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A serious accident on Interstate 95 in Prince George County, Virginia, early Sunday morning led to a miraculous outcome thanks to the coordinated efforts of local emergency responders and an extraordinary community mobilization. The crash occurred around 9:15 a.m. near the Route 623 exit when an SUV veered off the highway and overturned, leaving three people, including an infant, injured. Upon arrival, first responders found the infant had been ejected from the vehicle, and due to the severity of the injuries, a medical helicopter was dispatched to airlift the child to a hospital. The driver and another passenger were also taken to a local medical center. Authorities reported that all three victims sustained serious but non-life-threatening injuries. Remarkably, despite the terrifying circumstances, the infant’s injuries were minimal, and both the father and child were discharged from the hospital the same day. What followed the accident was an inspiring wave of chessed that turned this traumatic event into a true “mi k’amcha ysiroel” moment of unity and kindness. Local askanim immediately sprang into action, rallying resources and support for the victims. Chaim Feldman from Columbia Hospital, Meyer Spitzer from Florida Hatzalah, Yedidya Blau from Chaveirim of Rockland, and Aron Slone from Norfolk, Virginia, drove two hours to provide food and essentials to the family. Leading the efforts on the ground was Heshy Neiman from Cleveland, who coordinated help across state lines. He connected with Rabbi Mendy Heber of Chabad Williamsburg (Virginia), who in turn contacted Rabbi Mendy Weiss, a Chabad rabbi in Richmond. Rabbi Weiss spent seven hours at the hospital supporting the father and child, while Mrs. Nechama Kranz, wife of Rabbi Yossel Kranz, the head Chabad Shliach in Richmond, provided comfort and companionship to the mother during this challenging time. After their release from the hospital, the family was welcomed into the Kranz home, where they were given a place to stay and recover. The Richmond Jewish community, including Rabbi Mendy Weiss and Rebbetzin Nechomi Kranz of Lubavitch, and Rabbi Dovid Asher and Rebbetzin Aliza Asher of the OU shul Keneseth Beth Israel, played a pivotal role in providing care and support to the family. The family is expected to make a full recovery, and the coordinated response was as an extraordinary act of chesed and a tremendous kiddush hashem, showing the world the power of achdus in times of crisis and uncertainty. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

A ceremony was held at the Beis Medrash in the Rashbi shul in Tel Aviv on Sunday evening to thank Hashem for the incredible neis that occurred last week, when a suicide bomber who intended to target the shul prematurely detonated his bomb, blowing himself to bits and sparing those in the shul. The event was attended by HaGaon HaRav Yitzchak Yosef, the Sephardi Rav of Bnei Brak, HaGaon HaRav Masoud Ben-Shimon, Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv HaRav Yisrael Meir Lau, the Gabbai of the Rashi shul, Rav Avraham Meshulam, Shas members of the Tel Aviv City council, and other Rabbanim and public figures. During his speech, HaRav Yitzchak Yosef said: “How much Siyata Dishmaya have we seen, HaKadosh Baruch doesn’t abandon us – כי לא יטוש ה’ עמו ונחלתו לא יעזוב.” “וראו כל עמי הארץ כי שם ה’ נקרא עליך ויראו ממך – the shemirah and incredible neis that occurred here – it’s all in the zechus of the lomdei Torah here in the city of Tel Aviv.” (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)

Special counsel Jack Smith urged an appeals court Monday to reverse U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s dismissal of Donald Trump’s classified-documents case, arguing that Attorney General Merrick Garland had clear authority to appoint Smith to lead the prosecution.

Smith wrote that Cannon ignored decades of precedent when she issued her stunning decision to toss out the entire indictment, in which she said Smith was wrongfully appointed and wielded too much power for someone who was not in a Senate-confirmed position.

The 60-page filing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit marks the latest salvo in what has become a contentious relationship between the special counsel and Cannon, who was nominated to the bench by Trump and confirmed just before he left office. In measured language, Smith insisted Cannon’s dismissal of Trump’s indictment trampled on decades of legal precedent and Justice Department practice regarding the appointment of special or independent prosecutors.

Cannon has already been reversed by the appeals court in this case – at a much earlier stage of the classified-documents investigation. After FBI agents retrieved scores of classified documents from Trump’s home, Cannon ruled against the Justice Department and imposed an outside legal expert to review some of the evidence. That move was roundly rejected and reversed by the 11th Circuit. Smith is now asking that same court to again intercede to put the case back on track.

