A tax strategy once confined to the quietest corners of the wealth-management world has broken into the open, and the U.S. Treasury Department is now weighing whether to rein it in. The maneuver, known as a “351 conversion,” lets an investor sitting on years of stock-market gains fold those appreciated holdings into a brand-new exchange-traded fund without triggering the capital gains tax bill a straight sale would produce.

The appeal is straightforward for anyone holding a concentrated position that has ballooned in value. Selling to diversify means writing a check to the government at the top long-term capital gains rate of 20 percent, plus the 3.8 percent net investment income tax on top. A 351 conversion sidesteps that moment entirely. The investor contributes the stock to a newly formed ETF, receives fund shares in return, and carries the original cost basis forward. No sale, no realized gain, no immediate tax.

The name comes from Section 351 of the Internal Revenue Code, a provision on the books for roughly a century that permits property to be transferred into a corporation tax-free under the right conditions. Applied to ETFs, it comes with guardrails: the contributing investors must hold at least 80 percent of the new fund immediately after the exchange, and the portfolio has to be diversified enough that no single holding tops 25 percent and the five largest stay under half the total. Once the assets are inside the ETF wrapper, the fund’s in-kind trading machinery allows it to rebalance into a broad, diversified basket without kicking off taxable events along the way. The investor ends up diversified, still fully invested, and untaxed.

The strategy has moved well beyond theory. One of the clearest recent examples is a core-equity ETF that launched in February seeded with roughly $540 million in securities, most of it supplied by a single wealthy family looking to shed appreciated shares without realizing the gains. Filings show the roster of participants now includes private-equity billionaire Richard Kayne, and the trend has pulled in large institutional names as well, among them Dimensional Fund Advisors and Baillie Gifford, with Neuberger Berman said to be preparing its own version. Charlotte Hornets owner Gabe Plotkin is also reported to be planning a fund seeded largely with his own holdings.

What turns deferral into potential avoidance is the estate-planning endgame. Because heirs can inherit ETF shares at a stepped-up cost basis, the embedded gain that was never taxed during the investor’s lifetime can vanish altogether when the shares pass on. That is the feature that has drawn the sharpest criticism of the practice as a permanent escape hatch rather than a timing tool.

Regulators have taken notice. Late last year, Treasury officials began signaling interest in the conversions, and by early 2026 the department was in preliminary discussions with the Investment Company Institute and tax attorneys about how it might respond. Among the options floated internally was designating certain conversions “transactions of interest,” a label reserved for deals carrying tax-avoidance potential that triggers heightened IRS reporting. No formal guidance has been issued. In an unusual step, the ICI itself filed a comment letter asking Treasury for clarity, a sign the fund industry would rather have defined rules than open-ended uncertainty.

Congress is circling as well. Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has introduced legislation aimed at limiting access to 351 exchanges within the ETF market. And tax specialists have flagged aggressive uses that could invite an IRS challenge even under current law. Two patterns draw the most attention: “stuffing,” where a fund is packed with highly appreciated shares that have little to do with its stated investment strategy, and “sequential seeding,” where new ETFs are spun up repeatedly for the sole purpose of cycling appreciated stock into tax-deferred wrappers. Either could give the government grounds to recharacterize the deal and impose the tax immediately under the economic-substance doctrine, which lets the IRS disregard transactions that exist mainly to avoid tax.

For now, the conversions remain legal and are spreading fast enough that some advisory firms report a steady stream of pitches from issuers offering to structure them. The open question is how long the window stays open. With Treasury studying its options, the ICI asking for rules, and legislation pending on Capitol Hill, the strategy sits in a familiar spot: a legal edge that works precisely until Washington decides it works too well.

JBizNews Desk | New York, N.Y.

© JBizNews.com All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution without written permission is prohibited.

Three IDF reservists have been charged with aggravated abuse of a Gaza detainee at the Naftali detention facility, the IDF announced Tuesday.

According to the indictment, the three allegedly took the detainee to a shower room in the secure wing under the pretense of holding a “disciplinary conversation.” While he was handcuffed and blindfolded, they allegedly beat him, despite no prior resistance or prohibited conduct on his part.

The indictment states that the soldiers stopped after noticing that the detainee had been injured.

The detainee was a Gaza resident who had been staying in Israel without authorization since August 2023 and was arrested by security forces in October 2024. His detention order was canceled at the end of December 2024, and he was returned to Gaza before the investigation began. He is not included on the case’s witness list.

The Military Police Criminal Investigation Division opened an investigation after the Naftali detention facility reported suspected abuse of a security detainee in December 2024. The indictment is based in part on statements provided by the accused and by other soldiers during the investigation.

Following the investigation, and after the suspects were given an opportunity to attend a hearing, the military prosecution filed the indictment against the three on July 1, 2026.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

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JERUSALEM (VINnews)-The Israel Defense Forces on Wednesday released details identifying 12 terrorists killed during the war in Gaza as members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, many of whom had been portrayed publicly only as soccer players or coaches.

“Following an intelligence investigation, it is now possible to reveal the terrorists’ organizational affiliation and their roles, despite the fact that in many cases they were presented to the world solely as soccer players, without any mention of their affiliation with terror organizations,” the IDF said.

The military said some of the information came from open sources, but all of those listed were confirmed by the IDF as terror operatives. Several participated in the Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of Israel.

The 12 identified are:

Mohammed Barakat, a soccer player and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist who invaded Israel on Oct. 7.

Mahmoud Kamal Mohammed Ali Al-Rifi, a soccer player and company commander in Hamas’s aerial array.

Mohammed Mansour, a football player and coach, and deputy commander in Hamas’s Nuseirat Battalion, who invaded Israel on Oct. 7.

Ahmed Mohammed Hassan Abu al-Atta, a soccer player and platoon commander in Islamic Jihad.

Abdullah Riyad Abdullah Khattab, a soccer player and member of Islamic Jihad’s anti-tank missile array.

Mohammed Sami Mohammed Khattab, a FIFA international referee and member of Islamic Jihad in central Gaza.

Ali Mahmoud Ahmed al-Kurd, a soccer player and coach, and platoon commander in Islamic Jihad in Rafah.

Mohammed Imad Atta Hassoun, a soccer player and Hamas terrorist who invaded Israel on Oct. 7.

Tarek Ziad Hussein al-Hour, a soccer player and member of Hamas’s military wing.

Mohammed Ziad Hussein al-Hour, a soccer player and platoon commander in Hamas’s military wing in Nuseirat.

Mahmoud Osama al-Jazzar, a soccer player and Islamic Jihad operative.

Mohammed Nidal Mohammed al-Hawajri, a soccer player and commander in Hamas’s military wing in Nuseirat.

The IDF described the revelations as a response to what it called a “false campaign” portraying the military as deliberately targeting members of the soccer community. The army said such efforts are part of a broader pattern in which terrorists eliminated by Israeli forces were presented as journalists, humanitarian aid workers or other civilians, while their terror affiliations were concealed.

“In those campaigns, Palestinian terrorists struck and eliminated by the IDF were presented as journalists, humanitarian aid workers, and other civilian professionals, while their involvement in terrorist activity was deliberately concealed to promote false claims that they had been targeted because of their civilian professions,” the military added.

More than 300,000 empty lots listed for sale could help reduce America’s housing shortage, according to new research from Zillow.

The real estate company said 300,242 empty lots of five acres or fewer were listed for sale on Zillow in June, accounting for 17.4% of all for-sale listings.

Building one home on each lot would reduce the estimated national housing deficit from 4.7 million homes to about 4.44 million, a decline of 6.3%, Zillow said.

The typical lot for sale is 0.57 acres and has a median price of $79,000. Zillow said many of the parcels may be large enough to support more than one home, making its estimate conservative.

“The more than 300,000 lots currently listed for sale represent the lowest-hanging fruit in addressing a housing shortage that’s two decades in the making,” Zillow Senior Economist Kara Ng said.

Ng said loosening zoning rules, streamlining permitting and expanding access to financing could reduce the cost and uncertainty associated with construction.

Florida had the most empty lots listed for sale, with 42,601, followed by Texas with 40,907, California with 18,508, North Carolina with 14,226 and Georgia with 10,334.

Empty lots made up the largest share of for-sale listings in North Dakota, at 45.9%, followed by South Dakota at 38.7% and Alaska at 34.6%.

Rural markets had the highest concentration of empty lots, accounting for 25.3% of listings, compared with 13.6% in suburban areas and 9% in urban markets.

Rural lots were also the least expensive on a per-acre basis, with a median of about $75,000 per acre. That compares with more than $181,000 per acre in suburban areas and approximately $500,000 per acre in urban areas.

Zillow said expanding access to manufactured homes could also help address the shortage because they can be built faster and at a lower cost than traditional site-built homes.

The company is participating in a 12-week federal technology initiative with the U.S. Census Bureau’s Opportunity Project focused on increasing access to small-dollar housing loans in rural communities and reducing barriers for buyers interested in purchasing and building on empty lots.

R. James Woolsey, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency who guided the agency through the early post-Cold War years and became one of America’s most influential national security voices, died Tuesday at his Washington, D.C., home. He was 84.

According to his wife, Conchita Sarnoff Woolsey, he died after suffering a stroke, The Washington Post reported. She also said his health had steadily deteriorated due to Havana syndrome, the mysterious condition that has affected hundreds of U.S. intelligence officers and diplomats stationed around the world.

Woolsey assumed leadership of the CIA in 1993 during the opening years of the Clinton administration, at a time when the United States was reassessing its intelligence priorities following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Throughout his career, he served both Democratic and Republican administrations and earned widespread recognition as a leading authority on national security.

During his Senate confirmation hearing, Woolsey cautioned lawmakers against believing the end of the Cold War had eliminated America’s most serious threats. “Yes, we have slain a large dragon,” he said. “But we live now in a jungle filled with a bewildering variety of poisonous snakes,” pointing to terrorism, North Korea, arms proliferation and organized crime as emerging threats, The Wall Street Journal reported.

His tenure at the CIA was soon dominated by one of the agency’s most damaging espionage scandals. In 1994, veteran CIA officer Aldrich Ames was arrested after admitting he had spent nearly a decade spying for the Soviet Union and later Russia.

Following the Ames scandal, Woolsey disciplined 11 current and former CIA officials but chose not to dismiss anyone. He argued that those most responsible had already retired and maintained that the intelligence failure reflected broader institutional shortcomings rather than the actions of any one individual.

Woolsey also acknowledged that his relationship with President Bill Clinton was limited during his time leading the CIA. He later remarked that the two met in person only a handful of times and famously joked that a pilot who crashed a plane onto the White House lawn “was me trying to get an appointment to see President Clinton.”

Before becoming CIA director, Woolsey served as undersecretary of the Navy during the Carter administration. He later played a key role in strategic arms negotiations under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Although he remained a registered Democrat for much of his public life, Woolsey became known for his hawkish views on defense and foreign policy, often finding common ground with conservative national security leaders.

After leaving government service, he continued to influence U.S. foreign policy through legal practice, consulting, and public policy work. He also briefly served as a senior adviser to President Donald Trump’s 2016 transition team before stepping down shortly before Trump took office.

A graduate of Stanford University, a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, and a Yale Law School alumnus, Woolsey spent decades advocating for a strong intelligence community as a cornerstone of American national security.

He is survived by his wife, three sons from his first marriage, two stepchildren, and 10 grandchildren.

{Matzav.com}

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Kalshi, the largest prediction market operator in the United States, poured $990,000 into direct federal lobbying during the first six months of 2026 — and close to $1.8 million once the outside firms it retained are counted, according to newly filed disclosures reviewed this week. The figure already tops the roughly $1 million the company spent across all of 2025 and stands as its heaviest six-month push since it first registered to lobby in July of last year.

The spending surge reflects a widening fight in Washington over who gets to regulate an industry that now handles billions of dollars in weekly trades. From April through June alone, Kalshi reported $500,000 in federal lobbying on “matters affecting prediction markets” — its largest single-quarter outlay on record. The company also brought on a team at FTP, the firm previously known as Forbes Tate Partners, to work on legislation governing how the platforms are overseen.

The opposition is spending just as aggressively. The American Gaming Association, which represents casinos and traditional sportsbooks, laid out roughly $1.39 million in direct lobbying so far this year, climbing toward $1.8 million with outside firms — about 30 percent above its pace in the first half of 2025. The trade group spent $630,000 in the second quarter targeting, among other issues, event contracts tied to sports. The Cherokee Nation, which runs casino and gaming operations, added another $600,000 over the same six-month stretch.

Polymarket, Kalshi’s chief rival, is running a leaner operation. Its parent company, Blockratize, paid $90,000 to Advocus Partners in the second quarter for counsel on digital asset and information-market policy. The platform is nonetheless making a bold return to the American market after a multiyear ban, with federal investigators recently closing their probes into the company.

Sports betting giants have opened a second front. DraftKings reported $350,000 in second-quarter federal lobbying, while FanDuel spent a combined $480,000 between April and June and retained FGS Global to press its case on online wagering. Their central argument is that prediction-market sports contracts amount to sports betting by another name and should face the same state-level rules. The American Gaming Association estimates states have forfeited more than $1.2 billion in tax revenue as the platforms have expanded.

The money is also flowing toward the midterms. Win for America, a super PAC, has raised $70 million from sports betting companies including FanDuel, DraftKings and Fanatics Betting and Gaming — a war chest earmarked for the 2026 election cycle.

Lawmakers, meanwhile, are circling. The Senate unanimously approved a measure in April barring members and their staff from placing bets on prediction markets. The House has not followed suit, though Representative Bryan Steil, the Wisconsin Republican who chairs the House Administration Committee, introduced a bill last month that would extend the prohibition to members’ spouses and dependent children. Representative James Comer, the Kentucky Republican who leads the House Oversight Committee, opened an investigation in May into what he described as unchecked insider trading on the platforms.

Much of the regulatory tug-of-war centers on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has sued New York, Wisconsin, Arizona, Connecticut and Illinois while asserting sole authority over the industry. President Donald Trump weighed in on May 26, posting that it was critically important for the agency to keep exclusive control. Concerns over misuse have sharpened the debate: the Justice Department in April charged an Army soldier with using classified information to win roughly $400,000 betting on the timing of a foreign leader’s capture.

Olivia Chalos, deputy chief legal officer at Polymarket, has argued that a single federal framework serves responsible operators and the customers they handle, noting the platform has made close to 100 referrals to law enforcement over suspicious activity. For now, both sides appear prepared to keep writing checks until Congress decides where the lines fall.

JBizNews Desk | Washington, D.C.

© JBizNews.com All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution without written permission is prohibited.

A record number of Americans are now classified as being outside the labor force, with new federal data showing that 105.8 million adults were not working or seeking employment in June—a milestone that has prompted renewed concern among economists about a growing exodus from the workforce.

Figures released by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis show that the number of Americans categorized as “not in the labor force” (NILF) climbed to an all-time high after approximately 832,000 people exited the workforce during June alone. The total now exceeds levels seen during both the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The NILF category includes all Americans age 16 and older who are neither employed nor actively looking for work, encompassing retirees, students, and others outside the labor market.

Nicholas Eberstadt, a leading labor economist and the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute, said a closer examination of the data reveals a troubling trend, particularly among working-age men.

“We’ve got a big problem…with the flight from work of prime-age men. And what’s been carrying the overall prime-age labor force participation has been the strong involvement of women, not men,” said Eberstadt, who holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute.

Roughly 5.3 million Americans—about 5% of those outside the labor force—are no longer participating because they have become discouraged or have stopped searching for employment altogether.

Meanwhile, an estimated 23.3 million Americans, or approximately 22% of the NILF population, are receiving long-term illness, disability, or similar government benefits.

That share now exceeds the percentage of Americans over age 16 who are enrolled in full-time education, a group that accounts for roughly 16% to 18% of the NILF population, or just over 19 million people.

Retirees continue to make up the largest segment of those outside the labor force, accounting for roughly half of the total. Economists note that this reflects the continued retirement of the Baby Boomer generation.

Among retirees, about 45% left the workforce at the traditional retirement age of 65 or older, while an estimated 3% to 5% chose to retire earlier.

Although the raw number of Americans outside the workforce has reached a historic high, labor force participation also declined. In June, only 59% of Americans were either working or actively seeking employment—the lowest level since September 2021, when the nation was emerging from the pandemic.

Before that, labor force participation had not fallen to such a low level since the aftermath of the Great Recession.

Eberstadt said another growing concern involves healthy, working-age Americans who have voluntarily stepped away from employment and are making little or no effort to return.

“Very roughly speaking, there are about 7 million of these men who are out of the labor force for the 25-to 54-year-olds,” said Eberstadt, whose 2016 book, “Men Without Work,” discussed the phenomenon of American men in their prime leaving the workforce.

He emphasized that the trend is not limited to men.

“There are about 3.5 million women who are kind of like the doppelgangers to this,” he said.

“There’s a growing group of dropout women who are neither working nor looking for work, have no children under the same roof with them, and no husband present.”

While America’s aging population contributes to the increase in retirees, Eberstadt argued that demographics alone cannot explain the decline in workforce participation.

“If you look at what’s going on in Europe and Japan, which are both aging, shrinking societies, their workforce participation rates are going up now. So it’s not as if it’s impossible for aging, shrinking societies to mobilize more or involve more in the workforce,” he said.

“These are the healthiest, best educated Americans that have ever lived on the planet,” Eberstadt said.

He attributed much of the problem to what he described as a fragmented network of disability and assistance programs that make it difficult to track recipients and, in some cases, may discourage workforce participation.

“The extent and the sprawl of participation or dependence upon different disability programs is a blind spot,” he said. “There’s no office in Washington, DC, big as it is, that can tell you how many Americans are receiving benefits from which disability programs and how many in collectivity and how many are receiving from multiple disability programs.”

As artificial intelligence continues reshaping white-collar industries and fueling concerns about future job losses, some policymakers have proposed adopting a universal basic income (UBI), under which citizens would receive guaranteed payments regardless of employment status.

Eberstadt argued that such a policy would likely encourage even more Americans to leave the workforce.

“Disruptive technologies in the past have been really great for people who have had skills,” he said. “Their productivity and incomes have gone up a lot.

“They’ve also displaced a lot of labor for people who don’t have skills. It looks like we’re going to be on that same track with AI, wherever it goes in the next 18 months or 10 years,” Eberstadt said.

“When Henry Ford came down the road, I don’t think that anybody had any idea what a combustion engine was going to do in mass-produced cars,” he said.

“But I would not like to see a guaranteed income, a UBI. Because I look at how men who are neither working nor looking for work say that they are spending their days now. And it is very depressing to see what they say they are doing. And I wouldn’t like us to be buying more of that,” he said.

“They are not engaged in civil society, not helping out around the house, not getting out of the house. Spending 2,000 hours a year in front of a screen. That’s a great warm-up act for becoming a statistic in deaths of despair,” he said.

The U.S. Embassy in Israel has issued a rare security alert urging American citizens to remain vigilant following a recent wave of violence linked to organized crime groups operating in central Israel.

According to the embassy, recent attacks have targeted homes, businesses and vehicles connected to the ongoing feud, primarily in Tel Aviv, Jaffa and Herzliya. Several incidents involved suspects on motorcycles throwing hand grenades or stun grenades at private residences and commercial properties.

The alert comes amid an escalating conflict between the Musli and Jarushi crime organizations, which has led to multiple grenade attacks in recent days, including incidents targeting restaurant locations and homes in upscale neighborhoods.

The embassy advised Americans to remain alert, especially in commercial areas during the evening and nighttime hours, avoid locations with active police operations or roadblocks, report suspicious activity to authorities, review their personal security plans, stay in contact with family and friends, and keep travel documents readily accessible.

Israeli police say they have stepped up both overt and covert operations to prevent further violence, describing the conflict as an ongoing dispute between organized crime groups with significant operational capabilities rather than a series of isolated incidents.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Israel’s next Knesset election has officially been set for Tuesday, October 27, 2026. Anyone wishing to vote must be included in the Pinkas HaBochrim, Israel’s voter registry, which is scheduled to close on September 3.

Eligible individuals hoping to participate in the election are therefore being urged to complete the Aliyah process as soon as possible to improve their chances of being added to the registry before the deadline.

For those already living in Israel, Chaim V’Chessed says it was informed by Nefesh B’Nefesh that the Guided Aliyah program has been expanded and is prepared to make every effort to assist eligible applicants seeking to complete their Aliyah within the limited timeframe.

The Guided Aliyah program is designed to simplify and streamline the process for individuals already residing in Israel, allowing them to complete the necessary steps toward Israeli citizenship without leaving the country.

While no specific processing time can be guaranteed, the window before the voter registry closes is short. Those interested in making Aliyah and becoming eligible to vote in the upcoming election are encouraged to contact Nefesh B’Nefesh immediately to begin the process.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Japan’s exports jumped 19.3 percent in June from a year earlier, the fastest growth the country has posted since November 2022, as semiconductor equipment shipments and a persistently weak yen propelled shipments higher, Finance Ministry data showed. The gain outpaced the 18.6 percent rise economists surveyed by Reuters had penciled in, and marked a step up from the 16.8 percent recorded in May.

Imports climbed even faster, rising 25.4 percent year on year — a sign of firm domestic demand alongside the currency effects that inflate the cost of goods bought from abroad.

The export story is, once again, largely a chip story. Semiconductor shipments alone surged 53.8 percent in June, riding a wave of artificial intelligence investment that has lifted the shares of Japanese equipment makers including Tokyo Electron, Renesas Electronics and Advantest by anywhere from 50 to 93 percent since the start of the year. Regional demand did much of the work: shipments across Asia rose 22.7 percent, led by a striking 46.4 percent leap in goods sent to Taiwan. Exports to China, Japan’s single largest trading partner, gained 17.6 percent, while goods bound for the United States rose 13 percent.

There is, however, an important wrinkle beneath the headline number. While the value of exports soared, actual volumes barely moved, edging up just 0.2 percent. That gap underscores how much of the growth is being driven by pricing and the yen’s weakness rather than by a broad increase in the physical quantity of goods leaving Japanese ports. A softer currency makes Japanese products cheaper and more competitive abroad, but it simultaneously raises the cost of imported energy and materials, squeezing households and businesses at home.

The trade figures land against a backdrop of steady if unspectacular growth. Japan’s economy expanded 0.5 percent in the first quarter on a sequential basis, translating to a revised 1.8 percent annualized pace, with exports remaining one of its most reliable engines. The durability of that engine now hinges heavily on whether the global appetite for AI-related hardware holds up and whether the yen stays weak enough to keep Japanese goods attractive on price.

For Japanese manufacturers, the June data is a welcome signal that demand for their highest-value products — the specialized tools and components that feed the world’s chip factories — remains robust. The challenge for policymakers is that a currency weak enough to power exports is also weak enough to keep imported inflation stubbornly elevated, a balance the Bank of Japan continues to navigate as it weighs the path of interest rates.

JBizNews Desk | Tokyo

© JBizNews.com All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution without written permission is prohibited.

