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January 10, 2019 at 3:18 pm
Croatia - Israel has failed to overcome U.S. objections to its plan to sell 12 used fighter jets to Croatia and the $500 million deal will likely be canceled, Croatia’s defense minister said Thursday.
Israel reached a tentative deal with Croatia in March for the sale of the upgraded F-16 Barak fighters, pending U.S. approval that would allow the American-made technology to be purchased by a third party.
Croatian Defense Minister Damir Krsticevic said after meeting with Israeli defense officials in Zagreb on Thursday that “despite accepted obligations,” Israel failed to obtain the needed consent and his ministry “will propose to the government to make appropriate decisions.”
The deal ran into trouble after Washington said that Israel needed to strip off the ...
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January 10, 2019 at 3:17 pm
Hidalgo, TX - As President Donald Trump travels to the border in Texas to make the case for his $5.7 billion wall , landowner Eloisa Cavazos says she knows firsthand how the project will play out if the White House gets its way.
The federal government has started surveying land along the border in Texas and announced plans to start construction next month. Rather than surrender their land, some property owners are digging in, vowing to reject buyout offers and preparing to fight the administration in court.
“You could give me a trillion dollars and I wouldn’t take it,” said Cavazos, whose land sits along the Rio Grande, the river separating the U.S. and Mexico in Texas. “It’s not about money.”
Trump is scheduled to visit the border Thursday in McAllen...
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January 10, 2019 at 3:16 pm
Detroit - Ford’s aging Explorer big SUV is getting a major revamp as it faces growing competition in the market for family haulers with three rows of seats.
The company unveiled the new version Wednesday night at Ford Field, home of the NFL’s Detroit Lions. It comes just before next week’s press days at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, where the new SUV will be on display.
The Explorer, last reworked for the 2011 model year, gets a top-to-bottom update that includes a switch from front- to rear-wheel-drive, as well as updated engines and transmissions, some nice standard safety features and even high-performance and gas-electric hybrid versions. The switch to rear drive will boost towing capacity and off-road performance, Ford says.
Sales of the v...
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January 10, 2019 at 3:15 pm
Helena - A Montana politician is proposing the state give more than $8 million to help build President Donald Trump’s proposed wall on the Mexican border as a government shutdown over the $5.7 billion project continues. The proposal seems unlikely to pass in a state with a Democratic governor exploring a run for president.
At least one other state, South Dakota, is considering voicing support for Trump’s wall. But Montana, which last year faced a massive budget shortfall, appears to be the first to propose spending its own money on the project.
Scott Sales, a fiscally conservative Republican who leads the state Senate, says his proposal is a “small token” to show border security “is of vital interest to all citizens regardless of what state they live in.&rdq...
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January 10, 2019 at 3:15 pm
Washington - U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday canceled his planned trip later this month to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, amid the ongoing partial shutdown of the U.S. government.
“Because of the Democrats intransigence on Border Security and the great importance of Safety for our Nation, I am respectfully cancelling my very important trip to Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum,” Trump tweeted. Read more at Reuters
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January 10, 2019 at 3:12 pm
Miami - Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas is returning to a Florida port a day early and giving passengers full refunds of their fare after 277 guests and crew members were hit with an outbreak of Norovirus as it sailed to Jamaica.
Cruise line spokesman Owen Torres told The Associated Press “we think the right thing to do is get everyone home early rather than have guests worry about their health.”
He says the ship will return to Port Canaveral on Saturday. It sailed from there Sunday on a seven-day Caribbean cruise.
Passengers took to social media on Wednesday, tweeting they were forced to stay onboard after docking in Falmouth, Jamaica, for what was supposed to be a day of excursions.
Torres says returning a day early gives the cruise line “more time to comp...
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January 10, 2019 at 12:30 pm
Jerusalem - Israel inaugurated a new highway in the West Bank on Thursday that features a large concrete wall segregating Israeli and Palestinian traffic.
One side of Route 4370 — located northeast of Jerusalem — will be open to Israeli vehicles only, while the other half will only be open to Palestinian traffic. Critics have branded it an “apartheid” highway, saying it is part of a segregated road system that benefits Jewish settlers.