Cannon’s ruling that Smith was unlawfully appointed halted what was considered by many lawyers to be the strongest criminal case against the former president as he again seeks the White House. Two other indictments against Trump are also stalled. He was convicted in May in a fourth criminal case for falsifying business records related to hush money payments in 2016. He is scheduled for sentencing next month, though his lawyers have asked for a delay.

For decades, Smith argued in Monday’s court filing, attorneys general have appointed special counsels, and court after court has upheld those appointments as valid.

Cannon’s decision “conflicts with an otherwise unbroken course of decisions, including by the Supreme Court … and it is at odds with widespread and long-standing appointment practices in the Department of Justice and across the government,” Smith wrote.

Trump’s reply to the appeal is due in about 30 days. His campaign issued a statement Monday saying the higher court should uphold Cannon’s ruling.

“As we move forward in Uniting our Nation, not only should the dismissal of the Lawless Indictment in Florida be affirmed, but be immediately joined by a dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement. “Let us come together to END all Weaponization of our Justice System, and Make America Great Again!”

Cannon’s July 15 ruling was a shocking rebuke to a historic set of charges, in which the former president was accused of repeatedly breaking the law by allegedly stashing classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them.

Smith quickly vowed to appeal. He filed his legal argument one day before the Tuesday deadline set by the federal appeals court in Atlanta – the first step in a lengthy process that the government must take in its quest to resurrect the case.

If Trump wins the 2024 election and again becomes president, he could pressure his Justice Department to drop the appeals effort. Continuing would mean pitting his Justice Department lawyers against his personal defense attorneys in court.

But if Trump loses, the appeals process probably would go forward under the next administration, and the question of whether Smith was lawfully appointed could be decided by the Supreme Court. If the justices conclude that Cannon is wrong and that Smith was lawfully appointed, Smith could continue with his prosecution of Trump in Florida.

Cannon’s decision is only binding in the South Florida district in which she serves. It does not affect Smith’s separate prosecution of Trump in D.C. on election interference charges. That case has been on hold since last year and may be significantly narrowed by a Supreme Court decision that former presidents have broad criminal immunity for official actions. A hearing is scheduled next week for the judge in that case, Tanya S. Chutkan, to begin deciding which parts of the indictment can move forward.

In her ruling on the classified-documents case, Cannon drew distinctions between appointments of independent counsels – a predecessor to what is now known as a special counsel – and Garland’s appointment of Smith under the latter title.

But Smith largely dismissed that concern as superficial and said the mechanism that has allowed for independent-counsel-type appointments in the past is largely the same as in the modern era.

He argued that from the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, to the only American president to resign under threat of impeachment, Richard M. Nixon, U.S. courts have allowed for special or independent prosecutors.

“The district court erroneously regarded this history as ‘spotty’ or ‘ad hoc,’ giving undue emphasis to superficial differences in the appointments and roles of certain special and independent counsels,” the prosecutor wrote.

Smith criticized Cannon’s decision to disregard what the Supreme Court said about the appointment of such prosecutors in its U.S. v. Nixon ruling.

In 1974, the high court unanimously ruled that Nixon needed to hand over to a federal court tape recordings and other subpoenaed materials related to the Watergate scandal. In that opinion, the justices wrote that Congress has given the attorney general the authority to appoint a special prosecutor – one of the earlier variations of a special counsel – to handle key duties of the department.

Cannon, however, concluded that part of the ruling was not central to the decision and did not dictate the constitutionality of special counsels. Smith wrote that Cannon erred when making that decision, noting that the justices who decided the Nixon case did not include any caveat language to suggest their assertion on special counsels did not have legal muscle.

That seminal case, Smith said, “therefore binds this Court, just as it did the district court, and reversal is warranted on that ground alone.”

If allowed to stand, the consequences of Cannon’s decision could extend far beyond the appointment of special counsels to many other types of government officials, Smith argued.

“The district court’s rationale could jeopardize the longstanding operation of the Justice Department and call into question hundreds of appointments throughout the Executive Branch,” Smith wrote.

