Emotional Netanyahu: We pray for six wounded in shooting attack, know not to expect PA to condemn attempted murder of women and children. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu recalled the terrorist shooting attack in which six people were wounded at the Ofra Junction last night. We all pray for the safety of the wounded in the terrorist attack last night in Ofra," an emotional Netanyahu said at the weekly Likud faction meeting Monday afternoon. "We are strengthening the hands of the doctors who are fighting for the life of a baby," Netanyahu said. "Vile terrorists tried to murder a mother and a baby in her womb, which is monstrous." "And of course there is a kind of congratulations, I think it is unnecessary to expect condemnation from the Palestinian Authority, they only contribut...
Mother wounded in drive-by shooting attack still in serious condition as doctors work to save her new-born son's life. Several victims of Sunday night’s terrorist attack outside of Ofra, north of Jerusalem, remain hospitalized at the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, including a 30-year-old woman critically wounded in the attack, as well as her new-born son. Doctors at Shaare Zedek delivered the child, who was in the 30th week of pregnancy, via an emergency caesarian section, after the mother was evacuated to the hospital in critical condition. The woman had suffered multiple gunshot wounds in Sunday night’s attack. Her husband was also wounded in the drive-by shooting. On Monday, Dr. Alon Schwartz, a senior surgeon at Shaare Zedek’s trauma unit, sa...
Paris - French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian says U.S. President Donald Trump should not comment on France’s domestic affairs, notably nationwide protests that began over fuel tax hikes meant to wean the nation off fossil fuels. President Emmanuel Macron withdrew the planned increase last week in a failed bid to appease sometimes violent protesters. Trump has tweeted twice on the issue, saying in one tweet this weekend that “the Paris agreement isn’t working out so well for Paris.” It was a reference to the 2015 Paris climate accord, which the U.S. is leaving and which Macron has championed worldwide. Le Drian said on LCI TV on Sunday: “We don’t take part in American debates. Let us live our own national life.” He says Macron has told Tru...
Burlington, VT - Former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden says he is going to stay engaged for the rest of his life, but he didn’t make any indication about whether he will make a run for the presidency in 2020. Biden made the comments Sunday during an appearance in Vermont that is part of his ongoing tour that is promoting his book, “Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose,” which he wrote after the cancer death of his son Beau. Biden spoke in the hometown of independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is also considering another run for the presidency. Biden said last week he believes he is the most qualified person to be president. After saying he’d stay engaged, Biden spoke of his work in academia and of family life.
LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Theresa May looked set Monday to postpone Parliament’s vote on her European Union divorce deal to avoid a shattering defeat, throwing Brexit plans into chaos just weeks after Britain and the bloc finally reached an agreement on the U.K.’s departure. The pound sank amid the political uncertainty, hitting an 18-month low against the U.S. dollar of $1.2660. The House of Commons Speaker’s office said May would make a previously unscheduled statement to lawmakers about Brexit at about 3:30 p.m. (10:30 a.m. EST). An updated House of Commons schedule said there would also be a statement on “business of the House” after May’s address, indicating a sudden change to the parliamentary timetable. May’s office insis...
BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq on Monday celebrated the anniversary of its costly victory over the Islamic State group, which has lost virtually all the territory it once held but still carries out sporadic attacks to hang on to its last enclave in Syria near the Iraqi border. The government declared victory last December after a grueling three-year war in which tens of thousands of people were killed and hundreds of thousands displaced. Entire towns and neighborhoods were reduced to rubble in the fighting. The government declared Monday a national holiday, and a moment of silence is planned for later in the day. Checkpoints in the capital were decorated with Iraqi flags and balloons, as security forces patrolled the streets playing patriotic music. As part of the celebrations, authorities p...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is weighing at least four people to serve as his next chief of staff, after plans for an orderly succession for departing John Kelly fell through. The high-profile hiring search comes at a pivotal time as the president looks to prepare his White House for the twin challenges of securing his re-election and fending off inquiries once Democrats gain control of the House next year. Trump’s top pick for the job, Nick Ayers, is out of the running and Trump is now soliciting input on at least four individuals, including Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney and Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., the chair of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. Ayers, who is chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, was seen as the favorite fo...
PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron is at last preparing to speak to the nation Monday, after increasingly violent and radicalized protests against his leadership and a long silence that aggravated the anger. Many protesters only want one thing: for him to declare “I quit.” That’s an unlikely prospect. Instead Macron is expected to announce a series of measures to reduce taxes and boost purchasing power for the masses who feel his presidency has favored the rich. He’s being forced to act after four weeks of “yellow vest” protests that started in struggling provinces and spread to rioting in the capital that has scared tourists and foreign investors and shaken France to the core. Macron met Monday morning in his presidential palace with ...
BEIJING (AP) — China raised the pressure on the United States and Canada as a bail hearing for a top Chinese technology executive was set to resume Monday in Vancouver, British Columbia. A headline in a Communist Party newspaper called Canada’s treatment of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies, “inhumane.” The editorial published in Monday’s Global Times followed formal government protests to the ambassadors of both Canada and the United States over the weekend. Meng was detained on Dec. 1 while changing planes in Vancouver. The U.S. wants her extradited. It alleges Huawei used a Hong Kong shell company to evade U.S. trade curbs on Iran. Her arrest could fuel U.S.-China trade tensions at a time when the two sides are seeking to r...
Washington - President Donald Trump is considering four people as he determines who will be his next chief of staff. A person familiar with Trump’s thinking tells The Associated Press that the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney, is among those under consideration to replace John Kelly. The person thought to be the president’s top choice for the job, vice presidential chief of staff Nick Ayers, tweeted Sunday that he’s no longer in the running for the position. Instead, he will begin overseeing a pro-Trump political action committee next year. A White House official tells the AP that Trump and Ayers could not reach agreement on Ayers’ length of service. Trump wants his next chief of staff to hold the job through the 2020 election.
Long Island City - New York officials tout their deal to land a new Amazon headquarters as can’t-miss math. The city and state put up $2.8 billion in tax breaks and grants. In return, they get an economic engine expected to generate $27 billion in new tax money over a quarter-century. “This is a big moneymaker for us. Costs us nothing,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said when the agreement was announced. Experts say the economic equation isn’t that simple. The state’s predicted 9-to-1 return on its investment was based on a widely used economic model that compares the costs of tax incentives with expected tax gains, but it didn’t factor in the substantial costs of accommodating Amazon’s growth in the city, economic development researchers said after reviewi...
New York - A police officer has been wounded and a suspect killed Sunday night in a Staten Island shooting, the New York Police Department said. The shooting took place just before 10 p.m. at 30 Bridge Court at a complex of two-story apartment buildings north of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. “Tonight we are reminded, once again, of the dangers our officers face every day,” New York Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill said during a news briefing early Monday. O’Neill said uniformed officers from the 120th Precinct responded to a domestic dispute call and encountered an intoxicated man. The suspect was carrying a long knife that had a 4-inch wooden handle and a 10-inch blade, Chief Detective Dermot Shea said. Both the officers’ body cameras showed the ma...
Jerusalem, Israel - Dec. 10, 2018 - “I call on the whole world to denounce terrorism and incitement and to work with Israel to counter it. Needless to say, we expect all elected officials in Israel, local and national, to be clear in expressing zero tolerance for terrorism. It is unthinkable that Israeli elected officials express support for terrorists or terrorist organizations.”  President Reuven Rivlin stated on  Monday, December 10 / 2 Tevet, at Beit Hanasi, as he met new Israeli mayors and heads of local authorities who were elected to a first term in municipal elections. The president began by commenting on events yesterday in Ofra: “At this difficult time, our hearts and prayers are with those injured, including a pregnant woman and her ba...
Jerusalem - Israel’s prime minister on Monday announced that Oman will open its airspace to Israel’s national airline. The move appears to have no immediate practical effect because carrier El Al is still barred from flying over Oman’s northern neighbor, Saudi Arabia. But it marks another sign of warming ties between Israel and Gulf Arab states, as Israel’s behind-the-scenes dealings with its former foes become more public. Benjamin Netanyahu told a gathering of Israeli ambassadors that Oman’s Sultan Qaboos bin Said granted El Al permission to pass through its airspace during the Israeli leader’s surprise visit to the country in October. The two states have no formal diplomatic relations. Israel only has peace agreements with two Arab states — Eg...
