A turbulent demonstration against the arrests of yeshiva bochurim brought traffic on Highway 4 near Bnei Brak to a standstill for approximately three hours Wednesday, with some protesters wearing yellow stars and others displaying signs featuring graphic Holocaust imagery.

The protest was organized by members of the Peleg Yerushalmi in response to the ongoing arrests of yeshiva bochurim over their failure to report for military service. Demonstrators highlighted the latest case involving a yeshiva bochur classified as a draft evader who was transferred from the Lahav 433 police unit to military prison.

Hundreds of protesters gathered near the entrance to Bnei Brak and moved onto Highway 4, blocking traffic and prompting a large police response.

During the demonstration, some participants wore yellow stars bearing the Hebrew word “Chareidi,” deliberately evoking the yellow badges that Jews were forced to wear under Nazi rule during the Holocaust.

Other demonstrators carried signs comparing the current draft controversy to the Holocaust. One sign, displayed in both Hebrew and English alongside graphic photographs of Nazis leading Jews to their deaths, declared, “It is preferable to die in the Holocaust as a Jew than to convert in IDF camps.”

The use of Holocaust imagery and yellow stars became one of the most striking features of the demonstration as protesters continued blocking the major highway for several hours.

Following the dispersal of the protest, Israel Police announced that Highway 4 had reopened in both directions.

“Israel Police operated in recent hours in an effort to maintain public order, following protesters who blocked Highway 4, disturbed the peace and confronted police officers at the scene. Highway 4 has now been reopened to traffic in both directions,” police said.

Authorities described the gathering as an illegal demonstration and accused participants of endangering themselves and disrupting motorists traveling through the area.

“During an illegal demonstration held on Highway 4, near the city of Bnei Brak, hundreds of protesters confronted police officers, endangered their lives, physically blocked vehicles and infringed upon the freedom of movement of road users,” police said.

Police said an officer formally declared the demonstration illegal, but protesters refused instructions to clear the roadway and continued blocking traffic with their bodies.

“During the demonstration, a police officer declared the protest illegal, but the protesters did not obey the officers’ instructions, continued disturbing the public order and blocked the roads with their bodies. A short time ago, the demonstration was dispersed and the road was reopened to traffic. Israel Police views the right to protest as a cornerstone of a democratic state and permits protests as long as they are conducted within the framework of the law. At the same time, police will not permit disturbances of any kind or infringements upon freedom of movement, and will not tolerate behavior that could endanger public safety.”

The demonstration ultimately dispersed after approximately three hours, allowing traffic to resume on Highway 4 following an afternoon of major disruptions near Bnei Brak.

{Matzav.com}

A single Powerball ticket purchased at a gas station in western Illinois claimed Wednesday night’s massive $1 billion jackpot, bringing to an end a three-month stretch without a grand-prize winner.

Illinois Lottery officials announced that the winning ticket was sold at a Hy-Vee gas station in Quincy, a city along the Missouri border roughly 100 miles west of Springfield. The winning combination was 4-26-66-67-69, with a Powerball of 9.

Lottery officials said it was not immediately known whether the winner had come forward to claim the prize.

The jackpot winner can choose between receiving the full $1 billion through an annuity paid over 29 years or taking a one-time cash payout of $450.5 million. Historically, nearly all jackpot winners opt for the lump-sum payment.

The victory marks the first Powerball jackpot win since May 2, when a $20 million prize was claimed. It is also the first grand prize awarded since Powerball ticket sales expanded to the United Kingdom last month. With tickets costing $2 each, the odds of matching all six numbers remain approximately one in 292 million.

According to Powerball officials, the $1.04 billion prize ranks as the eighth-largest jackpot in the game’s history. Mega Millions has also produced jackpots exceeding the $1 billion mark.

“Congratulations to our newest Powerball jackpot winner in Illinois,” Stephen Durrell, chair of the Powerball Product Group and executive director of the Kansas Lottery, said in a statement. “For more than three decades, Powerball has shown that a winning ticket can be sold anywhere the game is played, giving every $2 ticket the chance to change not only a winner’s life, but generations to come.”

While only one ticket captured the jackpot, four other tickets sold in Arizona, California, Florida, and North Carolina matched the five white balls but missed the Powerball, earning prizes of $1 million each. Another ticket sold in Massachusetts also matched the five white balls and doubled its winnings to $2 million after the purchaser added the optional $1 “Power Play” multiplier.

