The IDF says troops of the Kfir Brigade operating in the West Bank city of Tulkarem located a bomb-making lab. The lab was being used to build makeshift roadside explosive devices as well as pipe bombs, according to the military
In a joint statement, the Israeli military, Shin Bet, and Mossad announced that an overnight airstrike in Beirut targeted and killed a key operative of both Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force. The IDF identified the terrorist as Hassan Bdair, a member of Hezbollah’s Unit 3900 and the IRGC Quds Force, who was taken out by fighter jets. The rare public statement from the Mossad, alongside the military and Shin Bet, revealed that Bdair had recently been working with Hamas, directing the Palestinian terror group to prepare a “significant and imminent terror attack” aimed at Israeli civilians. The IDF emphasized that the strike was launched due to the immediate threat posed by Bdair’s planned attack, underscoring Israel’s resolve to thwart such dangers to its citizens. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has reversed his decision to appoint Vice Adm. (res.) Eli Sharvit as the next head of the Shin Bet, just one day after announcing the move. The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) released a statement saying that Netanyahu met with Sharvit last night to inform him that he would not be taking the helm of the Shin Bet security service after all. “The Prime Minister thanked Vice Adm. Sharvit for his readiness to serve,” the PMO said, “but told him that upon further consideration, he plans to interview additional candidates.” Netanyahu’s initial announcement of Sharvit as his pick to succeed Ronen Bar at the top of the agency had raised eyebrows in political circles. The choice of the reserves vice admiral was seen as controversial due to his reported involvement in anti-government protests and the lingering questions about Bar’s exit amid a criminal investigation into the prime minister’s associates. The PM faced pushback from coalition partners to nix Sharvit’s nomination over his apparent role in the massive 2023 protests against the government’s judicial reform plans. Sharvit responded through the PMO, saying, “I was asked by the Prime Minister to take on the role of head of the Shin Bet and to continue serving Israel at this difficult time – and so I did,” reflecting his confidence in the Shin Bet’s capabilities and his own leadership potential. Adding to the controversy, Sharvit had publicly backed a 2022 maritime border deal with Lebanon that Netanyahu, then in the opposition, had opposed. Earlier this year, he also wrote an op-ed slamming former US President Donald Trump over his climate stance. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
Employees across the massive U.S. Health and Human Services Department began receiving notices of dismissal on Tuesday in an overhaul ultimately expected to lay off up to 10,000 people. The notices come just days after President Donald Trump moved to strip workers of their collective bargaining rights at HHS and other agencies throughout the government. At the National Institutes of Health, the world’s leading health and medical agency, the layoffs occurred as its new director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, began his first day of work. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a plan last week to remake the department, which, through its agencies, is responsible for tracking health trends and disease outbreaks, conducting and funding medical research, and monitoring the safety of food and medicine, as well as for administering health insurance programs for nearly half of the country. The plan would consolidate agencies that oversee billions of dollars for addiction services and community health centers under a new office called the Administration for a Healthy America. The layoffs are expected to shrink HHS to 62,000 positions, lopping off nearly a quarter of its staff — 10,000 jobs through layoffs and another 10,000 workers who took early retirement and voluntary separation offers. At the NIH, the cuts included at least four directors of the NIH’s 27 institutes and centers who were put on administrative leave, and nearly entire communications staffs were terminated, according to an agency senior leader, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid retribution. An email viewed by The Associated Press shows some senior-level employees of the Bethesda, Maryland, campus who were placed on leave were offered a possible transfer to the Indian Health Service in locations including Alaska and given until end of Wednesday to respond. Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington predicted the cuts will have ramifications when natural disasters strike or infectious diseases, like the ongoing measles outbreak, spread. “They may as well be renaming it the Department of Disease because their plan is putting lives in serious jeopardy,” Murray said Friday. Beyond layoffs at federal health agencies, cuts are beginning to happen at state and local health departments as a result of an HHS move last week to pull back more than $11 billion in COVID-19-related money. Local and state health officials are still assessing the impact, but some health departments have already identified hundreds of jobs that stand to be eliminated because of lost money, “some of them overnight, some of them are already gone,” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, chief executive of the National Association of