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April 17, 2019 at 10:24 pm
Washington - When President Donald Trump insisted last year that America’s southern border was in crisis, his warnings landed with a thud.
Making unverified claims about “unknown Middle Easterners” and prayer rugs found by ranchers, Trump drew eye rolls from Democrats and many others, who derided his tactics as little more than an election-year stunt .
Now, six months later, Trump’s new cries of alarm are again being met with skepticism, though the situation at the border has indeed deteriorated. Lawmakers of both parties agree there is a genuine humanitarian emergency, with federal authorities and non-profits unable to cope with the tens of thousands of Central American families seeking refuge in the U.S.
It’s a classic case of the boy who cried wolf.
No ...
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April 17, 2019 at 9:41 pm
Cherry Hills Village, CO - A Colorado city has voted to drop the name “Swastika Acres” from a subdivision.
KDVR-TV reports the Cherry Hills Village City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to approve a name change to “Old Cherry Hills” to prevent future controversy.
The neighborhood in the Denver suburb was named Swastika Acres decades before the symbol was adopted by the Nazis.
Councilman Dan Sheldon spearheaded the change and says the name comes from the Denver Land Swastika Company that divided area land into plots near the turn of the 20th Century.
While the name cannot be found on road signs, it still appeared on real estate closing documents.
Sheldon says one woman attending the council meeting opposed the change to preserve the “historical value&rdqu...
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April 17, 2019 at 9:35 pm
Baltimore, MD - Apr. 17, 2019 - It's that time of year when you can benefit Ahavas Yisrael by bidding on the first Tov Pizza after Pesach.
Click on the graphic below and bid now...
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April 17, 2019 at 9:19 pm
An Israeli flight attendant has slipped into a coma after contracting measles, according to health officials.
The 43-year-old woman has encephalitis, or inflammation of the brain, a well-known and potentially deadly complication of the virus. She was otherwise healthy before getting measles.
"She's been in a deep coma for 10 days, and we're now just hoping for the best," said Dr. Itamar Grotto, associate director general of Israel's Ministry of Health.
The flight attendant, who works for El Al, the Israeli national airline, might have contracted the virus in New York, in Israel or on a flight between the two, Grotto said. Health authorities do not believed that she spread the virus to anyone on the flights.
She's unable to breathe on her own and on a...
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April 17, 2019 at 9:18 pm
New York - With its mountains and desert, beach resorts and Berber villages, Morocco is a feast for travelers of all kinds, including those who want to explore the kingdom’s deep Jewish roots.
The presence of Jews in Morocco stretches back more than 2,000 years. Before the founding of Israel in 1948, estimates put their number as high as about 275,000, which was considered the largest Jewish community in the Muslim world, said Roy Mittelman, director of the Jewish studies program at The City College of New York.
Today, after vast waves of departures over the years, only about 2,000 Jews remain in Casablanca and about 500 elsewhere in Morocco, but the Jewish presence is still alive in a variety of sights. The Museum of Moroccan Judaism in suburban Casablanca, for instance, is the on...
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April 17, 2019 at 9:17 pm
United Nations - Israel’s U.N. ambassador says he believes the government will take no action on annexing Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank until after the Trump administration releases its long-awaited Israeli-Palestinian peace plan.
Danny Danon told reporters Wednesday he thinks the U.S. will present the plan between May and the summer.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged in the final stretch of his campaign to annex the settlements if he was re-elected. Netanyahu was asked Wednesday to form a government after his election victory.
Danon sidestepped a question on what Israel would gain from annexing the settlements, saying that “I don’t think we will see any major action by our government before the peace plan” is presented.
He noted t...
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April 17, 2019 at 9:16 pm
Fort Lee, NJ - New York’s plan to charge a fee for motorists entering its congested midtown area won’t go into effect for another two years but is already renewing time-honored animosities between the state and its neighbor to the west.
Standing on a bridge overlooking the heavily traveled George Washington Bridge that connects the two states, two New Jersey congressmen on Wednesday variously called the plan “poorly conceived,” ‘‘a raw deal” and “a two-by-four to our head.”
New York would become the first American city to use so-called congestion pricing to decrease vehicle traffic and fund mass transit improvements, following in the footsteps of London, Singapore and Stockholm. Those cities experienced an initial reduction in traffic...
