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February 11, 2019 at 8:50 am
Activists from the Im Tirtzu movement on Sunday hung huge signs across Yerushalayim with the portrait of 19-year-old Ori Ansbacher, who was murdered by a terrorist from Chevron near Jerusalem last Thursday.
The signs were accompanied by a Hebrew and Arabic script demanding the death penalty for terrorists, as well as figures hanging on a string illustrating the death penalty.
The signs were hung on the walls of the Old City near Shaar Yaffa and Shaar Shchem, on the Chords Bridge, on the Malcha Bridge as well as in Ein Yael, near the site of Ori’s murder.
Read more at Arutz Sheva.
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February 11, 2019 at 8:48 am
West Bank - The Palestinian foreign minister is asking Arab countries to boycott or downgrade their representation at the upcoming U.S.-sponsored Mideast summit in Poland.
Riad Malki says that, at the very least, Arab nations should have low-profile delegations, below the ministerial level, at the conference. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are sending foreign ministers. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be at the summit.
Malki says the Palestinians “view the Warsaw conference as a plot against the Palestinian cause.”
He spoke on Monday to the Voice of Palestine as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was to visit Saudi Arabia.
Most Arab nations have refrained from establishing relations with Israel without significant progress being made toward peace ...
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February 11, 2019 at 8:48 am
The Trump administration has completed its much-anticipated ‘Deal of the Century’ framework for a final status agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Fox News reported Sunday, citing two senior administration officials.
According to the report, the final draft of the Middle East peace plan runs between 175 and 200 pages in length. The full text has only been shown to a handful of people – less than five – the two senior Trump administration officials say.
President Trump has been briefed on the plan, and approved the “parameters” of the framework, though the White House will likely hold onto the plan until after the Israeli elections, scheduled for April 9th, officials say.
Read more at Arutz Sheva.
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February 11, 2019 at 8:46 am
Washington - Climate change is the top security concern in a poll conducted by the Washington-based Pew Research Center, followed by Islamist terrorism and cyber attacks while respondents in a growing number of countries worried about the power and influence of the United States.
In 13 of 26 countries, people listed climate change as the top global threat, with the Islamic State militant group topping the list in eight and cyber attacks in four, the non-profit, non-partisan Pew Research Center said in its report.
Worries about climate change have increased sharply since 2013, with double-digit percentage point increases seen in countries including the United States, Mexico, France, Britain, South Africa and Kenya, according to the poll of 27,612 people conducted between May and August, 2...
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February 11, 2019 at 8:46 am
Washington - President Donald Trump is pushing back against criticisms that a leak of his private schedule suggests he is not working hard.
Trump tweeted that it “should have been reported as a positive, not a negative.”
He also suggested that when the term “executive time” appears on his schedule, it means he is “generally working, not relaxing.”
The president’s work ethic has been a topic of Washington conversation after Axios obtained three months of his private schedules.
They revealed that he spent 60 percent of his time in executive time, a term coined by former chief of staff John Kelly for unstructured time in Trump’s day. That time often coincides with when Trump is on Twitter.
Acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said the leaker...
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February 11, 2019 at 8:42 am
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom plans Monday to withdraw several hundred National Guard troops from the state's southern border with Mexico in defiance of the Trump administration's request for support from border states.
About 100 of the 360 troops will remain deployed under California's agreement with the federal government to focus specifically on combating transnational crime such as drug and gun smuggling, Newsom spokesman Nathan Click said. Specifically, they will be tasked with providing intelligence on transnational crime and assist with cargo dock operations and searches of commercial trucks for contraband.
Newsom's move comes on the heels of New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, also a Democrat, pulling back her state's tr...
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February 11, 2019 at 8:42 am
Kabul - The Pentagon’s top official made an unannounced visit to Afghanistan on Monday to meet with U.S. commanders and Afghan leaders amid a push for peace with the Taliban.
Pat Shanahan, the recently installed acting secretary of defense, said he has no orders to reduce the U.S. troop presence, although officials say that is at the top of the Taliban’s list of demands in exploratory peace negotiations.
Shanahan said he is encouraged that President Donald Trump’s administration is exploring all possibilities for ending a 17-year war, the longest in American history.
But he stressed that peace terms are for the Afghans to decide. Thus far the Taliban have refused to negotiate with the government of President Ashraf Ghani, calling it illegitimate. Washington is trying t...
