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August 2, 2021 at 8:26 am
Israel’s Health Ministry is quietly drawing up plans for yet another nation-wide lockdown, a senior ministry official said, as the number of new cases of the coronavirus in Israel continuing to rise.
A report by Yediot Aharanot Monday morning cited a top Health Ministry official who warned that unless the outbreaks of the Delta Variant are contained in the near future and the trends in infection rates reversed, a new lockdown is all but guaranteed.
“It is obvious to everyone that if we don’t succeed in getting control of this thing, then we’re heading for a lockdown,” the official said.
Health Ministry officials estimate that if the government does move to impose a new lockdown, the fourth since March 2020, it will be put into effect during the up...
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August 2, 2021 at 8:26 am
Positive test rate decreases slightly as country ramps up booster campaign for older adults
The number of daily COVID-19 cases in Israel climbed to 2,114 on Monday, including three new deaths reported in the previous 24 hours, according to Health Ministry data.
The percentage of positive tests stood at 2.95 percent out of 72,220 tests administered, representing a slight decrease from Sunday's tally of 3.17 percent.
Of those infected, 212 were in serious condition with 46 of these patients listed as critical and 42 people on respirators.
The three new fatalities brought the overall death toll to 6,477 since the pandemic entered Israel.
On Sunday, Israel began vaccinating eligible older adults above the age of 60 with the booster shot with high demand, according th...
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August 2, 2021 at 8:22 am
MK Yaakov Litzman (United Torah Judaism), chief of the Agudat Yisrael party, blasted the government’s spending plan which was approved by the coalition Monday morning.
“This wicked government passed this morning an evil budget for the state which will hurt the weakest citizens,” said Litzman. “This is a budget entirely crafted to cause social damage to those least able to handle it.”
“After years in which the reasonable social policies were maintained, including no increases in taxes, the dam has broken. This is an evil government which put together a political budget, a merciless budget, with nothing for us to look forward to and no hope.”
“Unfortunately, the budget put forward by the Bennett-Liberman-Lapid-Sa’ar government includes...
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August 2, 2021 at 8:19 am
Israeli high-tech companies have raised $ 14.3 billion since the start of the year
Israeli startups raised $ 2.4 billion in July 2021, the Globes news site reported on Sunday, which cross-checked information from companies and investors.
This figure could be higher, however, as some companies prefer to remain discreet and not reveal the investments they have received. This is the fifth consecutive month that Israeli startups have raised $ 2 billion or more.
The high-tech sector in Israel has thus raised 14.3 billion dollars in the first seven months of 2021, almost 50% more than the record 10 billion dollars raised during 2020.
Of the funds raised last month, $ 2.1 billion was raised by startups that raised funds of $ 50 million or more.
In July, cryptocurrency platfo...
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August 2, 2021 at 8:11 am
Ashraf Ghani also said his government has a plan to bring conditions under control within six months
President Ashraf Ghani on Monday blamed Afghanistan's fast-deteriorating security situation on a "sudden" decision by the United States to withdraw its troops, but said his government had a plan to bring conditions under control within six months.
Taliban insurgents have moved in on three provincial capitals in the last few days, amid rapid advances nationwide since Washington said it planned a complete withdrawal of troops by September.
"The current situation is due to a sudden decision on the withdrawal of the international troops," Ghani told the Afghan parliament in a speech.
"We have had an unexpected situation in the last three months."
However, the Afghan government had a...
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August 2, 2021 at 8:06 am
Health maintenance organizations report hundreds of thousands of appointments scheduled for booster
Israel's health maintenance organizations reported high demand Sunday for the COVID-19 booster shot on the first day of the campaign to get the third vaccine dose into the arms of 1.5 million eligible adults over the age of 60 in just eight days.
Despite the strong start to the vaccination drive, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Sunday evening pushed the country's four health funds to step up their efforts.
“The situation is good, but we have to pick up the pace,” Bennett told the heads of Maccabi, Meuhedet, Leumit and Clalit. “Our daily rate needs to be five times what it is now."
