Baltimore, MD - Jan. 16, 2019 - Tu B'Shevat (the 15th day of Shevat) is the new year for the trees - the day when the sap starts to rise in the trees in order to begin the formation of fruit. The significance of this day demonstrates that the very early stages are critical to the outcome. We should not view our lives as independent, isolated days, but rather as a cumulative growth process, building from the very beginning. To listen click here
Washington - The White House says President Donald Trump has signed a bill that will require some 800,000 federal employees to be compensated for wages lost or work performed during the partial government shutdown. Wednesday’s bill signing was closed to the media. The House and Senate had voted to give the workers back pay whenever the federal government reopens. The shutdown is in its fourth week with no end in sight. Federal employees received pay stubs with nothing but zeros on them last week. Some posted photos of their empty earnings statements on social media as a rallying cry to end the shutdown. The shutdown has resulted from a dispute over border wall funding. Democrats remain opposed to Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion. They say they’ll discuss border securit...
The Yamin HeHadash (New Right) Party issued a statement Wednesday night emphasizing that it would “not sit in a government that will divide Jerusalem and establish a Palestinian state,” in response to reports of details of the US Administration’s proposed peace deal. Earlier, Hadashot 13 reported that the peace plan formulated by the White House and which President Trump is interested in presenting in the coming months includes the establishment of a Palestinian state in about 90 percent of Judea and Samaria, with at least part of eastern Jerusalem as its capital. "The United States is Israel's greatest friend, and President Trump is a true friend of Israel. However, Israel's security and Israel's well-being precede any other interest,&rdqu...
Jerusalem - Israeli television said on Wednesday that U.S. President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plan would propose a Palestinian state on as much as 90 percent of the occupied West Bank, with a capital in East Jerusalem - but not including its holy sites. The Trump administration has said publication of the plan, kept closely under wraps, could be months away, and cautioned against speculation about its contents. Citing what it said was a source briefed by the Americans, Reshet 13 TV said the plan would entail Israel annexing Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank while isolated settlements would either be evacuated or their construction halted. Trump wants the proposed Israeli moves to be supplemented by territorial swaps with the Palestinians, and for East Jerusalem&rsqu...
Jerusalem, January 16, 2019 – Following three intensive days of activities, the ZAKA Divers Unit delegation has completed the first phase of its mission to locate and retrieve Holocaust victims’ bones from the River Danube in Budapest. This included defining the exact area of the search on the basis of investigative work, scanning the riverbed with a sonar device and integrated underwater camera, a unique tool that had recently been purchased by the ZAKA organization. The images and sonar scan results will now be examined and decoded and, based on the results, the continuation of the mission will be determined. The ZAKA Divers Unit has been researching the project for four years, alongside diplomatic activity that resulted in the Hungarian government supporting the mission to ...
Barre, VT - A memorial paying homage to thousands of rescue and recovery workers who labored in the ruins of the World Trade Center is taking shape in Vermont, where workers are chipping at and chiseling slabs of granite that will be installed this spring at the national Sept. 11 memorial. The new area with a path flanked by stone monoliths will also honor those sickened or who died from exposure to toxins after the towers fell. One of the six monoliths weighing between 15 and 17.5 tons (13,600 to 16,300 kilograms) was nearly complete last week at the Rock of Ages granite manufacturing company in Barre, Vermont, a small community that has a long history of quarrying and stonecutting and dubs itself the granite capital of the world. The Associated Press last week was given access to the ...
Part of the finger of a 10-year-old charedi boy was cut off Wednesday morning when the door of his Talmud Torah classroom in Yerushalayim shut on it. Ichud Hatzala paramedics gave the child primary care and he was evacuated to the hospital, with the part of the finger placed into an ice bag, in the hope that the doctors would be able to heal the amputation. The spokesmen and spokespersons of Ichud Hatzala recommend that lessons be drawn from this unfortunate event (which has been happening again and again lately), to adopt safety and precautionary measures and, to the extent possible, to adopt measures to prevent such incidents in particular in homes or institutions where children and toddlers are present.
In what the Israel Defense Force is calling a “severe safety violation,” a 65-ton Merkava battle tank rolled across a major Israeli highway Sunday. Where was its crew? Fast asleep inside the armored vehicle. The IDF has launched an investigation into how a tank crew from Shizafon base fell asleep inside their Merkava-4 tank and put it into reverse, winding up 600 meters from where they should have been, on the other side of the busy Route 40 highway. Luckily, o one was hurt in the incident. The incident happened Sunday during a tank commander’s course in the Negev Desert, about 46 miles north of the resort city of Eilat, the Times of Israel reported. Read more at Sputnik News.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday signed new bipartisan legislation committing the United States to preventing genocide, named in honor of Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize laureate Elie Wiesel. The Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act, introduced by Congressman Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) and Ann Wagner (R-Mo.), and Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Todd Young (R-Ind.) makes the prevention of genocide and other crimes a matter of national security, and aims to improve and increase the U.S. response to potential and emerging genocides. It establishes a Mass Atrocities Task Force to provide training to U.S. Foreign Service officers on detecting early signs of atrocities and will mandate the director of national intelligence to report on atrocities in an annual crime report to Congr...
