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June 19, 2018 at 5:02 pm
NEW YORK (AP) — Smoking in the U.S. has hit another all-time low.
About 14 percent of U.S adults were smokers last year, down from about 16 percent the year before, government figures show.
There hadn't been much change the previous two years, but it's been clear there's been a general decline and the new figures show it's continuing, said K. Michael Cummings of the tobacco research program at Medical University of South Carolina.
"Everything is pointed in the right direction," including falling cigarette sales and other indicators, Cummings said.
The new figures released Tuesday mean there are still more than 30 million adult smokers in the U.S., he added.
Teens are also shunning cigarettes. Survey results out last week showed smoking among high school stude...
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June 19, 2018 at 4:58 pm
Baltimore, MD - June 19, 2018 - Parah Adumah is the quintessential chok, a law which is impossible for us to understand. It is atonement for the chet ha'egel-the mother cow is coming to 'clean up' the mess of her child. This is the opposite of Kibbud Av V'em, a mitzvah that is easily understood, and one in which the child is doing for the parents. For the nations of the world, it is very easy to honor one’s parent, as the honor of Hashem does not come into the equation. However, as Bnei Yisroel, we must keep all mitzvos whether we understand them or not, and our ability to honor our parents can be limited because of our necessary deference to Hashem.
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June 19, 2018 at 4:54 pm
The NY Daily News reports that Nassau County investigators are frustrated that bigwigs at a German-based carmaker are giving them a hard time in trying to determine the exact speed of a 2010 BMW 550i GT that caused the crash that claimed the lives of chosson and kallah Yisroel Levin and Elisheva Kaplan.
In April, manslaughter charges were levied against one of the drivers involved in the crash, 35-year-old Rahmel Watkins, who was previously charged with a DWI and was on parole for a felony assault. In the April 4th incident, police said that Watkins was driving dangerously fast and seemed to have been racing another car.
Five cars, with nine total occupants, were involved in the crash at about 1:40 a.m. on Chol Hamoed Pesach on the Nassau Expr...
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June 19, 2018 at 4:50 pm
Overall enrollment in the country’s food stamp program has dropped to its lowest level in more than eight years as the economy continues to improve and the Trump administration attempts to tackle fraud in the program, Fox News reports.
According to the latest statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), enrollment in the program dropped in March to 40,083,954. The last time food stamp participation dipped this low was in February 2010, when 39,588,993 people were enrolled in the program.
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June 19, 2018 at 4:49 pm
A former CIA computer engineer has been indicted on charges he masterminded what appears to be the largest leak of classified information in the spy agency’s history, Politico reports.
Joshua Schulte, 29, was charged in a new grand jury indictment with providing WikiLeaks with a massive trove of U.S. government hacking tools that the online publisher posted in March 2017, the Justice Department announced today. Schulte was previously facing charges in federal court in New York, but the indictment broadens the case to accuse him of illegally gathering classified information, damaging CIA computers, lying to investigators and numerous other offenses.
The Justice Department’s news release announcing Schulte’s indictment does not mention WikiLeaks by name, signali...
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June 19, 2018 at 4:44 pm
Amsterdam’s Blue Mosque released photos of someone they claimed to be an 87-year-old Holocaust victim converting to Islam on May 4, the Dutch Memorial Day for WWII victims.
“Mr. Sal van Coeverden, 87 years old, born from a Jewish noble family, has pronounced his Shahada (conversion) today,” the mosque proclaimed.
A Muslim girl said that her brother who was a caretaker of the wheelchair-bound elderly man converted him to Islam. This led to suspicions that the old man was possibly exploited and perhaps even senile.
Newsmen looking into the case failed to locate any such person, however, and the mosque refused to divulge further details.
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June 19, 2018 at 4:41 pm
A lawsuit was filed against Stamford Hill’s Agudas Yisroel-run Jewish Housing Association for not allowing non-Jews to purchase discounted apartments in religious neighborhoods.
