Baltimore, MD – Dec. 6, 2019 - When an organization runs a 24-hour charity campaign it is all hands on deck.  It’s not unusual for people from all corners of the community to come together to volunteer and help the campaign reach its goal.  A busload of students arriving from a different school to help with a campaign - now that’s a little unusual! The students of Yeshivat Mekor Chaim (YMC), however, did not think twice when presented with the opportunity to spend some time during their day making phone calls for the Ohr Chadash Academy (OCA) 500k campaign on November 25. YMC was excited about our participating in OCA’s campaign. It was a great opportunity for our students to have hands-on experience engaging in important chesed by helping to raise needed...
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — After a photo surfaced of West Virginia correction officer trainees giving what appears to be the Nazi salute, state officials quickly suspended some employees and the governor ordered the firing of those involved. The image, showing more than two dozen trainees with their arms raised and faces blurred, was released Thursday by the West Virginia Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety. A line of text reading “Hail Byrd” tops the picture, which an agency spokesman said was a reference to the trainees’ instructor. Before the photo was made public, the agency’s secretary, Jeff Sandy, released a memo describing the image of Basic Training Class Number 18 as “distasteful, hurtful, disturbing, highly insensitive, and complet...
WASHINGTON (JNS) — Julian Castro, former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary and current Democratic presidential candidate, said on Thursday that if elected, he would keep the U.S. embassy in Israel in Jerusalem. U.S. President Donald Trump relocated the embassy there from Tel Aviv in May 2018, just months after recognizing Jerusalem as Israel“s capital. “The actions of this president when it comes to Israel and Palestinians in the Middle East has been counterproductive in helping ensure a two-state solution,” Castro told JNS on a conference call for members of the media. “I believe that he made a mistake in moving the embassy to Jerusalem without making that part of a larger, negotiated peace agreement and a two-state solution.” “...
DALLAS (AP) — The Homeland Security Department is backing away from requiring that U.S. citizens submit to facial-recognition technology when they leave or enter the country. The department said Thursday that it has no plans to expand facial recognition to U.S. citizens. A spokesman said DHS will delete the idea from its regulatory agenda, where privacy advocates spotted it this week. The advocates and lawmakers accused DHS of reneging on repeated promises not to force American citizens to be photographed leaving or entering the United States, a process that is required for foreign visitors. Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., called the administration’s retreat “a victory for every single American traveler who flies on a plane.” He credited public pressure for the abou...
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) — An indoor ski slope that has been the most visible feature of the long-delayed American Dream megamall in New Jersey for more than a decade has finally opened. Olympic downhill champion Lindsey Vonn took the first official run down the 1,000-foot slope Thursday. Mall owner Triple Five says it’s the only indoor slope in North America. The ski slope was one of the first elements built more than a decade ago and could be seen from the adjacent New Jersey Turnpike. The retail and entertainment project began in 2003 next to the Meadowlands sports complex but stalled because of financing problems. Triple Five took over in 2010 and began a phased opening in October. All elements are expected to be open by spring. The ski slope measures 180,000 square f...
German Chancellor Angela Merkel will make her first visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial on Friday and will bring a 60 million euro donation to help conserve the site, the museum said on Thursday. “Auschwitz is a museum but is also the biggest cemetery in the world … (memory) is the key to building the present and future,” museum director Piotr Cywinski told the Reuters news agency ahead of Merkel’s visit at the invitation of the Auschwitz foundation. Merkel said the donation, half of which comes from Germany’s federal government and half from the regional governments, would ensure the memorial is preserved. “I am very happy that we could agree that the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial will get additional money,” she said after meeting German st...
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)’s Passaic, N.J. Branch on Wednesday published a Facebook post claiming that African-Americans “are dying so that Jews can live.” In the post, NAACP Passaic shared a Disclose.tv article titled “Israel gets $50 billion while America cannot afford clean water for Flint.” It claims that the Democrats have tried to push to give $400m to Flint for “the worst public health crisis the United States has endured in recent memory,” but were rebuffed by Republicans. It then claimed Israel had “demanded” the US increase its budget to $50 billion. The NAACP has yet to comment on the post. Read more at Arutz Sheva.
When Naftali Bennett was appointed last month as Israel’s defense minister, it was seen as a temporary political move by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to shore up his right-wing flank until a new government could be formed. Yet with the Jewish state likely headed towards a third election in less than a year, Bennett, who heads the New Right Party, will likely hold the office for several months, and is already making significant changes to the nation’s defense policies in just three weeks on the job. Since taking office, he has immediately responded to all missile fire from Gaza and Syria; has announced not returning the bodies of terrorists killed in Israel to their families; approved construction of a new Jewish neighborhood in Hebron; and instituted a hardline policy on...
The state of political discourse in these United States today — unfortunately, including much of the American Jewish world (including our corner of it) — was well exemplified in the reactions to something Senator Chuck Schumer of New York did not long ago. When Long Island Representative Peter King announced his retirement from Congress, some were pleased. Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, never one to hide her deeper feelings, tweeted, simply, “Good riddance.” Mr. Schumer, however, although a Democrat, issued a warm tribute to the Republican soon-to-be retiree, who not only is a member of the other party but someone with whom the senator has strongly disagreed on a number of occasions. Mr. Schumer tweeted that Mr. King, during his service in the House of R...