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February 11, 2019 at 8:39 am
LONDON (AP) — When mysterious operatives lured two cybersecurity researchers to meetings at luxury hotels over the past two months, it was an apparent bid to discredit their research about an Israeli company that makes smartphone hacking technology used by some governments to spy on their citizens. The Associated Press has now learned of similar undercover efforts targeting at least four other individuals who have raised questions about the use of the Israeli firm’s spyware.
The four others targeted by operatives include three lawyers involved in related lawsuits in Israel and Cyprus alleging that the company, the NSO Group, sold its spyware to governments with questionable human rights records. The fourth is a London-based journalist who has covered the litigation. Two of the...
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February 11, 2019 at 8:39 am
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Waving Iranian flags, chanting "Death to America" and burning U.S. and Israeli flags, hundreds of thousands of people poured out onto the streets across Iran on Monday, marking the date that's considered victory day in the country's 1979 Islamic Revolution.
On Feb. 11 that year, Iran's military stood down after days of street battles, allowing the revolutionaries to sweep across the country while the government of U.S.-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi resigned and the Islamic Republic was born.
In Tehran, crowds streamed in the rain from a dozen of the capital's far-flung neighborhoods to mass in central Tehran Azadi, or Freedom Square, on Monday, waving Iranian flags and chanting "Death to America" — a chant that has been standard far...
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February 11, 2019 at 8:39 am
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Maryland lawmakers are considering legislation that would fine some parents $1,000 for a misbehaving school-aged child.
The bill is designed to hold adults accountable for the behavior of their children.
The assault of a Loch Raven High School teacher by a student 10 days ago is adding urgency to pass legislation holding parents more accountable for their child's behavior.
"We hear time after time about school bullying and just bad conduct in some of our schools, and we need to take the bull by the horn to do something about it," said Delegate Robert Long, R-Baltimore County.
Long is pushing a bill that would place the $1,000 fine on a parent or guardian of a child who gets into trouble at school four times.
"You would go before a judge, he would have ...
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February 11, 2019 at 8:36 am
BALTIMORE (AP) — Universities in Maryland are now grappling with racist images in yearbooks from the 1960s and 1970s.
The Baltimore Sun reported Saturday that a fraternity page from a 1970 University of Maryland yearbook shows members imitating a lynching.
Yearbook pages from another fraternity in the 1960s include references to minstrel shows as well as photos of men in blackface. A 1965 yearbook photo shows a man in black paint at a football celebration.
The Johns Hopkins University also unearthed racist photos. They include a student in blackface in 1981 and people in robes and hoods in 1961.
The images are re-emerging in the wake of the scandal plaguing Virginia . A racist photo surfaced last week from Gov. Ralph Northam's medical school yearbook page...
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February 11, 2019 at 8:35 am
New leadership starts at the Baltimore City Police today, as Michael Harrison becomes the city's new acting police commissioner. Mayor Catherine Pugh is also formally sending Harrison's nomination to the City Council for confirmation.
Harrison is the former New Orleans Police Superintendent and told WDSU in New Orleans he wants to hear from both residents and police officers.
Harrison says he wants to hear the needs of both groups and then he says he can work to help restore trust between the public and police and between officers and department leadership.
And for the next two weeks, Harrison will appear at town hall meetings in each of the nine police districts.
Tonight's meeting is set for 7 P.M. At Forest Park High School.
Harrison will also appear...
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February 10, 2019 at 9:37 pm
Baltimore, MD - Feb. 10, 2019 - On Sunday, January 27, Bais Hamedrash and Mesivta of Baltimore marked the first yahrzeit of the Rosh Hayeshiva, Harav Zvi Dov Slanger, zt"l, with a Kinnus Zikaron, which took place in its beautiful new Bais Hamedrash. Local Rabbonim and members of the Baltimore community joined the Hanhalah and talmidim of the yeshiva as over 500 people gathered to hear divrei zikaron about Rav Slanger, zt'l who passed away suddenly one year ago.
Speakers included Harav Aaron Feldman, shlit"a, Rosh Yeshiva, Ner Yisroel of Baltimore; Harav Shmuel Kamenetsky, shlit'a, Rosh Yeshiva, Philadelphia Yeshiva; Harav Moshe Heinemann, Rav , Agudas Yisroel of Baltimore; Harav Elyasaf Slanger, Shlit"a, Menahel, Bais Hamedrash and Mesivta of Balti...
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February 10, 2019 at 9:11 pm
A wintry mix will come to Maryland late Sunday night into Tuesday in two rounds.
Snow is expected to approach as temperatures drop closer to freezing late Sunday night.
