|
March 14, 2019 at 8:37 pm
The Hamas-run “interior ministry” in Gaza vowed on Thursday night that it would take action against those responsible for the rocket fire on central Israel, Channel 13 News reports.
“The rocket fire was carried out without the consent of the Palestinian factions. The security forces in the Gaza Strip will take measures against those who violated the national consensus,” said the ministry, according to the report.
Two rockets were fired earlier on Thursday towards the Gush Dan region in central Israel, setting off air raid sirens in the area, including in Tel Aviv.
Read more at Arutz Sheva.
|
March 14, 2019 at 8:34 pm
BEL AIR, Md. — Maryland State Police are still investigating a fiery crash that killed the president of a grocery store company and a 7-year-old boy.
WBAL-TV 11 News is learning more about both victims: Andrew Klein, 65, was someone who understood that basic needs were critical for people, and Tripp Johnson, 7, had a zest for life.
The beginning of a small tribute at the intersection of West Ring Factory Road and Route 24 in Bel Air. It honors the accident victims who died: Klein, the president of Klein's ShopRite and Tripp, a second-grader at William Paca/Old Post Road Elementary. Both were passengers in separate cars when a ShopRite tractor-trailer plowed into stopped traffic. Monday's crash also included 11 other vehicles.
"Tripp hugged often. He laughed. Most of all,...
|
March 14, 2019 at 8:34 pm
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — "Heavy-handed tactics," is what Gov. Larry Hogan is calling efforts to turn back his executive order forcing school districts to start classes after Labor Day.
The legislation has passed both Houses of the General Assembly.
This is a hot button issue that affects every single Maryland school district. They may be a step closer to deciding when to start and finish their school year.
Most school districts have run out of snow days for the year and it's forced many of them to revise their calendars in order to abide by the governor's executive order to end classes in mid-June. But a bill to put school boards back in charge of their calendars could soon become law.
To that, Hogan fired off this statement, “This is just politics at its worst....
|
March 14, 2019 at 8:30 pm
Jerusalem - New evidence disclosed in Iran’s secret nuclear files taken by the Mossad show that its underground Fordow nuclear facility is older than it has admitted, according to a think-tank report.
This discovery could be significant, says the Institute for Science and International Security, because it shows that Iran is still lying to the international community about a nuclear facility that has no reasonable use other than military.
The report says that photographs and documents it reviewed from the materials taken from Iran in January 2018 by the Mossad date the facility to as much as five years earlier than the Islamic Republic has led the world to believe.
In 2009, the international community confronted Tehran with the fact that it had uncovered Fordow, which Iran had wor...
|
March 14, 2019 at 8:27 pm
BURLINGTON, Iowa (AP) — Democrat Beto O’Rourke jumped into the 2020 presidential race Thursday, shaking up the already packed field and pledging to win over voters from across the political spectrum as he tries to translate his sudden celebrity into a formidable White House bid.
The former Texas congressman began his campaign by taking his first ever trip to Iowa, the state that kicks off the presidential primary voting. In tiny Burlington, in southeast Iowa, he scaled a counter to be heard during an afternoon stop at a coffee shop.
“Let us not allow our differences to define us as at this moment,” O’Rourke told a whooping crowd, his heels perched at the countertop’s edge. “History calls for us to come together.”
Earlier in the day, O&rsqu...
|
March 14, 2019 at 8:27 pm
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — In one of the first lawsuits to come out of the college bribery scandal, several students are suing Yale, Georgetown, Stanford and other schools involved in the case, saying they and others were denied a fair shot at admission.
The plaintiffs brought the class-action complaint Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco on behalf of themselves and other applicants, asking for unspecified damages and the return of all application fees.
They argued that applicants who played by the rules were victimized when rich and famous parents paid bribes that enabled unqualified students to get into highly selective universities.
“Each of the universities took the students’ admission application fees while failing to take adequate steps to ensure that their adm...
|
March 14, 2019 at 8:22 pm
Washington - The House voted unanimously Thursday for a resolution calling for any final report in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation to be made public, a symbolic action designed to pressure Attorney General William Barr into releasing as much information as possible when the probe is concluded.
The Democratic-backed resolution, which passed 420-0, comes as Mueller is nearing an end to his investigation. Lawmakers in both parties have maintained there will have to be some sort of public resolution when the report is done — and privately hope that a report shows conclusions that are favorable to their own side.
