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Iran’s Supreme Leader Threatens Brutal Crackdown on Protests; Trump Says Khameini Looking to Flee

Yeshiva World News -

Iran’s supreme leader signaled Friday that security forces would crack down on protesters, directly challenging U.S. President Donald Trump’s pledge to support those peacefully demonstrating. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dismissed Trump as having hands “stained with the blood of Iranians” as supporters shouted “Death to America!” in footage aired by Iranian state television. State […]

Spanish PM: We’re Prepared to Deploy Forces to ‘Palestine’

Matzav -

Spain’s government is weighing the possibility of deploying peacekeeping forces to “Palestine,” with Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez saying the move would be considered once conditions allow for progress toward stability, according to a report by Agence France-Presse.

Addressing a gathering of Spanish ambassadors in Madrid, Sanchez said he intends to seek parliamentary approval for such a mission. “I will propose to parliament, when the opportunity presents itself, that we send peacekeeping troops to Palestine, once we can see how to advance this task of pacification,” he said.

Sanchez stressed that Madrid continues to focus closely on developments in Gaza and beyond. “Of course, we have not forgotten Palestine and the Gaza Strip… Spain must actively participate in rebuilding hope in Palestine. The situation there remains intolerable.”

Spain has taken a prominent position within Europe on the conflict, formally recognizing the “State of Palestine” in 2024 and repeatedly criticizing Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which began after the Hamas assault on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

Tensions between Madrid and Israel escalated in November 2023, when Spain’s ambassador to Israel was summoned by the Foreign Ministry following Sanchez’s remarks that “Israel is violating international law and is carrying out indiscriminate killings in Gaza.”

Sanchez reiterated his concerns several months later. In April, he condemned what he described as Israel’s “disproportionate response” to the war, warning that it could “destabilizing the Middle East, and as a consequence, the entire world”.

Spain’s criticism did not stop there. In May, Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares publicly pushed for international sanctions against Israel, citing the continued fighting with Hamas in Gaza and the toll of the ongoing conflict.

{Matzav.com}

Unvaccinated 11-Month-Old Dies of Measles Complications in Jerusalem

Yeshiva World News -

An 11-month-old infant with no underlying medical conditions died Thursday evening in Jerusalem from complications related to measles, according to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital. The hospital said the infant, who had not yet been vaccinated, was transferred Wednesday from another medical center in critical condition. She was admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit and […]

FAT JABS: Experts Warn Weight-Loss Jab Users May Need Lifelong Treatment as Pounds Return Quickly After Stopping

Matzav -

Doctors and researchers are cautioning that many people using injectable weight-loss medications could need to remain on them indefinitely, after evidence showed the pounds often come back swiftly once treatment ends.

In a large new review led by Oxford researchers, weight regain was found to be common and rapid after people stopped using the drugs, even among those who had lost substantial amounts. The analysis drew on 37 studies covering more than 9,300 participants and compared outcomes across all licensed weight-loss medications and behavioural programmes.

On average, people who discontinued the injections put weight back on at a rate of about a pound a month. Based on the data, many were expected to regain most or all of the lost weight within roughly 17 to 20 months, regardless of how much they had initially shed.

Professor Susan Jebb, who co-authored the review and advises ministers and the NHS on obesity, said the findings suggest a need to rethink how these drugs are viewed and prescribed. She said: “Obesity is a chronic relapsing condition, and I think one would expect that these treatments need to be continued for life, just in the same way as blood pressure medication.”

“We should see this as a chronic treatment for a chronic condition,” she added.

The injections — including widely used brands such as Mounjaro and Wegovy — belong to a class of medicines known as GLP-1 drugs. They mimic hormones released after eating, helping to suppress appetite and regulate blood sugar. Their arrival has been widely seen as a turning point in obesity care, offering levels of weight loss rarely achieved through diet and exercise alone.

However, the Oxford team warned in The British Medical Journal that the benefits can be short-lived once the drugs are withdrawn. Not only did weight return quickly, but key cardiometabolic improvements also faded. Gains in blood sugar control, blood pressure and cholesterol typically disappeared within 18 months of stopping treatment.

Weight regain occurred around four times faster than among people who lost weight through diet and exercise alone. While those on lifestyle programmes generally lost less — about 5kg over a year — they tended to regain weight far more slowly, at around a fifth of a pound a month. In that group, heart-health benefits often persisted for up to five years after the programme ended.

Dr Adam Collins, an associate professor of nutrition who was not involved in the research, said the mechanism behind the drugs helps explain the rebound effect. “As soon as the drug is stopped, appetite is no longer kept in check,” he said.

“If people haven’t built sustainable habits alongside treatment, going cold turkey can be extremely difficult – and some may regain even more weight than they lost.”