The highway was built as part of a planned ring road east of Jerusalem that would connect the northern and southern West Bank. Construction began in 2005, but the 5-kilometer (3-mile) road lay unfinished for years until 2017.
Israeli officials inaugurating the new road on Wednesday touted it as a means of better connecting West Ban...
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January 10, 2019 at 12:29 pm
A trip to Moscow next week by the leader of Palestinian Islamist group Hamas has been canceled, Interfax news agency quoted the ambassador for the Palestinian Authority to Russia as saying on Thursday.
The Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, had been expected to hold talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Jan. 15.
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January 10, 2019 at 12:27 pm
The oldest synagogue in Washington, D.C. was literally picked up and physically moved to a new location Wednesday.
A historic section of the Adas Israel synagogue was loaded onto a remote-controlled platform and moved, in a process that takes several hours.
It was taken from its spot near the Supreme Court and Capitol building to the corner of 3rd and F Streets, about a mile away, where it will become part of the new Capital Jewish Museum.
Read more.
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January 10, 2019 at 12:21 pm
More than seven decades after the liberation of the Nazi death camps, the remains of six unidentified victims of the Holocaust are to be given a Jewish burial.
The service will take place on 20 January, a week before Holocaust Memorial Day, and is expected to be attended by Holocaust survivors.
The Imperial War Museum, which has stored the remains for more than 20 years, has handed them to the United Synagogue after consultation with the chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, and the Auschwitz museum near Krakow in Poland.
The remains will be placed in shrouds in a single coffin and laid to rest at Bushey New Cemetery in Hertfordshire, which serves the orthodox Jewish community.
Read more at The Guardian
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January 10, 2019 at 12:11 pm
All New York City kindergarteners and first graders will receive prescription eyeglasses if they need them starting next school year, Mayor Bill de Blasio is expected to announce Thursday during his annual State of the City address.
The program already exists in 224 so-called “community schools” across the city, which get additional social services designed to combat the effects of poverty and other out-of-school factors that can interfere with student learning. Last year, about 26,000 glasses were distributed through the initiative.
Officials anticipate the expansion will involve 140,000 vision screenings and 33,000 new pairs of eyeglasses. The program is offered in partnership with Warby Parker, which will cover the cost of the eyeglasses themselves, and is expected to cost...
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January 10, 2019 at 12:03 pm
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump threatened on Thursday to declare a national emergency to circumvent Congress if he can’t reach a deal with Democrats to fund his promised border wall. He headed to the U.S.-Mexico border to draw further attention to his case after negotiations with lawmakers blew up.
The partial government shutdown dragged into a 20th day with hundreds of thousands of federal workers off the job or working without pay as the wall fight persisted.
Asked about a national emergency declaration, Trump said as he left the White House for Texas, “I’m not prepared to do that yet, but if I have to I will.” He contends such a declaration would allow him to direct the military to begin wall construction.
“So we’re either going to ...
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January 10, 2019 at 11:15 am
Baltimore, MD - Jan. 10, 2019 - Across the years, I have been lucky enough to meet many interesting individuals via my various interests, both professionally and socially. One such person is Dr. Ken Potocki. Dr. Potocki is a retired Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab physicist who worked on some of the most groundbreaking space projects exploring reaches of the universe unknown to man.
Mr. Baruch Ostro teaches the 6th grade honors science class at Talmudical Academy. My son, Yossi, is in this class, and when I read a weekly email from Mr. Ostro mentioning that the class was learning about the sun, satellites and such, I thought it would be a perfect fit for Dr. Potocki, who has lectured for years to students of all ages. In fact, when my son was in first grade at T.A., Dr. Poto...
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January 10, 2019 at 11:13 am
U.S. health officials are declaring an end to a food poisoning outbreak blamed on romaine lettuce from California.
From October to December, the E. coli outbreak sickened 62 people in 16 states. No one died, but 25 people were hospitalized. Illnesses were also reported in Canada.
Officials said Wednesday that no new illnesses have been reported for a month, and lettuce from the area is no longer in stores or restaurants
Read more at NY POST.
