The traditional path to homeownership — from portal search to real estate agent to loan officer — is being rapidly rewired by artificial intelligence (AI), and the industry’s biggest players want to be first through the new front door.

That was the central theme of a packed session Tuesday at HousingWire‘s AI Summit in Dallas, where Diego Sanchez, president of HW Media, sat down with Dan Snyder, CEO of Lower, and Chris Rediger, CEO of HouseCanary. The trio explored how AI is reshaping discovery, lead generation and the mortgage process itself.

Snyder’s company has been aggressively acquiring assets to build an end-to-end platform. He opened by describing the logic behind Lower’s recent purchases of Movoto, the fifth-largest real estate portal, and NeatLabs, a venture-backed point-of-sale loan operating system.

“What we’re trying to do is form one path — search to close,” Snyder said. “Essentially, our consumer goes in the front door; Movoto, whether it’s to Movoto.com or through AI, we’ll see what happens there. Then, how do you embed the financing? How do you ultimately get the loan closed and make the human talent shine?”

Snyder acknowledged that the industry is at an inflection point, with AI accelerating development cycles and product refinement in ways that were unimaginable just a few years ago.

“It’s the most exciting time I can remember,” he said. “Just the speed of the engineers going faster. It’s the speed of where product managers themselves can iterate and ship code, which is super exciting.”

He also emphasized the strategic advantage of owning underlying technology rather than relying on third parties.  

“I’m fairly impatient,” Snyder said. “And so now we have [the question], what can we do to reinvent the way a consumer searches? What can you do to make it easier so you can just get your loan with a maybe a screenshot? These things would have taken years and years. Now with AI, I think it’s going to come a lot faster than we think.”

Google’s play for top of the funnel

Rediger, whose company has been quietly working with Google for three years, detailed a partnership that places home listings directly inside Google search results.

“It started with a real simple problem, which was, how do we actually show listings in Google?” he said. “And then they engaged us to help navigate those waters. So there’s a lot of regulatory and compliance items around displaying home listings, and HouseCanary is a 50-state broker. So we worked with Google to just show it, and it’s been pretty well adopted. It’s on mobile only right now, and it’s still in pilot, but it’s growing very quickly.

“[It’s] getting a lot of participation from MLSs and data providers, and we’re getting a lot of feedback from brokers and consumers that they really like it. It’s a different approach than the typical portal search, and it’s very top of funnel.”

The feature, currently in pilot, is rolling out gradually, and Rediger was careful to explain certain limitations.

“Google requires us to work with the MLSs to be the data provider,” he said. “So in areas where an MLS is not participating, we might have limited data. Therefore, it wouldn’t show. We are live nationally, so every market’s eligible. There might not be appropriate data in that market, and also there might not be data that’s relevant to your search query.”

When asked whether this partnership positions Google as direct competition to portals like Movoto, Zillow and Realtor.com, Rediger pushed back.

“Is what was designed by Google meant to replace a portal? The answer is no,” he said. “It is top of funnel. It’s a pretty quick and unique and elegant experience that’s not a research-driving process. You do a quick search — homes near me, homes in an area. Then you see some homes in the area. You see some agents that are local to that area that actually do business in that area, and you’re done, right?

“Google still links to portals. Portals are having drip campaigns and a lot of cool, whiz-bangy things that really attract the customer over time. This is very much a single-shot hit, like very Google. You type in what you want. You get instant gratification and then you move on.”

Snyder, whose company owns a portal that competes directly for that traffic, was more blunt.

“Sounds like competition to me,” he said. “Now, they’ve talked about it a long time. You know, it keeps popping up. But we’ll see.”

He suggested that Google’s ambitions could extend far beyond a simple carousel of listings.

“[If] they really wanted to build a full real estate, mortgage and valuation killer, they probably could, right?” he said. “So what we do is just try not to worry about the competition as much as possible. Like, how can you lean in?”

LLMs as the next frontier

Both executives agreed that the real disruption lies beyond traditional search engines.

Rediger predicted that large language models (LLMs) will become the dominant method of discovery within five years.

“There’s still a lot that has to happen between here and now,” he said. “Right now, we have prohibited use in the data, so they cannot use it in LLMs. They cannot train LLMs with it. It cannot be fed into that LLM at all. It’s truly for that search experience.”

Snyder echoed that sentiment, describing a future where consumers delegate the entire search process to AI agents.

“I think people are going to ask their AI agent, and everyone will have an AI agent and then the AI agent will find the best way,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s by Google or otherwise. I think the patience is going to wane and the attention is going to wane. People still want to go see and go tour the homes. So, that means you’ll still need great buyer agents and you’ll need great listing agents to sell your house.”

Despite the rapid automation of discovery and loan processing, both CEOs emphasized that human talent — particularly top-performing agents and loan officers — will become more valuable, not less.

“It’s not going to necessarily disrupt the originator,” Snyder said. “I get that asked all the time. It’ll disrupt the originator that can’t get any loans. If you’ve got a value proposition, if you’re a great Realtor, I think the AI will amplify talent more than ever, from engineering to origination.”

When Sanchez asked directly whether agents and loan officers would be replaced, Snyder was characteristically direct.

“I think the winners will win and the mediocre will go find a different industry because it’ll be a lot easier to make money somewhere else than in mortgage or real estate,” Snyder said.

Rediger agreed.

“I think AI is a tool that’ll elevate the high performers to a different echelon, and I think it’s going to reduce the number of total originators and total real estate agents,” he said.

Ground game still matters

While the discovery layer is being upended, the relationship between agents and loan officers remains critical.

“We’ve fully integrated hundreds of these real estate teams across the country,” Snyder said. “One of our [main questions] is, can we win the ground game? We’re seeing a three-times conversion [increase] when distributing a lead to the local originator, believe it or not. And then with the capture, it’s working with that real estate team locally, and it’s working really well.”

Rediger, meanwhile, is focused on a different operational challenge by attempting to understand the economics of AI itself.

“What we’re building is really observability — understanding how we’re actually using AI and how our engineers are using AI and how we’re going to continue to not spend too much on those tokens,” he said. “I think [it’s about] understanding how you’re actually implementing it — and then you can start translating on a per-token basis to the products you’re actually pushing to market.

“There are not really any products out there that have that. I know this is an operation answer, but it’s pretty cool to see this many tokens translated to this revenue increase with this product.”

This post was originally published on here.

Bank of America (BofA) is launching a $250 billion initiative to finance a broad buildout of U.S. infrastructure, including data centers, semiconductor facilities, power generation and transportation projects.

The banking giant announced Wednesday that its Critical Infrastructure Finance Initiative will mobilize and deploy $250 billion through lending, investments, capital markets and advisory transactions over an 18-month period ending July 4, 2027.

The effort comes as growing demand for computing power, electricity, manufacturing capacity and diversified supply chains drives infrastructure investment across the U.S. BofA said the initiative will focus on projects that strengthen energy security, technological leadership and long-term economic growth.

“We are proud of our long history supporting the American economy. As America marks its 250th year, this initiative reflects our confidence in the country’s future and the investments that will shape it,” said BofA Co-President Jim DeMare. “The infrastructure that powers our economy, strengthens our energy security and secures our technological leadership will drive growth, create jobs and define America’s next chapter.”

The initiative will target three broad areas: digital infrastructure, energy and power infrastructure, and core infrastructure.

Digital projects can include data centers, computing hardware, chips, telecommunications and semiconductors. Energy investments can include conventional and renewable power generation, energy storage and distribution systems, while core infrastructure can include transportation, electric and energy transmission, grid optimization, water systems, critical minerals and mining.

Bank of America said investments supported by the initiative could help create tens of thousands of jobs across construction, manufacturing, technology and infrastructure operations.

The bank also pointed to its workforce-development efforts. In 2025, Bank of America invested nearly $40 million in more than 730 workforce-development partners across 97 U.S. markets. Those organizations estimate the funding helped connect more than 90,000 people with employment opportunities and provided more than 290,000 people with access to training, education and career-readiness programs.

Bank of America’s Global Capital Solutions and Global Infrastructure & Sustainable Finance teams will lead the initiative, with support from all eight of the company’s lines of business.

The $250 billion target will be measured based on eligible primary-market lending, investing, capital markets and advisory transactions between Jan. 1, 2026, and July 4, 2027. The bank said it will use a methodology consistent with its $1.5 trillion, 10-year sustainable finance goal.

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A 50% U.S. tariff lands on roughly $28 billion of Canadian goods on Aug. 19 — wine, hockey sticks, cement and dozens of other products — unless negotiators in Washington can get a package in front of President Trump first. Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer are aiming to do exactly that as early as Monday, Aug. 17, two days before the deadline. Nothing is agreed yet; what they are assembling is something concrete enough for the president to accept or reject.

The work continued in Washington on Tuesday. LeBlanc met Greer for the third time in as many weeks, with Canada’s chief trade negotiator Janice Charette also at the table. The meeting ran about an hour, and neither Canadian official took reporters’ questions leaving Greer’s office. LeBlanc said afterward that his side remains at the negotiating table and is working to defend Canadian interests.

The deadline comes from an executive order Trump signed last month. It applies the 50% rate to several categories of Canadian goods over what the administration calls discriminatory Canadian trade policies, covering roughly 5% of Canadian exports to the United States.

The bargain on the table is a straight exchange. Washington wants Canada to drop its counter-tariffs on autos and wants provincial bans on American alcohol lifted, and the two sides are trading proposals on how Canada manages its dairy quotas. Those are the same grievances the administration named when it announced the Aug. 19 tariffs: provinces pulling U.S. alcohol off store shelves, and alleged discrimination against American vehicles and dairy.

In return, Ottawa wants relief from the sectoral tariffs already in force, which cost far more than the goods on next week’s list. Canadian government briefing material puts current U.S. duties at 50% on Canadian steel, aluminum and copper, 25% on autos and trucks, and 10% on lumber. Steel, aluminum, lumber and autos are the four sectors LeBlanc and Charette are pressing on. Those are the Section 232 national-security tariffs, and getting them cut is the reason Canada is at the table at all.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has ruled out a narrow version of that trade. Speaking at an aluminum plant in Saguenay, Quebec, last week, he said he was not interested in a targeted deal disconnected from other sectors, and that any agreement must cover autos, steel, aluminum and forest products. He has framed the goal as getting “all 232s to be addressed.” He has also warned Canada will get tougher if nothing is reached before the new tariffs take effect. Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre set the bar higher still, calling for zero tariffs on softwood lumber, an end to the steel and aluminum duties, a tariff-free auto pact and a full exemption from Buy America rules on infrastructure projects.

Whether Trump takes a package that broad is the open question, and it is why the Aug. 17 meeting matters more than any working-level session. David MacNaughton, Canada’s former ambassador to Washington, told CTV News Channel on Tuesday that the president is the only person who will make the final deal, and that he is not sure Trump is ready right now for the comprehensive agreement the Canadian side wants. Canada arrives with what MacNaughton called a “fairly substantial package.”

For American buyers the exposure is concrete. The United States imported about $382 billion of goods from Canada in 2025, and the new tariffs would apply to close to $20 billion of that, by the U.S. Trade Representative’s count. Beverage distributors, ready-mix and construction suppliers and sporting goods retailers sit on the immediate list; steel and aluminum buyers, auto plants and homebuilders are already carrying the sectoral duties. The international heads of the United Steelworkers and the machinists’ union have written to Greer asking the administration to hold off on the 50% levies.

A larger piece is riding on the same talks. Canada is hoping the negotiations also produce an extension of the North American trade agreement, after the Trump administration declined to renew it in July. Reporting last week indicated Ottawa would prefer to book any tariff relief in side letters rather than reopen the pact itself, and that it expects to accept some level of U.S. metals tariffs — a structure that trades concessions on the irritants for a lower rate without touching the underlying agreement.

Nothing changes at the border before Aug. 19. The rates in effect today are the ones that have been in place for months. What the Aug. 17 meeting decides is whether a 50% wall goes up around a list of Canadian goods that American buyers cannot replace on short notice.

JBizNews Desk | Washington

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Elbit Systems has more orders on its books than at any point in its history, and the money is increasingly coming from outside Israel.

The Israeli defense contractor reported an order backlog of $32 billion at the end of the second quarter, up from $28 billion at the close of 2025. Second-quarter revenue rose 16% to $2.29 billion, and non-GAAP net profit climbed 32% to $199 million, producing adjusted earnings of $4.14 a share against a consensus estimate of $3.68. GAAP net income was $173.6 million, or $3.61 a share, on a 7.6% margin, with GAAP operating income of $218.8 million.

A backlog is contracted work not yet delivered, which makes it the closest thing a defense company has to a forward revenue statement. Elbit says 73% of the $32 billion originates outside Israel, with international orders — mainly European — driving the quarterly increase, and about 42% is scheduled for performance during the remainder of 2026 and 2027, with the rest set for 2028 and beyond.

The geographic split shows how far the customer base has shifted. Israel accounted for 37% of quarterly sales following inventory replenishment after the conflict with Iran ended at the start of April, Europe supplied 25%, North America 20% and Asia-Pacific 14%.

Segment results were uneven. C4I and cyber revenue rose 11% year over year, ISTAR and electronic warfare 22%, land systems 32%, and Elbit Systems of America 17%. Aerospace fell 8%, which the company attributed to an unfavorable project mix and weaker training and simulation sales in Europe.

Cash generation improved sharply. Operating cash flow reached $237 million for the quarter, up from $120 million a year earlier, with free cash flow of $150 million versus $71 million and cash conversion of 86%. First-half operating cash flow totaled $517.8 million against $304.0 million a year ago.

The company is spending to convert that pipeline. Management is raising capital expenditure to roughly $300 million from $220 million to add production capacity. Elbit said its increased investment in production infrastructure reflects a disciplined approach to scaling and to delivering at volume. Backlog only becomes revenue when factories can build the hardware, and $32 billion of commitments is a manufacturing problem before it is a financial one.

Recent orders keep arriving. The company cited a tank-upgrade contract worth about $350 million and more than $370 million from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and declared a dividend of $1.00 a share payable Oct. 26. Elbit also unveiled an airborne high-power laser system under development for helicopters and fighter aircraft, part of a push into directed-energy weapons. Demand from Israel’s Ministry of Defense remains materially higher and could generate additional orders.

Two items cut the other way. The effective tax rate jumped to 16.4% from 5.6%, driven by OECD Pillar II rules, and the company reported operational disruptions tied to Middle East conflicts, supply chain issues and attacks on facilities.

Investors were not impressed. Shares traded lower in U.S. premarket despite the earnings and revenue beat. In Tel Aviv trading the stock fell 5.2%, leaving Elbit with a market value of NIS 121 billion — still up 41% year to date and 240% over three years, though down 16% from its March peak.

That reaction is the recurring pattern in defense stocks this cycle: expectations have already priced in the order flow, so beating estimates is no longer the event. CFO Yaacov Kagan told analysts the quarter delivered double-digit growth across revenue, backlog, operating profit and earnings per share, and said the company expects backlog to keep growing while it focuses on converting it into revenue, profit and cash flow. Execution, not order intake, is now the number the market is watching.

JBizNews Desk | Haifa

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A federal appeals court refused to dismiss thousands of lawsuits against Meta, Google, TikTok and Snapchat, allowing complaints alleging the platforms were designed to be addictive to young users to move forward.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an appeal by Meta and TikTok attempting to overturn a lower court ruling requiring the firms to face more than 3,000 lawsuits filed in federal court, ruling the companies appealed too early.

The social media companies claimed that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 — which generally shields online platforms from being liable for content posted by their users — also prohibits lawsuits on allegations they failed to warn the public about the addictive design of their platforms.

Section 230 has largely protected several companies from lawsuits regarding content posted on their platforms.

Most appeals come after a case has reached a ruling or a verdict, but the companies claimed that they should not have to wait until the litigation wraps up to challenge the lower court’s rejection of their immunity defense.

However, the court ruled the companies cannot use Section 230 to dismiss lawsuits, saying it can only be used as a liability defense against claims, meaning the appeal was premature.

The statute “merely provides a defense to liability — not immunity from suit,” Judge Jacqueline Nguyen wrote.

The court’s decision clears the way for lawsuits alleging social media companies designed platforms to encourage addictive behavior, failed to verify users’ ages and did not adequately block harmful content.

The panel also denied Meta’s attempt to postpone a trial set to begin on Wednesday in a lawsuit brought by 29 state attorneys general accusing the company of illegally collecting and using children’s data, designing its social media platforms to addict young users and misleading consumers about child safety on the platforms.

The company had claimed that the trial could not move forward while the appeal was pending.

Fox Business reached out to Meta and TikTok for comment.

Attorneys representing thousands of school districts and people suing Meta and other tech firms in federal court, said in a statement the ruling would allow the states’ trial to move forward, as well as a trial over claims brought by school districts set for February.

“A trial is how the public finds out what Meta knew about its products’ impact on children, when it knew it, and what it chose to do with that knowledge,” the attorneys said. “Meta has fought to keep that evidence from the public.”

This comes after a New Mexico judge last week found Meta had created a public nuisance in the state, ordering it to pay $567 million into a teenage mental health fund and adopt youth-safety measures.

In March, a jury in California ruled against Meta and Google’s YouTube, while a jury in New Mexico ruled against Meta on child safety risks.

Reuters contributed to this report.

The tzibur is asked to be mispallel for the Spinka Rebbe (Beis Shmiel Tzvi), HaRav Yosef Meir Horowitz, who is in critical condition at Mount Sinai Hospital and is in dire need of Rachmei Shomayim.

The Rebbe is the son of HaRav Berish Horowitz zt”l, the eldest son of HaRav Hershele Spinker zt”l.

Please daven for HaRav Yosef Meir ben Blima Sorah for a complete Refuah Sheleimah.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

A young father and Husband in Toronto, who got married within the past year, suddenly became completely and unconscious on Friday night while in Toronto for a family wedding.

He remains in critical, unstable condition.

A name has been added for Tehilim: The community is asked to daven urgently for the speedy recovery of – Refoel Moshe Nechemia ben Yocheved

Further updates will follow as they become available.

He remains in critical, unstable condition.

The community is asked to daven urgently for his recovery. Name for Tehilim: Refoel Moshe Nechemia ben Yocheved

Further updates will follow as they become available.

Two people were killed in a horrific head-on collision between two vehicles on Route 383, south of Zecharia, at approximately 2:03 a.m.

One of the victims was identified as Rav Meir Turgeman Z”L, 42, of Beit Shemesh, a father of nine who had celebrated his son’s Bar Mitzvah just days ago.

The second victim was Noam Dadon, 27, of Sdot Micha, who was scheduled to be married in approximately two months.

Large numbers of MDA, United Hatzalah and ZAKA personnel responded to the devastating scene, where they found two badly mangled vehicles. One of the victims was trapped inside a vehicle, while the other was found on the side of the road. Both were pronounced dead at the scene.

A woman in her 40s was treated at the scene and transported to Shaare Zedek Medical Center in moderate condition.

MDA responders described the crash as extremely severe, saying that after examining the two victims, “there was nothing left for us to do but pronounce them dead.”

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(YWN World Headquarters – NYC?

The Senate passed the Common Cents Act on Friday night, and once the House signs off on a small change the senators made, the arithmetic at the register becomes federal law for anyone paying cash. A total ending in 1, 2, 6 or 7 cents gets rounded down to the nearest nickel; a total ending in 3, 4, 8 or 9 cents gets rounded up, and the rounding applies only to cash, and only after taxes and fees are added. Pay by card, check or phone and nothing changes — you are charged the exact amount, down to the cent.

Rounding is an option, not an order. Businesses may round when they cannot make exact change, but they are not required to, and merchants that adopt the practice get legal safe-harbor protection for doing it. That protection is the reason retailers pushed for the bill in the first place.

The problem it solves is one that has been building at cash registers since the Mint stopped striking pennies. Retailers large and small have been warning customers that exact change is unlikely on cash purchases, and they have handled the shortfall inconsistently — some handing out gift cards or free items, others simply rounding the total. Several states and localities bar businesses from rounding cash transactions in either direction, which left a chain operating across state lines with no safe way to do the same thing everywhere.

Evan Armstrong, senior vice president of government affairs at the Retail Industry Leaders Association, said more than a dozen states have moved ahead with their own versions of rounding legislation, and the federal bill “gives a singular, uniform approach around rounding” that replaces the patchwork. The National Retail Federation called the measure an overdue step toward letting retailers keep serving cash customers as penny supply and usage dwindle. Sean Kennedy, chief advocacy officer at the National Restaurant Association, said Senate passage delivers “the certainty, consistency, and protection restaurant operators need” at the point of sale.

The vote itself moved fast. Senators cleared the bill Friday evening through a hotline process, polling each member for sign-off so the legislation could advance without floor time. The Banking Committee was discharged by unanimous consent, and the measure passed with an amendment, also by unanimous consent. The change came from Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and requires the Treasury Department to notify Congress before discontinuing any currency in the future and to submit a transition plan. Because the Senate altered the text, the House has to vote on it a second time, and retail trade groups are aiming to get the bill to President Trump in September.

The legislation also settles the penny’s status permanently. Treasury would have to end all penny production within a year of enactment, while pennies already in circulation stay legal tender indefinitely. The Federal Reserve would be tasked with limiting disruptions in penny supply during the wind-down. Roughly 114 billion pennies remain in existence, by Treasury’s estimate.

The second half of the bill is about the coin shoppers will be handed instead. The nickel loses money on every strike. It cost 13.31 cents to produce a nickel in fiscal 2025, down slightly from 13.78 cents the year before, and fiscal 2025 marked the twentieth straight year that production costs ran above the coin’s face value. The culprit is copper: a nickel contains very little of the metal it is named for and is roughly 75% copper.

The fix on offer is a cheaper recipe. The bill permits a five-cent coin built with an inner layer of zinc and an outer layer of nickel, with the Treasury secretary allowed to set the exact proportions only after testing shows the new composition cuts cost and, as the text puts it, has “minimal adverse impact on machines designed to accept coins.” That last clause was written in for vending machine operators, convenience store chains and laundromats, whose coin acceptors read a coin’s weight and electromagnetic signature. A copper-nickel five-cent piece must weigh five grams, but the zinc version could weigh anywhere from four to six, giving Treasury room to tune the coin so existing equipment still recognizes it. Zinc ran nearly $7,000 per metric ton cheaper than copper last year, according to the Mint.

