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April 8, 2021 at 10:36 pm
Israel may have reached herd immunity against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, say experts from its largest hospital, Sheba Medical Center.
Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population has immunity—through vaccination or having recovered from the disease—to indirectly protect those who aren’t immune by preventing the disease from spreading.
The immunity level needed to achieve this is calculated based on the transmission rate of the virus in question. For SARS-CoV-2 it’s estimated at 65 percent to 70 percent, according to Dr. Eyal Leshem, director of Sheba’s Institute for Travel & Tropical Medicine.
Approximately 56 percent of Israel’s 9.2 million citizens are now vaccinated and another 15 percent (approximately 700,000 people) have reco...
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April 8, 2021 at 10:23 pm
Baltimore, MD – Apr. 8, 2021 - BJL wishes a hearty Mazel Tov to Mr. and Mrs. Simcha Loewenthal (Eretz Yisrael) on the birth of a son.
Mazel Tov grandparents Mr. and Judge Abe Loewenthal
יה"ר שיזכו לגדל בנם לתורה, לחופה, ולמעשים טובים. אמן
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April 8, 2021 at 10:19 pm
Originally published 5779
In the aftermath of the tragic deaths of Nadav and Avihu, God appeared to Aharon, the bereaved father, and instructed him:
And the Lord spoke to Aharon saying, ‘Do not drink wine that will lead to intoxication, neither you nor your sons with you, when you go into the Tent of Meeting, so that you shall not die. [This is] an eternal statute for your generations’ (Vayikra 10:8-9).”
The Kohanim (priests) may not drink wine either before or when performing the Temple service. On a most basic level, this was to ensure the sanctity and appropriateness of Kohanic behavior. In addition, the Kohanim were often consulted on matters of Jewish law and therefore, had to possess the clarity of mind to rule on complex issues. But why was Aharon giv...
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April 8, 2021 at 10:17 pm
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan on Thursday announced a pair of vetoes, one of which was on a bill that would prevent juveniles charged as adults from being sentenced to life without parole.
In his veto message, Hogan said the bill would impact cases involving grave offenses including first-degree murder and first-degree rape.
"These are serious crimes that require the most serious of consequences, which is why a judge or jury sentences the individual to a lengthy determinate sentence, life imprisonment, or life imprisonment without parole," Hogan wrote.
The governor stressed work his administration has done on the legislative front and through clemency grants for juvenile offenders. He said the current framework already offers incarcerated individuals the chance to seek parole or a modified ...
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April 8, 2021 at 10:13 pm
Statement also spells Holocaust with a lowercase H and fails to mention anti-Semitism while referencing "prejudice and injustice."
The Democratic Party controlled House Foreign Affairs Committee released a Yom HaShoah statement that omitted reference to the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust and spelled Holocaust with a lowercase H.
The statement also mentioned prejudice but failed to specifically mention anti-Semitism or Jew hate.
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On Thursday, the Democrat-led House Foreign Affairs Committee tweeted, “On Yom HaShoah we commit ourselves to...
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April 8, 2021 at 7:30 pm
“They’re Healthy. They’re Sustainable. So Why Don’t Humans Eat More Bugs?” is the name of a recently published news article from Time Magazine. The author writes that approximately two billion people, mostly in Africa, Latin America and Asia, already eat insects. And in places like Europe and North America, where bugs were once upon a time associated with filth, the attitudes are changing to normalize the consumption of creepy crawlers.
The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says that agricultural production worldwide will have to increase by 70% in order to feed the global population expected to reach 9.1 billion by 2050. However, the demand for animal protein is increasing the strain on the environment, and decreasing meat ...
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April 8, 2021 at 6:58 pm
Baltimore, MD, Apr. 8, 2021 — Today, Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV) condemned the decision of the Biden administration to renew funding to both the Palestinian Authority and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Neither has implemented any of the reforms demanded by humanitarian groups and the Taylor Force Act, which was signed into law in 2018.
In particular, the Palestinian Authority retains its infamous “Pay to Slay” program, which provides generous rewards to Palestinians – or their families – who murder innocent Israeli and American citizens. UNRWA was forced to admit earlier this year that its “educational materials,” including math textbooks, encourage suicide bombings and other acts...
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April 8, 2021 at 6:08 pm
Washington-based group made threatening posters that featured Nazi symbols, masked armed figures and Molotov cocktails.
The leader of a Washington state neo-Nazi group has pleaded guilty to federal hate crime and conspiracy charges in a U.S. District court.
Cameron Shea, the 25-year old leader of neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division, plead guilty to the charges for threatening journalists and activists who expose online anti-Semitism.
Shea and three co-defendants were also charged with a conspiracy involving their efforts using an encrypted online chat group to identify targets who were working to expose anti-Semitism who they planned to threaten.
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April 8, 2021 at 6:04 pm
JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu mentioned in his Holocaust Remembrance day speech the story of Bella Freund, the chareidi daughter of a Holocaust survivor who could not bring herself to vaccinate due to the horrors her mother had experienced as a child who was part of the experiments conducted by the infamous Dr. Mengele.