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January 10, 2019 at 10:18 am
Beijing - The United States and China gave no indication of their next step after wrapping up talks aimed at resolving a tariff fight that threatens to chill global growth.
The two sides will “maintain close contact,” China’s Ministry of Commerce said Thursday. But they announced no agreements or date for meeting again during the 90-day truce declared on Dec. 1 by Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in their fight over Beijing’s technology ambitions.
That uncertainty dampened Asian investor sentiment. Stock markets in Germany, France, Japan and China fell back after rising Wednesday following Trump’s comment on Twitter that the talks were “going well!”
Negotiators focused on China’s pledge to buy a “substantial amount”...
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January 10, 2019 at 10:16 am
President Trump in a tweet early Thursday said that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) lied about Trump throwing a “temper tantrum” during negotiations concerning the partial government shutdown.
“Cryin Chuck told his favorite lie when he used his standard sound bite that I ‘slammed the table & walked out of the room. He had a temper tantrum.’ Because I knew he would say that, and after Nancy said no to proper Border Security, I politely said bye-bye and left, no slamming!” Trump wrote.
Trump met Wednesday with Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) inside the White House, but said he left early because he felt it was a “total waste of time.”
Read more at The Hill.
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January 10, 2019 at 10:00 am
Jerusalem - An Israeli court has sentenced a Palestinian man to 18 years in prison for stabbing a British student to death.
The Jerusalem district court accepted a plea bargain on Thursday in sentencing 60-year-old Jamil Tamimi. He killed 20-year-old British student Hannah Bladon on the Jerusalem light rail in April 2017, stabbing her multiple times before an off-duty policeman pulled the emergency brake and subdued him.
Tamimi’s defense team claimed he suffered from a mental illness, and the attack was not ideologically or politically motivated.
Bladon was an exchange student at Hebrew University from the University of Birmingham.
Maurice Hirsch, her family’s representative, said he was disappointed her killer would not be serving a life sentence for his crime. But he adde...
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January 10, 2019 at 9:45 am
Jerusalem - The Rishon Lezion Magistrates Court on Thursday ordered the release of four of the five Israeli youth who have been rounded up by security forces in recent weeks in connection with the suspected killing of an Arab woman in October.
Acting on the police’s request, the four were sent to house arrest. The remand of the fifth suspect was extended until Tuesday.
The suspects’ attorneys welcomed their clients’ release while charging that the youth have been subjected to harsh and improper forms of interrogation and that the Shin Bet (Israel’s Security Agency), which conducted the investigation, operated through illegal means.
Attorney Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose client was held for 12 days without the right to meet an attorney, called on the Shin Bet to do some ...
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January 10, 2019 at 9:30 am
Brussels - The trial of a man accused of shooting dead four people at a Jewish museum in Belgium in 2014 after fighting alongside extremists in Syria started in Brussels on Thursday amid high security.
The slaying was one of the first in Europe blamed on a foreign fighter — often young, radicalized people who trained or fought with the Islamic State group or other extremists, then returned home to commit atrocities like the November 2015 Paris attacks and the Brussels suicide bombings four months later.
Mehdi Nemmouche is accused of “terrorist murder” for gunning down the four — an Israeli couple and two people working at the museum — with a revolver and an assault rifle. The 33-year-old Frenchman’s alleged accomplice, Nacer Bendrer, aged 30, als...
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January 10, 2019 at 8:45 am
LAWRENCE, Nassau County (WABC) -- A fire broke out at an elementary school on Long Island early Thursday.
Smoke poured from the building as firefighters moved in to get it under control.It started around 3 a.m. inside the second floor of the Hebrew Academy of Five Towns and Rockaway on Washington Avenue in Lawrence."It was confined to one classroom, a large classroom," said Chief Edward Kohler, Lawrence-Cedarhurst Fire Department. "A little extension to the hallway, and a little extension to the outside of the building when the flames came out the windows."Firefighters reported heavy smoke throughout the building."It was a textbook operation, the members did a really good job," Chief Kohler said. "They had smoke, they had to find the fire, there was a lot of hose stretching through ...