Nothing changes in anyone’s pocket yet. The bill permits the new nickel rather than ordering it, and Treasury would still need to test and validate the composition before a zinc-core nickel reaches circulation, putting 2027 at the earliest realistic window. The nickel itself is not going away; a separate bill to eliminate it remains stuck in House committee. The immediate business consequence is narrower and more useful: a single national rule for making change, ending the state-by-state legal exposure that has been hanging over every cash sale since the last penny was struck.

JBizNews Desk | Washington

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Toyota issued a recall for about 655,000 of its Camry vehicles globally over a display error that may deactivate safety indicators such as turn signals and hazard lights, the automaker announced on Tuesday.

The global recall involves vehicles produced between December 2023 and July 2026 across manufacturing facilities in the U.S., Japan and Thailand.

Among those vehicles, a total of 508,354 model year 2025-2026 Camry Hybrids in the U.S. are affected by the recall, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

The affected vehicles are equipped with a 7-inch display combination meter that may be blank at startup. Only the LE, SE and Nightshade trims have the smaller 7-inch display. The XLE and XSE trims use a larger 12.3-inch driver display, so these models are not affected.

Turn signals, hazard lights and other warning buzzers, such as reminders to fasten the seat belt and remove the key from the ignition, may also be deactivated due to the defect in affected vehicles.

“The 7-inch combination meter may become blank at startup,” the automaker said in a statement. “This can also deactivate the turn signal and hazard lamps and certain warning buzzer sounds (such as the smart key reminder and the driver/passenger seat belt reminder). This can cause the vehicle not to meet certain federal safety standards.”

“If certain required information is not displayed in the combination meter, if the turn signal/hazard lamps do not function, or if certain warning buzzers do not activate, there can be an increased risk of injury or a crash depending on the specific situation,” the statement added.

The NHTSA warns that these display issues increase the risk of a crash for both drivers who may be unable to see telltale indicators and other road users would not know the driver’s intent to turn or indicate a vehicle hazard.

Toyota Motor North America said it will notify owners of the affected Camrys, so they can bring their vehicles to a dealer for a software update free of charge.

U.S. owner notification letters are scheduled to be mailed starting on Sept. 21, with all expected to be sent out by early October.

WASHINGTON D.C (VINnews)-Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., on Monday called for the immediate resignation of U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, accusing him of failing in his core duty to protect American citizens and interests while acting as an apologist for the Israeli government.

In a video statement released Monday, Van Hollen said: “It’s time for our American ambassador in Israel, Mike Huckabee, to resign. The job of an American ambassador is to defend and protect the interests of the United States of America. Ambassador Huckabee has failed to do that. He’s become an apologist for the extremist government in Israel.”

Van Hollen criticized Huckabee for what he described as insufficient condemnation of violence against American citizens in the West Bank, including incidents involving settlers and Israeli forces. He referenced cases of Americans allegedly beaten or killed and faulted the ambassador for prioritizing support for Israeli policy over U.S. interests. Van Hollen also pointed to Huckabee’s past comments on “Greater Israel” and his public identification as a Christian living comfortably in the Holy Land, arguing the ambassador has neglected the concerns of local Christian communities.

Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor and longtime evangelical supporter of Israel, was nominated by President Trump and confirmed as ambassador. He has consistently defended Israel’s security policies and the U.S.-Israel alliance.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) praised Van Hollen’s remarks, saying the ambassador’s “personal ideological and theological allegiance” had compromised his ability to represent all American citizens equally.

Critics of the senator’s position, including pro-Israel voices, argued that strong support for Israel — America’s closest ally in the Middle East — is being treated as a disqualifying stance. Some noted Van Hollen has not issued similar calls regarding other U.S. diplomats in the region, including Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, who has faced separate criticism over his approach to Turkish and regional policy.

Huckabee posted on X: “I’m doing something right! Sen Chris Van Hollen (Wasting Away in Margaritaville) & Pro-Hamas CAIR want me to resign.”

“Senator, I will if YOU will. I’ll go see my grandkids & you can take MS-13 gangbangers out for Margaritas like you did before.”

A young IDF soldier was injured in a frightening incident in Tiveriah after becoming trapped inside the luggage compartment of an Egged bus when the driver unknowingly drove away with her partially inside the compartment. She was rescued only after bystanders noticed what had happened and stopped the bus before she suffered even more serious injuries.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with HaOlam HaBoker, the soldier described the terrifying moments she endured and said she feared she would lose her leg if the bus continued moving.

The incident occurred after the soldier arrived in Tiveriah on a bus from Hatzor. She asked the driver to open the luggage compartment so she could retrieve her bag, but while she was leaning inside to remove it, the compartment door suddenly closed on her leg, trapping her as the bus pulled away.

“On Thursday I left my base and boarded the bus from Hatzor to Tiveriah. When I got off at the stop, I asked the driver if he could open the luggage compartment, and I saw that my bag was inside. I leaned halfway into the compartment to take out my bag, and he lowered the luggage compartment door.”

She said she immediately realized something had gone terribly wrong.

“When I realized he was closing the luggage compartment, I tried to push it away with my leg, but my leg got stuck. I was sure he had noticed and would stop, but suddenly I realized he was continuing to drive while half of my body was inside and my leg was trapped outside. I realized that if he kept driving, I would lose my leg.”

As the bus continued moving, the soldier called police in an effort to have officers locate and stop the vehicle. At the same time, she repeatedly pounded on the luggage compartment, hoping passengers would hear her and alert the driver.

“I was completely helpless. I watched as my leg started rubbing against the road while the bus was moving,” she recalled.

The bus finally came to a stop after passersby spotted the trapped soldier and alerted the driver. Another soldier at the scene forced open the luggage compartment and freed her.

“I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t breathe. If he had driven another two or three minutes until the central bus station, I truly don’t even want to imagine what would have happened to me.”

The soldier was taken to a hospital for treatment of the injuries she sustained.

In a statement, Egged said: “Egged regrets the incident. An internal review indicates that the driver did not notice the soldier entering the luggage compartment and believed she had already exited the bus and walked away. As soon as he realized what had happened, the driver stopped the bus, rescued her, and asked whether she required medical treatment. Egged wishes her a speedy recovery.”

US President Donald Trump praised Sen. Darline Graham Nordone on Tuesday night after she secured a place in the runoff for the Republican nomination for her late brother Lindsey Graham’s Senate seat, while also addressing the Iranian threat against him and the extraordinary security measures taken during his recent trip to Turkey.

Reporters at Joint Base Andrews pressed Trump about the security operation surrounding his departure from Turkey last month, when he was moved to a different military aircraft amid a threat against him.

The president said the decision had been made by the Secret Service and the military and that he simply followed their instructions.

“It’s only up to Secret Service. I just follow what they’d like to do,” Trump said. “They wanted me to go in a different flight, a different plane, equal safety, but they wanted me to do it, so I do it. I do what they say.”

Asked about the threat that prompted the unusual measures, Trump appeared to play down how much he knew about the details.

“I guess there was a threat out there. I didn’t really ask that much about it,” he said. “I get a lot of threats.”

Trump said the aircraft switch was made in England and maintained that the plane on which he ultimately traveled may actually have faced greater danger.

“I think actually the plane that I flew on was at greater risk,” he said. “I think it was at greater risk because that would be the plane… that they would be more likely to go for.”

US president unsurprised by the Iranian threat on his life

Asked whether he was surprised by the threat, Trump replied that he was not.

“I have a lot of threats. I have a lot of threats that you don’t know about,” he said.

“Any consequential president has a lot of threats. Non-consequential presidents don’t get threatened, and I think that I’m maybe the most consequential president.”

Trump added that the threats did not worry him.

“I don’t worry about anything, to be honest,” he said. “Whatever it is, you know my attitude. Whatever.”

‘I’m the last person to trust Iran’

Trump then pushed back against a suggestion that he trusted Tehran, insisting that Iran had repeatedly deceived him.

“I don’t trust Iran. Why are you saying I trust Iran?” Trump said. “I’m the last person to trust Iran. They’ve lied to me constantly.”

US has ‘total control’ over the Strait of Hormuz

He also repeated his assertion that the United States now has complete control of the Strait of Hormuz.

“We have total control over the Strait [of Hormuz] right now. They don’t have control. We have total control. We own it,” Trump said.

Earlier in the exchange, Trump said the situation with Iran was going “absolutely fine,” crediting the US Navy with establishing control over the strategic waterway.

“We totally control the Strait of Hormuz,” he said. “Nobody else, only us. Our Navy is unbelievable.”

Trump warned that any renewed Iranian action could be met with overwhelming force.

“At some point, maybe they’ll do something, and then they get blown away,” he said. “But we, right now, we’re in a very good position.”

The president concluded by arguing that decades of Iranian dominance in the region had come to an end.

“We have a country that has been the bully of the Middle East for 50 years,” Trump said. “They’re no longer the bully of the Middle East.”

Trump praised Darline Graham, ‘she’s got good genetics’

Trump said Graham had called him shortly before to thank him for his endorsement.

“She just called me to thank me for the endorsement, and it’s great that she’s doing so well,” Trump said. “She’s a very good woman, and she’s got good genetics because she’s related to Lindsey, who is a real professional.”

Trump noted that he also likes Graham’s Republican rivals, describing them as supporters of his movement, but made clear that his endorsement remains with her.

“I like the other people in the race also. They’re all Trump. I mean, they’re all Trumpers, but, you know, I endorsed her. I think she’s great,” he said.

Trump also invoked his close relationship with the late South Carolina senator, saying Lindsey Graham frequently spoke to him about his sister.

“Lindsey loved his sister more than anything else,” Trump said. “He would tell me about his sister that she’s just outstanding. He actually said she’s better than him. That was hard for Lindsey to say.”

This post was originally published on here.

TRENTON, N.J. (VINnews) — Rebecca Bennett, the Democratic nominee in New Jersey’s competitive 7th Congressional District, will not endorse or campaign with fellow Democratic nominee Adam Hamawy this fall, her campaign said Tuesday.

A Bennett campaign spokesperson told Jewish Insider that Bennett “is not going to campaign with or endorse Adam Hamawy this fall, as she is laser focused on flipping New Jersey’s seventh district, lowering costs, and getting corruption out of Washington.”

Bennett, a former U.S. Navy helicopter pilot and Air National Guard officer who won her primary earlier this summer, is running as a relative moderate with a pro-Israel platform against Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. in one of the nation’s key swing districts.f0512d

Jewishinsider

Hamawy, a plastic surgeon and Army combat veteran, won the Democratic primary in the neighboring 12th District. He has faced national scrutiny over past associations, including serving as a defense witness in the 1995 terrorism trial of Omar Abdel-Rahman, known as the Blind Sheikh, and volunteering in the mid-1990s with Benevolence International Foundation, a charity later designated by the U.S. government as an al-Qaida front group.f67ece

Jewishinsider

Republicans have sought to link Bennett to Hamawy because both are Democratic nominees and military veterans.

Hamawy’s campaign has defended his record, stating that his “entire career and life have been defined by his patriotism and deep love of this country.” It described his testimony in the Blind Sheikh case as a “civic and legal duty” performed while he was in the Army and dismissed criticism of his charity work as “desperate,” “absurd” and “gross and bigoted.”

Bennett defeated several primary opponents in June and has emphasized affordability, healthcare access and national security in her campaign. The general election is scheduled for November.

If it feels like your phone has been ringing nonstop with unfamiliar numbers, you’re far from alone. Americans were bombarded with an estimated 4.4 billion robocalls in July, marking the highest monthly total in a year, according to data compiled by call-blocking service YouMail.

YouMail’s tracking shows that robocall activity had fallen to its lowest level in October 2025 but has steadily climbed in recent months. The company reported that telemarketing pitches and scam calls accounted for the largest share of unwanted calls during July.

Not every automated call is fraudulent. Many are legitimate reminders about appointments, bills, or other services. Still, the sheer number of unknown callers has made it increasingly difficult for consumers to distinguish genuine calls from scams.

According to YouMail, the most common robocall in July involved offers for pre-approved personal loans, often telling recipients they qualified for large loans with affordable monthly payments.

“As with similar campaigns, this appears to be at a minimum, illegal telemarketing at scale. Based on consumer reports and the behavior of the calls, it’s likely to be a scam,” YouMail said in its July report.

Although robocall activity increased across the country, several regions experienced particularly sharp jumps. Data provided to Nexstar showed that phone numbers with area codes in Texas, Georgia, and Indiana saw the largest increases in spam calls.

The area codes recording the biggest month-over-month increases in July were:

• 346 (Houston, Texas): 16.2 million calls, up 19%
• 470 (Atlanta, Georgia): 20.2 million calls, up 13%
• 229 (Albany, Georgia): 32.1 million calls, up 13%
• 765 (Indianapolis, Indiana): 17.3 million calls, up 12%
• 901 (Memphis, Tennessee): 47.4 million calls, up 11%
• 812 (Evansville, Indiana): 25 million calls, up 11%
• 720 (Denver, Colorado): 17.7 million calls, up 11%
• 870 (Jonesboro, Arkansas): 32.2 million calls, up 9%
• 317 (Indianapolis, Indiana): 24.9 million calls, up 9%
• 931 (Clarksville, Tennessee): 22 million calls, up 9%
• 254 (Killeen, Texas): 19.3 million calls, up 9%

YouMail CEO Alex Quilici said that despite new regulations adopted by the Federal Communications Commission in recent years, scammers continue finding ways to place massive numbers of illegal calls.

“We suspect the fraudsters are getting on the telephone networks at scale through a set of carriers that are benefiting from this illegal call traffic,” Quilici told Nexstar. “There are more barriers to that now, but it doesn’t take a lot of bad actors to generate meaningful volumes.”

Lawmakers are also attempting to curb the problem. A bill approved by the Senate would further target robocalls by cracking down on those originating outside the United States.

Promoting the legislation, Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said “folks in red and blue states alike are sick and tired of picking up the phone and wondering if they’re being scammed.”

While enrolling your phone number in the National Do Not Call Registry can reduce telemarketing calls, experts caution that it cannot stop every unwanted caller.

Consumer protection specialists recommend ignoring suspicious calls from unfamiliar numbers and allowing them to go to voicemail. If you need to contact your bank, utility provider, health insurer, or another company, they advise calling the official number printed on your card, bill, or account statement rather than returning an unknown call.

Multiple people were injured in a crash involving two NYPD cruisers and a third vehicle at 15th Avenue and 51st Street.

The accident reportedly occurred while the NYPD officers were rushing to a call.

Hatzolah and other emergency personnel responded to the scene following the collision.

Five NYPD officers, one sergeant, and one civilian were injured in the crash.

The circumstances surrounding the collision remain under investigation, and additional details on the conditions of those injured were not immediately available.

LOS ANGELES (VINnews) — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Tuesday that his department has stopped “billions and billions of dollars worth of fraud” by deploying artificial intelligence and other systems to identify suspicious claims before taxpayer funds are paid out.

Kennedy made the remarks during a White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud press conference focused on Los Angeles’ homelessness response. He sharply criticized the Biden administration’s handling of health care fraud and specifically accused former HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra of failing to curb it.

“He let the people steal the money,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy said HHS is now using AI, machine counting systems and other algorithms to flag potential fraud in advance. “We now don’t pay anything that we suspect to be fraudulent,” he said.

The comments came as administration officials, including Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner, highlighted concerns over waste and mismanagement in Los Angeles homeless services programs and promoted alternatives such as faith-based recovery models.

NEW YORK (JNS/Stephen M. Flatow) “Schumer,” he would tell Jewish audiences, came from shomer, or “guardian.” And as the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in American history, he embraced the description Shomer Yisrael, a guardian of Israel and the Jewish people.

It was more than a clever play on words. It became part of Schumer’s political identity.

Which is why his decision to embrace Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate from Michigan, deserves more than the usual partisan shouting.

JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin recently excoriated Schumer for the endorsement, arguing that when American Jews needed courage, their supposed custodian chose politics instead. There is plenty in that indictment with which to agree. But I wonder whether Schumer’s decision says something even more disturbing.

Perhaps Schumer hasn’t changed nearly as much as the party around him has.

He didn’t want El-Sayed to win the Michigan primary. He backed Rep. Haley Stevens, a mainstream pro-Israel Democrat. El-Sayed nevertheless defeated her in an extraordinarily close race. Michigan is now essential to Democratic hopes of regaining control of the Senate. Within hours, Schumer and other party leaders announced that Democrats would unite behind El-Sayed.

Asked about the political contortions involved, Schumer supplied perhaps the most revealing sentence of the episode: “The issue isn’t me. It’s about winning.”

There is a sympathetic case for him.

Schumer is the Senate Democratic leader. His job is to elect Democratic senators. Michigan could determine control of the chamber. Party leaders routinely support nominees they opposed in primaries. Refusing to support El-Sayed could help elect a Republican and doom Democratic hopes of regaining the Senate.

That is politics.

But Shomer Yisrael was supposed to mean something beyond politics.

The concern about El-Sayed is not that he is Muslim. Nor should support for Palestinian rights or criticism of an Israeli government be confused with antisemitism. Israel is a democracy, and Jews themselves argue vigorously about its government and policies.

El-Sayed’s record goes considerably further. He has called for ending U.S. military aid to Israel, used the language of apartheid and genocide against the Jewish state, and questioned the motives of Democrats who support Israel.

The question, therefore, is not whether Schumer suddenly agrees with Abdul El-Sayed. I doubt he does.

The question is what it means that he no longer believes that disagreements over matters this fundamental are sufficient reason to withhold his political support.

And that is where New York Jews should pay particular attention.

No political party can be entrusted permanently with a key role. Coalitions change. Generations change. Incentives change.
We have already watched Mayor Zohran Mamdani demonstrate that aggressive anti-Zionism is no longer necessarily an impediment to political success in New York City. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and others on the party’s progressive flank have shown that positions once regarded as far outside the Democratic mainstream can now command substantial constituencies.

Something is moving beneath Schumer’s feet. Something is moving beneath American Jewry’s feet as well.

For decades, American Jews could largely assume that support for Israel’s existence as a Jewish state was safely inside the bipartisan consensus. Republicans and Democrats could quarrel about settlements, peace negotiations, military tactics and Israeli prime ministers while agreeing on that foundation. But that consensus is cracking.

Jewish Democrats also need to ask an uncomfortable question: Did they help create the conditions that made this possible?

For too long, much of the organized Jewish community treated Democratic support for Israel as a permanent fixture, rather than a political position that required constant explanation, cultivation and defense. Jewish donors supported candidates for a hundred reasons and often assumed that Israel would take care of itself.

Jewish organizations emphasized access to Democratic leaders while sometimes hesitating to confront ideological trends within the party for fear of appearing partisan. And many Jewish voters continued to regard pro-Israel sentiment as an almost hereditary characteristic of mainstream Democratic politics. It wasn’t.

Nothing in politics is hereditary.

Meanwhile, Israel’s opponents were organizing, recruiting candidates, contesting primaries and teaching a generation of activists to view Zionism not as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people but as something morally suspect.

They did the work. We often assumed that we had already won the argument.

Schumer’s predicament is one consequence. And it demonstrates why relying upon individual political “guardians” was always dangerous.

No senator can be Shomer Yisrael for us. No political party can be entrusted permanently with that role. Political coalitions change. Generations change. Incentives change. Yesterday’s red line becomes today’s uncomfortable disagreement and tomorrow’s party platform.

I do not take pleasure in saying this about Schumer. Indeed, that is precisely the point. There would be something easier about concluding that he had simply lost his moral compass. We could condemn him and move on.

I suspect the truth is harder.

Schumer may know exactly where his compass points. He may simply have discovered that following it now carries a political price he is unwilling—or, as Democratic leader, believes himself unable—to pay.

A shomer, however, is not needed when guarding the gate is easy. He is needed when leaving his post would be easier.

And if even he now finds that post impossible to hold, American Jews should spend less time asking what happened to Chuck Schumer and much more time asking what happened to the political landscape around us—and what we intend to do about it.

Attorney Stephen M. Flatow is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is the author of A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror (available in an expanded paperback on Amazon.com) and is the president of the Religious Zionists of America-Mizrachi. An oleh chadash, he divides his time between Jerusalem and New Jersey.

MONTREAL (AP) — Montreal’s former commissioner for racism and systemic discrimination, Bochra Manaï, is suing the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs for $125,000, alleging the organization carried out a nearly three-year campaign to discredit her and push for her removal from office.

According to the Montreal Gazette, the lawsuit focuses on an alleged CIJA publication from June 2025 that Manaï says included a visual comparison between her and Adolf Hitler. She argues that the comparison was an extreme attack on her reputation, dignity and professional integrity. The alleged publication was submitted as an exhibit in the lawsuit, but has not been independently reviewed. The allegations have not been tested in court.

Manaï is seeking $100,000 in moral damages and $25,000 in punitive damages, according to the Gazette. She also reserves the right to seek additional damages if the alleged conduct continues or her claimed losses increase.

Manaï was appointed Montreal’s commissioner for the fight against racism and systemic discrimination in 2021. According to CBC News and the Montreal Gazette, her relationship with CIJA deteriorated following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza.

CIJA called for Manaï’s resignation in late 2023, accusing her of failing to adequately respond to antisemitic incidents involving Jewish institutions in Montreal while publicly addressing the Israel-Hamas conflict.

The lawsuit alleges that CIJA and its representatives continued criticizing Manaï during 2024 and 2025, portraying her as incapable of fulfilling her responsibilities. Her lawyers describe the alleged actions as a sustained campaign intended to damage her professional reputation and force her dismissal.

Manaï also alleges that the campaign reinforced stereotypes linking Muslims with antisemitism and extremism and amounted to discrimination prohibited under Quebec’s Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.

The lawsuit says Manaï suffered damage to her reputation and dignity, as well as humiliation, stress and anxiety.

CIJA declined to comment on the lawsuit, citing the ongoing court proceedings. Manaï is represented by civil rights lawyer Julius Grey.

MK Avi Maoz, chairman of the Noam L’Yisrael party, says he is committed to remaining in the race through Election Day and is not using his campaign as leverage for political negotiations. In an interview with Kikar HaShabbos, Maoz declared that his goal is to strengthen the right-wing bloc, set his sights on becoming Israel’s next education minister, pledged full and equal funding for chareidi educational institutions regardless of core curriculum studies, and reiterated his position that bnei Torah should not be drafted into the military.

