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February 15, 2019 at 11:10 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on President Donald Trump and border security (all times local):
10:55 a.m.
President Donald Trump says he’ll be declaring a national emergency so he can build a southern border wall.
Trump did not say on Friday when he would make such a declaration, but the move will allow him to bypass Congress to spend more money to erect barriers on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Congress has given Trump about $1.4 billion for border barriers, well below the $5.7 billion Trump has insisted he needed to build a wall.
To get around Congress, Trump plans to use his executive authority to tap other sources of funding to get a total of $8 billion to build the wall. The White House says Trump plans to tap accounts in the Treasury and Defense departments, but not money e...
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February 15, 2019 at 11:07 am
President Trump declared a national emergency to divert funds to build a wall on the southern U.S. border.
The move is expected to ignite a new battle over the legality of his border-spending ambitions.
Read the Article ›
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February 15, 2019 at 10:59 am
In yet another incident of discrimination on airlines, a Rosh Yeshivah and his wife were forcibly removed from a United Airlines flight in what they claim was a completely baseless and unsubstantiated accusation by a crew manager, Hamodia reports.
The couple were settling into their seats for a flight from Newark to Amsterdam en route to Israel for the wedding of their grandson when a cabin manager asked the Rebbetizin to put place a carry on bag in the overhead bin. When the Rebbetzin asked if she could just remove some items from the bag before stowing it, the cabin manager got visibly angry and told her, “I’m going to get you off this flight,” before storming off to request that police remove the couple, who are in their mid 70s.
While other crew memb...
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February 15, 2019 at 10:55 am
Chabad House for Towson University and Goucher College Files Lawsuit Alleging RLUIPA Violations Following State Court Order to Demolish Newly-Constructed Addition
The Chabad House for Towson University and Goucher College, pictured above, has filed a lawsuit against Baltimore County, Maryland (the “County”), following a state court order requiring demolition of a newly-constructed addition to the Chabad House. The Complaint alleges, among other things, violations of RLUIPA’s substantial burden, equal terms, nondiscrimination, and exclusions and limitations provisions.
The story begins in 2008, when Friends of Lubavitch, Inc. (“Lubavitch”), a religious corporation founded to support and develop religious and educational activities in Maryland, purchased prope...
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February 15, 2019 at 10:40 am
Warsaw - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was forced to spend an extra night in Warsaw after his plane was damaged following an airport mishap shortly before departure. He departed around noon Friday, marking an inauspicious ending to a turbulent visit.
The prime minister and his entire entourage were on-board a chartered El Al plane shortly after midnight, after a two-day visit to a high-profile security conference, when a vehicle towing the aircraft on the runway crashed into it. A photo circulated to traveling journalists showed large scrapes in the underbelly of the aircraft.
Netanyahu and his wife were taken off the plane and ushered back to their hotel. Other aides, including Netanyahu’s national security adviser and his military secretary, spent the night on the air...
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February 15, 2019 at 10:39 am
New York - Amazon jilted New York City on Valentine’s Day, scrapping plans to build a massive headquarters campus in Queens amid fierce opposition from politicians angry about nearly $3 billion in tax breaks and the company’s anti-union stance.
With millions of jobs and a bustling economy, New York can withstand the blow, but experts say the decision by the e-commerce giant to walk away and take with it 25,000 promised jobs could scare off other companies considering moving to or expanding in the city, which wants to be seen as the Silicon Valley of the East Coast.
“One of the real risks here is the message we send to companies that want to come to New York and expand to New York,” said Julie Samuels, the executive director of industry group Tech: NYC. “We&r...
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February 15, 2019 at 10:39 am
Washington - Medicare wants to change how it pays for emergency ambulance services to give seniors more options besides going to a hospital emergency department, officials said Thursday.
Other options could include going to an urgent care center, a doctor’s office, or even treatment at home under supervision of a doctor via telehealth links.
It’s just a pilot project for now, but if adopted nationwide the idea could save Medicare more than $500 million a year and allow local fire departments and ambulance services to focus the time and energy of first responders on the most serious emergencies.
Some advocates for patients welcomed the plan, but said it needs careful review and supervision.