Two families claim they cannot get cheap apartments on the street they want as they are not Jewish.
The housing association claimed that it looks after religious Jews first because non-Jews can buy discounted apartments just two blocks away.
“There is no reason why the non-Jews should push themselves into a crowded street of religious Jews. What do they have to look for here?” the association said.
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June 19, 2018 at 4:24 pm
LONDON (AP) — London police are investigating a small explosion at a London Underground station.
Police said they are not aware of any serious injuries in what the force called a "minor explosion" at Southgate tube station in northwest London on Tuesday evening.
British Transport Police said the Southgate Tube station was closed while police investigate a suspicious package. Police cordons were put in place and the public was asked to keep away.
The Metropolitan Police said officers remained on the scene and were investigating.
Transport police say a "small number" of people were treated at the scene. The nature of the injuries was not immediately clear. There were no immediate reports of anyone needing hospital treatment.
Police responded after people ran from the station and s...
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June 19, 2018 at 4:20 pm
Seattle - Amazon.com Inc said on Tuesday that it has partnered with Marriott International Inc to help increase guest access to amenities with Alexa, through its voice-controlled device Echo, in an attempt to expand its presence in the hospitality industry.
Alexa for hospitality would assist in providing services ranging from ordering room service to requesting housekeeping or calling the concierge for dinner recommendations without picking up the phone.
The company said the partnership will start this summer at Marriott’s select properties and the service will be available by invitation to other hotel chains.
Several media reports had said that Marriott had tested both Apple Inc’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa to select what was best suited for its hotels.
Marriott did not...
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June 19, 2018 at 4:17 pm
NEW YORK (AP) — The Dow Jones industrial average is closing with its sixth straight loss Tuesday as worries about a U.S.-China trade dispute hit stock indexes around the globe.
The Dow is down 287 points, or 1.1 percent, to 24,700. Big industrial companies that are part of the index, such as Boeing and Caterpillar, suffered steep losses.
The S&P 500 index is off by 11 points, or 0.4 percent, to 2,762. The Nasdaq composite is down 21 points, or 0.3 percent, to 7.725.
The global sell-off came after President Donald Trump threatened to put tariffs on another $400 billion in imports from China, and the Chinese government said it would retaliate.
Investors sought safer investments, such as high-dividend companies like utilities and companies that make and sell household goods. The...
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June 19, 2018 at 4:15 pm
Seattle - The call came at mealtime — an anonymous threat demanding $5,000 or her son’s life.
So Blanca Orantes-Lopez, her 8-year-old boy and his father packed up and left the Pacific surfing town of Puerto La Libertad in El Salvador and headed for the United States.
Two months later, she sits in a federal prison south of Seattle. The boy, Abel Alexander, is in custody at a children’s home across the country in upstate New York. She has no idea when she might see him again.
“I still haven’t been able to talk to him,” Orantes told The Associated Press in Spanish as she wept through a telephone interview Monday from the prison. “The most difficult is not seeing him.”
Her story is emblematic of the 2,000 instances in which President Donald T...
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June 19, 2018 at 3:45 pm
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — President Donald Trump's immigration policies have come under intense scrutiny because of the forced separation of migrant children from their parents. Democrats and some Republicans are urging an end to the practice at the U.S.-Mexico border. A look at the latest developments:
TRUMP HEADING TO HILL
Trump is planning to meet with House Republicans Tuesday to discuss legislation, even as lawmakers in both parties complain about the administration's "zero tolerance" approach to illegal border crossings, in particular the separation of families at the southern border .
Nearly 2,000 children were separated from their families over a six-week period in April and May.
Democrats are demanding that the administration do something to ...
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June 19, 2018 at 3:31 pm
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans on Capitol Hill frantically searched on Tuesday for ways to end the Trump administration's policy of separating families after illegal border crossings, with the focus shifting on a new plan to keep children in detention longer than now permitted — but with their parents.