At the outset of the interview, Maoz rejected suggestions that his independent campaign is merely a negotiating tactic designed to secure a merger with another right-wing party before the election.

“No, this time it’s different. Maybe in previous elections people could have viewed our announcement that we were running as part of negotiations to eventually unite with someone else. This time it’s different. We’re raising a great deal of money, we’ve changed our name from ‘Noam’ to ‘Noam L’Yisrael.’ If my goal was simply to unite with another party, I could have kept the name ‘Noam.’ I also wouldn’t have recruited such strong candidates, like Shimon Tobul, deputy mayor of Be’er Sheva, and Eliyahu Libman, a hero of Israel.”

Asked directly whether he intended to stay in the race until the end, Maoz answered unequivocally.

“I am running until the end at the head of the ‘Noam L’Yisrael’ list. There will still be alliances with new and unexpected groups. Just as no one expected me to bring Shimon Tobul, there will be other unexpected figures who will join me on this journey. On a personal note, I’m 70 years old. At 70, you don’t embark on an adventure like this unless you truly believe in it. My entire mission is to save the right-wing bloc.”

When confronted with claims that his party could cost the right-wing bloc seats if it fails to cross the electoral threshold, Maoz dismissed the criticism and argued that his candidacy would actually strengthen the coalition.

“That was the conversation in 1992. It may have been true then, but it’s no longer true today. I want to change the conversation from ‘You’ll waste votes and destroy the right-wing bloc’ to a more accurate one: we’re here to save the right-wing bloc. We’re here to save the right-wing government. Why do I say that? Today the chareidi parties are telling voters, ‘Vote right and you’ll get a left-wing government.’ Netanyahu has declared that he wants a broad unity government. With whom? With the left!”

He continued by explaining why he believes his party fills an important political role.

“The chareidi parties are saying, ‘We’ll be the deciding factor.’ We are saying openly: we are only with the right-wing bloc, because we want to represent the ציבור that places its trust in the right. Right now the bloc is missing several seats. Every poll shows that it still lacks enough mandates to get beyond 60 seats. I’m here so Aryeh Deri can continue serving as a minister. I’m here so Moshe Gafni can continue doing what he’s been doing. I’m here so Smotrich can continue doing what he’s been doing.”

Maoz said his campaign is aimed at three different sectors of Israeli society.

“I’m appealing to three groups that are very dear to me: the chareidi ציבור, the religious Zionist ציבור that I come from, and the traditional ציבור—the people in the periphery, the ordinary people of Israel. I’m speaking to all of you. You love tradition, you love the Torah, you love talmidei chachamim, you love those who learn Torah, and at the same time you deeply appreciate the IDF.”

Asked whether he could work together with groups seeking to represent disillusioned chareidi voters, including parties associated with Moti Leitner, Eli Yishai, or the Achi Party, Maoz said ideological loyalty to the right was his only condition.

“Anyone who joins me must state clearly and unequivocally: we will not be Gadi Eisenkot’s 61st vote. Anyone who joins me—we will be the 61st vote for the right-wing bloc. That’s my condition.”

He said he welcomes support from any group willing to embrace that commitment.

“All of those groups are potential partners as far as I’m concerned. All of them. I invite them to join me on this journey to save the right-wing bloc. And I emphasize this because right now I’m the only one saying openly: I will not be Eisenkot’s 61st vote. I will be the 61st vote of the right-wing bloc, the bloc of faith. And yes, I’m appealing to the chareidi ציבור because I know there is tremendous disappointment there.”

Maoz made no attempt to hide the fact that he hopes to attract voters from Shas and United Torah Judaism.

“I’m here for the ציבור of Shas. I’m here for the ציבור of United Torah Judaism. I’m here for the religious Zionist ציבור, and I’m here for the traditional ציבור that loves Torah, loves IDF soldiers just as much, and loves the Jewish people. We’re here to save the bloc of faith, the right-wing bloc. It’s time that voters on the right vote for the right and actually receive a right-wing government.”

Turning to education policy, Maoz declared that he wants to become Israel’s next education minister and outlined what he said would be one of his signature reforms.

“I want to serve as education minister in the next government, and I will bring full-strength Judaism to the Ministry of Education—for everyone, for every sector. And there will be full funding for every child, equal funding. That means equal opportunity.”

When asked whether that funding would be provided regardless of how much core curriculum a school teaches, Maoz responded without hesitation.

“Without any connection! A religious Zionist child who wants to study according to his worldview should receive exactly what every other child in the education system receives, because we do not play games with children.”

The interviewer noted that even the chareidi parties have generally tied funding levels to the amount of core curriculum instruction.

“Yishai, I once sat in a meeting with the education minister, and his legal adviser said, ‘Listen, we can’t do that because it’s not the ministry’s policy.’ What do you expect an education minister to say? ‘Madam, I determine the ministry’s policy!’ As education minister, I will determine the ministry’s policy: equal funding for every child. Because equal funding means equal opportunity for every child.”

Asked whether such a policy would survive a challenge before Israel’s High Court of Justice, Maoz said he believes it would.

“With G-d’s help, yes, it will stand up in the High Court. Because there is a glaring inequality here. Why are there children today who do not receive equal funding? Why are there children who are being discriminated against?”

Toward the end of the interview, Maoz addressed the ongoing debate over military service and the status of bnei yeshiva, reaffirming his longstanding position on the issue.

“I always tell the truth, and this is my truth: Whoever is learning Torah will not be drafted. Whoever is not learning Torah will receive every possible condition necessary to enlist if he wants to serve. He will enter the army as a chareidi and leave the army as a chareidi. That’s what I fought for, and that’s what I will continue to fight for.”

{Matzav.com}

Darline Graham and Rep. Ralph Norman have advanced to a runoff in South Carolina’s Republican special Senate primary, according to the Associated Press, setting up the next stage of the contest to replace the late Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Because no Republican candidate secured more than 50% of Tuesday’s vote, Graham and Norman will compete in a runoff two weeks from now. Rep. Russell Fry, former Gov. and former Rep. Mark Sanford, and several other candidates failed to advance. The primary took place exactly one month after the longtime senator unexpectedly died at age 71.

The runoff represents another important test of President Donald Trump’s influence within the Republican Party, particularly the effectiveness of his endorsements in GOP primary contests. Trump endorsed Darline Graham, the late senator’s younger sister, in the race. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster appointed Graham last month to serve out the remainder of her brother’s current Senate term, which expires at the end of the year.

Graham said after casting her ballot Tuesday that she entered the race to help “President Trump get his agenda passed.”

Norman, who earlier this year unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for governor in the contest to replace term-limited Gov. Henry McMaster, is a strong Trump ally in the House. Fry, a two-term congressman, has likewise positioned himself as a supporter of the president during his Senate campaign.

Sanford entered the race with a different political profile. The former governor and congressman briefly challenged Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2020 but failed to gain traction. Sanford has long been identified with fiscal conservatism and made the country’s growing debt a central reason for seeking a Senate seat.

The Republican field was crowded, also featuring businessman Mark Lynch, who had previously challenged Lindsey Graham and lost to him by nearly 30 percentage points in the June Republican Senate primary.

The outcome underscores that a Trump endorsement is not necessarily a guarantee of victory, even in deeply Republican South Carolina.

Trump had previously endorsed Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette in the Republican gubernatorial primary to determine who would succeed McMaster, who is barred by term limits from seeking another term. The primary was held in early June.

Evette finished as the leading vote-getter in that primary but was decisively defeated by South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson in the subsequent runoff. Trump had also endorsed Wilson shortly before the runoff, giving him support in addition to his earlier backing of Evette.

The Republican nominee emerging from the Senate runoff in two weeks is expected to enter the general election as the clear favorite against Democratic nominee Annie Andrews, a pediatrician.

The race will ultimately determine who completes the next chapter of the Senate seat long held by Lindsey Graham, while also providing another indication of how much weight Trump’s backing carries with Republican voters heading into the 2026 midterm elections.

Key elements of the 15-point plan intended to shape the “day after” in Gaza remain far from implementation, even as the IDF has ceased attacks and begun withdrawing to the original Yellow Line. The proposed multinational force, reconstruction efforts in Rafah and the establishment of a technocratic committee are all facing significant delays, Channel 12 reports.

The multinational force is not expected to begin deploying in Gaza before October, with a real possibility that its arrival will be pushed off until after Israel’s elections. Israeli officials believe assembling the force itself remains one of the main obstacles facing the Board of Peace’s plan and do not expect it to deploy in the near future.

The proposed “Green Rafah” project, intended to become a central component of the plan in territory under IDF control behind the Yellow Line, is similarly months away from becoming a reality. The United Arab Emirates is advancing plans for a new neighborhood in eastern Rafah and recently received approval to begin preparing the site and its infrastructure.

That work, however, is expected to take approximately six months. Officials currently estimate that temporary housing units and caravans will not begin being placed at the site before November 2026, after the elections.

The civilian governing component is also stalled. Current assessments indicate that the proposed technocratic committee is not expected to enter Gaza anytime soon, further delaying implementation of the postwar framework.

Meanwhile, Palestinian Authority official Mohammed Dahlan is involved behind the scenes, leading a major humanitarian aid initiative and advancing UAE-backed reconstruction efforts in Gaza while also seeking to strengthen his own political support base.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

The Justice Department went to court Monday against New York, Connecticut and Vermont, seeking to bar all three states from charging in-state tuition rates to students who are in the country illegally — a filing that puts two of the tri-state area’s public university systems directly in federal litigation.

The complaints challenge state laws, regulations and policies requiring colleges and universities to provide in-state tuition rates to all non-citizens who maintain state residency, regardless of whether they are lawfully present. The department is also asking courts to block the states from enforcing laws that provide financial assistance and scholarships to those students.

“States cannot put illegal aliens over our Nation’s own citizens,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said, adding that the department has now sued every state in the Second Circuit on the issue. Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Civil Division said the matter turns on a straightforward reading of federal law — that “colleges cannot provide benefits to illegal aliens” that are unavailable to U.S. citizens.

Monday’s filings bring the total to 17 lawsuits in the campaign, which is run under Attorney General Todd Blanche.

The legal theory, and the counterargument

The government’s position is that these state laws unconstitutionally discriminate against U.S. citizens who do not receive the same reduced rates or scholarships, create incentives for illegal immigration, and conflict directly with federal law. The citizens in question are out-of-state Americans: a student from New Jersey attending a New York public university pays the higher non-resident rate, while a student living in New York without legal status pays the resident rate.

The states’ side of that turns on how the residency test is written. New York, Connecticut and Vermont all extend in-state tuition reductions to every student who meets certain state residency requirements — the benefit keys on where a student lives and went to high school, not on immigration status. Whether that framing survives federal preemption is the question now in front of the courts.

The department has won on this argument before. Five similar suits — in Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Illinois — have produced favorable orders. Earlier rulings in Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Nebraska permanently enjoined and declared unconstitutional analogous laws granting reduced tuition. Cases have also been pending in Minnesota, Virginia, California, New Jersey and Kansas — which means New Jersey’s turn in this fight is already underway.

The university systems for New York, Connecticut and Vermont did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The enrollment math

The population at issue is small as a share of national enrollment. Roughly 2.4% of all students enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities lack legal status, according to an October report from the Higher Ed Immigration Portal. Nearly 28% of them are estimated to hold or be eligible for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the program providing temporary work permits and deportation protection to people brought to the country as children.

For public universities, the financial effect of an injunction is not obvious in either direction, and administrators in Albany and Hartford will be modeling both. Non-resident tuition at a state university typically runs two to three times the resident rate. A school that must charge the higher rate to these students either collects substantially more per enrollee or loses them entirely — and for a student paying out of pocket without access to federal aid, the second outcome is the likely one.

Why tri-state employers should track this

The practical exposure runs through the workforce pipeline. Community colleges and regional public universities in New York and Connecticut feed nursing programs, allied health, skilled trades, accounting and teaching — fields where employers across the region are already short-staffed. A ruling that prices a segment of local students out of those programs removes graduates from a labor market that is not currently producing enough of them.

Employers with DACA holders on payroll have a narrower question to consider. Those employees are lawfully authorized to work, and this litigation does not change that. But roughly a quarter of the affected student population overlaps with that group, and any employee currently finishing a degree part-time at a state institution could see their cost of completion change if an injunction issues.

Nothing changes immediately. These are complaints, not orders, and the states will answer before any court rules. But given the department’s record in the earlier cases, institutions in the region would be prudent to model what a reversal costs them — before a judge decides the question for them.

JBizNews Desk | New York

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he slipped away from Air Force One after a trip last month in Turkey because the Secret Service and military wanted him on a “different plane” due to a threat that he insisted didn’t scare him.

Trump downplayed the extraordinary nature of the subterfuge involved in his flight, which saw him stow away in an airport catering container to sneak onto another plane while Air Force One was sent into the sky, essentially as a decoy.

He also downplayed the risk to the people — White House officials, security and support staff, and reporters — he left on the plane.

“They wanted me to go on a different flight, different plane,” Trump told reporters after returning from an event in Ohio, saying he had little choice in the matter.

“I guess there was a threat out there. I didn’t really ask too much about it,” he said. “I get a lot of threats.”

His comments confirmed a report that first appeared in The Washington Post saying that Trump, following a NATO summit last month, was spirited onto a different plane because of a credible threat from Iran. The action was kept secret for weeks, until the newspaper’s story.

“I think actually the plane that I flew on was at greater risk,” Trump said Tuesday, who did not provide many details about the action. But he said the incident did not scare him.

“I don’t worry about anything, to be honest,” Trump said. “Whatever it is. You know my attitude? Whatever!”

Presidents often take secret trips — but not like this
Commanders in chief have sometimes kept overseas trips covert for security reasons, with schedules and logistics kept classified until after for safety reasons. But the fact that Trump’s whereabouts were concealed at the time and for weeks afterward is believed to be unprecedented.

“We have absolutely seen the president fly on unmarked or decoy planes before, into Iraq, Afghanistan, other war-zone-like places,” said Garrett M. Graff, author of “Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself — While the Rest of Us Die.”

“But this was an ongoing secret that I don’t think we’ve ever seen before.”

After hiding in the catering vehicle and being moved to the other plane, Trump stopped in Britain, sneaked back aboard the presidential plane undetected, and even later scoffed when asked about potential danger.

“If I go, you go. Right?” he told reporters then — gliding past the fact that if the plane had been shot down, the president wouldn’t have been aboard.

Many details about what happened remain unknown
The president’s flight out of Turkey made headlines at the time because he had arrived aboard a luxury jet gifted by Qatar, which was not equipped with some of the same missile detection and countermeasure systems found on older presidential jets.

Trump ended up traveling in a smaller government aircraft from Turkey to the United Kingdom, only to secretly reboard the decoy jet, then descend from it and climb back aboard the Qatari plane.

Presidents have regularly tested the confines of their office, pushing their security advisers to visit war zones as a show of American presence and their own leadership. Usually, this happens in the form of trips that aren’t announced until the president is deemed to be out of harm’s way.

What’s different this time is that Trump was covertly separated from the rest of his travelers — including the press pool meant to provide independent coverage of the president and his actions — and, instead of informing the public about what occurred once the risk had passed, the White House still hasn’t fully revealed what took place.

Graff said the presence of the White House press corps is as much about protecting “the presidency and democracy” as it is about covering the story.

“This shows that the White House just fundamentally doesn’t understand how important that role is,” he said.

Officials have gone to great lengths to keep presidents safe on covert trips before
In 2023, a motorcade pulled away from the White House around 3:30 a.m. on a Sunday, and President Joe Biden later boarded an Air Force C-32, a modified Boeing 757 normally used for domestic trips to smaller airports, and flew to Poland. Biden then took a secret, 10-hour overnight train ride to Kyiv meant to show solidarity with Ukraine after Russia’s invasion.

A press pool at the White House had been expecting a quiet Sunday for Biden in Washington. However, two journalists went to Ukraine with him and documented the trip, capturing images of Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy walking together.

In Trump’s first term, he made a secret Thanksgiving trip to Afghanistan in 2019, when officials kept a separate press pool and decoy plane in Florida to maintain the illusion that the president was spending the holiday at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

Instead, Trump and another group of reporters flew to the U.S. military base at Bagram, where the president served turkey to troops, gave a speech and met with Afghanistan’s then-president, Ashraf Ghani, while journalists documented what was occurring.

When President George W. Bush made his first trip to Iraq in 2003, news was not released until he was in the air on the way back to the United States. President Barack Obama made a furtive nighttime visit to Afghanistan in 2010, when he was meant to be spending the weekend at Camp David.

Other risky trips featured presidential misdirection
President Bill Clinton went secretly from India to Pakistan in 2000, attempting to calm tensions in the disputed Kashmir region. He was seen talking with officials in front of a military plane that he appeared to board. Instead, Clinton ducked around the front of the aircraft to another jet parked nearby.

Both planes took off for Islamabad, as did a third jet painted with the familiar baby blue markings of Air Force One.

Joe Lockhart, a White House press secretary for Clinton, noted that reporters knew the president was on one of the planes, “but not which one.” He said he and other officials had briefed the press pool ahead of time and “although they didn’t know all the details, it was made clear” that Clinton “was not going to travel on the plane they were on.

“There was no attempt to hide anything, much less lie about it later,” Lockhart wrote on social media.

Bush was visiting an elementary school in Sarasota, Florida, during the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, and, after all commercial air traffic was grounded, officials wanted to move him to an undisclosed location.

The full White House traveling press pool flew with Bush from Florida to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, where officials reduced the number of reporters and staff on the plane. Bush and the smaller traveling party next flew to Nebraska’s Offutt Air Force Base before eventually returning to Washington.

Bush’s location remained secret throughout the day. However, the White House did not suggest that the president was somewhere he was not — unlike when Trump was whisked out of Turkey.

“You can imagine the different ways that this could have gone wrong, where, for a period of time, no one would have been able to independently corroborate the status of the U.S. president, or who was in charge of the U.S. government,” Graff said. “And that’s an incredibly dangerous moment for the world.”

The Yerushalayim Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday ordered the release of right-wing activist Tal Yinon Dardik after 38 days in detention, rejecting a police request to impose restrictive conditions and criticizing authorities for attempting to link the criminal case against him with a newly issued administrative order.

Judge Amir Shaked ruled that Dardik, who is suspected of involvement in violence against Palestinians, should be released immediately and without restrictions. In his decision, the judge criticized the Judea and Samaria District Police for trying to intertwine the ongoing criminal proceedings with a new administrative order that had recently been issued against him.

Although the court ordered his release, Dardik was informed that a new order signed Monday by the commander of the IDF Central Command remains in force and prohibits him from entering Judea and Samaria.

The criminal case centers on an indictment charging Dardik with violating a lawful military order and interfering with a police officer. According to prosecutors, intelligence information linked him to unlawful and violent activities that endangered lives and property, prompting the commander of IDF forces in Judea and Samaria to issue an order on June 9 barring him from entering the region.

On the same day, military authorities also ordered Dardik to remain at his mother-in-law’s home in the community of Adei Ad in Judea and Samaria. Court documents state that subsequent inspections found he was not staying there and was instead allegedly hiding at the Tirpon Farm outpost.

On July 9, the Magistrate’s Court had previously ruled that Dardik could be released to house arrest at Tirpon Farm under the supervision of his wife, finding that the evidence supporting the charges was relatively weak. The court also pointed out that the indictment was not based on his mere presence in Judea and Samaria and questioned how authorities could simultaneously require him to remain in the area while also prohibiting him from entering it.

The court further found that the allegation Dardik violated the house arrest order was weakened by the fact that his mother-in-law had never agreed to have him confined in her home, despite the order requiring him to remain there.

Prosecutors appealed that decision, and the Jerusalem District Court overturned it. The higher court concluded there was sufficient evidence at this stage to support the charges and found no dispute that Dardik had failed to comply with the military order. However, it ruled that any challenge to the legality of the order itself should be addressed during the criminal proceedings rather than in detention hearings.

An appeals committee later instructed the commander of the Central Command to replace one of the existing conditions with a new one. On Aug. 9, a court upheld that decision, ruling that the committee had acted within its legal authority.

The following day, the commander issued a new administrative order against Dardik. Police then asked the court to release him, but only if his release was made subject to the conditions contained in the new order.

Judge Shaked rejected that request, saying the police had improperly attempted to merge the criminal proceedings with the new administrative restrictions.

“It is impossible to accept such conduct, in which the applicant chose to intertwine the criminal and administrative proceedings. The court cannot make the respondent’s release dependent upon compliance with release conditions whose sole purpose is to prevent a violation that has not yet occurred in light of the issuance of the new order. This is especially so when the respondent is already behind bars. Such a course of action cannot be accepted.”

The judge noted that the new administrative order had been issued while Dardik was already in custody and emphasized that the indictment concerns only the alleged violation of the earlier June 9 order, which has since been replaced.

He further ruled that Dardik could not remain in jail based solely on speculation that he might violate the new order in the future. If such a violation were to occur, authorities could respond at that time, but the possibility alone did not justify keeping him detained.

The court ultimately denied the police request to condition Dardik’s release on compliance with the new administrative order and ordered that he be freed immediately after 38 days in custody. At the same time, the judge made clear that the newly issued order remains legally valid and in force.

Following the ruling, Dardik’s attorney, Nati Rom, welcomed the decision.

“We have now received Judge Amir Shaked’s decision ordering the immediate and unconditional release of Tal Yinon Dardik. We are pleased that the defense’s arguments from the very beginning have been accepted. This order is unenforceable, the military commander issued it without legal authority. The order is therefore effectively void, meaning there was no violation and no justification for his arrest. We are happy that he has been released and hope that this time the judicial decisions will be respected and that he will be able to rebuild his life and support his family.”

After being released, Dardik thanked those who supported him and vowed to continue opposing what he described as government policies targeting settlement activists.

“I want to thank the people of Israel and everyone who worked on my behalf. It is very important for me to say that this struggle is far from over, and we will continue with all our strength to fight the policies of Minister Katz and General Bluth, a policy of persecuting the settlement movement. Administrative orders directed specifically against settlement activists are something that must come to an end.”

Dardik also said he had just completed a lengthy hunger strike while in custody.

“I have now been released after a prolonged 37-day hunger strike. I am physically weak, but my spirit remains strong, and I trust in God to continue this struggle until the very end.”