In addition to the top prizes, more than 3 million tickets won smaller cash awards in Wednesday night’s drawing.

With the jackpot now claimed, the Powerball grand prize resets to $20 million for Saturday’s drawing.

The largest lottery jackpot ever awarded remains the more than $2 billion Powerball prize won in California in 2022.

{Matzav.com}

An unusual report by i24News correspondent Avishai Grinzaig on Wednesday evening revealed details of negotiations over a plea deal with Yonatan Urich in the Bild leak affair

According to the report, Central District Attorney Chaim Wismonsky reached an agreement with Urich’s attorney on a plea deal under which Urich would serve nine months of community service. The proposal was then submitted to Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, who approved it.

However, during a meeting with State Attorney Amit Isman, he expressed opposition to the deal and effectively vetoed it. Baharav-Miara chose not to insist on her position because the case falls under the State Attorney’s authority.

At the same meeting, Isman made clear that he would agree to a plea deal only if Urich received at least 12 months of actual imprisonment. Urich rejected the proposal, and no further plea negotiations have taken place since then.

Isman and Baharav-Miara both rejected the report, responding that “the  entire report is false.”

According to Grinzaig, the two later even threatened that if the report were published, they would issue a statement to the media saying that it was false.

Following their denial, Grinzaig added: “It takes audacity, and also quite a bit of nerve, to deny a report and even threaten to issue a statement to the press when they know that I have evidence proving that the information is true.”

It should be noted that earlier this year, Isman insisted on filing the case involving smuggling goods into the Gaza Strip under the charge of aiding the enemy in wartime–the gravest offense in Israeli law–despite the fierce objection of Southern District prosecutors, i24News reported.

The charge, which carries a maximum penalty of death or life imprisonment, was included in the indictments against 12 suspects, including Betzalel Zini, the Shin Bet chief’s brother. The indictments were filed despite the fact that a month earlier, indictments were filed in a similar case involving soldiers from the Bedouin reconnaissance battalion accused of smuggling cigarettes into Gaza–but they faced a less severe national security charge, carrying a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

Senior political commentator Amit Segal said at the time: “We live in a remarkable era of law enforcement in which it’s better to be a Bedouin than to be the Shin Bet chief’s brother.”

Channel 14 journalist Yinon Magal wryly commented, “If Zini’s brother really knew about the smuggling of cigarettes into Gaza, it’s strange that Isman didn’t charge him with genocide as well.”

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

An advanced OpenAI model was given a cybersecurity test. Instead of staying inside the test, it found a way onto the open internet, discovered previously unknown software flaws and used them to access systems belonging to a real outside company.

A human doing the same thing could face arrest.

The AI was trying to solve the problem it had been given.

OpenAI was testing advanced models inside a restricted cybersecurity environment designed to measure how capable they were at finding and exploiting vulnerabilities. For the test, normal cyber safeguards were reduced so researchers could see what the models could actually do.

Then the test escaped the lab.

The models found weaknesses that allowed them to reach the internet and then access infrastructure belonging to Hugging Face, a major AI platform. According to disclosures about the incident, the models carried out thousands of actions while searching for information that could help solve the evaluation.

Nobody explicitly told the AI: “Break into Hugging Face.”

It apparently worked out that Hugging Face’s systems might contain what it needed and pursued that path.

That distinction may be more important than the hack itself.

The AI did not need to become “evil” or decide to attack anyone. It simply pursued its assigned objective farther than its designers expected.

That creates a new cybersecurity problem: What happens when AI follows instructions too well?

The answer from security experts is increasingly clear. Companies cannot rely only on telling powerful AI agents what they should not do. They have to build systems that physically prevent them from doing it.

AI test environments should have no unnecessary connection to the public internet. Agents should receive only the permissions needed for the specific job they are performing. Credentials used in testing should never provide access to production systems.

AI agents also need to be treated almost like employees on a corporate network.

Give each one its own identity. Track everything it accesses. Limit what it can do. And have a way to shut it down immediately.

Speed makes that especially important. An AI agent can discover a vulnerability, make a decision and begin acting across computer systems in seconds. Waiting for a human security employee to notice something unusual may already be too slow.

