Democratic presidential candidates Amy Klobuchar and Tom Steyer couldn’t name the Mexican president when asked for it during a televised interview in Nevada Thursday. The two, along with Pete Buttigieg, were separately interviewed by Spanish-language station Telemundo after a candidate forum hosted by the League of United Latin American Citizens. Klobuchar, a Minnesota senator, replied, “No,” when asked who the Mexican president is. “I forgot,” was billionaire businessman Tom Steyer’s response. Buttigieg, the former South Bend, Indiana mayor, was the only candidate to correctly name Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrado, though he didn’t seem too confi...
The Israeli Defense Ministry recently announced a successful trial of what it described as an “advanced version of the Iron Dome air-defense system.” The trial was led by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, which produces Iron Dome, and was held in southern Israel. Symbolically, it came 10 years after the very first Iron Dome trials, held in January 2010. Since those tests, Iron Dome has conducted more than 2,400 successful real-life interceptions rockets—most of them fired by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad from the Gaza Strip towards built-up areas in Israel. While no details are currently available about the nature of the latest Iron upgrade, it’s clear that the changes are designed to help the system deal with future threats, such as large barrages of rocket...
A team of more than 400 lawyers from the Lawfare Project, a nonprofit human and civil-rights litigation and advocacy group, have partnered with nearly 1,000 legislators working for the Israel Allies Foundation to fight the a pro-BDS ruling by the European Court of Justice that requires E.U. countries to identify products made in Israeli settlements on their labels. In November, the European Union’s top court ruled that Israeli goods produced over the pre-1967 line—meaning products from eastern Jerusalem, Golan Heights and West Bank settlements—must be marked as settlement products in all 28 E.U. member states. Israel opposes the labeling and holds that it supports the BDS movement, providing a tool to boycott the Jewish state. Israel Allies Foundation president Josh Re...
Researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s (BGU) Cyber Security Research Center have found that they can cause the autopilot on an autonomous vehicle to erroneously apply its brakes in response to “phantom” images projected on a road or billboard. In a new paper, “Phantom of the ADAS,” researchers demonstrated that autopilots and advanced driving-assistance systems (ADASs) in semi-autonomous or fully autonomous cars register depthless projections of objects (phantoms) as real objects. They show how attackers can exploit this perceptual challenge to manipulate the vehicle and potentially harm the driver or passengers without any special expertise by using a commercial drone and inexpensive image projector. While fully and semi-autonomous cars are a...
MUNICH (AP) — Iran’s foreign minister said Saturday that U.S. President Donald Trump is receiving bad advice if he believes an American “maximum pressure” campaign against his country will cause the government in Tehran to collapse. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told a group of top defense officials and diplomats at the Munich Security Conference that the information provided to the president has dissuaded Trump from accepting offers from other leaders to mediate between Washington and Tehran. “President Trump has been convinced that we are about to collapse so he doesn’t want to talk to a collapsing regime,” Zarif said. To support his argument, the Iranian minister cited Trump’s decision to pull out unilaterally in 2018 from Iran&...
Security establishment thwarts malicious Hamas technology aiming to infect cell phones of those in the IDF via social media. The security system thwarted a number of Hamas servers over the weekend trying to infect cellular devices of those serving in the IDF, it was cleared for publication Sunday morning, in what has been dubbed "Operation Rebound." "The purpose of the thwarting," says the IDF spokesman, "was to thwart a set of Hamas technological measures to infect those in the service of the IDF with malware distributed through social networks. The innovation this time also includes the use of the Telegram messaging network and the impersonation of deaf and dumb people,” thereby providing an excuse to avoid voice and video conversations. The Hamas operations also included ...
This comes as the administration has repeatedly targeted sanctuary cities that limit cooperation with immigration enforcement authorities. The Trump administration will deploy 100 tactical Border Patrol officers to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 10 so-called sanctuary cities across the nation, a senior official with the Department of Homeland Security said Friday. The decision to deploy the officers comes after the administration has recently repeatedly targeted sanctuary cities that limit cooperation with immigration enforcement authorities. The Customs and Border Protection officers were being sent to work with ICE in those cities from February to May to “enhance integrity of the immigration system, protect public safety, and strengthen our national securit...
