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November 19, 2019 at 5:52 pm
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met on Tuesday evening at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem with Blue and White chairman Benny Gantz, who holds the mandate to form the government.
The meeting, which is considered crucial, began only 25 and a half hours before the expiry of the mandate given by the President to Gantz to form the government.
It concluded around 11:30 p.m. Israel time after approximately one hour, without a breakthrough.
Gantz said at the conclusion of the meeting with Netanyahu: "At the start of the meeting today, I said once again, as I have said since entering the political field, that Israel needs a broad and liberal unity government composed primarily of the two major political parties, led by Blue and White which won the elections.”
“A uni...
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November 19, 2019 at 5:41 pm
Baltimore, Md – Nov. 17, 2019 - This past Motzaei Shabbos, more than 100 6th grade Middle School talmidim of YCC/TA and their fathers were treated in the TA Middle School Bais Medrash to an amazing presentation on The Hidden Mission to save the Jews of Ethiopia by Rabbi Shlomo Horwitz. To allow as many talmidim to attend as possible, the evening was scheduled to begin after the completion of all of the Motzaei Shabbos Kal HaNearim programs from around town.
Rabbi Horwitz is well known in the community for his daily shiur in Cong. Shomrei Emunah, his wizardry on the guitar as a member of the Zemer Orchestra strings section and also a master storyteller (not to mention an accomplished writer as well).
Rabbi Yaakov Schwartz, Middle School Menahel, introduced Rabbi Horwitz and the at...
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November 19, 2019 at 5:02 pm
BERLIN (AP) — German special police forces arrested a Syrian man in a raid on his apartment Tuesday after receiving intelligence from American officials that he was planning an extremist attack, authorities said.
The 26-year-old “radical Islamist” was planning an attack in Germany designed to “kill and injure a maximum number of people,” federal prosecutors said in a statement.
The Syrian, whose name wasn’t given, came to Germany in 2014 as an asylum seeker and had been living in the country with “protected” status, said Martin Steltner, a spokesman for Berlin state prosecutors.
The suspect had obtained information online on how to build bombs and talked about planning an attack in internet chats, and an “allied foreign intelligence ...
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November 19, 2019 at 4:56 pm
Jerusalem, Israel - Nov. 19, 2019 - The tenth annual Temech Conference was held in the Jerusalem International Conference Center on November 19, 2019. Temech, which grew from the Kishor Conference for Haredi Women, had one thousand Israeli business and entrepreneurial women participating.
Gvira Milworm attended most of the previous Temech conferences, but this was her first one as Temech's new CEO, "It is a tremendous zechus for me to work with the special community of women who do and who give so much faith, women whose priorities are clear, women with a special closeness to Hashem."
For the English Program, following sponsor Ilan Goldstein of Elan Global Group, and Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair lecturer at Ohr Someyach, former Temech CEO Shaindy Babad ...
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November 19, 2019 at 4:40 pm
The world’s first successful “artificial meniscus” transplant was just performed in Israel, i24News reported on Monday.
The surgery was performed by Dr. Gabriel Agar from the Yitzhak Shamir Medical Center in Be’er Ya’akov and Dr. Ron Arbel from Ramat Aviv Medical Center in Tel Aviv, who were both involved in the development of the “NUsurface Implant,” which passed clinical trials in Israel and is made from medical-grade plastic in Israel by Active Implants LLC.
It was given a Breakthrough Device Designation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The implant is inserted into the knee joint with a small incision and made to mimic the movement of the body’s natural meniscus. It does not require any fixation on the bones or soft tissues, wh...
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November 19, 2019 at 3:49 pm
Rivlin denies all Arab elected officials are threat to existence of State of Israel and fifth column.
The meeting has ended between President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who came to the President's House for an update meeting together with the Likud coalition negotiation team. The President was updated by his guests on the political situation and again emphasized that he is of the opinion that the State of Israel needs as broad a unity government as possible.
In addition, the President expressed his strong objection to recent statements against Arab Knesset Members.
The President is of the opinion that calls by Arab Knesset Members from time to time regarding Israeli society, and particularly about IDF soldiers, are "gra...
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November 19, 2019 at 3:47 pm
US President Donald Trump's former Special Envoy to the Middle East Jason Greenblatt has joined the Republican Jewish Coalition's board of directors.
