Backlash to EU court ruling requiring labeling of products comes in fast and furiously Jewish and pro-Israel groups blasted the ruling by the European Court of Justice requiring products coming from the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem and the Golan Heights to be labeled as such and not “made in Israel.” The court decided, “Israel is present in the territories concerned as an occupying power and not as a sovereign entity.” The decision stemmed from a case brought by brought by Israeli wine producer and exporter Psagot Winery Ltd., along with the Lawfare Project. The Lawfare Project said the decision by the European Union high court not only “supports derogatory French-labeling requirements imposed on Israeli products, but it also mandates similar requirements t...
WASHINGTON (AP) — For the first time a top diplomat testified Wednesday that President Donald Trump was overheard asking about “the investigations” he wanted Ukraine to pursue that are central to the impeachment inquiry. William Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, revealed the new information as the House Intelligence Committee opened extraordinary hearings on whether the 45th president of the United States should be removed from office. Taylor said his staff recently told him they overheard Trump when they were meeting with another diplomat, Ambassador Gordon Sondland, at a restaurant the day after Trump’s July 25 phone call with the new leader of Ukraine that sparked the impeachment investigation. The staff explained that Sondland had called the president...
ROME (AP) – Pope Francis has denounced the “inhuman, un-Christian” rebirth of anti-Semitism, weighing in on an issue that has convulsed Italy in recent weeks. Speaking at his general audience Wednesday, Francis denounced anti-Semitism, saying it is raging after the world thought the “brutalities” of the Holocaust were over. He said: “Here and there, there is a new rebirth of persecuting Jews. Brothers and sisters, this isn’t human or Christian. Jews are our brothers. And they must not be persecuted. Understand?” In Italy, controversy flared recently when Liliana Segre, an 89-year-old Auschwitz survivor and senator-for-life, called for the creation of a parliamentary committee to combat hate, racism and anti-Semitism after revelations that ...
DENMARK (AP) – Two men, aged 27 and 38, were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of “gross vandalism” of gravestones in the Jewish section of a churchyard in northwestern Denmark. Danish broadcaster DR, citing information from a detention hearing that was briefly open before continuing behind closed doors, reported that the 38-year-old man was a member of a neo-Nazi group. The men are suspected of scrawling in green paint on 84 gravestones and knocking over several of them in Randers, some 177 kilometers (110 miles) northeast of Copenhagen. Police spokesman Klaus Arboe Rasmussen said their motive was to target “a particular group of the population based on their religion.” He added that the men, who were not identified in line with Danish practice, also are su...
VENICE, Italy (AP) — The worst flooding in Venice in more than 50 years prompted calls Wednesday to better protect the historic city from rising sea levels as officials calculated hundreds of millions of euros in damage. The water reached 1.87 meters (6.14 feet) above sea level Tuesday, the second-highest level ever recorded in the city and just 7 centimeters (2½ inches) lower than the historic 1966 flood. Another wave of exceptionally high water followed Wednesday. “Venice is on its knees,’’ Mayor Luigi Brugnaro said on Twitter. “St. Mark’s Basilica has sustained serious damage, like the entire city and its islands.” One death was blamed on the flooding, on the barrier island of Pellestrina. A man in his 70s was apparently electrocuted w...
WASHINGTON (AP) – The U.S. State Department says it’s “deeply concerned” by a new EU requirement for businesses to label products from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. The statement came in response to Tuesday’s ruling by the EU Court of Justice that settlement products must provide an “indication of that provenance” to better inform consumers. The State Department said Wednesday that the ruling encourages the BDS movement, a Palestinian-led campaign that promotes boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel. It said the U.S. “unequivocally opposes” any efforts to “economically pressure, isolate, or otherwise delegitimize Israel.” The EU says it opposes the boycott movement but that settlement goods can...
The project aims to develop hi-tech investment expertise amongst Israeli institutional investors and to leverage public savings and the domestic capital market for the Israeli hi-tech industry Jerusalem – 13 November 2019: Today, the board of the Israel Innovation Authority, approved a new program formulated by the Israel Securities Authority to promote investments by Israeli institutional investors in Israel’s hi-tech industry. Under the program’s framework, Israeli institutional investment entities, including mutual funds (such as hi-tech funds), provident funds, pension funds, and insurance companies, that will win a competitive process, will be eligible to receive a grant of up to $1 million (approximately NIS 3.5 million) over the span of five years, to es...
JERUSALEM (VINnews) – Despite the strict Home Command directive requiring people living in southern areas of Israel not to congregate in groups of more than 100, Israelis aren’t going to let a few rockets ruin their weddings. Last night couples in the affected region found all kinds of creative ways to celebrate their marriages despite the security situation. Even the red alerts blaring regularly during the night did not deter them or mar the joy. And it’s just this kind of crisis that brings out the best in Israelis. For one couple, a surprise visit to their wedding from singing star and 2018 Eurovision winner Neta Barzilai saved the day for them. Barzilai saw the couple, Efrat and Eliran, who had planned to marry in a ceremony with 400-plus guests in Beersheba on Tuesd...
The Israeli military is massing ground forces on the border with the Gaza Strip in an effort to thwart possible terrorist infiltration attempt from the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave. Early Tuesday morning, the IDF assassinated Baha Abu al-Ata, commander of the Iran-backed Palestinian terrorist group Islamic Jihad. Since then, southern Israel has been blanketed by rocket fire from Gaza, with warning sirens sounding as far away as Tel Aviv, in the center of the country. The IDF conducted a number of retaliatory strikes in Gaza throughout the day as the rocket launches persisted. According to the Israeli news site Walla, the IDF is moving armored forces and infantry units to the border area. Furthermore, senior reserve officers are being sent to the Southern Command headquarters. The major ...
