A South Florida jury has awarded $3 million to a man who was severely injured by a defective airbag in a 2020 crash. Miami-Dade jurors reached a verdict for Jose Hernandez on Thursday, according to court records. He had filed a lawsuit in 2022 against Takata Airbag Tort Compensation Trust Fund, which was formed during Takata’s bankruptcy Hernandez was driving his 2005 Honda Civic in Miami in December 2020 when another vehicle hit him as he tried to make a left turn, his attorneys said. The collision should have caused only minor injuries, but the car’s Takata airbag inflator improperly exploded, shooting a piece of metal shrapnel several inches long into Hernandez’s right arm, the lawsuit said. Attorneys for the Takata trust didn’t immediately respond to an email Monday seeking comment. At least 28 deaths have been linked to Takata air bag inflators in the U.S. and at least 36 worldwide, according to regulators. More than 400 people in the U.S. have been hurt. Large-scale recalls began in 2013. Takata used ammonium nitrate to create a small explosion to inflate air bags in a crash. But the chemical can deteriorate over time due to high heat and humidity and explode with too much force. That can blow apart a metal canister and send shrapnel into the passenger compartment. (AP)
A new salmonella outbreak linked to backyard poultry has sickened at least seven people in six states, health officials said Monday. Two cases were identified in Missouri, and one each in Florida, Illinois, South Dakota, Utah and Wisconsin, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. People got sick in February and March of this year, the CDC said. They all had the same strain of salmonella — a version that has been traced to hatcheries in the past. The investigation is continuing, health officials said. Salmonella bacteria cause about 1.35 million infections in the United States every year, and recent outbreaks have been tied to sources such as cucumbers, eggs, unpasteurized milk, fresh basil, geckos and pet bearded dragons. But one concern is that chickens and other backyard poultry can carry salmonella bacteria even if they look healthy and clean. A backyard poultry-associated outbreak that ended last year was tied to 470 cases spread across 48 states, including one death. (AP)
רצועות – STRAPS OF TEFILIN ARE תשמישי קדושה זהירות שלא לגרור רצועות התפילין על הארץ ובפרט בשעת הנחתן וסילוקן THEY HAVE SANCTITY – AND MAY NOT BE LEFT TO TOUCH OR BE DRAGGED ON THE FLOOR !! THEY ARE NO DIFFERENT THAN A CHUMASH OR SIDDUR. הנהגות מהחזו״א זצוק״ל ע״י הגר״ח קניבסקי זצוק״ל ״הי׳ מדקדק בשעת כריכת התפילין שלא תגרר הרצועה על הארץ״ (footnote from Rav Chaim Kanevsky zt”l) ״וע׳ משנ״ב סי׳ כ״א סקי״ח גבי ציצית דהוי ביזוי מצוה, וכ״ש כאן שהן תשמישי קדושה״ The Chazon Ish was extremely careful when donning Tefilin that the straps should not drag on the floor” ובדינים והנהגות מבואר (או״ח פ״ג אות י״א), שאף לאחרים הזהיר להימנע מכך״, וכן הורה רבנו (דעת נוטה ח״ג תשובה י״ד) והעידו (אורחות רבנו ח״א עמ׳ מד) ״שהי׳ פעם שהתפלל בישיבת בית יוסף והי׳ בחור אחד בקצה ביהמ״ד שנגעו רצועות התפילין שלו בארץ, ורץ אליו החזו״א ממקומו בקצה השני של ביהמ״ד להעיר לו על כך״. “The Chazon Ish was mindful to call people’s attention to this. On occasion he once davened in a Yeshiva and noticed a student at the far end of the Bais Hamedrash whose Tefilin straps were touching the floor. He ran from where he was standing to that student to call his attention to this impropriety.”
Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu arrived at the IDF Headquarters Bunker in Tel Aviv to oversee the Yemeni strikes, joining Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir and Defence Minister Israel Katz, who were already present at the facility monitoring developments.