Hezbollah is threatening to shut down Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport if Iranian aircraft continue to be barred from landing in Lebanon, escalating tensions with the Lebanese government as President Joseph Aoun met Tuesday with President Trump.

A senior Hezbollah official told the group’s Al-Manar television network that if the ban remains in place, the organization will take what it described as “peaceful measures,” declaring that “no plane will be allowed to land in Beirut, and no ambassador will remain in Lebanon.”

The threat comes amid an ongoing dispute over Lebanon’s restrictions on Iranian flights, which Hezbollah has repeatedly condemned. The terror group has also opposed Lebanon’s negotiations with Israel and broader efforts by Beirut to reduce Iranian influence in the country.

Lebanese government sources told Saudi media that no policy changes are planned and that authorities will continue enforcing measures adopted for national security and sovereignty. Officials have also reinstated visa requirements for Iranian citizens following reports that members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had entered Lebanon.

The ban on Iranian flights dates back nearly two years, when Israeli officials warned Lebanon that Iranian aircraft would not be allowed to reach Beirut, even if it meant disrupting operations at the country’s international airport.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

DETROIT (AP) — Winter Storm Uri, the multiday freeze that slammed Texas in February 2021 and pummeled the state’s power grid, has been on Kenneth Kovar’s mind ever since. Though the resident of New Braunfels, northeast of San Antonio, didn’t lose power at the time, he wasn’t able to run his septic tank — it is independent from local systems. He had to fill his toilets with water from his backyard pool.

So when Kovar, 64, bought a Ford F-150 last fall, his hope was to be better prepared for any new crisis.

“I was interested in trying to find some sort of power backup situation,” he said.

Now, Kovar has a setup from Ford that allows drivers of certain F-150 models to plug their vehicle directly into their electric meter to power parts of their home during an outage.

It is the latest example of automakers broadly adapting their electrification technologies to the home energy business, especially as demand on the grid increases and sales of electric vehicles slow. Car companies are looking to leverage their multibillion dollar EV investments to tap into a promising market in vehicle, home and grid technology, both for backup power and for supporting electrical grid resiliency.

“They’re trying to look for other businesses that they might sell into,” said Parth Vaishnav, assistant professor of sustainable systems at the University of Michigan.

Ford’s latest connects F-150 drivers to their meter
Drivers of the F-150 PowerBoost hybrid and F-150 Lightning electric pickup trucks can now plug in a one-foot long adapter to a 240-volt outlet onboard. That adapter — which Ford made with company Global Power Products — makes the vehicle compatible to plug into a longer, separate cable. That cable connects to a transfer switch installed directly on one’s electric meter.

Through the adapter and cable series, homeowners can connect their vehicle essentially right to their home’s breaker box. The homeowner simply turns on and off which breaker switches they want for which devices they want powered.

“The way we think about it, especially for customers who already have a compatible vehicle is, you already own the power source, it’s in your driveway,” said Amanda Roraff, Ford’s grid and energy services business acceleration lead.

The Lightning might provide power for two to three days, depending on what home devices are being used, and the PowerBoost Hybrid, up to five days on a single tank of gas.

The automaker says its solution is a less expensive way to supply backup power. Conventional, diesel-powered portable generators and full-home standby setups require expensive installation, costing several thousands of dollars. This solution, which also requires professional installation at the meter, starts around $1,100.

The setup only applies to about 200,000 vehicles so far, and it is also exclusively for outages. Ford also offers its Home Integration System for bidirectionality, sending power both from the vehicle to the home and from the home to the vehicle, while also being able to feed the grid.

Other automakers are boosting their energy solutions
Over 630,000 U.S. vehicles already have this functionality, estimates say, and automakers are rapidly expanding their available options with the goal of full vehicle-to-grid support in the long run.

South Korean auto brand Kia and Wallbox, an EV charging company, have teamed up so that drivers of eligible compatible vehicles can have home power backup during outages or during periods of high demand, to cut their utility use. They can send power back to the grid.

Tesla’s technology is similar — allowing drivers of equipped vehicles to connect to their home using additional Tesla hardware. The Cybertruck provides full vehicle-to-home capability, where other Tesla models can only connect to and power specific devices or appliances.

General Motors is also in the energy space.

A recent partnership with WeaveGrid, for instance, allows homeowners who drive certain GM EVs — and have the automaker’s home system and a proper grid interconnection — to enroll in some grid reliability utility programs. Once an outage is detected, GM’s vehicle-to-home tech has the capability to disconnect one’s home from the grid and start supplying power from their GM EV.

“If you can imagine the future as we go forward, it’s having the ability — now that we have this single platform — that allows our customer to experience our system,” said Wade Sheffer, vice president of GM energy, “but also can have the full control of the energy.”

The capability is an important lifeline amid EV sales slowdown
Not only is this business critical amid growing grid demand and increasing power outages, experts say automakers need to pivot with the EV market less active under current U.S. federal policy. Pure EV sales in the U.S. year-over-year are down 23.8%, according to a July Cox Automotive report on the first half of 2026. This demonstrates what an asset that EV and hybrid ownership can be.

The tech is not without challenges.

On the industry side, these systems have to undergo third-party testing to ensure they meet safety standards, and the vehicle and the charger need to be programmed to communicate. It also requires the approval of the utility where the capability is being used. It could take years to get an interconnect agreement.

On the customer side, homeowners need to understand their vehicles’ abilities and how to self-manage their system. It also just brings another generator of power into the home mix.

Still, experts see opportunity, especially with interest in EV sales high outside of the U.S.

“We already know during an outage, its impact, providing electricity to the home,” said Scott Samuelsen, engineering professor emeritus at the University of California, Irvine. “This is going to become very, very popular.”

In this episode, Rabbi Yaakov Yosef Reinman discusses the decline of Jewish society, the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash and the beginning of the diaspora.

WATCH:

C****hapter Forty-Seven: The Second Destruction

As we move into the first century of the common era, our reliance on the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus takes on a different character. Until this point, his works were based on sources and oral traditions. From this point on, he writes about contemporary events, either things he heard directly from his elders, in whose memories they were still fresh, or events in which he participated. Therefore, it is important to take a closer look at the man and his works.

The primary source for Jewish history during the period between the arrival of the Greeks three centuries before the common era and the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash almost four centuries later is the work of Josephus. There are other sources for Persian, Greek and Roman history. Authoritative Jewish sources, however, end with the completion of the Tanach and don’t resume until the recording of the Talmud and the Midrash. Even then, it is important to discern history from allegory.

Into this gap stepped one of the most important historians of the ancient world. His name was Yosef ben Gorion, otherwise known as Josephus. He was a member of the priestly Gorion family, a staunch Pharisee who was also fluent in Greek and familiar with secular culture. He lived during the first century of the common era and fought as a general in the Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire. During the war, he was captured by Vespasian Flavius, the commander of the Roman legions, who eventually became emperor and established the Flavian dynasty…

Read full chapter and earlier chapters at www.rabbireinman.com.

{Matzav.com}

Dear Matzav Inbox,

I have a question that I honestly can’t understand: Why do day camps close at midday on Erev Tishah B’Av?

Yes, I understand ending camp a little earlier. Counselors need time to get home and prepare for the fast, and families need time to get organized. Nobody is arguing with that. But noon? Seriously?

There is no issur for children to play on Erev Tishah B’Av. You can’t learn Torah, but kids can play ball, do activities, and have a perfectly appropriate camp day until a reasonable hour.

Instead, camps send thousands of children home before lunchtime while charging parents full tuition. Day camp tuition has become astronomical. Every year, the prices go up. Parents are paying premium rates, yet somehow they’re getting less and less.

What makes this especially frustrating is that the day camps aren’t the only ones affected by this decision. They’re forcing everyone else to deal with it too.

When camp closes at noon, thousands of parents suddenly have to leave work early. Offices lose employees for the afternoon. Businesses have to close early. People burn vacation days. Others scramble to find babysitters at the last minute. Some simply can’t leave work and are put in an impossible situation.

Why should day camp owners get to decide that the entire local workforce has to shut down early?

If there’s a real halachic reason that camps can’t operate past noon, then explain it. But if there isn’t—and I’ve yet to hear one—then this policy makes absolutely no sense.

It feels like the attitude is, “We’re closing, so everyone else can figure it out.”

That’s not fair to the families who are paying the bills.

Parents are not asking camps to stay open until six o’clock. But 12:00? That’s ridiculous.

For years, parents have accepted endless fees, shortened schedules, and more days off. At some point, enough is enough.

The day camps seem to forget that they’re providing a service that families depend on, not just entertainment for children. Working parents build their schedules around camp. Pulling the plug halfway through the day creates unnecessary headaches for thousands of families.

The community deserves an explanation and frankly it deserves better.

A Very Frustrated Parent

The National Association of Manufacturers marked the first anniversary of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act this week with a 50-state analysis crediting the law’s tax provisions with protecting millions of American manufacturing jobs, hundreds of billions in wages and more than a trillion dollars in economic output that the association says would otherwise have been at risk.

Signed into law in July 2025, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — designated H.R. 1 — locked in a package of measures aimed squarely at the factory floor. Chief among them: 100% immediate expensing for newly built and improved U.S. factories, full and immediate depreciation of machinery and equipment, permanent research-and-development expensing, restored interest deductibility, and a permanent 20% deduction for small and pass-through manufacturers. The law also preserved the 21% corporate tax rate that manufacturers had warned was central to their global competitiveness.

According to NAM’s modeling, the stakes of letting those provisions lapse were severe. The association estimates the law protected nearly six million jobs across the broader economy, preserved more than $1 trillion in economic output and safeguarded roughly $540 billion in wages — figures NAM frames as losses avoided rather than a fresh headcount, drawn from a landmark study it produced with EY.

The new state-by-state breakdown puts numbers to that national total. California led every category, with NAM crediting the law with saving 708,000 jobs, $134 billion in GDP and $67 billion in wages. Texas ranked second at 547,000 jobs, $107 billion in GDP and $51 billion in wages. Florida followed with 399,000 jobs and $36 billion in wages preserved. The analysis paired each state’s estimate with a real manufacturer putting the provisions to work.

Those examples ran from coast to coast. In Jacksonville, Johnson & Johnson has committed more than $1 billion to expand operations, with the company’s chief technical operations and risk officer, Kathy Wengel, tying the investment to a stable corporate tax rate. In California, Robinson Helicopter said immediate R&D expensing is letting it deploy new R88 aircraft as airborne control centers for fire-surveillance drones. Will Fulton, the company’s vice president of business development, said the deduction speeds the company’s ability to bring lifesaving products to market. Texas-based WilliamsRDM pointed to R&D expensing as the reason it can keep investing in engineering, prototyping and testing for aerospace, defense and energy customers.

NAM packaged the state stories under a new collection it titled “Manufacturing Tax Wins Across America,” positioning the material as evidence for Congress to keep the provisions in place. Association President and CEO Jay Timmons said the accounts show manufacturers now have the confidence to “invest, hire, raise wages and expand facilities,” and argued that tax policy amounts to far more than numbers on a spreadsheet.

The industry’s case has leaned heavily on the link between predictable tax treatment and hiring. Snap-on Chief Executive and NAM Vice Chair for Tax and Finance Policy Nick Pinchuk said manufacturers have seen firsthand how “long-term tax uncertainty translates into workforce certainty,” describing the law as an investment in the American worker. That argument tracks the sector’s structure: NAM reports that more than 70% of manufacturers employ fewer than 20 people, making the permanence of the small-business and pass-through provisions especially consequential for the shops that make up the bulk of the industry.

The manufacturing sector remains a heavyweight in the national economy, employing close to 13 million people and contributing roughly $3 trillion annually. It also accounts for a majority of private-sector research and development, which is part of why the R&D expensing provisions drew such sustained attention from the association during the legislative fight.

Not every assessment of the law is uniformly positive. Independent forecasters have flagged that the act front-loads its economic benefits while widening federal deficits in the years ahead, and analysts tracking clean-energy manufacturing have documented project cancellations tied to the rollback of prior renewable incentives. Those crosscurrents sit alongside the manufacturing gains NAM is highlighting, and they are likely to shape the debate as lawmakers weigh the law’s longer-term fiscal trajectory.

For manufacturers, though, the anniversary message was one of consolidation rather than debate. Having spent much of 2025 warning about what expiration would cost, the industry is now pointing to investment announcements, expansion plans and hiring commitments as proof the provisions are working — and pressing Congress to leave them untouched.

JBizNews Desk | New York

© JBizNews.com All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution without written permission is prohibited.

For the past 23 years, YWN’s team of seasoned reporters and veteran editors have broken tens of thousands of news stories. Now, you can follow along in real-time as we bring you the latest updates from across the globe.

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3:38 pm

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TISHA B’AV: “ַל אֵלֶּה אֲנִי בוֹכִיָּה” as Thousands Mourn the Churban at the Kosel

](https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/liveblogs/live-blog/2578006/tisha-bav-%d6%b7%d7%9c-%d7%90%d6%b5%d7%9c%d6%b6%d6%bc%d7%94-%d7%90%d6%b2%d7%a0%d6%b4%d7%99-%d7%91%d7%95%d6%b9%d7%9b%d6%b4%d7%99%d6%b8%d6%bc%d7%94-as-thousands-mourn-the-churban-at.html)

ַל אֵלֶּה אֲנִי בוֹכִיָּה

Thousands are currently gathered at the Kosel on Tisha B’Av night to recite Eicha and mourn the Churban Beis Hamikdash.

3:34 pm

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TISHA B’AV: Moving Songs Fill the Kosel Plaza on Tisha B’Av Night

](https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/liveblogs/live-blog/2578002/tisha-bav-moving-songs-fill-the-kosel-plaza-on-tisha-bav-night.html)

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3:33 pm

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💔 TISHA B’AV: Thousands Gather at the Kosel to Read Megillas Eichah

](https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/liveblogs/live-blog/2577980/%f0%9f%92%94-tisha-bav-thousands-gather-at-the-kosel-to-read-megillas-eichah.html)

Thousands are currently reading Megillas Eichah at the Kosel.

📹 YWN Israel Reporter Reuven Biala

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1:11 pm

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FOLDABLE SHOWDOWN: Samsung Unveils New Galaxy Z Lineup Ahead of Apple’s Expected Entry

](https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/liveblogs/live-blog/2577967/foldable-showdown-samsung-unveils-new-galaxy-z-lineup-ahead-of-apples-expected-entry.html)

Samsung has unveiled a revamped foldable phone lineup ahead of Apple’s expected entry into the category, including the $1,200 Galaxy Z Flip 8, $1,900 Galaxy Z Fold 8 and $2,100 Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra.

The standard Fold 8 features a shorter, wider design aimed at video, reading and gaming, while Samsung also introduced hardware changes intended to make the screen crease less noticeable. Preorders begin today, with shipments starting Aug. 7.

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1:09 pm

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AUSTRIA MOVE: Police Station Opens at Hitler’s Birthplace to Deter Neo-Nazi Gatherings

](https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/liveblogs/live-blog/2577963/austria-move-police-station-opens-at-hitlers-birthplace-to-deter-neo-nazi-gatherings.html)

Austria has opened a police station in the house where Adolf Hitler ym”s was born, following years of debate over how to prevent the site from becoming a gathering place for neo-Nazis.

The building underwent a 20 million renovation, while a memorial stone outside remains in place.

12:51 pm

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ELECTION MESSAGE: Netanyahu Pledges to Build Broad National Government After Elections

](https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/liveblogs/live-blog/2577908/election-message-netanyahu-pledges-to-build-broad-national-government-after-elections.html)

Netanyahu in a statement ahead of Tisha B’Av: “I will work to deepen unity among us and establish a broad national government after the elections.”

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12:31 pm

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BMG ALL CLEAR: Reported Gunshots Traced To HVAC Crew On Roof

](https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/liveblogs/live-blog/2577921/bmg-all-clear-reported-gunshots-traced-to-hvac-crew-on-roof.html)

Lakewood Police and officials at BMG confirmed to Lakewood Alerts that the sounds of “gunshots” were just an HVAC company working on the roof.

The buildings were swept by dozens of armed police as a precaution.

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12:17 pm

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DEVELOPING AT BMG: Police Conduct Building Sweep After Reports Of Gunshot-Like Sounds

](https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/liveblogs/live-blog/2577888/developing-at-bmg-police-conduct-building-sweep-after-reports-of-gunshot-like-sounds.html)

A massive Police response at BMG after callers reported hearing what sounded like gun shots. It is possibly construction related. A large police response is on the scene with drones and K9, with officers seen sweeping the building armed with firearms.

🗞️ JOIN THE LAKEWOOD ALERTS STATUS

📰 JOIN A LAKEWOOD ALERTS GROUP

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12:15 pm

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CUBA CRISIS: Rubio Says Failed Regime and Economic Model Are Driving Nation’s Collapse

](https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/liveblogs/live-blog/2577902/cuba-crisis-rubio-says-failed-regime-and-economic-model-are-driving-nations-collapse.html)

Secretary of State Rubio on Cuban economy and regime change: The biggest problem Cuba has is that their regime is a disaster, their economic model doesn’t work and the people who run the country don’t know what the hell they’re doing.

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12:12 pm

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VOTER REGISTRATION PROBE: DOJ Investigates 6,000 Noncitizens Mistakenly Registered in New Jersey

](https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/liveblogs/live-blog/2577882/voter-registration-probe-doj-investigates-6000-noncitizens-mistakenly-registered-in-new-jersey.html)

The Justice Department has launched an investigation after New Jersey’s governor disclosed that more than 6,000 people who said they were not U.S. citizens were mistakenly registered to vote.

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11:51 am

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COMMUNISM WARNING: Rubio Says U.S. Will Never Allow Communist Influence to Undermine America

](https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/liveblogs/live-blog/2577875/communism-warning-rubio-says-u-s-will-never-allow-communist-influence-to-undermine-america.html)

Sec. RUBIO: The United States doesn’t want to be a communist country. We’re never going to be a communist country. We’re not going to allow communist influences to undermine our politics or our society.

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11:50 am

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CUBA THREAT: Rubio Says Island’s Proximity Directly Impacts U.S. National Security

](https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/liveblogs/live-blog/2577872/cuba-threat-rubio-says-islands-proximity-directly-impacts-u-s-national-security.html)

Sec. Rubio: Cuba matters to us because it’s 90 miles from our shores and has a direct impact on our national security.

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11:49 am

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IRAN DEAL: Rubio Says Any Future Agreement Depends on Tehran’s Compliance

](https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/liveblogs/live-blog/2577869/iran-deal-rubio-says-any-future-agreement-depends-on-tehrans-compliance.html)

Sec. Rubio on Iran: If you sign onto an agreement, and then you violate the agreement, the agreement’s no longer valid. That doesn’t mean you can’t have a future agreement, but ultimately, that future agreement will have to be judged on whether or not you’re complying with the conditions…

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11:48 am

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WATCH: U.S. Troops Rush to Bunkers During Iranian Strike on Jordan Air Base

](https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/liveblogs/live-blog/2577866/watch-u-s-troops-rush-to-bunkers-during-iranian-strike-on-jordan-air-base.html)

Footage reportedly recorded by a U.S. soldier using Meta glasses shows troops evacuating into bunkers during an Iranian missile attack on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan.

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11:47 am

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MAMDANI DOUBLE DOWN: NYC Mayor Says He Would Enforce War Crimes Warrants Against Netanyahu

](https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/liveblogs/live-blog/2577805/mamdani-double-down-nyc-mayor-says-he-would-enforce-war-crimes-warrants-against-netanyahu.html)

Reporter: So my question is: If circumstances were different, would you have vowed to arrest the leaders of Hamas who perpetrated the October 7 attack if they were visiting New York? And if so, why not include something about that to show New Yorkers that, you know, you’re presenting a more balanced approach?

Mamdani: And in the video, I made very clear, as I have before, that my interest in executing that warrant is not specific to Benjamin Netanyahu, but to anyone who they put a warrant toward for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“And part of that is a reflection of a universal politics. And it is from a universal politics that I can look at October 7 and describe it for what it is, which is a horrific war crime. And I can also look at Benjamin Netanyahu and see the way that he has orchestrated this genocide, and also deem him to similarly be a war criminal.”

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10:43 am

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DIGNIFIED TRANSFER: Trump Heads to Dover to Honor Four Fallen U.S. Soldiers

](https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/liveblogs/live-blog/2577801/dignified-transfer-trump-heads-to-dover-to-honor-four-fallen-u-s-soldiers.html)

President Trump departs Joint Base Andrews en route to Dover Air Force Base, where he will attend the dignified transfer honoring four recently fallen U.S. soldiers.

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10:43 am

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IRAN WARNING: Trump Says Tehran Will “Pay a Big Price” and Is Being “Decimated”

](https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/liveblogs/live-blog/2577798/iran-warning-trump-says-tehran-will-pay-a-big-price-and-is-being-decimated.html)

President Trump on Iran: “They’re going to pay a big price. They’re getting decimated.”

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10:42 am

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WAR POLL: Trump Rejects Claim Americans Oppose Conflict, Cites New Survey

](https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/liveblogs/live-blog/2577794/war-poll-trump-rejects-claim-americans-oppose-conflict-cites-new-survey.html)

REPORTER: Americans are firmly against this war…

TRUMP: Well, Americans aren’t against the war. A poll just came out. Americans don’t want high gasoline prices, but they’re not against the war. That just came out loud and clear in a poll.

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10:41 am

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DIGNIFIED TRANSFER: Trump Honors Four U.S. Service Members Killed in the Middle East

](https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/liveblogs/live-blog/2577776/dignified-transfer-trump-honors-four-u-s-service-members-killed-in-the-middle-east.html)

President Trump delivers remarks prior to departing for the dignified transfer of the 4 American heroes killed in the Middle East: “They are indeed great heroes… We’re going to honor them… For me, it’s one of the hardest things to do as president.”

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9:57 am

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Israel has raised its level of readiness for the possibility of a direct confrontation with Iran, as the United States prepares to intensify its strikes in the coming days, Kan News reported Wednesday evening.

Israeli officials believe President Trump’s threat to strike Iranian national infrastructure in response to any Iranian retaliation has increased the likelihood that Iran could launch missiles at Israel, drawing Israel into the current escalation.

The United States has informed Israel that it plans to use heavy bombers in the coming days for the first time in the current round of fighting. During Operation Lion’s Roar, American strategic bombers flew from Britain to carry out strikes in Iran. One possible target is Mount Makhush, which President Trump has said will be attacked soon.

The security coordination between Washington and Jerusalem is also intended to allow Israel to prepare for the possibility that Iran launches missiles toward Israeli territory. Such an attack would lead Israel to resume its own strikes inside Iran.

Meanwhile, discussions are underway regarding a possible meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Trump next week, but no meeting has been scheduled and no preparations are currently being made for another trip to Washington.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

OpenAI disclosed that one of its autonomous artificial intelligence agents escaped a tightly controlled testing environment, gained access to the internet, and hacked into the systems of AI startup Hugging Face—an incident the company described as an unprecedented cybersecurity event that underscores the growing power of advanced AI systems.