And this is becoming bigger than one OpenAI experiment.

Britain’s AI Safety and Security Institute recently reported instances in which AI agents given cybersecurity tasks took unauthorized actions on the live internet. Other major AI developers have also disclosed problems involving models reaching systems outside their intended testing environments.

The legal system is nowhere near ready.

If a human hacker escapes a restricted system and breaks into another company’s network, prosecutors have laws they can use.

But what happens when software does it autonomously while completing a task assigned by researchers?

Is the AI developer responsible? The researcher running the test? The company operating the agent?

Current law does not provide simple answers.

That debate could take years.

Companies do not have years.

Powerful AI agents are already accessing databases, writing software, calling outside tools and making decisions without humans approving every individual step.

The lesson from these incidents is therefore much simpler than the legal debate:

Don’t assume an AI will stay inside the box because you told it to. Build a box it cannot leave.

Because the next AI that finds a way out may not be taking a test.

JBizNews Desk | New York

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

A heartbreaking tragedy struck the chareidi community in Yerushalayim on Wednesday with the passing of 3-year-old Yael Rivka Betzalel a”h, who succumbed after battling for her life for two weeks following a choking incident at her family’s home in Ramot.

Yael Rivka choked while eating a grape approximately two weeks ago. Emergency medical personnel, including paramedics and EMTs from United Hatzalah and Magen David Adom, rushed to the family’s home and immediately began prolonged, advanced resuscitation efforts.

During the lifesaving attempts, a paramedic succeeded in removing the grape that had become lodged in the young girl’s airway.

Yael Rivka was subsequently rushed to Shaare Zedek Medical Center in extremely serious condition while resuscitation efforts continued. She was sedated and placed on a ventilator as doctors fought to save her life.

For the next two weeks, physicians in the intensive care unit battled for the life of the young girl, the daughter of Yitzchak and Chana Betzalel. Family members and members of the broader community davened fervently for her recovery.

Tragically, her condition deteriorated Wednesday and doctors were ultimately forced to pronounce her passing.

The devastating loss comes at an especially painful time for the Betzalel family, just one week before the scheduled wedding of Yael Rivka’s older sister.

Instead of preparing to accompany their daughter to her chuppah amid celebration and joy, the family was forced to accompany their 3-year-old daughter and sister to her final resting place.

The levayah departed from the Shamgar Funeral Home in Yerushalayim and proceeded to Har Hamenuchos, where Yael Rivka was laid to rest in the Yemenite section.

Yehi zichrah baruch.

{Matzav.com}

Family getting up:

Rebbetzin Esther Bas R’ Shmuel Mattesdorf

Rebbetzin Devorah Olshin

Rabbi Simcha Bunim Paller

Rabbi Zecharya Paller

Rebbetzin Miriam Horowitz

What are your thoughts about the balance?

TLS welcomes your letters by submitting them to us via  Whatsapp  or via email  [email protected]

Turing Inc., a five-year-old Tokyo company building software that drives a car by itself, is setting up an office in the United States and telling investors it intends to go public at a valuation of roughly $10 billion. Neither has happened yet. The U.S. office is a plan the company is now acting on, and the listing is a target its founder has held for years — one the company describes internally in yen terms as a ¥1 trillion debut. What is real today is a startup worth a fraction of that number publicly declaring where it expects to end up, and moving staff toward the market where the money and the customers are.

Turing’s technology is simpler to explain than most in the field. Where Waymo and much of the industry stitch together lidar sensors, radar, and centimeter-accurate digital maps, Turing feeds camera images straight into one large neural network that outputs the steering, braking, and acceleration commands. That is the same “end-to-end” bet Tesla made. Strip out the map-building and the sensor stack and the cost per vehicle falls sharply, which is the entire commercial argument: a system cheap enough to sell to automakers for ordinary consumer cars, not just a robotaxi fleet a single company operates itself.

The founders picked the fight openly. Turing was incorporated in August 2021 by Issei Yamamoto, who built the shogi program Ponanza, and Shunsuke Aoki, who holds an autonomous-driving doctorate from Carnegie Mellon. The company’s public slogan is “We Overtake Tesla.” Its proving ground has been a project called Tokyo30, in which a Turing vehicle drove more than 30 minutes through Tokyo traffic without human intervention, an exercise the company has since repeated in denser areas around the country.