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April 17, 2019 at 9:16 pm
San Francisco - Some of Samsung’s new, almost $2,000 folding phones appear to be breaking after just a couple of days.
Journalists who received the phones to review before the public launch said the Galaxy Fold screen started flickering and turning black before completely fizzling out. Two journalists said they removed a thin, protective layer from the screens that they thought was supposed to come off, but was meant to stay.
But reporters from The Verge and CNBC said they left that layer on and their screens still broke. A CNBC video shows the left side of the inside screen intermittently flashing, and the right side as unresponsive.
The phone was “completely unusable” after two days, CNBC reporter Todd Haselton wrote .
The long-anticipated folding phone is about the...
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April 17, 2019 at 9:16 pm
Seoul - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the testing of a new type of tactical guided weapon on Wednesday, state media Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said on Thursday.
It is North Korea’s first public weapons test since the second U.S.-North Korea summit in Hanoi ended with no agreement in February.
KCNA did not describe exactly what the weapon is, including whether it was a missile or another type of weapon, but “tactical” implies a short-range weapon, as opposed to the long-range ballistic missiles that have been seen as a threat to the United States.
Nevertheless, the missile has a “peculiar mode of guiding flight” and “a powerful warhead,” KCNA said.
Kim said “the completion of the development of the weapon system serves as ...
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April 17, 2019 at 9:15 pm
Albany, NY - Former radical activist Judith Clark was granted parole Wednesday after serving more than 37 years behind bars for her role as getaway driver in a 1981 Brink’s armored truck robbery that left two police officers and a security guard dead.
“We are grateful that the Parole Board affirmed what everyone who has interacted with Judy already knows - that she is a rehabilitated, remorseful woman who poses no threat to society,” said Michael Cardozo, who represents Clark pro bono as co-counsel with Steve Zeidman.
“My great hope is that the Parole Board continues to honor the work people do to transform their lives while in prison and lets more families’ loved ones come home,” said Clark’s daughter, Harriet Clark, in a prepared statement.
De...
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April 17, 2019 at 9:15 pm
Arvada, CO - Each morning for the last two decades, Frank DeAngelis has recited aloud the names of the 13 people killed at Columbine High School, where he served as principal during the 1999 massacre that marked a modern era of mass school shootings.
“When I wake up in bed each morning, that’s the first thing I do is recite the names. Then I go into my office and pray,” DeAngelis, 64, told Reuters in an interview. “They have been with me since that day and they’ll continue to be with me for the rest of my life in the Columbine community.”
On April 20, 1999, two heavily armed Columbine students stormed the school in suburban Denver, killing 12 classmates and a teacher before turning their guns on themselves and committing suicide. At the time, it was th...
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April 17, 2019 at 9:14 pm
Washington - After nearly two years of waiting, America will get some answers straight from Robert Mueller.
The Justice Department on Thursday is expected to release a redacted version of the special counsel’s report on Russian election interference and Donald Trump’s campaign, opening up months, if not years, of fights over what the document means in a deeply divided country.
Attorney General William Barr will hold a 9:30 a.m. news conference accompanied by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversaw the investigation after Mueller’s appointment in May 2017. It’s unclear if Barr will speak before or after the report is released.
The nearly 400-page report is expected to reveal what Mueller uncovered about ties between the Trump campaign and Russia that f...
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April 17, 2019 at 9:14 pm
Abidjian - On a trip to Africa to promote women’s economic empowerment, Ivanka Trump said the White House should be judged by its actions toward a continent that her father has privately disparaged.
In an interview with The Associated Press, the president’s daughter and senior adviser pointed to visits to the continent by herself, the first lady and others, saying: “Our commitment to Africa is clear.” She added that she hopes President Donald Trump will visit, saying: “I’ve been deeply, deeply inspired by my trip here. And I think he will be as well.”
Ivanka Trump spoke Wednesday, the last day of her four-day trip to Ethiopia and Ivory Coast, which has featured a mix of diplomacy and visits to local business ventures as she advances a White House...
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April 17, 2019 at 9:13 pm
Washington - White House senior adviser Jared Kushner urged a group of ambassadors on Wednesday to keep an “open mind” about President Donald Trump’s upcoming Middle East peace proposal and said it will require compromises from both sides, a source familiar with his remarks said.
Kushner said the peace plan is to be unveiled after Israel forms a governing coalition in the wake of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s election victory and after the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ends in early June, the source said.