“We definitely think this is intriguing and exciting, but it really does need t...
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February 15, 2019 at 10:38 am
Queens, NY - U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wasted no time on Thursday in calling Amazon’s decision to scrap plans to build a major New York outpost with nearly $3 billion in city and state incentives a big victory for progressive politicians.
The democratic socialist congresswoman has become the face of the Democratic Party’s ascendant left wing, thanks in part to her upset victory last year in a district near the proposed Amazon.com Inc development.
“Anything is possible: today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers & their neighbors defeated Amazon’s corporate greed, its worker exploitation, and the power of the richest man in the world,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter.
Amazon blamed local opposition for its abrupt rever...
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February 15, 2019 at 10:37 am
New York - As if the worst year for stocks in nearly a decade weren’t bad enough, many investors now have to pay a tax bill on top of it.
The headache for investors is a result of how mutual funds are structured and how many times the funds’ managers bought and sold shares through 2018. Because of the way tax laws work, the majority of investors with a U.S. stock mutual fund or ETF received something called a “capital-gains distribution” late last year.
Investors holding funds in a tax-advantaged account, like a 401(k) or IRA, don’t need to worry about it. But if they hold it in a taxable account, watch out. They’ll owe taxes on it, due by this spring, and the rate could be as high as 40.8 percent in a few cases. And the last thing many investors want ...
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February 15, 2019 at 10:34 am
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — U.S. Vice President Mike Pence visited the memorial site of Auschwitz on Friday along with the Polish president and Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of President Donald Trump, viewing a train car, crematoriums and the hair of victims that make it such a powerful testament to the evil that befell Europe in the last century.
It was the first visit for Pence, a conservative Christian, to the site where German forces murdered 1.1 million people, most of them Jews but also Poles, Roma and others, during the Nazis' occupation of Eastern Europe during World War II.
Pence and his wife Karen were joined by Polish President Andrzej Duda and first lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda.
They began their visit by walking under the notorious gate with the German words "Arbeit Macht...
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February 15, 2019 at 10:27 am
Washington - If President Donald Trump declares an emergency to build the wall with Mexico, he still needs money to pay for it. And shifting money from other accounts to deliver the $5.7 billion he wants is not without political problems.
The administration has been eyeing several pots of money — including disaster funds, counternarcotic accounts and military construction dollars — to fund Trump’s wall, according to congressional aides and White House officials.
White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney has said there are various accounts available.
One possibility is shifting a portion of the $13 billion in disaster aid Congress approved last year for Puerto Rico and a dozen states, including California and Texas, hit hard by hurricanes, flooding and other disas...
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February 15, 2019 at 10:25 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court says Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has returned to work at the building for the first time since lung cancer surgery in late December.
The court's press office says the 85-year-old Ginsburg is attending the justices' Friday closed-door conference at which they're weighing whether to add new cases and finalizing opinions in cases argued in the fall.
Ginsburg missed six days of arguments and three private conferences as she recuperated from the December surgery. The court has said she participated in the court's work despite her absence.
Ginsburg made her first public appearance since the surgery last week when she attended a musical account of her life that was put on by her daughter-in-law and other musicians. Opera singer Patr...
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February 15, 2019 at 10:23 am
f the 362 Baltimore Police officers who participated in a recent survey, more than 40 percent said they don’t feel comfortable making proactive arrests.
The voluntary survey conducted by Councilman Isaac “Yitzy” Schleifer at the end of 2018 was sent via department email to police department leadership, officers and civilian members who responded anonymously. The short questionnaire asked basic biographical information, including their ages and how long the respondents had served on the force, and questions about overall morale.
The results showed 43 percent said they do not feel “comfortable making self-initiated arrests,” which Schleifer said refers to proactive calls when officers are on patrol and they witness an incident and intervene, as oppos...
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February 15, 2019 at 10:21 am
Berlin - Appealing an earlier court decision that dismissed its case, Lufthansa is continuing to pursue legal action against a customer who tried to game the system, skipping out on the last leg of his stopover flight in order to save a few Euros through a technique known as hidden-city ticketing.