(c) 2024, The Washington Post · Perry Stein, Devlin Barrett 

For the first time in history, 70 Teimani Rabbanim signed a letter not to abandon the ancient communal minhag of translating the Torah. The Rabbanim have become aware that some shuls have stopped translating Kriyas HaTorah and the Haftorah to the tzibur on Shabbos and Yom Tov, an ancient takanah from the days of Ezra. The Rabbanim bemoan the fact that the minhag is slowly being abandoned:  “And if in the past, we saw a weakening of the minhag and a distancing from it on the outskirts of the camp, today we see that it’s spreading even among Bnei Torah…” The letter quotes Rebbe Shmuel HaNagid who spoke strongly against those who stopped translating the parsha in public and said that anyone who works to restore the minhag, “his sechar before the Makom is ensured.” The Rabbanim ended the letter by stating: “Don’t change the minhag of your ancestors and return to the paved path. Ensure that your children learn the mesorah of their fathers and know how to translate quickly and easily.” (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)

LISTEN:

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A young female resident of the yishuv of Yitzhar in the Shomron was driving home on Monday evening and came under an organized lynch by Arabs in Huwara. Miriam Yered said that the Arabs saw her as she entered the village and waited for her on both sides of the road near the Yitzhar Junction with rocks in their hands. ‘It was a lynch for all intents and purposes,” Yered said. “It happened as I was about to leave Huwara – they probably noticed me at the beginning of the village and prepared in advance for an organized attack. They ran at me from both directions with stones and rocks in their hands and tried to jump on my car while they threw stones from point-blank range.” “They attacked my car, tried to stop it and smashed it with stones with all their strength. Their faces weren’t covered which showed that they’re aware that they simply have nothing to fear.” “It was simply a neis that I made it out of there. Every part of the car was hit, stones passed by my head, the front headlights were broken, and the trunk was damaged – only the front windshield somehow remained intact. Glass flew at me but I managed to put my foot on the gas and speed away before they could block the road.” “There were no IDF forces in the entire village and as of now, I haven’t heard that they were arrested. They’re probably walking around freely and can carry out another lynch at any moment,” she cynically concluded. There have been countless terror attacks in Huwara, including the most well-known attack in recent years, the shooting attack in February 2023 that killed the Yaniv brothers, H”yd. Thousands of Jews living in the Shomron are forced to drive through Huwara daily as a major road, Route 60, passes through the town.     (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)

The IDF announced overnight Monday that the suspected abduction of a young Jewish woman in the Shomron was a false alarm. The drama began late Monday evening when a 17-year-old standing at the Tapuach Junction called the Shomron Regional Council hotline and told them he saw a Jewish young woman screaming “Help!” from the back of a Palestinian car that drove through the intersection. A large number of IDF forces were deployed to the scene and immediately began searching the area and setting up roadblocks. Shortly later, forces stopped a car that fit the description of the suspected car and detained the two Palestinian men inside. However, a preliminary investigation revealed that they were not involved in any abduction incident. According to reports, security officials had doubts about the credibility of the report following an initial investigation but treated the matter seriously out of an abundance of caution. (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)

LISTEN:

https://matzav.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/65a-perfecting-your-indivuality_81.mp3

In a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan on Monday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that Facebook faced significant pressure from the Biden-Harris administration to censor certain content related to COVID-19. This revelation comes over a year after Zuckerberg provided the committee with thousands of documents as part of an investigation into online content moderation. “There’s a lot of talk right now around how the U.S. government interacts with companies like Meta, and I want to be clear about our position,” Zuckerberg wrote, emphasizing Meta’s role in promoting free speech and safe connections. He disclosed that in 2021, “senior officials” from the Biden administration “repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire.” Zuckerberg noted that when Facebook resisted the censorship demands, the administration expressed frustration. “Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions, including COVID-19-related changes we made to our enforcement in the wake of this pressure,” he stated. He further added, “I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it.” Reflecting on the situation, Zuckerberg admitted, “I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.” He reassured that Meta would resist similar pressures in the future, asserting, “I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards to pressure from any Administration in either direction – and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens.” (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