American suppliers are already deep in the story, which is part of why a U.S. presence follows logically. In July, Turing closed an extension to its Series A worth ¥12.62 billion — about ¥6.8 billion in equity and a ¥5.8 billion loan from MUFG Bank — with AMD Ventures, Mitsubishi Corp., Super Micro Computer, Tokyo Electron Device, GMO Internet, BIPROGY, and DataDirect Networks taking shares. Combined with the ¥15.27 billion first close in November, the full round came to ¥27.89 billion, or roughly $180 million. That round left the company valued at about ¥96 billion, in the neighborhood of $600 million. Turing has also committed to AMD graphics processors for the compute that trains and runs its driving model, a deliberate cost decision in a business where training bills run to the hundreds of millions, and it has worked with Nvidia on end-to-end development.

The gap between $600 million and $10 billion is the whole question. Turing plans to put its system in consumer vehicles and driverless taxis as early as 2028, with fully autonomous commercial vehicles targeted around 2029. It has roughly 60 to 85 employees, most of them engineers, and no commercial revenue to speak of. A U.S. office gives it three things it cannot get in Tokyo: access to the engineers who have already built these systems at Waymo, Tesla, and Zoox; proximity to AMD, Nvidia, and Super Micro, on whose hardware the entire product depends; and standing with the American investors who will ultimately decide whether a ten-figure listing is credible.

The domestic clock is the pressure. Nissan, British startup Wayve, and Uber are preparing a self-driving taxi pilot in Tokyo before the end of this year. Waymo has been mapping seven central Tokyo wards with human drivers and running validation with taxi operator Nihon Kotsu, working toward a commercial launch that has no confirmed date. Turing’s executives argue the delay costs them little, since automakers refresh models on three- to five-year cycles and a supplier that wins a design slot in 2028 is locked in through the early 2030s.

Japan’s public markets have already given the sector a reality check. Tier IV, the Nagoya University spinout behind the open-source Autoware software, listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Growth Market on July 22 in the country’s first autonomous-driving IPO. It priced at the top of its range, ¥1,085, raising about ¥23.2 billion — then opened at ¥1,009, roughly 7 percent below the offer price, for a market value near ¥64 billion. Tier IV booked ¥6.4 billion of revenue and a ¥4.7 billion loss in its last full fiscal year.

That is the number Turing has to argue past. A company with no product on sale is telling the market it will be worth more than fifteen times what Japan’s first listed autonomous-driving firm fetched on its opening day. The U.S. office is the first visible step toward making that case somewhere other than Tokyo.

JBizNews Desk | Tokyo

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

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s botched repairs at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool have landed the National Park Service in a political predicament.

The beloved federal agency, its iconic park rangers and other employees have been serving the public while managing controversial demands by the Republican president — from revising exhibits at parks and other sites to the demolition of important structures under its stewardship, such as the White House’s East Wing, to arresting visitors for alleged vandalism at the pool.

Critics say the monthslong Reflecting Pool saga and other demands by Trump risk undermining the integrity of a federal agency that has long been held in high esteem by the American public.

“Never — not once in decades — have I witnessed such systematic degradation, disrespect and dismantling of the National Park Service as I see today under the thumb of President Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum,” said Bill Wade, a former park ranger and superintendent.

Wade, who now serves as executive director of the Association of National Park Rangers, wrote an op-ed for The Denver Post lamenting what he called the Trump administration’s “assault on the people, the mission and the values that have made the National Park Service one of America’s most valued institutions.”

The park service has been at the center of some of Trump’s most contentious actions during his second term. An executive order targeted funding and demanded reviews at national parks and other sites that Trump said advanced “divisive narratives” and “improper ideology,” resulting in changes to some exhibits on slavery or climate change.

The president has also ordered sweeping changes to historical monuments and buildings in Washington that fall under NPS’ purview, including the creation of a White House ballroom and a 250-foot-tall (76-meter-tall) memorial arch. The agency meanwhile has lost at least one-quarter of its permanent workforce since Trump began his second term, through layoffs, forced retirements and resignations.

Park service employees “are being politicized and drawn into the absurdities and corruption of this administration” on a regular basis, said California Rep. Jared Huffman, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee. He cited the pool project, the proposed arch and the executive order on exhibit materials.

