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April 12, 2019 at 1:32 pm
A scuttled White House proposal to release immigrant detainees in San Francisco and other sanctuary cities triggered a fierce backlash Friday from Democrats including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose office called the idea “despicable.”
The Washington Post first reported that the White House proposed sending the detainees to sanctuary cities, including Pelosi's district, twice in the last six months. The proposal was first floated in November amid reports of a large migrant caravan from Central America making its way to the southern border. The idea was again considered in February, amid the standoff with Congress over a border wall.
“The extent of this Administration’s cynicism and cruelty cannot be overstated,”...
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April 12, 2019 at 1:23 pm
The notion was so bizarre and horrific that Jesse Fink had trouble believing his own eyes and ears.
R’ Fink’s wife, Edna, had been hospitalized with multiple health issues. In addition to suffering from cancer of the small intestine, she was also experiencing liver problems, and as days went by Mrs. Fink continued to deteriorate. While doctors had put in a feeding tube because Mrs. Fink was unable to eat, R’ Fink soon realized that his wife faced far greater problems than cancer as he discovered that the hospital had made a decision to deprive his wife of both nutrition and water.
After receiving no plausible explanation from the nursing staff about why the hospital was intentionally hastening his wife’s death, R’ Fink met with the managing doctor to ask tha...
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April 12, 2019 at 1:04 pm
Imagine baking matzah with chometz flour. For Jews living in the former Soviet Union and other communist countries during the 1950s, observing Pesach with kosher matzah and wine was virtually impossible. Although many did try to observe the yom tov properly, they were unable to because of the limited resources available to them. During that era there were instances in which well-intentioned but spiritually deprived Jews actually baked matzah with chometz ingredients.
Decades ago, Agudas Yisroel learned of their predicament. They recognized the need of the thousands of yidden stuck in the communist countries of the former Soviet Union. The organization mobilized volunteers who worked tirelessly to secretly send them matzah and other basic Pesach necessities, using humanitarian channels and...
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April 12, 2019 at 1:02 pm
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine on Thursday commended Israel for its attempt to land a spacecraft on the moon, even though the Beresheet spacecraft failed to land on the moon.
“While NASA regrets the end of the SpaceIL mission without a successful lunar landing of the Beresheet lander, we congratulate SpaceIL, the Israel Aerospace Industries and the state of Israel on the incredible accomplishment of sending the first privately funded mission into lunar orbit,” Bridenstine said in a statement.
“Every attempt to reach new milestones holds opportunities for us to learn, adjust and progress. I have no doubt that Israel and SpaceIL will continue to explore and I look forward to celebrating their future achievements,” he added.
Read more at Arutz Sheva.
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April 12, 2019 at 12:59 pm
The city of Chicago sued Jussie Smollett for more than $130,000 on Thursday to recover the cost of police overtime spent looking into an alleged hate crime against him.
The “Empire” actor has been accused of orchestrating the Jan. 29 assault, during which he says two men yelled racist and anti-gay slurs while beating him, pouring an unknown chemical substance on him and wrapping a rope around his neck. Smollett, 36, was indicted on 16 felony counts in early March for allegedly lying to police about the altercation – one count per alleged lie – but Cook County prosecutors dropped all criminal charges on March 26, citing his two days of community service and agreement to forfeit his $10,000 bond to the city.
Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, a Democrat, joined other city officia...
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April 12, 2019 at 12:57 pm
Federal prosecutors in California announced on Thursday three dozen charges against Michael Avenatti, the prominent attorney best known for his criticisms of President Donald Trump, accusing the lawyer of stealing millions of dollars from his clients and funneling their money into his own interests, including co-ownership of a $5 million private jet.
The indictment was sweeping in its scope, accusing Avenatti of defrauding clients for more than four years. The charges included bleak details, including assertions that Avenatti’s alleged actions caused a paraplegic client to lose his Supplemental Security Income benefits, which are paid to adults and children who have disabilities, and prevented the same client from using settlement money to buy a home.
Avenatti denied wrongdoing and...
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April 12, 2019 at 12:52 pm
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein came to his boss’s defense Thursday, saying it was “bizarre” for anyone to claim Attorney General William Barr is “trying to mislead people” by not immediately releasing the special counsel’s report.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, his first since Robert S. Mueller III concluded the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, Rosenstein tried to tamp down criticisms of Barr’s handling of the report and the time it is taking him to release it.
“He’s being as forthcoming as he can, and so this notion that he’s trying to mislead people, I think is just completely bizarre,” Rosenstein said in the interview.
Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller to lead the inv...
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April 12, 2019 at 12:49 pm
American officials had debated bringing charges against Julian Assange almost from the moment in 2010 that his organization WikiLeaks dumped onto the internet a historic trove of classified documents, including internal State Department communications and assessments of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.
But through the years, the case languished. Some prosecutors reasoned that Assange was arguably a publisher, if a capricious one. Concerned that proving a criminal case against him would run up against the First Amendment and, if successful, set a precedent for future media prosecutions, the Obama administration chose to put the case aside.
In 2017 – after WikiLeaks exposed CIA hacking tools and stirred political chaos by releasing Democratic campaign emails – the govern...
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April 12, 2019 at 12:48 pm
Uber filed documents Thursday to take the ride-hailing giant public, the most anticipated of the year’s high-profile technology stock-exchange listings.
It’s a watershed moment for Uber, which said its stock market symbol would be UBER. The company is expected to list its shares on May 10 as it seeks to raise funding in the neighborhood of $10 billion at a $100 billion valuation.
