The Israel Defense Forces announced late Sunday that two soldiers were killed during clashes in southern Gaza.
Major Yaniv Kula, 26, of Modi’in-Maccabim-Reut, who served as a company commander in the 932nd Battalion of the Nahal Brigade, was killed in action in the southern Gaza Strip.
Also falling in the same encounter was Staff Sergeant Itay Yavetz, 21, from the same city. He served as a combat soldier in the Erez Leadership Program, also within the 932nd Battalion of the Nahal Brigade.
During the same confrontation in which Major Kula and Staff Sergeant Yavetz lost their lives, a reservist from the Combat Engineering Heavy Equipment Unit (TZAMA) of the Gaza Brigade sustained critical injuries.
The wounded soldier was transported to a hospital for emergency medical care. The IDF stated that his family has been informed of his condition.
According to preliminary findings, the incident began when terrorists emerged from a tunnel shaft in Rafah at approximately 10:30 a.m. and launched an anti-tank missile at an IDF engineering vehicle.
Moments later, terrorist snipers opened fire at a second engineering vehicle. Within minutes, additional sniper fire targeted IDF personnel operating nearby.
In response to the attack, Israeli forces launched strikes against the area, aiming to neutralize the threat and destroy the tunnel shafts and other terrorist infrastructure. The IDF emphasized that, “These terrorist actions constitute a blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement, and the IDF will respond firmly.”
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KIRYAS JOEL: A fire broke out in the boiler room at the KJ Poultry Processing Plant on Dinev Court, producing heavy flames and thick smoke. The blaze was quickly extinguished by the Kiryas Joel Fire Department, with additional emergency personnel responding to the scene. Thankfully, no injuries were reported.
The IDF reports that it killed a cell of armed terrorists operatives who approached IDF troops in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahiya earlier today. The gunmen had crossed the so-called Yellow Line, from which the military had withdrawn under the current ceasefire, and “posed an imminent threat to the forces,” the IDF said.
BREAKING: Israel’s political leadership has halted humanitarian aid into Gaza in response to Hamas’s ongoing ceasefire violations.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth released footage of a Friday strike on a suspected drug-trafficking vessel in the Southern Caribbean, linked to the ELN guerrilla group. The strike, carried out in international waters near Venezuela, reportedly killed three narco-terrorists.
A North Korean soldier defected to South Korea across the rivals’ heavily fortified border on Sunday, South Korea’s military said. The military took the custody of the soldier who crossed the central portion of the land border, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. It said the soldier expressed a desire to resettle in South Korea. It was the first reported defection by a North Korean soldier since a North Korean staff sergeant fled to South Korea via the border’s eastern section in August 2024. Despite the two border crossings, it isn’t common for North Koreans to defect via the land border. Unlike its official name, the Demilitarized Zone, the 248-kilometer (155-mile) -long, 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) -wide border is guarded by land mines, tank traps, barbed wire fences and combat troops. In 2017, when a fleeing North Korean soldier sprinted across the border, North Korean soldiers fired about 40 rounds, before South Korean soldiers could drag the wounded soldier to safety. A vast majority of about 34,000 North Koreans who have fled to South Korea since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War came via China, which shares a long, porous border with North Korea. Relations between the two Koreas remain strained, with North Korea repeatedly rejecting outreach by South Korea’s liberal President Lee Jae Myung, who took office in June with a vow to restore reconciliation between the rivals. (AP)
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont delivered a blistering speech at the No Kings rally in Washington, D.C., targeting President Donald Trump and accusing the nation’s wealthiest figures of exploiting the system for personal gain. Sanders claimed that under Trump’s watch, the American economy has been “hijacked” by tech tycoons such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg.
“But let us be clear, this moment is not just about one man’s greed, one man’s corruption or one man’s contempt for our Constitution,” Sanders declared. “This is about a handful of the wealthiest people on earth who, in their insatiable greed, have hijacked our economy and our political system in order to enrich themselves at the expense of working families throughout the country.”
He went on to specify whom he meant: “Yes, I’m talking about Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and the other multi-billionaires who were sitting right behind Donald Trump when he was inaugurated — the very same billionaires who funded his campaign, who have bestowed gifts upon him, and who have seen huge increases in their wealth and power since Trump took office.”
While Sanders condemned the alleged profiteering of Trump’s billionaire allies, market data paints a more nuanced picture. Since Trump assumed office, Meta’s stock value has climbed by 14.9% and Tesla’s by 2.8%, while Amazon has seen a decline of 5.7%. The senator also omitted that more billionaires supported Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign than Trump’s.