The Taliban on Monday rejected concerns and criticism of the United Nations over new vice and virtue laws which ban women in Afghanistan from baring their faces and speaking in public places. Roza Otunbayeva, who heads the U.N. mission in the country, UNAMA, said Sunday the laws provided a “distressing vision” for Afghanistan’s future. She said the laws extend the “ already intolerable restrictions ” on the rights of women and girls, with “even the sound of a female voice” outside the home apparently deemed a moral violation. Zabihullah Mujahid, main spokesman for the Taliban’s government, in a statement warned against “arrogance” from those who may not be familiar with Islamic Sharia law, particularly non-Muslims who might express reservations or objections. “We urge a thorough understanding of these laws and a respectful acknowledgment of Islamic values. To reject these laws without such understanding is, in our view, an expression of arrogance,” he said. Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers last Wednesday issued the country’s first set of laws to prevent vice and promote virtue. They include a requirement for a woman to conceal her face, body and voice outside the home. They also ban images of living beings, such as photographs. “After decades of war and in the midst of a terrible humanitarian crisis, the Afghan people deserve much better than being threatened or jailed if they happen to be late for prayers, glance at a member of the opposite sex who is not a family member, or possess a photo of a loved one,” Otunbayeva said. In response to the UNAMA statement, Mujahid added, “We must stress that the concerns raised by various parties will not sway the Islamic Emirate from its commitment to upholding and enforcing Islamic Sharia law.” (AP)

A lawyer for Rudy Giuliani said Monday that the charges against his client in Arizona’s fake elector case should be thrown out because Giuliani did nothing criminal in contesting Joe Biden’s narrow 2020 victory in the state over Donald Trump. An indictment said Giuliani spread false claims of election fraud in Arizona after the 2020 election and presided over a downtown Phoenix gathering where he claimed officials made no effort to determine the accuracy of presidential election results. Attorney Mark Williams said Giuliani was exercising his rights to free speech and petition the government. “How is Mr. Giuliani to know that, oh my gosh, he presided over a meeting in downtown Phoenix,” Williams asked sarcastically. “How is he to know that that’s a crime?” Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Bruce Cohen is hearing arguments over whether to dismiss charges against Republicans who signed a document falsely claiming Trump won Arizona and others who are accused of scheming to overturn the presidential race’s outcome. Cohen hasn’t yet issued decisions on the dismissal requests. Arguments over whether to throw out the case will continue Tuesday. While not a fake elector in Arizona, the indictment alleged Giuliani pressured Maricopa County officials and state legislators to change the outcome of Arizona’s results and encouraged Republican electors in the state to vote for Trump in mid-December 2020. At least a dozen defendants are seeking a dismissal under an Arizona law that bars using baseless legal actions in a bid to silence critics. The law had long offered protections in civil cases but was amended in 2022 by the Republican-led Legislature to cover people facing most criminal charges. The defendants argue Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes tried to use the charges to silence them for their constitutionally protected speech about the 2020 election and actions taken in response to the race’s outcome. They say Mayes campaigned on investigating the fake elector case and had shown a bias against Trump and his supporters. Prosecutors say the defendants don’t have evidence to back up their retaliation claim and they crossed the line from protected speech to fraud. Mayes’ office also has said the grand jury that brought the indictment wanted to consider charging the former president, but prosecutors urged them not to. Dennis Wilenchik, an attorney for defendant James Lamon, who had signed a statement claiming Trump had won Arizona, argued his client signed the document only as a contingency in case a lawsuit would eventually turn the outcome of the presidential race in Trump’s favor in Arizona. “My client, Jim Lamon, never did anything to overthrow the government,” Wilenchik said. Prosecutor Nicholas Klingerman said the defendants’ actions don’t back up their claims that they signed the document as a contingency. One defendant, attorney Christina Bobb, was working with Giuliani to get Congress to accept the fake electors, while another defendant, Anthony Kern, gave a media interview in which he said then-Vice President Mike Pence would decide which of the two slates of electors to choose from, Klingerman said. “That doesn’t sound like a contingency,” Klingerman said. “That sounds like a plan to cause turmoil to change the outcome of the election.” In all, 18 Republicans were charged with forgery, fraud and conspiracy. The defendants consist of 11 Republicans who submitted a document falsely claiming Trump won Arizona, […]

Texas Governor Greg Abbott today announced that since signing Senate Bill 1 into law in 2021, Texas has removed over one million people from the state’s voter rolls, including people who moved out-of-state, are deceased, and are noncitizens. That removal process has been, and will continue to be, ongoing.

“Election integrity is essential to our democracy,” said Governor Abbott. “I have signed the strongest election laws in the nation to protect the right to vote and to crackdown on illegal voting. These reforms have led to the removal of over one million ineligible people from our voter rolls in the last three years, including noncitizens, deceased voters, and people who moved to another state. The Secretary of State and county voter registrars have an ongoing legal requirement to review the voter rolls, remove ineligible voters, and refer any potential illegal voting to the Attorney General’s Office and local authorities for investigation and prosecution. Illegal voting in Texas will never be tolerated. We will continue to actively safeguard Texans’ sacred right to vote while also aggressively protecting our elections from illegal voting.”