County and City Health Officials. Union representatives for HHS employees received a notice Thursday that 8,000 to 10,000 employees will be terminated. The department’s leadership will target positions in human resources, procurement, finance and information technology. Positions in “high cost regions” or that have been deemed “redundant” will be the focus of the layoffs. Kennedy criticized the department he oversees as an inefficient “sprawling bureaucracy” in a video Thursday announcing the restructuring. He said the department’s $1.7 trillion yearly budget, “has failed to improve the health of Americans.” “I want to promise you now that we’re going to do more with less,” Kennedy said. The department on Thursday provided a breakdown of some of the cuts. __ 3,500 jobs at the Food and Drug Administration, which inspects […]
New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker carried an all-night speech in protest of President Donald Trump’s agenda into Tuesday morning. Booker took to the Senate floor on Monday evening saying he would remain there as long as he was “physically able.” He was still on the floor more than 12 hours later. “These are not normal times in our nation,” Booker said at the start of his speech. “And they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate. The threats to the American people and American democracy are grave and urgent, and we all must do more to stand against them.” Booker railed against cuts to Social Security offices and spoke to concerns that broader cuts to the social safety net could be coming, though Republican lawmakers say the program won’t be touched. Donning and doffing reading glasses, Booker read what he said were letters from constituents. One writer was alarmed by the Republican president’s talk of annexing Greenland and Canada and a “looming constitutional crisis.” “I hear you. I see you, and I’m standing here in part because of letters like yours,” Booker said. On Tuesday morning, Booker got some help from Democratic colleagues, who gave him a break from speaking to ask him a question. Booker said he would yield for questions but would not give up the Senate floor. According to the Senate’s website, the record for the longest individual speech belongs to Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who filibustered for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Booker, 55, is serving his second term in the Senate. He was an unsuccessful presidential candidate in 2020, when he launched his campaign from the steps of his home in Newark. He dropped out after struggling to gain a foothold in a packed field, falling short of a threshold to meet in a January 2020 debate. Before taking to the national political stage, Booker was considered a rising star in the Democratic Party, serving as mayor of Newark, New Jersey’s largest city, from 2006 to 2013. A Rhodes Scholar and graduate of Stanford University and Yale Law, he started his career as an attorney for nonprofits. He served on the Newark City Council before becoming the city’s mayor. He was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2013 during a special election held after the death of incumbent Democrat Frank Lautenberg. He won his first full-term in 2014 and then reelection in 2020. Booker was at the helm in Newark when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced a $100 million donation to improve the city’s schools in 2010. Roughly a decade ago, Zuckerberg told the AP a major lesson from Newark being applied in later donations was to make sure the desires of the public are considered. (AP)
The Food and Drug Administration’s chief tobacco regulator has been removed from his post as sweeping cuts hit the agency and staffers across the federal health workforce Tuesday. In an email to staff, FDA tobacco director Brian King said: “It is with a heavy heart and profound disappointment that I share I have been placed on administrative leave.” King was removed from his position and offered reassignment to the Indian Health Service, according to a person familiar with the matter who did not have permission to discuss it publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity. Dozens of staffers in FDA’s tobacco center also received notices of dismissal Tuesday morning, including the entire office responsible for drafting new tobacco regulations. Elsewhere at the FDA, the agency’s entire press office of more than a dozen communication staffers and managers was also given notice. King, who joined the agency in 2022, has been vigorously criticized by vaping lobbyists for ordering thousands of companies to remove their fruit and candy-flavored e-cigarettes from the market. During his time at FDA, teen vaping has fallen to a 10-year low. His removal comes just days after FDA vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks was forced out, citing health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s support for vaccine “misinformation and lies” in his resignation letter. The latest changes mean that nearly all of FDA’s top leaders overseeing drugs, food, vaccines, medical devices and now tobacco products have turned over in recent months, mainly through resignations and retirements. The leadership vacuum comes as Kennedy moves to fire 3,500 FDA staffers and pushes ahead with plans to scrutinize ultra-processed foods, childhood vaccines, antidepressants and other long-established products. The wave of departures means incoming FDA commissioner Marty Makary — who was confirmed last week— will inherit an