Four Republicans voted present: Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar and Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie.
The n...
|
March 14, 2019 at 8:22 pm
Paris - France doesn’t see an unusually large number of aviation disasters, but its plane crash investigators are world famous.
The French air accident investigation authority, known by its French acronym BEA, is now handling the analysis of the flight recorders from the Ethiopian Airlines jet that crashed after takeoff earlier this week, killing 157 people.
Ethiopian authorities wanted European investigators to handle the analysis because of its complexity, according to BEA spokesman Sebastien Barthe. They initially asked Germany, which said it didn’t have the necessary capacity to take it on, so then the Ethiopians turned to France, Barthe told The Associated Press.
And the BEA said yes.
The French agency, based in the Paris suburb of Le Bourget, has extensive experience ...
|
March 14, 2019 at 8:21 pm
New York - Insider testimony, emails and other evidence show President Donald Trump turned his charitable foundation into a wing of his White House campaign, New York’s attorney general said in a new court filing Thursday.
State Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, detailed her case against the foundation in a 37-page court filing in a lawsuit that seeks $2.8 million in restitution and an order banning Trump and his three eldest children from running any New York charities for 10 years.
The filing was a response to an earlier court submission from the foundation’s lawyers, who have argued that the lawsuit against the charity is both flimsy and politically motivated.
The Trump Foundation reached a deal in December to fold and distribute about $1.7 million in remaining ...
|
March 14, 2019 at 8:20 pm
New York - Federal authorities say a Bronx man bit off part of an immigration officer’s finger during a recent arrest.
Court papers released Thursday show Cristopher Santos Felix was charged with assaulting a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.
A criminal complaint says agents went to Santos Felix’s home March 3 believing he had stayed in the country “longer than his legal authorization permitted.”
The document says officers arrested Santos Felix but removed the handcuffs to allow him to put on a piece of clothing.
Authorities said he became combative and ran into a bedroom before biting an ICE agent who attempted to restrain him.
The agent was taken to a hospital for treatment.
An email seeking comment was sent to the defendant’s lawyer.
|
March 14, 2019 at 8:20 pm
Washington - During the early days of the Russia investigation, FBI officials debated whether Donald Trump’s chance of winning should factor into how aggressively they investigated potential coordination between his campaign and the Kremlin, two FBI officials told Congress last year, according to newly released transcripts of their interviews.
Peter Strzok, the former FBI agent who helped lead the investigation, told lawmakers in a closed-door interview that the FBI had received information from an “extremely sensitive source” alleging collusion between Russia and members of the Trump campaign. FBI officials, including then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, debated internally how vigorously to follow up on that information given that Democrat Hillary Clinton was seen at the...
|
March 14, 2019 at 8:19 pm
San Francisco - Facebook says two of its top executives are leaving the company. Chief Product Officer Chris Cox and Chris Daniels, who heads messaging app WhatsApp, are departing. It isn’t clear what future plans the executives have.
Cox was in charge of Facebook’s apps including its flagship social media site, as well as Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. He joined 13 years ago and helped create Facebook’s News Feed feature.
Facebook will not appoint a direct replacement for Cox. Longtime Facebook executive Will Cathcart will head up WhatsApp.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg reiterated that the company is organizing around a “privacy-focused” emphasis on private messaging, which he announced last week.
Founding executives of Facebook-owned Instagram and WhatsApp hav...
|
March 14, 2019 at 8:18 pm
Washington - One of the most prominent prosecutors working for special counsel Robert Mueller is leaving the team soon, a likely indication that the investigation is close to wrapping up.
More than any other member of Mueller’s team, Andrew Weissmann has been a target of President Donald Trump’s outrage and singled out for attacks, including by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, as an overly aggressive prosecutor.
Mueller spokesman Peter Carr said in a statement Thursday that Weissmann would be concluding his work with the team “in the near future.” He did not give a date, but the looming departure is not surprising given that the principal case Weissmann has worked on — against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort — came to a close Wednesday with a...
|
March 14, 2019 at 8:18 pm
New York - Former New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s quest to avoid prison got a boost when a panel of appeals judges heard his appeal Wednesday, questioning whether his actions were crimes or politics as usual.
The Democrat wasn’t at oral arguments before the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, but he likely heard a positive report from his lawyers.
Two of the panel’s three judges questioned whether Silver’s actions fit the definition of a public corruption crime after a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling narrowed the requirements of the law.