The review found that people using injections typically lost close to two-and-a-half stone (14.7kg) within nine to 12 months. But once treatment ended, most were projected to return to their starting weight within two years.

The findings are likely to intensify debate over NHS policy. Under current rules, Wegovy is offered for a limited period of up to two years. Most users, however, obtain the drugs privately, often paying as much as £300 a month — raising concerns about affordability if long-term or lifelong use is required.

Professor Jebb said real-world use also presents challenges. “What we’ve shown is that weight regain after treatment is common and rapid – suggesting the jabs should not be seen as a short-term solution,” she said.

“In the real world we know that adherence is surprisingly poor, with around half of people discontinuing these medications within a year.”

An estimated 2.5 million people in the UK are currently using newer GLP-1 weight-loss drugs. At the same time, around two in three adults are classed as overweight or obese. NHS data show adults now weigh roughly a stone more than they did three decades ago, a trend estimated to cost the economy £100 billion annually.

Eligibility for NHS-funded treatment is already restricted. Only patients with a BMI over 35 and a weight-related health condition, or those with a BMI between 30 and 34.9 referred to specialist services, qualify. More than half of local health commissioners in England are expected to further tighten access due to cost pressures.

Obesity is linked to at least 13 types of cancer and is the second biggest cause of the disease in the UK, according to Cancer Research UK. It has also driven a 39 per cent increase in type 2 diabetes among under-40s, with about 168,000 young people now living with the condition.

While concerns have been raised about side effects — including nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea, and rare cases of pancreatitis — many specialists say the overall benefits outweigh the risks for most patients.

Professor John Wilding, an honorary consultant physician in cardiovascular and metabolic medicine at the University of Liverpool, said the results were to be expected. “We don’t expect treatments for diabetes, high blood pressure or high cholesterol to continue working once medication is withdrawn – and there’s no scientific reason obesity should be different,” he said.

“These drugs should be considered long-term treatments, not a quick fix.”

{Matzav.com}

Trump Plans To Make His Ballroom Addition As Tall As The White House Itself

Matzav -

President Donald Trump plans to build his controversial ballroom as tall as the White House’s main mansion itself, the project’s chief architect told a federal review committee Thursday – a significant change of plans that breaks with long-standing architectural norms requiring additions to be shorter than the main building.

Architect Shalom Baranes told the National Capital Planning Commission that the president’s plans call for the building to be about 60 feet high on its north side and 70 feet high on its south side. That differs from representations made as recently as August, when a National Park Service official said the building would be 55 feet tall, according to an environmental assessment.

“The heights will match exactly,” Baranes told the panel.

Baranes also disclosed that the project’s footprint would be about 45,000 square feet, roughly half the size that the administration has described since announcing the project in July. Of that, the ballroom itself would total about 22,000 square feet and would be designed to accommodate roughly 1,000 guests. White House officials have repeatedly said the building would span 90,000 square feet of White House grounds, which Baranes said includes a second floor – a clarification introduced as federal oversight bodies begin an accelerated review of a project for which core specifications continue to evolve.

D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, who has a seat on the panel, pressed Baranes on whether the ballroom’s height could be lowered, saying he was “concerned” by the possibility that the planned addition could overwhelm the White House mansion. Baranes said it was “possible, not impossible” to lower the ballroom’s height.

The presentation comes as the White House begins an unusually compressed push to win approvals from two committees charged by Congress with reviewing federal construction. White House officials have said they intend to complete the process in just over two months, a timeline far shorter than comparable projects, former commissioners have said, placing added pressure on oversight bodies that the administration moved to stock with Trump allies.

Baranes told the panel that the White House had abandoned plans to make the ballroom larger. But he said that officials are now considering a one-story addition to the West Wing’s colonnade in an effort to create symmetry with the planned two-story colonnade that would lead from the White House to the ballroom. He also laid out other planned features of the project, such as an office suite for the First Lady, and reconstructed White House movie theater.

It was only last week that the White House laid out a timeline for approvals, laying out a step-by-step path through the two review bodies. After their appearance at the planning commission, Baranes and administration officials intend to give a nearly identical informational presentation to the Commission of Fine Arts at its Jan. 15 meeting. They plan to come back on Feb. 19 to get the fine arts commission’s approval for the project, followed by a planning commission vote on March 5.

Trump administration officials have said they could start aboveground construction as soon as April.

The president will have to appoint at least four members to the fine arts commission for the body to reach a quorum at its meeting next week. Trump in October fired the panel’s six holdover members appointed by President Joe Biden, and White House officials are currently seeking potential appointees aligned with Trump’s architectural desires.