RJC National Chairman Senator Norm Coleman said: "Jason Greenblatt served our country admirably as an adviser to President Donald Trump and as someone passionately concerned for the security and peace of Israel. We commend his outstanding contributions to the US-Israel alliance and to the Trump Administration's efforts to develop a plan for a stable, peaceful settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
Greenblatt said: "It's an honor for me to participate in the Republican Jewish Coalition, a respected organization that has done great work for over three decades. Republican leaders in DC and around the country know ...
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November 19, 2019 at 3:44 pm
U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman pushed for a change to the U.S. position on the legality of Israeli settlements early in the Trump administration, but former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson opposed the move. This according to Channel 13 News correspondent Barak Ravid.
Friedman, the key driver behind the major policy shift, raised the issue again when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo came in. This time he got a "green light," U.S. officials told Ravid.
State Department deliberations on the legal status of Israeli settlements lasted a year.
A special team was formed that consisted of Friedman and department lawyers led by the State Department’s then-chief legal advisor Jennifer Newstead, who is now the general counsel of Facebook. During that year, the U.S. team he...
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November 19, 2019 at 3:39 pm
NEW YORK (AP) — The kombucha and beer on tap flow freely. The milk-and-cookie happy hours, yoga sessions and waffle Mondays continue as usual.
WeWork’s stock market fiasco has yet to reverberate much for its more than 600,000 tenants, spread across a global empire of gracefully designed co-working offices. But beneath the work-and-play cheer, there’s unease as WeWork embarks on a painful restructuring that will include thousands of layoffs as early as this week.
WeWork is slashing the lavish spending that fueled the office-sharing company’s breakneck growth while racking up unsustainable losses that ultimately turned off Wall Street investors, forcing it to shelve its initial public offering.
Shannon Wilkinson, CEO of a small online reputation management firm, sa...
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November 19, 2019 at 3:37 pm
JERUSALEM (VINnews) — In a trip to Israel organized by the Jewish Agency’s educational arm Israel Experience and France’s United Jewish Social Fund in Israel (FSJU), 80 French Holocaust survivors got the chance to do something they had not done before. Celebrate their Bar/Bat Mitzvahs.
Jacques Innedjian, a survivor in his late 80s told The Jerusalem Post that it was difficult to describe his feelings in the moment. “It’s a feeling that is shaking my entire body,” he said, showing his arm with a number tattooed on it. “This number was my mother’s number – it’s the only thing I have left of her. I tattooed her number onto my arm so that she will be with me wherever I go.”
He went on to explain that he is a victim of two geno...
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November 19, 2019 at 3:22 pm
WASHINGTON (AP) — A career Army officer. A career foreign service official. Both had a consistent message during Day 3 of the House impeachment inquiry, and each was troubled by the phone call between President Donald Trump and the president of Ukraine.
Here are some takeaways from Tuesday’s testimony:
‘CONCERNED BY THE CALL’
Republicans have consistently criticized the House impeachment inquiry by saying witnesses didn’t have firsthand knowledge of President Donald Trump’s role in trying to persuade Ukraine to investigate a chief political rival.
On Day 3 of the proceedings, that posture is suddenly more difficult to maintain.
The two witnesses in Tuesday morning’s session each listened to the July 25 phone call in which Trump prodded his Ukr...
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November 19, 2019 at 3:19 pm
The White House on Monday released a note from President Trump’s physician seeking to dispel speculation about his physical state after he made an unannounced trip to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for exams over the weekend.
“Despite some of the speculation, the President has not had any chest pain, nor was he evaluated or treated for any urgent or acute issues,” Navy Cmdr. Sean Conley, physician to the president, said in a letter released by the White House.
The visit was part of “a routine, planned interim checkup,” Conley said. Trump did not undergo any specialized heart or neurological evaluations during his roughly three hour stop at the medical center.
Read more at The Hill.
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November 19, 2019 at 3:16 pm
A day before Gantz’s mandate to form a governing coalition will end, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will meet with Avigdor Leiberman to discuss the possibility of bringing Leiberman into a right-wing coalition.
Leiberman has said previously that the demands of the charedi parties are ‘excessive’ and he will need greater concessions except for the issue of haredi draft.
Liberman said yesterday at his party’s meeting that if Gantz doesn’t form a government, then all options are on the table and its “each man for himself.”
Read more at Arutz Sheva.
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November 19, 2019 at 3:11 pm
The United States broke off talks Tuesday with South Korea over how to share the cost of the two nations’ military alliance, injecting fresh tension into the relationship over Washington’s demands that Seoul pay sharply more.