Sanders denounced what he called “insanity,” referring to Musk’s massive fortune, claiming the Tesla CEO now holds “more wealth than the bottom 52% of American households.”
The Vermont lawmaker has repeatedly gone after Musk in recent months. During a campaign stop for socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani, who is running for mayor of New York City, Sanders pledged that he was “not going to allow” Musk to become the world’s first trillionaire.
Currently valued at around $455 billion, Musk’s wealth could approach the trillion-dollar mark if Tesla’s new compensation plan delivers as expected, contingent on the company meeting certain performance goals in the coming years.
{Matzav.com}
The IDF on Sunday identified two soldiers killed in combat in the Gaza Strip amid renewed clashes that have put the fragile ceasefire under strain. The fallen soldiers were Major Yaniv Kula hy”d, 26, and Staff Sergeant Itay Yavetz hy”d, 21, both from Modiin and members of the Nachal Brigade’s 932nd Battalion, the army said in a statement. According to initial findings, the soldiers were killed when a Hamas cell emerged from a tunnel and fired rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) at an IDF excavator operating in the area. Moments later, a second excavator came under sniper fire, wounding two additional soldiers, one seriously. Another soldier was later injured in a separate sniper attack, the military said. The attack broke the fragile ceasefire in Gaza, and following their deaths, the IDF carried out a new wave of airstrikes across southern Gaza, including in Khan Younis. The IDF said one of the airstrike targets was a tunnel complex previously used by Hamas to hold Israeli hostages, while in the north, a drone strike killed several armed militants who had crossed into Israeli-controlled territory. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
The IDF launched a new wave of airstrikes against Hamas targets in southern Gaza on Sunday night, hours after Palestinian gunmen attacked Israeli troops in Rafah in a “blatant violation” of the ceasefire. According to a military source, one of the targets hit was a tunnel system in the Khan Younis area that had previously been used by Hamas to hold Israeli hostages. Footage released by Palestinian media showed explosions and smoke rising from the city as strikes continued into the night. The escalation follows a morning attack in which Hamas operatives opened fire on IDF troops in the Rafah sector of southern Gaza. Defense officials vowed retaliation after the incident, which came amid growing concerns that renewed violence could unravel the fragile truce in place since earlier this year. Separately, the IDF said its forces killed several armed terrorists who approached Israeli soldiers in northern Gaza. The gunmen had crossed the Yellow Line — the boundary to which Israeli troops had withdrawn under the terms of the ceasefire — and “posed an imminent threat to the forces,” the military said. A drone strike was carried out “in accordance with the agreement to remove the threat,” according to an IDF statement, which also included video footage of the strike. Meanwhile, Washington is working to prevent the flare-up from collapsing the ceasefire, Axios reported. U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have spoken with Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, urging Israel to “respond proportionately but show restraint,” according to the outlet. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
A suspicious post appeared on Naftali Bennett’s official X account on Thursday, sparking immediate concern among followers. The message read: “The Israel News App is now available. Download it and share your thoughts. Exclusive to Israelis. Currently available only on Windows.”
The post included an external link that raised red flags within minutes. Users quickly warned that it resembled phishing campaigns commonly used to spread spyware or harvest personal data. Cybersecurity professionals later concluded that Bennett’s account had likely been compromised by hackers attempting to leverage his credibility to lure users into clicking on a potentially dangerous link.
This is not the first time Bennett’s social media has been targeted. A similar breach occurred in 2020 while he was serving as defense minister, when his account briefly displayed Palestinian and Turkish flags with the slogan “Free Palestine.” That intrusion was resolved within minutes after control was restored by Twitter or his team.
As with that earlier hack, experts believe the intent of Thursday’s attackers was to create confusion and misuse Bennett’s public image to distribute fraudulent links. These types of links may appear legitimate but can redirect users to malicious websites that attempt to install harmful software or trick them into surrendering passwords, credit card details, or other sensitive information.
In some cases, merely clicking on such a link can activate spyware capable of granting intruders remote access to the victim’s messages, photos, or files. Specialists caution that fake links are often disguised as coming from trustworthy sources through social media, WhatsApp, or email. They urge people to double-check links before clicking, since scam sites frequently contain subtle typos, extra symbols, or strange domain extensions.