The Trump administration met with staff members from the planning and fine arts commissions only after a Dec. 17 court order from U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon, holding separate meetings on Dec. 19 and formally submitting applications to review the ballroom project three days later.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation argued in court filings last week that the Trump administration had failed to take “meaningful steps” toward public review or commission approval.

“They have, repeatedly, broken the rules first and asked for permission later,” wrote lawyers for the National Trust, which sued the Trump administration in an effort to halt construction until required reviews occur.

The White House said meeting with committee staffers and submitting conceptual renderings – rather than detailed blueprints – satisfied the judge’s instruction to start engaging with both commissions by the end of the year.

The National Capital Planning Commission is led by Will Scharf, the White House staff secretary and Trump’s former personal lawyer, whom the president appointed in July. The commission’s membership now tilts heavily toward Trump, including two other White House officials and nine Cabinet members.

The review process for the ballroom building differs markedly from past practice. Large projects have previously undergone lengthy, multistage reviews that begin well before any demolition or site work. Agencies typically engage planning commission staff months or even years in advance, with commissioners and staff evaluating design, siting and environmental impacts at each stage.

The Trump White House has compressed or bypassed some of those steps. Officials plan to complete in months a process that took nearly two years for a White House security fence that was significantly smaller than the ballroom. That project involved five public meetings, during which the commission assessed compliance with federal environmental laws and “the historic and symbolic importance of the White House and the surrounding grounds,” according to planning commission documents.

By contrast, Trump has overseen a three-month transformation of a large chunk of the White House grounds with no planning commission oversight. In mid-September, crews started clearing foliage and cutting down trees. In late October, the president shocked the public by ordering the demolition of the East Wing. And by early December, cranes and pile drivers were operating daily, as crews worked to create the underground infrastructure necessary to support the building, the White House said.

Scharf has asserted that the planning commission review process covers only “vertical” construction – not demolition or site preparation. Critics have disputed that assertion, arguing that demolition, site work and construction are inseparable and that the commission’s mandate includes preserving existing historic structures.

Planning commission records show that commissioners have previously approved site development plans for projects, including the perimeter fence and a tennis pavilion built during Trump’s first term. In both cases, site work began after agencies received approvals.

The commission nevertheless adopted Scharf’s argument in the document it published in December outlining its review process, saying the law doesn’t give it authority over “the demolition of buildings or general site preparation.”

Lawmakers and watchdog groups have repeatedly called for more transparency on the estimated $400 million project being funded by private donors – many without disclosing their contributions. Many of the donors the White House has identified – including Amazon, Lockheed Martin and Palantir – have business before the administration, such as seeking future federal contracts or eyeing potential acquisitions. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut), the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, sent letters last month demanding more information from several attendees of a White House dinner in October to honor ballroom donors.

“The American people are entitled to all the relevant facts about who is funding the most substantial construction project at the White House in recent history,” Blumenthal wrote.

(c) 2026, The Washington Post · Jonathan Edwards, Dan Diamond 

Trump Warns Iran Against Cracking Down as Protests Surge

Yeshiva World News -

Trump on Iran: What they’ve done is, in the past, they started shooting the hell out of [protesters]… and I said if they do that, we’re going to hit them very hard… So far, for the most part, they haven’t… The enthusiasm to overturn that regime is incredible.

“DO NOT INVITE”: US Spy Chief Gabbard Excluded From Maduro Plan Over Past Views

Matzav -

President Donald Trump’s decision to move against Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro exposed internal strains inside his administration, including sharp disagreements over how the operation was prepared and who was involved.

According to people familiar with the process, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was kept out of months of planning discussions because senior officials questioned whether her long-standing opposition to military intervention would align with the White House’s approach to Venezuela. Those people said the concerns stemmed from her public record criticizing regime-change efforts abroad.

The separation became so widely known inside the White House that aides joked privately that the acronym for her post — DNI — meant “Do Not Invite,” according to three people who described the internal conversations. They spoke on condition of anonymity. A White House official denied that any such joke circulated.

Gabbard’s past remarks have repeatedly emphasized restraint in Venezuela. In 2019, while serving as a Democratic member of Congress, she said the United States should “stay out” of the country. As recently as last month, she publicly criticized “warmongers” whom she accused of pushing Washington toward conflict.

The episode has become another flashpoint in the uneasy relationship between Gabbard and parts of the Trump team. While Trump campaigned on avoiding new wars, the move to oust Maduro has widened divisions not only among MAGA supporters but also among senior officials inside the administration.

Vice President JD Vance rejected suggestions that either he or Gabbard were excluded from planning the operation, calling those claims “false.” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung echoed that defense, saying Trump “has full confidence in DNI Gabbard and she’s doing a fantastic job.”