Added Bennett: "Our goal is to vaccinate everyone by the end of th...
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August 2, 2021 at 8:02 am
Budget raises state's Health Ministry budget to NIS 2 billion
The new Israeli government passed a major stress test on Monday with the approval of the country's first budget in more than three years.
"In good time, there is a budget in Israel. After three years of stagnation, Israel returns to work," Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in a joint statement by the Prime Minister's Office and the Finance Ministry Office.
The state budget for 2021 and 2022 passed after marathon talks between cabinet ministers and Finance Ministry officials on Sunday.
The budget next goes to the Knesset Finance Committee to prepare for the Knesset plenum for a November 4 deadline to pass into law to avoid the new government from falling apart.
It is the first state budget to pas...
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August 2, 2021 at 8:00 am
Imminent decision of justices raises fears of renewed tensions around sensitive issue
The Israeli Supreme Court on Monday was set to examine the appeal filed by four Palestinian families residing in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem.
They are threatened with eviction, while an Israeli religious Zionist association claims that the houses where they live legally belong to Jewish families present in the neighborhood before 1948.
To support its claims, the association submitted to the Court a document which would prove that the process of cession of these homes to Palestinians by Jordan was suspended during the Six Day War in 1967.
The Court's decision raises fears of renewed tensions around this particularly sensitive issue. The district was indeed the sce...
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August 2, 2021 at 7:56 am
Baltimore, MD – Aug. 2, 2021 - BJL wishes a hearty Mazel Tov to Yehuda Rosensaft and Shoshana Weiner on their engagement.
יה"ר שיזכו לבנות בית נאמן בישראל. אמן!
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August 1, 2021 at 9:39 pm
The highest ranking Republican in the Wisconsin Assembly said Friday that he was expanding a probe into the 2020 presidential election, saying it will take more investigators and time than originally planned.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos signed contracts in June with two retired police detectives and a former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice to handle the investigation. But those two investigators quit earlier this month, Vos confirmed for the first time Friday, leading him to “take a different tack.”
Vos has designated retired Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman as a “special counsel” and empowered him to hire as many investigators as he wants, with the goal of completing the probe this fall.
“If he thinks he needs one person, great,” Vos t...
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August 1, 2021 at 9:34 pm
The Department of Justice (DOJ) said Friday that the hackers behind the major SolarWinds attack compromised employee accounts in more than two dozen federal prosecutors’ offices.
The DOJ said in an update that the hackers are believed to have compromised the accounts from May 7 to Dec. 27, 2020. The data includes “all sent, received, and stored emails and attachments found within those accounts during that time.”
In total, hackers gained access to “one or more employees’ ” emails in 27 office across 15 states and the District of Columbia, the DOJ said Friday.
While other districts were affected to a lesser extent, hackers gained access to the email accounts of at least 80 percent of employees working in all of its New York off...
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August 1, 2021 at 9:32 pm
The Hamas terror group has intensified efforts to carry out West Bank terror attacks, with guidance from the Gaza Strip, Kan news reported Saturday in an unsourced report.
The TV network said Abdallah Arar, a Hamas man released from Israeli prison in the 2011 exchange for the release of abducted soldier Gilad Shalit, had contacted some 60 West Bank Palestinians over the past six months to try to recruit them to carry out attacks.
The report said Arar contacted individuals online, on social media ad on the phone, and had managed to recruit several people to Hamas in recent months. It said Arar was seen as particularly talented at recruitment, and that he often provides the people he enlists with detailed instructions on how to find targets for attacks and build bombs.
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August 1, 2021 at 9:29 pm
Ian Millhiser, a senior correspondent for the left-wing website Vox and senior policy analyst for Center for American Progress, is calling on Congress to punish unvaccinated Americans by increasing the income tax rate for unvaccinated individuals to 99 percent — a move which would disproportionately target black and Hispanic Americans, given their lower vaccination rates.
“Congress should increase the income tax rate on taxpayers who are unvaccinated, and who have no legitimate religious or medical reason to be unvaccinated, to 99 percent,” Millhiser suggested in a Thursday social media post to tens of thousands of his followers.