To protect against similar threats, cybersecurity experts advise enabling two-factor authentication for all accounts, ensuring that every login requires a secondary code sent to a phone or authentication app. They also recommend using unique passwords for each platform, avoiding unfamiliar links, and installing apps only from verified stores such as Apple’s App Store or Google Play.
{Matzav.com}
Americans are growing increasingly concerned about their ability to find a good job under President Donald Trump, an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs poll finds, in what is a potential warning sign for Republicans as a promised economic boom has given way to hiring freezes and elevated inflation. High prices for groceries, housing and health care persist as a fear for many households, while rising electricity bills and the cost of gas at the pump are also sources of anxiety, according to the survey. Some 47% of U.S. adults are “not very” or “not at all confident” they could find a good job if they wanted to, an increase from 37% when the question was last asked in October 2023. Electricity bills are a “major” source of stress for 36% of U.S. adults at a time when the expected build-out of data centers for artificial intelligence could further tax the power grid. Just more than one-half said the cost of groceries are a “major” source of financial stress, about 4 in 10 said the cost of housing and health care were a serious strain and about one-third said they were feeling high stress about gasoline prices. The survey suggests an ongoing vulnerability for Trump, who returned to the White House in January with claims he could quickly tame the inflation that surged after the pandemic during Democratic President Joe Biden’s term. Instead, Trump’s popularity on the economy has remained low amid a mix of tariffs, federal worker layoffs and partisan sniping that has culminated in a government shutdown. Linda Weavil, 76, voted for Trump last year because he “seems like a smart businessman.” But she said in an interview that the Republican’s tariffs have worsened inflation, citing the chocolate-covered pecans sold for her church group fundraiser that now cost more. “I think he’s doing a great job on a lot of things, but I’m afraid our coffee and chocolate prices have gone up because of tariffs,” the retiree from Greensboro, North Carolina, said. “That’s a kick in the back of the American people.” Voters changed presidents, but they’re not feeling better about Trump’s economy The poll found that 36% of U.S. adults approve of how Trump is handling the economy, a figure that has held steady this year after he imposed tariffs that caused broad economic uncertainty. Among Republicans, 71% feel positive about his economic leadership. Yet that approval within Trump’s own party is relatively low in ways that could be problematic for Republicans in next month’s races for governor in New Jersey and Virginia, and perhaps even in the 2026 midterm elections. At roughly the same point in Biden’s term, in October 2021, an AP-NORC poll found that 41% of U.S. adults approved of how he was handling the economy, including about 73% of Democrats. That overall number was a little higher than Trump’s, primarily because of independents — 29% approved of how Biden was handling the economy, compared with the 18% who currently support Trump’s approach. The job market was meaningfully stronger in terms of hiring during Biden’s presidency as the United States was recovering from pandemic-related lockdowns. But hiring has slowed sharply under Trump with monthly job gains averaging less than 27,000 after the April tariff announcements. People see that difference. Four years ago, 36% of those in the survey were “extremely” or “very” confident in their […]
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A newly published analysis on Friday projects that President Trump’s immigration agenda will lead to a dramatic contraction of America’s labor force over the coming decade, eliminating as many as 15 million workers.
“The Trump administration’s policies on illegal and legal immigration would reduce the projected number of workers in the United States by 6.8 million by 2028 and by 15.7 million by 2035 and lower the annual rate of economic growth by almost one-third, harming U.S. living standards,” stated the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) in its comprehensive review of the administration’s enforcement initiatives.
According to the NFAP, the wide-ranging restrictions on both legal and illegal immigration will “substantially” expand the federal deficit by an estimated $1.74 trillion and cut the nation’s gross domestic product by $12.1 trillion over the next ten years.
“The reductions in legal immigration include suspending and reducing refugee admissions, the travel ban enacted in 2025, ending Temporary Protected Status and humanitarian parole programs, prohibiting international students from working on Optional Practical Training and STEM OPT after completing coursework and other changes, such as an expected public charge rule, to restrict legal immigration,” the study’s authors explained.
“The analysis does not include the likely significant economic impact of restricting U.S. companies’ access to high-skilled foreign nationals through regulatory and administrative action, which could affect productivity growth,” the report continued.
Trump officials have pledged to deport at least one million undocumented immigrants annually, a target that has drawn concern from economists and industry groups. The Labor Department has cautioned that large-scale deportations could send food prices soaring by reducing the available workforce in critical agricultural sectors.
Billions in taxpayer dollars are already being redirected to enhance border and immigration operations, with $45 billion earmarked by the White House to expand Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention capacity and related infrastructure.