SKOPJE, North Macedonia (AP) — North Macedonia’s parliament voted to dismiss a government minister Saturday after she appeared at two news conferences in front of a large wall sign bearing the country’s old name, Republic of Macedonia, and refused to change it. Prime Minister Oliver Spasovski, who is leading a caretaker government appointed last month, said he recommended the removal of Labor and Social Policy Minister Rasela Mizrahi’s because she “deliberately and consciously breached the laws and constitution” and “endangered” North Macedonia’s Euro-Atlantic future. After six hours of heated debate that ended before dawn, lawmakers voted 62-26 to dismiss Mizrahi from the Cabinet of technicians that is serving before an early electio...
WASHINGTON (AP) – The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is distancing itself from a political action committee that has run ads against Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. The political action arm of Democratic Majority for Israel, formed last year to bolster the party’s support for Israel as its conservative government faces growing criticism from American progressives, ran a six-figure ad campaign in Iowa last month that questioned Sanders’ health and his ability to defeat President Donald Trump in November. Those ads prompted pushback from Sanders’ campaign, and a Friday report from the left-leaning website The Intercept asserted that AIPAC was helping Democratic Majority for Israel by allowing its donors to get AIPAC benefits from contribut...
NEW YORK (AP) — A 14-year-old has been arrested in the fatal stabbing of a Barnard College student in a park during a robbery in December, a crime that rattled New York City residents, authorities said Saturday. Rashaun Weaver has been indicted by a grand jury and was taken into custody Friday night without incident, New York City Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said at a news conference. Weaver, charged with second-degree murder and robbery, is the second teenager to be charged in the attack on 18-year-old Tessa Majors in a Manhattan park. “We are confident that we have the person in custody who stabbed her,” Shea said. “And that person will face justice in a court of law.” The Associated Press is naming the juvenile defendant because of the seriousness o...
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) says that English should not be the official language of the U.S., a reversal from a vote she cast more than a decade ago. At a campaign event in Las Vegas on Friday, Klobuchar said she has now “taken a strong position against” the English-language amendment, which she voted for in 2007, according to The Associated Press. Her shift on the issue comes a week before the Democratic caucuses in Nevada, which has a significant Latino population and where she polls at about 10 percent support. “I think that when you look at a state like this state, and a country like ours that is so diverse, you don’t want to have that provision in law because then it would be very difficult to have, say, government documents...
On Sunday, a massive atzeres tefilla will be held at the Kosel to ask for rachamei shomayim over the COVID-19 epidemic. The virus has already infected over 67 thousand people, and has killed over 1,500. The atzeres tefilla is initiated by Chief Rabbi of Tzfat and President of the Rabbinical Community Association Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu; in partnership with the OU ISRAEL and its Rabbi Avi Berman; and the Rabbinical Community Association, led by Rabbi Amichai Eliyahu. The atzeres tefilla, scheduled for Sunday at 4:40p.m., will include a mass tefillah initiated by Rabbi Eliyahu, Rabbi Avi Berman, Rabbi Amichai Eliyahu, and other rabbis. Read more at Arutz Sheva.
China reported 143 virus deaths and a dip in new cases Saturday while the head of the World Health Organization praised the country’s efforts to contain the new disease, saying they have “bought the world time” and that other nations must make the most of it. France, meanwhile, reported Europe’s first death from the new virus, a Chinese tourist from Hubei province, where the disease emerged in December. The United States was preparing to fly home American passengers quarantined aboard a cruise ship in Japan. The U.N. health agency’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, urged governments to step up their efforts to prepare for the virus, saying “it’s impossible to predict which direction this epidemic will take.” Read more at ...
A Jewish woman in the United Kingdom recently opened up about what it was like to be the neighbor of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in Munich, Germany, in the 1920s and 1930s. Alice Frank Stock, 101, told the Daily Mail that she lived several doors away from Hitler in an apartment building on Prinzregentplatz in Munich but rarely saw him, usually only when he entered the building. “I saw him once or twice coming home, too. His car would draw up. Two SS men would jump out and stand on either side, and he would rush up to the house, terrified obviously of someone who would try and kill him,” she recalled. “I never spoke to him.” Stock remembered seeing a coffin being removed from Hitler’s apartment and thinking it belonged to his niece, Geli Raubal, who lived with ...