{Matzav.com}

Shas MK Moshe Abutbul is demanding an explanation from National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir after a yeshiva bochur was arrested by Military Police immediately after appearing at Lahav 433 headquarters to give testimony in a fraud investigation. Abutbul warned that the incident could severely damage trust between the chareidi public and law enforcement and even discourage victims from reporting crimes.

In a sharply worded letter sent Tuesday, Abutbul accused police of crossing “a red line” and violating commitments previously made by Police Commissioner Danny Levy to the chareidi community. He cautioned that the incident could deter chareidim from cooperating with police investigations in the future.

Moshe Steiner, a Bnei Brak resident who studies at a yeshiva in Beit Meir, was summoned to Lahav 433 to provide testimony after he himself was allegedly victimized in a fraud case. After investigators completed their questioning, Steiner was informed that he was free to leave. However, as he exited the station and entered the parking lot, Military Police officers who had been waiting outside arrested him on allegations that he was a draft evader.

Following the arrest, Abutbul sent an urgent letter to Ben Gvir under the heading, “Crossing a Red Line and Violating the Police Commissioner’s Commitment.” He wrote that Steiner had come to the police voluntarily and in good faith to assist investigators by providing testimony as the victim of an alleged fraud scheme.

“It is a crossing of a red line and a serious violation of the police commissioner’s commitment to the chareidi public,” Abutbul wrote, warning that the incident would erode confidence between police and the chareidi community. “This is not how you build trust; this is how you destroy it.”

Abutbul suggested the incident may have resulted from confusion among officers on the ground despite directives previously issued by the police commissioner. He called on Ben Gvir to issue an immediate and unequivocal instruction to every police station “to allow chareidi yeshiva bochurim to file complaints at police stations without being arrested.”

In closing, Abutbul warned that the consequences could extend far beyond this individual case. “If this conduct continues, chareidi citizens will completely refrain from turning to the police and reporting crime, something that could, G-d forbid, cost lives.”

Copies of the letter were also sent to Police Commissioner Danny Levy and Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Minister Yariv Levin.

The companies building America’s AI data centers are running into a problem money alone can’t solve: the insurance industry is close to the limit of what it can cover.

That’s the warning from Eric Andersen, president and chief executive of American International Group, who says the data center boom is maxing out property and casualty insurers. The math behind it is simple. A single hyperscale campus can be worth more than a mid-sized city’s entire commercial real estate stock, and it all sits on one plot of land. Markel’s Guenter Kryszon has warned that an individual campus can require $10 billion to $20 billion of property limit — far more than any one insurer will put on a single site.

Andersen has described a project that generates demand across an insurer’s entire product line, saying a data center needs roughly 30 different insurance products from permitting and financing through construction, including marine, liability, cyber and business interruption. He has called the buildout the biggest short-term opportunity the property/casualty industry has. The catch is that opportunity and capacity are now colliding.

The scale explains why. Zurich says the average data center project in its portfolio was worth $150 million five years ago; today it is $3 billion. The insurer has covered more than $350 billion of values across 250 data center projects over the past three years. AM Best counts 4,287 data centers in the United States as of May 2026, with the top 10 states holding 59% of them — Virginia leads with 603, or 14.1% of the national total, followed by Texas with 461.

Insurers normally manage risk by spreading it around. Data centers do the opposite. They pile enormous value into one location, often in states exposed to severe weather, and pack it with equipment that is expensive, scarce and hard to replace quickly. AM Best has flagged business interruption as potentially the most consequential exposure of all, and says the coverage the buildout requires already goes beyond what the traditional property/casualty industry has previously handled.

Power is part of the exposure too. A single modern AI data center can draw as much electricity as roughly 100,000 homes, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory research cited by AM Best estimates data centers could consume as much as 12% of all U.S. electricity by 2028.

Andersen’s proposed fix is to widen the pool of money willing to take the risk. He has urged insurers and brokers to bring alternative capital providers — including the insurance-linked securities market — into risks the industry cannot absorb on its own, with data centers as the leading example. Brokers are already building structures to do it. Marsh launched a $75 million excess casualty facility for U.S. digital infrastructure construction in February.

That matters well beyond the insurance business. Lenders financing these projects require coverage before money moves. If insurers cap out on limits or price the risk higher, financing terms tighten and construction timelines stretch — which slows the buildout that hyperscalers and chipmakers are counting on.

AIG’s own quarter shows a carrier being choosier about where it puts capital. On his first earnings call as CEO, Andersen told analysts the market is moving out of a long stretch of broad price increases into a more selective phase where results depend on line-by-line dynamics, with new capacity from excess and surplus lines carriers and delegated underwriting structures pressuring property pricing in particular. In North America, AIG deliberately shrank the property book at its surplus lines unit Lexington in targeted areas, cutting premium retention there by nine points in the second quarter, while growing property where the returns hold up — including through its renewal rights deal with Everest. Andersen said the company is walking away from business that doesn’t meet its underwriting standards.

Andersen took over as CEO on June 1, succeeding Peter Zaffino, who became executive chairman, after joining AIG in February from Aon. His growth plan runs to five points: deploying capital toward the highest returns, using reinsurance efficiently, expanding artificial intelligence, holding expenses and investing in people. AIG is using its own AI tools to speed underwriting and claims, and Andersen said the goal is not fewer employees but employees handling more clients.

AIG grew net premiums written 24% year over year to $5.60 billion in the first quarter, helped by transactions, reinsurance changes and targeted organic growth.

JBizNews Desk | New York

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Israel’s Defense Ministry has awarded Ondas a strategic contract worth several million shekels to develop and manufacture a new generation of tactical attack drones for the IDF, as the military moves to expand the use of unmanned and autonomous systems across frontline units.

Under the contract, Ondas will lead development of a low-cost tactical strike drone designed to meet evolving battlefield requirements and allow widespread deployment among combat forces. The project is part of a broader Defense Ministry initiative to deepen the integration of tactical drones and autonomous systems into IDF operations.

The new system is expected to include a complete operational package, featuring an advanced aerial platform, autonomous capabilities, mission integration, systems engineering, production readiness and compatibility with the IDF’s command-and-control infrastructure

Attack drones have become an increasingly important tool on the modern battlefield because they can provide frontline forces with precise, readily available and flexible strike capabilities.

Ondas currently operates across four primary defense fields: air defense and counter-UAV systems, aerial intelligence, aerial strike systems and unmanned ground platforms. Its systems also incorporate artificial intelligence-based command-and-control and mission-management software designed to coordinate drones, sensors, robotic systems, combat forces and military command networks.

The company said the new contract further strengthens its position in the defense technology sector and supports its long-term strategy of expanding the development, production and support of advanced autonomous systems for defense organizations in Israel and abroad.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Nearly three years after the October 7 massacre, criminal proceedings against captured Hamas Nukhba terrorists remain stalled, with prosecutors warning that the filing of indictments could be delayed by at least another two years unless responsibility for the case is transferred as planned.

According to an i24 report, Israel’s Military Advocate General’s Corps has warned the Justice Ministry that if the team of prosecutors currently handling the investigation is not formally transferred under its authority, the already lengthy legal process could face an additional delay of at least two years before indictments are filed.

One of the primary obstacles is the enormous volume of investigative material collected since the attack. Prosecutors assigned to the case began gathering and reviewing evidence during the first week after the October 7 massacre, but the transition of responsibility to the military prosecution has not yet been fully completed.

Only recently, government officials and members of the Knesset were told that the first indictments were expected to be filed in January 2027. However, according to the latest report, that timeline is now viewed as virtually impossible to meet.

Meanwhile, the IDF is continuing preparations for the military prosecution unit that will oversee the criminal cases against the captured terrorists. Under legislation passed by the Knesset in May 2026, responsibility for prosecuting those involved in the October 7 massacre was formally transferred to the military prosecution.

Responding to the report, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said: “In May 2026, the Knesset passed the law for the prosecution of those responsible for the October 7 massacre. Under the law, responsibility for prosecuting the terrorists was transferred to the military prosecution. Six officers have been assigned to various positions and are expected to begin serving in their roles in the near future.”

The IDF added: “The employment terms for the remaining personnel assigned to the project, including those that will allow for the hiring of civilian prosecutors, have not yet been finalized. The matter remains under ongoing discussion, in cooperation with all relevant government agencies. Funding for the project was transferred to the IDF in recent weeks.”

{Matzav.com}

The owner of a container ship handed the Panama Canal $4 million on Monday for one thing: permission to go ahead of everyone else. The vessel, the Seaspan Benefactor, won a near-record auction price to jump the queue at a waterway where large ships are now waiting 10 days to get through, and Seaspan did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

That $4 million is not a toll increase and it is not a fee the canal set. Most ships cross at a flat published rate by booking a reservation in advance. Vessels without one can either sit at anchor or bid in the canal authority’s auction, which sells a small number of daily slots to whoever offers the most. The price is simply what one company decided a week and a half of waiting was worth. It was more than double the average auction price of the previous seven days, according to a document seen by Bloomberg.

Time is expensive at sea for reasons that have nothing to do with the canal. A large gas or container ship costs tens of thousands of dollars a day to run whether it moves or not, cargo is usually sold against a delivery window written into a contract, and missing that window can cost more than the bid. When a buyer in Asia needs a cargo of American propane or liquefied natural gas by a fixed date, paying millions to move up the line can still be the cheaper answer.

The congestion traces back to the Iran war. With traffic sharply curtailed at two Persian Gulf chokepoints — the Strait of Hormuz and, more recently, the Bab el-Mandeb — buyers and sellers of oil, natural gas, fertilizer and chemicals, particularly in Asia, have been rerouting cargoes, and much of that redirected trade is funneling through Panama. The practical effect is that U.S. Gulf Coast export terminals have become the substitute supplier for a lot of Asian demand, and Panama is the shortcut those cargoes take.

Neopanamax vessels — the larger class that carries liquefied petroleum gas, liquefied natural gas, crude and refined products — face a 10-day wait for the Pacific-to-Atlantic direction, the longest since May, according to Argus Media data.

Two problems inside Panama are making it worse. Lock maintenance running until September is affecting the Neopanamax locks, and the canal recently cut the maximum draft allowed in those locks for the weeks ahead after rainfall came in below expectations. Draft limits are not a small technicality: a ship that cannot load to its full depth carries less cargo per trip, so the same tonnage requires more transits through a canal that already cannot handle the traffic it has. Water levels in Gatun Lake have continued to fall, and the authority moved earlier this month to tighten draft limits again. In July it had already begun curtailing some vessel-booking slots because of water supply.

The Panama Canal Authority said auction costs have risen because of shifts in global trade supply and demand and confirmed that some bids have topped $1 million, while declining to comment on the $4 million transaction or the ship that paid it. Its longstanding position is that auction results reflect what customers bid, not what the canal charges.

The scale of the move is easier to see against where prices sat before the fighting started. Auction slots went for roughly $135,000 to $140,000 before the war, then climbed to about $385,000 in March and April. A standard crossing runs somewhere between $300,000 and $400,000 depending on the vessel, and the extra paid for an earlier slot, once $250,000 to $300,000, has averaged around $425,000 during the surge. A $4 million Neopanamax slot had not been seen since the drought of November 2023.

As of Tuesday, the Seaspan Benefactor was sitting on the Pacific side of the canal, apparently waiting to transit northbound.

The fix, such as it is, is already underway and slow. The canal authority says it has increased transit capacity by about 15 percent and credits wetter weather for faster velocities. The lock maintenance is scheduled to finish in September, which should return capacity that the industry badly needs. Beyond that, shippers are doing what shippers do in a squeeze: booking reservations further out, splitting cargoes across more sailings, and pricing the delay into freight rates rather than gambling on the auction.

Whoever ends up buying that cargo pays for it. A $4 million line jump does not stay on one balance sheet — it moves into freight rates, then into the delivered cost of fuel, fertilizer and chemicals, and eventually into the price of things made from them. The number is remarkable because it is public. The pattern it belongs to is not.

JBizNews Desk | New York

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Prince Street Pizza has built a cult following that includes some of Hollywood’s biggest names, but the company says the key to taking its famous New York slices nationwide is staying true to the original.

The New York City-born brand has expanded from its original SoHo shop to roughly 20 locations across the U.S. and Canada, with parent company Best Buddy Hospitality CEO Lawrence Longo pointing to strong demand and a relentless focus on product quality as drivers of that growth.

“I think it’s important to stay close to the principles that made it special in the first place,” Longo told FOX Business. “And that comes down to the quality of the product.”

That commitment extends to the dough. Longo said Prince Street uses a New York WaterMaker system to replicate the characteristics of New York City water at its locations outside the Big Apple.

“Every time we sign a new lease, we get the water from that city, and we send it to the lab, and they create a filtration system that turns our water into New York City water,” he said.

The goal is to make the pizza feel as close as possible to the original Prince Street shop, according to Longo.

“The idea is that when you walk into a Prince Street Pizza, you should feel like you walked into a pizzeria in New York City,” Longo said.

Known for its Sicilian-style square pies and pepperoni-loaded slices, Prince Street sees room for further expansion.

“Sicilian-style pizza hasn’t been really done right at scale across America,” he said.

The brand has also attracted a long list of celebrity fans, including Adam Sandler, who Longo said has visited locations in New York, Malibu and West Hollywood.

Still, Longo said that famous customers do not receive special treatment.

“Whether you’re a celebrity or just a regular customer, we love everybody,” he said.

Prince Street is now focused on building a larger national footprint. Longo said he is “handpicking some of the best operators around America” with the goal of becoming the country’s leading Sicilian pizza brand.

The company is also expanding beyond restaurants.

Longo created “Delivering Happiness,” a video series starring actor Nick Turturro as a pizza delivery driver visiting guests including Dana White, Alex Rodriguez, Bert Kreischer and Ice-T. The project has since expanded through TikTok Radio and iHeartMedia, he said.

“We’re becoming a media company in a way,” Longo said.

Prince Street has also leaned into entertainment partnerships, including a Disney collaboration that recreated Little Nero’s Pizza from “Home Alone” at select locations. The campaign earned a Clio Award.

Despite those new ventures, Longo said Prince Street’s growth strategy comes back to staying “true” to what made the original SoHo shop successful.

“How do you scale a cult brand?” he said. “You really stay true to what made it successful in the first place.”

New York City officials are exploring a first-of-its-kind project that would cool sweltering subway platforms while recycling excess underground heat to warm nearby buildings during the winter, with one of Manhattan’s hottest stations selected as the potential testing site.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Gov. Kathy Hochul, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced Monday that they are partnering on a feasibility study for a thermal energy network designed to lower temperatures on subway platforms while capturing and repurposing the heat generated underground.

If approved, the pilot project would be installed at the Brooklyn Bridge–City Hall 4/5/6 station and the adjacent Chambers Street J/Z station. Officials said it would be the first transit-based thermal energy network of its kind anywhere in the United States.

The study is being launched as the MTA prepares a major renovation of the aging Chambers Street station. Officials said the planned reconstruction presents an opportunity to evaluate innovative ways of addressing the increasingly severe heat that riders experience throughout the subway system.

According to MTA data, the Brooklyn Bridge–City Hall station was among the hottest in the network during the summer of 2025, with average temperatures reaching 96 degrees.

“There are few feelings worse than escaping the extreme summer heat only to find yourself on a subway platform that is even hotter,” Mayor Mamdani said. “We can make our subway platforms cooler and more comfortable while putting wasted heat to work during the winter.”

Under the proposal, heat generated within the subway system would be collected, stored beneath the ground, and then redirected to nearby municipal buildings for heating during colder months. Officials believe the technology could both improve passenger comfort and reduce energy costs.

“For years, New Yorkers have suffered through sweltering summer heat on subway platforms,” Hochul said. “Working with Mayor Mamdani and the MTA, we are harnessing cutting-edge climate technology for a truly cool purpose: making our subway stations tolerable during the summer and heating critical city buildings during the winter.”

Officials said the feasibility study will cost approximately $800,000, while the larger renovation of the Chambers Street station will be financed through congestion pricing revenue.

MTA Chairman and CEO Janno Lieber said the agency is evaluating solutions that have never before been implemented in a U.S. transit system.

“Bringing down the temperature is a real challenge in a century-old system with open entrances and vents everywhere,” Lieber said. “We’re exploring solutions … to make stations more comfortable while helping to reduce energy costs. Everybody wins.”

Officials described the proposal as part of a broader effort by both the city and the MTA to modernize transit infrastructure and better prepare it for rising temperatures linked to climate change.

The announcement also included details of a comprehensive renovation of the Chambers Street J/Z station, which first opened in 1913. Planned improvements include new station structures, replacement of aging tilework, upgraded stairways, and a full restoration of the historic facility.

“Anyone who has stood on a subway platform in August knows that our stations do not just get hot, they turn into underground saunas,” Mamdani said. “And if you, like me, do not know what a summer suit is, and choose instead to commute in a wool one, let me tell you, it’s far from a therapeutic experience.”

The MTA expects to award a contract for the project this fall. If the location is ultimately deemed suitable, design work on the thermal energy system could begin in early 2027.

NASHVILLE (VINnews)— Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro on Tuesday sharply criticized a recent podcast interview between Tucker Carlson and Hunter Biden, describing the pair as privileged elites posing as outsiders while advancing conspiracy theories involving Israel and praising controversial figures.

In a post on X accompanied by a segment from “The Ben Shapiro Show,” Shapiro wrote: “Hey, look, two silver spoon rich kids sitting in a prop cabin in Maine to talk about how the elite class is victimizing you…and also, why the Joos did Hunter Biden’s laptop and ackshually Candace Owens is just the best. Viva la revolucion!”

The remarks targeted an August 10 appearance by Hunter Biden, son of former President Joe Biden, on Carlson’s podcast. The interview was filmed at Carlson’s property in Maine and covered a range of topics including Biden’s recovery from addiction, artificial intelligence, insider trading in Washington, and the long-running controversy surrounding Biden’s laptop.

During the conversation, Carlson claimed that allegations of child sexual abuse material on the laptop originated with Israeli sources. He said a man connected to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had relayed the information to a producer on his former Fox News program, and that intelligence officials later wrongly attributed the claims to Russia.

Hunter Biden, for his part, called Netanyahu “evil incarnate” and rejected suggestions that such criticism constituted antisemitism. “If it’s antisemitic to point out that Bibi Netanyahu is evil incarnate, then I don’t know what to say to people anymore,” Biden said. He also expressed admiration for Candace Owens, a view Carlson shared.

Shapiro’s monologue framed the exchange as hypocritical, arguing that two individuals from wealthy backgrounds were lecturing audiences about elite victimization while promoting narratives that blamed Jews or Israel for the laptop story that damaged the Biden family politically in 2020.

The interview has drawn mixed reactions across the political spectrum. Some on the left welcomed Biden’s willingness to speak critically of Israel and defend Carlson against antisemitism accusations. Critics on the right, including Shapiro, viewed the discussion as an unseemly alliance that recycled fringe theories and downplayed documented evidence related to the laptop.

Neither Carlson nor Biden immediately responded publicly to Shapiro’s comments. The segment aired as part of Shapiro’s regular show for The Daily Wire.

Israel and Venezuela announced Tuesday that they are renewing consular relations, establishing an official channel of coordination between Jerusalem and Caracas after diplomatic relations between the two countries were severed in 2009.

The agreement follows talks held in recent weeks and days between Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and Venezuelan Foreign Minister Félix Plasencia.

As part of the understandings, the two countries agreed to establish a coordination mechanism that will allow consular services to be provided to citizens of both nations. While Israel and Venezuela are not restoring full diplomatic relations at this stage, the move creates an official channel of communication between the two governments.

Israel and Venezuela also agreed to continue cooperating on emergency response and reconstruction efforts following damage caused by earthquakes in Venezuela.

An Israeli aid delegation was dispatched to Venezuela following the earthquakes that struck the country on June 24. The mission, led by Israel’s Foreign Ministry and Home Front Command, provided professional assistance to the country’s emergency response and reconstruction efforts.

The joint statement issued by Israel and Venezuela also emphasized the importance of the relationship between the State of Israel and Venezuela’s Jewish community.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Private equity firms are sitting on record amounts of capital, strategic buyers continue searching for acquisitions, and thousands of Baby Boomer-owned businesses are preparing to change hands. Yet an increasing number of deals are stalling before closing—not because buyers have disappeared, but because many otherwise profitable companies cannot survive modern due diligence.

The market for selling a business has quietly changed. During years of inexpensive financing, buyers often accepted operational imperfections in exchange for growth. Today’s environment is different. Higher borrowing costs, more selective investors and greater scrutiny of financial performance have shifted leverage toward buyers, making clean financial reporting and operational discipline as valuable as revenue growth itself.

Transaction advisers say more deals are being delayed, repriced or abandoned after buyers begin reviewing financial statements, customer contracts, inventory records and internal controls. Businesses that appear healthy on the surface are discovering that undocumented processes, inconsistent accounting, weak reporting systems or unreliable earnings can materially reduce valuation—or end negotiations altogether. (tax.thomsonreuters.com)

The timing reflects broader changes across the mergers-and-acquisitions market. Private equity firms continue managing enormous amounts of committed capital, but higher interest rates have increased financing costs while investors demand greater confidence in earnings quality. Buyers are still willing to pay premium valuations, but only for companies that can demonstrate those earnings are sustainable and well documented.

That shift is changing what creates value inside a business.

For years, owners focused primarily on growing sales, expanding customers and increasing profitability. Increasingly, buyers are assigning equal value to audited financial statements, recurring revenue visibility, documented internal controls, cybersecurity practices, tax compliance and organized corporate records. In many transactions, preparation has become a competitive advantage rather than an administrative exercise.

The implications extend beyond companies currently considering a sale.

Thousands of family-owned manufacturers, distributors, healthcare providers, transportation companies and professional service firms are expected to transition ownership over the coming decade as Baby Boomer entrepreneurs retire. Companies that begin preparing years before entering the market are more likely to preserve valuation than those waiting until a letter of intent has already been signed.

The opportunity is creating growing demand for accountants, CFOs, valuation specialists, cybersecurity consultants and transaction advisory firms that help businesses become “deal ready” long before negotiations begin. What was once viewed as back-office compliance is increasingly becoming part of enterprise value.

The larger business story is not that buyers have become scarce. Capital remains abundant. What has become scarce is confidence.

In today’s acquisition market, buyers are no longer paying simply for a successful business—they are paying for one that can prove its success. As ownership transitions accelerate across Corporate America, the companies commanding the highest valuations may not be those growing the fastest, but those able to demonstrate—with clear records, reliable controls and credible financial reporting—that their performance will withstand the most demanding scrutiny.