The NFAP warned that such spending will worsen the national debt. “Increasing the federal debt will reduce living standards in the United States by leading to higher levels of taxation, inflation and interest rates than without such debt,” researchers wrote.
They emphasized that immigrant labor plays a vital role in sustaining the nation’s economy. “Labor force growth is a crucial part of the economic growth that advances a country’s living standards and facilitates the financing of existing debts and obligations. With the U.S.-born population aging and growing at a slower rate, immigrants have become an essential part of American labor force growth,” the NFAP concluded.
{Matzav.com}
During Friday night’s episode of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, host Bill Maher took aim at the sudden quiet among campus activists who once loudly demonstrated over Gaza. “Where are the protesters?… Suddenly, the keffiyeh-wearing college kids are very quiet,” he remarked, questioning their disappearance as turmoil continues in the region.
Seated alongside Maher, billionaire businessman Mark Cuban quipped in agreement, saying, “Can’t be found. Yeah, can’t be found anywhere.” Maher then underscored the contrast between the outcry and the current situation, asserting that Hamas is “shooting everybody,” and pointing to what he described as “the asymmetry of what goes on.”
The conversation unfolded during a lively roundtable that also included actor and former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin. The discussion, part of Friday’s broadcast, was later recapped by entertainment outlets and posted on HBO Max.
Maher has long been outspoken about what he views as hypocrisy among certain American activists who condemn Israel but ignore Hamas’s brutality. Back in May, he blasted left-wing figures for voicing sympathy for Hamas despite its radical agenda and violent record.
His latest comments broadened that criticism, targeting the student protest movement that dominated college campuses throughout the past academic year but has since gone quiet.
Clips from the exchange spread rapidly online, with many social media users echoing Maher’s question about the sudden disappearance of demonstrations even as new reports from Gaza detail internal crackdowns and violence carried out by Hamas.
{Matzav.com}
More video showing the massive airstrikes carried out by the IDF moments ago.
HAPPENING NOW: The IDF announced it has launched a wave of airstrikes against Hamas targets in southern Gaza in response to an earlier attack on Israeli troops. A military source said one of the targets is a tunnel system previously used by Hamas to hold Israeli hostages.
Iranian-backed Houthi rebels detained two dozen U.N. employees Sunday, a day after they raided another U.N. facility in the capital Sanaa, a U.N. official said. Jean Alam, a spokesman for the U.N. resident coordinator for Yemen, told The Associated Press that the U.N. staffers were detained inside the facility in Sanaa’s southwestern neighborhood of Hada. He said those detained Sunday include five Yemenis and 15 international staff. He said the rebels released another 11 U.N. staffers after questioning. He said the U.N. was contact with the Houthis and other parties to “to resolve this serious situation as swiftly as possible, end the detention of all personnel, and restore full control over its facilities in Sanaa.” A second U.N. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the raid, said the rebels confiscated all communications equipment from the facility, including phones, servers and computers. The official said the detained employees belong to multiple U.N. agencies including the World Food Program, UNICEF and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The Houthis have launched a long-running crackdown against the U.N. and other international organizations working in rebel-held areas in Yemen including Sanaa, the coastal city of Hodeida and the rebel stronghold in Sadaa province in northern Yemen. Dozens of people, including over 50 U.N. staffers, have been detained so far. A World Food Program worker died in detention earlier this year in Sadaa. The rebels have repeatedly alleged without evidence that the detained U.N. staffers and those working with other international groups and foreign embassies were spies. The U.N. fiercely denied the accusations. The crackdown forced the U.N. to suspend its operations in Saada province in northern Yemen following the detention of eight staffers in January. The U.N. also relocated its top humanitarian coordinator in Yemen from Sanaa to the coastal city of Aden, which serves as seat for the internationally recognized government. (AP)
Iranian-backed Houthi terrorists detained about two dozen U.N. employees in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, on Sunday, a day after raiding another U.N. facility, according to U.N. officials. The detainees include both Yemeni and international staff from several agencies, including the World Food Program and UNICEF. The Houthis also confiscated phones and computers from the compound.
President Donald Trump announced Sunday that the U.S. will cut all funding to Colombia, accusing President Gustavo Petro of failing to curb drug production and calling him “an illegal drug dealer.” Writing on Truth Social from Mar-a-Lago, Trump said Petro “does nothing to stop” the drug trade and warned that if Colombia doesn’t act, “the United States will close them up for him.”
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