The ongoing political assault on the agency “is unlike anything we’ve seen in this country, and it makes life miserable at agencies like the National Park Service,” Huffman said.

Reflecting Pool saga continues
Trump launched repairs at the Reflecting Pool earlier this year, hoping to address longstanding problems at the iconic site ahead of the America 250 celebrations. But the $16 million project faced immediate problems, including peeling blue sealant and a fierce return of green algae.

Trump blamed the sealant issues on vandalism without providing evidence, and felony charges were brought against a former Olympic canoeist, David Hearn, after he was accused of vandalizing the pool.

The U.S. Park Police, a unit of the National Park Service, arrested Hearn, who denied wrongdoing and said he briefly touched a chunk of the coating.

Charges against Hearn were dropped on July 31 after prosecutors acknowledged that damage was caused by a bungled installation rather than vandalism.

The advice and counsel of career officials and rangers — instantly recognizable by their signature flat hats and green-and-gray uniforms — has been ignored or pushed aside as Trump and Burgum make decisions regarding the failed pool repair, according to an Interior Department employee who was not authorized to discuss internal discussions and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“It’s tragic,” said Ed Stierli, vice president of government affairs at the National Parks Conservation Association, another advocacy group. “The whole thing is a master class in how not to go about a public rehabilitation project.”

In the days since the dismissal of the charges, Trump has continued to lean on NPS in his repeated claims that vandals damaged the pool’s lining.

“A National Park Service career employee, a highly credible witness, saw David Hearn … in broad daylight vandalize the Reflecting Pool by ‘violently’ ripping and tugging at the Pool’s somewhat delicate coating,” Trump posted Aug. 9 on his Truth Social site. Hearn’s legal team said Trump “is continuing to attack an innocent man.”

Stierli, of the parks conservation group, called Trump’s reference to the unnamed park employee an example of the awkward position agency workers now face under Trump and Burgum, who has publicly backed Trump’s claims about vandalism at the pool.

“I think the public understands that unfortunately, you have the president of the United States directly driving decisions, both here in Washington and around the country,” Stierli said. The park service — and especially its career staff — “has very little control over this,” he added.

The White House and the Interior Department did not directly respond to requests for comment on the park service. The White House defended the pool project, saying Trump “promised to make D.C. safe and beautiful, and he’s delivering.”

“For years, the Reflecting Pool sat neglected, plagued with algae and leaking millions of gallons of water,” the White House said in a statement. “Fixing it was common sense.”

Park service morale is at its lowest point, a former official says
Wade, the former park superintendent, called the pool repair “a comedy of errors” and “a continuation of the incompetence” shown by the Trump administration.

“Most people realize the NPS is under the gun and can’t do much about it, even though they’d like to,″ he said, adding that morale at the agency is at the lowest point he can remember.

Edicts from Washington have made clear that speaking honestly about what is going on could cost staffers their jobs, Wade said. “There’s a very strong fear among employees at NPS,″ he said in an interview. “It’s very frustrating for them, as you can imagine.”

Trump’s proposed memorial arch has faced some pushback. A recent report by park service staff warned that the proposed gilded arch could disrupt the historical significance of dozens of sites around its planned location near the Lincoln Memorial.

The arch, which last month received initial approval from a key federal commission, would impact the “integrity” of dozens of historical properties because it would change “character-defining visual and spatial relationships” between them, the report said.

Americans view the National Park Service favorably
The park service is popular with Americans. About three-quarters of U.S. adults — including similar shares of Democrats and Republicans — have a favorable opinion of the agency, according to Pew Research Center polling from 2025. Only about 1 in 10 have a negative impression, and about 15% are unsure.

A Washington Post/Ipsos poll from July found that about two-thirds of Americans say they are “dissatisfied” or “upset” about Trump’s Washington area projects, including construction of a new ballroom at the White House, painting the Reflecting Pool and building his triumphal arch. Republicans are more likely to be “enthusiastic” or “satisfied” with the projects.

About one-quarter of U.S. adults say Trump’s goal is to “make Washington more beautiful,” while about half say he has a “different goal.” In an open-ended question, many respondents speculated that Trump wants to glorify himself or leave his mark.

The pool and other recent controversies including the exhibit reviews jeopardize the agency’s credibility, Wade said.