Harvard University will receive no new federal grants until it meets a series of demands from President Donald Trump’s administration, the Education Department announced Monday. The action was laid out in a letter to Harvard’s president and amounts to a major escalation of Trump’s battle with the Ivy League school. The administration previously froze $2.2 billion in federal grants to Harvard, and Trump is pushing to strip the school of its tax-exempt status. Harvard has pushed back on the administration’s demands, setting up a closely watched clash in Trump’s attempt to force change at universities that he says have become hotbeds of liberalism and antisemitism. In a press call, an Education Department official said Harvard will receive no new federal grants until it “demonstrates responsible management of the university” and satisfies federal demands on a range of subjects. The ban applies to federal research grants and not to federal financial aid that helps students cover college tuition and fees. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to preview the decision on a call with reporters. The official accused Harvard of “serious failures.” The person said Harvard has allowed antisemitism and racial discrimination to perpetuate, it has abandoned rigorous academic standards, and it has failed to allow a range of views on its campus. To become eligible for new grants, Harvard would need to enter negotiations with the federal government and prove it has satisfied the administration’s requirements. The Trump administration has demanded that Harvard make broad government and leadership changes, revise its admissions policy and audit its faculty and student body to ensure the campus is home to many points of view. The demands are part of a pressure campaign targeting several other high-profile universities. The administration has cut off money to colleges including Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell University, seeking compliance with Trump’s agenda. The White House says it’s targeting campus antisemitism after pro-Palestinian protests swept U.S. college campuses last year. It’s also focused on the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports. The attacks on Harvard increasingly have called out the university’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, along with questions about freedom of speech and thought by conservatives on campus. In a letter Monday to Harvard’s president, Education Secretary Linda McMahon accused the school of enrolling foreign students who showed contempt for the U.S. “Harvard University has made a mockery of this country’s higher education system,” McMahon wrote. Harvard’s president has previously said he will not bend to the government’s demands. The university sued last month to halt the government’s funding freeze. In a conversation with alumni last week, Harvard President Alan Garber acknowledged there was a “kernel of truth” to criticism over antisemitism, freedom of speech and wide viewpoints at Harvard. But he said the conflict with the federal government has become a threat to the school’s autonomy. “We were faced with a recent demand from the federal government that, in the guise of combating antisemitism, raised new issues of control that frankly we did not anticipate, getting to the heart of governance,” Garber said. “We felt that we had to take a stand.” Harvard’s lawsuit called the funding freeze “arbitrary and capricious,” saying it violated its First Amendment rights and the statutory provisions of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The Trump […]
The IDF on Tuesday afternoon issued a warning to evacuate the area of Yemen’s Sanaa International Airport. IDF spokesperson in Arabic Avichay Adraee wrote on X: “Urgent warning to all those present in the Sana’a International Airport area, as shown in the attached map.” “We call upon you to evacuate the airport area – Sana’a International Airport – immediately and warn everyone in your vicinity of the need to evacuate this area immediately.” “Failure to evacuate and move away from the place exposes you to danger.” The move follows Israel’s airstrikes on the Hodeidah port in Yemen and a concrete factory on Monday in response to the Houthis’ attack on Ben Gurion Airport a day earlier. (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
The Army is pausing helicopter flights near a Washington airport after two commercial planes had to abort landings last week because of an Army Black Hawk helicopter that was flying to the Pentagon. The commander of the 12th Aviation Battalion directed the unit to pause helicopter flight operations around Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport following Thursday’s close calls, two Army officials confirmed to The Associated Press on Monday. One official said the flights have been paused since Friday. The pause comes after 67 people died in January when a passenger jet collided in midair with a Black Hawk helicopter at Reagan airport. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details that were not publicly announced. The unit is continuing to fly in the greater Washington, D.C., region. The unit had begun a return to flight within the last week, with plans to gradually increase the number of flights over the next four weeks, according to an Army document viewed by the AP. Thursday’s close call involved a Delta Air Lines Airbus A319 and a Republic Airways Embraer E170, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. They were instructed by air traffic control to “perform go-arounds” because of a “priority air transport” helicopter, according to an emailed statement from the Federal Aviation Administration. The priority air transport helicopters of the 12th battalion provide transport service to top Pentagon officials. It was a Black Hawk priority air transport known as PAT25 that collided with the passenger jet in midair in January. That crash was the worst U.S. midair disaster in more than two decades. In March, the FAA announced that helicopters would be prohibited from flying in the same airspace as planes near Reagan airport. The NTSB and FAA are both investigating the latest close call with an Army helicopter. The Army said after the latest incident that the UH-60 Blackhawk was following published FAA flight routes and air traffic control from Reagan airport when it was “directed by Pentagon Air Traffic Control to conduct a ‘go-around,’ overflying the Pentagon helipad in accordance with approved flight procedures.” But helicopter traffic remains a concern around that busy airport. The FAA said that three flights that had been cleared for landing Sunday at Reagan were ordered to go around because a police helicopter was on an urgent mission in the area. All three flights landed safely on their second approaches. The NTSB said after the January crash that there had been an alarming number of close calls near Reagan in recent years, and the FAA should have acted sooner. Investigators have highlighted 85 close calls around Reagan airport in the three years before the crash that should have signaled a growing safety problem. FAA officials said they did analyze every close call but missed the alarming trend. Since then, the FAA launched a review of data at airports nationwide with heavy helicopter traffic that identified safety concerns at the Las Vegas airport related to all the helicopter tours there. That review is ongoing. Reuters first reported the pause in Army helicopter flights. In New Jersey on Monday, flight delays and cancellations persisted at Newark Liberty International Airport. The FAA attributed arriving flight delays of nearly four hours to a combination of an air traffic controller shortage, thick cloud cover and antiquated […]
President Donald Trump wants to convert Alcatraz back into a federal prison, decades after the California island fortress was converted into a U.S. tourist destination because it had become too costly to house America’s worst criminals. The prison off the coast of San Francisco is where the government sent notorious gangsters Al Capone and George “Machine Gun” Kelly as well as lesser-known men who were considered too dangerous to lock up elsewhere. Circled by herons and gulls and often shrouded in fog, Alcatraz has been the setting for movies featuring Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage and Clint Eastwood. Trump says Alcatraz, now part of the National Park Service, suddenly is needed to house America’s “most ruthless and violent” criminals. “When we were a more serious Nation, in times past, we did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals, and keep them far away from anyone they could harm. That’s the way it’s supposed to be,” Trump said Sunday on his Truth Social site. What is Alcatraz? Alcatraz is in San Francisco Bay off the coast of San Francisco and visible from the Golden Gate Bridge. It is best known for its years as a federal prison, from 1934-63, but its history is much longer. President Millard Fillmore in 1850 declared the island for public purposes, according to the park service, and it soon became a military site. Confederates were housed there during the Civil War. By the 1930s, the government decided that it needed a place to hold the worst criminals, and Alcatraz became the choice for a prison. “A remote site was sought, one that would prohibit constant communication with the outside world by those confined within its walls,” the park service said. “Although land in Alaska was being considered, the availability of Alcatraz Island conveniently coincided with the government’s perceived need for a high security prison.” Why did it close? The remoteness eventually made it impractical. Everything from food to fuel had to arrive by boat. “The island had no source of fresh water,” according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, “so nearly one million gallons of water had to be barged to the island each week.” The cost to house someone there in 1959 was $10.10 a day compared with $3 at a federal prison in Atlanta, the government said. It was cheaper to build a new prison from scratch. Why is Alcatraz notorious? Despite the location, many prisoners tried to get out: 36 men attempted 14 separate escapes into the bay, according to the FBI. Nearly all were caught or didn’t survive the cold water and swift current. “Escape from Alcatraz,” a 1979 movie starring Eastwood, told the story of John Anglin, his brother Clarence and Frank Morris, who all escaped in 1962, leaving behind handmade plaster heads with real hair in their beds to fool guards. “For the 17 years we worked on the case, no credible evidence emerged to suggest the men were still alive, either in the U.S. or overseas,” the FBI said. “The Rock,” a 1996 fictional thriller with Connery and Cage, centers on an effort to rescue hostages from rogue Marines on Alcatraz. A national park Alcatraz became part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and was opened to the public in 1973, a decade after it was closed as a prison. The park service […]
