Twitter is refusing to take down the account of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s account on the social-media platform, even though he posts tweets calling for the genocide of Israel and the Jewish people, and even after the company was called out for its double standard over how it decides who violates its guidelines. On Monday, the Knesset’s Committee for Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs on anti-Semitic content online held a meeting with representatives of Google, Facebook and Twitter, but it quickly became clear that Twitter had no intention of making the necessary changes to prevent Khamenei’s anti-Semitic tweets. The Twitter representative was present, but did not speak, choosing instead to “listen.” Blue and White Party Knesse...
The nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates has rejected a request from the Trump campaign to either add an additional general election debate or move up the calendar for the contests. In a letter to Trump private attorney Rudy Giuliani, his liaison to the commission, the commission writes that it is committed to its existing schedule of three debates between Trump and his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, saying it would consider adding a fourth debate only if both sides agree to it. “If the candidates were to agree that they wished to add to that schedule, the Commission would consider that request but remains committed to the schedule of debates it has planned as reflected in the attached release,” the commission wrote in a letter obtained by The Associated Press. ...
Bnei Braq - Aug. 7, 2020 - The sad news comes from Bnei Brak this morning about the petirah of the late Rabbi Zosha Berkowitz, Z'L, one of the leaders of the Koidinov Institutions, who died suddenly. He was 52 years old at the time of his death. His father died in the last year in England. His funeral will be on the 11th from the Koidinov Beit Midrash on Maharshal St. in Bnei Brak. Many of the Baltimore community will remember him from his many visits here with the Koidenover Rebbe, shlita.
John Bolton, who served at National Security Advisor under President Donald Trump, relates in his new book how Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, prevented Prime Minister Netanyahu from speaking with the president when Netanyahu wanted to convince him not to speak with the Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Zarif. According to Bolton, Kushner pushed for a meeting but in the end it did not happen. In an interview with the Makor Rishon newspaper, Bolton says that President Trump’s decisions on a variety of foreign policy subjects were not made for any reason other than how they would affect American politics at home. “Sometimes I saw this strategy produce results as positive as I could have hoped. If Trump is re-elected, the fear from negative reactions from Repu...
Baltimore, Md - Aug. 7, 2020 - 11:51 AM -*** I-95 Closed Both Ways In Havre de Grace *** I-95 NORTHBOUND & SOUTHBOUND at MD 155/Havre de Grace is now CLOSED following a crash resulting from a police chase.   Med-evac helicopter is landing at the scene.
In a long-awaited announcement, the governor says schools can welcome back students if the rate of infection in their communities remains low.Schools across New York can reopen for in-person instruction this fall, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Friday, solidifying New York’s status as one of the few states in America that has a virus transmission rate low enough to forge ahead with reopening plans. Just a few months after New York became a global epicenter of the pandemic, the governor opened the door for millions of students across the state to return to classrooms, even as most public school students in the country will start the school year remotely. But Mr. Cuomo’s announcement does not guarantee that school buildings in the state’s roughly 700 local districts will ...
The IDF downed an unmanned aircraft overnight, after it crossed into Israeli airspace from Lebanon, an Israeli military spokesperson said Friday afternoon. The drone was shot down after it flew over the Mount Hermon area in the Golan Heights, the spokesperson said. IDF forces tracked the unmanned aircraft as it entered Israeli airspace and shot the drone down. There are searches currently underway at the scene for debris from the drone. Read more at Arutz-7
Joe Biden said in remarks on Wednesday that the Latino community is "incredibly diverse," "unlike" the Black community. "Unlike the African American community, with notable exceptions, the Latino community is an incredibly diverse community with incredibly diverse attitudes about different things," Biden said. "You go to Florida, you find a very different attitude about immigration than you do in Arizona. So it's a very diverse community." Biden made the comment during an interview hosted by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the National Association of Black Journalists that was released in full on Thursday. His remarks on diversity were a response to a question from NPR reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro, who asked a question about whether Biden, the presumpt...
The Baltimore City Council has voted to override Mayor Jack Young's veto of a measure to let residents vote on a charter amendment to create a city administrator. Council President Brandon Scott's measure would establish a chief administrative officer to focus on improving the performance of city agencies and take steps to better serve residents. Scott says the city administrator position will professionalize local government, but Young has said a mayor could just appoint a member of their executive team to handle those duties. Read more at WBAL
Gov. Ron DeSantis, who had repeatedly disparaged New York as an example of how not to manage the coronavirus pandemic, quietly lifted travel restrictions Thursday. New Yorkers and their neighbors from the tri-state region no longer have to self-quarantine for two weeks after entering Florida. Gov. Ron DeSantis, who had repeatedly disparaged New York as an example of how not to manage the coronavirus pandemic, quietly lifted travel restrictions Thursday on people coming to Florida from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. The three states are not the coronavirus hot spots they were when the 14-day self-quarantine restrictions were put in place on March 23. DeSantis lifted the restrictions Thursday in an executive order that focused on ensuring restaurants comply with employee coronav...