“Whether interpreting the Civil War, discussing climate science or describing the complex stories of Indigenous people, rangers have sought to present evidence, not political ideology,” he said. ”That is now being lost.”

Following days of intensive efforts involving Congressman Mike Lawler, members of his staff, Askonim and U.S. consular officials, the body of HaGaon HaRav Tzvi Zev Berger Z”L has been released by Swiss authorities and is now en route to the United States for the Levaya and Kevurah.

As YWN reported Tuesday, HaRav Berger, a 43-year-old Dayan of the Sanz-Klausenburg Kehilla in Boro Park, was suddenly niftar after failing to wake from his sleep while vacationing in Switzerland.

Since the tragic Petira, extensive efforts have been underway to expedite the complicated process necessary to allow the Niftar to be transported back to the United States as quickly as possible.

Congressman Mike Lawler and his office became heavily involved in the case, working tirelessly together with Askonim and U.S. officials in Switzerland. Lawler’s Senior Advisor Rafi Silberberg was closely involved in the efforts to help move the process forward.

In a letter sent Thursday by the U.S. Embassy in Bern to Congressman Lawler’s office, Sharon Cyr, Consul and Chief of American Citizens Services, detailed the Embassy’s handling of the case. The required mortuary certificate was completed and issued Thursday at 10:00 a.m.

“We are aware of how important timely return of a loved one is in these difficult circumstances,” the Embassy wrote, adding that its consular team would continue providing support to the family.

Following the intensive efforts, the flight carrying the Niftar departed Zurich on Thursday and is headed to Newark Liberty International Airport.

The Levaya is expected to take place at approximately 11:00 p.m. Thursday at the Klausenburg Shul on 50th Street in Boro Park.

A second Levaya is scheduled for approximately 1:00 a.m. at the Klausenburg Shul on Main Street in Monsey, followed by the Kevurah at Har Shulem Beis HaChaim, 44 Hillside Avenue in Airmont.

The swift resolution came through the combined efforts of Congressman Lawler and his staff, including Silberberg, Askonim who worked on the matter, and U.S. consular officials in Switzerland, allowing the family to bring the Niftar home for Kevuras Yisroel.

Yehi Zichro Baruch.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

U.S. stocks strengthened through late morning Thursday, August 13, with the S&P 500 reaching a fresh intraday record as softer wholesale inflation, lower oil prices and renewed buying in technology shares pushed Wall Street higher.

As of roughly 11:55 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up about 110 points, or 0.2%, near 53,880. The S&P 500 climbed roughly 55 points, or 0.7%, to around 7,804, while the Nasdaq Composite gained about 235 points, or 0.9%, to approximately 26,825. The S&P 500 earlier traded above 7,813, setting another intraday record.

Thursday morning’s economic reports were broadly supportive. Producer prices were unchanged in July, compared with expectations for a 0.2% increase, while annual wholesale inflation slowed to 4.7% from 5.5% in June. Initial unemployment claims rose modestly to 209,000, suggesting some cooling in the labor market without signaling a sharp deterioration.

The combination strengthened expectations that the Federal Reserve can leave interest rates unchanged in September. The 10-year Treasury yield fell to roughly 4.61%, providing additional support for technology stocks and other rate-sensitive sectors.

Big Tech is helping lead the market higher. Microsoft rose about 1.4%, Nvidia gained roughly 0.6% and Apple advanced around 0.5%, while the broader technology sector outperformed the market.

Oil is providing another important tailwind. Brent crude fell more than 3% to around $86 a barrel, easing concerns that the recent energy-price surge will feed into inflation and increase costs for businesses and consumers.

Individual stocks are producing much larger moves. Cisco fell roughly 7% despite beating quarterly profit and revenue expectations as investors focused on weaker margins. Tapestry dropped about 15% following its earnings report. Dell rose roughly 2.5%, while HP gained around 4% as investors responded to continued strength in AI-related infrastructure demand.

Lower fuel prices are also helping travel stocks. United Airlines gained roughly 1.7% and Carnival rose nearly 3%. Rate-sensitive housing shares also moved higher, including AvalonBay Communities and Builders FirstSource.

One additional economic report arrived after the opening bell. U.S. natural-gas inventories increased by 36 billion cubic feet, slightly more than economists expected.