His extreme proposal, some surmise, is fundamentally racist, as it would not only rob millions of Americans — many of whom have exp...
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August 1, 2021 at 9:23 pm
Islamic State group terrorists ambushed a checkpoint in the restive northern part of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on Saturday, killing at least five troops from the security forces, officials said.
At least six other troops were wounded in the attack in the town of Sheikh Zuweid and taken to a military hospital in the Mediterranean city of el-Arish, they said.
Security personnel killed three terrorists in the firefight, and the area was reinforced, the officials added, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.
Egypt has been battling jihadists in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula for years. Violence and instability there intensified after the 2013 military ouster of Mohammed Morsi, an elected but divisive Islamist president, amid nat...
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August 1, 2021 at 9:21 pm
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy is facing calls to step down after he joked about having to restrain himself from hitting Speaker Nancy Pelosi over the head if his party takes control of the chamber next year.
McCarthy was given an oversized gavel adorned with the words “Fire Pelosi” by members of Tennessee’s Republican congressional delegation during a dinner Saturday in Nashville, according to a report.
The Republican leader was bullish about the prospects of the GOP regaining control of the House and him becoming speaker as a result, inviting the attendees of the dinner to come to the Capitol to witness Pelosi turning over the speaker’s gavel to him.
“It will be hard not to hit her with it, but I will bang it down,” McCarthy said, according ...
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August 1, 2021 at 9:19 pm
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said she may yet jump back into politics, teasing the possibility of a Senate run in 2022 against incumbent Lisa Murkowski.
“If God wants me to do it I will,” Palin told an enthusiastic audience during a discussion last week with New Apostolic Reformation leader Ché Ahn, Right Wing Watch reported.
“I would say you guys better be there for me this time, because a lot of people were not there for me last time,” she added, chiding the conservative Christian audience for what she said was their insufficient support during her 2008 vice presidential campaign with Sen. John McCain.
During the run, Palin was ruthlessly mocked as an outside-the-beltway lightweight who didn’t have the clout to potentially step into the top ...
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August 1, 2021 at 9:16 pm
Former President Donald Trump has been huddling with “cabinet members” at his New Jersey golf resort and is planning to “move forward in a real way,” former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said.
“We met with several of our cabinet members tonight, we actually had a follow-up meeting with some of our cabinet members, and as we were looking at that, we were looking at what does come next,” Meadows said Friday night on Newsmax’s “Cortes & Pellegrino” show.
He wouldn’t elaborate on whether Trump was getting close to announcing running for president in 2024.
“I’m not authorized to speak on behalf of the president, but I can tell you this, Steve. We wouldn’t be meeting...
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August 1, 2021 at 9:14 pm
A key inflation indicator rose 3.5 percent in June from a year ago — its biggest year-over-year jump in 30 years — as costs continued to grow in the US economy just as it’s mounting a comeback from the pandemic, the feds said Friday.
It is the most since July 1991 that the Commerce Department’s core personal consumption expenditures index has risen over a 12-month period, but still came in lower than expected as concerns remain heightened over inflation throughout the economy.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones expected to see the so-called core PCE index, which excludes food and energy costs, increase 3.6 percent.
The core index rose 0.4 percent from May, slower than the 0.5 percent increase seen from April to May and below the 0.6 percent incr...
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August 1, 2021 at 9:11 pm
Osama bin Laden’s brother, Ibrahim bin Laden, has listed his longtime Bel Air mansion for a whopping $28 million, The Post can confirm.
Ibrahim, who is the older half-brother of the late terrorist, has owned the property for nearly four decades, since 1983, property records show.
Ibrahim purchased the Mediterranean villa-style mansion for $1,653,000 at the time — what would be roughly $5.5 million after accounting for 38 years of inflation.
But, according to the listing, he hasn’t occupied the home since the September 11 attacks.
“Ready for redoing, owner has not been here for over 20 years,” the listing states.