Baltimore, MD -  Dec. 6, 2019 - BJL wishes a hearty Mazel Tov to Binyomin Schuck and Shira Goldberger (Atlanta) on their engagement Mazel Tov Mr. and Mrs. Moshe Schuck and Rabbi and Mrs. Menashe Goldberger יה"ר שיזכו לבנות בית נאמן בישראל. אמן
JERUSALEM (AP) — Palestinian officials expressed “great concern” Thursday over a report by the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor that includes a warning that Palestinian stipends to attackers and their families could constitute a war crime. Palestinian Foreign Affairs Minister Riad Malki said the prosecutor’s office’s report was “based on misleading narratives of a political nature … rather than an objective and accurate description of the relevant facts.” The Palestinians have long sought redress with international bodies such as the ICC for what they consider Israeli crimes. President Mahmoud Abbas’s government appeared to have been caught off guard by the language of the criticism found in the report. The Pale...
OSWIECIM, Poland (AP) — German Chancellor Angela Merkel voiced a feeling of “deep shame” during her first-ever visit on Friday to the hallowed grounds of the former Nazi German death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where Adolf Hitler’s regime murdered more than a million people. Merkel noted that her visit comes amid rising anti-Semitism and historical revisionism and vowed that Germany would not tolerate anti-Semitism. She said Germany remains committed to remembering the crimes that it committed against Jews, Poles, Roma and Sinti, homosexuals and others. Speaking to a gathering that included former Auschwitz inmates, she said she felt “deep shame in the face of the barbaric crimes committed by Germans here.” “Nothing can bring back the people who...
U.S. and British law enforcement officials announced charges Thursday against two Russian nationals they believe responsible for separate global hacking schemes that deployed some of the largest pieces of malware ever seen to swipe tens of millions of dollars from the bank accounts of unsuspecting victims. Officials identified those charged as Maksim Yakubets, of Moscow, and Igor Turashev, of Yoshkar-Ola, Russia. They said a $5 million reward is being offered for information that leads to Yakubets’ capture – which they said was the largest such money offering yet for a cyber criminal. Brian Benczkowski, who heads the Justice Department’s criminal division, said Yakubets was the “leader of a criminal cyber gang,” who had been involved in cyber crime for the p...
Former Secretary of State John Kerry endorsed Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy on Thursday, saying his longtime friend and colleague has the character, experience and leadership skills to restore the nation’s standing abroad and confront urgent problems at home. “I’m not endorsing Joe because I’ve known him a long time. I’m endorsing him because I know him so well,” Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, said in a telephone interview ahead of the formal announcement of his endorsement. Kerry will join Biden on the campaign trail on Friday in Iowa, where the former vice president is in the midst of a week-long bus tour of the state, and in New Hampshire on Sunday, according to the Biden campaign. The former secretary of state said he w...
Sen. Cory Booker, who faces a very real danger of failing to qualify for the next Democratic debate, took sharp aim at his own party Thursday in the aftermath of Sen. Kamala Harris’s exit from the presidential race this week. What does it say, Booker asked a roomful of supporters in Iowa, that an “immensely qualified, widely supported, truly accomplished black woman, running to lead . . . a party that is significantly empowered by black women voters, didn’t have the resources that she needed to continue her campaign?” He added: “What message is that sending – that we heralded the most diverse field in our history and now we’re seeing people like her dropping out of this campaign?” As the effects from Harris’s departure Tuesday contin...
A lower-court ruling giving a congressional committee access to President Donald Trump’s financial records would usher in a new wave of political warfare in times of divided government, the president’s lawyers said in a brief filed Thursday. Warning of “uncharted territory,” Trump asked the court for the second time to review rulings from lower courts that have said Congress and state prosecutors have a right to review his personal and business records. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s decision in favor of the House Oversight and Reform Committee presents the Supreme Court with a “case of firsts,” wrote Trump’s personal lawyer, William Consovoy. “It is the first time that Congress has subpoenaed personal records of a ...
Less than a day after the Arab driver who rammed into the Rimmel family’s car was unconditionally released, police re-arrested him. He was re-arrested after a witness gave detailed testimony which showed the driver’s part in the accident, causing the charge against him to be changed from causing death by negligence to the more serious offense of causing death by driving lightheadedly, Maariv reported. This is one of the most serious crimes in the traffic code. According to the witness, the driver got into his vehicle and began performing stunts at high speed. He drove at an excessively fast speed and at one point crashed head-on into the rear of the Rimmel family’s vehicle. As a result of the violent crash, Tzipi Rimmel and her daughter were killed, while Tzipi’s ...
In a joint letter addressed to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres that was released by the world body on Wednesday, ambassadors from the United Kingdom, Germany and France reiterated that Iran has developed nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. The countries, all parties to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, formally the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), listed four examples of the alleged activity, adding that “Iran’s developments of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles and related technologies is inconsistent” with U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231, which restricts the regime from doing so. “Iran is believed to possess the largest and most diverse ballistic-missile arsenal in the Middle East, according to U.S. intelligence assessments, with a subs...
Senior Israeli military officials involved with the army’s charedi recruitment program denied on Wednesday that data was falsified to make it appear that recruitment quotas had been met, Ynet reported. The statement came in response to a report by Israel’s Kan radio that the Israeli Defense Forces has been inflating the number of charedi recruits for years in an effort to hide the fact that it was not meeting its quota requirements. The report claimed that in 2017, for example, the number of charedi recruits according to the army was 3,070, when in true figure was 1,300. However, according to Ynet, the military officials said the differences were due to changes in the army’s definition of who qualified as charedi. The army said in a statement: “The IDF recently d...
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