agency without many of its top experts and a beleaguered workforce that has been rocked by weeks of layoffs and a chaotic return-to-office process. Only a handful of FDA employees are political appointees, with nearly all of the agency’s scientific reviews and decisions overseen by career officials. Neither Makary nor Kennedy have said much about how tobacco policy fits into their plan to “Make America Healthy Again.” Despite historically low rates of smoking, tobacco-related diseases remain the nation’s leading preventable cause of death, blamed for more than 490,000 annually. In recent years, the FDA’s tobacco center has been besieged by criticism from all sides including congressional lawmakers, anti-smoking advocates, and tobacco and vaping companies. Politicians, parents and anti-tobacco groups want the FDA to do more to stamp out unauthorized vaping products that can appeal to teens, many of which are imported from China. Tobacco and vaping companies say the FDA has been too slow to approve newer products for adult smokers — including e-cigarettes — that generally carry much lower risks than traditional cigarettes. Under King, the FDA rejected applications for millions of flavored e-cigarettes, citing insufficient data that the products would help adult smokers while not becoming popular with underage kids. Those rejections have resulted in multiple lawsuits against FDA from vape makers, including one that was argued before the Supreme Court in December. The Vapor Technology Association, an industry group, has been running ads urging Trump to follow through on a campaign pledge he made to “save the flavored vaping industry.” The FDA […]
Just after sunrise on Saturday, a satellite set its long-range camera on the city of Mandalay in Myanmar, not far from the epicenter of Friday’s 7.7 magnitude earthquake that devastated the Southeast Asian country’s second-largest city. The mission was to capture images that, combined with artificial intelligence technology, could help relief organizations quickly assess how many buildings had collapsed or were heavily damaged and where helpers most needed to go. At first, the high-tech computer vision approach wasn’t working. “The biggest challenge in this particular case was the clouds,” said Microsoft’s chief data scientist, Juan Lavista Ferres. “There’s no way to see through clouds with this technology.” The clouds eventually moved and it took a few more hours for another satellite from San Francisco-based Planet Labs to capture the aerial pictures and send them to Microsoft’s philanthropic AI for Good Lab. By then it was already about 11 p.m. Friday at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington. A group of Microsoft workers was ready and waiting for the data. The AI for Good lab has done this kind of AI-assisted damage assessment before, tracking Libya’s catastrophic flooding in 2023 or this year’s wildfires in Los Angeles. But rather than rely on a standard AI computer vision model that could run any visual data, they had to build a customized version specific to Mandalay. “The Earth is too different, the natural disasters are too different and the imagery we get from satellites is just too different to work in every situation,” Lavista Ferres said. For instance, he said, while fires spread in fairly predictable ways, “an earthquake touches the whole city” and it can be harder to know in the immediate aftermath where help is needed. Once the AI analysis was complete, it showed 515 buildings in Mandalay with 80% to 100% damage and another 1,524 with between 20% and 80% damage. That showed the widespread gravity of the disaster, but, just as important, it helps pinpoint specific locations of damage. “This is critical information for teams on the ground,” Lavista Ferres said. Microsoft cautioned that it “should serve as a preliminary guide and will require on-the-ground verification for a complete understanding.” But in the meantime, the tech company has shared the analysis with aid groups such as the Red Cross. Planet Labs says its satellites — it has 15 of them orbiting the Earth — have now photographed roughly a dozen locations in Myanmar and Thailand since Friday’s quake. (AP)
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk is turning his attention to the mystery of Congressional wealth, vowing to investigate how lawmakers have accumulated millions of dollars despite their relatively modest public salaries. Speaking at a town hall in Wisconsin on Sunday night, Musk said that his team at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will follow the money to uncover how certain members of Congress have achieved generational fortunes while serving in public office. Responding to a question about whether USAID funds had been wired to Rep. Maxine Waters, Sen. Adam Schiff, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Musk outlined his theory. He explained that the government sends money overseas to non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which then move funds through multiple channels before some of it mysteriously returns to the United States and into the hands of politicians. While stopping short of making direct accusations, Musk said he was “highly confident” that this process plays a role in the unexplained wealth of certain members of Congress. “It doesn’t go directly, but let’s just say that there’s a lot of strangely wealthy members of Congress where I’m trying to connect the dots of, ‘How do they become rich?’” Musk said. The question is an increasingly pressing