“We’re all part of the same team,” Vance told reporters at the White House on Thursday. “One of the things that is really amazing about that operation is that we kept it very tight to the senior Cabinet level officials and related officials in our government and we kept this operation secret for a very long time.”

A senior intelligence official also disputed the idea that Gabbard was frozen out entirely, saying she contributed intelligence assessments that aided the mission, even if she was not involved in operational planning. An Office of the Director of National Intelligence spokeswoman pointed to a social media post Gabbard shared Tuesday praising US forces for the operation’s “flawless execution” in capturing Maduro.

“President Trump promised the American people he would secure our borders, confront narcoterrorism, dangerous drug cartels, and drug traffickers,” she wrote. The message ended several days of silence while other senior national security officials publicly celebrated the mission through interviews, press briefings, and social media posts.

Earlier, on Jan. 1, Gabbard posted four photos of herself at the beach. “My heart is filled with gratitude, aloha and peace,” she wrote.

Former intelligence officials from both Democratic and Republican administrations described her absence from planning meetings as unusual, noting that the director of national intelligence is typically the president’s chief intelligence adviser and oversees all 18 US intelligence agencies, including the CIA. Planning for the Venezuela operation intensified in late summer, according to those familiar with the matter.

Photographs released by the White House after the raid showed Trump monitoring the operation alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller in an improvised war room. Gabbard was not pictured.

“It’s highly unusual for the DNI not to be involved in any of these operations, especially something like Venezuela,” said Cedric Leighton, a retired US Air Force intelligence colonel. “The visuals from that picture are a perfect description of what’s going on to Tulsi Gabbard at this point.”

The situation has renewed debate inside Trump’s orbit about the value of the DNI role itself. Some allies have argued that the position, created after the September 11 attacks to coordinate intelligence agencies, should be eliminated. Trump and his advisers have also occasionally expressed discomfort with Gabbard since she assumed the post.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Gabbard played only a minimal role in the planning and execution of the raid.

Tensions reportedly flared last summer after Trump grew irritated by a video Gabbard posted in June warning that the world was closer to nuclear war than ever. The video did not name any countries but was released a little more than a week before Trump ordered a strike on Iran, according to people familiar with the matter.

Marc Gustafson, director of analysis at Eurasia Group and a former head of the White House Situation Room, said it is not unheard of for either the CIA director or the DNI to be left out of certain planning processes. He noted that presidents including Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Trump himself during his first term sometimes relied on one intelligence chief over the other. “Then the other would be kind of left out temporarily,” Gustafson said.

Despite the controversy, Gabbard continues to brief Trump regularly and frequently attends Oval Office meetings, according to the senior intelligence official. That official said it was unfair to single out her past policy views, noting that other senior Trump officials — including Vance — have previously disagreed with or even criticized Trump before joining his administration.

Since taking office, Gabbard has leaned into a more political interpretation of her role, prioritizing the declassification of material important to Trump’s base, including records related to President John F. Kennedy’s assassination and Russian interference in US elections. She has also focused on rooting out what she and Trump describe as a Deep State within the intelligence community.

Gabbard, 44, served in the Iraq War and remains an officer in the Army Reserve. Throughout her career, she has opposed prolonged US involvement in regime-change conflicts.

In a 2019 post about Venezuela, she argued that “we don’t want other countries to choose our leaders — so we have to stop trying to choose theirs.”

“When we look throughout history, every time the United States goes into another country and topples a dictator or topples a government, the outcome has been disastrous for the people in these countries,” she said on Fox News in May of that year.

After launching a presidential bid in 2020, Gabbard reiterated those views in a speech last October, saying that “for decades, our foreign policy has been trapped in a counterproductive and endless cycle of regime change or nation-building.”

“The old Washington way of thinking is something we hope is in the rear-view mirror,” she said.

{Matzav.com}

Iran Pulls The Plug On Internet Nationwide As Protesters Shout “Death to the Dictator!”

Yeshiva World News -

Iran’s government cut off the country from the internet and international telephone calls Thursday night as a nighttime demonstration called by the country’s exiled crown prince drew a mass of protesters to shout from their windows and storm the streets. The protest represented the first test of whether the Iranian public could be swayed by Crown Prince […]

House Republicans Revolt Against Leadership, Pass Obamacare Subsidy Extension

Yeshiva World News -

In a remarkable rebuke of Republican leadership, the House passed legislation Thursday that would extend expired health care subsidies for those who get coverage through the Affordable Care Act as 17 renegade GOP lawmakers joined every Democrat in support. The tally, 230-196, signified growing political concern over Americans’ health care costs. Forcing the issue to a vote […]

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