Silver, 75, is appealing his conviction and seven-year prison sentence. Prosecutors said he collected nearly $4 million in fees to help a cancer researcher and real estate developers. An earlier conviction...
|
March 14, 2019 at 8:16 pm
Phoenix - Two years after New Mexico’s largest county barred local law enforcement from cooperating with immigration authorities, its leaders learned that the policy was being subverted from within.
Staff members at the Bernalillo County jail in Albuquerque were still granting immigration authorities access to its database and, in some cases, tipping them off when a person of interest was being released.
“I was surprised and horrified,” said Maggie Hart Stebbins, chairwoman of the Bernalillo County Commission. “Individual employees do not have the freedom to pick and choose what they want to observe.”
The disclosure last month cast a spotlight on an often-overlooked way in which immigration officials around the U.S. may be getting around local “sanctu...
|
March 14, 2019 at 8:14 pm
New York - Facebook says its lengthy outages over the past day were the result of a “server configuration change.”
The outages affected countless users and advertisers worldwide. Some people weren’t able to reach Facebook’s website and apps, including Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.
The length of the outage is another publicity problem for a company already dealing with privacy issues and regulatory probes. The outages started midday EDT Wednesday. There were still sporadic problems Thursday morning.
Facebook did not say how many users were affected or why the outage was so long. In a tweet about 24 hours after the problems began, Facebook apologized and thanked people for their patience. It didn’t elaborate on the server change.
|
March 14, 2019 at 8:12 pm
Boston - The mastermind of a wide-ranging college admissions scandal set up a charity that wove a deep web of deception and fraud to mask bribes and payoffs, funneling millions of dollars through the tax-exempt organization under the nose of U.S. officials, according to prosecutors and tax documents reviewed by The Associated Press.
William “Rick” Singer registered Key Worldwide Foundation as a charity in 2013, gaining accredited 501(c)3 status with the federal government. Its tax filings reported revenue that doubled each year, from $451,600 in its first year to $3.7 million in 2016.
Singer, painted by prosecutors as the ringleader of the biggest school admissions scandal ever prosecuted by federal authorities, is accused of funneling money from wealthy parents through his f...
|
March 14, 2019 at 8:07 pm
Washington - President Donald Trump on Thursday sharply criticized Britain’s handling of negotiations over leaving the European Union, saying the talks have been bungled and that the wrenching debate was dividing the country.
“I’m surprised at how badly it’s all gone from the standpoint of a negotiation,” he said.
Trump, who holds himself up as a master deal-maker, said he gave Prime Minister Theresa May his ideas on how she could negotiate a successful deal for leaving the 28-member group of nations. But “she didn’t listen to that and that’s fine. I mean she’s got to do what she’s got to do,” he said at the White House as he welcomed Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar for an early St. Patrick’s Day celebration.
&ldq...
|
March 14, 2019 at 7:59 pm
New York - U.S. and Canadian carriers wrestled with customer calls and flight cancellations on Thursday after the two countries followed other nations in grounding Boeing’s 737 MAX planes because of safety concerns.
Dallas-based Southwest Airlines Co, the largest operator of the 737 MAX in the world with 34 jets, said it was experiencing unusually high call volumes and had canceled 39 MAX flights.
The low-cost carrier, a launch customer of the MAX 8 in 2017, said it was servicing those flights with available 737-700s and 737-800s.
Canada and the United States announced on Wednesday they would ground the MAX planes, citing new satellite data and evidence from the scene of an Ethiopian Airlines plane crash on Sunday that killed 157 people.
American Airlines Group Inc, with 24 MAX 8...
|
March 14, 2019 at 7:57 pm
New York - The fall in Boeing shares has made the stock’s valuation less expensive but that may not make it an obvious buy for investors.
The planemaker’s shares have fallen 11 percent this week after a Ethiopian Airlines crash on Sunday that killed 157 people prompted the grounding of Boeing’s global 737 MAX fleet. Boeing shares were down 0.5 percent $375.09 on Thursday afternoon.
The declines come after a run for Boeing shares that saw the price more than double over the past two years, making the company the largest U.S. industrial firm by market value.
This week’s slide means the stock as of Wednesday was trading at about 18.2 times earnings estimates for the next 12 months, according to Refinitiv data. That valuation is in line with its average forward P/E r...