Since Governor Abbott signed Senate Bill 1 into law in 2021, Texas has removed over 1 million people from the voter rolls, including:

Over 6,500 noncitizens Over 6,000 voters who have a felony conviction Over 457,000 deceased people Over 463,000 voters on the suspense list Over 134,000 voters who responded to an address confirmation notice that they had moved Over 65,000 voters who failed to respond to a notice of examination Over 19,000 voters who requested to cancel their registration Total Over 1.1 million

Of the over 6,500 noncitizens removed from the voter rolls, approximately 1,930 have a voter history. The Secretary of State’s office is in the process of sending all 1,930 records to the Attorney General’s Office for investigation and potential legal action. To better crackdown on illegal voting, Governor Abbott signed House Bill 1243 into law last year, increasing the penalty for illegal voting, including voting by noncitizens, to a second-degree felony.

In 2021, Governor Abbott signed Senate Bill 1, Senate Bill 1113, and House Bill 574 into law. Senate Bill 1 elevated lying while registering to vote to a state jail felony, criminalized ballot harvesting, required the Secretary of State to conduct randomized audits of elections every two years, banned distribution of unsolicited mail-in ballot applications and ballots, and required ID for mail-in ballots. Senate Bill 1113 empowered the Secretary of State to withhold funds from counties that fail to remove noncitizens from their voter roll. House Bill 574 made it a second-degree felony to knowingly count invalid votes or refuse to count valid votes.

In 2017, the Governor signed Senate Bill 5, which increased the penalty for election workers who knowingly permit noncitizens and other ineligible persons to vote.

{Matzav.com}

A federal judge in Texas on Monday paused a Biden administration policy that would give spouses of U.S. citizens legal status without having to first leave the country, dealing at least a temporary setback to one of the biggest presidential actions to ease a path to citizenship in years. The administrative stay issued by U.S. District Judge J. Campbell Barker comes just days after 16 states, led by Republican attorneys general, challenged the program that could benefit an estimated 500,000 immigrants in the country, plus about 50,000 of their children. One of the states leading the challenge is Texas, which in the lawsuit claimed the state has had to pay tens of millions of dollars annually from health care to law enforcement because of immigrants living in the state without legal status. President Joe Biden announced the program in June. The court order, which lasts for two weeks but could be extended, comes one week after the Department of Homeland Security began accepting applications. “The claims are substantial and warrant closer consideration than the court has been able to afford to date,” Barker wrote. The judge laid out a timetable that could produce a decision shortly before the presidential election Nov. 5 or before a newly elected president takes office in January. Barker gave both sides until Oct. 10 to file briefs in the case. The policy offers spouses of U.S. citizens without legal status, who meet certain criteria, a path to citizenship by applying for a green card and staying in the U.S. while undergoing the process. Traditionally, the process could include a years-long wait outside of the U.S., causing what advocates equate to “family separation.” The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately return an email seeking comment on the order. Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton cheered the order. “This is just the first step. We are going to keep fighting for Texas, our country, and the rule of law,” Paxton posted on the social media platform X. Several families were notified of the receipt of their applications, according to attorneys advocating for eligible families who filed a motion to intervene earlier Monday. “Texas should not be able to decide the fate of hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens and their immigrant spouses without confronting their reality,” Karen Tumlin, the founder and director of Justice Action Center, said during the press conference before the order was issued. The coalition of states accused the administration of bypassing Congress for “blatant political purposes.” The program has been particularly contentious in an election year where immigration is one of the biggest issues, with many Republicans attacking the policy and contending it is essentially a form of amnesty for people who broke the law. To be eligible for the program, immigrants must have lived continuously in the U.S. for at least 10 years, not pose a security threat or have a disqualifying criminal history, and have been married to a citizen by June 17 — the day before the program was announced. They must pay a $580 fee to apply and fill out a lengthy application, including an explanation of why they deserve humanitarian parole and a long list of supporting documents proving how long they have been in the country. If approved, applicants have three years to seek permanent residency. […]

Leaders in Tennessee’s capital seek to implement measures to constrain the white supremacist activists spreading hate on the city’s streets after a flurry of activity this summer.

WTVF-5 reports that Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell, the Metro Council and the city’s Department of Law have collaborated on multiple proposed legal changes.