NPR reported (https://n.pr/2X5G81o) that the unnamed traveler paid €657 for a business class ticket between Seattle and Oslo with a stopover in Frankfurt.
After flying to Oslo in May 2016, the passenger returned only as far as Frankfurt without completing the Seattle leg of the ticket he had booked, instead hopping on a different flight to Berlin.
Noting that a direct trip from Oslo to Frankfurt was a significantly more expensive flight than an Oslo to Seattle flight with a Fr...
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February 15, 2019 at 10:20 am
West Bank - Following Israel’s expulsion of an international observer force from the volatile West Bank city of Hebron, Palestinian activists are trying to fill the void by launching their own patrols to document alleged Israeli settler violence.
Armed with video cameras and donning blue vests, the activists say they will replace the Temporary International Presence in Hebron. The group has enlisted 18 volunteers and began its work this week.
“By expelling the international monitors, the Israeli government wanted to hide the Israeli settlers’ and soldiers’ violations, but we will not let them get away with that,” Issa Amro, an activist leader, told The Associated Press. “We will document any attack by photos and words, and we will circulate it all over...
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February 15, 2019 at 10:19 am
Washington - The ink wasn’t dry on a border security compromise before Jared Kushner had moved on to another enormous challenge.
As lawmakers fine-tuned a border agreement that the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser had been unable to extract from Capitol Hill in earlier talks, Kushner was at an international conference in Poland discussing his efforts to produce a Mideast peace plan. That’s not all that’s been crowding Kushner’s plate: In recent months, he has scored a hard-fought win on criminal justice reform and kept one foot squarely planted in high-stakes trade negotiations.
It’s all evidence of Kushner’s hefty policy portfolio and his coveted seat at President Donald Trump’s right hand — but also of the education in the ...
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February 15, 2019 at 10:18 am
As part of the long-term project on I-895 north of the Harbor Tunnel, the SOUTHBOUND tube of the tunnel will be closed around-the-clock this weekend.
The SOUTHBOUND tube of the Harbor Tunnel will be shut down from 10 p.m. Friday, February 15th until 4:30 a.m. on Monday, February 18th.
Crews will be conducting inspection work and last minute repairs in preparation for a two-month, around-the-clock closure of the SOUTHBOUND tube set to begin in mid-April.
The NORTHBOUND tube of the Harbor Tunnel will carry two-way traffic, one lane in each direction while the work is underway.
The closure of the SOUTHBOUND tube will be repeated again during the same hours next weekend, Friday, February 22nd - Monday, February 25th.
Traffic Pattern Change on Crosby Road at I-695
As part of the project...
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February 15, 2019 at 10:07 am
Investigators are working to determine what caused a school bus fire that happened at the intersection of Cold Spring Lane and Loch Raven Boulevard.
Twenty students were on the bus when the fire started. None of them was hurt, but one student tells us it was a scary experience.
"The little girl sitting next to me said something stinks, and it smelled like something was burning. It smelled like a tire or gas or something, and we were like, 'Maybe it's just a car around us,' and then the front of the bus started smoking," said Monarch Academy student Ginelle Hunter.
The video from SkyTeam 11 shows the bus fully engulfed in flames.
The front end of the school bus is destroyed in the aftermath.
"I seen the bus pull up and the driver and another person escort th...
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February 15, 2019 at 9:57 am
Parashas Tetzaveh: Rabbi Eytan Feiner from Agudath Israel on Vimeo.
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February 14, 2019 at 10:03 pm
Drinking just two diet drinks a day increases the risk of a stroke and heart disease by almost a third, according to new research.
Drinking Diet Coke everyday increases your risk of dying young, experts have warned.
Enjoying just two cans of any artificially-sweetened drinks each day significantly ups the risk of stroke and heart disease by almost third, new findings show.
The shocking new data from the American Heart Association and American Stroke Association shows that risk of early death is 16 per cent higher for those who consume diet drinks, compared to those who don’t.
Scientists warned their findings should serve as a warning to those on diets.
Dr Yasmin Mossavar-Rahmani, lead author of the study told CNN: “Many well-meaning people, especially those who ar...