JBizNews Desk | New York

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

Iran has sharply improved the way it attacks American forces, combining drones and maneuvering missiles to overwhelm U.S. air-defense systems while the Pentagon burns through increasingly scarce interceptor stockpiles, a shift highlighted by the deadly Iranian strike that killed three U.S. soldiers in Jordan last month, The New York Times reports.

During five days of attacks on three U.S. bases in Jordan, Iran launched repeated waves of drones and missiles, including advanced weapons capable of changing course in flight. The attacks forced American forces to expend large numbers of Patriot interceptors in an effort to protect the bases. On the fifth day, one Iranian missile penetrated the defenses and struck prefabricated housing at a base on July 17, killing three U.S. soldiers and wounding more than 100 people. The Pentagon later acknowledged that scores of other troops were injured and several aircraft were damaged during attacks in Jordan that week.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio later acknowledged how close the defenses came to stopping the fatal strike. “We shot down almost all the missiles,” he said. “One leaked through.”

The attacks exposed a growing problem for the Pentagon: Iran has become more effective at finding ways around U.S. defenses at the same time American interceptor inventories are being rapidly depleted. The Pentagon has fired more than 1,500 Patriot interceptors during the war and has fewer than 1,700 remaining, according to people briefed on the sensitive stockpile levels. The United States produced only about 400 Patriot interceptors during all of 2025.

On one particularly intense day last month, U.S. forces across the Middle East fired roughly 50 Patriot interceptors, according to two American officials. Each interceptor costs approximately $6 million.

U.S. officials believe Iran has closely studied the war in Ukraine, where Russia has used combinations of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones to strain Ukrainian air defenses. Tehran has adopted similar tactics, mixing different types of threats and forcing American defensive systems to respond simultaneously.

The Jordan attack targeted Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Azraq, a Jordanian military installation increasingly used by the U.S. Air Force and serving as a major hub for dozens of aircraft and several thousand service members. Many American troops previously stationed in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have relocated to Jordan during the conflict because bases there are farther from Iran and had been considered less vulnerable to Iranian drone and ballistic-missile attacks.

Following the July 17 strike, U.S. commanders strengthened air defenses in Jordan and elsewhere in the region. American military specialists who have studied Russian drone and missile attacks in Ukraine have also been working with U.S. Central Command for months, sharing lessons from that conflict. Two of the three American soldiers killed in Jordan belonged to air-defense units based in Germany that had been deployed as part of that effort.

Iran’s ability to adapt was demonstrated earlier in the war as well. In April, Iran shot down an American F-15E fighter jet over southern Iran using a shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile. Both the pilot and weapons systems officer ejected. The pilot was rescued quickly, while the weapons systems officer remained missing for nearly two days, hiding from Iranian security forces before being recovered by U.S. Special Operations forces.

American officials later concluded that Iran had used a swarm of drones to help locate the F-15E and provide Iranian commanders with three critical pieces of targeting information: the aircraft’s GPS position, speed and direction. The fighter’s crew said its countermeasures provided only about half a second of warning before the roughly $60 million aircraft was struck.

The Pentagon had initially portrayed Iran’s missile capabilities as badly damaged. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on April 8 that Tehran’s missile program had been “functionally destroyed,” with launchers and missiles severely depleted. But many Iranian launchers were stored inside vast underground facilities. After U.S. and Israeli forces heavily bombed those sites during the first five weeks of fighting, Iran eventually dug out many of the launchers and resumed attacks.

That renewed capability has allowed Tehran to continue threatening American forces and has helped bring shipping through the Strait of Hormuz to a near standstill.

The dwindling supply of American interceptors has also become a factor in broader regional calculations. In late July, President Donald Trump asked Hegseth about diminishing U.S. weapons stockpiles. The Pentagon has publicly denied that it faces a shortage, saying claims of American munition shortages are false.

Two weeks ago, Trump canceled planned bombing raids against Iran after the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar urged him to pursue diplomacy instead. During a telephone conversation, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman warned Trump that major U.S. strikes could prompt Tehran to attack energy facilities and other critical infrastructure across Saudi Arabia and neighboring states.

With American interceptor supplies under pressure and Iran having demonstrated that it can penetrate even heavily defended facilities, a Saudi official said the possibility of serious damage could no longer be dismissed, prompting Mohammed bin Salman to push Trump toward de-escalation.

Iran has continued evolving its tactics even during pauses in the fighting. The entry of Yemen’s Houthi militia into the war last month was viewed by analysts as another effort to force the United States and its allies to defend against attacks coming from multiple directions simultaneously.

Meanwhile, Iran continues to protect some of its most valuable assets deep underground. International inspectors believe portions of its nuclear program are being stored inside a heavily fortified complex in central Iran that the United States refers to as Pickaxe Mountain, buried more than 300 feet beneath a mountain. Iranian troops and senior leaders have also dispersed to hideouts across the country, further complicating American targeting efforts.

The result is a war in which Iran has increasingly learned how to exploit the limitations of U.S. defenses while forcing Washington to expend expensive and difficult-to-replace interceptors at a pace American production has struggled to match.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

A recruiting campaign launched by the Federal Aviation Administration to attract video gamers into careers as air traffic controllers has produced record-breaking results, with more than 2,000 candidates entering the hiring pipeline after the agency revamped its recruiting strategy.

The initiative, unveiled by the FAA in April 2026, was designed to bring in the next generation of air traffic controllers by targeting individuals with skills commonly developed through gaming, including rapid decision-making, multitasking, and complex problem-solving.

According to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, the effort has exceeded expectations. In a social media post on Sunday, he announced that the campaign has set multiple FAA hiring records, including the largest number of candidates hired in a single year, surpassing 2,000.

“In April, we launched a NEW CAMPAIGN to recruit video gamers as air traffic controllers — and supercharged the entire hiring process to get the BEST & BRIGHTEST in faster. The results are HISTORIC,” Duffy said.

Duffy also said the initiative featured the agency’s fastest and most efficient hiring process to date, noting that more than 2,000 of the nation’s “best & brightest” applicants are now progressing through the employment pipeline.

Although recruiting gamers for one of the nation’s most demanding jobs may seem unconventional, the FAA said the concept was inspired by feedback from experienced air traffic controllers already working in the profession.

“With only about 25 percent of controllers holding a traditional college degree, this effort is focused on reaching talented young people pursuing alternative career paths, many of whom are active in gaming. Feedback from controller exit interviews reinforces this, with several controllers pointing to gaming as an influence on their ability to think quickly, stay focused, and manage complexity,” the FAA said.

When the hiring campaign first opened, applications were limited to 8,000 prospective candidates. As of Aug. 9, Duffy reported that the FAA had already achieved 94% of its hiring target.

{Matzav.com}

Up to $400 million in debts owed by Hamas could be covered as part of the 15-point agreement reached between the terror organization, the Board of Peace and the mediating countries, Kan News reported Tuesday evening.

The provision appears in Clause 5 of the agreement and is written broadly. Under the framework, funds would be directed to suppliers and contract holders. A Board of Peace official confirmed the arrangement, explaining that payments would go to public-sector employees “who were not paid, or to suppliers and contractors who provided services to the population and are still owed the money.”

The Board of Peace stressed that every claim for payment would be examined individually and that the commitment does not extend to covering “Hamas corruption, other financial mismanagement connected to its rule in Gaza, or anything related to the organization’s record of terrorism and repression.”

Separately, Kan News reported last week that the Board of Peace is developing a program under which people in Gaza who surrender their weapons and commit to abandoning terrorism would receive payments. The proposal, which is still being formulated, would offer a weapons “buyback” to those prepared to give up their arms, renounce violence and agree to future supervision.

Current estimates cited by Kan indicate that surrendering weapons could result in payments of thousands of dollars, along with inclusion in a rehabilitation program that is also being developed.

Both President Donald Trump’s 20-point framework and the 15-point document agreed with Hamas address the possession of weapons in accordance with Palestinian law. Under that law, all weapons, including handguns, must be licensed. The proposed collection effort is aimed primarily at Kalashnikov rifles.

The Board of Peace expects the weapons-collection initiative to receive international financial backing, particularly from Gulf states.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Israeli officials say that even though roughly three weeks have passed since the pilot program to disarm Hezbollah began, the Lebanese Army is “not doing enough” on the ground, according to two Israeli officials who spoke to The Jerusalem Post.

On July 20, 2026, Israel, the United States, and the Lebanese Army launched a security pilot program in southern Lebanon. As part of the initiative, the IDF began withdrawing from and transferring security responsibility and deployment to the Lebanese Army in three villages: Bir al-Sana, Sarifa, and Zawtar al-Gharbiyah.

One of the officials told the Post that the Lebanese Army has entered the area and even uncovered weapons and ammunition caches, but said that “it is still not enough.”

“The test will be whether the Lebanese Army enters Hezbollah infrastructure and actually confronts the terrorist organization,” the official said.

Another round of talks between the Israeli and Lebanese delegations is expected to take place in September. Israeli officials have made clear that the pilot program will not be expanded to additional areas unless the Lebanese Army fully demilitarizes the area.

Aoun claims talks with Israel have shown progress

Despite Israel’s claims and frustration, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said on Sunday that progress had been made in negotiations with Israel and that a diplomatic path was preferable to war.

“Since the framework agreement was signed, the scale of Israeli strikes has decreased, allowing Lebanese people to return and enjoy their country,” Aoun said.

Aoun stressed that Lebanon would not relinquish a single inch of its territory, but added that the slogan “what is taken by force can only be returned by force” had proven incorrect in practice.

He also said it was time for residents of southern Lebanon to live in peace and that his goal was to rebuild the country.

This post was originally published on here.

IDF forces are tightening pressure on dozens of Hezbollah terrorists believed to be trapped inside an underground complex in southern Lebanon’s strategic Ali Taher ridge, cutting water supplies and working to prevent equipment and supplies from reaching them, Ynet reports.

The terrorists remain barricaded inside the underground infrastructure and have not yet been defeated or forced to surrender. Lebanese reports say they have attempted to bring equipment and supplies into the complex using drones, prompting Israeli forces to isolate the area and block resupply efforts.

Israeli forces are maintaining surveillance and fire control over large portions of the area. In some sections, Israel is relying on observation and the ability to strike targets rather than keeping troops physically present, allowing the IDF to use airstrikes against parts of the complex while limiting the exposure of soldiers operating on the ground.

The Ali Taher ridge is a strategically significant area near Beaufort Castle in southern Lebanon, overlooking portions of the border region. Israeli forces have been operating there amid continued tensions with Hezbollah despite ceasefire arrangements intended to halt fighting between Israel and the terror group.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to the operation Sunday but provided few details, saying: “In recent days Israel has acted forcefully in Lebanon, eliminating terrorists, including on the Ali Taher ridge. Netanyahu said. “I can’t elaborate on it. We are in the midst of a very important operation. We are working with careful judgment and prudence.”

The operation follows an escalation in the area last month, when Hezbollah launched an explosive-laden first-person-view drone at an Israeli military engineering vehicle in southern Lebanon. The drone struck the vehicle during an Israeli patrol on the Ali Taher ridge, with no injuries reported.

Israel responded with a major operation against Hezbollah’s underground infrastructure near Beaufort Castle. The IDF said Israeli forces destroyed tunnels in the area using approximately 700 metric tons of explosives, producing a powerful blast that could be felt across the border in northern Israel. Residents in communities in the Galilee Panhandle were advised beforehand to leave their windows open over concerns that the force of the explosion could shatter glass.

The IDF has maintained only limited control over the surrounding area, with Israel’s military presence in Lebanon further complicating efforts to deal with the underground complex. Israeli officials have refrained from taking more extensive action at the site because of diplomatic sensitivities surrounding military operations in Lebanon.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Cuba has run short of the oil that powers its electric plants, and it is replacing that supply with Chinese solar panels — fast enough that China now sends the island roughly 40 times the volume of panels it sent three years ago.

Chinese exports of solar panels to Cuba ran about $3 million in 2023. That figure reached $117 million in 2025, according to the energy research group Ember. Cuba has built dozens of solar parks with Chinese investment, under an agreement to open 92 across the country by 2028. Imports of Chinese photovoltaic panels have risen more than 1,800% in five years.

The turn toward renewable energy has helped the island absorb increased pressure from the United States, though it has not stopped the grid from failing.

How the oil disappeared

The crisis stems from a U.S.-imposed oil blockade enacted after January 2026, when Washington ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Venezuela had long been Cuba’s primary oil supplier, and imports from Mexico were halted as well under U.S. pressure. Washington authorized a single Russian tanker carrying 100,000 tons of crude in March; those reserves are long exhausted. Domestic production covers a fraction of demand, and emergency diesel generators have become largely unusable for lack of fuel.

The grid was fragile before any of that. Cuba’s electricity system runs on fuel-oil, diesel and gas thermoelectric plants, and most of the seven main plants forming the backbone of the national grid have operated for more than 40 years. Peak-hour deficits routinely exceed 2,000 megawatts against demand near 3,100 megawatts.

The result has been repeated total failures. The island suffered its sixth nationwide blackout of the year on the night of August 2, the eleventh since late 2024. There were two islandwide collapses in March and three in July, along with several partial outages, and rolling blackouts now run more than 20 hours a day in places. The Cuban government attributes the crisis to the U.S. embargo and oil restrictions; independent analysts point to a lack of domestic investment and poor economic management as the main drivers, compounded by chronic maintenance shortfalls.

What solar can and cannot do

Solar accounts for only about 9% of Cuba’s electricity generation, because the aging grid cannot efficiently absorb new capacity and lacks battery storage. Panels without storage produce during daylight hours and nothing after sunset — which is precisely when household demand peaks.

That is the limit on the strategy, and it is a physical one. Cuba can keep installing capacity, but until it can store the output and stabilize the network that carries it, the panels reduce daytime fuel burn rather than end the blackouts.

China’s side of the trade

China controls close to 80% of the global solar supply chain and has positioned itself as Cuba’s leading renewable energy partner while working through its own industrial overcapacity. That last clause is the commercial logic. Chinese manufacturers built far more panel capacity than global demand absorbs, and placing that output — through financing, donations and state-backed projects — serves both an industrial and a diplomatic purpose.

Beijing has extended other support as well, including $80 million and 60,000 tons of rice approved by Xi Jinping.

A crack in the state’s grip

The most interesting development for business readers is what the fuel shortage has forced Havana to permit. The government recently authorized its first foreign-backed fuel import venture and allowed nearly 200 Cuban businesses to take part in wholesale fuel distribution — a cautious opening of an energy sector the state has controlled tightly for decades.

Scarcity did what ideology would not. A government that could supply fuel through state channels had no reason to license private distributors; one that cannot has every reason.

For American companies, direct opportunity remains foreclosed by sanctions. The relevant lesson runs the other way. An economy whose grid fails eleven times in twenty months is a live demonstration of what happens when generating capacity ages past its service life and no capital goes in behind it — a scenario that utilities in the United States are now arguing about in the context of data center demand. The difference is capital availability, not physics.

Cuba’s solar buildout is real, and it is among the fastest anywhere. It is also a country installing the future while the present keeps going dark.

JBizNews Desk | Havana

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

ATLANTA (VINnews) — An unauthorized Wi-Fi network that appeared to impersonate Delta Air Lines’ onboard service was detected Monday on a flight from Las Vegas to Atlanta, prompting the crew to temporarily disable the aircraft’s legitimate Wi-Fi, the airline said.

Delta Flight 591, a Boeing 757 carrying 199 passengers and six crew members, was en route from Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Aug. 10 when the rogue network was discovered. Cabin crew shut down the plane’s Wi-Fi for about 30 minutes as a precaution. No emergency was declared to air traffic control.

Delta said an initial review confirmed the network was not provided, operated or supplied by the airline. The company stressed that no Delta systems, including the in-flight Wi-Fi, were hacked and that flight safety and aircraft operating systems were never affected.

Messages attributed to the flight crew, which circulated among aviation trackers, reported concerns that a passenger had created a network named “Delta WiFi Fast” and may have been attempting to scam others. A follow-up message referenced a group of passengers who had attended a cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas and indicated the legitimate Wi-Fi had been jammed while the unauthorized signal was broadcast.

The flight departed shortly after the conclusion of DEF CON 34, one of the world’s largest cybersecurity and hacker conferences, which ran Aug. 6-9 in Las Vegas. Delta is investigating whether any conference attendees were involved.

“Safety of flight was never in question, and no aircraft operating systems were affected,” a Delta spokesperson said. “We are fully investigating to gather a complete set of facts, which will take time. We will partner with federal law enforcement and aviation regulators to ensure the incident is thoroughly investigated.”

The Federal Aviation Administration said it is aware of the report and is looking into it. The agency noted that any issue with onboard Wi-Fi would not affect an airplane’s flight-safety systems.

Federal authorities have previously warned about “evil twin” attacks, in which a fake network mimics a legitimate one to potentially capture user data. Whether malicious intent was involved in this case remains unclear, and Delta said it has not determined whether any passenger information was compromised.

The investigation is ongoing.

Megan Romer, co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), is facing widespread condemnation after saying in a recent interview that Hamas’ October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel was “largely inevitable” and indicating that she likely would have attended a pro-Hamas rally held the day after the attack.

During an interview with The New Yorker‘s David Remnick, Romer was asked about Democratic socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier, who took part in an anti-Israel, pro-Hamas demonstration in New York City on October 8, 2023. Remnick asked whether Romer would have attended the rally herself had she been in New York.

“You would have gone to that rally, had you been able?” Remnick asked.

“That’s a good question. I probably would have,” Romer replied. “Yeah, yeah. I don’t live in New York City, so I wouldn’t have —”

Remnick then questioned whether she was comfortable supporting such a demonstration immediately after Hamas’ attack on Israel.

“One day after the slaughter of 1,200 people and taking of over 200 hostages, you would have come and rallied behind Hamas?”

“I think that Oct. 7 was largely inevitable,” she replied. “If you put people in an open-air concentration camp and you deprive them of rights, of dignity, of food, of the ability to live in safety, you have to expect that they are going to not take that for that long. And that is not defending any harm of civilians or of non-combatants —”

When Remnick suggested that her comments amounted to support for the attack, Romer rejected that characterization.

“I’m saying that I think it was inevitable.”

Her remarks immediately drew condemnation from several pro-Israel organizations.

“I agree with DSA Co-chair Megan Romer that the October 7 attacks were in many ways inevitable — but not for the libelous reasons she cited,” Zionist Organization of America National President Morton A. Klein told Fox News Digital.

“When Gazans elected Hamas – a terror organization whose charter calls for murdering every Jew and destroying Israel, October 7 was the result,” he added. “When Qatar and Iran gave arms and hundreds of millions of dollars to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, gave sanctuary to Hamas leaders, and helped terror groups plan attacks on Israel, October 7 was the result.”

Klein continued by arguing that a number of additional factors contributed to the attack.

“When UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency) teaches children to hate and murder Jews, employs Hamas terrorists as teachers and principals, stores weapons for Hamas, and provides communications centers for Hamas, October 7 is the result. When Israel, under pressure from the Biden administration, issued thousands of work permits to enter Israel to Hamas terrorists and scouts, October 7 was the result,” he continued.

He warned that Israel must take steps to prevent a similar attack from happening again.

“And now, when Hamas is refusing to really disarm, and is vowing to commit more and more October 7ths, we must enable Israel to ensure its safety by retaining a buffer zone in Gaza and insisting on Hamas’ disarmament prior to any other peace plan steps,” he said. “Or else another October 7 will be the result. Regarding Romer’s lies, the parties ‘imprisoning’ Gaza are Hamas, PIJ and other terror groups. By contrast, Israel facilitated tons of food, water, medical and other supplies into Gaza — while Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad launched 30,000 rockets at Israeli civilians.”

The Anti-Defamation League also criticized Romer’s comments, directing Fox News Digital to a series of posts it published on X condemning the interview.

“What she said and doubled down on in this interview should concern every American. Because this kind of hateful and demonizing rhetoric against the only Jewish state in the world goes well beyond criticism of a government or its policies, and it puts every Jewish American at risk,” the ADL tweeted on its official account.

The organization specifically objected to Romer’s remarks about the rally and the October 7 massacre.

“Romer shamelessly said she ‘probably would have’ attended the pro-Hamas rally held in NYC on 10/8/23, just one day after Hamas murdered more than 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages, including babies, children, young women, mothers, and elderly people. She also called the Hamas-led October 7 massacre a mere ‘revolt’ and ‘largely inevitable.’ There is no justification for rape, kidnapping, torture, and slaughter.”

The ADL concluded its statement by linking to an entry in its database about the Democratic Socialists of America, arguing that the organization’s growing influence extends well beyond the political fringe.

“DSA now has over 120,000 members and 250+ elected officials across 40 states in the U.S. Radical groups like DSA are no longer on the fringes of society, they have infiltrated mainstream politics and have the ability to impact laws and policies affecting everyone.”

Rabbi Yaakov Menken, executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values, also sharply criticized Romer’s comments, calling the DSA “objectively antisemitic.”

“She used a mythological inversion of reality to justify both a murderous pogrom and an ongoing plan of starvation, torture, rape, and murder,” Menken said.

{Matzav.com}

(AP) – Pushing through dense, shoulder-high brush near a river in west Michigan, a trooper yells out: “Make some noise!”

A boy’s scream can be heard in the distance on body camera footage released by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources showing how rescue teams last week found two women and a 9-year-old boy who had been stranded for three days when their river tubing trip went wrong.

This is the unedited version of the video. pic.twitter.com/FQozKfSPsH

— MSP Sixth District (@mspwestmi) August 11, 2026

“We’re coming, guys,” says Cameron Wright, a conservation officer from Newaygo County, his breath heard in ragged gasps.

The team picks up their pace, pushing through sharp switchgrass and stinging nettle. A few moments later, they find Sarah Vida, 28, and her son Kayden Kovalcik, 9, along with Jazmin Hock, 28; wearing just their swimming suits.

Hock’s legs are almost entirely covered in deep, red cuts from scrapes after walking for days through the brush. They have a broken phone and a single water bottle with only a few sips left.

“You’re talking about vegetation that’s higher than your eyes and switchgrass that cuts you when you touch it and stinging nettles that makes your skin set on fire,” Anna Cullen, a conservation officer from Muskegon County who helped with the rescue, said Tuesday.