President Donald Trump has demanded South Korea raise fivefold its contribution to cover the cost of stationing 28,500 U.S. troops in the country, asking for nearly $5 billion, officials on both sides said. But that demand has triggered anger from Korean lawmakers and sparked concerns that Trump may decide to reduce the U.S. troop presence in the Korean Peninsula if talks break down.
The top U.S. negotiator, James DeHart, said the U.S. side decided to cut short the negotiations on Tuesday morning, the second of two days of planned talks. In a rare public...
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November 19, 2019 at 3:09 pm
The small Jewish community in Denmark experienced a 50-percent increase in antisemitic attacks in 2018 over the previous year, a new report from the Scandinavian country’s Jewish representative organization has revealed.
Compiled by Det Jødiske Samfund (“The Jewish Community”) — the official body of Danish Jews — the report noted 45 incidents targeting Jews in 2018, compared with 30 incidents the year before. It concluded that after several years of relative peace and stability, an increase in antisemitic attacks had occurred in each of the years since 2015 — when one person was killed in a Feb. 14 terrorist attack against the Great Synagogue in Copenhagen, as a bat mitzvah ceremony was underway.
Denmark is home to between 6,400 and 8,500 Jews, ...
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November 19, 2019 at 3:04 pm
Regavim submits a precedent-setting petition to the Supreme Court against the Palestinian Authority regarding an illegal school it built in an Israeli nature reserve.
For the first time in history, the Palestinian Authority will be called before the Israeli courts to present a legal defense against charges brought by the Regavim Movement.
At issue is an illegal school, built by the Palestinian Authority inside the Nahal Machoch Nature Reserve– on land registered to and under the full jurisdiction of the State of Israel. The nature reserve covers some 18,000 dunams (18 km2 , some 7 miles2) in the northern Judean Desert, stretching from the Baal Hazor Mountain towards the Jordan River and the Dead Sea. The reserve is home to a host of rare protected floral species, such as the Judean...
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November 19, 2019 at 12:25 pm
WASHINGTON (AP) — Elizabeth Warren has released a proposal to combat white nationalism that includes making prosecuting crimes committed by hate groups a top priority for the departments of Justice and Homeland Security.
The Massachusetts senator promises to use both agencies to prosecute white nationalist crimes involving threats to life as well as ones linked to broader, previously violent organizations.
Warren said Tuesday she’ll direct the FBI to investigate significant hate crimes and improve law enforcement training while ordering state and local governments to collect better data on bias-motivated crimes.
Warren also says she’ll direct federal prosecutors to seek similar penalties for similar crimes, including consistently designating hate crimes as domestic ter...
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November 19, 2019 at 12:24 pm
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. home building jumped 3.8% in October, a positive sign for the overall economy as developers anticipate steady demand.
The Commerce Department said Tuesday that housing starts reached a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.31 million. Starts for single-family houses were up 2%, largely because of construction in the West and South. Construction of apartment buildings rose 6.8% from the prior month.
Lower mortgage rates and a healthy job market have aided the housing market in recent months, yet housing starts are still down 0.6% year-to-date as a shortage of land and high construction costs have limited building. Affordability is a problem for would-be buyers as increases in home prices have outstripped wage growth.
The average 30-year mortgage has an interes...
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November 19, 2019 at 12:21 pm
HONESDALE, Pa. (AP) — A bagel shop manager in New York drove to Pennsylvania to return a key fob that a customer had left in his shop on Long Island.
Diana Chong drove off from Bagels 101 on Saturday with her family for a pre-Thanksgiving celebration in Honesdale. After parking in Pennsylvania, she realized she had left the fob, needed to restart her car, at the store 185 miles (298 kilometers) away.
Manager Vinny Proscia offered to ship the fob, but they couldn’t find a service. So Proscia decided to deliver it.
Chong tells Newsday she insisted he accept $200 for gas and tolls and a gift card.
Proscia says he got stopped for speeding on the return trip, but the officer let him go after he showed a thank-you card from Chong.
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November 19, 2019 at 12:20 pm
BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s International Center on Nazi Persecution has uploaded some 850,000 documents with information on ten million people collected after the end of World War II in the American occupied zone of Germany.
The Bad Arolsen-based archive said in a statement Tuesday that the documents contain information about victims of Nazi persecution that was collected in the winter of 1945/46 in Germany based on orders by the four occupying powers — the U.S., Britain, France and the Soviet Union.
They issued orders to German local authorities, companies and others requiring them to draw up lists of foreign nationals, German Jews and stateless people who were registered with them.
A large collection of these documents as well as other lists from the American Zone of Oc...