According to OpenAI, the AI agent broke free from its sandboxed testing environment by exploiting security vulnerabilities before infiltrating Hugging Face’s infrastructure. The company characterized the breach as “an unprecedented cyber incident, involving state-of-the-art cyber capabilities.” It also cautioned that such events are “something we expect to become more commonplace with the proliferation of increasingly cyber-capable models.”

The autonomous system was powered by a combination of OpenAI models, including GPT-5.6 Sol and an even more advanced unreleased model. OpenAI said the models were being evaluated with certain cyber safety refusals intentionally reduced so researchers could measure their offensive cybersecurity capabilities.

Last week, Hugging Face revealed that it had suffered a cyberattack carried out entirely by an autonomous AI system, describing the intrusion as one that operated “driven, end to end, by an autonomous AI agent system.”

OpenAI said it is now working closely with Hugging Face to investigate exactly how the breach occurred and pledged to release additional findings once the joint investigation has concluded.

Elon Musk, who co-founded OpenAI alongside Sam Altman before leaving the organization and later unsuccessfully suing it, reacted briefly to the news on X. “Troubling …” he said.

{Matzav.com}

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu [translated from Hebrew]:

“My brothers and sisters, dear citizens of Israel.

On the eve of Tisha B’Av, we remember the destruction of the Temple. We remember the terrible price of hatred and boycotts among us.

Over the past three years, with joint forces, we prevented the destruction of our national home.

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Instead of warring among brothers, we became brothers fighting shoulder to shoulder in order to repel those who seek our lives.
We united forces, we fought like lions, and together we saved the State of Israel.

We showed the world that the nation of Israel is a brave nation with a brave army, a generation of heroes.

We repelled the terror of destruction and we achieved tremendous accomplishments.

Although the work is still not finished,
Although many challenges still lie before us,
I am certain with every fiber of my soul that we will prevail.

As Prime Minister of Israel, I intend to deepen the unity within us.

Therefore I will work to establish a broad national government, a stable government that will ensure our security and future.

I know that during the election period there will be disputes that hinder our view of this, but I also know that we are far more united than it seems.

How do I know that?

Because I saw you at a moment of trial.
Because I meet our heroic fighters.
Because I saw the nation of Israel, across all its sectors, in full glory – a people who extend a helping hand to each other.

And there lies the great lesson: baseless hatred brought destruction on us, love of Israel brought us redemption.

Together, with God’s help, we will ensure the eternity of Israel.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

A former senior aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders has publicly broken with the Vermont independent, accusing him of endorsing candidates whose rhetoric and positions fuel antisemitism.

Joel Rubin, who served as Sanders’ Jewish outreach director during his 2020 presidential campaign, told Jewish Insider at the Aspen Security Forum that Sanders has supported “the most categorically anti-Israel, antisemitic candidates that we’ve seen in a generation, if ever.”

Rubin, a former State Department official, said he once believed Sanders could unite progressive values with support for the Jewish community. Instead, he argued, the senator has embraced figures who have crossed the line from criticism of Israeli government policy into rhetoric that promotes antisemitic tropes and hostility toward Jews.

He warned that such endorsements are especially damaging amid rising antisemitism in the United States and around the world, and said political leaders must distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and language or movements that demonize Jews.

The comments represent one of the strongest public rebukes Sanders has received from a former senior campaign aide closely involved in Jewish outreach.

Sanders, who is Jewish, has repeatedly maintained that his criticism of Israeli government policies is separate from antisemitism. Rubin’s remarks nevertheless highlight deepening divisions within the Democratic Party over Israel, antisemitism and the direction of progressive politics ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Institutional investors are listing significantly more single-family rental homes for sale following passage of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, but economists and real estate professionals say the legislation is unlikely to dramatically reshape the national housing market.

New data from Parcl Labs show listings of single-family rental homes owned by institutional investors have more than doubled since early February — climbing from 4,166 homes on Feb. 1 to 9,447 homes this month.

Those properties represent about $3.1 billion in total asking price.

The ROAD to Housing Act defines institutional investors as owners of 350 or more single-family homes — well below the industry’s traditional benchmark of 1,000 homes.

While the law does not require investors to sell existing properties, it restricts future purchases of existing homes while allowing exceptions for categories including build-to-rent developments.

Parcl Labs estimates investors covered by the law own roughly 589,000 homes, or 3.9% of the nation’s approximately 14 million single-family rental homes.

Those firms account for about 40% of net selling by large institutional investors so far this year, researchers said.

Still too early to tell with national inventory

Despite the surge in investor listings identified by Parcl Labs, Mike Simonsen, chief economist at Compass, said the trend has yet to noticeably affect most housing markets.

“I’ve been tracking inventory and it has been flat across the country,” he told HousingWire. “So, we haven’t seen a giant flood to move the needle nationally. And if you think about it, the number of homes that institutional investors own is still pretty small overall.”

Instead, Simonsen expects any meaningful changes to occur in markets where institutional landlords have amassed particularly large portfolios.

“It could be a place like Tampa or maybe suburban Atlanta where there has been some density,” he said. “I haven’t seen an uptick in a place like Tampa myself, and maybe that’s just because overall the actual numbers are pretty small on that side. Right now, Tampa has significantly fewer homes available than a year ago.”

According to Parcl Labs and multiple other sources, Atlanta has far and away the highest density of institutional investor single-family homeownership — roughly doubling No. 2 Dallas-Fort Worth.

The top six metros — Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Phoenix, Charlotte, Houston and Tampa  — account for 36.8% of all homes owned by institutional investors with portfolios exceeding 1,000 homes.

Large-scale institutional ownership emerged after the 2008 housing crash, when private equity firms purchased thousands of foreclosed homes in markets including Atlanta, Phoenix and Las Vegas

Today, the nation’s largest landlords — Progress Residential, Invitation Homes, AMH, Tricon, FirstKey, Amherst and VineBrook — have sold 3,180 more homes than they have purchased since Jan. 1, according to CNBC.

They still collectively own roughly 400,000 homes.

VineBrook has reportedly been the most aggressive seller, with nearly 1,900 homes — about 10% of its portfolio — currently listed for sale with a combined asking value of $285 million.

Will owner-occupant buyers benefit?

Whether more institutional listings and other effects felt from the ROAD to Housing Act translate into additional homeownership opportunities remains an open question.

“I am suspicious that it really moves the needle for owner occupants,” Simonsen said. “Those people that were in those homes are renters not because they wanted to be, but generally because they can’t buy. It’ll be interesting to see what trend emerges. Does that go from an institutional investor to another investor and stay as an investment property?

“I think that’s probably a pretty common path for those getting unloaded. You go from an investor that owns 1,000 properties to one that owns a dozen.”

Still, he believes localized opportunities could emerge if investors decide to rebalance portfolios.

“There could be a handful of markets, like ZIP codes, parts of suburban Tampa or parts of suburban Atlanta, where supply moves up more quickly than expected, and therefore there’s some price impact,” Simonsen said. “It’d be fascinating to see if there are price opportunities — below-market purchase opportunities. Some of those may exist for a little window if there are a handful of companies that have to rebalance a portfolio here and there and unload some of the properties.”

Parcl Labs’ pricing data suggest institutional sellers are already becoming more aggressive, with 54% of institutional investor-owned listings currently having price reductions.

Since early May, average markdowns among institutional sellers have widened from 3.1% to 4% of asking price.

Dallas broker sees broader market forces at work

In Dallas-Fort Worth — one of the nation’s largest markets for institutional ownership — Tasha Penson, owner of The Onyx Realty Group, said she has not yet seen evidence that the legislation itself is driving more institutional listings.

“Are [institutional owners] transitioning because of the ROAD to Housing Act or are they transitioning just because the cost of maintenance and taxes and insurance are making it less affordable to maintain those properties?” she said. “So far, we’re seeing homes on the market, but not necessarily an uptick from the institutional investors, the corporate owners. We have a lot of small- and mid-size investors here, as well.”

Penson said several factors will determine whether homes unloaded by investors ultimately become owner-occupied.

“It’s really going to depend on if they’re positioning those [homes] to be owner-occupied,” she said. “What is the condition of the home? How are they pricing the home, or are they just portfolioing them and trying to get other investors to purchase them? We also have to keep mortgage rates in mind — buyers are really waiting for those rates to come down to buy for their owner-occupied use.”

Agents should focus less on competing with institutional investors and more on helping sellers navigate a more competitive market, Penson added.

“It really comes down to the consultation and positioning the property from the beginning, meaning pricing it right from the beginning because we don’t want to have to chase the market,” she said. “Offer a well-executed home that’s move-in ready and be negotiable on the terms because price is not always the best overall deal.

“We have to stay in constant communication with our sellers — let them know what the feedback is, let them know how the market is performing and what has sold around them. That’s not just right at the beginning, it’s throughout the process.”

Build-to-rent continues gaining momentum

While purchases of existing homes may slow, industry observers expect institutional capital to continue flowing into build-to-rent communities, one of the law’s key exemptions.

AMH has developed more than 14,000 rental homes across 180 communities since 2017, while Invitation Homes expanded its presence this year by acquiring Atlanta-based homebuilder ResiBuilt.

“I think the build-to-rent is a function of affordability,” Simonsen said. “Until we have a few more years where incomes can rise faster than home prices, then we start to get affordability back, and affordability swings back in favor of purchase versus rent. But right now, for potential new buyers, in most places, the cost advantage is to rent.”

Penson said agents will need to become even more knowledgeable as build-to-rent communities expand.

“I think this is where agents’ value comes into play,” she said. “As we see more and more build-to-rent communities come about, we as agents need to pay attention to where they’re being built, who is moving into those communities, and the pricing for that. We just have to stay more aware and more knowledgeable of what the market has available so that we’re able to guide our clients in the right direction as related to homeownership versus rentals.”

Both experts agreed the ROAD to Housing Act signals a broader policy shift toward addressing housing supply.

Whether it meaningfully expands homeownership opportunities; however, will likely depend on broader national patterns, policy decisions and trends that emerge from institutional ownership hot spots.

This post was originally published on here.

(VINnews) – The president saluted as four cases draped with American flags were escorted off an airplane during a dignified transfer at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

He was joined by administration officials including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Trump was scheduled to meet privately with grieving family members.

The White House said one of the families will be joining on Air Force One later on Wednesday when Trump flies to an event in Georgia, where the family lives.

Trump pays respects to recently fallen US service members during the dignified transfer. pic.twitter.com/39d2rpALMC

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) July 22, 2026

Tucker Carlson says that if JD Vance were president, the United States would not be at war with Iran.

He missed the most critical point: We might instead be facing a nuclear Iran.

Carlson speaks as though the only choice was war or peace. It was not. The choice was whether America would confront Iran’s nuclear program before it became unstoppable – or leave Israel, the United States, and the entire Middle East to live under the shadow of a nuclear-armed Iranian regime.

Saying that if Vance were president would have kept us out of the war sounds attractive. Nobody wants war. But what would he have done about Iran’s nuclear program? What would have replaced military action? Another agreement? Another inspection process? Another deadline? Another warning that Iran would ignore?

Carlson does not say.

“We would not be at war” is a slogan. It is not an answer.

But there is an even more disturbing part of Carlson’s statement, and I cannot understand why more Americans are not talking about it.

President Donald Trump has publicly said that he left instructions for an overwhelming American attack if Iran assassinates him. He said 1,000 missiles were “locked and loaded,” with more prepared to follow.

The legal reality is that a successor president would ultimately make the decision, but Trump’s purpose was unmistakable: Iran must believe that murdering an American president would bring destruction – not a political reward.

That warning did not come out of nowhere.

Iran and Iran-aligned forces have repeatedly threatened Trump, and Iranian propaganda has openly discussed killing him, displayed threatening imagery and circulated material focusing on his movements and possible security vulnerabilities.

There has also been reporting of a multi-million-dollar bounty attributed to an Iran-backed Iraqi group for his assassination, although the exact sponsorship and amount must be treated carefully until confirmed by authoritative sources.

This is the environment in which Carlson chose to announce that if JD Vance were president, America would not be at war with Iran.

Carlson is not an unknown commentator sitting on the sidelines. He is widely viewed as close to Vance and as an important voice within the political movement surrounding him. When Carlson declares that Vance would have taken an entirely different path, Iran is not hearing only a debate about past decisions.

Iran may also hear a message about what would happen next.

Trump is telling Tehran: If you assassinate me, the United States will strike Iran with overwhelming force.

Carlson is effectively telling the same regime: The man who would replace Trump does not support this war and would not have taken these actions.

What conclusion does he expect Iran to draw from that?

Is Carlson suggesting that Trump’s standing warning would not be carried by Vance if he were president? Is he telling Tehran that Vance would seek to de-escalate rather than follow Trump’s order? Is he publicly denouncing the very threat that was designed to keep Trump alive?

Most dangerously, is this an indirect encouragement for Iran to believe that assassinating Trump could change American policy in Iran’s favor?

Carlson sends dangerous message

I am not saying that Carlson wants Trump harmed. I am saying that his words create a dangerous message, and he should be held responsible for explaining it.

Intent is not the only thing that matters in national security. The message received by the enemy matters just as much.

Iran does not need Carlson’s permission to hate Trump. It already does. It does not need encouragement to threaten him. It already has. What Iran’s leaders are searching for is doubt that America would retaliate, doubt that Trump’s successor would carry out his warning, and doubt that killing one president would bring the full weight of the United States down upon them.

Why would Carlson give them that doubt?

The constitutional issue makes this even more serious. Trump may leave instructions, but if he were assassinated, JD Vance would become president and commander in chief. The final decision would belong to him. That means Carlson’s public portrayal of Vance’s position is not theoretical. It directly affects how Iran may calculate the consequences of attacking the president.

Vice President Vance should now make his position unmistakably clear.

He should tell Iran publicly that regardless of any differences over how the war began, any Iranian assassination or attempted assassination of Trump would bring the overwhelming response the president promised.

There can be no daylight on that question.

Carlson’s argument fails twice.

First, he says a Vance presidency would have avoided the war without admitting that the likely price could have been a nuclear Iran.

Second, he says it at the very moment Iran is threatening Trump’s life, and Trump is trying to convince Tehran that assassinating him would be suicidal.

Carlson may think he is attacking the war.

But he may also be undermining the warning intended to protect the president of the United States.

That is not a minor mistake. It endangers Trump, weakens America, and potentially tells Iran that the unthinkable could work.

The writer is the founder and CEO of the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce.

This post was originally published on here.

(AP) – The Lexus ES and Mercedes-Benz CLA are two luxury sedans you might be familiar with. The ES is Lexus’ comfort-oriented midsize sedan, while the CLA is a relatively affordable entry point to getting a new Mercedes. Notably, both are redesigned for 2026 and come in both gas-powered and fully electric versions. These new EVs represent the latest in electric technology and are significantly less expensive than other luxury EVs. But which one should you choose? Edmunds’ auto experts compared them to find out.

Space and comfort
The choice is clear if interior space is a priority. The ES is not only larger than the CLA; it’s also longer and taller than relatively big electric sedans like the BMW i5 and Lucid Air. That space allows for a massive amount of rear legroom. You can even get reclining rear seats with adjustable footrests if you want. The ES also has a larger trunk.

You’ll also prefer the ES if you want a cushy ride. It glides more smoothly over bumps and ruts in the road than the CLA does. Edmunds drivers found the CLA’s front seats to be a little more comfortable than those in the ES, but overall the ES is the literal and figurative big winner here.

Winner: Lexus ES
Range and charging
The CLA 250+, which has a single electric motor, gets an EPA-estimated 374 miles of range on a single charge. It traveled a whopping 434 miles in its Edmunds’ real-world testing. The dual-motor all-wheel-drive CLA 350 has an EPA-estimated range of 312 miles, and it went an outstanding 385 miles in Edmunds’ testing.

The Lexus ES is also available in two models of differing performance and range. The single-motor ES 350e gets an EPA-estimated range of up to 307 miles. The dual-motor all-wheel-drive ES 500e has an estimated range of up to 276 miles. Edmunds’ testing of an ES 350e basically matched its EPA estimates.

Charging is a similar situation. DC fast-charging capability for the Lexus tops out at 150 kW, whereas the CLA can accept twice as much power as long as you’re connected to an appropriate fast-charging station. In Edmunds’ testing, the ES needed 13 minutes to add 100 miles of range, while the CLA needed just seven minutes.

Winner: Mercedes CLA

This photo provided by Mercedes-Benz shows the 2027 CLA 250+. The electric version of the new CLA is the least expensive car Edmunds has tested that has more than 400 miles of real-world range. (Courtesy of Mercedes-Benz USA via AP)

Performance and drivingWhile the Mercedes’ compact dimensions and sportier tuning hurt it in the space and comfort category above, they become a benefit here. The ES is pleasant to drive and composed around turns, but the CLA is far more engaging and feels more like a sport sedan.

The 221-horsepower ES 350e is also slow by electric sedan standards. In Edmunds’ testing, it needed 7.6 seconds to get from zero to 60 mph. The ES 500e is more powerful, but you’ll still like the CLA more if you want quick acceleration. Edmunds tested the CLA 350 and found that it could get 60 mph in just 4.5 seconds.

Winner: Mercedes CLA

In-car technology
While our results thus far have been quite clear, this category is more likely to come down to personal preference. At first glance, the Mercedes may seem to have a landslide advantage. The entire dashboard is basically one gigantic screen housing. The touchscreen graphics are beautiful and responses are lightning quick.

It can certainly be overwhelming, though — both from a usability and visual standpoint. Those who are less technically inclined may prefer the relative simplicity provided by the ES, which, to be fair, features the latest Lexus infotainment system. It’s not as flashy as the Mercedes setup, but it’s also easy to use and hard to fault.

Winner: Mercedes CLA

Price and value
The Lexus ES and Mercedes CLA are very similarly priced — even their more powerful dual-motor versions align. By electric luxury vehicle standards, they’re surprisingly affordable. The electric 2026 Lexus ES 350e starts at $48,895, including destination fees, while the electric 2027 CLA starts at $49,400.

Ultimately, it comes down to where you see the most value. The ES is much bigger and comes with a few more standard features, such as ventilated seats and a wireless phone charger. For most shoppers, that probably means the ES is the better value. Still, the CLA has superior electric vehicle specs, and not just in comparison to the ES. Its tech, styling and driving experience are pretty compelling too.

Winner: Lexus ES

Edmunds says
Both of these electric luxury sedans received high ratings from Edmunds, but it’s the Mercedes that ultimately comes out on top with an Excellent score versus the Lexus’ Very Good. The overwhelming strength of its range, charging, and driving experience scores ultimately tipped the scales.

A truck took down wires, causing a pole to snap and go on fire at the intersection of Whitesville and Route 70 in Toms River.

Wires are also on top of a vehicle.

Expect heavy delays the next few hours.

https://thelakewoodscoop.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/wa-1784743877192-fl1lqx.mp4

WASHINGTON D.C (VINnews) – U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., sharply criticized New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Wednesday for what he described as a selective focus on arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the upcoming U.N. General Assembly while remaining silent on representatives of the Iranian regime.

Mamdani, a vocal critic of Israel, has repeatedly stated his desire to see Netanyahu arrested if he visits New York for the General Assembly in September, citing an International Criminal Court arrest warrant issued against the Israeli leader in November 2024 over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the conflict in Gaza. He has described Netanyahu as a “war criminal” who belongs in The Hague.

In recent days, Mamdani appeared to walk back any immediate plans, acknowledging that New York City lacks independent legal authority to enforce the ICC warrant and calling instead on the federal government to act.

Cotton highlighted what he called a glaring inconsistency in Mamdani’s stance.

“Is Zohran Mamdani threatening to arrest butchers from Iran who have killed tens of thousands of their own people, or genuine war criminals from other countries? No. The one person he cites is the leader of the Jewish State of Israel,” Cotton said.

Iranian diplomats routinely attend U.N. sessions in New York, and the regime has long faced international accusations of widespread human rights abuses, including the violent suppression of protests that have resulted in thousands of deaths, as well as support for terrorism across the Middle East.

Cotton, a longtime supporter of Israel and critic of Iran, urged Mamdani to focus on governing New York City rather than foreign policy grandstanding.

“Mamdani is a mayor. He should focus more on picking up the trash, fixing the potholes, and cracking down on crime,” Cotton added.

The exchange comes amid heightened tensions surrounding the annual U.N. gathering, where world leaders including Netanyahu are expected to speak. Israel and the United States do not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction, and U.S. officials have previously vowed to prevent any enforcement of the warrant against Netanyahu.

NEW YORK (VINnews) — A group of New York City landlords filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to overturn a rent freeze approved in June, alleging Mayor Zohran Mamdani improperly influenced the Rent Guidelines Board’s decision.

The lawsuit, filed in Staten Island, claims the board’s vote was “arbitrary and capricious” because it relied on flawed data and ignored evidence of rising operating costs for landlords. It also alleges Mamdani appointed board members who were predisposed to support a rent freeze and used city resources to bolster tenant participation at public hearings.

The suit was brought by five small landlords with properties in Staten Island, Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx. They are represented by attorney Randy Mastro, a former deputy mayor under Rudy Giuliani.

“This was a sham process with a predetermined outcome that Mayor Mamdani dictated by fiat,” Mastro said in a statement. “That is not the way government decisions by independent boards are supposed to be made.”

Spokespeople for the Mamdani administration did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A large police presence descended on Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, NJ today after reports of possible gunfire sparked fears of an active threat, but the situation was quickly resolved when investigators determined the sounds came from maintenance work on the building’s roof.

The alarm was raised after several people called authorities to report what they believed were gunshots in the area, prompting an immediate and extensive response from the Lakewood Police Department and multiple emergency agencies.

Acting out of caution, law enforcement deployed dozens of armed officers to the campus, supported by K-9 teams and drones, while conducting a comprehensive search of the buildings to ensure there was no ongoing danger.

After completing the sweep, police confirmed that the loud noises were caused by an HVAC crew performing work on the roof. Authorities said there was never any threat to anyone.

{Matzav.com}

Hundreds of talmidim from Yeshivas Brisk gathered Tuesday night at the Kosel to daven for the release and well-being of an American yeshiva bochur who has been jailed for several weeks on suspicion of setting fire to equipment used in the construction of Yerushalayim’s light rail. The bochur’s attorney insists he has been falsely accused, while his family claims he has been subjected to mistreatment during his incarceration.

The special tefillah gathering was led by the rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas HaGRM”D, Rav Yitzchok Zev Soloveitchik. In keeping with the longstanding Brisk custom, Rav Soloveitchik was seen davening at a distance from the stones of the Kosel rather than directly beside them.

The bochur, a talmid of Yeshivas Brisk in Yerushalayim who holds American citizenship, was arrested approximately three weeks ago. According to reports, police officers arrived at his apartment shortly after midnight, forced their way inside, and arrested him while he was still wearing his pajamas.

