from the Gaza Strip. The motion dealt largely with the violence which has accompanied the 'March of Return.' Unusually for an EU body, ...
75 years after the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, Poland holds a day of commemoration, taking a moment of silence to remember those who fell in resistance to the Nazi regime, as well as the millions of others slain in the Holocaust. People in Warsaw pinned paper daffodils to their clothes as the Polish capital held a day of commemorations Thursday on the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. People stopped in the street and officials stood at attention as sirens wailed and church bells tolled at noon in a sign of mourning for the Jews who died fighting, as well as the millions of other Jews murdered in the Holocaust. The daffodils tradition comes from Marek Edelman, who was the last surviving commander of the uprising, and on every anniversary used to lay these spring flowers at the ...
Towson, MD — Baltimore County has picked one its own as the new school superintendent. Verletta White, who has been holding down the top job on a temporary basis, is about to get the job for good. White became interim superintendent after Dallas Dance suddenly quit and later faced criminal charges. White is about to take on her new role without the full support of her Board of Education, which voted 8-4 to offer her to a new contract. "There will always be some opposition, but I say, 'Let's work together. Let's make sure we can come together and find common ground.' As long as we have the heart and soul for children, we can find common ground," White said. Those opposing White's appointment said the board moved too quickly in offering ...
LONDON (AP) — Queen Elizabeth II opened a summit of the 53-nation Commonwealth on Thursday, and backed her son Prince Charles to be the next leader of the association of Britain and its former colonies. In a ceremony at Buckingham Palace, the queen said she hoped Charles would "carry on the important work" of leading the Commonwealth, a loose alliance of countries large and small that has struggled to carve out a firm place on the world stage. For decades, the queen has been the driving force behind the Commonwealth but she has no designated successor as chief. Some have suggested that Charles should not take over the helm of the group, which takes in 2.4 billion people on five continents. "It is my sincere wish that the Commonwealth will continue to offer stability and continuity...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Office of the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Justice has referred its findings on former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to the U.S. attorney in Washington for possible criminal prosecution, CNN and the Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing unnamed sources.Spokesmen for the Justice Department and its inspector general’s office declined to comment to Reuters, as did a spokeswoman for McCabe. A representative of U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington could not be immediately reached.
HOUSTON — A former Houston 911 operator who hung up on thousands of people including calls for help during robberies and homicides will spend 10 days in jail and 18 months on probation. Harris County jurors on Wednesday found Crenshanda Williams, 44, guilty of interference with emergency telephone calls. Williams spent a year and a half taking 911 calls at the Houston Emergency Center until she was caught in August 2016 and fired by the city. A supervisor who oversaw Williams was also placed on one year of internal probation, officials said at the time. Williams’ misdeeds came to light after HEC officials performing routine monthly audits of 911 calls noticed a high volume of Williams’ calls lasted less than 20 seconds, known as “short calls.” In a news rel...
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Gaza protest organizers moved sit-in tents closer to the Israeli border fence Thursday, a day before a fourth planned mass demonstration, raising fears of more bloodshed. The protests, largely led by Gaza's Hamas rulers, began March 30. Organizers said they'll gradually move the camps toward the fence until May 15, but made conflicting comments about a possible breach. Hamas says the protests are aimed at breaking a crippling border blockade that was imposed by Israel and Egypt after the Islamic militant group overran the territory in 2007, a year after winning Palestinian parliament elections. The marches also press for the return of the descendants of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled or were forced from homes in the 1948 war ov...
FORDLAND, Mo. (AP) — Officials say a maintenance worker died when a Missouri television station tower collapsed and he became trapped under a tangle of metal and wires. Rob Talburt, assistant fire chief for the Logan-Rogersville Fire Protection District, says the 1,980-foot (600-meter) tower near Fordland collapsed Thursday. Missouri State University owns the tower and uses it to broadcast KOZK Ozarks Public Television and KSMU Ozarks Public Radio. Talburt says six workers were about 105 feet (32 meters) off the ground when the tower tumbled. Five workers suffered non-life-threatening injuries. The cause of the collapse is under investigation. Webster County Sheriff Roye Cole says the workers were replacing crossbeams on the tower. University spokeswoman Andrea Mostyn says the wor...
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A package bomber who created a wave of terror across the South is scheduled to be executed in Alabama, nearly 30 years after killing a federal judge with a bomb mailed to his home. Walter Leroy Moody Jr., 83, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection Thursday. At his 1996 trial, prosecutors described Moody as a meticulous coward who committed murder by mail because of his obsession with getting revenge on the legal system, and then committed more bombings to make it look like the Ku Klux Klan was behind the judge's murder. Judge Robert S. Vance, a member of the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, was at his kitchen table in Mountain Brook, Alabama, on Dec. 16, 1989, when he opened a package after a morning of errands and yard work. The e...
Enjoy this Medrash Rabba shiur on Megilas Rus from Rabbi Goldberger -- Click on link to listen Megilas Rus
The Islamic Jihad published a video on Thursday showing senior IDF officers in the gunsights of a sniper rifle. In the clip, which was disseminated by the Lebanese Al Mayadeen news, Major General Yoav Mordechai can be seen touring the Gaza border fence while a sniper follows his every move. "You kill our people in cold blood and think that you are protected, at a time when your senior commanders are within sniping range," read the Hebrew caption. The Hamas terror organization released a similar video in 2014 that showed then-IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz under surveillance from short range. Hamas claimed in the video that it had the capabilities to assassinate high-level IDF officers and claimed that it was ready for "any possible aggression". 21ce6a6a-6068-4878-bb6a-89b46...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration moved Thursday to make it easier for U.S. defense contractors to sell armed drones and other conventional weapons to foreign governments. In policy changes aimed at boosting American firms' ability to compete in the increasingly lucrative global arms market, the administration said it is removing restrictions that barred U.S. manufacturers from directly marketing and selling drones, including those that are armed or can be used to guide missile strikes, abroad. Previously, foreign countries had to go through the U.S. government to buy such drones. They will now be able to deal directly with the companies, although the government will retain oversight. Despite Thursday's changes, the government must still approve the sales by over...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The drama of U.S. and allied missiles strikes on Syria has obscured a sobering fact: The U.S.-led campaign to eliminate the Islamic State from Syria has stalled. The U.S. has 2,000 troops in Syria assisting local Arab and Kurdish fighters against IS, even as President Donald Trump resists deeper U.S. involvement and is eager to withdraw completely in coming months. Trump wants "other people" to deal with Syria, whose civil war has spawned the greatest humanitarian crisis since World War II in terms of refugees. It's unclear whether Trump will go ahead with a total U.S. withdrawal while IS retains even a small presence in Syria. Since January, when Trump asserted in his State of the Union address that "very close to 100 percent" of IS territory in Syria and I...
Philadelphia's police commissioner is apologizing to two black men who were arrested at a Starbucks in the city. Commissioner Richard Ross, who is black, apologized to the two men on Thursday after he previously staunchly defended police for their handling of the incident. Ross says that he "failed miserably" in the messaging around the arrests. He says that the issue of race is not lost on him and he shouldn't be the person making things worse. He says the police department did not have a policy for dealing for similar situations, but does now. He says it will be released soon. ___ Midnight Two black men arrested at a Philadelphia Starbucks said they were just waiting for a business meeting — and a week later still wonder how that could escalate into a police encount...
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