Former Maryland Rep. John Delaney was the first Democrat to officially enter the 2020 presidential race. As he was known to be a steadfast three-term bipartisan congressman, his record on Israel was essentially such—bipartisan on most accounts, which included supporting the two-state solution between the Israelis and the Palestinians. As a first-time congressional candidate in 2012, Delaney visited Israel and met with Israeli officials in addition to touring the country. “Israel is not just another foreign-policy issue; it is a huge part of the daily spiritual lives of millions of Americans, and there is an intense mutual bond between the two nations,” said Rabbi Stuart Weinblatt, founder of the B’nai Tzedek Congregation in Potomac, Md. “With regional stabi...
Hezbollah planned to use its underground attack tunnels to suddenly invade Israel in an operation that was aimed at shaking the Jewish state, according to the country’s outgoing Israel Defence Forces (IDF) chief Gadi Eisenkot. Eisenkot claimed that Hezbollah wanted to launch a surprise attack on Israel from underground tunnels by sending “1,000 to 1,500 fighters into our side”. Eisenkot argued that Hezbollah also considered “a massive artillery bombardment of IDF bases” as a possible means to cover their invasion. Additionally, the militant group allegedly planned to take control of “a piece of Israeli territory and hold it for weeks”. “They said, this is something Israel has never experienced since its founding, and it will be an achievem...
Israel will start exporting natural gas to Egypt within a few months, a crucial development in the Jewish state’s plans to sell its increasing gas-manufacturing services worldwide. As part of this development, it also aims to improve diplomatic relations with existing nations, including Egypt, and forge new ones. Without specifying an amount, Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said on Monday that exports would double, and that shipments to Egypt are projected to reach 1.85 trillion gallons annually within a decade. He said that about half of the exports were projected to be utilized for Egypt’s domestic economy and half will be liquefied to be re-exported.
Nairobi, Kenya - Kenya’s security forces have killed the Islamic extremist gunmen whose assault on a luxury hotel and shopping complex took 14 “innocent lives,” the country’s president said Wednesday. “All the terrorists have been eliminated,” President Uhuru Kenyatta said in announcing an end to the overnight operation to secure the complex in the capital, Nairobi. In a televised address, Kenyatta did not say how many attackers were involved. He said more than 700 people were evacuated during the security operation and urged Kenyans to “go back to work without fear,” saying the East African country is safe. Sporadic gunfire could be heard while scores of people were rescued at daybreak during what police called a “mopping-up” ...
San Bruno, CA - YouTube is trying to prevent otherwise bright people from doing dangerous things. The video-sharing network owned by Google is cracking down on harmful or dangerous pranks. Updated policies no longer allow challenges that present “an apparent risk of death” and ban content featuring children “participating in dangerous challenges that pose an imminent risk of injury or bodily harm.” YouTube also says it is drawing the line on content that “intends to incite violence or encourage dangerous or illegal activities” that have a risk of serious harm or death. They include bomb making or pranks that put people in physical danger. A recent “Bird Box challenge” featured videos of people engaging in activities while blindfolded. Pe...
Bronx, NY - An off-duty New York City police officer has been killed in a vehicle crash in the Bronx involving a city-owned garbage truck. The New York Police Department says fellow officers responding to a 911 call found the 28-year-old officer unconscious and unresponsive around 8:20 a.m. on Wednesday. He was pronounced dead at a hospital. Pictures of the crash scene in the borough’s Pelham section show a damaged green city parks department garbage truck resting against the passenger side of the officer’s car on the side of a two-lane road.
Washington - Seven Democratic lawmakers, including newly elected freshmen, have arrived at the White House ready to ask President Donald Trump to reopen the government while talks continue over border security. It’s the first group of rank-and-file Democrats to meet with Trump during the shutdown, which stretched into its 26th day Wednesday. The White House has been trying to peel lawmakers away from Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (puh-LOH’-see), but invitations to Democrats earlier this week were declined. Those arriving Wednesday for the midday meeting in the Situation Room included five freshmen, several of whom did not back Pelosi as speaker. They represent areas where Trump remains popular. They’re from a bipartisan group called the Problem Solvers Caucus. ...
Jerusalem - The death of American Ariel Newman on a hike in the Judean Desert in 2014 was a “terrible but unforeseeable tragedy” for which no one can be held responsible, Josh Ettinger, the guide on the hike told the Jerusalem Post this week. Ettinger was the counselor on a hike in which Newman and a group of other teenage boys who were studying at the now-defunct Mechinat Yeud yeshiva, a gap-year program for Diaspora youth between high school and college. According to previous medical reports, Newman’s body temperature rose to unusually high temperatures and he died on the hike. Ettinger and other Yeud officials were accused of negligent homicide by Newman’s family. They were questioned by police and all cleared of any wrongdoing. However, last year, a petition w...
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