Measures include requiring buffer zones around demonstrations; prohibiting the display of distracting flags on overpasses; banning the distribution of leaflets on private property; and criminalizing face masks for reasons not exempted from medical, religious or costume purposes.

These efforts come following four demonstrations in the city by the Goyim Defense League on July 6, 14, 15 and 16.

(JNS)

An apparent cyberattack disrupted internet, phones, email and other systems at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport for a third day on Monday as Port of Seattle officials worked to investigate the outages and restore full service. “We’re working around the clock to get necessary systems back online and to mitigate impacts to our passengers,” the airport’s aviation managing director Lance Lyttle said in a press conference Sunday. Lyttle said the airport is investigating with the help of outside experts and is working closely with federal partners, including the Transportation Security Administration and Customs and Border Protection. Officials have not released details about the full scope of the outage, but Lyttle said it was not affecting TSA’s ability to screen passengers. Some airlines, including Delta and Alaska Airlines, reported no service interruptions from the outage. Both of the airlines use Sea-Tac as a hub. Still, the outage did affect the Port of Seattle’s baggage sorting system, prompting airlines to warn passengers to avoid checking bags if possible to avoid potential delays, as well as its lost and found system. The airport also warned travelers to allow extra time at the airport and to use airline mobile applications to get boarding passes and bag tags when possible. Still, many travelers faced security lines that were longer than normal and long waits at baggage claims and checking. Terminal screens were also out throughout the airport, making it difficult for some to determine their assigned gate. In a Facebook post, the airport said passengers should look for airport staff in green for assistance. Thai Un, 46, and his family were among those affected. He described frenzied scenes at the airport as he arrived there Sunday with his wife and four young children ahead of their flight to Maui. They waited in line for 45 minutes to drop off their checked bags, then discovered as they continued through the airport that none of the screens displaying flight information were working. The screens next to individual gates that indicate the next boarding flight weren’t working either, he said, and as a result, airline personnel were largely relying on the intercom to inform passengers about where they needed to go. Once on the plane, the pilot told passengers there would be a delay as crews were having to manually check bag tags, Un said. After landing in Maui, two of his family’s bags didn’t make it, while another family was missing all of their luggage, including the car seats for their young children, Un said. “We had to go to the customer service,” he said. “Sure enough, we turn around, there’s about 30 people in line, all in the same boat as we are. It was just chaotic.” While Un’s family ended up receiving their two missing bags later that day, navigating the travel havoc was still stressful, he said. “Any airline or airport, they should have a backup process in place,” he said. In a Facebook post on Sunday, the airport said port teams were making progress but that there wasn’t an estimated time for when systems would return to normal operations. (AP)

Amazon is preparing to launch its delayed overhaul of personal voice assistant Alexa in October, according to internal documents obtained by The Washington Post, as it faces new competition from artificial intelligence voice assistants from rivals.

Access to the upgraded version of the assistant will require a paid subscription, the documents said.

The release, scheduled to occur just weeks before the presidential election, will include a new “Smart Briefing” feature that provides daily, AI-generated summaries of news articles selected based on a customer’s preferences, the documents said.

Alexa has previously struggled to accurately answer questions about political news events, such as who won the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Rival tech companies, including Microsoft and Google, have programmed their own AI chatbots Copilot and Gemini to decline to answer questions about politics, in light of concerns about misinformation in a year of consequential global elections.

But Amazon documents said that “AI features that help customers curate, summarize, and explore current events was also rated as one of the top customer requests.” News summaries can create a daily habit and drive “recurrent engagement,” according to the internal communications, used to track progress ahead of product launches.

A subscription to the new assistant could cost as much as $10 a month, the documents said, but the original version, referred to as “classic Alexa,” will remain free to use. Amazon management is planning to make final decisions on pricing, subscription structure and the product name this month, according to documents obtained by The Post.

The company declined to comment on this story. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post.)

Other features of the new Alexa, sometimes referred to as Remarkable Alexa or Project Banyan in the documents, include help finding recipes and a chatbot aimed at children. The documents also describe new conversational shopping tools, which if they boost e-commerce sales could, along with subscription fees, help Amazon recoup some of its investment into Alexa.

More than 500 million Alexa devices have been sold, but Amazon has not disclosed revenue or other financial details for the project. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that development costs and consumers mostly using free functions of Alexa have contributed to the company’s devices business losing tens of billions of dollars.