“We will all have to look for reasonable compromises that will make peace achievable,” Kushner said, according to the source, who asked to remain anonymous.
Kushner, one of the main architects of the peace proposal and who is marr...
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April 17, 2019 at 9:13 pm
New York - Auto shows may be waning in importance as companies find other ways to introduce new products, but the New York International Auto Show still has a healthy list of new vehicle debuts.
In keeping with the dramatic shift from cars to sport utilities, most of the new models are SUVs.
Here are some of the new vehicles being rolled out on the show’s press days Wednesday and Thursday. It’s open to the public from April 19-28:
TOYOTA HIGHLANDER
The popular midsize family-hauling SUV gets a complete revamp with a roomier interior, a redesigned gas-electric hybrid power system and added safety features.
The Highlander, with a more sculpted look, also keeps three rows of seats that can be configured to carry as many as eight passengers.
It comes with a holdover 295-horse...
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April 17, 2019 at 9:13 pm
Jerusalem - Israel’s Defense Ministry says the country’s military exports were $7.5 billion last year, down 18% from the previous year.
The ministry said on Wednesday that despite the drop, the 2018 figures were a “major success” and the second-highest level in the past decade.
It said the $9.2 billion of defense exports in 2017 were “out of the ordinary” but was unable to explain the drop in 2018, saying only that the global market is “dynamic.”
The largest share of Israel’s exports consisted of missiles and air defense systems. Unmanned aerial vehicles, radar systems and ammunition also represented crucial exports.
Nearly half of Israel’s sales went to the Asia and the Pacific region.
Israel is the world’s eighth-larg...
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April 17, 2019 at 9:12 pm
Jerusalem - A long-hidden trove of unpublished works by Franz Kafka could soon be revealed following a decade-long battle over his literary estate that has drawn comparisons to some of his surreal tales.
A district court in Zurich upheld Israeli verdicts in the case last week, ruling that several safe deposit boxes in the Swiss city could be opened and their contents shipped to Israel’s National Library.
At stake are untouched papers that could shed new light on one of literature’s darkest figures, a German-speaking Bohemian Jew from Prague whose cultural legacy has been hotly contested between Israel and Germany.
Though the exact content of the vaults remains unknown, experts have speculated the cache could include endings to some of Kafka’s major works, many of which...
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April 17, 2019 at 9:11 pm
Brussels - The European Union has drawn up a list of $20 billion worth of U.S. products it could tax in an escalating feud over plane industry subsidies, the EU’s executive commission said Wednesday.
The commission said the EU could tax the products , which range from aircraft parts to frozen fish, from early next year in retaliation for U.S. financial support to Boeing that it says hurt Europe’s Airbus.
The extent of the EU punitive duties will depend on a ruling by the World Trade Organization. Earlier in this dispute, the EU sought permission to target $12 billion worth of U.S. products. Businesses and stakeholders have through May to give feedback on the proposed EU tariffs.
The move comes days after the U.S. said it was preparing tariffs on $11 billion worth of EU trade...
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April 17, 2019 at 9:11 pm
Washington - The Trump administration wants to open two new tent facilities to temporarily detain up to 1,000 parents and children near the southern border, as advocates sharply criticize the conditions inside the tents already used to hold migrants.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a notice to potential contractors that it wants to house 500 people in each camp in El Paso, Texas, and in the South Texas city of Donna, which has a border crossing with Mexico.
Each facility would consist of one large tent that could be divided into sections by gender and between families and children traveling alone, according to the notice. Detainees would sleep on mats. There would also be laundry facilities, showers, and an “additional fenced-in area” for “outside exercise/re...
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April 17, 2019 at 9:10 pm
Acting Mayor Bernard C. "Jack" Young has put two top aides to Mayor Catherine Pugh on leave.
Young put both Chief of Staff Bruce Williams and lobbyist Karen Stokes on paid leave. The news was first reported by The Baltimore Sun.
“Personnel matters are private and cannot be discussed," Young said in a statement. "To date, no employees from the Office of the Mayor have been terminated from City employment by me. In my capacity as Ex Officio Mayor, I will make decisions necessary to provide stability and continuity of government. To that end, I will onboard persons whom I believe are best able to achieve both continuity and stability during this unusual time in Baltimore's history."
Pugh remains on a leave of absence owing to a recovery from pneumonia as questions swirl around h...