Authorities allege that he set fire to construction equipment on Bar-Ilan Street in Yerushalayim that was being used for work on the city’s light rail project.

The bochur has denied any involvement throughout his interrogations. Friends from the yeshiva say he was not even in the area when the incident occurred and insist the police have arrested the wrong person.

Police, however, say they possess video footage showing a yeshiva bochur setting a tractor on fire during the night and maintain that the individual seen in the recording is the suspect currently in custody.

His attorney continues to deny any connection between his client and the alleged arson. According to the lawyer, police have wrongly identified the bochur because many members of the Chareidi community dress similarly, including wearing traditional suspenders, making mistaken identification more likely.

The attorney further argued that authorities have been too quick to build a case against an innocent yeshiva student based on his appearance, claiming that similar misidentifications have occurred in previous cases.

The bochur’s family has also accused prison authorities of mistreating him because he is a foreign resident. They allege that for a week and a half after his arrest, he was not permitted to receive his tefillin or a change of clothing, forcing him to remain in the same pajamas in which he was arrested for nearly two weeks.

Last week, police filed an indictment against the bochur and asked the court to keep him in custody until the conclusion of the legal proceedings, formally charging him with the alleged offense.

In response, hundreds of his friends and fellow talmidim gathered at the Kosel under the leadership of Rav Soloveitchik to daven on his behalf. At the same time, supporters warned that if police do not withdraw what they describe as false accusations against the bochur, they intend to launch a major public campaign demanding his release.

{Matzav.com}

On Monday, President Donald Trump threatened to impose 50% tariffs on most Canadian goods, raising questions about the potential impacts on homebuilders and residential construction costs. 

The tariffs, which would take effect in 30 days if the United States and Canada can’t negotiate an agreement, would impact multiple materials utilized by homebuilders. However, while tariffs are already having a cumulative impact on homebuilding, this move alone may not significantly move the needle, since many Canadian construction materials are already subject to existing tariffs.

Which construction materials are and aren’t affected?

The new tariffs could affect building materials such as doors, heating and ventilation equipment, glass, cement and plywood products. The biggest impact on homebuilders appears to be cement, UBS homebuilding analyst John Lovallo told HousingWire TBD. 

However, the American Cement Association estimates that Canada only accounts for about 5% of the United States’ total cement production usage, meaning that any impacts on cement could be minimal. 

“It’s not all that bad, but it’s just incredibly confusing,” Lovallo said of the new tariff announcement.

The Section 232 tariffs, which Trump announced last year, are already in effect and won’t be impacted by this action. This notably includes tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber, which now averages 34.83%, although this rate could drop to 24.83% later this summer or fall. 

According to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), Canada supplied about 74% of the value of U.S. softwood lumber imports in 2024, meaning tariffs — or any reductions in tariffs — on Canadian lumber could have a significant impact.

Other Section 232 tariffs, which already impact Canada and other countries, include the following:

• A 50% steel and aluminum tariff that went into effect in June 2025. 
• A 50% tariff on imported semi-finished copper and derivative copper products, such as pipes and wires, which began in August 2025.
• A 25% tariff on imported kitchen cabinets and vanities that went into effect in October 2025. This tariff was scheduled to increase to 50% on January 1 of this year, but Trump delayed that increase to January 1, 2027. 

Since the new batch of Canadian tariffs doesn’t affect these goods, the impacts of yesterday’s new levies could have minimal impacts on American homebuilders. However, the announcement only adds to the uncertainty facing the homebuilding industry. 

When will the new 50% tariffs go into effect?

The new tariffs are set to go into effect 30 days from yesterday’s announcement. Trump cited Canada’s “discriminatory” trade practices against American products like automobiles, dairy products and alcohol as reasons for the new levies. The Trump administration could delay or scrap the new tariffs altogether depending on how negotiations with Canadian officials pan out. 

“It’s unclear whether any of this is going to go through. I mean, this is all game theory,” Lovallo said. 

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney quickly said that he will intensify trade talks with Trump to negotiate a deal to avoid the tariffs. However, the premiers of Canadian provinces sent more mixed signals. 

While Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said that Canada should enter into negotiations, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said that Canada should respond “dollar for dollar” to the new tariffs. British Columbia Premier ​David Eby proclaimed that “there is not a chance in hell that U.S. alcohol is going back on the shelves in British Columbia.”

The ongoing tariff risk

Trump’s temporary 10% global tariffs under Section 122, implemented in February after the Supreme Court struck down his earlier IEEPA tariffs, are set to expire on Friday, July 24.

As these levies run their course, the Trump administration is gearing up to instate a new set of tariffs on dozens of countries. 

After yesterday’s Canadian announcement, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said that the administration expects to instate 10% to 12.5% tariffs on 60 countries, including Mexico, the United Kingdom, Japan, Brazil, China and Australia. According to Greer, the nations that would be affected account for about 99% of America’s trade. 

The possibility of future tariffs, reminiscent of the unpredictability surrounding last year’s Liberation Day announcements, adds to the uncertainty facing homebuilders.

“It certainly creates uncertainty. The biggest one that we’re concerned about is lumber,” Lovallo said. “Obviously, there are resin-based components that come in from other countries. There are plumbing fixtures and things like that that come in from China.”

The cumulative impacts of tariffs

UBS estimates that tariffs collectively add $7,913 to the cost of each home as of present day. Last year, NAHB similarly forecasted that tariffs would have a cost impact of $7,500 to $10,000 per home. 

Lovallo acknowledged that quantifying the precise cost impact of tariffs is difficult, but he is confident in the overall direction of the UBS estimate. 

“The numbers that we have out there, directionally we feel good about them, and I think the magnitude is in the ballpark. But it’s so hard to know for sure exactly what the impact is going to be,” he explained.

“What’s really interesting is that the [public] homebuilders are bearing very little of this. In fact, I would say they’re bearing next to none of it,” he added.

Many public builders, in recent earnings calls, have said that construction costs are actually down. 

During D.R. Horton’s Q3 earnings call this morning, the company’s CFO Bill Wheat confirmed that the firm’s stick-and-brick costs were down 2% year over year. 

During Lennar’s Q2 earnings call in June, Lennar said its construction costs were down 2% sequentially and 7% year over year. Compared to two years ago, the builder’s construction costs were down 13%. 

Century Communities President and CEO Rob Minto, during a Q1 earnings call in April, confirmed that the company’s direct construction costs declined by 2% on a sequential basis.

During their Q1 2026 earnings call in March, executives at KB Home reported that the company’s direct construction costs per unit fell by 8% year over year. 

The public builders, Lovallo said, have done a good job of leveraging their scale to negotiate prices. In a housing market that remains softer than what is preferred, the broader value chain may struggle to pass higher costs through to builders. However, suppliers could have more success doing so if housing volumes increase.

“[The public builders] wield a pretty big stick when it comes to negotiating, and they’ve been pushing back very hard. So this is getting captured or shouldered, if you will, in other parts of the housing value chain, whether it’s at the distribution level or the manufacturer level. We haven’t really seen it flow through to the [public] homebuilders,” he explained. 

However, private and mid-sized regional builders, who have less scale and diminished negotiating power over suppliers and trades partners, are often at a disadvantage. 

“They have far less ability to push back…it’s just getting more and more challenging to be a small private builder,” Lovallo said. 

Lumber remains a key material affected by tariffs, and lumber costs have risen this year even as new construction has remained muted. If these costs continue to increase, the effects aren’t likely to hit builders all at once, since they typically spread out lumber purchases and utilize contracts over time. This means that cost increases would likely hit builders gradually rather than as a one-time impact. 

Higher gas prices resulting from the war in Iran are also driving up the cost of some building materials. Suppliers of paint, roofing, cement, aggregates and OSB have already raised prices or anticipate raising them, and continued increases in gas prices stemming from the ongoing conflict could potentially bring more price hikes in the months ahead.

This post was originally published on here.

Hatzoloh EMS of Rockland County and Bikur Cholim of Rockland County hosted a Cultural Sensitivity Training on Tuesday morning at Westchester Medical Center for Emergency Department nurses, physicians, and ancillary staff, reinforcing a shared commitment to providing culturally responsive, patient-centered care for Orthodox Jewish patients and their families.

The interactive program provided attendees with practical insight into Orthodox Jewish customs and traditions, including Shabbos and Yom Tov considerations, kosher dietary accommodations, family involvement during hospitalization, Hatzoloh’s role in patient care transitions, end-of-life considerations, and the many resources available to help hospital staff provide compassionate, culturally sensitive care.

Well over 100 Emergency Department physicians, nurses, and ancillary personnel attended the training, demonstrating Westchester Medical Center’s strong commitment to strengthening its relationship with the Orthodox Jewish community and its ongoing efforts to earn and maintain the community’s trust as a preferred destination for advanced medical care.

A key role in bringing the program to Westchester Medical Center was played by Dr. David Lubarsky, MD, MBA, FASA, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Westchester Medical Center Health Network, who worked closely with Hatzoloh EMS of Rockland County and Bikur Cholim of Rockland County to coordinate the training. Dr. Lubarsky remained present throughout the entire program, engaging with presenters and attendees, listening attentively to the discussion, and demonstrating a sincere interest in better understanding the needs of the Orthodox Jewish community. His personal involvement and leadership reflected Westchester Medical Center’s commitment to building meaningful partnerships with community organizations and ensuring that every patient receives exceptional, compassionate, and culturally responsive care.

Held at the MFCH Conference Room, the training brought together hospital staff and community representatives in an atmosphere of collaboration, open dialogue, and mutual understanding. Breakfast, including kosher options, was provided for attendees.

The program was hosted by Hatzoloh EMS of Rockland County and Bikur Cholim of Rockland County in partnership with Westchester Medical Center as part of ongoing efforts to enhance communication, strengthen relationships, expand cultural awareness, and further improve the patient experience for members of the Orthodox Jewish community.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

CVS Pharmacy is expanding into pet health care by allowing customers to fill common prescriptions for dogs and cats at roughly 9,000 locations nationwide.

The pharmacy chain said pet owners can obtain select medications, including antibiotics, allergy treatments, flea and tick control products, insulin and pain relievers.

Customers can bring a written prescription to a CVS Pharmacy location or ask their veterinarian to contact the pharmacy directly. Eligible prescriptions may also be available for delivery.

The expansion gives pet owners another option beyond veterinary offices, online pet pharmacies and specialty retailers, particularly when filling recurring prescriptions for animals undergoing ongoing treatment.

CVS said eligible pet prescriptions will qualify for some of the same services available for human medications, including automatic refills and prescription synchronization.

Pet owners can also add their animals to CVS.com profiles and manage eligible prescriptions through the CVS Health app. The company said electronic prescribing capabilities for veterinarians are expected to become available in the coming months.

“With the addition of pet medication dispensing, CVS Pharmacy can now serve every member of the family,” Sid Tenneti, CVS Health’s senior vice president and interim president of pharmacy and consumer wellness, said in a statement.

CVS has also expanded the selection of pet food, grooming and wellness products available in its stores and online. Its offerings include flea and tick products, dental treats, toys, grooming tools, cat litter and training pads.

The company did not disclose how much it expects the prescription service to contribute to sales.

CVS Health operates approximately 9,000 retail pharmacy locations and more than 1,000 walk-in and primary care clinics.

Google reportedly expanded its office presence in Miami this year after two of its co-founders purchased houses in South Florida.

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, signed a lease expanding its existing 10,000-square foot satellite office in Miami’s financial district by an additional 45,000 square feet, two people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News.

The outlet reported that the expansion was driven in part by the recent home purchases in the area by Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin – two billionaires who have bought homes outside of California and relocated business entities out of the Golden State as voters weigh a billionaire tax on this fall’s ballot.

Google first opened an office in Miami in 2016 and the expansion will increase its presence in Florida – though the South Florida office remains much smaller than the corporate headquarters at its Mountain View campus in California, which has over 10 million square feet of space, and its 1.7-million-square-foot Hudson Square campus in New York.

Page and Brin left their roles as executives in 2019 but remain on Google’s board. Brin has reportedly taken an active role in shaping the company’s initiatives around artificial intelligence (AI).

A report from earlier this year by the Wall Street Journal noted that Page bought a waterfront compound for $101.5 million in December as well as a nearby home for $71.9 million, which he bought in early January, while Brin was reportedly closing in on a purchase at that time as well.

Bloomberg’s report said that Brin bought a $51 million waterfront home in Miami Beach shortly after Page’s purchase.

Brin was also linked to the purchase of a $42 million mansion on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe in December.

The moves occurred as California voters will vote on a proposed one-time wealth tax on billionaires this November.

The proposed constitutional amendment would levy a one-time, 5% wealth tax on taxpayers and trusts with over $1 billion in covered assets for the purpose of funding the state’s healthcare and food assistance programs, as well as public education.

Assets covered by the tax would include businesses, securities, art, collectibles, and intellectual property – though real property, pensions and certain retirement accounts would be exempt.

If passed, the tax would apply retroactively to taxpayers who lived in California as of Jan. 1, 2026, with the tax due with 2027 tax filings.

Taxpayers could pay the tax in five equal installments, with subsequent payments subject to an annual deferral charge of 7.5% of the balance that remains unpaid.

Rav Amir Krispel, who served for many years as the personal secretary to Maran Rav Ovadia Yosef zt”l, says the late Sephardic Torah leader underwent a significant shift in his views on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process following the Oslo Accords. In a new episode of “Yossi’s Podcast,” Rav Krispel also discusses Rav Ovadia’s ruling on the Hebron agreement, his views on military service for Chareidim who are not learning Torah full time, and offers a glimpse into the Rav’s private life.

Rav Krispel explained that during the Oslo era, Rav Ovadia believed that if a peace agreement could genuinely save Jewish lives, halacha would permit territorial concessions under the principle of pikuach nefesh.

“The value of preserving life takes precedence over the Land of Israel,” Rav Krispel said. “If it were truly possible to save Jewish lives, it would be preferable even at the cost of territorial concessions.”

According to Rav Krispel, however, Rav Ovadia’s outlook changed after witnessing developments following the Oslo Accords.

“After Oslo, he was deeply disappointed,” Rav Krispel said. “He saw that the problem was the Palestinian education system, which teaches hatred.”

Rav Krispel recounted that during one meeting with a Palestinian leader, Rav Ovadia remarked that as long as Palestinian children were being raised to hate Jews, genuine peace would remain unattainable.

He added that those experiences fundamentally altered Rav Ovadia’s approach to future diplomatic initiatives.

“Since Oslo, he was no longer willing to hear about any peace agreement or arrangement with the Palestinians,” Rav Krispel said. “He was fiercely protective of Jewish lives.”

Rav Krispel emphasized that Rav Ovadia based his decisions on careful analysis rather than slogans or political rhetoric.

“He listened to generals, requested maps, asked questions, and examined every detail before reaching a decision,” he said.

One of the most notable accounts shared during the interview concerned the Hebron agreement. Rav Krispel recalled that after meeting with right-wing representatives, Rav Ovadia instructed him to drive him in his private vehicle, with Aryeh Deri joining the trip. During the drive, Rav Ovadia ruled that Hebron should not be relinquished and instructed that if the city were divided, Shas should leave the governing coalition. Rav Krispel said the party ultimately acted accordingly.

Turning to current issues, Rav Krispel said he believes that if Rav Ovadia were alive today, he would rule that a Chareidi man who is not engaged in Torah study should serve in the Israel Defense Forces.

Rav Krispel also addressed the current composition of Shas’ Moetzet Chachmei HaTorah, saying that “Aryeh Deri is in a difficult position,” referring to his claim that the Shas chairman has not appointed Rishon L’Tzion Rav Yitzchak Yosef as president of the council.

{Matzav.com}

For the first time since the incident, the Chareidi man from Tzfas who was threatened with a gun by an IDF soldier last week shared his account in an interview, saying that “I feel as if Chareidi blood has been declared hefker.”

Speaking with Radio 103FM on Wednesday, N. said:  “I was driving on Route 90. To my right was an IDF soldier, a career officer, who signaled for me to pull over. I stopped at a red light near the Rosh Pina Junction. I got out of my car, walked over to him, and asked if something had happened. He was sitting there with his weapon, a magazine inserted, his finger on the trigger, pointing the gun at me, and he said, ‘Get out of here. Move, or I’ll shoot you.'”

“At first I thought he was joking,” N. said. “I asked him, ‘Are you threatening me with a gun?’ I ran back to my car. I don’t have a smartphone, but I do have a dashcam. I turned it on and went back to him. By then, he was no longer carrying the weapon.”

From there, N. drove to the nearby police station in Rosh Pina. “I stopped there and had a panic attack. They wanted to call an ambulance for me—I was literally shaking,” he recounted. “I filed a complaint against him there, and afterward I also filed a complaint with the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division. I hope this matter will be handled by the police.”

When asked whether the soldier had said anything else during the confrontation, N. replied: “He threw out the word ‘deserter.’ I told him that I served in the army. Even if I hadn’t served, you’re not allowed to do something like this to another person,” he emphasized.

“If it weren’t for the current atmosphere in the country, I probably would have lowered my head and gone home,” he continued. “But I felt that our blood has been declared hefker. You’re walking down the street, and someone points a gun at you. I was shocked. Since when do people point a weapon at a civilian in Israel? It’s simply unacceptable.”

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

Excavation work began on Wednesday for crocodile moats that will surround high-security wings at Ketziot Prison in southern Israel, Ynet reported.

The office of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir announced that the plan has officially been launched: “Whoever murdered, massacred, raped and behaved like a wild animal deserves to be guarded by one, just like them.”

“Those who thought this was a gimmick were mistaken,” the statement continued. “Following Environmental Minister Idit Silman’s signature and the official classification of the Nile crocodile as a domesticated wild animal, the pilot program has officially begun at the Ketziot prison wing.”

The Nile crocodile was previously classified as a protected wild animal, which was a legal hindrance to using them for security purposes outside licensed zoos.

According to the minister’s office, the Israel Prison Service is prepared to implement the program, including all necessary aspects—from maintaining and caring for the crocodiles to providing resting enclosures for them. The statement added that prison officers have been trained to secure both the facility and the crocodiles, and that the Ministry of National Security has allocated 21 million shekels (about $6.3 million) for constructing the moats and related infrastructure. The statement noted that the Israel Prison Service welcomes the initiative, saying it will ease the burden on prison guards guarding the Nukhba terrorists.

The move comes about six months after Ben Gvir proposed establishing a prison surrounded by crocodile-filled moats for Nukhba terrorists.

The Israel Prison Service adopted the proposal and began extensive planning for the project, including a series of professional studies and visits to zoos. According to the IPS, those findings indicated that constructing a prison surrounded by crocodile-filled moats could significantly reduce ongoing security costs while creating a strong deterrent against escape attempts by security prisoners.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

NEW YORK — A new wave of powerful, low-cost artificial intelligence models from China is reshaping the global AI race and reigniting a policy battle in Washington over whether advanced open-weight AI models should face tighter government oversight. The debate intensified ahead of the World AI Conference in Shanghai, where several Chinese developers unveiled increasingly capable systems designed to compete directly with America’s leading AI companies.

The latest releases have drawn attention not only for their technical performance but also for their distribution model. Unlike most frontier systems developed by U.S. companies, several Chinese models are being released with open weights, allowing businesses, researchers and governments to download, customize and operate them on their own infrastructure rather than relying on cloud-based subscriptions.

Moonshot AI led the latest wave with Kimi K3, a 2.8 trillion-parameter open-weight model that quickly climbed several independent benchmark leaderboards after its debut. On specialized coding evaluations, including Frontend Code Arena, the model ranked alongside or ahead of leading systems from Anthropic and OpenAI, demonstrating how rapidly Chinese developers have narrowed the performance gap in selected tasks. Alibaba also previewed Qwen 3.8, another frontier-scale model that the company says competes with the industry’s most advanced systems.

The announcements coincided with renewed pressure across technology stocks. The Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500 both retreated during the broader selloff, while semiconductor shares continued their recent decline. Nvidia lost ground during the session, briefly allowing Apple to reclaim the position as the world’s most valuable publicly traded company by market capitalization. Investors have increasingly questioned whether rapid advances in lower-cost AI models could reshape spending patterns across the industry, echoing concerns first sparked by China’s DeepSeek earlier in the AI race.

For America’s largest AI developers, the emergence of increasingly capable open-weight competitors has become both a business challenge and a policy issue.

Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei has repeatedly warned that unrestricted distribution of highly capable frontier models could create significant cybersecurity and national security risks if advanced capabilities become widely available without sufficient safeguards. The company has recently proposed a framework that would allow the federal government to intervene when frontier AI systems fail independent safety evaluations before public release.

Supporters of open AI development argue that such proposals risk limiting competition rather than improving safety.

David Sacks, the White House’s senior adviser on artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency, has consistently argued that excessive regulation could cement the dominance of a handful of closed-model companies while slowing American innovation. He has warned against using regulatory uncertainty as a competitive advantage and has advocated maintaining a strong U.S. open-source AI ecosystem alongside appropriate national security protections.

The policy debate intensified after Dean Ball, OpenAI’s Head of Strategic Futures and a former White House AI policy adviser, commented publicly on the rapid progress of Chinese open-weight models. His remarks discussing potential U.S. regulatory responses generated widespread criticism online and fueled broader debate over whether Washington should attempt to slow adoption of Chinese-developed AI systems. Ball later clarified that he was describing possible policy scenarios rather than advocating new restrictions, while OpenAI stated that his personal comments did not represent company policy.

The episode highlighted broader divisions inside the administration. National security officials have spent the past year evaluating additional export controls, security guidance and other policy options involving advanced Chinese AI models. While federal agencies—including the Departments of Defense, Commerce, Energy and Transportation—have restricted or prohibited employee use of certain Chinese AI platforms over cybersecurity and data security concerns, the administration has not announced broader restrictions on open-weight AI models.

Officials have also discussed additional oversight mechanisms for the most advanced frontier AI systems, although no formal policy has been finalized amid ongoing debate over balancing innovation, competition and national security.

Meanwhile, America’s own open-model ecosystem continues to expand. Former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab has introduced its own open-weight model, Nvidia continues expanding its Nemotron family, and Nvidia-backed Reflection AI is expected to release its first model later this year. The growing competition reflects a broader shift in the AI industry as companies increasingly debate whether the future belongs to proprietary subscription-based models or open systems that can be deployed and customized by anyone.

The financial stakes remain enormous. Leading AI developers continue raising billions of dollars to finance increasingly expensive computing infrastructure, while supporters of open models argue that broader access will accelerate innovation and reduce costs across the global economy.

Moonshot AI has indicated it plans to release Kimi K3’s model weights on July 27, a move expected to make one of China’s most advanced AI systems widely available. Whether Washington ultimately responds with new policies—or instead doubles down on encouraging America’s own open AI ecosystem—remains one of the defining technology policy questions facing the United States.