Blue and White leader Benny Gantz said in a televised address on Saturday evening that he would not share a government with the predominantly Arab United List faction and that he did not need its support. “I have a government even without the support of the United List. Blue and White will be the largest party; with the Jewish and democratic parties, we can form a unity government or a government with the left parties and Lieberman. We (will) witness that Likud with Bibi cannot form a government. Without Bibi, there is national unity,” said Benny Gantz, referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Gantz further added that Netanyahu was the “wrong person” to implement the peace plan recently unveiled by the administration of US President Donald Trump. Read more...
Israeli ambassadors in Europe refused an urgent order from the Foreign Ministry ahead of meetings with European foreign ministers on the subject of delaying the implementation of US President Donald Trump's "deal of the century." The reason for their refusal was cited as the meeting behind held on Shabbat (the Sabbath), and the fact that diplomatic emissaries would have their pay cut by one-third. Yediot Aharonot's Itamar Eichner reported that over Shabbat, the ambassadors received an urgent message demanding that they arrive immediately at their respective foreign ministers' offices and speak out in favor of Israel at the upcoming monthly meeting, which will be held on Monday. The Foreign Ministry also asked the ambassadors to update Jerusalem regarding their activities ...
IDF attacks Hamas targets in central Gaza in retaliation for rocket fire on southern Israel. IDF fighter jets and helicopters attacked several Hamas terror targets in central Gaza overnight Saturday, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said. The attack targeted a Hamas military compound. This attack hampers the ability of the Hamas terrorist organization to intensify its abilities, the statement said. The attack was carried out in retaliation for the rocket fire from Gaza toward Israeli territory on Saturday evening. "The IDF views any attack on Israeli territory as very serious and is in high readiness for a variety of scenarios. The IDF will continue to act as necessary against attempts to harm Israeli civilians,” said the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, which warned Hamas that ...
Billionaire Mike Bloomberg’s presidential campaign on Saturday downplayed a report that he is considering 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton as his pick for vice president. The Drudge Report, citing a source close to Bloomberg’s campaign, reported that Clinton was under consideration after internal polling found that a Bloomberg-Clinton ticket would be a “formidable force.” The conservative news aggregator, which came to prominence in the 90s for first reporting the Monica Lewinsky scandal, reported that Bloomberg would consider changing his residence to a home he owns in Colorado or Florida, “since the electoral college makes it hard for a POTUS and VPOTUS from the same state.” But the Bloomberg campaign quickly tamped down that report...
Mike Bloomberg is considering making Hillary Clinton his running mate, a source close to his campaign has told Drudge Report. Polling found the Bloomberg-Clinton combination would be a formidable force to take on Trump in the race for the White House, the source said.  Former New York City Mayor and Democratic candidate Bloomberg is said to be considering even changing his official residence from New York to Colorado or Florida - where he also has homes - because the electoral college makes it difficult for US president and vice-president to reside in the same state. Under the Twelfth Amendment to the US Constitution, which provides the procedure for electing the president and vice-president, it states that the two people could not both inhabit the same state as the elect...
Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who was captured by Hamas terrorists in 2006 and held captive for over five years until his release in October 2011, is now engaged. Shalit’s kallah is Nitzan Shabbat, to whom he proposed on Erev Shabbos. The 24-year-old Shalit was captured in 2006 near the Kerem Shalom crossing in Israel, and held by Hamas as a hostage at an unknown location in the Gaza Strip. Shalit was the first Israeli soldier captured by Palestinian terrorists since Nachshon Wachsman in 1994. Shalit, having a rank of Corporal in the IDF’s Armor Corps at the time of his capture, was promoted to Staff Sergeant, Sergeant First Class, and then Sergeant Major on the eve of his release. Shalit was born in Nahariya, Israel, to Noam and Aviva Shalit. He has an older brother an...
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