House GOP leaders are revising their legislation amid a public outcry over President Donald Trump's "zero tolerance" approach to illegal crossings. The change would loosen rules that now limit the amount of time minors can be held to 20 days, according to a GOP source familiar with the measure. Instead, the children could be detained with their parents for extended periods.
The revised bill would also give Department of Homeland Security the authority to use $7 billion...
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June 19, 2018 at 3:27 pm
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is set to announce Tuesday its departure from the United Nations' main human rights body in its latest withdrawal from an international institution.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley will deliver the verdict on the U.N. Human Rights Council in a joint appearance at the State Department, according to four officials familiar with the matter.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly preview the decision, the specifics of which are to be laid out by Haley.
Haley threatened the pull-out last year, citing longstanding U.S. complaints that the 47-member council is biased against Israel. But the announcement will also come just a day after th...
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June 19, 2018 at 3:13 pm
Bank of Israel Governor Dr. Karnit Flug, was keynote speaker on the first day of the Eli Hurwitz Conference on Economy and Society, "Two Economies-One Society" focusing on the halfway point of the Strategic Plan 2008 - Israel 2028.
The conference a highlight on the calendar under the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), contains various sessions in which analyses of the basic demographic and global trends are presented and discussed.
Flug in her presentation stressed several points:
"In order to achieve economic and social goals over time, it is very important that there be a strategic plan.
At the start of the current government’s term in 2015, it adopted a socioeconomic strategic assessment and directions of action. The test ...
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June 19, 2018 at 3:00 pm
Attleboro, MA - A Massachusetts family has captured a video of their toddler climbing what is supposed to be a gate stopping children from getting into a pool.
Keith Wyman says his family was in their backyard on Monday when his 2-year-old son Cody began to climb the gate blocking the ladder to their above-ground pool.
The Wymans grabbed Cody before he got into the pool, but not before capturing it on camera to show other parents how easily kids could climb over.
The video has since been viewed more than 21 million times on Facebook.
The Wymans say the store where they bought the ladder and gate offered them a replacement, but all the other gates had a similar design.
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June 19, 2018 at 2:48 pm
Homestead, FL - U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson accused Trump administration officials of a “cover up” after officials denied him entry Tuesday to a detention center for migrant children in South Florida where he had hoped to survey living conditions.
Nelson and U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, both Florida Democrats, went to the contractor-run Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children following reports it was receiving detained migrant children who had arrived in the country illegally.
Wasserman Schultz said the facility was being used for an estimated 1,000 children, aged 13 to 17, who arrived here as unaccompanied minors as well as children separated from their families at the border. She said two other facilities in South Florida were being used for younger children...
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June 19, 2018 at 1:32 pm
New York - The New York Times says it agreed at the request of the White House not to use audio from an interview with President Trump’s aide Stephen Miller for Tuesday’s episode of its popular podcast “The Daily.”
The Times said Tuesday that reporters Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D. Shear interviewed Miller for a story that appeared in print and online last weekend. He was quoted in the article, but the White House balked at letting Miller’s voice be heard on “The Daily,” the podcast that gets roughly 1 million downloads each day.
The newspaper said it agreed not to use the audio because ground rules for how Miller’s interview would be used were not clearly established. Information Miller gave to reporters was still used in the podca...
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June 19, 2018 at 1:30 pm
New York - Verizon is pledging to stop selling data through intermediaries that pinpoints the location of mobile phones to outside companies, the Associated Press has learned.
It is the first major U.S. wireless carrier to step back from a business practice that has drawn criticism for endangering privacy. The data has allowed outsiders to track wireless devices without their owners’ knowledge or consent.
Verizon, the nation’s largest mobile carrier measured by subscribers, said that about 75 third parties have obtained its customer data from two little-known California-based brokers that it supplies directly — LocationSmart and Zumigo.
The company made its disclosure in a letter to Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who has been probing the phone location-tracking mar...