The FBI says there were 49 reported hate crimes in our state last year. The latest figures on hate crimes find that the majority of those reported in Maryland were against victims because of their race or ethnicity, which follows the nationwide trend. Montgomery County Police reported 16 hate crimes for last year. That was the most reported in our state, according to the FBI findings. Six hate crimes were reported by Anne Arundel County police in 2018. Baltimore County Police reported three hate crimes for last year. The report shows the Baltimore City Police Department reported a hate crime involving a person because of their sexual orientation last year. Nationwide, the FBI reported about 7,000 hate crimes.  More than half of the victims were targeted, the agency sa...
Palestinian sources say the Israeli drone confirmed Baha Abu al-Ata precise location minutes before strike i24NEWS has learned that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) used a drone to confirm that a Palestinian Islamic Jihad commander was inside his Gaza home minutes before his assassination. According to Palestinian sources, the drone entered his apartment to indicate his precise location. A few minutes later, an IDF airstrike was launched at the apartment, killing Baha Abu al-Ata and his wife. Additionally, the sources said following a barrage of rockets fired toward Israel’s southern city of Sderot over two weeks ago, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was spotted hovering over the home of Abu al-Ata and the homes of three other Islamic Jihad senior figures in the coastal enclave. I...
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Snow and cold records fell as an arctic airmass that started in Siberia spilled over a big chunk of the eastern half of the U.S., including the normally mild South, on Tuesday. The mid-autumn taste of winter brought record single-digit temperatures to Chicago and environs; set snowfall records in Buffalo and Detroit; dusted cars with snow in Memphis, Tennessee; and froze lakes in Minnesota weeks earlier than usual. Wisconsin farmer Bob Grove still has soybeans in the field, 20 miles south of Milwaukee, but said he can’t harvest them because the snow will clog the machinery. “Normally, you don’t see this kind of weather to well into December,” Grove said. “It’s caught us off guard, as far as getting crops harvested. Doing wha...
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Billionaire philanthropists Joan and Sandy Weill announced Tuesday they are donating $106 million to launch a research initiative at three West Coast universities aimed at finding treatments for brain disorders like epilepsy and Alzheimer’s disease. The donation to the University of California, San Francisco, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Washington will go toward a “neurohub” that will bring together data-driven and engineering work done at the three institutions, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. “How does one study 110 billion cells, each of which is connected to 50,000 others? And modified by environment, modified by genetics, influenced by our microbiome?” said Stephen Hauser, a neurologist ...
NEW YORK (AP) – Michael Bloomberg filed paperwork Tuesday to appear on the ballot in Arkansas’ March 3 presidential primary, the latest indication that the billionaire former New York City mayor may seek the Democratic nomination . Bloomberg sent staffers to Alabama last week to file for the primary there, but filed his paperwork in person in Arkansas two hours before the state’s deadline. “We’re getting closer” to making a decision, Bloomberg told reporters after filing paperwork at Arkansas’ Capitol. He’s moving toward a presidential bid as he warns that the current field of Democratic presidential candidates isn’t equipped to defeat President Donald Trump next year. If he runs, Bloomberg plans to skip campaigning in the traditiona...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Trump confidant Roger Stone wanted to contact Jared Kushner in order to “debrief” the president’s son-in-law about hacked emails that were damaging to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign, a former Trump campaign aide said Tuesday. Rick Gates, who was Donald Trump’s deputy campaign chairman and became a key cooperator in the special counsel’s Russia probe, appeared on the witness stand in Stone’s criminal case in federal court in Washington. Stone is charged with witness tampering and lying to Congress about his attempts to contact WikiLeaks about the damaging material during the 2016 presidential campaign. The testimony spelled out Stone’s efforts to at least be seen by the highest ranks of the Trump camp...
President Trump will welcome Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the White House on Wednesday — the leaders’ first meeting since a diplomatic clash over Turkey’s military offensive in northern Syria — as Congress opens the first public impeachment hearings into the U.S. president. Trump will be trying to move past the episode in Syria that he helped trigger by pulling U.S. troops out of the region, where they were maintaining peace between Turkey and the American-allied Kurdish forces that helped defeat Islamic State. At the same time, Trump is expected to increase pressure on Erdogan over his decision to purchase a Russian anti-aircraft missile system despite American admonitions. The meeting comes as Trump faces the first of several public hearings in...
A mother from the southern Israeli city Netivot is calling her family’s narrow escape from a direct hit on their house by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip a “miracle.” Batsheva Hadad’s home suffered extensive damage from a rocket strike on Tuesday — a day on which more than 150 rockets were fired from Hamas-ruled Gaza into Israel after the IDF assassinated a top Islamic Jihad commander. However, in the few seconds between the activation of the warning siren and the impact of the rocket, Batsheva succeeded in getting her family into a fortified room, saving all their lives. “It’s a great miracle, I have no words,” Batsheva told Israel’s Channel 13. “Thanks to the holy one, blessed be he,” she said. “It wasn’...
Under constant rocket fire from Gaza since 6:00 a.m. this morning, volunteers from United Hatzalah in Sderot stepped up to perform an act of everlasting kindness when they assisted in preparing the grave and burial rights of a resident of the city who died yesterday. Staff and volunteers who regularly take care of these arrangements for the deceased in the city were unable to perform reach the city due to the barrage of rockets coming from Gaza. The volunteers stayed to provide medical security to the small group of people who managed to arrive for the burial service to pay their respects for their neighbor and friend.
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