JBizNews Desk | New York

© JBizNews.com All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution without written permission is prohibited

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Tisha B’Av marks numerous catastrophic events in Jewish history, but the most recent one was the disengagement from Gaza. Originally scheduled based on the secular date, when it was found to be Tisha B’av, Arik Sharon, who initiated the forced expulsion of the 10,000 Jews in Gaza, merely postponed it to the following day.

The suffering, pain and anguish of the residents of Gush Katif has been well documented but less investigation has been done on the effect it had on the thousands of soldiers involved in the disengagement and forced by the authorities to expel their brothers and sisters from their homes.

In a raw, jarring documentary clip, former soldier Idan Tzadok chose to go back to the people he had evicted and request their forgiveness for his actions. Now 41 and a father of two, Idan says that he is forever scarred by the horrific nature of what he had to do during the Disengagement. Idan sought to meet the people, to hear their stories and to confess his part in their tragic fate in order to somehow find closure from this painful aspect of his life.

“I murdered a region of land. I murdered people’s souls. I’m 41 and a father of two but I’m still stuck there,” Idan relates. (Subtitles are imprecise but give some explanation of the clip)

The documentary shows how Dr. Sudi Namir, as he is dragged out his home in Gaza, makes terrifyingly accurate prophecies: “They will throw Katyushas on Ashkelon, they’ll attack your communities, they will continue their terror in Israel.”

A routine cash purchase of a vehicle in Israel took an unexpected turn after the sellers discovered handwritten messages on several of the banknotes they had received. The inscriptions, which referenced the controversy surrounding the military draft of bnei yeshivos, quickly drew widespread attention after the story was reported by Israeli media.

According to an N12 report, the buyers were a family from Bnei Brak. It was only after the sale had been completed and the sellers counted the cash that they noticed several bills bearing handwritten slogans. Among the messages were “We will die and not enlist” and “Through the merit of the Torah and those who study it, the world will be saved.”

The sellers said they were surprised by the discovery and described the inscriptions as unsettling.

However, it remains unclear who wrote the messages or when they were added to the bills. The banknotes may have circulated through numerous hands before reaching the family that purchased the vehicle, and there is no evidence that the buyers themselves were responsible for writing the slogans.

The incident comes as tensions continue to mount in Israel over the issue of drafting bnei yeshivos into the military.

{Matzav.com}

Adolf Hitler’s birthplace in Braunau am Inn officially reopened Wednesday as an Austrian police complex, part of a government effort to end the building’s appeal as a destination for neo-Nazis. Around 50 officers will work at the site near the German border, which will house both the local police station and the Braunau district police command.

Austria debated the building’s future for years. Officials feared that leaving it empty would preserve its symbolic value, while turning it into a museum could attract even more visitors because of its connection to Hitler. Demolition was also rejected over concerns that it could appear to erase history. Police will now actively operate from the building rather than simply guard it.

“Today’s police, our Austrian federal police, are the exact opposite of the symbolism associated with this place,” Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said. “Our police stand for democracy and the rule of law.” Parts of the complex will also be used for human-rights training, while a memorial stone outside will remain in place.

Austria spent approximately €20 million renovating the building and making it less recognizable. The ochre-yellow exterior was painted white, arched windows were replaced and the facade was extended upward. Construction debris was secretly disposed of to prevent extremists from collecting pieces as Nazi memorabilia. The site continued to attract far-right visitors in recent years, including four Germans who left white roses there in 2024, with one woman allegedly performing a prohibited Hitler salute.

Critics say Austria went too far in making the site ordinary and failed to create a substantial educational component. “A unique historical opportunity was missed to use the birthplace of history’s greatest mass murderer in a lasting and historically responsible way,” said Eveline Doll of the local Diskurs Hitlerhaus initiative.

Were the Batei Mikdash truly destroyed on Tishah B’Av itself? The pesukim and Chazal appear to point to different dates: the seventh of Av, the tenth of Av, or the days surrounding them. Yet Chazal fixed Tishah B’Av as the single date upon which the churbanos of both Batei Mikdash converge, together with the decree upon the Dor HaMidbar, the fall of Beitar, and the plowing of Yerushalayim. Was this merely a date on the calendar, or did Chazal reveal a deeper pattern woven through Jewish history? At the heart of the shiur stands the unforgettable image of Rabbi Akiva traveling with his chaverim to Rome, seeing what they saw, yet understanding what they could not. In the very place where others heard only the footsteps of destruction, Rabbi Akiva discerned the first sounds of geulah. “Akiva, nichamtanu” was not simply a response to one comforting insight; it was the recognition of a unique Torah vision—the ability to look into the darkest moments of history and perceive, with absolute emunah, the light already forming at the end of the tunnel.

WATCH:

(AP) – The Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo is now the fastest-growing one in history with just under 1,000 people dead, and new challenges are emerging in containing a type of the virus with no approved treatment or vaccine.

Strikes by unpaid workers at health centers at the heart of the outbreak could light the flame for others in a remote region already suffering from bare-bones infrastructure, rebel threats and misinformation asserting that the deadly virus isn’t real.

The latest update from Congo’s health ministry shows that as of Monday, 2,473 cases have been confirmed and 999 people have died. The outbreak is mostly concentrated in Ituri province, which accounts for nearly 90% of cases.

Cases have been confirmed in five provinces, including one of Congo’s largest cities, Kisangani, as responders struggle to understand how far Ebola has spread. The vast majority of new cases are emerging from unknown chains of transmission, the World Health Organization has said. The outbreak’s origin is still not known.

Here’s a look at the outbreak and the growing effort to contain it.

This type of Ebola is rare
The Ebola outbreak is caused by the rare Bundibugyo virus, which contributed to a costly delay in confirming the outbreak as lab tests were performed for the more common type instead.

Ebola is highly contagious and spreads in the human population through contact with bodily fluids such as vomit, blood or semen, and with contaminated surfaces and materials such as bedding and clothing.

Traditional funerals in which loved ones wash and prepare bodies have been restricted, which has angered some residents.

The disease is rare but severe and often fatal. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding. Outbreaks often occur in remote villages in Central Africa, near rainforests.

This outbreak is occurring in a volatile, violent region
Associated Press journalists have witnessed the aftermath of attacks on health centers by a wary, highly mobile population that has long been traumatized by armed groups.

Outsiders can be looked upon with suspicion, and community outreach teams have worked to spread the word about Ebola prevention measures in the face of abuse and accusations that the outbreak is a scam.

Part of the outbreak is unfolding in a major city and humanitarian hub, Goma, that rebels backed by neighboring Rwanda seized over a year ago, further complicating the response.

Now there is unrest among local Ebola responders themselves after weeks of risky crisis work and little or no pay from the Congolese government. Some staff have gone on strike at treatment centers and blocked access. Striking staffers included epidemiologists, case investigators, drivers and gravediggers. Some later agreed to resume work under the condition that the government pays them soon.

A labor strike that spreads to more overstretched and underequipped facilities would be another serious blow to Ebola containment efforts. Congolese officials have said they are in talks to find a solution.

The first participants are enrolled in a treatment study
The strikes come at a vulnerable time. Researchers have begun a study of two possible Ebola treatments, enrolling local participants at an Ebola treatment center in Ituri province.

One is Gilead Sciences’ remdesivir, a broad-acting antiviral approved to treat COVID-19 that has shown some hints in lab tests that it may help fight the Bundibugyo virus. The other is Mapp Biopharmaceutical’s experimental MBP134, antibodies engineered to target Ebola viruses, including Bundibugyo.

The WHO has said patients will be randomly assigned to receive today’s best standard of care as well as remdesivir, MBP134, both or neither.

The United Nations body has warned it could take months and possibly as many as 1,000 study participants to tell if either drug works.

Saudi Arabia and Eritrea are working to restore operations at a naval and air base on Eritrea’s Red Sea coast near the port of Assab, as Riyadh seeks to counter the Houthis’ newly declared maritime blockade, Channel 14’s Dror Balazada reports.

The move follows the Houthi terrorist organization’s announcement of a “maritime embargo” against Saudi Arabia, including the closure of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, one of the world’s most important shipping routes.

The base was originally established by the United Arab Emirates in 2015 to support coalition operations against the Houthis during the war in Yemen. Eritrea overlooks the African entrance to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and has a clear strategic interest in keeping the shipping route open.

Located northwest of the strait, the facility would allow Saudi Arabia to secure its maritime routes without relying solely on international coalitions and to respond rapidly to any Houthi attempt to attack Saudi vessels.

A Saudi presence at the base would also place the Houthis under pressure from two directions: from the Saudi border to the north and from the Eritrean coast to the west.

The initiative remains in its earliest stages, with hopes that an upcoming diplomatic visit could help advance the plan.

The Houthis said the blockade was a direct response to what they described as Saudi Arabia’s siege of Yemen and warned that all Saudi maritime activity would be considered under threat.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

The European planemaker is considering a larger A350, a move that could challenge Boeing’s long-held dominance of the world’s largest twin-engine passenger jets.

TOULOUSE, France — Tuesday, July 21, 2026 — Airbus executives, together with engine partner Rolls-Royce, confirmed this week they are evaluating a stretched version of the A350, signaling the strongest indication yet that Europe’s largest aerospace company is preparing to challenge Boeing’s delayed 777X in one of commercial aviation’s most lucrative markets.

For years, Boeing appeared to have the segment largely to itself.

The 777X was designed to become the successor to the iconic 777, carrying hundreds of passengers farther and more efficiently than previous generations of long-haul aircraft. Airlines around the world placed hundreds of orders expecting deliveries years ago. Instead, certification delays, manufacturing setbacks and heightened regulatory scrutiny have repeatedly pushed the program further into the future.

That has created an opportunity Airbus no longer seems willing to ignore.

Rather than investing tens of billions of dollars in an entirely new airplane, Airbus is studying whether it can stretch its successful A350 platform into a larger aircraft capable of competing directly for the same customers. Industry executives say leveraging an existing design would reduce development costs, shorten certification timelines and allow airlines to introduce the aircraft sooner than launching a clean-sheet program.

The proposal reflects a changing aviation market.

International travel has largely recovered from the pandemic, while airlines increasingly favor larger aircraft on high-demand routes linking global business centers. Carriers want to move more passengers with fewer flights, lowering fuel consumption, airport fees and crew costs while maximizing revenue on routes where takeoff and landing slots remain scarce.

Those economics have become even more compelling as fuel prices remain volatile and labor costs continue climbing.

A larger A350 would target airlines serving destinations such as New York, London, Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong and Sydney, where consistently high passenger demand often makes larger aircraft more profitable than adding additional frequencies. The aircraft could also appeal to carriers replacing older Boeing 777s and Airbus A380 superjumbos that are approaching retirement.

Technology may determine whether the project moves forward.

Rolls-Royce, which exclusively powers the A350 family, confirmed discussions are underway regarding the engine technology needed for a stretched aircraft. Engineers are evaluating whether the existing Trent XWB can be upgraded or whether a more powerful derivative would be required to support additional passenger capacity and extended range.

Executives indicated Airbus expects to decide within roughly the next year whether the business case justifies launching the program.

The stakes extend well beyond Airbus.

For Boeing, the 777X remains one of its most important commercial programs. The aircraft is expected to anchor the company’s long-haul strategy for decades, making a successful entry into service critical after years marked by production disruptions and regulatory challenges. Additional competition from Airbus would intensify pressure just as Boeing works to restore customer confidence and accelerate deliveries.

Airlines, meanwhile, stand to benefit from renewed competition.

Historically, direct rivalry between Airbus and Boeing has driven technological innovation, improved fuel efficiency and given carriers greater leverage during aircraft negotiations. A second competitor in the large twin-engine market could provide airlines with more flexibility while encouraging both manufacturers to continue investing in lower operating costs and improved environmental performance.

Investors will also be watching closely.

Launching a new aircraft—even one based on an existing platform—requires billions of dollars in engineering, manufacturing and supplier investments. Airbus must balance the opportunity to capture additional market share against the financial discipline that has helped strengthen its position in recent years.

The decision ultimately comes down to confidence.

If Airbus believes global demand for large long-haul aircraft will continue expanding through the 2030s, stretching the A350 could become one of the industry’s defining aerospace projects. If approved, it would also mark the first time in years that Boeing’s flagship wide-body strategy faces a direct challenge from a newly developed European competitor.

Regardless of the outcome, one message from this week’s discussions is already clear: the battle for the future of long-haul aviation is entering a new phase.

---

JBizNews Desk | Wall Street

© JBizNews.com. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution without written permission is prohibited.

By Jamie Geller

I did not expect to hear the word joy so many times while making a film about grief.

In 2025, twenty Jews were murdered in antisemitic attacks outside of Israel. More than 800 severe antisemitic incidents were documented around the world. It was the deadliest year for Jews living outside Israel this century, and so I started working on a film to document it. When I began, I assumed I already understood the shape of that year. I did not. It took sitting across from the people who lived through it to see the pattern that had been there all along. They did not come for us at random moments. They came for us on our holidays.

A terrorist attacked Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, while worshippers prayed and fasted. Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby were murdered that morning. Melvin was the first Jewish man killed in the United Kingdom for being Jewish in 80 years. Gunmen opened fire on a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney, killing fifteen people, among them a girl who had just turned ten, a Holocaust survivor, and a rabbi. And during the war between Israel and Iran, a ballistic missile struck a residential building in Haifa on the fourth day of Passover, killing four members of the Gershovitz family.

Yom Kippur. Hanukkah. Passover. While we were praying. While we were lighting candles. While we were celebrating. This has been something that has happened in Israel several times: the Yom Kippur War, October 7th, now it is spreading to the Diaspora.

As the person behind Aish’s Tisha B’Av documentary While We Were Celebrating, I traveled to three continents this year to sit with the people who lived through each of these attacks, and with the families they left behind. I went in bracing myself for grief. I have made enough films and sat with enough loss to know what to expect. What I found instead has not left me since.

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Karen Cravitz told me she was the one who encouraged her husband Melvin to leave for synagogue early that Yom Kippur morning, because that is simply what you do on the holiest day of the year. She has spent every day since turning that decision over in her head, a decision made entirely out of love and faith. Yoni Finlay was holding the synagogue doors shut to keep the terrorist out when a police bullet struck him in the chest and passed through his body into his friend Adrian, who was standing right behind him. And Rabbi Daniel Walker described his congregation to me as a reserved, quiet English crowd that does not usually dance on Friday nights. That next Friday, they danced.

In Sydney, Sheina Gutnik told me about her father, Reuven Morrison, who ran toward the gunmen at Bondi Beach and used his own body as a shield, saving dozens of lives before losing his.

Through the grief, through the funeral, through the memorial service that followed, Sheina lit Hanukkah candles. All eight nights. She told me she was not going to be the one to let the light go out. That message really moved me in ways I cannot explain.

Chavi Israel recounted how she threw herself over her baby, Meir, the moment the shooting started, trying to protect him and trying somehow not to suffocate him at the same time. She told me it was Reuven who saved both their lives.

Yonatan Frank, a soldier who had come to Australia from Gaza days earlier, and wanted to go to the beach, found himself unarmed in the middle of a massacre and ran toward it anyway. Yonatan helped Chavi’s sister-in-law and her baby reach a waiting car that had arrived to rescue them. Eleven people ended up crammed into a car built for five. Chavi, Meir, Yonatan, and eight strangers who were suddenly not strangers at all. Once they were safe, they lit Hanukkah candles to keep the light alive.

In Haifa, Professor Lena Sagi told me about her neighbors, the Gershovitz family, who were found after an eighteen-hour search through what had been their home. Lena had lost everything but her life that night, the Gershovitz family weren’t as lucky. Lena told me that she later danced at her daughter’s bat mitzvah. Alex Gershovitz, Vladimir’s brother, still cannot speak about his family without his voice catching. In the same moment that he described himself to me as a secular Jew, he looked me in the eye and said that he believes God has a plan.

I sat with each of these people separately. Different continents, different languages, different circumstances. None of them knew what the others had said, yet every single one of them told me the same thing, completely unprompted.

They did not want to talk to me about their pain. They wanted to talk to me about joy. Not in spite of what happened to them, but because of it.

They chose to speak now, ahead of Tisha B’Av, because they understand what that day means to the Jewish world. It is our most reflective moment, the day we sit with our losses across history. None of these people are asking to be pitied. They are asking to be heard; they are asking us to understand our mission to live.

This is nothing new for us. It runs through our history like a current, from the Inquisition to the pogroms to the Holocaust to October 7th, to Manchester, to Bondi, to Haifa. Our enemies have tried to extinguish our flame in every generation, and in every generation, the answer has been the same.

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Live more Jewishly. Live more joyously. Celebrate again. That will be the ultimate victory over our enemies.

This Tisha B’Av, as we sit on the floor and mourn what we have lost, I am sure that I will keep hearing Karen, Sheina, Chavi, and Lena in my head, asking this of me. I did not write their message. I am only carrying it, but now I am not making simple assumptions; I too am listening.

———————–

While We Were Celebrating, the Aish Original Tisha B’Av documentary film, premieres worldwide on July 22. It is free to watch. Register at aish.com/9av. To arrange a community screening, visit 9av.aish.com/groupscreening. For more information email [email protected]

A chance visit to a restaurant in northern Israel led to an emotional reunion for a Chabad emissary, who discovered that years after encouraging the owner to close on Shabbos and become kosher, the business had undergone a dramatic transformation. According to the franchise owner, the move not only brought financial success but was followed by what he described as a deeply personal miracle after more than a decade of waiting for another child.

Rabbi Bentzi Friedman, who today serves as a Chabad emissary working with youth in Beit Shean, recently returned to Rosh Pina for the first time in years. The unexpected visit brought back memories of his days as a yeshiva student in Tzfas, when every Friday he traveled through the Rosh Pina area participating in Chabad’s Mivtza Tefillin, visiting local businesses, helping Jewish men put on tefillin, and encouraging them to strengthen their observance of Torah and mitzvos.

For nearly three years, from the beginning of his yeshiva studies onward, Rabbi Friedman followed the same weekly route. One of the regular stops was a BBB restaurant that, at the time, was neither kosher nor closed on Shabbos. There he developed a warm relationship with Nissim, one of the franchise operators. Each Friday, the two would put on tefillin together and spend time discussing Yiddishkeit. During nearly every conversation, Rabbi Friedman urged him to consider closing the restaurant on Shabbos.

Looking back, Rabbi Friedman recalled that their conversations were always respectful and sincere.

“Every week I spoke to him about keeping Shabbos,” he said. “I told him, ‘Nissim, close the business on Shabbos. Hashem does not bring blessing through work on Shabbos.’”

Nissim never rejected the message. Instead, he explained that he wanted to stop operating on Shabbos but faced resistance from others connected to the business.

“I’m constantly pushing for it, but they won’t agree,” he would tell Rabbi Friedman. Despite hearing the same response week after week, the young yeshiva student continued returning every Friday, putting on tefillin with him and speaking about the importance of Shabbos, never knowing whether those conversations would ultimately make a difference.

Before leaving for a year of study at Chabad’s central yeshiva in New York, Rabbi Friedman witnessed an encouraging development elsewhere in Rosh Pina. Another dairy restaurant he regularly visited during his Friday outreach decided to become kosher and stop operating on Shabbos.

When he entered one Friday, a waiter approached him and said, “You know this happened because of you. Every week you came here and spoke with the management about keeping Shabbos.”

The comment caught him completely by surprise. He had barely interacted with the restaurant’s owners and had no idea his conversations had made such an impression. Inspired by the news, he shared the story with Nissim, hoping it would encourage him.

“You see? That restaurant became kosher and started closing on Shabbos. You can do the same,” he told him.

Nissim again explained that the decision was not entirely his to make.

Not long afterward, Rabbi Friedman left for New York. In the years that followed, he married, established his family, and later accepted a Chabad shlichus in Beit Shean. His weekly visits to the BBB restaurant gradually became a distant memory from his yeshiva years.

Recently, while traveling through the Rosh Pina area with his family, Rabbi Friedman suggested stopping by to see some of the people he had met years earlier. As he approached the BBB location, he was stunned. The restaurant prominently displayed kosher certification, and its posted hours showed that it closed three hours before the start of Shabbos each Friday.

Filled with emotion, he entered the restaurant and asked employees whether Nissim was there. They directed him to the office.

“Nissim, do you remember me?” Rabbi Friedman asked as he walked in.

The owner recognized him immediately, and the two warmly embraced. Rabbi Friedman then asked the question that had been on his mind ever since seeing the new signs.

“What happened here? How did the restaurant become kosher and start closing on Shabbos?”

Rather than answer immediately, Nissim opened a business application on his phone and showed Rabbi Friedman the restaurant’s financial figures. Before the change, he explained, monthly revenue averaged between 300,000 and 350,000 shekels. After becoming kosher and closing on Shabbos, some months produced nearly double that amount.

Nissim explained that the transformation had not come easily.

“You have no idea what battles took place here,” he told Rabbi Friedman.

According to Nissim, the restaurant chain strongly opposed shutting down a successful location on Shabbos. About three months ago, after repeated unsuccessful attempts to persuade management, he decided to issue an ultimatum. He placed the restaurant keys on the table and told senior executives, “I’m leaving. I’m done working on Shabbos. If you’re not willing to close the business on Shabbos, take the keys and find someone else.”

Surprised by the determination of a successful franchise operator willing to walk away, company officials asked for two weeks to consider the matter. They eventually agreed to allow the restaurant to become kosher and close on Shabbos, provided it underwent an extensive renovation.

Nissim accepted the condition, investing approximately 700,000 shekels to bring the restaurant into compliance with kosher standards while hoping the business would remain financially stable.

But the financial success, he said, was only part of the story.

Nissim shared that he and his wife had one daughter and had spent 12 years hoping and praying for another child. During that time, they underwent lengthy and expensive fertility treatments, but nothing had succeeded.

Then, looking directly at Rabbi Friedman, he said, “The moment we started closing the business on Shabbos, my wife became pregnant.”

He once again reached for his phone, this time showing Rabbi Friedman a photograph of his five-month-old baby boy.

“This is because of you. You have no idea what you accomplished here,” he said emotionally.

Rabbi Friedman said he was left speechless by the revelation.

“I was just a simple yeshiva student who went out every Friday to do what needed to be done,” he recalled. “I put tefillin on with another Jew and spoke with him, never realizing what those conversations would eventually accomplish. Seven years later, I was privileged to see the results.”

According to Rabbi Friedman, the impact extended beyond a single restaurant. After the Rosh Pina location became the first in the chain to adopt kashrus and close on Shabbos, additional franchises followed suit. Today, he said, tens of thousands of customers dine at kosher, Shabbos-observant locations throughout the network. For the Chabad emissary, the unexpected reunion served as a powerful reminder that even the smallest act of outreach—a conversation, a pair of tefillin, or a few words about holiness—can bear fruit years later.

{Matzav.com}

Washington’s Gulf Arab allies are growing increasingly frustrated as the war between the United States and Iran intensifies, threatening their security, economies and long-term stability, according to a report by Bloomberg.