Since its launch in 2009, Uber has worked toward global dominance of the ride-hailing industry through a cash-burning strategy of investor-subsidized fares. Uber operates in 63 countries and has millions of customers. By the end of 2018, 74 percent of its trips were taking place outside the United States, Uber said in its filing.
It has also expanded its business in recent years to include food deli...
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April 12, 2019 at 12:38 pm
Baltimore, MD - Apr. 12, 2019 - BJL wishes a hearty Mazel Tov to Mr. and Mrs. Shmuel Iser on the birth of a son
יה"ר שיזכו לגדל בנם לתורה, לחופה, ולמעשים טובים. אמן
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April 12, 2019 at 12:27 pm
Businessman and former presidential candidate Herman Cain is expected to withdraw from consideration for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board, ABC News reported Thursday, citing an administration official and source familiar with the matter.
President Trump last week announced he would nominate Cain to the board. His nomination faced strong criticism and four Republican senators said they would vote against confirming him, likely sinking his nomination.
Cain ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, but dropped out of the race after harassment allegations. The accusations have made him a controversial pick for the board.
Read more at The Hill.
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April 12, 2019 at 12:25 pm
British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has come under fire again for defending the decision of schools to send students to a festival which featured a campaigner who vandalized the Warsaw Ghetto.
According to investigative journalist Iggy Ostanin, Corbyn slammed the British Board of Deputies for considering banning eight schools from attending the Tottenham Palestine Literary Festival in 2011, where one of the speakers was Ewa Jasciewicz, an activist who spray-painted “Free Gaza and Palestine” on the wall of the Warsaw Ghetto in 2011.
“The Board of Deputies are hardly objective in this matter. Their record of denunciation of all things Palestinian is well known,” Corbyn told the Islington Tribune at the time.
“It’s a great opportunity for children to und...
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April 12, 2019 at 12:23 pm
President Reuven Rivlin will begin doing a round of consultations on Monday with all factions chosen for the Knesset, all of which will be broadcast live.
Rivlin will move from large to small factions that were elected for the Knesset in coordination with the chairman of the Central Elections Committee, Judge Hanan Melzer.
As is customary, Rivlin will hear the parties’ recommendations and at the end will announce the member of the Knesset to whom he has entrusted the task of forming a government. Once this has been done, that person has 28 days to form a new government.
Read more at JPOST.
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April 12, 2019 at 12:16 pm
The lead article Thursday on the opinion page of the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper compared Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with the 1940 Nazi antisemitic movie The Eternal Jew.
The article was titled in the paper “The Eternal Netanyahu” in a word play in connection with the antisemitic pseudo-documentary organized by Adolf Hitler’s minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels and widely-considered to be the most violent anti-Jewish film ever made.
The Rundschau wrote in its apology it is “especially difficult” to find words that are not associated with antisemitism.
Read more at JPOST.
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April 12, 2019 at 12:14 pm
President Donald Trump considered nominating his eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, to be president of the World Bank in part because “she’s very good with numbers,” according to a new interview published Friday.
Speaking to the Atlantic, Trump lavished praised on his daughter, a 37-year-old White House adviser, and suggested she would be suitable for other administration positions, including U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
“She’s a natural diplomat,” Trump said. “She would’ve been great at the United Nations, as an example.”
Asked why he didn’t nominate her, Trump replied: “If I did, they’d say nepotism, when it would’ve had nothing to do with nepotism. But she would’ve been incredible.”
Trump...
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April 12, 2019 at 12:12 pm
Chicago - The number of young kids who went to U.S. emergency rooms because they swallowed toys, coins, batteries and other objects has more than doubled, a new study says.
In 2015, there were nearly 43,000 such visits among kids under 6, compared with 22,000 in 1995, according to the study published Friday in the journal Pediatrics. The rate jumped from almost 10 per 10,000 ER visits to 18 per 10,000.
The increase “rang some alarms,” said Dr. Danielle Orsagh-Yentis, the lead author and a gastrointestinal physician at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
Orsagh-Yentis noted that an increasing number of consumer products use potentially dangerous button-sized batteries, including TV remotes, digital thermometers and remote-controlled toys, which likely cont...
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April 12, 2019 at 12:11 pm
South Korea - Just two hours after Lee Dong Kil’s daughter was born on New Year’s Eve, the clock struck midnight, 2019 was ushered in, and the infant became 2-years-old. She wasn’t alone, though it happened for her quicker than most: Every baby born in South Korea last year became 2 on Jan. 1.
According to one of the world’s most unusual age-calculating systems, South Korean babies become 1 on the day of their birth and then get an additional year tacked on when the calendar hits Jan. 1. A lawmaker is working now to overturn the centuries-old tradition amid complaints that it’s an anachronistic, time-wasting custom that drags down an otherwise ultramodern country.
For parents whose babies are born in December, it can be especially painful. One hour after his...
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April 12, 2019 at 12:09 pm
Albany, NY - New York’s governor says legislation that would end the ability of parents to object to vaccinations for their children on religious grounds is “legally questionable.”
Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo during interviews this week called the recent surge in measles cases a serious public health concern but said eliminating the religious exemption to school vaccine requirements could face a First Amendment challenge.
The bill hasn’t been scheduled for a vote in the Democrat-controlled state Legislature. Current law also allows parents to exempt their children for medical reasons, such as a weakened immune system.
Supporters of the bill to eliminate the religious exemption note that California successfully repealed its exemption for personal or philosophical...