The trio had been on a tubing trip on the Muskegon River in the small community of Twin Lake on Tuesday when they’d hit logs and their tubes popped, according to officials. They were reported missing after one of the women didn’t show up to her dentist appointment.

“I was just in disbelief at finding them because we were just running out of ideas and places to search and it was nothing short of a miracle that we ended up finding them the way we did,” Wright said.

For days, teams had scoured the river and rugged terrain.

The group was found Friday about 7 miles (11.27 kilometers) from where they entered the river, according to Wright. The rescuers had tracked them from a tube next to the river, following footprints, broken twigs and knocked over grass.

In the video, Kayden explains that they’ve been eating bark and flowers, while Hock says they had to drink river water.

Hock explains that they’d been tubing down the river and kept hitting log jams.

“The last one that we ran into just popped everything,” she said.

They started walking and soon realized they were going in circles, she said.

Members of the rescue crew handed over their own shirts to protect them from the bugs swarming their cuts and put medical gloves on some of their hands and feet. Wright inflated his life vest for Hock to sit on. As she answered the rescue team’s questions, her legs, lined with scratches, shook.

“There was not even an inch of their exposed skin that was not just covered in cuts and bug bites and mud and scrapes where they were just physically not able to go any further,” Wright said, explaining that he still had cuts on his arms.

Cullen said the women later explained that when they saw the rescuers, they thought they were hallucinating.

The two women couldn’t walk, so they put them in Stokes baskets, a type of stretcher, to get them out of the brush, while Wright carried the boy on his back. Along with their scrapes and cuts, they were also dealing with dehydration and exhaustion, and were taken to the hospital, according to Lt. Pat Agema, a spokesperson for the Michigan State Police.

“The entire hike out, he’s just telling me about all of the root beer he’s going to drink and the slushies and the pizza and doughnuts he’s going to eat,” said Wright.

He adds: “You would have no idea that he had just spent 72 hours in the woods from how happy he was.”

Jamie Dimon has put a condition on something most Americans treat as permanent: the dollar sits at the center of the global financial system because the United States has the strongest economy and the strongest military, and it stays there only as long as both remain true.

“If we’re not the strongest military in 25 years and the strongest economy, we won’t be the reserve currency either,” the JPMorgan Chase chief executive said on PBS’ “Firing Line with Margaret Hoover,” which aired over the weekend. “The world will be fragmented, and it’ll be very dangerous for us.”

Dimon framed the two as inseparable: to be safe, have the best military in the world, and to have the best military, have the best economy. He noted that reserve-currency status has historically followed the leading power that upholds rule of law and open capital flows, and said that if the U.S. loses its lead through debt, deficits or mismanagement, the status follows.

The trend line is already moving. The dollar accounts for about 57% of global foreign-exchange reserves, down from roughly 70% at the turn of the century. IMF data puts the decline at 72% in 2001 to 57% today.

That is erosion, not collapse, and the distinction matters for anyone doing business in dollars. Reserve-currency transitions run slowly — the British pound’s decline from dominance unfolded across roughly four decades, from the end of World War I to the post-Bretton Woods era, even though American economic supremacy was evident well before any formal shift.

Economists put less weight on the military piece than Dimon does. Eswar Prasad of the Brookings Institution told Fortune that institutions and economic dynamism — how quickly an economy innovates and reallocates resources — are far more important to reserve-currency status than an economy’s size or military power. He added that weakening U.S. economic and military strength, along with erosion of domestic institutions and geopolitical influence, will hurt dollar dominance, but the absence of any serious rival will prevent the dollar from being displaced as the dominant payment and reserve currency.

Dimon is not making the argument abstractly. His comments come alongside JPMorgan’s $1.5 trillion Security and Resiliency Initiative, aimed at strengthening U.S. domestic manufacturing, energy and defense capacity. He argued corporate America must partner with government on strategic vulnerabilities now, pointing to American reliance on potential adversaries for missile components and rare earths, and said the national interest matters more than his own bank — because if the country does poorly, JPMorgan suffers. He closed with the line that fighting a war is very expensive, and losing one is the most expensive.

For companies and consumers, reserve status is not a matter of prestige. It is why the U.S. can borrow at scale in its own currency, why oil and most commodity contracts settle in dollars, and why American importers face no exchange-rate friction on the majority of world trade. Losing that position would strip Washington of significant geopolitical leverage and push domestic borrowing costs higher, which reaches ordinary borrowers through mortgages and consumer credit.

Some think Dimon’s timeline is generous. Analyst Philip Pilkington argued that fallout from the Iran war could halve it, accelerating a shift toward a multi-polar monetary order within a decade, with energy shocks doing more lasting damage to the postwar financial architecture than the military strikes themselves.

The Federal Reserve continues to affirm the dollar’s strong international standing, and the Atlantic Council puts its share of global reserves near 58%. The U.S. Dollar Index is up 1.42% year to date, down 1.28% over the past month and roughly flat over the year. Market positioning shows continued appetite for gold as a hedge against long-run currency risk.

The debt arithmetic gives Dimon’s warning its edge. Reserve status is what makes large deficits financeable at low cost; large deficits are among the things that could erode reserve status. That circularity is the substance beneath the soundbite, and it is why the CBO’s revised $2.1 trillion deficit and Dimon’s 25-year warning are the same story told at different speeds.

JBizNews Desk | New York

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

(AP) – Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers may soon be outfitted with gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks intended to gain compliance from combative individuals.

ICE plans to spend up to $20 million to purchase thousands of “conductive distraction and de-escalation devices” for officers and agents by March, according to a notice published Monday by the Department of Homeland Security.

The devices are known as the G.L.O.V.E., which stands for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, and are manufactured by Compliant Technologies LLC of Lexington, Kentucky. They have been used in recent years by some jails and police departments.

DHS said Tuesday that it was working on a response to an Associated Press inquiry and offered no immediate comment. Jeff Niklaus, the founder and CEO of Compliant Technologies, wrote in an email, “Unfortunately, we are unable to speak on this subject.”

The notice said the solicitation for a no-bid contract could be published as early as Friday.

Civil rights advocates expressed alarm at the plan, saying ICE officers already face criticism for their use of force with little oversight or accountability while enforcing President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Compliant Technologies says the devices function as a normal pair of patrol gloves until officers press a switch to activate their electrical mode. The gloves must be applied directly to someone’s skin to deliver a pain stimulus that typically helps an officer gain compliance within seconds, according to the company.

“It’s immediate and sharp, and it will distract you. I call it like a bee sting,” said John Peters, president of the Institute for the Prevention of In-Custody Deaths, who is studying how the device has been used. “If the officer is getting any type of resistance from the person, this is certainly an effective tool.”

Peters said he believed ICE’s planned purchase would likely be the largest from the company to date. He said he could envision ICE officers using the gloves to help remove uncooperative subjects from cars and houses and in and out of detention facilities.

“For smaller officers or weaker officers or older officers, I think it has a great advantage” because it can produce faster takedowns and shorten confrontations, he said.

The manufacturer warns the device should not be used as punishment, against people merely exhibiting “verbal defiance or belligerence” or on high-risk populations such as children, pregnant women or elderly or disabled people.

Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, deputy project director on policing at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the public should have no confidence that ICE officers will use the devices appropriately. She questioned why the devices would be necessary for civil immigration enforcement and noted those getting shocked might have no advance warning.

“ICE spent the last year showing this country they are too quick to use force. Now they will be able to deploy electric shocks with the slight push of a button that maybe nobody else can see them do,” she said. “Introducing gloves that can so easily be used to deliver terrible pain in encounters is a recipe for harm to the public.”

Supporters say the devices are generally used in specific jail and transport situations, rather than broadly to patrol on the streets. They have been used to subdue violent suspects who are refusing to get into squad cars and inmates who are harming themselves and threatening officers, according to Compliant Technologies.

Peters said he expected the devices to be misused by a small number of employees, as with other policing technologies, but he said they are unlikely to cause injuries. He said it would be important for ICE to have robust policies and training in place.

To use the device, officers must complete a course and be recertified every two years, the manufacturer says.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea launched a ballistic missile toward the sea on Wednesday, its neighbors said, the second such weapons testing activity in less than a week.

The series of launch events were likely a protest of the upcoming Korea-U.S. military drills that North Korea views as an invasion rehearsal.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said it detected the launch from North Korea’s eastern coastal Wonsan area in a direction of the North’s eastern waters around 6 a.m.

South Korea’s military said it boosted its surveillance posture and that Seoul was closely exchanging information on the launch with Washington and Tokyo.

Japan’s Defense Ministry said it also spotted a suspected ballistic missile launch from North Korea. It said it didn’t detect the weapon reaching Japan’s exclusive economic zone, suggesting it was believed to have fallen further away from the Japanese coast.

The latest launch came two days after South Korea and the United States announced they will kick off their annual large-scale military drills next week to beef up readiness against North Korean threats.

The Ulchi Freedom Shield training is to start on Monday, Aug. 17, for an 11-day run. Its scale will be similar to previous years with 18,000 South Korean soldiers taking part, according to South Korea’s military.

North Korea has previously responded to the training and other major South Korea-U.S. military exercises with provocative weapons tests and harsh rhetoric. North Korea calls such drills a practice to attack the country and forces it to bolster its nuclear arsenal, though the U.S. and South Korea have repeatedly said their training is defensive in nature.

On Aug. 6, South Korea, the U.S. and Japan detected the launch of a short-range ballistic missile from North Korea in what was the North’s first ballistic weapons testing activity since late June. North Korea didn’t confirm the reported launch, though it usually releases details of weapons tests a day later.

North Korea has been engaging in a run of weapons tests since its leader Kim Jong Un’s high-stakes diplomacy with U.S. President Donald Trump fell apart in 2019 due to disputes over international economic sanctions on North Korea.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is moving to reshape the Likud slate ahead of the primaries, with people close to him saying his latest moves are partly aimed at settling scores over an alleged attempt by senior Likud figures to remove him from power in the aftermath of October 7, Channel 12 reported Tuesday.

The story centers on Economy Minister Nir Barkat and former senior Likud figure Yuli Edelstein, who Netanyahu’s circle suspects separately spearheaded efforts to replace him as the party was plunging in the polls following October 7. The plan was extraordinary: rather than force new elections, Likud lawmakers would use a constructive no-confidence vote in the Knesset to replace Netanyahu while keeping the government in Likud hands.

Edelstein reportedly concluded that uniting lawmakers behind a single replacement would be difficult and proposed heading a unity government for a limited period, followed by Likud primaries in which he himself would not be permitted to run. Channel 12 said numerous Likud MKs were aware of the discussions, with some aligned with Barkat, others with Edelstein, and still others willing to consider joining only if they themselves led the effort.

But the attempted revolt never got off the ground. Without relying on Arab MKs, the organizers needed 13 Likud lawmakers. Edelstein met at the time with Minister Chaim Katz, who strongly opposed the initiative and became one of the figures instrumental in stopping it. Once Netanyahu learned of the effort, he summoned a series of ministers and MKs and succeeded in blocking it, while the subsequent expansion of the coalition further ended the initiative.

Nearly three years later, Netanyahu’s circle believes it is time to settle the account.

Netanyahu announced Monday that successful high-tech entrepreneur Oren Dobronsky would receive a reserved spot on the Likud slate and pledged that he would serve as a minister — placing him squarely in the type of economic role associated with Barkat. “Those around Netanyahu are convinced that Barkat acted at the time to bring Netanyahu down — and now is the time to settle the score,” a source close to Netanyahu told Channel 12.

Hours later, Likud announced that its secretariat would be asked to approve reserved positions for Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, Defense Minister Israel Katz and Chaim Katz. According to a source close to Netanyahu, Chaim Katz is being rewarded both for helping Netanyahu secure the reserved slots in his capacity as chairman of the Likud Central Committee and for his central role in preventing the alleged post-October 7 revolt.

Channel 12 reported that Dobronsky’s placement may be only the beginning. Netanyahu is expected to strengthen additional candidates who could push Barkat further down the Likud primary list, including Eli Cohen, Ofir Katz and Amichai Chikli.

“The Netanyahus know everything,” a Netanyahu associate told Channel 12. “As far as they are concerned, Nir Barkat was the one who led it — and worse, it almost succeeded.”

Likud officially denied that Dobronsky’s placement was connected to political revenge, saying Netanyahu chose him because he is a successful high-tech entrepreneur whose experience can help lead Israel’s economy. Barkat’s office also welcomed the move, calling Dobronsky’s addition an “excellent decision” that strengthens Likud and the entrepreneurial forces within the party.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

New York City prosecutors are urging the court to impose strict controls during the upcoming murder trial of Luigi Mangione, warning that his supporters could attempt to intimidate witnesses and influence jurors in the closely watched case involving the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

In a letter submitted Monday evening to Judge Gregory Carro, Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann argued that the extraordinary public attention surrounding the case has created unusual risks for the judicial process.

“The media attention surrounding this case — and the efforts of some of defendant’s supporters both to intimidate witnesses and to interfere with the functioning of the jury — will place extraordinary pressure on witnesses and potential jurors alike,” Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann wrote in a letter to Judge Gregory Carro Monday evening.

Prosecutors are asking the court to tightly regulate access to the courtroom and ensure that all courtroom rules are rigorously enforced when the trial begins next month.

They also cautioned against creating an overflow room for additional members of the media, arguing that courthouse personnel could have difficulty policing such a space if it is opened to accommodate reporters who cannot fit inside the main courtroom.

“We are particularly concerned about the possibility that a spectator in an overflow courtroom will clandestinely record the proceedings and share any such recordings with others,” prosecutors wrote. “That concern will only be heightened if the overflow room includes a video feed as well as an audio feed.”

Seidemann recommended that, if an overflow room is ultimately approved, it should carry only live audio rather than video in order to reduce the risk of witnesses being identified or harassed.

“it include only an audio feed so as to minimize the potential for witness intimidation and harassment.”

Legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani said the defense appears to be pursuing a strategy that differs from what is typically seen in high-profile criminal cases.

“The conventional wisdom is that the defense usually doesn’t want high-profile cases broadcast. It can put implicit pressure on jurors to return a guilty verdict,” Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor, told Fox News Digital last week.

Rahmani suggested Mangione’s attorneys may believe the widespread publicity could actually work in their client’s favor because of the public support he has attracted.

“There’s upwards of 10 to 20 percent of the people who have been surveyed who believe that even if he did it, it was justified,” Rahmani said. “And I think the defense knows this, and they know that more attention creates the possibility of jury nullification, or maybe even an acquittal.”

Thompson, a 50-year-old Minnesota father of two, was shot from behind while walking to a business conference outside a Manhattan hotel on Dec. 4, 2024. Surveillance footage captured a gunman firing multiple shots before fleeing the scene. Mangione was arrested several days later at a McDonald’s restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

Mangione briefly appeared in court Tuesday for a pretrial conference ahead of next month’s proceedings before Judge Carro.

During the hearing, the issue of cameras in the courtroom was not addressed. Judge Carro did, however, warn that anyone using a cellphone inside either the courtroom or any overflow room would be immediately removed.

“There has never been a decision by this court to exclude or limit,” he said. “There have been discussions on expanding.”

Mangione’s attorneys have asked the court to allow the trial to be televised, even though New York law generally prohibits broadcasting criminal trials.

Earlier this year, the defense announced plans to pursue a psychiatric defense in the state prosecution but withdrew that strategy just one day later.

Mangione has pleaded not guilty to all eight state charges against him, including second-degree murder, a charge that carries a potential sentence of 25 years to life in prison if he is convicted under New York law.

In addition to the state prosecution, Mangione also faces federal charges stemming from the killing. That separate federal trial is expected to begin early next year.

{Matzav.com}

The United Arab Emirates is embarking on a massive expansion of its natural gas infrastructure, investing billions of dollars to increase production and develop alternative export routes as instability threatens some of the Persian Gulf’s most important shipping lanes.

ADNOC Gas, the Abu Dhabi government-owned energy company, has announced a development plan worth more than $8 billion as the UAE seeks to dramatically expand its role in global energy markets.

The move comes following the UAE’s decision to withdraw from OPEC, freeing the country from the production quotas imposed by the oil-producing alliance and giving Abu Dhabi greater flexibility to increase its energy output.

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, the UAE is now moving aggressively to capitalize on that independence by expanding both oil and natural gas production.

Oil and natural gas production are closely linked because significant quantities of gas can be produced alongside crude oil. Under OPEC production restrictions, limits on the UAE’s oil output also effectively restricted the amount of associated natural gas available for processing and sale.

With those restrictions removed, Abu Dhabi expects substantially larger quantities of gas to become available.

Under the expansion plan, ADNOC Gas intends to construct a major new natural gas processing facility in Habshan, home to the country’s largest gas complex, while also developing an advanced export terminal in Ruwais.

The facilities will process raw natural gas into higher-value products for sale in both domestic and international markets.

The latest investment brings the total amount committed to the broader development program to approximately $13.2 billion.

ADNOC Gas is also positioning itself to capitalize on rapidly increasing global electricity demand, particularly as artificial intelligence data centers, cloud computing infrastructure and other energy-intensive technologies consume growing amounts of power.

The company has raised its earnings forecast for 2030 to more than $12 billion, with CEO Fatima Al Nuaimi saying the company aims to increase profits by approximately 60%.

However, company officials acknowledged that reaching those targets will depend heavily on improved security and stability in the Persian Gulf.

Regional fighting has already taken a significant financial toll.

ADNOC Gas reported second-quarter net profit of $665 million, down sharply from $1.39 billion during the same period last year.

The company attributed much of the disruption to conditions surrounding the Strait of Hormuz, the strategically vital waterway through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas supplies normally pass.

Shipping through the strait has reportedly been severely disrupted since the outbreak of the war with Iran, complicating energy exports and underscoring the UAE’s vulnerability to maritime chokepoints.

As a result, Abu Dhabi is investing billions of dollars not only in production capacity but also in pipelines and alternative export infrastructure designed to bypass potentially dangerous shipping routes.

For decades, OPEC production quotas played a major role in determining how much crude member countries could bring to market, helping the organization influence global oil prices.

The UAE increasingly viewed those restrictions as an obstacle to expanding production and maximizing its enormous energy reserves.

Its departure from OPEC represented a significant economic and geopolitical shift, allowing Abu Dhabi to pursue its own production strategy without being constrained by quotas negotiated with other oil-producing nations.

The latest investments demonstrate how the UAE intends to use that flexibility — expanding oil and gas production, building alternative export routes and positioning itself as an increasingly independent global energy powerhouse.

With demand for electricity soaring and geopolitical risks threatening traditional shipping corridors, Abu Dhabi is betting that massive new infrastructure investments can simultaneously increase its energy exports and reduce its exposure to future disruptions in the Persian Gulf.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

David Ellison has given California’s attorney general a deadline: agree to settlement talks over the Warner Bros. Discovery merger, or Paramount starts leaving the state.

Ellison told Paramount’s senior executives last week he is prepared to relocate the company — and Warner Bros. too, if the merger closes — unless Attorney General Rob Bonta agrees to negotiate a settlement in the antitrust case brought by 12 states. He said the exit process would begin Oct. 1 if talks have not started, and that the Paramount Skydance board has approved the move. Paramount declined to comment.

Leaving California could save Paramount Skydance roughly $500 million a year in taxes and potentially raise another $4 billion from selling its studio lots. That is the leverage, and it is aimed at a state that counts film production among its signature industries.

The date is not arbitrary. Oct. 1 is when Paramount begins accruing a “ticking fee” payable to Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders of $7 million a day. With the antitrust trial scheduled to start March 2, 2027, Paramount would owe roughly $1.2 billion to WBD shareholders by the time that trial is expected to conclude. The fee was written into the deal as a $0.25 per share quarterly accrual beginning after Sept. 30, 2026, alongside a $7 billion regulatory termination fee if the transaction fails on regulatory grounds.

If the state attorneys general succeed in blocking the merger, Paramount pays that $7 billion. The March trial date was itself a blow — it means the case may not resolve until next summer or later, with the ticking fee running the whole time. Paramount had asked the judge to start trial Nov. 4, 2026; the states and the Writers Guild asked for April 5, 2027.

Bonta’s answer was blunt. He called the planned exit an attempt to blackmail the state into letting an illegal deal through, writing on X that Paramount has lost the plot as it keeps losing in court and that the tactic did not work on the eve of the July lawsuit and will not work now. Bonta has not said what concessions would take the suit off the table, but has said any remedy would have to be structural — divestitures — rather than behavioral commitments like production quotas.

The underlying complaint is about market structure. The 12-state coalition alleges a combined Paramount-Warner Bros. would unlawfully reduce competition in basic cable and theatrical distribution, while the Writers Guild’s separate suit argues it would harm the market for writers. Speculation that the states might drop the case if Paramount spun off CNN has been denied by Bonta.

Ellison has been countering the theatrical argument directly, securing backing from two of the largest theater chains to support his commitment to release 30 films a year under the combined company. He has also pointed to 90 series planned from Paramount’s television studios in 2026 and a $1.5 billion increase in content investment made before the deal was signed.

Ellison remains confident the $110 billion transaction will close. He had hoped to have completed the takeover by now and instead faces a legal fight that could push the closing into 2027 or unravel it.

For California, the threat lands on a film and television sector already losing production to Georgia, New Mexico and overseas. For shareholders on both sides, the calculation is narrower: every month of delay costs $210 million in ticking fees, and the alternative to closing is a $7 billion check. Moving the headquarters does not address the antitrust claim — it changes who bears the cost of the fight.

JBizNews Desk | Los Angeles

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

(AP) – The first night in a new place is always the same for Robinson Leoni: He takes longer to fall asleep, wakes up more often during the night and gets less sleep overall.

At home he averages seven hours. The first night away — with or without earplugs and regardless of the bed’s quality — his smartwatch tells him he gets about five.

“I feel normal, you know, no stress, nothing, but it’s just I notice I wake up continuously,” said Leoni, a sales director for a tech company who travels once or twice a month for work.

He is a victim of what sleep specialists call the first-night effect. The phenomenon has been confirmed by dozens of studies and is believed to have evolutionary roots, said Anna Wick, a senior sleep researcher at the University of Freiburg in Switzerland.

“It’s assumed to be an adaptation response that the sleeping brain remains vigilant in this unfamiliar environment,” Wick said.