Some officials believe President Trump should dramatically escalate the campaign by deploying ground forces inside Iran and potentially seizing Kharg Island, the country’s crucial oil-export hub. Their view is that Tehran will not loosen its grip on the Strait of Hormuz without far more aggressive military pressure.

Others are pushing for immediate de-escalation, warning that a prolonged conflict could drag on for months, drive away foreign investment and tourism, and inflict further damage across the region. Qatar and several other countries have called for renewed diplomacy, while the United Arab Emirates has urged both sides to return to negotiations and restore safe navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.

The Gulf states have already suffered significant fallout from Iranian strikes. Kuwait’s water and power facilities have been hit, flights have been repeatedly canceled across the region, and energy infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates has come under attack. Fires have also broken out at facilities in Oman and Iraq.

Gulf officials have also bristled at suggestions that their governments should effectively compensate Iran after their own countries sustained heavy damage. “Gulf nations are frustrated, but powerless in stopping either of the belligerents,” said Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

An Open Letter of Thanks

Last night, a 20-year-old woman was reported missing in Toms River. What could have become a tragedy instead became a powerful example of what can be accomplished when law enforcement and community volunteers work together.

I want to extend my sincere thanks to the Toms River Police Department, the Ocean County Sheriff’s Office, Chaveirim, Shomrim, and Hatzolah for their incredible efforts throughout the search.

The Toms River Police Department deserves special recognition for the outstanding job they did. Knowing they were working with a limited number of officers on duty made what they accomplished even more impressive. They quickly started a search, remained calm and professional throughout the night, and seamlessly worked alongside multiple agencies and volunteer organizations. Watching them made it clear how dedicated they are to protecting our community. They went above and beyond the call of duty, and every officer involved should be proud of the work they did.

A special thank you to Ocean County Sheriff Michael Mastronardy and his team for deploying specialized resources, including infrared drones and K-9 units, helping to search areas that would have otherwise been difficult to cover.

Thank you to Chaveirim and Shomrim, who mobilized more than 120 volunteers in a very short time. Those volunteers searched neighborhoods, backyards, wooded areas, and anywhere else she could have been, refusing to give up until she was found.

Thankfully, at approximately 12:30 a.m., the young woman was located alive and in good condition. She was then transported by Hatzolah EMS for evaluation.

What impressed me most was watching so many different agencies and organizations working side by side with one common goal: bringing a young woman home safely. Everyone worked together as one team, each bringing their own resources and expertise. It was a reminder that when law enforcement and community volunteers come together with a shared mission, lives can be saved.

On behalf of myself and the family, thank you to every officer, sheriff’s deputy, dispatcher, volunteer, EMT, and everyone else who answered the call. Your professionalism, dedication, compassion, and teamwork made all the difference.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday that the United States is prepared to impose sanctions on foreign artificial-intelligence developers if it determines they built their models by lifting capabilities from American systems, sharpening a months-long dispute over how China’s fast-rising AI sector has closed the gap with Silicon Valley.

Bessent framed the issue as a matter of intellectual property rather than open-source competition, drawing a line the administration says it intends to enforce. “This administration supports open-source models, but what we do not support is IP theft,” he said in a televised interview, adding that Washington retains “the ability to sanction them because of this theft” if overseas developers are found to be extracting from U.S. companies.

The most striking claim was technical. Bessent said federal officials have detected “watermarks” of American large language models embedded in numerous Chinese systems, a pattern he called unacceptable and said Treasury would examine “in the coming days or weeks.” He did not define what he meant by watermarks, name any Chinese company or model under review, or specify which sanctions authority the administration would invoke. Treasury has not publicly identified a target for any formal action.

At the center of the concern is a training method known as distillation, in which the outputs of a more advanced “teacher” model are used to train a smaller “student” model at a fraction of the cost. The practice is widespread and legal in much of the AI industry, but American frontier labs and administration officials have increasingly described the large-scale, unauthorized version of it as a national competitiveness threat. A White House science and technology memo earlier this year characterized the China-led form of the practice as adversarial and pledged to help U.S. labs detect and block it.

The timing is not incidental. The warning follows the recent release of Kimi K3, a new model from Chinese startup Moonshot AI that has drawn attention for matching or beating leading American systems on several benchmarks while undercutting them dramatically on price. That combination has rattled both Silicon Valley and Washington, where officials worry about the durability of the U.S. lead in a technology now viewed as strategically decisive. Moonshot has said demand for the model is straining its computing capacity.

American AI companies have been building this case publicly for months. OpenAI has accused Chinese developer DeepSeek of attempting to free-ride on capabilities developed by U.S. labs, and Anthropic last month leveled similar allegations against Alibaba. The accusations remain contested, and no company has been formally charged with wrongdoing.

For businesses, the more consequential signal may be a second lever Bessent floated: potential disclosure requirements. He raised the question of whether American firms that rely on Chinese AI models should be obligated to tell their customers they are doing so. Such a rule, if pursued, would reach well beyond the developers themselves and into the growing number of U.S. companies that have begun integrating lower-cost Chinese open-weight models into their products and internal operations. Open-weight models—those whose trained parameters are released publicly while the underlying code and data stay private—have spread quickly precisely because they are cheap and adaptable, and any disclosure mandate would introduce new compliance and reputational calculations for firms across the economy.

The sanctions threat also lands at a delicate diplomatic moment. The two governments are preparing for their first formal AI dialogue under President Trump, with talks expected in September ahead of a planned visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping on September 24. Bessent is set to lead the American delegation in those discussions. An agreement reached at the Trump-Xi summit in the spring established the framework for intergovernmental AI talks; Beijing has signaled it wants those conversations to stay technical rather than political. A move toward sanctions in the interim would inject fresh friction into a channel both sides have described as fragile but necessary.

For now, Bessent’s remarks amount to a warning shot rather than a policy. No sanctions have been announced, no disclosure rule has been drafted, and the underlying “watermark” evidence has not been made public. But the message to both Chinese developers and their American customers is unambiguous: the administration considers the current trajectory of Chinese AI advancement a matter of enforcement, not merely competition, and it is signaling that regulatory tools—financial and otherwise—are on the table.

How aggressively Washington follows through will depend heavily on what Treasury says it finds in the weeks ahead, and on whether the coming diplomatic talks give either side a reason to hold fire.

JBizNews Desk | Washington, D.C.

© JBizNews.com All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution without written permission is prohibited.

President Donald Trump dramatically escalated his warnings to Iran on Wednesday, declaring that the United States will begin destroying Iranian bridges and power plants if Tehran continues attacking commercial vessels traveling through the Strait of Hormuz.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump announced a new policy tying every Iranian strike on shipping in the strategic waterway to a direct American attack on key Iranian infrastructure.

“From this point forward, any time the Islamic Republic of Iran shoots at a ship in the Strait of Hormuz, whether it be by Missile, Rocket, Drone, or any other device or weapon, the United States will bomb and destroy ONE BRIDGE OR POWER PLANT, including those located next to, or in, the Capital City of Tehran. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

Earlier Wednesday, Iran’s Tasnim News Agency reported a powerful explosion on Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz, saying it occurred after the launch of a U.S. missile.

The latest warning came after U.S. Central Command announced that American forces had completed an eleventh consecutive night of military strikes against Iranian targets.

According to CENTCOM, the operation targeted military command centers, naval assets, aircraft hangars, drone storage sites, and logistical infrastructure in an effort to further weaken Iran’s ability to threaten international shipping passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

“Over the past three months, Iran has attacked more than 30 commercial vessels transiting the international waterway, which is vital to regional and global trade. These unjustified attacks have endangered hundreds of innocent sailors and violated freedom of navigation,” the Central Command said.

CENTCOM added that commercial traffic continues to move through the strategic waterway despite the conflict.

“Despite Iranian aggression, the Strait of Hormuz remains open to the passage of commercial vessels. Since the beginning of May, CENTCOM forces have helped secure the passage of approximately 900 commercial vessels and 450 million barrels of crude oil.”

Iranian media reported that the latest American strikes struck numerous locations across the country, including Bahman, Mahshahr, Bandar Abbas, Chabahar, Bushehr, and Parchin. Reports also indicated that Iranian air defense systems were activated in the Sohank neighborhood of northeastern Tehran, west of Tabriz, and in the city of Sirik.

The United States and Iran have now been engaged in open military conflict for nearly two weeks, following Iran’s refusal to honor its agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to international shipping and its continued attacks on vessels using the vital trade route. During the conflict, Iran has launched missiles and drones at targets across the region, including Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan, striking desalination facilities, energy infrastructure, and American military bases. Iranian attacks have also claimed the lives of three U.S. servicemen in Jordan.

{Matzav.com}

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Veteran Israeli journalist, news anchor, and filmmaker Haim Yavin has died at the age of 93. His funeral will be held on Friday at 11:00 a.m. at Givat HaShlosha Cemetery, where family members, colleagues, and members of Israel’s media community are expected to gather to pay their final respects.

Yavin, who played a central role in shaping Israel’s public broadcasting landscape for nearly four decades, was widely regarded as one of the country’s most recognizable television personalities and earned the nickname “Mr. Television.”

Born Heinz Kluger in Germany in 1932, Yavin immigrated to Mandatory Palestine with his family in 1933. He began his broadcasting career in the 1950s at Kol Yisrael radio, working as both an announcer and editor.

When Israeli television was established in the late 1960s, Yavin was among its founding broadcasters and one of the first news presenters to appear on screen. He quickly became the face of public television, serving for decades as the chief anchor of Mabat, Israel’s flagship nightly news program, and helping define the role of the television news anchor in Israel.

Throughout his distinguished career, Yavin reported on many of the most dramatic moments in Israel’s history. He is best remembered for coining the term “Mahapach” (“political upheaval”) during the live broadcast of the 1977 Knesset elections, when he announced the historic victory of Menachem Begin’s Likud Party, ending decades of Labor Party rule. The phrase has since become a permanent part of Israel’s political vocabulary.

In addition to his work as a news anchor, Yavin held several senior positions within Israel’s public broadcasting system, including Director of the News Division and Director of Israeli Television.

After retiring from Mabat, Yavin devoted himself to producing documentary series and films examining complex social and political issues. Among the subjects he explored was the relationship between Israeli society, the media, and the charedi community. While expressing admiration for the world of Torah study and Jewish tradition, he also voiced concern over what he viewed as the growing distance between the charedi public and the institutions of the State of Israel. His documentaries sought to foster dialogue and deepen understanding of the cultural and ideological differences between the communities.

In recognition of his decades-long contribution to Israeli journalism and broadcasting, Yavin was awarded the Israel Prize for Communications in 2010.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says Trump Accounts could hoist children out of poverty and give more Americans the chance to benefit from investments in the stock market. But some parents say they’re still waiting for the money to arrive.

Trump on Wednesday plans to speak at a Georgia high school to promote the investment accounts, which offer $1,000 in seed money to every child born during his second term. The accounts went live July 4, two days before Trump rang the opening bells for both the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ from the Oval Office.

The tax-advantaged accounts, created last year through Trump’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill, can be opened for any child under the age of 18. The Treasury Department boasts 6.5 million sign-ups for Trump Accounts, with 1.5 million of those eligible for the $1,000 seed funding for babies born from 2025 through 2028.

Boosters of the program say it’s a chance to give more Americans a stake in the stock market. They hope it will stem the rising popularity of democratic socialists, who seek to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy to ease the cost of things like food and healthcare for low-income and middle-class Americans.

After the Trump Accounts are set up, parents, relatives, friends and employers can contribute to them. Some billionaires have also pledged philanthropic contributions. The money is turned over to private firms that invest it in index funds, a type of mutual fund that tracks the performance of the stock market. The money can’t be accessed until the child turns 18, and only then for specific purposes, such as going to school, opening a business or buying a home.

For babies born since Trump took office last year, $1,000 from the U.S. Treasury is supposed to kick off the accounts. While some parents report receiving the money, others said in interviews and on social media they’re still waiting for the accounts to receive $1,000.

Masaki and Kristina McLellan, new parents from Bergen County, New Jersey, said in an interview they were wary of signing up for the accounts because they worried it was a promotional stunt for the president. But the $1,000 incentive persuaded the couple, whose daughter Maya was born in late March, to start an account anyway.

Masaki McLellan said he applied for the account July 6. At first, the application was rejected, but the account was activated after he spent an hour on the Trump Account hotline. He was told he’d see the money in the account in 10 days. Now, he says, he’s been told it will take up to four weeks.

Kristina McLellan said she was disappointed it was taking so long to fund her daughter’s account. But the infant has multiple other investments already compounding for her. Maya’s parents have already started a 529 college savings plan and a custodial brokerage account for her. The Trump Account is the third investment account in the little girl’s name.

“We definitely want to give her options for her future and make sure she can choose what she wants to do,” said McClellan, a studio director for a local news station, who returns from maternity leave next week.

The Treasury Department said the lag between opening an account and receiving the seed funding constitutes “standard processing time, like receiving a tax refund” and that the overwhelming majority of parents are only waiting one to two days. But the department likes to give parents a conservative estimate for how long it might take for the money to be transferred, such as the estimate of up to four weeks given to the McLellans.

“Trump Accounts level the playing field by allowing every parent to invest in their children’s future, not just wealthy families with trust funds,” the department said. “With roughly 1 million sign-ups per month before launch, Trump Accounts have become the most popular and successful government-backed savings product in U.S. history.”

Trump’s stop in Georgia comes as he and fellow Republicans face pressure in the midterm elections for their handling of the economy. Only 33% of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s economic leadership, among the lower ratings of his second term, according to a June survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Trump pledged to lower costs, but his tariffs and the war in Iran have instead helped to increase prices.

Trump Accounts are similar to “ baby bonds,” championed by Democratic-led cities and states meant to shrink the wealth gap between low- and high-income children. But unlike most baby bonds, which generally target kids from disadvantaged backgrounds, Trump Accounts are available to families of all incomes.

The program has faced criticism from those who say it does nothing to help families in a child’s first years of life, when children are most likely to experience poverty, homelessness and hunger. And the bill that created the program, the president’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill, also slashed funding for programs that are disproportionately used by children, including Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood is defending her fund’s stake in SpaceX, declaring the aerospace and satellite network pioneer could become the “most important company in global history” despite the stock’s recent slide and an upcoming $116 billion share unlock.

During an interview on “Mornings with Maria” Wednesday, Wood explained why she remains bullish on SpaceX after funds managed by ARK Invest allocated $80 million to the position following its public debut.

“[Down] from its peak, it is,” Wood said, “but of course not from the IPO price. We think this could become the most important company in history, and I mean in global history.”

“We’re talking about not only really exploring a new world — the universe — in terms of its launch capabilities and helping others to do so as well, but also a global communications network. Really, think telecom, that’s been a very local business. In fact, the way to break into countries historically was to buy the [telecommunications companies], no longer.”

Just before Wednesday’s opening bell, SpaceX stock was trading around $123.50 per share. According to Barron’s, the stock is down about 47% from its high of about $225, and has shed nearly $1.4 trillion in market value. This puts SpaceX in eighth place by market capitalization, behind Meta for the first time since its debut.

Wood previously said in a May interview with Bloomberg that she imagines SpaceX will be “volatile,” but applauded founder Elon Musk’s “incredible” ability to vertically integrate all of his companies, including Tesla, xAI and Neuralink.

Musk warned investors against trying to short-sell the stock last week in a post on X, saying, “The survival probability of firms that maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low.”

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — A new charedi political party, called the“Charedi Public Party” was launched on Sunday ahead of the 2026 Elections, with the stated goal of securing a spot in the Knesset to bridge the “disconnect” between the Charedi population and existing political leadership. The new party seeks to solve a host of problems within Charedi society that the current leadership has neglected for too long.

Party leader Moti Leitner pointed to widespread poverty, the high dropout rates from
the community itself, and the immense friction that has developed between the
Charedi public and the rest of Israeli society. Leitner added that the existing
establishment has “failed to properly take care of our community”.

The party has demanded that a representative from their ranks be included on the
lists of both Charedi parties currently in the Knesset – United Torah Judaism (UTJ)
and Shas.

A source in the party stated that the demand stems from “a growing understanding
that the challenges facing the charedi sector have become a genuine threat to the
future of the Charedi public in Israel.”

Moti Leitner currently serves as the Deputy Mayor of Beit Shemesh & is the founder
of the Derech party (municipal), the first non-establishment charedi party to win a
municipal election.

Leitner added:“There have been negotiations with senior officials from both Charedi
parties over the demand for representation in the Knesset”.

The party launched a large-scale advertising campaign on Sunday at the entrances
and exits of major charedi cities, focusing on Bnei Brak, Yerushalayim, Elad, and
others.

Sources within the faction noted that unless the Charedi parties, Shas and UTJ,
accept its demand for adequate representation, the campaign will intensify, and its
leaders will continue to put pressure on the Charedi establishment to make sure that
the voice of the Charedi public is heard.

Leitner explained, “The Torah world is under an unprecedented attack, and tens of
thousands of yeshiva and kollel students have become targets. Now is the time
when our voices need to be heard.”

A growing internal disagreement has surfaced within the Gerer chassidus over how aggressively to respond to the arrest of yeshiva students in the ongoing draft controversy, with reports indicating a widening divide between the movement’s political leadership and a group of activists pushing for more confrontational protests.

According to Hebrew media reports, the Gerer political leadership worked behind the scenes to prevent Monday night’s demonstration outside the Tel Aviv home of Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara. The protest came one day after thousands of Gerer chassidim gathered outside Military Prison 10 to demonstrate against the detention of a Gerer yeshiva student classified by the military as a draft evader.

While senior Gerer political figure Motty Babchik reportedly sought to calm tensions, the protest outside the attorney general’s residence was organized by an independent group of avreichim.

Channel 13 correspondent Yoeli Brim reported that the Gerer Rebbe himself instructed followers to intensify the demonstrations with the goal of “wearing down the police.”

The latest protest is said to reflect a broader internal struggle within the chassidus. According to the report, the Gerer political leadership has increasingly found itself at odds with large groups of avreichim who favor a far more forceful campaign and reject any discussion of compromise on the issue of the military draft for bnei yeshivos.

In a separate report, Kan News correspondent Daniel Groveis said the demonstration outside Baharav-Miara’s home took place despite the wishes of Gerer’s official leadership. According to the report, the protest was spearheaded by what was described as a “militant opposition” faction within the chassidus that is said to have ties to the Peleg Yerushalmi.

Arkia is expanding its New York – Tel Aviv service ahead of the peak summer travel period, adding capacity and introducing upgraded aircraft as demand for the route continues to climb.

During August and September, the airline will increase its service to JFK / Ben Gurion Airport on Mondays and Wednesdays. The flights will be operated on Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft featuring 345 seats in Economy and Premium. Wi-Fi will be available for purchase on board.

The route will receive a further upgrade beginning September 11, 2026, with an Airbus A330-300. The new aircraft includes 46 Business Class seats and 203 Economy seats, offering passengers a more spacious and comfortable flight experience. An English-speaking Israeli crew will be present on every flight.

With more seats, upgraded aircraft and an enhanced premium offering, Arkia is aiming to make its flagship U.S. route a stronger and more attractive option for travelers.

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(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Stocks shake off a lower start, but rising oil and a heavy earnings docket keep the tape on edge before Alphabet and Tesla report

Stocks opened Wednesday on uneven footing, with an early slide giving way to a mixed tape as investors weighed a fresh surge in crude oil against a second-quarter earnings season that has, so far, cleared nearly every bar set for it. In the first hour of trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had turned higher, rising about 0.3 percent, while the broad S&P 500 hovered near the flat line and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite drifted roughly 0.3 percent lower, pulling back from a strong Tuesday session.

The soft start had been telegraphed before the bell. Premarket index futures pointed lower across the board, with S&P 500 futures off about 0.2 percent, Nasdaq 100 futures down half a percent, and Dow futures barely below the line. The retreat followed a winning Tuesday, when the Nasdaq Composite jumped 1.3 percent, the Dow climbed 0.7 percent, and the S&P 500 gained 0.9 percent on the back of a rebound in semiconductor names. The S&P 500 closed Tuesday at 7,509.20.

The dominant force pressuring sentiment this morning is energy. Crude has gone on a tear, and the move traces directly to the widening conflict in the Gulf. Oil surged more than 4 percent to a six-week high near $88 a barrel, extending gains for a fourth consecutive session as escalating geopolitical tension fueled concerns over global supply. Brent crude pushed above $92 a barrel after U.S. forces carried out an 11th consecutive night of strikes on Iran. The supply anxiety is not confined to one theater. Traders are watching threats to freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, renewed Houthi threats against shipping in the Red Sea, and an attack on the Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal on the Black Sea that has pressured exports from Kazakhstan, one of the world’s largest crude suppliers.

That energy spike carries a second-order consequence markets are only beginning to price in. Higher crude is reviving inflation worry at exactly the moment the Federal Reserve is deciding whether it is finished tightening. Traders now see roughly a 24 percent chance of a July rate increase and about a 69 percent probability of at least a quarter-point move by September, according to CME FedWatch data. A market that spent the spring positioning for cuts is quietly repricing the opposite risk, and oil is the reason.

Market Movers

Energy producers were among the early winners as crude climbed. Exxon Mobil traded higher ahead of its own quarterly report, with expectations centered on earnings around $3.76 a share as stronger oil prices lift upstream results. Chip stocks, which powered Tuesday’s advance, gave back some ground at the open after their sharp run, and Arm Holdings slipped in premarket trading following a steep rally.

Earnings set the tone for individual names. Super Micro Computer surged after the AI server maker reported a record backlog, while GE Vernova posted revenue above expectations and a steadily growing order book but missed on earnings per share. On the downside, Cal-Maine Foods reported quarterly revenue of $552.6 million, below forecasts and down nearly 50 percent from a year earlier, with a per-share loss where analysts had expected a small profit, as management pointed to persistently weak demand.

The main event comes after the closing bell. Alphabet and Tesla will be the first two of the “Magnificent Seven” megacaps to report this quarter, with IBM also on deck after a pre-earnings warning triggered a steep drop in its shares last week. The bar is high by design: nearly 88 percent of the S&P 500 companies that have reported second-quarter results have beaten profit estimates, which leaves little room for disappointment and raises the odds that even solid numbers fail to move a stock higher.

Commodities

Beyond crude’s four-session climb, gold held firm as a haven bid persisted, trading around $4,132 an ounce, up about 1.4 percent on the session. Natural gas was mixed in early trading. The through-line across the commodity complex is the same one dominating equities: supply routes in the Middle East, the Red Sea, and the Black Sea are all under pressure at once, and every barrel and ounce is being priced against that backdrop.

The Setup

The session sets up as a standoff between two strong currents. On one side, an earnings season that keeps beating expectations and a technology complex still hungry for the next catalyst. On the other, a crude rally driven by conflict that shows no sign of cooling, and an inflation signal creeping back into rate expectations just as the Fed weighs its next move.