A winter weather advisory takes effect Sunday night and lasts through Monday morning. A winter storm watch is in effect Monday afternoon into Tuesday morning.
The first part of the storm will bring snow, sleet and freezing rain. There will be light snow late Sunday night into Monday morning. Depending on the temperature where you are, there could also be freezing rain or sleet.
There will be a break in the storm during the middle of the day Monday with temperatures climbing above freezing.
Then, it all starts over again Monday night into Tuesday morning. Cold air sinks back down and heavier snow and sleet could fall ...
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February 10, 2019 at 9:06 pm
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. fears about China and Russia's growing influence in Central Europe will top Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's agenda as he heads to the region this week, Trump administration officials say.
Pompeo leaves Sunday on a five-nation tour of Europe that will begin in Hungary and Slovakia where he will raise those concerns and the importance of promoting democracy and the rule of law to counter Beijing and Moscow's efforts to pull the countries away from the West and sow divisions in the European Union and NATO.
The centerpiece of the trip will be a conference on the future of the Middle East in Poland on Wednesday and Thursday that is expected to focus on Iran and will also be attended by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Vice President Mike ...
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February 10, 2019 at 8:54 pm
Seattle, WA - First it was a heart-wrenching tweet that he and his wife were getting a divorce after 25 years. Then a tabloid revealed that he’d been having an affair, releasing texts and photos of him and his mistress.
As if either of those weren’t distracting enough, now Jeff Bezos — the world’s richest man and CEO of Amazon — is accusing The National Enquirer in a blog post of trying to blackmail him by threatening to release more intimate photos of him unless he calls off an investigation into how that information was obtained in the first place.
But despite the all-consuming personal drama, analysts and experts don’t expect it to make much difference to Amazon itself, the company Bezos has steered from an online bookstore two decades ago to a worl...
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February 10, 2019 at 8:53 pm
Budapest - Hungary’s anti-immigration prime minister says the government is greatly increasing financial aid and subsidies for families with several children.
The measures announced Sunday by Prime Minister Viktor Orban during his “state of the nation” speech are meant to encourage women to have more children and to reverse Hungary’s population decline.
They include a lifetime income tax exemption for women who give birth to at least four children.
Orban said such policies are “Hungary’s answer” to downward demographic trends, “not immigration.”
Orban repeated his assertion that European Union leaders in Brussels want to fill Europe with migrants from other continents.
With European Parliament elections set for May, he said that un...
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February 10, 2019 at 8:51 pm
President Trump on Sunday mocked Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) for launching her presidential campaign in wintry conditions in Minnesota, tweeting that she "looked like a Snowman."
"Amy Klobuchar announced that she is running for President, talking proudly of fighting global warming while standing in a virtual blizzard of snow, ice and freezing temperatures," Trump tweeted. "Bad timing. By the end of her speech she looked like a Snowman(woman)!"
Klobuchar announced her candidacy on Sunday in Minneapolis, where scores of supporters stood out in steady snowfall and frigid temperatures.
The three-term senator laid out her vision for the country, which included tackling environmental issues. She vowed to "put forth sweeping legislation to invest i...
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February 10, 2019 at 8:48 pm
Tel Aviv - Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has invaded the Israeli city of Tel Aviv — as the face of an eye-catching, satirical new recycling campaign.
A gigantic poster featuring the Lebanese militant leader overlooking Tel Aviv’s Ayalon highway went up Thursday and encourages Israelis to recycle plastic bottles.
Above Nasrallah’s head reads the caption: “I don’t recycle bottles.” Beneath him, the poster says: “Nasrallah has been stuck in a bunker for 12 years. What is your excuse?”
ELA, Israel’s recycling company, was not immediately available for comment.
Nasrallah has remained in hiding underground, making rare public appearances, since a 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel.
The U.S., EU and Israel consider Hezbollah a terr...
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February 10, 2019 at 8:47 pm
President Donald Trump said Wednesday that officials would announce next week that “100 percent” of the ISIS caliphate had been liberated.
“The United States military, our coalition partners and the Syrian Democratic forces have liberated virtually all of the territory previously held by ISIS in Syria and Iraq,” the president said during a speech to the Ministers of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. “It should be formally announced sometime probably next week that we will have 100 percent of the caliphate.”
“But I want to wait for the official word,” he quickly added. “I don’t want to say too early.”
ISIS currently holds only about 1 percent of land in Iraq and Syria, the global coalition to counter ISIS announced late...