one, given that rank-and-file members of Congress make just $174,000 annually, yet many long-time lawmakers are multi-millionaires. The issue of political wealth is hardly new, but Musk’s comments have reignited scrutiny on high-profile figures in Washington whose personal fortunes far exceed their public paychecks. Among them is former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose estimated net worth of $250 million has been largely attributed to lucrative stock investments in companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon. Another example is Senator Rick Scott, whose personal fortune stands at $552 million, stemming from his work in the healthcare industry before his time in office. While some lawmakers amassed wealth before entering politics, others appear to have seen their bank accounts grow dramatically during their time in public service, a trend Musk is determined to investigate. “How do they get $20 million if they’re earning $200,000 a year?” Musk pondered, promising that DOGE would dig deep into the issue and work to prevent such questionable financial gains from continuing unchecked. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
NASA’s celebrity astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams said Monday that they hold themselves partly responsible for what went wrong on their space sprint-turned-marathon and would fly on Boeing’s Starliner again. SpaceX recently ferried the duo home after more than nine months at the International Space Station, filling in for Boeing that returned to Earth without them last year. In their first news conference since coming home, the pair said they were taken aback by all the interest and insisted they were only doing their job and putting the mission ahead of themselves and even their families. Wilmore didn’t shy from accepting some of the blame for Boeing’s bungled test flight. “I’ll start and point the finger and I’ll blame me. I could have asked some questions and the answers to those questions could have turned the tide,” he told reporters. “All the way up and down the chain. We all are responsible. We all own this.” Both astronauts said they would strap into Starliner again. “Because we’re going to rectify all the issues that we encountered. We’re going to fix them. We’re going to make it work,” Wilmore said, adding he’d go back up “in a heartbeat.” Williams noted that Starliner has “a lot of capability” and she wants to see it succeed. The two will meet with Boeing leadership on Wednesday to provide a rundown on the flight and its problems. The longtime astronauts and retired Navy captains ended up spending 286 days in space — 278 days more than planned when they blasted off on Boeing’s first astronaut flight on June 5. The test pilots had to intervene in order for the Starliner capsule to reach the space station, as thrusters failed and helium leaked. Their space station stay kept getting extended as engineers debated how to proceed. NASA finally judged Starliner too dangerous to bring Wilmore and Williams back and transferred them to SpaceX. But the launch of their replacements got stalled, stretching their mission beyond nine months. President Donald Trump urged SpaceX’s Elon Musk to hurry things up, adding politics to the stuck astronauts’ ordeal. The dragged-out drama finally ended March 18 with a flawless splashdown by SpaceX off the Florida Panhandle. NASA said engineers still do not understand why Starliner’s thrusters malfunctioned; more tests are planned through the summer. If engineers can figure out the thruster and leak issues, “Starliner is ready to go,” Wilmore said. The space agency may require another test flight — with cargo — before allowing astronauts to climb aboard. That redo could come by year’s end. Despite Starliner’s rocky road, NASA officials said they stand behind the decision made years ago to have two competing U.S. companies providing taxi service to and from the space station. But time is running out: The space station is set to be abandoned in five years and replaced in orbit by privately operated labs. (AP)
Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, accompanied by his gabbai Rabbi Mordechai Tzion, made a special visit on Monday to Israeli reservists stationed at Tel Kudna in Syria to give them chizzuk. “The goal of the visit was to strengthen the morale of our holy soldiers,” Rabbi Tzion told Arutz Sheva-Israel National News. During the visit, Rabbi Aviner addressed the soldiers, offering both inspiration and historical perspective on the land where they were stationed. He noted that from a Torah perspective, it is not entirely clear whether Tel Kudna is considered part of Syria or the land of Eretz Yisroel, but suggested that it is likely the latter. He further explained a Midrash that describes Yerushalayim extending to the gates of Damascus, drawing a symbolic connection between the soldiers’ location and the spiritual heart of the Jewish people. “Our yeshiva, Ateret Yerushalaim, is in the center of Jerusalem,” he said. “And here we are, on the road to Damascus—it is an allegory of our connection to this land.” Rabbi Aviner, who has been actively visiting and encouraging Israeli troops since the war in Gaza broke out, reiterated that the war should be viewed as a mitzvah that requires sacrifice, explaining that their efforts are part of a larger divine plan. “Everything is from Hakadosh Baruch Hu,” he told the soldiers. “He alone determines when a person will live and when he will die.” He urged them to view their service as a sacred duty, comparing their current struggles to the existential threats the Jewish people have faced throughout history. “I tell them that this is not hardship. Hardship is what happened to me as a baby when I had to be hidden from the Nazis to avoid being sent to a death camp. That was hardship. Now, we have an army. We are fighting back. And that requires sacrifice.” (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