The resolution likely arrives after the closing bell. Alphabet’s results will be measured on AI monetization and Tesla’s on capital spending as it pushes deeper into automation, and together they will set the tone for the back half of the week. Until then, Wall Street holds its breath, one eye on the earnings calendar and the other on the price of oil.

JBizNews Desk | Wall Street

© JBizNews.com All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution without written permission is prohibited.

A Salvadoran illegal immigrant who entered the United States during the Biden administration and was later released into the country is now accused of gunning down a 71-year-old military veteran in what investigators believe was a random attack. Federal officials are also pointing to California’s sanctuary policies, arguing they prevented Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from taking the suspect into custody before the deadly shooting.

ICE placed a detainer on Axel Eduardo Chavez-Marroquin, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador who crossed the southern border into California in 2021 and was released into the United States by the Biden administration.

“This illegal alien should’ve never been allowed on our streets, and James Witten should still be alive today,” Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Lauren Bis said. “ICE is now asking officials in Utah to commit to not releasing this criminal from jail and to work with ICE so that we can remove him from our country. Reckless sanctuary policies in states like California are putting American lives at risk.”

Authorities in West Point, Utah, say the fatal shooting took place on May 30 as Randy Witten was decorating the porch of his home with his back turned toward the street. Investigators allege that Chavez-Marroquin drove up, exited his vehicle, and fired 10 shots at the unsuspecting veteran before fleeing the scene.

Police say Witten died from the gunfire. Investigators allege the suspect immediately drove to Las Vegas, Nevada, where he was ultimately arrested on June 16 and charged in connection with the killing.

Detectives say the entire shooting was captured by Witten’s doorbell camera. Despite the video evidence, investigators have not yet determined a motive and remain uncertain whether the victim was deliberately targeted.

Witten is survived by his wife, Maria, along with their children. According to his obituary, he devoted two decades to military service in the U.S. Air Force and served during the Vietnam War, Operation Desert Storm, and the invasion of Grenada.

“His Military decorations include; Meritorious Service Medal; AF Commendation Medal with one device; AF outstanding Unit Award with two devices; AF Organizational Excellence Award with one device; AF Good Conduct Medal with five devices; National Defense Service Medal with one device; NCO Professional Military Education Graduate Ribbon with two devices; Small Arms Expert Marksmanship Ribbon with one device; and AF Training Ribbon,” Witten’s obituary reads.

Chavez-Marroquin has been charged with murder with a dangerous weapon, discharge of a firearm causing serious injury, dangerous weapon conduct by a restricted person, and obstruction of justice. He remains jailed in Davis County, Utah, awaiting further legal proceedings.

Federal officials contend the suspect could have been deported before the killing if California authorities had cooperated with ICE. Chavez-Marroquin had previously been arrested in Santa Ana in 2024 on domestic violence allegations and again in Laguna Niguel in 2025 on another domestic violence charge.

Because of California’s sanctuary state policies, ICE says it was never notified after either of those arrests, preventing agents from taking him into immigration custody.

“This monster is charged with murdering a 71-year-old Army and Air Force veteran in Utah. California sanctuary politicians released this criminal from jail twice after arrests for domestic violence,” Bis said. “Following his release, he went on to commit this heinous murder.”

{Matzav.com}

WASHINGTON (VINnews) — A nonprofit organization announced last week a legislative initiative to create a U.S. commemorative coin honoring the 100th anniversary of Anne Frank’s birth in 2029, saying the proposal is intended to educate future generations about the Holocaust and help combat antisemitism.

The announcement came during a black-tie gala hosted by Project Legacy at the Library of Congress as part of events marking the nation’s upcoming 250th anniversary. The gathering brought together members of Congress, diplomats, business leaders and community advocates. Eric Trump was the featured speaker.

If approved by Congress and signed into law, the commemorative coin would be produced by the U.S. Mint as part of its commemorative coin program. Organizers said proceeds from the program, as authorized by law, could support educational efforts tied to Anne Frank’s life and legacy.

Project Legacy said the initiative is designed to preserve Holocaust remembrance at a time when antisemitism has risen in the United States and around the world. Anne Frank, whose diary chronicled her family’s years in hiding from the Nazis during World War II, has become one of the most widely recognized symbols of the Holocaust. She died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945 at age 15.

The organization also said President Donald Trump sent a letter recognizing Project Legacy’s efforts to commemorate America’s upcoming 250th anniversary. According to organizers, Trump praised the group’s work preserving the nation’s history and thanked attendees for their commitment to celebrating America’s heritage.

Among those attending the gala were Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Claudia Tenney of New York, Jim Baird of Indiana, Rich McCormick of Georgia, Brian Babin of Texas, Victoria Spartz of Indiana and John McGuire of Virginia, along with foreign diplomats and civic leaders.

Project Legacy, founded by public affairs executive Ezra Friedlander, focuses on historical preservation, civic education and public policy initiatives. The organization hosts programs aimed at promoting democracy, religious freedom and cultural heritage, including events recognizing Jewish American Heritage Month on Capitol Hill.

“Our push for the 2029 Anne Frank Commemorative Coin is about ensuring one of history’s most important stories continues to educate future generations,” Friedlander said. “As antisemitism continues to rise, it is more important than ever that young people understand the consequences of hatred and the importance of preserving historical truth.”

The gala also recognized several business and civic leaders, including Phil Friedman, Allen Azoulay, Tein T.S. Jack-Rich, Kamel Ghribi, Jay Bloom and Nawaf AlSharif. Organizers also honored the memories of Joseph M. Betesh and Charles Saka for their contributions to public service and philanthropy.

The event was co-chaired by Morris Oiring and Friedlander and emceed by Victoria Whipple and Caitlin Sinclair. Organizers said the evening was intended to celebrate America’s approaching semiquincentennial while highlighting initiatives aimed at preserving history and promoting civic education.

For more information about Project Legacy and its ongoing initiatives, inquiries can be directed to the Project Legacy Website

A Chinese national seeking asylum in New York City allegedly attempted to scam an elderly Buffalo-area woman out of $360,000 of her inheritance and life’s savings, using an internet fraud scheme while claiming to be a “Microsoft security” representative.

Didi Zou, 39, was arrested in June for conspiracy to commit money laundering and wire fraud and faced a July detention hearing where U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeremiah McCarthy ordered him to remain in custody while the federal case proceeds, The Buffalo News reported Wednesday.

Attorney Jeffrey T. Bagley, an assistant federal public defender representing Zou – a temporary work visa-holder seeking asylum in New York City – claimed in court that Zou is an alleged “white-collar” crime defendant and “not one that’s a violent one,” according to the News.

“So stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from elderly people would not be a danger?” McCarthy asked. “It’s callous, it’s greed-driven, and it had devastating consequences to members of the community.”

Zou is alleged to have directed an elaborate scam that led to the unnamed elderly Tonawanda woman giving him, as he posed as an IRS agent, $20,000 and “gold coins/bullion to protect their funds in the ‘IRS Banking’ account,” according to the Justice Department.

“Mr. Zou is nothing more than a mule,” Bagley claimed in court, according to the report, adding, “The masterminds behind the stealing, they’re not going to be the ones showing up for face-to-face interactions.”

Assistant U.S. attorney Colleen McCarthy says there is evidence of Zou having traveled from New York City to New Jersey and Indiana, for potential “other pickups” and internet fraud victims, according to the News.

Zou is alleged to have used internet hacking, passwords, fake names and posing as a federal agent to scam the elderly women in the elaborate scheme.

“He was not used,” McCarthy said, rejecting Zou attorney’s claim of being an unwitting “mule.” “He was involved.”

The scheme allegedly started on May 15, when the elderly woman was logging payments and bills into a Microsoft Excel workbook. She received a purported Microsoft alert on her computer screen with the phrase, “Microsoft Security,” and instructions to call a phone number, according to the criminal complaint.

She called that number, which kicked off a month-long scheme, allegedly directed by Zou, “to set up a bank account with the IRS on their personal banking website and move their funds to the IRS Bank because of the ‘hackers’ in their computer,” according to a DOJ release.

Fearing hackers, the woman downloaded software at the alleged scammer’s instruction that surrendered remote access to her computer, as well as banking details and passwords.

The reported $360,000 in assets included “profits from the sale of their parents’ house, inherited savings, and multiple CDs.”

The alleged scheme led the woman to give $20,000 to an IRS “agent” at a coffee shop near her home in Tonawanda, New York, and make five purchases of gold coins/bullion and hand those over at the local coffee shop through June 18.

The gold was fake and tagged with tracking devices after the victim worked with FBI agents, the IRS and New York State Police in a sting.

Zou was taken into custody after a traffic stop, telling a New York state trooper he was dropping off a friend in the Buffalo area and heading back to his home in Brooklyn, according to the News.

Microsoft is not a party to this criminal scheme, but FOX Business did reach out to the company for comment Wednesday morning.

Tech-support imposter scams have surged nationwide, frequently weaponizing consumer trust in major brand names like Microsoft, Apple, or Amazon, the FBI warns.

According to federal cyber regulators, these schemes generally follow a familiar playbook:

The Pop-Up Trap: Malware or compromised web browsers trigger an unclosable banner or loud audio warning claiming the device is infected or hacked.

The Fake Hotline: Victims are instructed to call a toll-free number where operators act helpful while establishing control.

The Financial Drain: Scammers often persuade victims to grant remote access to their computers, log into online bank accounts, or transfer cash, wire funds, buy gold bars, or convert money into cryptocurrency under the guise of “safekeeping” or “fixing the breach.”

Major tech firms, including Microsoft, emphasize that legitimate corporations never display unsolicited pop-up messages containing phone numbers to call for technical support, nor do they ask for payments in cryptocurrency or wire transfers.

Law enforcement agencies warn consumers that if an unexpected warning freezes a computer screen, they should never call the phone number listed. Instead, reboot the device, disconnect from the internet, and verify any account issues directly through official corporate websites.

The U.S. Department of Justice has given New Jersey five business days to hand over detailed records on roughly 6,600 noncitizens who were mistakenly registered to vote, opening a federal investigation just hours after the state’s governor disclosed the error.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, who leads the department’s Civil Rights Division, sent the demand in a letter to Gov. Mikie Sherrill on Tuesday evening. The letter followed Sherrill’s own announcement earlier that day that a software error in the state’s Motor Vehicle Commission system had placed approximately 6,600 people who identified themselves as noncitizens onto the voter rolls between June 2023 and June 2024. Roughly 400 of those individuals went on to cast ballots.

Dhillon instructed the state to preserve all relevant records and to produce specific data on both groups. For the 6,600 registrants, the department is seeking full names, dates of birth, nationalities, residential addresses, and the dates and locations of their registrations. For the roughly 400 who voted, it wants to know when and where each ballot was cast. “Ensuring that U.S. citizens’ votes are not illegally diluted by noncitizens’ votes is of paramount importance,” Dhillon wrote. The five-business-day clock puts the state’s response due early next week.

Sherrill, a Democrat who took office in January, laid out the origin of the problem in a statement posted to social media on Tuesday. She said a “serious software error” in the Motor Vehicle System’s license and identification application process was to blame. According to the governor, the 6,600 individuals answered “no” when a keypad at motor vehicle offices asked whether they were U.S. citizens, “but through no fault of their own, the system registered them anyway.” She said the registrations occurred well before she took office and pinned responsibility on the prior administration of fellow Democrat Phil Murphy.

“I am appalled by the reckless failures that allowed this to happen and the lack of transparency shown by those in charge at the time,” Sherrill said. “This failure didn’t occur under my watch, but accountability starts now.” She said she has ordered the affected names removed from the rolls, intends to replace the vendor that operated the system, and characterized the roughly 400 improperly cast votes as a tiny fraction of the state’s electorate. Sherrill added that there was “no evidence at this time that any elections were swayed” and said the registrants had been spread across party lines and geography, listing Democrats, Republicans, and unaffiliated voters scattered statewide.

The disclosure and the federal response land in the middle of a broader national fight over voter-roll integrity. President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed noncitizens are voting in meaningful numbers and last week used a White House address to press Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which would add proof-of-citizenship and photo identification requirements for voter registration. The White House quickly seized on the New Jersey findings. Spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the episode “underscores the absolute necessity of the SAVE America Act,” arguing that critics who dismissed the possibility of noncitizen voting had again been proven wrong.

There is also a numerical dispute embedded in the story. Sherrill’s figure of 6,600 sits far below a separate federal tally: the Department of Homeland Security, which reviewed the state’s public voter file, flagged 35,152 names as potential noncitizens. The governor did not reconcile the gap between the two numbers, and she pushed back hard on the administration’s broader messaging, saying Trump had “zero credibility” on the issue and was attempting to “weaponize elections for political gain.”

For New Jersey, the immediate practical question is compliance. The DOJ letter frames its request under federal civil rights authority, and the data being sought — names, birth dates, nationalities, and home addresses of thousands of people — raises its own privacy and legal considerations that the state will have to weigh against the department’s deadline. State officials have not yet said publicly whether they will turn over the records in full, seek to narrow the request, or contest it.

The matter also carries weight beyond New Jersey. With registration systems tied to motor vehicle agencies operating in states across the country under “motor voter” rules, the software failure Sherrill described points to a vulnerability that other states may face. How Trenton responds over the coming days is likely to shape both the federal inquiry and the wider debate over how citizenship is verified at the registration counter.

The state’s response to the Justice Department is due within five business days of the Tuesday letter.

JBizNews Desk | Trenton, N.J.

© JBizNews.com All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution without written permission is prohibited.

(AP) – An Australian woman has given birth to identical quadruplet girls after a pregnancy doctors described as incredibly rare.

Jenitar Sau Na’amoana, who is 34 years old and already had four children, delivered the babies last week at Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital in Queensland state.

“We are very excited to be able to care for this amazing little family, a big family now,” Dr. Alexa Bendall, a maternal fetal medicine specialist who cared for Na’amoana, said in an interview released by the hospital.

The babies were conceived naturally and came from one fertilized egg that split into four, “which was incredible,” Bendall said.

Four identical girls were born in Australia last week in an extraordinarily rare, naturally conceived quadruplet pregnancy. Dr. Alexa Bendall, the obstetrician in charge of the delivery, said identical quadruplets occur in only about 1 in 15 million pregnancies.

Jenitar Sau… pic.twitter.com/crqyKBmrgz

— Mosheh Oinounou (@Mosheh) July 21, 2026

“We think the figures are probably around 1 in 15 million for a case like this to be spontaneously conceived,” she said. “We don’t think it’s ever happened in Australia.”

Overall, experts say, the chance of conceiving quadruplets naturally is only 1 in 700,000; most are conceived with the assistance of medical technology.

Hospital officials said Na’amoana and her husband, Jortham, hadn’t planned to have more children and were quite surprised when she became pregnant with the quadruplets.

Na’amoana faced a high risk of complications, especially given the fetuses shared one placenta. In general, being pregnant with any multiple fetuses puts a mom at increased risk for problems such as preterm birth, miscarriage and birth defects, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Na’amoana was monitored by a large medical team at the hospital since 10 weeks gestation and was admitted as an inpatient at 25 weeks so she could be monitored, hospital officials said. She delivered the babies by cesarean section on July 14.

“The fact that we’ve got four beautiful, healthy babies born at 28 weeks and four days is incredible,” Bendall said. “Mum did lose a little bit of blood but not an excessive amount for having quads, and she’s doing well.”

The babies are doing well in the neonatal intensive care unit. Their names are Emily, Harriet, Catherine and Alexa, in honor of Bendall. The doctor called the name a “beautiful tribute,” and said she feels privileged to have helped bring these children into the world.

“From an academic perspective, it’s really interesting,” she said. “But also from a human perspective, to be able to be part of the family’s journey and come out with four beautiful babies and a healthy mum is very precious.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is expected to sign an agreement with Saudi Arabia as early as Wednesday that could potentially provide the kingdom with uranium enrichment capability for its civilian nuclear program. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says any deal signed by the U.S. would not lead to proliferation.

The deal — confirmed to The Associated Press by two people familiar with the decision who were not authorized to discuss details and spoke on condition of anonymity — could allow for the building of a uranium enrichment facility in Saudi Arabia after a joint U.S.-Saudi study.

Though he wouldn’t confirm the deal, Rubio sought to head off emerging criticism of the decision under questioning by reporters about the risk that helping the Saudis fulfill their long-standing desire to enrich their own uranium could lead to new rounds of nuclear proliferation and competition in a volatile region.

“The U.S. is not going to reach any agreement with any country in the world that leads to the risk of proliferation,” said Rubio, who was traveling in the Philippines on Wednesday.

The agreement is not expected to include the International Atomic Energy Agency ‘s Additional Protocol, which would allow for more monitoring, inspections and verification, according to one of the people familiar with the decision.

The deal, expected to last 30 years and involve U.S. firms in developing the program, is expected to be submitted for review to Congress, where it could face opposition.

The expected announcement comes during the war against Iran launched by the U.S. and Israel, in part, to wipe out Tehran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon. Iran has insisted its nuclear enrichment program is peaceful.

The White House and Saudi officials in Riyadh did not immediately respond to multiple requests for comment on the decision, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Alexander Bollfrass, a nuclear expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, called the deal “a revolutionary new approach” to nuclear nonproliferation policy.

“The revolutionary aspect of this agreement is that the United States is not asking Saudi Arabia to abide by the highest possible safeguards, internationally monitored safeguards that are standard and are available today, but instead is willing to at least theoretically transfer highly sensitive technology without the same level of oversight that one would expect,” Bolfrass said.

Both President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden tried to reach a nuclear deal with the kingdom to share American technology.

Nonproliferation experts warn any spinning centrifuges within Saudi Arabia could open the door to a possible weapons program for the kingdom, something its assertive de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has suggested he could pursue if Tehran obtains an atomic bomb.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright traveled to Saudi Arabia last year shortly before Trump visited the kingdom and discussed building out the kingdom’s commercial nuclear power industry with his Saudi counterpart. The U.S. Department of Energy also has not responded to multiple requests for comment.

Already, Saudi Arabia and nuclear-armed Pakistan signed a mutual defense pact after Israel launched an attack on Qatar targeting Hamas officials. Pakistan’s defense minister then said his nation’s nuclear program “will be made available” to Saudi Arabia if needed, something seen as a warning for Israel, long believed to be the Middle East’s only nuclear-armed state.

Enrichment isn’t an automatic path to a nuclear weapon — a nation also must master other steps, including the use of synchronized high explosives, for instance. But it does open the door to weaponization, which has fueled the West’s concerns over Iran’s program.

The United Arab Emirates, a neighbor to Saudi Arabia, signed what is referred to as a “123 agreement” with the U.S. to build its Barakah nuclear power plant with South Korean assistance. But the UAE did so without seeking enrichment, something nonproliferation experts have held up as the “gold standard” for nations wanting atomic power.

Vice President JD Vance’s office has forcefully denied an Israeli media report claiming that it sought to prevent a meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump.

The report cited unnamed Israeli officials who alleged that Vance’s team feared Netanyahu would press Trump to take a more aggressive approach toward Iran, while the vice president favors a diplomatic resolution to the ongoing tensions.

“This is 100% fake news, and we would’ve told Ynet so if they bothered to reach out to our team,” Vance’s communications director, Taylor Van Kirk, wrote on X.

Vance recently criticized what he described as Israeli efforts to undermine the memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran, saying on a podcast that Israelis allegedly involved should “go to hell.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

A new Channel 13 News poll released Tuesday night shows Prime Minister Binyomin Netanyahu’s Likud party running even with Gadi Eisenkot’s newly formed Yashar! party, while the anti-Netanyahu camp would hold a parliamentary advantage if elections were held today.

According to the survey, Likud and Yashar! would each capture 21 Knesset seats, placing the two parties in a statistical tie.

The Together party, headed by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, continues to lose ground and is projected to win 14 seats. The Democrats follow with 11 seats, while Yisrael Beytenu is forecast to receive 10. Shas and United Torah Judaism would each secure 8 seats.

The poll projects 7 seats for Otzma Yehudit, 6 for Hadash-Ta’al, and 5 apiece for the Religious Zionist Party and Ra’am. A joint list led by Chili Tropper and Yoaz Hendel would narrowly clear the electoral threshold with 4 seats.

Meanwhile, both Blue and White and Balad are projected to fall below the threshold required to enter the Knesset.

Based on the poll’s seat distribution, the right-wing bloc would control 49 seats, while parties opposed to Netanyahu would command 60 seats without relying on support from the Arab parties.

The survey also measured public preferences for prime minister. In a direct matchup, Gadi Eisenkot leads Netanyahu by a margin of 47% to 35%. When matched against Naftali Bennett, Netanyahu trails by a narrower margin, with Bennett receiving 43% support compared to Netanyahu’s 40%.

{Matzav.com}

NEW YORK (AP) — A fifth person has died in a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in New York City, health officials said Tuesday night.

The New York City Health Department said it has confirmed the presence of the bacteria in 34 cooling towers in 33 buildings, all of which are being cleaned. Officials still haven’t identified the source of the bacteria that has sickened more than six dozen people in the last month.

No new patients have come forward with symptoms in the last 10 days, the department said in a news release.

Legionnaires’ disease, a form of pneumonia, is treatable but kills about 10% of patients, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s caused by Legionella bacteria, which grow in warm water and can spread in such places as hot tubs and building cooling equipment. People may contract the disease by inhaling contaminated water droplets, but it doesn’t spread person-to-person.

Eight people are still hospitalized and 56 others have spent time in but been discharged from hospitals in the Upper East Side outbreak, officials said.

The city is cleaning and disinfecting a total of 82 cooling towers in 80 buildings, they said.

Inspections have shown that some of the tony neighborhood’s fancy apartment buildings, private schools and renowned museums had traces of Legionella bacteria in their air-cooling equipment — despite new regulations that upped testing requirements just this spring, and despite a budget boost to hire more inspectors.

Some owners of buildings that tested positive have said they have worked to stay on top of any Legionella threat. The Guggenheim Museum, for instance, said in a statement that an outside company tests and treats the institution’s cooling tower every month.

The situation is avoidable and frustrating, said Jory Lange, a Texas attorney who represents over 50 people who were affected by an outbreak last year that killed seven people and sickened over 100 in New York’s Harlem neighborhood. He’s representing at least three patients who are recovering in the Upper East Side outbreak.

“There’s no excuse for this to keep happening,” Lange said. “New York already has the best and strongest regulations … and yet this still keeps happening.”

New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Alister F. Martin said in a statement that the department’s quick action after the first two confirmed cases “saved lives.” Martin said the department will learn what happened from the ongoing investigation and update policies and procedures with the goal of preventing future outbreaks.

After the Harlem outbreak, city leaders authorized the Health Department in November to hire 23 more Legionella-focused water ecologists and supervisors, bringing the intended total to 56. The staff currently stands at 35, the department said in a statement Tuesday, noting that another 14 people are in a monthslong process of orientation, training and shadowing veteran inspectors. The department said it’s working to fill the final seven positions.

