Matzav1 hour agoExactly three years to the minute after Hamas launched its October 7 invasion of Israel, Israel Prison Service forces carried out coordinated surprise raids Wednesday morning in five prisons holding security prisoners, conducting extensive searches aimed at uncovering contraband and preventing disturbances or attacks.
The operation began at precisely 6:29 a.m. — the time the Hamas assault began on October 7, 2023 — as Israel marked three years since the massacre that killed more than 1,100 people and saw 251 hostages abducted into Gaza.
The large-scale prison operation was launched following a security assessment ahead of the highly sensitive anniversary, with officials seeking to head off any attempt by security prisoners to exploit the date to cause unrest or threaten prison personnel.
The raids were conducted simultaneously at five security detention facilities across Israel. Officers entered cells and prison wings housing terrorists and other security prisoners and carried out extensive searches for prohibited items and potential security threats.
The operation drew personnel from across the Prison Service’s northern, central and southern districts and included a substantial contingent of specialized forces.
Among those participating were members of the elite Metzada unit, which specializes in complex prison emergencies and hostage situations, along with the Nachshon unit, district units, first-response prison forces and prison intelligence and investigative personnel.
The Prison Service said the goal was to reinforce its control and authority within the facilities, locate contraband and thwart in advance any effort to disrupt prison order, attack guards or compromise the security of the prisons.
The timing at 6:29 a.m. was deliberately chosen to coincide with the exact moment Hamas began its assault three years earlier. The same hour was marked elsewhere across Israel Wednesday with memorial events, moments of silence and ceremonies honoring those murdered on October 7.
The Prison Service did not immediately disclose whether weapons, communications equipment or other prohibited materials were discovered during Wednesday morning’s searches.
The operation comes amid a dramatically changed prison landscape since October 7. Before the massacre, Israel held approximately 16,200 inmates in Prison Service facilities, including roughly 5,200 security prisoners. The war and the detention of thousands of terrorists and terror suspects placed enormous additional pressure on the country’s prison system.
Since the outbreak of the war, Israeli authorities have also significantly tightened the conditions under which security prisoners are held, while increasing searches, intelligence operations and other measures intended to prevent terrorist organizations from maintaining command structures and communications from inside Israeli prisons.
Under the policy of Prison Service Commissioner Kobi Yaakobi, officials said proactive operations aimed at asserting control over security prisoners are conducted throughout the year. Those measures are intensified when intelligence assessments indicate heightened sensitivity or an increased potential for unrest.
The third anniversary of October 7 was considered one such period, leading authorities to increase preventive and deterrence measures throughout the prison system and stage Wednesday’s coordinated operation.
“The Israel Prison Service will continue to act with determination to maintain order, control and security in correctional facilities and to thwart any threat emanating from them,” the service said.
{Matzav.com}
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JBizNews4 hours agoElon Musk’s net worth once again topped the $1 trillion mark this week—and few people have had a closer look at the forces behind his success than his former deputy Linda Yaccarino.
The 30-year media veteran was tapped as CEO of then-Twitter in 2023, stepping in as Musk was remaking the social platform from the ground up, and she got a firsthand look at the philosophy driving his companies, from Tesla to SpaceX: Move fast, rethink everything, and don’t wait for tomorrow.
“The reason his companies are singular in what they deliver is because of the insatiable sense of urgency. There’s not a deadline for a project or to ship something, a product—it’s now,” Yaccarino told Fortune.
That mindset, she said, changes how you approach virtually any challenge. Rather than simply working toward a deadline, it forces you to strip a project down to its most essential pieces and figure out what actually needs to happen to succeed.
“A lot of people talk about first principles, but that’s what it forces you to do,” Yaccarino added.
And she saw it almost immediately. When she arrived, Twitter was in the middle of another round of upheaval, including the retirement of its blue-bird logo and, eventually, its transformation into “X”—all with a fraction of its pre-Musk staff. Misinformation, hate speech, and bots also became growing concerns, issues that have continued to follow X since her 2025 departure.
For Yaccarino, though, the flux was part of the appeal. For all the challenges that came with running X and working for Musk, she said the hardest moments in a career can ultimately be “like a gift.”
That belief in leaning into difficulty began taking shape long before Yaccarino ever worked for Musk.
Yaccarino grew up on Long Island to an Italian-American family, and she and her two sisters were raised with what she calls an “immigrant mentality”: Work hard, rely on yourself, and remember that family matters regardless of professional success or failure.
That confidence was tested early in her career while as a telecommunications student at Penn State University. Yaccarino landed an internship at NBC for the summer before her senior year. But when she showed up at 30 Rock for her first day, the company had no idea who she was.
“They had literally no record of me,” Yaccarino recalled. “So, soul crushing to say the least.”
She went home that night feeling like she had failed. But the setback quickly became a footnote. NBC asked her to return the next day, placing her in the sales department, and marking the start of a three-decade career in media.
“That’s where the love affair happened,” Yaccarino said. “I got to be amongst the ranks of people that were leading industry and inspirational in pop culture, newsmakers of the headlines. And who couldn’t become a fan and a disciple of the industry at that time?”
After graduating in 1985, Yaccarino gradually climbed the ranks in media sales and advertising at Turner and NBCUniversal. In 2020, she was named chairman of global advertising and partnerships at NBC, where she helped notably lead the company’s early advertising strategy for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. In total, she was overseeing some $13 billion in annual ad revenue.
But when Musk asked her to make the jump to tech, Yaccarino said it was hard to pass up: She saw him as “singular in his ability to transform human conversation and movement,” and being part of that mission at Twitter/X was “consequentially important” at the time.
After two turbulent years at the helm of X, Yaccarino resigned from the social platform in July 2025 and began thinking about where to take her career next. She said she had plenty of options but wanted a path that would challenge her again, so she sought advice from her mentor, billionaire financier Michael Milken, who now chairs the Milken Institute.
“He said, Linda, ‘You have so many paths to take, and they’re all good paths. So you’re not going to make a mistake, but don’t choose a good path,’” she recalled. “‘Choose another consequential one. You spent so much time doing world-changing types of things at X. Be consequential again.”
That advice led Yaccarino to becoming the CEO of eMed, a $2 billion healthcare startup focused on telehealth and GLP-1 treatments, backed by investors including Tom Brady.
It’s also a lesson she encourages Gen Z to carry into an increasingly AI-driven workplace: Don’t simply get better at what everyone else is doing. Find the skills and experiences that make you stand out.
“Celebrate those skills that you have that are at the intersection of art and science, or magic and math—not just what the screen tools give you,” Yaccarino said, adding that human skills like empathy and decision-making are also critical.
Above all, she encourages people to run toward problems. Otherwise, she said, their careers could be “kind of boring”—something her own career, thanks in part to Musk, has been far from.
“Comfort is complacency—that’s not going to make you consequential in your career or your life,” Yaccarino said. “So, go to the uncomfortable.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