U.S. equity markets slid Friday morning as Congressional gridlock on a new COVID-19 relief package and growing tension with China overshadowed better-than-expected jobs growth. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 110 points, or 0.4 percent while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.15 percent and 0.16 percent respectively. A higher close for the S&P would extend its winning streak to six, the longest since April 2019. Looking at the economy, U.S. payrolls added 1.763 million workers in July as the unemployment rate fell to 10.2 percent, the Labor Department said Friday. Wall Street analysts surveyed by Refinitiv were expecting the addition of 1.6 million jobs to push the unemployment rate down to 10.5 percent. Leaders on C...
Parshas Eikev falls between the two places in the Torah where we are warned of the calamities which would befall Klal Yisroel if they turned away from Hashem.  In between those readings of Parshas Bechukosai and Ki Savo we also experience Tisha B’Av, when we vividly recall and reflect on many of those warnings which came to pass on multiple occasions in our history.   Conversely, Parshas Eikev begins with promises of great rewards for fulfilling Hashem’s Mitzvos. Specific blessings of ample crops, health, great families and security from our enemies are just some of the assurances given.  Our Parsha gives us perhaps the greatest blessing of all, it tells us the failures of mankind which lead us to go astray.  Not only does Hashem urge us to do what&rsqu...
The U.S. unemployment rate edged down to 10.2 percent in July even as a wave of new coronavirus cases forced most states to pause or reverse their reopenings, slowing hiring. The Labor Department said in its Friday report that employers added 1.8 million jobs in June — a far slower pace than the 4.8 million created in June, which was the highest recorded. Economists surveyed by Refinitiv expected the report to show that unemployment dropped to 10.5% and the economy added 1.6 million jobs. Estimates varied widely amid escalating fears that a flare-up in COVID-19 cases across the country and a fresh round of business closures would derail the job market's early recovery from the worst economic downturn since the Great D...
JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Rabbi Adin Steinzaltz, the author of the renowned Steinzaltz Talmud and numerous other books on all facets of Jewish literature, passed away in Jerusalem Friday at the age of 83. Born in 1937 in Jerusalem to a secular family, Rabbi Steinzaltz was sent by his father, a communist Zionist who believed in giving a broad Jewish education to his children, to a religious school where he gradually became religious and moved towards the Chabad Chasidus under the influence of his friend and mentor, Rabbi Shmuel Elazar Halperin, a descendant of the founder of Chabad. Rabbi Steinzaltz was also influenced by the Rabbi of the Katamon neighborhood where he lived, Rabbi Dov Ber Eliezrov, who was also a Chasid of Chabad. Rabbi Steinzaltz studied at the Tomchei Temimim yeshiva i...
President Trump issued an executive order on Thursday that prohibits any U.S. citizen or company from conducting business with Chinese-owned TikTok beginning in 45 days. Trump signed it after saying on Monday that he would give Microsoft a month and a half to look into buying TikTok’s U.S. operations. The executive order said “any transaction by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States” would be prohibited “with ByteDance … or its subsidiaries" within 45 days. TikTok is owned by Chinese internet technology company ByteDance, which is based in Beijing. “Any transaction by a United States person or within the United States that evades or avoids, has the purpose of evading or avoid...
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) deployed its novel Multidimensional Unit on the north border earlier this week amid tensions with Hezbollah terrorist group, Maariv reported Thursday. While the elite unit, dubbed “Ghosts,” was involved in Israel’s response to the latest border tensions in the north since their onset in a limited capacity, the deployment marked the first time the unit was out on a mission. The deployment disrupted the unit’s training schedule, with the army yet to declare it fully operational. Read more at i24NEWS.
Former US Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden prevented a move to mention Israeli “occupation” in the Democratic Party’s platform, Foreign Policy reported on Thursday. In early July, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and other influential progressives were convinced that they had secured a critical concession from Biden’s campaign by having the platform asserting that Palestinian Arabs had a right to live free of foreign “occupation,” a scarcely veiled reference to Israel. But days before a draft platform was released on July 15, the presumptive Democratic nominee personally weighed in, according to three sources familiar with the discussion, ordering his advisors not to include any reference to Israeli “occupation.&r...
California public-health officials have resorted to counting new cases of COVID-19 infections by hand after the electronic system for tallying positive tests broke down, the Los Angeles Times reports. The slowed-down method may mean that the numbers of new cases reported to the public by some counties are undercounted. “The information you’re giving to the public over the last few days gives people the sense that we are doing better, and that they can relax. That might not be true,” said Bob Kocher, a former member of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s testing task force. “We reported to the public that they went from 10,000 to 5,000 a day. If you’re looking at the data, you think we’re doing better. You might be less vigilant.” Several counties...
President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order Thursday that would encourage the production of certain drugs and medical supplies in the U.S., following shortages during the Covid-19 pandemic. The order urges purchasers to buy American-made products and loosens federal drug-safety and environmental regulations that the administration says disadvantage domestic producers, among other measures. The drugs and devices covered by the order are expected to include medicines used to respond to a public-health emergency or biohazard attack, among others. White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said on a call with reporters that the Food and Drug Administration will come up with the list of essential medicines covered by the order, but he didn’t say by when. Read more at NEWS...
Baltimore, MD - Aug. 6, 2020 - Dr. Bert Miller will be giving a shiur entitled, "How We Built the Baltimore Eruv." Rabbi Berger's shul, Kol Torah, this Sunday morning, August 9, 10:15-11:30 in the social hall.
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