Marrakech, Morocco - Defying fierce opposition from the United States and a few other nations, nearly 85 percent of the countries at the U.N. agreed Monday on a sweeping yet non-binding accord to ensure safe, orderly and humane migration. The debate over the Global Compact for Migration, the first of its kind, has proven to be a pivotal test of the U.N.-led effort to crack down on the often dangerous and illegal movements across borders that have turned people smuggling into a booming worldwide industry. “Unregulated migration bears a terrible human cost: a cost in lives lost on perilous journeys across deserts, oceans and rivers; and a cost in lives ruined at the hands of smugglers, unscrupulous employers and other predators,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a m...
Istanbul - Journalist Jamal Khashoggi repeatedly told his killers “I can’t breathe” during his final moments in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, CNN reported on Monday. Quoting a source who said they had read the full translated transcript of an audio recording, CNN said that Khashoggi recognized one of the men, General Maher Mutreb, who told him: “You are coming back”. Khashoggi replied: “You can’t do that…people are waiting outside.” His Turkish fiancee Hatice Cengiz waited for hours outside the consulate on Oct. 2 and, when he did not return, contacted Turkish authorities about his disappearance. There was no further dialogue in the relatively short transcript, prepared by Turkish authorities, CNN’s source said. As people...
Riyadh - Linda Sarsour is an extremist who has “roots in [the] Muslim Brotherhood,” according to an English-language feature on Al-Arabiya, the Saudi Arabia based news channel. The article published in idiomatic English on Sunday accused the Brotherhood of “shaping the thoughts of American activist Linda Sarsour, [which resulted in] her declaring her ‘Jihad’ against US President Donald Trump.” The unprecedented article linked her to others whom it also labeled extremists, and insinuated that the Brotherhood and groups it is allied with, including Hamas, are seeking to infiltrate the US. The article comes in the context of Saudi Arabia’s attempt to cement relations with the Trump administration, and its ongoing conflict with Qatar and Islamist gro...
New York - In a speech at an event celebrating the eighth and final night of Hanukkah, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of 435 members of the incoming US House of Representative, shared that members of her family were Sephardic Jews who were forced to flee to Puerto Rico during the Spanish Inquisition. Ocasio-Cortez shared her family’s past at a Hannukah celebration she held together with the Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JREJ) earlier this evening, and thanked the organization on her social media account for assembling the ‘festivities.’ “So many of our destinies are tied beyond our understanding.” Ocasio-Cortez said regarding her family lineage. The newly elected congresswoman of New York told a gasping crowd, “That a very long time ago, genera...
Chen Antebi and Meirav Sharvit, 16, who were lightly wounded in Sunday’s shooting attackat the Ofra junction, recalled the moments of the attack from their beds at the Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem. Moments before the attack, the two spoke with Shira, the 21-year-old woman who was seriously wounded in the attack and was in the advanced stages of her pregnancy. The hospital's doctors delivered her baby, who is in stable condition at the ward for premature babies. His wounded mother is still fighting for her life. "Chen and I stood at the hitchhiking stop in Ofra, waiting for the ride that was supposed to pick us up,” recalled Meirav. "Suddenly I saw shrapnel flying, I saw the pregnant woman bleeding on the floor, I began to hear shouts of 'shooting...
Baltimore, MD - Dec.8, 2018 - Over a decade of dreaming, planning and building came to a climax this past Sunday, as our TA Family celebrated a momentous and historic Chanukas Habayis of our new expanded campus, in conjunction with a Hachnosas Sefer Torah. From beginning to end, the day was packed with simcha, ruach and hoda'ah to Hashem for reaching this milestone. The kesivas osios was completed in the morning by the Ray and Krupp families, who generously facilitated the writing of our new Sefer Torah. The Hachnosas Sefer Torah began with spirited dancing by hundreds of people, including our Hanhala, administration, Rebbeim, talmidim, staff, alumni and community members. We were very fortunate to have our Rosh Yeshiva, HaRav Yosef Rottenberg, shlita, grace us with his presence and j...
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