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Religious Zionist MK Simcha Rothman, the chairman of the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, slammed the term “evasion law,” which some media outlets have been using to describe the law being formulated to regulate the status of lomdei Torah. Speaking in an interview with 103FM Radio on Tuesday morning, Rothman said: “I came to the conclusion, and every reasonable person knows this, that even if the government passes a law under which all members of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah will enlist in Golani, you’ll call it an evasion law.” “When this government passed the same law that the previous government passed, you called it the ‘Equality of Burden Law,’ and now it has become the ‘Evasion Law.’ This issue requires a process; if we do it incorrectly, it will fail, and if we do it correctly, it will lead to integration,” Rothman asserted. Rothman’s brother is HaGaon HaRav Natan Rothman, a renowned marbitz Torah at Wolfson Yeshivah in Bayit Vegan, a Rosh Kollel and the mechaber of Sharei Daas and many other sefarim. (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
The Trump administration on Monday sought to force Harvard University back to the negotiating table by informing the nation’s oldest and wealthiest college that it would not be eligible for any new federal grants. That decision was relayed in a contentious letter to Alan M. Garber, the president of Harvard, from Linda McMahon, the education secretary, who blasted the school for “disastrous mismanagement.” “This letter is to inform you that Harvard should no longer seek grants from the federal government, since none will be provided,” Ms. McMahon wrote in the letter. “Harvard will cease to be a publicly funded institution, and can instead operate as a privately-funded institution, drawing on its colossal endowment, and raising money from its large base of wealthy alumni.” It was the first significant response from the administration since Harvard sued to challenge the government’s decision to cut billions of dollars in research funding after the university defied demands for intrusive oversight. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
Youssef Qadi, a Hamas platoon commander who participated in the October 7 massacre and was responsible for holding several hostages [who have since been released], surrendered to IDF forces in Gaza, the IDF revealed on Tuesday. Additionally, Muhammad Za’arab, a commander in Hamas’ sniper unit, surrendered to IDF forces along with Qadi. The IDF said that several knives were found in the terrorists’ possession after their surrender. The two were arrested by forces of the 188th Armored Brigade several weeks ago in Rafah in southern Gaza. Their interrogation by the Shin Bet yielded intelligence information on the location of “significant terrorist infrastructure” in the area, the IDF said. The IDF completed the move to encircle Rafah several weeks ago and is continuing to operate there. It will soon expand operations to nearby neighborhoods. (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
Senior Houthi official Hazam al-Assad threatened revenge on Israel in a poorly translated Hebrew post following Israel’s airstrikes on the Hodeidah port in Yemen and a concrete factory on Monday in response to the Houthis’ attack on Ben Gurion Airport a day earlier. Al-Assad wrote on X in broken Hebrew that “the Zionist-American attack on the port of Al-Hodeidah and the concrete factory in Bajil is a vile crime that will not go unanswered. The blood of the civilians and workers will be the fuel for a harsh and unequivocal Yemeni response. We will continue to support Gaza with faith and determination and strike deep into the enemy and disrupt its movements until the aggression stops and the siege is lifted. The response will be imminent…painful, and surprising.” Ynet reported that the Houthis are planning to add a “large target in Haifa” to their target bank. Since the resumption of Israel’s war in Gaza, the Houthis have fired dozens of missiles at Israel, with all but one intercepted by air defense systems or falling before reaching Israel. Sunday’s attack was the first time that the Houthis succeeded in striking Ben Gurion Airport, leading to dozens of airlines cancelling their flights to and from Israel. Meanwhile, senior Houthi official Mohammed al-Bukhaiti told Arab media that the Houthis coordinate every decision with Hamas, and the launch of the ballistic missile at Ben Gurion Airport was at the Gazan terror group’s request. “We do not regret the attack on Ben Gurion Airport,” he said. “It was a warning attack, and additional attacks will follow.” (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
State prosecutors dropped felony charges Monday against seven people accused of trespassing and resisting police a year ago during the break-up of a pro-Palestinian camp at the University of Michigan. Attorney General Dana Nessel said she believed the cases were strong but suggested her office was worn down by criticism and other factors. She noted that a judge in Washtenaw County still hadn’t decided whether to send the cases to a trial court despite multiple hearings. “Baseless and absurd allegations of bias have only furthered this divide,” said Nessel, a Democrat, who added that “distractions and ongoing delays have created a circus-like atmosphere.” The camp on the Diag, a traditional site for campus protests, was cleared by police in May 2024 after a month. The university said the camp had become a threat to safety, with overloaded power sources and open flames. Defense attorney Amir Makled said Nessel was trying to turn free speech into a crime. “We sent a clear message to both Lansing and to Washington, that the people still rule, and that public pressure compels the rule of law to be upheld,” Makled said Monday. Protesters had demanded that the school’s endowment stop investing in companies with ties to Israel. The university insisted it has no direct investments and less than $15 million placed with funds that might include companies in Israel. (AP)