You stay alert while sleeping
Ahmad Mayeli, a psychiatry professor and sleep researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, said most people experience it, and even those who may not notice it probably do on a small level. On average, people sleep about 20 to 30 minutes less in a new environment.

His research found that the frontal lobe, an area associated with the deepest stage of sleep, was more active, indicating a sense of alertness. In other words, not only do people sleep less, but also less deeply.

“They are saying that, like in dolphins, part of the brain is awake when you are sleeping,” Mayeli said. “It’s not exactly like dolphins, but still, studies show part of the brain is sleeping less.”

He noted that age makes a difference. The effect is more pronounced in children, adolescents and older adults, and it typically worsens with age. Those in their 20s are the least affected.

“Maybe it’s the sweet spot,” he said.

Anxiety can play a part
Mayeli suspects that the brain may be wired to be wary of new places because, historically, they were the most dangerous to rest.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a Marriott hotel or it’s the savannah,” he said. “Your brain hasn’t gotten the memo that this place is completely safe.”

Wick said evidence suggests the effect fades after the first night.

Lisa Strauss, a psychologist specializing in cognitive behavioral treatment of sleep disorders, said several factors can impact sleep in a new place beyond evolutionary vigilance.

Travel itself can have a negative effect, even within the same time zone. Environmental factors may get in the way, like a flashing smoke alarm light in a hotel room. Relational tension, perhaps while visiting family members you’re not close with, could also contribute.

Strauss noted that some people may sleep better the first night if they’re tired after a long day of travel or if the location provides a sense of disconnection from daily stressors. And people who have trouble sleeping at home might fare better because they don’t associate the new place with a history of difficulty sleeping.

While anyone can experience the first-night effect, Strauss said those who are more anxious at baseline are especially vulnerable. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy — the worry about whether they can sleep is what keeps them awake.

Leoni acknowledged there are times he goes into the first night thinking about how he’ll sleep.

“Sometimes the thoughts come automatically,” he said. “You talk with your colleague, and you say, ‘I’m going back to the room, but I’m not going to sleep anyway.’”

How to sleep better on the first night
Strauss recommends general sleep hygiene practices such as going to sleep in a cool, dark room at the same time every night, following a nighttime routine and turning off screens well before going to bed. Those are especially helpful if you start (or restart) doing them in the days or weeks before an important trip.

She suggested people try to make the environment their own by spending a little extra time in the new bed. They could read or do another peaceful, familiar activity to make the experience less novel. They could also bring familiar objects, like a favorite pillow or blanket.

For someone who is particularly anxious, Strauss recommended they visualize themselves in a safe, familiar environment out in nature, such as on a favorite hike or beach. They should notice the anxiety they’re feeling, then repeat positive phrases to help lower feelings of hypervigilance. Her suggestion: “May you know that you are safe. May you know that you are loved. May you be at peace.”

Mayeli said the first-night effect is not really anything to worry about, and people can easily make up for missing an hour or two of sleep for one night. But he recommends arriving a day early to acclimate if you have an important meeting or event.

“If tomorrow matters, get there a night early,” he said, “so you’ll sleep like yourself when it counts.”

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has launched an inquiry into The New York Times, demanding internal company records that he argues could reveal whether editorial decisions have created legal and financial risks for shareholders, including Florida’s public retirement system, which holds millions of dollars in the company’s stock.

In a 28-page letter sent Monday, the Republican attorney general requested documents detailing how the newspaper reviewed several controversial stories and what information the company’s board received regarding potential legal exposure and financial liability stemming from those publications.

According to Uthmeier, the probe is “grounded in concrete corporate risk, not generalized dissatisfaction with editorial judgment.”

To support his argument, Uthmeier cited Fox News’ nearly $800 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, saying it demonstrates how editorial choices can have enormous financial consequences for publicly traded media companies and their investors.

“Editorial malpractice does not always kill a media enterprise,” Uthmeier wrote. “But it always sends a bill.”

The New York Times strongly rejected the attorney general’s actions, accusing him of attempting to pressure the newspaper over its reporting.

“We are aware of the demand letter, which, while positioned as a request under corporate law, is a clear attempt to chill First Amendment-protected journalism,” Danielle Rhoades Ha, the Times’ senior vice president for communications, said in a statement obtained by Politico.

“We will respond more fully in due course.”

Uthmeier contends that the newspaper has experienced “publicly documented failures” to adhere to its own editorial guidelines. He also alleges that its opinion section has been used to “publish reported factual assertions outside the newsroom’s verification controls.”

Among the central issues in the investigation is a May opinion column by Nicholas Kristof titled “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians,” which alleged that Israeli authorities used dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners.

The column drew sharp condemnation from Israeli Prime Minister Binyomin Netanyahu, who threatened legal action and described it as “one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel.”

The Times defended the article and its reporting process, stating that Kristof’s work “underwent a rigorous vetting process by Opinion’s fact-checking department to ensure that every testimony and anecdote he personally reported was supported by independent sources, as is the case with all sensitive pieces.”

As part of the inquiry, Uthmeier is seeking records indicating whether The New York Times’ board of directors was informed about the controversy surrounding Kristof’s column and any resulting consequences. He is also requesting documents related to other reporting by the newspaper, including a June article involving former Democratic Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner.

“The Times tells investors that its brand and reputation are its most important assets, and that if people see its journalism as unreliable or biased, the company can be hurt,” Uthmeier said Monday.

“So, we want to exercise our rights under New York law to review the company’s internal board documents, meeting minutes, reports, and other materials, to see what the directors know.”

The attorney general has given the newspaper two weeks to produce the requested documents.

Florida’s retirement system has a financial stake in the outcome. According to a May filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Florida Retirement System owned 147,831 shares of The New York Times Company, valued at approximately $12.4 million. The pension fund provides benefits to more than 1.2 million current and former public employees and their beneficiaries.

{Matzav.com}

If you haven’t seen it already, please go into the New York Times archives — that’s right, I’m recommending the Times — for an article by Thomas Edsall entitled “A Working-Class Party Without Many Workers.” Mr. Edsall is a former Washington Post columnist. And he wrote a very important piece. In a nutshell, he uses polling data that non-college educated people do not agree with the Democratic Socialists of America on key issues such as open borders, defunding the police, abolishing ICE, and support for an array of transgender rights.

What’s more, using the DSA’s own surveys, they are 85 percent non-Hispanic whites. Only 9 percent are Hispanics, and only 5 percent are Asian Americans. And 4 percent are blacks. And only 4 percent of the members held blue-collar jobs.

So you have to ask yourself, while comrade Abdul El-Sayed, comrade Francesca Hong, comrade Zohran Mamdani, and comrade Hasan Piker may claim to speak for the working class, the reality is that they don’t speak for the working class. 

Let me say right here there is an important political leader who speaks for the working class and their values, his name is President Trump. If you find this ironic, since the DSA has Trump Derangement Syndrome to the tenth power or more, it’s nonetheless a political fact of life.

Now, Mr. Edsall notes that the Democratic Party writ large has positive views of socialism, and that helps explain why many of the leading Democrats welcome the comrade socialists into their big tent, with the exception of Secretary Hillary Clinton and Senators John Fetterman and Joe Manchin. Yet not many.

In the main, the Democratic party regulars are welcoming the socialists, and the socialists are going to be a big open target of Republicans in the coming midterm elections. At a minimum, the socialists are going to give the GOP the Senate. I can’t yet vouch for the House. Yet Michigan and Maine and perhaps some others are going to go Republican.

It would be great if the GOP had a tax-cutting message to help working folks going into these elections, because yelling at socialism and communism may not be enough, especially to carry the House. The key point, though, is that while the socialists say they speak for the working folks, they don’t really have many working folks behind them at all. And Mr. Trump’s free enterprise policies are doing very well, thank you very much.

A new U.S. military intelligence assessment has concluded that Iran’s strategic priority has shifted away from its nuclear program and toward the Strait of Hormuz, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the assessment, NBC News reports.

The assessment represents a significant change in how U.S. officials currently view Tehran’s priorities, placing the strategically vital waterway ahead of the nuclear program that has long dominated concerns surrounding Iran.

The shift comes as U.S. military officials have warned President Donald Trump about the enormous risks involved in attempting to take control of the Strait of Hormuz. Officials have told the president that such an operation would be lengthy, costly and deadly, with no guarantee that the United States would ultimately succeed.

The assessment underscores the growing importance of the Strait of Hormuz in the ongoing confrontation with Iran, as Washington weighs its options and military leaders caution about the potential consequences of trying to seize the critical waterway.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

NEW YORK (VINnews)— Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Rabbi Daniel Schonbuch issued a stark warning about the growing influence of the Democratic Socialists of America and radical Islamist movements during a wide-ranging discussion about New York politics, antisemitism, Israel and the future of the Democratic Party.

Appearing with Giuliani, Schonbuch argued that the political changes taking place in New York should be viewed as a warning to the rest of the country.

“America, not just New York City, is in existential danger right now,” Schonbuch said, pointing to the rise of Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other candidates associated with the socialist left. He described what he called a growing “Red-Green Alliance” between far-left political movements and Islamist activists.

Giuliani agreed that the threat extends far beyond ordinary partisan politics.

“We have no excuse now,” Giuliani said, arguing that radical movements are increasingly open about their desire to fundamentally transform American institutions. He warned that many Americans lack the historical knowledge necessary to recognize the ideological movements developing around them.

Schonbuch compared the current political environment to revolutionary movements of the early 20th century and argued that the DSA’s growing political influence should be taken seriously beyond New York.

“The DSA has infected, parasitically, the entire Democratic Party,” Schonbuch said, pointing to socialist candidates emerging not only in New York but across the Midwest and elsewhere in the country.

The conversation also turned to Israel, where Schonbuch recently spent time. He described a striking disconnect between international portrayals of the Jewish state and everyday life inside the country.

“When you go there, you get into the airport, you see Jews, you see Muslims, you see Christians living together in an advanced democracy,” he said, pointing to the participation of Arab citizens throughout Israeli society.

Giuliani recalled visiting Israel during the Second Intifada following terrorist attacks and meeting victims of the violence. He said that although he traveled there intending to strengthen Israelis, their resilience ultimately strengthened him.

“They gave me support and morale,” Giuliani recalled.

Both men argued that Americans need a better understanding of history to recognize the ideological forces now shaping politics.

Giuliani said generations of Americans have not been adequately taught the history of communism, revolutionary movements and radical Islam, leaving younger voters particularly vulnerable to political extremism.

“We have to get the American people to understand the danger that they face from this dual threat,” Giuliani said.

Schonbuch said the response should begin by rebuilding the broad political coalition that once helped define New York City — bringing together Jews, Catholics, Italians, Irish, African Americans, Latinos and other communities around shared civic values.

With the midterm elections approaching, he argued that voters who oppose the socialist movement cannot afford to remain politically disengaged.

“Vote as your life depended upon it right now,” Schonbuch said. “There’s no room to sit back.”

The discussion concluded with Schonbuch predicting that political developments in New York and Michigan could accelerate a broader realignment among Jewish voters who have traditionally supported Democrats.

He argued that mainstream Jewish voters increasingly concerned about antisemitism, Israel and the direction of the progressive movement may begin reconsidering their longtime political loyalties.

Giuliani praised Schonbuch for continuing to speak publicly about the issue.

“I know you’re doing a lot of good by spreading this message because you’re so effective,” Giuliani said.

Follow Rabbi Daniel Schonbuch and the Viktor Frankl Podcast for more interviews and analysis:
https://www.youtube.com/@rabbiforamerica

A Cambridge, Massachusetts biotech has put an experimental gene therapy into a deaf child’s inner ear for the first time, aiming at the single most common genetic cause of deafness in the world.

Skylark Bio came out of stealth Tuesday to announce it has dosed the first patient in its trial of SKY-GJB2, a one-time treatment for children born deaf because of mutations in the GJB2 gene.

Here is what the mutation does. The GJB2 gene tells the body how to build a protein called connexin 26, which sits between cells in the inner ear and lets them pass signals to one another. When the gene is broken, the protein does not work, and sound never gets converted into a signal the brain can use. Mutations in GJB2 are the most common cause of inherited, non-syndromic hearing loss worldwide, and the resulting deafness is usually present at birth.

The therapy is an attempt to fix that at the source. SKY-GJB2 uses an engineered adeno-associated virus to carry a working copy of the GJB2 gene directly into the affected cells of the inner ear, treating the genetic cause rather than compensating for it the way a cochlear implant does. In the trial, called SONIX, each child receives a single infusion into one ear through a purpose-built one-time-use device, the SKY-CAT.

The trial

SONIX is enrolling ten children: six between nine months and two years old, and four between two and seven. Participants must carry two pathogenic variants in GJB2 and have hearing loss of at least 85 decibels in the treated ear. The primary focus is safety of both the therapy and the delivery device, with hearing improvement measured alongside it.

The company is small and recently capitalized. Skylark has raised about $40.9 million across a single round, and is led by chief executive Jodi A. Cook, with Shawn Harriman as chief scientific officer. In June it signed a manufacturing and development partnership with Forge Biologics to produce the AAV vector under cGMP conditions for the clinical program. A second program, SKY-PEN, targets SLC26A4-related hearing loss, or Pendred syndrome, and the company says it also has an undisclosed central nervous system program.

Why the market opened up

None of this would be happening on this timeline without what Regeneron proved in April. The FDA granted accelerated approval to Otarmeni, the first gene therapy ever approved for genetic hearing loss, based on a trial in which 80% of participants hit the primary hearing endpoint and 42% reached normal hearing with longer follow-up. Otarmeni treats a different mutation — in the OTOF gene — an ultra-rare condition affecting roughly 50 newborns a year in the United States. The therapy came to Regeneron through its 2023 acquisition of Decibel Therapeutics.

Regeneron’s commercial decision is the part the industry is still digesting. The company is providing Otarmeni at no cost to clinically eligible U.S. patients, though out-of-pocket costs for the administration procedure can vary. That came bundled with an agreement with the U.S. government to tie current and future drug prices to those in other developed countries. For a rare-disease population of 50 births a year, giving the product away was a defensible trade. GJB2 is a different arithmetic. Skylark describes it as affecting tens of thousands of patients — a population large enough that pricing will be a real commercial question rather than a goodwill gesture.

A three-country race

Skylark is not running alone. France’s Sensorion raised €60 million in January, including a €20 million strategic investment from Sanofi, specifically to push its GJB2 candidate SENS-601 toward regulatory clearance and first-cohort enrollment, with cash runway extended into the first half of 2027. Chinese groups are pursuing the same target. Being first into humans, which Skylark now is, matters for the obvious reason in biotech: the first credible efficacy data sets the terms for everyone else’s financing.

Skylark’s chief executive indicated at a scientific conference in May that early data would arrive by the end of this year. That is the date to watch. A safe dose in one child proves very little on its own; the question is whether a child who has never heard anything begins to respond to sound, and whether that holds.

For investors in the hearing space, the sequence is now established: an approval that showed regulators will clear these therapies, a manufacturing base being built out, and a much larger patient population entering the clinic behind it.

JBizNews Desk | Boston

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

A 24-year-old Lakewood yungerman who learns in BMG is in critical condition and in need of tremendous yeshuos after drowning in a swimming pool on Sunday.

The family is asking the public to increase their tefillos and daven for Daniel Baruch Ben Hadassa Orit for a complete refuah sheleimah.

A special gathering for tefillah will take place tonight at Bais Medrash Ozer Yonah, located at 124 Gudz Road in Lakewood. Maariv will be held at 9:00 p.m., followed by Tehillim.

The name Baruch was added. Please daven for Daniel Baruch ben Hadassa Orit for a complete refuah sheleimah.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

The City-Wide Learning Program is returning for the second half of its 12th year, once again giving boys across Lakewood the opportunity to continue their Torah learning during the weeks between the end of camp and the start of school.

More than 4,000 boys attended the first half of the program – between school and camp – making it the community’s largest seasonal learning initiative.

The program will take place from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. at dozens of participating shuls throughout Lakewood.

Schedule

• Wednesday, August 12
• Thursday, August 13
• Friday, August 14
• Sunday, August 16
• Monday, August 17
• Tuesday, August 18

Participating locations include Albert Shul, Arlington Shul, Ateres Yeshaya, Bais Dovid, Bais Medrash D’Manchester, Bais Medrash Kol Yaakov, Bais Medrash of Kelmwoods, Bais Medrash of Woodlane, Bais Shabsi, Bais Medrash Pine Lake Park, Brookwood 3, Bunker Hill, Cedarwood Hills, Chanichei Hayeshivos, Chesterfield Commons, Eitz Chaim Brookwood 4, Elmwood Village, Harmony Farms, Hearthstone Shul, Heichal Yehuda Tzvi, Khal D’Brookwood, Khal Glen Arden, Lakewood Commons, Lutzk, Ohel Shulamit, Ohr Yaakov, Ohr Yoel Meir – Williams Street, Old Shul, Prospect Park, Prospect Vines Shul, Sterling Forest Shul, Tiferes Pinchos, Westgate Shul, Zichron Meir and Zichron Pinchas.

The program is open to boys entering 2nd through 9th grade. Boys entering 2nd through 4th grade are welcome to attend with a parent or other adult, while boys entering 5th through 9th grade should bring their chavrusa and seforim. Each location is supervised by a rebbe.

Participants will also have the chance to earn a variety of incentives throughout the program, including City-Wide basketballs, daily raffles and treats, Sky Zone tickets, and pizza vouchers for boys entering 5th through 9th grade.

For additional information or sponsorship opportunities, call or text 732-814-2591.

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that his administration is examining whether the federal government has legal grounds to challenge New York’s newly enacted tax on luxury second homes, calling the measure a misguided policy that could have far-reaching consequences.

In a post on social media, Trump blasted the state’s new “pied-a-terre” tax, describing it as a “dangerous political experiment” and signaling that he is exploring possible legal avenues to stop it.

The tax, whose name comes from a French phrase meaning “foot on the ground” and refers to a secondary residence, was approved by New York lawmakers as part of the state’s budget package adopted in May.

“I am looking ⁠to see if the Federal ⁠Government ⁠has any legal right to avert this disaster,” Trump said.

The measure is already facing a legal challenge in New York state court. According to reports, a Staten Island judge issued a temporary order on Monday preventing the tax from taking effect while the case moves forward.

{Matzav.com}

Domino’s is putting its own name on a new pizza as the restaurant chain looks to give customers a personal-size option built for individual tastes.

The Michigan-based pizza giant said Tuesday that it will launch the Domino, a Detroit-style pizza made for one, at restaurants nationwide on Aug. 31.

Shaped like the company’s red-and-blue domino logo, the new pizza is cut into two slices and allows customers to choose their sauce and add up to three toppings.

The company is positioning the product as an alternative for customers who want different toppings when ordering pizza with family or friends, as well as for individual meals and on-the-go occasions.

“The Domino fills a gap in our portfolio,” said Joe Jordan, chief operating officer and president of Domino’s U.S., and incoming CEO. “When everyone wants something different, traditional pizza falls short. The Domino lets every person build the exact pizza they want.”

Domino’s said the pizza uses its buttery-flavored pan dough with Parmesan cheese baked into the crust. It comes with two layers of cheese and is finished with the chain’s garlic seasoning.

The company said consumers in independent testing rated the Domino as one of the most delicious products it has introduced. Domino’s did not provide additional details in its announcement about the testing methodology or sample size.

FOX Business reached out to Domino’s for additional details about the product’s development, consumer testing, pricing and potential impact on franchisees.

The Domino will also be included in the chain’s Mix and Match promotion, allowing customers to select a two-topping version as one of two or more eligible menu items for $6.99 each. Prices may be higher at some locations, according to the company.

The launch comes as Domino’s operates a global network of more than 22,500 stores across more than 90 markets.

Domino’s reported more than $20.6 billion in global retail sales during the four quarters ended June 14. Independent franchise owners operated 99% of its stores at the end of the second quarter.

The company has also leaned heavily into digital ordering in its home market. More than 85% of Domino’s U.S. retail sales in 2025 came through digital channels, according to the company.

At the levayah of his four-year-old grandson, Rav Shalom Arush delivered an emotional message urging the tzibbur to strengthen its commitment to Torah during bein hazmanim, stressing that there is never a “vacation” from Torah and calling on people to avoid unnecessary trips abroad.

The remarks were delivered at the levayah of four-year-old Shalom Seginer, the son of Reb Assaf Seginer and grandson of Rav Shalom Arush, founder and leader of the Chut Shel Chessed institutions. Speaking to the thousands gathered, Rav Arush reflected on the tragedies that so often occur during bein hazmanim, both in Eretz Yisroel and overseas, and called for spiritual introspection and renewed dedication to Torah.

Addressing the crowd, Rav Arush urged every Jew to use the bein hazmanim period for increased limud haTorah rather than spiritual relaxation.

“All of the Jewish people need to strengthen themselves. Tragedies always happen during bein hazmanim. All of the Jewish people should take it upon themselves during bein hazmanim to set aside fixed times for Torah study, including the children. Children say, ‘We’re on vacation.’ There is no vacation from Torah. The dead are free; there is no vacation from Torah.”

Rav Arush also addressed the growing trend of overseas travel, urging that such trips be reserved only for spiritual purposes.

“Travel abroad? Only to the graves of the righteous,” he said.

The levayah began Tuesday morning at the Chut Shel Chessed yeshiva in Yerushalayim and continued to Har HaZeisim, where thousands of family members, talmidim, friends, and members of the ציבור accompanied the young child on his final journey and paid their last respects.

Shalom Seginer tragically drowned in a swimming pool while vacationing with his family in Mexico.

{Matzav.com}

A new YouGov poll has found growing opposition to Israeli immigration in Britain, with nearly half of respondents saying they want fewer Israelis or no Israelis at all allowed to immigrate to the United Kingdom.

According to the survey, 23% of Britons said immigration from Israel should be reduced, while another 24% said no Israeli immigrants should be admitted at all.

Combined, 47% of respondents favored either reducing or completely stopping Israeli immigration. That represents an increase of eight percentage points from 39% in 2016.

The poll examined how British attitudes toward immigration from various countries have changed over the past decade, including differences between those who voted Remain and Leave in the 2016 Brexit referendum.

Among Remain voters, opposition to Israeli immigration increased significantly. In 2016, 27% said they wanted fewer or no immigrants from Israel. That figure has now risen to 41%.

Among Leave voters, attitudes remained virtually unchanged. In both 2016 and 2026, 52% said Britain should accept fewer or no Israeli immigrants.