Freund, who is the widowed daughter-in-law of Rabbi Asher Freund, the founder of the Yad Ezra organization and a mother of 8, said that her mother had never given her any vaccinations all her life after the trauma she suffered as a child and therefore she was nervous about taking her first vaccination.
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April 8, 2021 at 5:57 pm
Ford, GM announce deeper production cuts due to chip shortage
The S&P 500 rallied to record highs Thursday as Big Tech outperformed and as weekly jobless claims unexpectedly rose.
The benchmark S&P 500 rose 0.42% while the Nasdaq Composite advanced 1.03%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, meanwhile, climbed 57 points, or 0.17% to finish less than 25 points below its own all-time peak.
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The gains came a day after minutes from the Federal Reserve’s March meeting showed the central bank plans to continue the pace of its asset p...
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April 8, 2021 at 5:55 pm
Bnei Brak, one of the predominantly charedi cities hardest-hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, has seen a dramatic decrease in the number of reported active cases, with experts citing vaccination efforts as a major contributor to the decline.
Bnei Brak was infamously closed off by Israeli authorities early in the pandemic as the charedi-majority city suffered large numbers of cases and deaths, with charedi leaders accusing the government of targeting the ultra-Orthodox for “special treatment.”
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But a massive vaccination campaign, including one where chol...
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April 8, 2021 at 5:53 pm
Yerushalayim…Less than 24 hours after being sworn in, the 24th Knesset established a Caucus on Har Hazeisim, it was announced by MK Michael Malchieli, chairman of the Shas faction in the Knesset. The purpose of the caucus would be to oversee security, preservation and restoration of Har Hazeisim. MK Malchieli was again selected to be the Caucus chairman. The Caucus for Har Hazeisim was extremely active in the last few Knesset sessions, and was responsible for many initiatives on the historic 3000-year-old cemetery. MK Malchieli is in the process of signing up Knesset members from across the political spectrum. When first established several years ago, the Har Hazeisim caucus had 69 members, the largest such lobby in the history of the Knesset.
In his announcement of the Knesset&r...
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April 8, 2021 at 5:36 pm
The number of Americans filing first-time unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week, according to the Labor Department.
Data released Thursday showed 744,000 Americans filed first-time jobless claims in the week ended April 3. Analysts surveyed by Refinitiv were expecting 680,000 filings. The previous week’s total was revised higher by 9,000 to 728,000.
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Continuing claims for the week ended March 27, meanwhile, fell to 3.734 million from the prior week’s downwardly revised 3.75 million. Economists had expected the number of continuing...
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April 8, 2021 at 3:20 pm
Accused Monsey Hanukkah slasher Grafton Thomas — who allegedly hacked five Jewish men with a machete in 2019, killing one of them — has been deemed unfit for trial by a psychologist, prosecutors and his attorneys wrote in a joint letter Wednesday.
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Suspect Thomas Grafton was deemed unfit in a March 30 report submitted by Dr. Lea Ann Preston Baecht, the letter states. Prosecutors and Grafton’s attorneys do not expect the results to change.
“There currently is not a substantial probability that in the foreseeable future the defe...
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April 8, 2021 at 3:15 pm
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin III said Wednesday that under no circumstances would he vote to eliminate or weaken the legislative filibuster in his most definitive statement yet on the topic, dealing a blow to Democrats’ hopes of pushing major aspects of President Biden’s agenda through Congress.
The West Virginia senator also suggested in an op-ed published in The Washington Post that he would be opposed to using the budget reconciliation process, under which certain legislation requires only a majority vote, again to circumvent the filibuster, an avenue Senate Democrats have considered for passing Biden’s ambitious infrastructure package.
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April 8, 2021 at 3:12 pm
The B.1.1.7 variant of the coronavirus, first found in the U.K., has overtaken the initial form of the virus in the U.S. and is now the country’s most common strain, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said at a briefing that the version had overtaken other mutations that have emerged, as well as the initial version of the virus in the U.S.
“It is the most common lineage, period,” she said. “These trends are pointing to two clear truths — one, the virus still has hold on us, infecting people and putting them in harm’s way, and we need to remain vigilant, and two, we need to continue to accelerate our vaccination efforts.”
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April 8, 2021 at 3:11 pm
Mossad Director Yossi Cohen is expected to travel to Washington in the coming days for meetings with senior White House and US intelligence officials, Channel 13 reported on Wednesday.
It will be the first high-level visit by an Israeli official to the United States since President Joe Biden took office on January 20.
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According to the channel, the Jewish state would like to try and organize a meeting between Cohen and Biden.
During these meetings at the White House, the director of Mossad is expected to present “formal evidence of I...
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April 8, 2021 at 2:55 pm
United Airlines says it wants women and people of color to make up at least half of the 5,000 pilots it plans to train this decade at its new flight school, a push to diversify a career traditionally dominated by white men.
Tuesday’s announcement comes as U.S. airlines resume pilot hiring halted last year during the pandemic and as they find themselves in the crosshairs of politically charged issues involving race.
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“We want to make sure that we are tapping into a big deep talent pool and not limiting ourselves to just one section of the pond,&rdqu...