Amazon first announced that Alexa would get a major AI overhaul in September 2023. The project was seen as Amazon’s response to the emergence of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which prompted leading tech companies to invest more heavily in AI. An internal Amazon document from earlier this year obtained by The Post said the revamped assistant was due to launch in September 2024.

The mid-October launch described in the new internal documents would mean it took Amazon more than a year to bring the project to fruition, slower than other major tech companies have launched some major AI projects since the debut of ChatGPT.

Amazon has not released a general-purpose chatbot similar to ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini or Microsoft Copilot, although it has launched a shopping assistant called Rufus. But the documents said that alongside the new Alexa the company plans to launch Project Metis, a web-based product, previously reported by Business Insider, that is meant to directly compete with ChatGPT-style tools.

The new Amazon Alexa is supposed to feel more conversational and charismatic, according to the documents. They describe how the assistant will learn to recognize the individual voices of new customers and ask people questions about themselves so as to be more helpful later.

“Tell me something about what you like to do on the weekends?” the device might ask, or, “Would you like to tell me more about your family?” If a user tells the assistant about their family’s dietary restrictions future recipe suggestions can take that into account. The more the AI assistant can predict customer’s needs, the more “like-able” customers will perceive it to be, the documents said.

The new AI Alexa will also help customers with other daily tasks, like finding recipes. “Food assistance was ranked one of the top 3 areas where customers want more help from AI enabled assistance,” according to the documents.

Many new features are aimed at making the Amazon shopping experience easier, which could help Amazon recoup its investment into Alexa through increased e-commerce sales.

Customers who pay for AI Alexa will be able to ask it questions about product details and appearance, like “what colors do the shoes come in?,” “what are the ingredients?” or “do you have any deals on headphones?”, according to the documents. A forthcoming product referred to as Shopping Scout can notify customers when an item they’re looking to buy goes on sale is described as “a marquee feature to drive subscriptions.”

Amazon also hopes AI Alexa will prove compelling to children. An experience called Explore with Alexa 2.0 will allow verified children to “have back-and-forth, exploratory conversations with Alexa about any topic under the sun,” the documents said. The children’s experience will be “safe and moderated,” the documents said, and in compliance with regulation.

(c) Washington Post

The famous Coney Island Cyclone roller coaster in New York City was shut down indefinitely after coming to a stop mid-ride this week. The 97-year-old wooden roller coaster at Luna Park was on its ascent on Thursday when ride operators took it out of service due to a damaged chain sprocket in the motor room. The operator stopped the ride and several people were removed from the roller coaster without injury, according to New York City’s Department of Buildings. Video posted on social media shows a person being carefully escorted down the tracks. Inspectors with the buildings department were at the scene Friday and issued the owners of Luna Park violations for the damaged equipment and for failure to immediately notify the department about the incident. A posting on Luna Park’s website Sunday said the Cyclone will reopen when the repair is complete and the ride passes inspection. “At Luna Park in Coney Island, safety is our number one priority and ride maintenance, and thorough testing happens daily before Luna Park opens and throughout the day as necessary,” the statement read. “The Coney Island Cyclone is a 97-year-old roller coaster that is meticulously maintained and tested daily.” (AP)