The United States Treasury sanctioned six people and seven companies Monday for alleged money laundering for factions of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, underscoring the group’s new designation as a foreign terrorist organization under the Trump administration. The designation aimed at “targeting the financial operations” of the cartel, which has raked in money by trafficking fentanyl to the United States, came as part of an investigation by U.S. and Mexican government agencies. The Treasury said those listed used a “network of front companies and shell corporations” to launder money, often using things like currency exchange businesses along the U.S.-Mexico border and larger bulk cash pickups. The move makes it illegal to carry out business transactions with those listed, and warns that in addition to civil and criminal penalties, anyone violating the sanctions may also be subject to sanctions themselves. “Laundered drug money is the lifeblood of the Sinaloa Cartel’s narco-terrorist enterprise, only made possible through trusted financial facilitators like those we have designated today,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. Bessent added that the government will use “all available tools to target anyone who assists the cartels in furthering their campaign of crime and violence.” It comes just weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump designated the Sinaloa Cartel and seven other criminal groups across Latin America as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Analysts say the terrorism designation would not vastly expand the American government’s power to go after the criminal groups nor take military action in Mexico, an idea Trump has bounced on a number of occasions. But law enforcement officials and other experts say it will provide authorities with more tools to go after the cartels, which in recent years have expanded their enterprises from just drug-trafficking to everything from avocado production to migrant smuggling. (AP)
Hagaon HaRav Rav Elya Ber Wachtfogel, the Rosh Yeshiva of South Fallsburg, spent his day on Sunday in the Five Towns, to benefit many families who need assistance with the “Tzarchei HaChag”. The Rosh Yeshiva met with many local Rabbonim, as well as held an event at the home of Reb Dovid Bloom in Far Rockaway, where he delivered Divrei Bracha. VIDEO & PHOTOS FOR YWN BY HOLY SHOTS (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
President Donald Trump has unleashed a fiery response after activists defaced his cherished Trump Turnberry golf resort in Scotland, calling the perpetrators “terrorists” and demanding they be “treated harshly” following the attack. The vandalism, which took place in the early hours of March 8, sent shockwaves through Trump’s inner circle. Activists from a pro-Palestinian group dug into the greens, sprayed “Gaza is not 4 sale” in massive letters, and doused the clubhouse in red paint in what they described as a direct response to Trump’s stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Late Sunday, Trump took to Truth Social, claiming victory in the search for the culprits. “I was just informed by Prime Minister Starmer of the United Kingdom that they caught the terrorists who attacked the beautiful Turnberry, in Scotland,” Trump wrote. “They did serious damage, and will hopefully be treated harshly. The three people who did this are in prison. You cannot let things like this attack happen, and I greatly appreciate the work of Prime Minister Starmer, and UK Law Enforcement.” Despite Trump’s assertion that three individuals had been imprisoned, only one person—33-year-old Kieran Robson—has actually been charged, with two others released pending further inquiries. Robson appeared in court on Monday, facing charges of “malicious mischief,” and was released on bail. The UK Prime Minister’s office has not publicly commented on the case, casting doubt on Trump’s claim of direct involvement from Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The radical group Palestine Action, which took responsibility for the act, defended the vandalism, calling it a direct response to the U.S. administration’s alleged role in Israel’s actions in Gaza. They cited Trump’s February remarks, in which he suggested that the U.S. should “take over” Gaza and “clean out the whole thing” as justification for their protest. “We are not standing by while war criminals dictate the future of Palestine,” the group declared in a social media post, where they also shared images of the defaced golf course and clubhouse. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
Hagaon HaRav Meilich Biederman delivering a Hesped at the heartbreaking Levaya on Monday night on Har Hamenuchos for Natasha (Sara) Saada A”H, and her precious daughters, Diana (7) A”H and Debra (5) A”H. Many Rabbonim are in attendance, including the Sephardic Chief Rabbi, Hagaon HaRav David Yosef.
WATCH: At another anti-government rally tonight in Israel, clashes began as protesters attempted to get closer to the Knesset while Israeli police held them off with barricades.