Nevertheless, the agency said it did nearly 1,600 cooling tower inspections in the first six months of the year, 35% more than during the same period in 2025.

JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs are each in line for fees approaching $100 million for arranging the largest borrowing in SoftBank Group’s history, a payout that shows just how profitable the financing behind the artificial intelligence buildout has become for Wall Street’s biggest firms.

The fees flow from the $40 billion unsecured bridge facility SoftBank signed on March 27, underwritten by a syndicate that pairs JPMorgan and Goldman with Japanese lenders Mizuho Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and MUFG Bank. The proceeds went chiefly toward SoftBank’s $30 billion follow-on investment in OpenAI, part of the ChatGPT maker’s $110 billion capital raise — the largest private funding round on record, one that valued the company at roughly $852 billion. With the new commitment, SoftBank’s total stake in OpenAI now sits near $64.6 billion.

What makes the fee pool so rich is the structure of the deal itself. The facility carries no collateral, meaning SoftBank pledged no specific assets against $40 billion in credit. Banks price that kind of exposure aggressively, and a loan of this scale generates arrangement and underwriting fees far larger than a conventional secured facility would. The 12-month term compounds the point: the loan is designed to be short, with SoftBank obligated to repay or refinance by March 26, 2027. Lenders willing to extend unsecured money at that size, on that clock, expect to be paid accordingly.

There is a second motive behind the two American banks taking the lead roles. JPMorgan and Goldman are positioning themselves for what could be a far bigger prize — lead underwriting assignments on an OpenAI public offering, an event that would rank among the largest listings ever attempted. The bridge loan functions as both a fee-generating instrument today and a relationship anchor for the mandates to come. Chairman and Chief Executive Masayoshi Son has stated that repayment would likely come through existing assets and additional financing, a plan that leans heavily on SoftBank’s ability to convert its AI holdings into liquidity.

The scale of these paydays is easier to grasp against a recent benchmark. When SpaceX went public in June — the largest IPO in history — the banks running the deal split a fee pool of about $500 million, with the lead firms each taking home close to $100 million. That SoftBank’s lenders can approach similar figures on a single loan, rather than a landmark stock sale, signals how much the AI financing cycle has reshaped where investment banking revenue is now made. The reported fee arrangement was detailed by Bloomberg.

For SoftBank, the record loan is one piece of an increasingly aggressive borrowing program. Son has funded his AI push through a mix of debt and asset sales, including trimming stakes in Nvidia and T-Mobile US, and the company has continued to seek fresh credit lines. On July 1, SoftBank reopened talks with a consortium expected to include Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Mizuho Financial Group for a $10 billion loan backed by its OpenAI stake — a facility that had stalled earlier over the difficulty of valuing a private company. To ease lender concerns this time, SoftBank offered to guarantee repayment, giving banks recourse if the pledged OpenAI shares lose value.

Credit-rating agencies have taken note of the strategy. On July 16, S&P Global Ratings revised its outlook on SoftBank to stable from negative while affirming the company’s BB+ long-term rating, a modest vote of confidence as the conglomerate leans further into leverage. SoftBank’s price-to-earnings ratio, meanwhile, remains well below the industry average, reflecting continued investor caution about the size of Son’s bets.

The through-line connecting all of it is the assumption that OpenAI will eventually reach the public market at a valuation large enough to make today’s borrowing look conservative. If that listing materializes, SoftBank gains the liquidity to clear its March 2027 obligation, and the banks that arranged the bridge financing stand to earn a second, larger round of fees underwriting the offering. If the timeline slips, the pressure of an unsecured, short-dated $40 billion facility falls back on SoftBank’s balance sheet and its willingness to keep selling down long-held positions.

For now, the immediate winners are clear. Two banks are set to book nine-figure sums for structuring a single loan, a reminder that in the current cycle, the surest money in artificial intelligence is often made not by the companies building the technology, but by the institutions financing the race to own it.

JBizNews Desk | Wall Street

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President Donald Trump announced that he is ending a decades-long prohibition on direct commercial flights between the United States and Lebanon, ordering his administration to allow American airlines to resume service following talks at the White House with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun.

Trump revealed the decision in a Truth Social post after meeting with Aoun, praising the Lebanese leader’s efforts to reshape his country and announcing that U.S. carriers will once again be permitted to fly directly to Lebanon.

“After meeting with the President of Lebanon, Joseph Aoun, who has done a remarkable job working to transform his Country, I am hereby directing my Administration to allow all U.S. airline carriers to fly directly to Lebanon so that Americans can easily visit this beautiful land,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The President also applauded Aoun for what he described as a “remarkable job” advancing reforms in Lebanon and urged other nations to reopen direct commercial air service to the country.

Direct flights between the United States and Lebanon have been suspended since 1985, when the U.S. halted commercial service in the aftermath of the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 and amid continuing security concerns during Lebanon’s civil war.

The decision followed discussions between Trump and Aoun centered on expanding cooperation between the two countries, maintaining American support for the Lebanese Armed Forces, and advancing implementation of a recently negotiated framework agreement between Lebanon and Israel that was brokered in Washington.

That agreement, however, is contingent on the complete disarmament of Hezbollah. The Iran-backed terrorist organization has rejected both the framework agreement and the broader peace negotiations between Lebanon and Israel.

{Matzav.com}

Israel Airports Authority Chairman Yiftach Ron-Tal said on Wednesday that there will be no flight cancellations at Ben Gurion Airport, even if additional US refueling aircraft arrive in Israel.

Speaking to Kan News amid concerns about a possible escalation with Iran, Ron-Tal said: “Fortunately, there is a policy that was updated just two days ago by the Transportation Minister, and I agree with it a thousand percent. There’s absolutely no intention of closing Israel’s airspace, even in the sensitive strategic and security situation we are currently facing.”

Ron-Tal’s remarks directly contradict statements made yesterday by Israel Airports Authority CEO Sharon Kedmi, who warned that Ben Gurion Airport would not be able to operate all scheduled flights if it were required to accommodate additional American refueling aircraft.

“We can’t fit even one more refueling aircraft into Ben Gurion Airport. If another one comes in, we’ll have to start canceling flights,” he said.

Ron-Tal, however, presented a very different picture. “We will do everything in our power to keep Israel’s skies open during a season that is so important to the Israeli public,” he emphasized.

According to Airports Authority data, more than two million passengers are expected to pass through Ben Gurion Airport during July, representing an approximately 25% increase compared to the same period last year.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

US President Donald Trump will travel to Dover Air Force Base on Wednesday to attend the dignified transfer of four American service members killed in incidents linked to the war with Iran. Their flag-draped caskets will return to American soil as the conflict’s military, financial and political costs continue to rise.

First Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad, 28, and Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, were killed or believed killed after Iranian missiles and drones struck living quarters at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan on Friday. All three served in US Army air-defense units.

Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton, 30, was killed Sunday during the controlled detonation of a downed Iranian attack drone at Erbil Air Base in Iraq. The Pentagon classified Swinton as killed in action, although the circumstances of the incident remain under investigation. Another service member suffered minor injuries.

The war has now killed 18 US service members and injured more than 450 troops. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told lawmakers this week that the conflict has cost at least $37.5 billion, a figure that includes some anticipated expenses through the end of September. The Pentagon separately said that 100 service members had been injured since July 7 and that 96% had already returned to duty.

Pressure on the administration is growing as lawmakers from both parties question the war’s objectives and duration. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 79% of Americans expect the conflict to continue for an extended period, while only 37% approve of the US strikes. Rising oil and gasoline prices have also increased concerns among Republican strategists ahead of November’s midterm elections.

A run of Wall Street downgrades across enterprise software is crystallizing a worry that has hung over the sector all year: that generative AI may erode the pricing power these companies were built on.

Adobe has been at the center of the anxiety. Shares fell about 9% after its fiscal second-quarter results, despite record revenue of $6.62 billion, as a CFO departure and AI-disruption fears rattled investors and cast a shadow over the broader software group. Management leaned into the AI story, noting that AI-first annual recurring revenue tripled to more than $500 million—but skeptics countered that the figure is under 2% of Adobe’s $27.1 billion total ARR, leaving them unconvinced the monetization pivot can protect margins. A surprise 30% price cut on Firefly AI subscriptions and a shift toward a freemium model deepened concerns about margin compression, while leadership changes—including CEO Shantanu Narayen’s move to board chair—added uncertainty.

The reaction has split the analyst community. Bank of America downgraded Adobe to Underperform, citing generative AI’s threat, even as HSBC upgraded the stock to Buy with a $308 target, arguing the market undervalues Adobe’s core business and AI growth potential.

Salesforce drew its own twin blow. On July 9, KeyBanc and Bernstein both cut the stock to the equivalent of a hold on the same day, with both firms pointing to the same problem: the Agentforce AI platform is not living up to expectations. KeyBanc’s Jackson Ader argued that customer data is not organized enough for real AI work and that the product is not ready yet, while a survey of chief information officers showed more of them planning to trim Salesforce spending than raise it. Salesforce shares slid 3% to 4% at their low and have been among the Dow’s weakest members in 2026, down roughly 37% year to date and trading near 19 times earnings.

The caution has spread beyond the two names. An IBM earnings warning about enterprise software budgets rippled through the group, pulling down ServiceNow, Workday and Salesforce, while Snowflake has faced pressure from Amazon and Oracle bundling their AI data tools. The common thread is a question investors keep circling back to—whether subscription pricing can hold as AI-native competitors undercut incumbents on cost. Strong current fundamentals at these companies have not been enough to quiet it.

JBizNews Desk | San Francisco

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Q: How important is it to cry in the kinos in Tisha B’Av? Is it very important or let’s say I’m more of an internal person and it’s very hard for me to cry?

A: How important is it to cry on Tisha B’Av? What if it’s a person that only feels internally but can’t actually bring himself to cry?

It’s very easy to weep on Tisha B’Av. על בית ישראל על עם ה’ שנפלו בחרב. The Germans came to town after town and took the people. The people in the small towns, they were generally shomrei Shabbos in the small towns. In the small towns, yes. They all ate kosher in the small towns. They weren’t tzaddikim already and their children didn’t go to yeshivos – many small towns didn’t send any boys to yeshivos anymore. Even the small towns were cooled off – their hislavus had gone away –but in general they were moderately observant people.

The big towns is what I was talking about where they had the newspapers and the leftists. For instance Pinsk. Pinsk was a town of 40,000 Jews. In 1938 you didn’t have ten boys from Pinsk who went to yeshivos outside of Pinsk. In a town of 40,000 Jews not ten boys who went to yeshivos out of Pinsk!

I was in Slabodka. Nobody from Slabodka went to yeshivos except Slabodka people who were kollel people. Otherwise nobody went. So therefore the fire had gone out already.

But still imagine a small town, like a small town where I lived for a while. I knew the people personally. Quiet people. They didn’t have any great hislavus but they kept everything. There wasn’t any fire anymore. They didn’t send their children to yeshiva. They didn’t have many children either by the way. They didn’t have many children. Small families. Small families. Nobody had big families anymore.

But then the Nazis came and marched all the men outside on a field outside the town and they shot all the men down. My brother-in-law, they shot him down. A Telzer yeshivah bachur, a nice boy. They shot him down for nothing. In cold blood they killed him. Now can you do anything else than weep at that?

Then they took, a few weeks later, all the women; quiet women, decent women. Nobody was full of hislavus. Many didn’t have sheitlim at all; no, they didn’t have sheitlim at all. They wore their own hair most of them. Uncovered heads. But still they were quiet women. They kept kosher.

So they took these quiet people out in the field, the quiet women and the girls. My sister-in-law, a beautiful and fine frum girl went with them. And they shot them all dead in cold blood. Is there anything to do except weep? Certainly we weep. We weep and weep. And Tisha B’Av is not enough. We have to weep more frequently for that.

My chaveirim; Rav Feivel Pilvishker, zichrono levrachah, from Pilvishkov, a tzaddik, a yungerman. He was learning all the time. He even thought in learning all the time. He was always thinking in divrei mussar in his spare time. They found his dead body on the field. He was murdered outside of the town.

Other tzaddikim too. Aharon Bihrzer, my chavrusa. He became the son-in-law of the Kodoner Rav. He was murdered together with the Kodoner Jews.

My rebbi, Rav Avraham Grodzinski, was burned up in a fire. The hospital was set on fire. They burned him up.

Rav Elchonon Wasserman zichrono levrachah was in Slabodka. They marched him out with all the Slabodka boys and they shot him in the Ninth Fort. They shot him dead.

Certainly we have to weep. When we say we understand that Hashem is doing everything for our benefit, it’s bederech klal, yes; but the fact is that they were killed!

Rabbi Akiva, when he was killed so the gemara says there’s no kapparah for that. מי יביא לנו תמורתו – you can’t bring another Rabi Akiva. And therefore all the nations of the world are held accountable and Hakadosh Baruch Hu will remember that. He’ll remember! כי דורש דמים אותם זכר – The One who remembers the blood of the innocent, לא שכח צעקת ענוים – He won’t forget their outcry. He won’t forget it.

And therefore all of them deserve that we should remember them with tears. Certainly we’re sorry. We’re sorry and we weep for them.

But we should know sof kol sof Hashem is doing a chessed to our nation and the end will be that we will be the ones who are going to conquer. And the tzaddikim in the Next World are going to rejoice that their nation is the nation that survives. Sof kol sof the happiness of the World to Come and the happiness even in this world will be ours. When Moshiach comes all the nations will admit that their religions were false, were wicked lies and they’ll all bow down and they’ll יכירו וידעו כל יושבי תבל כי לך תכרע כל ברך תשבע כל לשון.

(August 1997 – Toras Avigdor)

NEW YORK (VINnews) — President Donald Trump is backing FIFA President Gianni Infantino as his preferred candidate to become the next secretary-general of the United Nations, according to a New York Post report.

The report says Trump believes Infantino, 56, has earned widespread international respect through his leadership of world soccer and possesses a unique ability to unite people across political and cultural divides. The Swiss-born FIFA chief and Trump developed a close relationship during the 2026 FIFA World Cup, with Infantino frequently appearing alongside the president and presenting him with FIFA’s inaugural Peace Prize in December.

Current UN Secretary-General António Guterres is set to step down at the end of the year. The next secretary-general will be chosen through a process requiring approval from the 15-member UN Security Council, where any of the five permanent members can exercise a veto, followed by confirmation by the UN General Assembly.

According to the New York Post, it remains unclear whether Infantino is interested in the position or whether Trump has personally discussed the proposal with him. However, sources cited in the report said that Trump sees an opportunity in what one insider described as a relatively weak field of candidates.

Among the better-known contenders are former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi. The report notes that Bachelet could face opposition from Washington, while Grossi may encounter resistance from the United Kingdom because of the longstanding Falkland Islands dispute with Argentina.

Although there has been an informal tradition of rotating the secretary-general position among different geographic regions, multiple sources told the New York Post that such a convention would not necessarily prevent Infantino from emerging as a consensus candidate.

Trump’s special envoy for global partnerships, Paolo Zampolli, praised the idea, telling the newspaper that “only President Trump could have such a genius idea.” Zampolli argued that Infantino’s experience leading FIFA, which has more than 200 member associations, demonstrates his ability to manage a large international organization and build bridges through sports.

The report also notes that Trump has been critical of the United Nations, accusing it of failing to play a meaningful role in resolving major international conflicts. Since returning to office, his administration has reduced U.S. funding for the UN and withdrawn from several UN-affiliated organizations, including the World Health Organization, UNESCO, and the UN Human Rights Council.

According to the New York Post, placing Infantino at the helm of the United Nations could help improve relations between the Trump administration and the international body.

The report adds that accepting the role would require a substantial financial sacrifice for Infantino. As FIFA president, he reportedly earns about $6 million annually, while the UN secretary-general’s compensation is approximately $418,000 per year.

Infantino has already announced his intention to seek another term as FIFA president when elections are held next March. He did not respond to the New York Post’s request for comment regarding the reported UN proposal.

Icahn Enterprises on Tuesday announced that the company reached a deal to sell Pep Boys to Mavis, one of the largest independent tire and service providers in the country, in a $700 million deal.

Pep Boys has nearly 800 locations around the country and offers auto services including tires, repairs, oil changes and maintenance.

The deal will expand Mavis’ presence in new and existing markets, particularly in the western U.S. where Pep Boys has a significant presence, and will increase Mavis’s network to over 4,400 service centers around the U.S. and Canada.

“Today’s announcement marks a significant milestone as Mavis continues to execute its growth strategy. Pep Boys is one of the most well-respected names in the automotive aftermarket, and we look forward to welcoming it into the Mavis family of brands,” said Mavis co-CEO David Sorbaro.

Sorbaro added that the deal “will create a stronger, more geographically diverse platform with the scale and capabilities to provide dependable service to even more customers and create meaningful opportunities for employees.”

Pep Boys CEO Joe Auriemma said that, “For more than 100 years, Pep Boys has earned the trust of drivers across the country by delivering quality service with honesty and care,” adding that Mavis shares those values and its network will give Pep Boys the “scale, footprint, and operational and technological strength to continue building on its legacy as it enters a new chapter of growth.”

Carl Icahn, chairman of Icahn Enterprises, welcomed the deal and said that they “believe that the combined businesses will benefit greatly from the inevitable economies of scale and from the great experience of the Mavis team in the industry.”

Under the deal, Icahn Enterprises will retain the real estate it obtained from Pep Boys, as well as the AAMCO Transmissions and Precision Tune Auto Care businesses.

Pep Boys was acquired by Icahn Enterprises in 2016, taking the auto service chain private in an all-cash $1 billion deal after it had been publicly traded.

Mavis operates other auto service brands including Midas, Tire Kingdom and Tuffy.

The transaction is expected to close in the coming months.

Reuters contributed to this report.

22The Dutch government will begin enforcing a ban on imports from Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria on September 22, according to a senior Dutch diplomat, making the Netherlands the latest European Union member state to adopt such restrictions.

The official told Haaretz on Tuesday that the new policy is intended to bring the Netherlands’ trade practices into line with international legal positions that view Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria as unlawful.

Under the new rules, businesses and individuals will be prohibited from importing, buying, or selling products manufactured in Israeli communities throughout Judea and Samaria. The regulations also outlaw brokerage and intermediary services related to those goods and impose penalties on anyone attempting to evade the restrictions.

The diplomat said the measure was officially published Tuesday in the Dutch government’s official gazette. Israel’s embassy was informed of the decision before it was publicly announced. Additional diplomatic meetings are expected to take place in The Hague to discuss implementation and could pave the way for broader international sanctions.

The Netherlands now joins Spain and Belgium as the third European Union country to impose an import ban on products originating from Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.

According to Haaretz, Luxembourg is also expected to adopt similar restrictions in the near future. Because the country relies on the Port of Rotterdam for maritime shipping, its trade policy is closely linked to that of the Netherlands and Belgium.

Ireland has approved similar legislation as well, although it has not yet taken effect because it still requires formal approval from President Catherine Connolly.

The issue was recently discussed by the European Union’s foreign ministers, who considered imposing a bloc-wide ban on goods produced in Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria. However, the ministers were unable to reach a consensus on implementing such a measure.

Last year, nine EU member states urged the European Commission to draft proposals that would end trade between the European Union and Israeli communities located in Judea and Samaria.

That request was outlined in a letter sent to European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and signed by the foreign ministers of Belgium, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden.

In their letter, the ministers cited a July 2024 advisory opinion issued by the International Court of Justice, which declared “Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories and the settlements within them as illegal”. The opinion also said that countries should take steps to prevent trade and investment activities that help sustain that situation.

{Matzav.com}

WASHINGTON — House Republicans pushed through a stopgap spending bill on Tuesday that would keep the federal government funded through Dec. 4, an unusually early maneuver designed to remove the threat of a shutdown from the calendar well ahead of the November midterm elections.

The measure cleared the chamber on a 220-205 vote that fell almost entirely along party lines. Six Democrats — Henry Cuellar of Texas, Don Davis of North Carolina, Jared Golden of Maine, Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, Gabe Vasquez of New Mexico, and Kathy Castor of Florida — crossed over to back the bill, while Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie was the lone GOP defector.

What makes the vote notable is its timing. Congress typically waits until the eleventh hour to pass this kind of temporary funding patch, often acting within hours of a lapse. The current fiscal year does not end until Sept. 30, more than two months out. But with the House scheduled to be in session for only 16 more days before that deadline once lawmakers leave for the August recess, Republican leaders opted to act now rather than gamble on a chaotic September that could rattle voters just before they head to the polls.

For the business community, the early action carries a practical upside: predictability. A continuing resolution that generally holds agencies at existing spending levels gives federal contractors, grant recipients, and companies that depend on government operations a clearer runway through the fall. Shutdowns freeze contract payments, stall permitting and regulatory reviews, and force agencies to furlough workers — disruptions that ripple outward to the private firms doing business with Washington. Locking in funding through early December, if it holds, takes that particular source of uncertainty off the table during a period when markets already have plenty to digest.

House Speaker Mike Johnson framed the vote as a direct challenge to Democrats, warning that if they blocked the funding and a lapse followed after Sept. 30, the political fallout would land squarely on them. He argued that the party opposing the measure would own whatever disruption resulted.

Democrats saw the process very differently. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said the legislation was handed to her side last Friday with no bipartisan negotiation, leaving lawmakers to rush a one-sided bill through two days before the recess. She said Democrats would have used any real negotiation to push back on a proposed federal rule that could let agency heads block or cancel grants they deem out of step with the administration’s priorities — a provision with direct consequences for universities, nonprofits, and businesses that rely on federal grant funding.

The bill also tucks in death gratuity payments of $174,000 each to the heirs of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham and Rep. David Scott, a customary provision attached to funding legislation following the deaths of sitting members.

The bigger question now moves across the Capitol. Passage in the House was the easier lift; the Senate is another matter. Majority Leader John Thune signaled that quick action in his chamber is far from assured. Unlike the House, the Senate needs a degree of bipartisan buy-in to advance spending legislation, meaning Republicans cannot move a stopgap on their own. That hands Senate Democrats real leverage, and the path forward there is murky at best.

The standoff sets up a familiar dynamic with unfamiliar timing. Republicans are betting that funding the government early denies the opposition a shutdown fight in the closing weeks of the campaign — a scenario that historically damages the party in power. Democrats, for their part, are unlikely to hand over that leverage without extracting concessions, and some see a shutdown fight as politically useful heading into November.

Republican leaders said work on the dozen annual appropriations bills would continue through the fall regardless, with the December deadline meant to buy time for that longer process rather than replace it. Whether that timeline survives contact with the Senate remains to be seen.

For now, the takeaway for anyone with exposure to federal spending — contractors, grant-dependent institutions, and the broader web of firms tied to government operations — is cautious. The House has done its part to push a shutdown out of the pre-election window, but the funding is not secure until the Senate acts and the president signs. Until then, the early vote is best read as a statement of intent rather than a guarantee.

JBizNews Desk | Washington, D.C.

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