Israeli intelligence sources revealed that Yahya Sinwar has been hiding among displaced Palestinians in Gaza, disguised as a woman, after abandoning the network of terror tunnels beneath the enclave. Israeli forces came close to capturing Sinwar during a raid on his Gaza hideout 10 days ago, according to intelligence officials. Brigadier General Dan Goldfus, outgoing commander of the IDF’s 98th Division, said, “We were close. We were in his underground compound. The coffee was still hot.” Shalom Ben Hanan, a former leader of three divisions within Israel’s Shin Bet security agency, confirmed that Israeli forces have come within minutes of capturing Sinwar more than once. “As we have discovered through other elimination operations, Sinwar will not remain in any underground location for more than 24 to 36 hours,” Ben Hanan explained. “He knows our advanced technology can detect these locations, and he needs to stay on the move to avoid being found.” Israeli assets in Gaza have reportedly been equipped with instant DNA kits that can confirm Sinwar’s identity within moments during field operations. Additionally, a large reward has been offered for information leading to his capture, with sources noting that Sinwar is deeply unpopular among many Gazans, who blame him for leading the region to ruin. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Russia battered much of Ukraine on Monday, firing scores of missiles and drones that killed four people, injured more than a dozen and damaged energy facilities in attacks that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described as “vile.” The barrage of over 100 missiles and a similar number of drones began around midnight and continued through daybreak in what appeared to be Russia’s biggest onslaught in weeks. Ukraine’s air force said swarms of Russian drones fired at eastern, northern, southern, and central regions were followed by volleys of cruise and ballistic missiles. “Like most previous Russian strikes, this one was just as vile, targeting critical civilian infrastructure,” Zelenskyy said, adding that most of the country was targeted — from the Kharkiv region and Kyiv to Odesa and the west. Explosions were heard in the capital of Kyiv. Power and water supplies in the city were disrupted by the attack, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said Russia fired drones, cruise missiles and hypersonic ballistic Kinzhal missiles at 15 Ukrainian regions — more than half the country. “The energy infrastructure has once again become the target of Russian terrorists,” Shmyhal said, adding that the state-owned power grid operator, Ukrenergo, has been forced to implement emergency power cuts to stabilize the system. He urged Ukraine’s allies to provide it with long-range weapons and permission to use them on targets inside Russia. “In order to stop the barbaric shelling of Ukrainian cities, it is necessary to destroy the place from which the Russian missiles are launched,” Shmyhal said. “We count on the support of our allies and will definitely make Russia pay.” U.S. President Joe Biden called the Russian attack on energy infrastructure “outrageous” and said he had “re-prioritized U.S. air defense exports so they are sent to Ukraine first.” He also said the U.S. was “surging energy equipment to Ukraine to repair its systems and strengthen the resilience of Ukraine’s energy grid.” The Russian Defense Ministry said the attacks used “long-range precision air- and sea-based weapons and strike drones against critical energy infrastructure facilities that support the operation of Ukraine’s military-industrial complex. All designated targets were hit.” At least four people were killed — one in the western city of Lutsk, one in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, one in Zhytomyr in the country’s center, and one in the partially occupied Zaporizhzhia region in the southeast, local officials said. Thirteen others were wounded — one in the Kyiv region that surrounds the capital, five in Lutsk, three in the southern Mykolaiv region and four in the neighboring Odesa region. Blackouts and damage to civilian infrastructure and residential buildings were reported from the region of Sumy in the east, to the Mykolaiv and Odesa regions in the south, to the region of Rivne in the west. In Sumy, a province in the east that borders Russia, local administration said that 194 settlements lost power, while 19 others had a partial blackout. The private energy company DTEK introduced emergency blackouts, saying in a statement that “energy workers throughout the country work 24/7 to restore light in the homes of Ukrainians.” In the wake of the barrage and the power cuts, officials across Ukraine were ordered to open “points of invincibility” — shelter-type places where people can charge their phones and other devices and get refreshments […]

HaGaon HaRav Ben-Tzion Mutzafi, a leading Sephardi posek, slammed those who violate Israeli law and enter Palestinian villages, endangering their lives and those of IDF soldiers who are forced to rescue them. Someone sent HaRav Mutzafi a shaila: “We live in the Shomron. I know that my daughter and her husband buy eggs and drinks in an Arab village. They don’t want me to interfere. I know they’re not the only ones.” Harav Mutzafi did not mince words and responded: “Their din is like those who commit suicide and they also endanger the lives of our soldiers who are fighting for our welfare.” The Rav added: “And animals of the worst kind that exist on earth are supported by these [purchases].” In recent months, following a number of attacks and robberies of Jews in Area A, Israel Police issued a warning against entering Palestinian areas. The police statement said: “Recently, we have witnessed many cases of Israeli citizens entering Area A, which is under the control of the Palestinian Authority. Entry into these areas is prohibited by law for Israeli citizens and may cost human lives, as has happened in recent days.” “Many Israelis enter these areas knowingly for the purpose of shopping, trading, repairing their cars, etc., thus risking their lives and often encounter incidents of assault, robbery, theft, as well as being a target for harm for nationalistic reasons.” “Also, entering the areas may be caused by a mistake in navigation or lack of familiarity with the roads in Yehudah and Shormon. Therefore, the entrance to the prohibited area is marked with a clear red sign that makes it clear that traffic in this direction should be avoided.” “Passengers in the area should be aware that traveling in Yehudah and Shomron requires additional vigilance and paying attention to the travel route.” “In addition, drivers using the various navigation applications can choose the option that prevents them from entering dangerous places but it is not a substitute for vigilance and looking out for the red warning signs at the entrances to the villages.” (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)