The survey also examined attitudes based on how respondents voted in Britain’s 2024 general election.

The highest levels of opposition to Israeli immigration were found among Reform UK and Green voters, with approximately 52% to 53% saying they wanted fewer or no immigrants from Israel.

Among Labour and Conservative voters, the figure was in the mid to high 40% range. Liberal Democrat voters registered the lowest level of opposition, at approximately 41%.

Israel was not the country facing the highest opposition to immigration in the survey.

Russia topped the list, with 58% of respondents saying they wanted fewer or no Russian immigrants. Pakistan followed at 52%, Nigeria at 48%, Israel at 47%, Egypt and India at 44%, and Turkey at 43%.

The findings show that British attitudes toward Israeli immigration have become considerably more negative over the past decade, particularly among voters who previously supported remaining in the European Union.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

President Donald Trump said the United States has three ways to force an end to the Iran war, and that the one he likes best requires no new military action at all: let Iran run out of money.

Trump laid out the options in a pre-taped interview with Real America’s Voice that aired early Tuesday. The first is to do nothing and wait, on the argument that Iran’s economy fails on its own. The second is to strike Iran hard. The third, in his framing, is to beat Tehran economically — and he described that as something Washington is already doing.

The line that carried the interview was his description of the American position over Iran’s blocked assets. Trump said the United States controls the regime’s money, that there is a lot of it, and that he is Iran’s banker. He also said Iran cannot borrow.

In plain terms, that refers to Iranian government funds and reserves frozen in overseas accounts under U.S. sanctions, plus the banking restrictions that keep Iran from moving oil revenue through the international financial system. Tehran can still sell oil to buyers willing to take the risk, but converting those sales into usable hard currency is the choke point. Releasing blocked assets is one of the conditions Iran has attached to reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump’s claims about how bad things are inside Iran should be read with care. He said the country is running 300 percent inflation, that its currency has almost no value, and that soldiers are not being paid and are leaving. Iranian inflation is severe, but his figures run higher than what his own administration officials have been giving reporters. That gap matters for anyone trying to judge how close the pressure campaign is to producing a result.

The timing of the interview also matters. It follows Trump’s Truth Social post on Monday saying he would demand Iran pay compensation for people the regime killed, as part of any future talks. That demand came after Tehran refused to reopen Hormuz unless Washington agreed to a list of conditions: lifting the naval blockade of Iranian ports, lifting sanctions, releasing blocked assets, withdrawing U.S. troops, and paying war damages. Trump’s compensation demand answers that with a mirror-image claim of his own.

Wire coverage read the week as a shift rather than a new plan. The pivot back to financial pressure comes as U.S. stockpiles of key weapons have thinned and as stop-start talks appear to have stalled again — and sanctions are a slow instrument, built to grind over years rather than end a shooting war on a schedule.

The enforcement side of the economic strategy is running in the meantime. Central Command said on Aug. 9 that U.S. forces had redirected 55 commercial vessels, disabled two ships and boarded two others under the naval blockade of Iranian ports, which was reinstated on July 14 after the ceasefire collapsed in early July. Those numbers are the practical expression of what Trump described in the interview: not strikes, but a cordon around Iran’s ability to move cargo and get paid for it.

The military option he named second is not hypothetical either. Central Command struck Iranian military targets for 13 straight days beginning July 11 and ending July 23, and Trump said on July 24 the military was ready for a far larger attack.

For businesses, the significance is what all this says about how long the disruption lasts. A negotiated reopening of Hormuz would restore the shipping route that normally carries about a fifth of the world’s traded oil. An economic-attrition strategy, by design, does not have an end date — it works by outlasting the other side. Companies with exposure to Gulf shipping, energy costs or Asia-Europe freight are pricing the difference between those two paths every day.

Trump gave no timetable for choosing among the three, and his description of Iranian negotiators as dishonest — he said they agree to terms and then deny it publicly — suggests he does not expect a fast diplomatic close. The two sides signed a memorandum of understanding on June 17, nearly four months after U.S. strikes began on Feb. 28, and it broke down in July.

What Trump is betting is that Iran’s finances give out before the world’s patience with closed shipping lanes does. Nothing in Tuesday’s interview indicated which way that race is running.

JBizNews Desk | Washington

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

The Sanz-Klausenburg community in the United States is in mourning following the sudden petirah of Rav Tzvi Zev Berger zt”l, a respected moreh horaah and mara d’asra who served the Sanz-Klausenburger community and the Karlsburg Beis Horaah. Rav Berger passed away in his sleep while vacationing in Switzerland. He was just 43 years old and was widely regarded as one of Boro Park’s most prominent poskim and morei horaah.

Rav Berger had traveled to Switzerland in recent days for a period of rest. During the night, he apparently suffered a sudden cardiac event and passed away in his sleep. When he failed to wake up the following morning, emergency responders were summoned, but despite their efforts, they were forced to pronounce him dead at the scene.

Rav Berger was among the leading halachic authorities in Brooklyn’s Boro Park neighborhood. He served as a moreh horaah and mara d’asra for the Sanz-Klausenburg community while also holding a prominent position at the renowned Karlsburg Beis Horaah, which was founded by the Karlsburg Gaavad, Rav Yechezkel Roth zt”l.

He earned widespread respect for his extraordinary diligence in Torah study, his deep mastery of halachah, and his ability to analyze and resolve complex halachic questions. His well-known shiurim covering the laws of Shabbos, medicine and halachah, modern technology, and travel-related halachic issues attracted thousands of listeners and were widely circulated among those seeking practical psak.

Friends, colleagues, and members of the community describe Rav Berger as an exceptional talmid chochom, a devoted chossid, and an oveid Hashem whose entire being was deeply connected to the Sanz-Klausenburg Rebbe. They also recalled his warm personality, remarkable humility, and genuine kindness toward everyone he encountered.

News of his sudden passing has left his family, the Sanz-Klausenburg community, his many talmidim, and those who regularly sought his halachic guidance in the United States and around the world struggling to come to terms with the loss of a distinguished moreh horaah taken in the prime of his life.

Rav Berger leaves behind a beautiful family. Community leaders are currently working with Swiss authorities to complete the necessary legal procedures and secure the release of his body so it can be transported to the United States for burial. Funeral arrangements and details regarding the transfer of the aron will be announced at a later time.

Yehi zichro boruch.

{Matzav.com}

Following the success of this weeks CPR course for women, another course is being offered Wednesday night for Bachurim and married men.

The course will take place Wednesday night from 7:15 p.m. to 10:15 p.m. at Dr. Roberts Shul (KNA) on Arbutus Drive.

The course is open to Bachurim in high school and older, as well as married men. There is no charge for the course, and no certification will be issued following the class.

With many Bachurim returning home from camp this week, the course provides an opportunity to spend several hours learning valuable, practical skills in a meaningful way.

Following the course, participants will daven Maariv together.

For questions or additional information, contact or text Rabbi Kaisman at 908-670-1791.

Family getting up: Sunday (8/16/26)Morning

Harav Yisroel Eliezer Szklarz
Husband

R` Yossi Szklarz
Son

Sitting at main address until Thursday night, Friday, MOtzei Shabbos & Sunday sitting in Monsey at 38 Besen Pkwy

R` Yanky Szklarz
Son

Mrs Devoiry Pfeiffer (Kish)
Daughter

Mrs Leahla Pollak
Daughter

Israel provided the US administration with intelligence about the Iranian threat against US President Donald Trump, which included the possibility of using shoulder-fired missiles against Air Force One, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday evening, citing a US official.

According to the report, following the threat, Trump initially boarded, in full view of the media, an aircraft that had previously served as Air Force One. Shortly afterward, however, a deception operation began: The president was placed inside an airport catering truck and driven out of sight of reporters to another aircraft, a smaller military C-32A parked nearby.

Trump then departed aboard the C-32A for a US base in the UK, under the pretext that troops stationed there wanted to take photographs with the Air Force One aircraft. From there, he flew back to Washington.

Some members of Trump’s staff were unaware of the covert operation

The report detailed that the operation was kept so secret that even some members of Trump’s staff did not know he was traveling aboard the third aircraft. For weeks, the impression was that Trump had returned from Turkey aboard the old Air Force One after the new presidential aircraft, which had been given to the US by Qatar, was flown separately to the UK.

In fact, journalists and some White House officials, including US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, boarded the aircraft believing that Trump was traveling with them as usual. In reality, he had already been secretly transferred to another military aircraft and was flying separately.

The Iranian threat and the switch of aircraft were revealed last month, following initial denials, but the new report discloses for the first time the details of the deception operation carried out at the airport.

The White House declined to directly address most of the details in the report. White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said the new aircraft was equipped with “high-level security protocols” intended to ensure the safety of the president and his staff.

This post was originally published on here.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) sharply dismissed Kamala Harris on Monday, arguing that the former vice president no longer carries political influence as he pushed back against her criticism of President Trump’s efforts to advance the SAVE America Act.

Appearing on Fox News with Sean Hannity, Kennedy responded to Democratic opposition to the election legislation by referencing a recent video in which Harris criticized President Trump’s decision to make the SAVE America Act a legislative priority.

“No disrespect, but Vice President Harris is no longer relevant. She had a shot and she missed. She can cozy up to the Lulu Lenins all she wants to,” Kennedy said, invoking Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin.

Kennedy continued his criticism by making clear that Harris’s views carry little weight with him.

“But she has me confused with somebody who cares what she thinks,” Kennedy continued to Fox News host Sean Hannity.

“I mean, she’s yesterday.”

In the video that prompted Kennedy’s remarks, Harris accused Republicans of creating barriers that could discourage voter participation. She claimed the GOP was putting up “obstacles to make it difficult to vote” and encouraged Americans to verify their voter registration, register if needed, and cast their ballots early.

Despite her defeat to President Trump in the 2024 election, Harris has continued to remain active in Democratic politics and is widely viewed as a possible contender for her party’s 2028 presidential nomination.

In recent weeks, she has urged Democrats to revisit several major institutional changes, including eliminating or restructuring the Electoral College, expanding the U.S. Supreme Court from nine to 13 justices, and granting statehood to both Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.

President Trump defeated Harris in the 2024 election by a 312-226 Electoral College margin and also won the national popular vote by more than two million votes.

Since leaving office, Harris has remained visible on the campaign trail and online, endorsing Democratic candidates such as Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed while maintaining an active presence on social media.

{Matzav.com}

Cleveland Federal Reserve President Beth Hammack on Monday said that she thinks there will be a need for more than one interest rate hike to prevent inflation from becoming more entrenched across the economy.

Hammack made the comments in an interview with Yahoo Finance that followed her dissent from the Fed’s decision to leave interest rates unchanged. She and two other members of the central bank’s monetary policy panel voted in favor of raising interest rates by 25 basis points.

“I would say in general, one 25-basis-point move probably doesn’t do a whole lot for the economy,” she said. “So it’s probably some number of [movements]. But I don’t want to prejudge what that number is going to be.”

Hammack added that “I don’t know exactly where we will end,” adding that she thinks the current target range for the benchmark federal funds rate of 3.5% to 3.75% is not “meaningfully restricting” the economy amid stubborn inflation.

“When I’m talking to businesses, I’m not hearing that they’re sensing any restraint from investments in growth based on where interest rates are,” she said in the interview. “So to me that says that now is the time to act.”

Hammack said that the longer the central bank waits to address inflation through higher interest rates, the more difficult it will be to return inflation to the Fed’s 2% target.

Inflation has been running well above that target, with the consumer price index (CPI) up 3.5% through June, while the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge – the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index – was 3.7% in June.

Hammack said in the interview that raising rates is similar to gradually applying the brakes when approaching a stop sign so as to glide to a stop, rather than slamming the brakes with a more dramatic policy move to stop price growth.

“I think that now is the time for us to start acting, to start bringing more restraint into policy,” she said.

“Nothing would make me feel better than to be wrong, that we need to change the stance of policy to help bring inflation back to target. But from where I sit, I just don’t see it coming back on its own,” Hammack added.

The Cleveland Fed president also discussed the July jobs report, which showed a loss of 23,000 jobs when economists expected a gain of around 80,000 jobs, but said in the interview that she is “still not seeing a problem” with the labor market given that the 4.1% unemployment rate is near her estimate of full employment.

Fed policymakers will hold their next meeting in mid-September, and they’ll have fresh inflation data to parse in the meantime with the July CPI data set to be released on Wednesday and the PCE reading for the month due in late August.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Tuesday announced the deployment of a new radar at Newark Liberty International Airport that’s designed to prevent incidents from occurring on busy runways.

The new radar, known as the Surface Movement Radar Model 4, allows air traffic controllers to track aircraft and vehicles on runways and taxiways in all weather and visibility conditions and prevent runway incursions that could result in accidental collisions. The SMR-4 will represent a capability improvement over the 30-year-old radar that’s being replaced.

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford spoke at the event and said that it was the deployment of the fifth surface movement radar in the U.S.

“We will deploy 53 of these surface movement radars across the country at our top 44 busiest airports in the U.S.,” Bedford said, adding that the radar system was built in Syracuse, New York, as onshoring production of critical infrastructure was a key component of the agency’s modernization effort.

“We think of modernization not just as replacing all of this old equipment. And again, this is a 30-year-old box: we can’t maintain it, they don’t build it, they don’t supply replacement parts for it. So when these things break, they’re no longer available to us, so getting this investment is critical,” he explained.

“It’s not just that we’re purchasing and deploying new equipment, we have brought these jobs back to the U.S. which is a key focus of the secretary and the president,” Bedford said.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who also spoke at the unveiling, noted that the surface awareness radar will “give us better technology to see airplanes, to see vehicles on the ground at Newark Airport. It’ll see aircraft on final approach. It is a more resilient system,” he added.

“It allows controllers on a dark night, or controllers in bad weather, if they can’t see out of the tower and see what’s happening on the tarmac, they can actually use this radar to see on their screens where everything is at – airplanes, vehicles – and again, it keeps the American public safer as we use American skies,” Duffy said.

The Department of Transportation and FAA noted in a release that they’ve installed 96 new systems around the country over the last year that are related to the agency’s surface awareness initiative.

FAA data shows that there have been 1,102 runway incursions in the agency’s fiscal year 2026 so far – down from 1,197 in the same period a year ago. The data includes operational incidents, pilot deviations, vehicle or pedestrian deviations, and other forms of incursions.

U.S. stocks finished modestly lower Tuesday as investors weighed stubborn energy prices, softer housing activity, mixed consumer signals and another round of massive AI infrastructure spending ahead of Wednesday’s inflation report.

The S&P 500 closed at 7,728.20, down 24.91 points, or 0.3%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 184.13 points, or 0.3%, to 53,791.85, while the Nasdaq Composite declined 159.91 points, or 0.6%, to 26,445.45.

Small-cap stocks moved the other way. The Russell 2000 gained 0.3% to 3,027.12, showing better relative strength among smaller companies even as large technology stocks lagged.

Brent crude settled 1.4% higher at $88.91 a barrel, keeping energy costs at the center of the inflation debate. The 10-year Treasury yield eased to about 4.68%, down from roughly 4.72% Monday.

Among the day’s biggest movers, On Holding plunged more than 21%, Aramark jumped nearly 9%, and Cardinal Health finished higher.

The larger story beneath the indexes was an economy sending conflicting signals: housing remains constrained by high borrowing costs, small-business owners are becoming more optimistic, oil remains expensive, and AI infrastructure companies continue projecting extraordinary growth.

Housing Slows Again

Existing-home sales fell 1.7% in July to a 4.06 million annualized pace, marking the second consecutive monthly decline.

The median existing-home price still increased about 2% from a year earlier to $434,100, while inventory slipped to roughly 1.54 million homes.

Mortgage rates remained close to 6.7%, leaving both sides of the housing market under pressure.

Potential buyers are struggling with monthly payments that remain far above pre-pandemic levels, while existing homeowners with mortgages locked in at much lower rates remain reluctant to sell.

That creates a market where home prices can stay elevated even as transaction volume remains weak.

For brokers, mortgage lenders, title companies, contractors, furniture retailers and businesses tied to home turnover, the slowdown in transactions remains the bigger problem than falling property values.

Small Businesses Turn More Optimistic

The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index climbed to 99.8, its highest level in 11 months.

The share of owners planning to create jobs over the next three months rose to 20%, the highest level since October 2022.

That is an important counterpoint to last week’s weak national employment report.

Small businesses are still signaling demand for workers even as broader payroll growth slows, suggesting the labor market may be cooling unevenly rather than collapsing across the economy.

The challenge remains finding qualified employees. Many business owners continue reporting difficulty filling open positions.

For Main Street, the numbers suggest confidence is improving even while financing costs, labor shortages and input prices remain substantial obstacles.

Energy Costs May Stay High Much Longer

The U.S. Energy Information Administration raised its oil-price outlook as Middle East production disruptions continue.

The agency estimates roughly 5.5 million barrels per day of Middle East production — more than 5% of global oil consumption — was offline during July.

More importantly, the EIA now expects some disrupted production to remain unavailable through the end of 2027.

The agency raised its 2026 Brent crude forecast to approximately $86.81 a barrel, while estimating global production at roughly 100.8 million barrels per day against demand near 104 million.

That changes the business calculation.

Elevated oil prices do not stop at the gas pump. They increase trucking expenses, aviation costs, plastics production, manufacturing expenses, utility bills and the price of moving goods through supply chains.

For business owners, the larger takeaway is that expensive energy may no longer be a temporary Hormuz-related shock.

If production remains constrained well into 2027, companies may have to begin treating higher transportation and energy costs as a longer-term operating expense.

U.S. and Canada Move Toward Possible Trade Deal

American and Canadian officials are working toward a potential trade agreement ahead of another threatened round of U.S. tariffs.

The discussions could affect autos, steel, aluminum, agriculture, construction materials and other industries where U.S. and Canadian supply chains are deeply connected.

For businesses operating across the border, even progress toward an agreement reduces uncertainty around pricing, sourcing, inventory and long-term contracts.

North American manufacturers often move components across the border multiple times before a finished product reaches a customer, meaning tariffs can compound throughout the supply chain.

No final agreement has been reached, and the possibility of new tariffs remains.

On Holding Plunges as U.S. Growth Slows

Shares of premium footwear company On Holding fell more than 21% after investors focused on slower sales growth in the Americas.

Americas sales increased about 13%, compared with roughly 17% growth in the previous quarter.

Asia-Pacific sales remained much stronger, increasing more than 50%.

The company is still growing, but Wall Street punished the slowdown because investors had priced in unusually strong expansion.

Management also signaled that it would not chase sales volume through aggressive discounting, preferring to protect the premium positioning of the brand.

For retailers and consumer companies, the reaction offered another warning about the American consumer.

Higher-income shoppers are still spending, but investors are increasingly sensitive to any evidence that discretionary purchases are slowing.

Shein’s Valuation Reset Gets Real

Shein is preparing to move ahead with a Hong Kong initial public offering that could value the fast-fashion company at roughly $30 billion to $40 billion.

That would represent a dramatic reset from its private valuation of more than $98 billion in 2022.

The company has faced rising trade costs, regulatory scrutiny and the elimination of a U.S. duty exemption that had helped make its direct-to-consumer shipping model extraordinarily inexpensive.

Shein recently swung to a quarterly loss as those pressures increased.

The IPO will therefore become an important test of how investors value ultra-fast global e-commerce once cheap cross-border shipping and tariff advantages become less dependable.

It also matters for other private companies considering public listings. A successful Shein offering at a substantially lower valuation could encourage more companies to accept realistic pricing rather than wait indefinitely for previous private-market valuations to return.

AI Infrastructure Spending Keeps Accelerating

After the closing bell, Super Micro Computer projected fiscal 2027 revenue of $65 billion to $72 billion, far above Wall Street expectations.

The company remains one of the largest suppliers of servers optimized for artificial-intelligence workloads, and its forecast suggests hyperscalers and other AI developers are still placing enormous orders for computing infrastructure.

CoreWeave separately reported second-quarter revenue of $2.58 billion, slightly ahead of expectations.

But CoreWeave also showed the other side of the AI boom.

Technology and infrastructure expenses jumped 125% to $1.51 billion, highlighting how much capital is required to build and operate the computing capacity customers are demanding.

That is becoming one of the most important questions surrounding AI.

Demand remains extraordinary. The harder question is whether the companies financing data centers, chips, networking equipment and power infrastructure can ultimately generate returns large enough to justify the spending.

The AI boom is increasingly becoming a financing and infrastructure story rather than simply a software or semiconductor story.

Cyberattack Reaches Freight and Logistics

Uber Freight disclosed unauthorized access to part of its systems and repositories.

The company said operations continued normally and that the incident had been contained, but hackers claimed to possess nearly 1 million files.

The same broader hacking campaign has reportedly targeted major financial and investment organizations.

For businesses, attacks on freight platforms create risks far beyond stolen passwords.

Modern logistics systems contain customer information, pricing, routing instructions, contracts, shipment records and billing data.

A disruption can quickly spread across manufacturers, distributors, retailers and trucking companies that depend on those platforms to move inventory.

Cybersecurity is therefore becoming a supply-chain issue as much as an IT issue.

What to Watch Wednesday

The biggest event arrives at 8:30 a.m. ET, when the government releases July consumer inflation.

Markets are looking for headline inflation around 3.4% year over year, with core inflation expected near 2.5%.

The report could determine the market’s next major move.

A hotter-than-expected number could lift Treasury yields, strengthen the dollar and pressure technology and other rate-sensitive stocks.

A softer reading could push yields lower and revive expectations that the Federal Reserve can remain on hold rather than tighten further.

The inflation report also matters directly to businesses because it will show whether higher energy and other input costs are beginning to spread more broadly through consumer prices.

Cisco reports earnings after the closing bell Wednesday, giving investors another read on whether AI spending is spreading beyond chips and servers into networking equipment.

Oil remains the largest external risk.

With Brent near $89 a barrel and the EIA warning that some Middle East production disruptions could persist through 2027, another negative development around shipping or production could quickly overwhelm even a favorable inflation report.

Tuesday’s market decline was small.

The business signals underneath it were not.

Housing remains locked by rates, small-business confidence is improving, oil is threatening to stay expensive for much longer, U.S.-Canada trade remains unsettled, premium consumer brands are seeing more pressure, and the AI infrastructure buildout continues at a scale that is reshaping capital spending across the economy.

JBizNews Desk | Wall Street

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