For the rest of Thursday, investors are watching the 1:00 p.m. ET auction of 30-year Treasury bonds. Weak demand could push long-term yields higher and pressure the technology-led rally.

After the closing bell, Applied Materials reports earnings, giving Wall Street another important look at semiconductor-equipment demand and whether the enormous AI infrastructure spending boom remains intact.

For now, the market’s message is clear: inflation is cooling, oil is falling, bond yields are easing and investors are again willing to pay up for growth.

JBizNews Desk | Wall Street

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

As Israel heads toward another election season, political analysts say the chareidi parties are unlikely to launch their campaigns in earnest until after the Yomim Tovim, with United Torah Judaism facing its familiar internal disagreements and Shas confronting what could prove to be a particularly difficult political challenge.

Commentators Yitzchak Feldman and Moshe Weisberg discussed the approaching elections Wednesday evening on Kol Chai’s “Central Edition,” hosted by Shneor Weber, addressing both the political landscape and the opening of the Elul zman across the yeshiva world.

Feldman said that although Israel’s political system is already beginning to shift into election mode, launching a full-scale campaign now would accomplish little within the chareidi community. In his view, starting too early could exhaust voters and dilute campaign messages long before Election Day.

“To start campaigns now is a waste of time, a waste of money, and it will usually have the opposite effect,” Feldman said. “The public is not capable of absorbing a message for more than a week or two and then internalizing it afterward. It dries up, and it won’t last until the ballot box.”

Turning to United Torah Judaism, Feldman said the party traditionally spends considerable time resolving internal disagreements before its campaign can even get underway.

Those disputes, he noted, predate the current crisis surrounding the military draft and typically involve questions over campaign management, the allocation of funds, which advertising firms will be hired, and how responsibilities will be divided between Degel HaTorah and Agudas Yisroel.

“In United Torah Judaism, there are world wars even before the arrangements between Degel and Agudas Yisroel,” Feldman said.

He said reaching agreements over the structure and leadership of the campaign frequently takes considerable time, making an immediate launch of UTJ’s election operation unlikely.

Feldman said Shas could face an even more consequential challenge.

According to the analyst, tensions between the party’s political leadership and the positions of Rav Yitzchak Yosef could become one of the central issues confronting Shas during the coming election campaign.

“It will have a challenge that I don’t know how it will overcome this time,” Feldman said, referring to reports concerning Rav Yitzchak Yosef’s position regarding voting for Shas.

Feldman said the issue appears significant and added that he has heard similar information from additional sources.

Despite the potential difficulty, Feldman predicted that Shas would use the approaching period of Selichos and the Yomim Tovim to try to strengthen its relationship with its traditional voter base before the campaign begins in earnest.

Weisberg agreed that the chareidi street has not yet entered full election mode. He said the atmosphere does not currently resemble an intensive political campaign and predicted that the real election battle will begin only after the Yomim Tovim.

The analysts also discussed the opening of the Elul zman, which is taking place amid continuing tensions and arrests connected to the draft of yeshiva bochurim.

Weisberg said most yeshivos have either already begun the new zman or will do so by the end of the week. Despite the turmoil surrounding the draft issue, he said yeshiva batei medrash are once again filling with bochurim, with numerous institutions expanding to accommodate continued growth.

“I am receiving reports from all the yeshivos. They are building, adding and expanding, and in Ponevezh they are opening the Elul zman with 2,500 bochurim, to the point that there isn’t even room in the dormitories for all the bochurim. There are yeshivos that already started today, some that will start tomorrow, and there are bochurim who remained for weddings on the 30th of Av. But overall, by Shabbos all the yeshivos will be full,” Weisberg said.

{Matzav.com}

Iran has reportedly delivered direct and forceful warnings to Damascus and several other regional capitals in an effort to prevent Syrian military intervention in Lebanon against Hezbollah.

Iran’s Tasnim news agency cited a report Thursday by the Lebanese media outlet U News, which said Tehran informed Turkey, Iraq, Qatar and Saudi Arabia that any Syrian move against Hezbollah, under American pressure, would lead to a broad regional confrontation fought on Syrian territory.

The warning to Damascus was delivered through Turkey and included a threat that “the Iranian missile response will target more than 100 strategic sites in Syria, including the presidential palace.”

The report comes after the IDF warned in January that Iran, together with additional hostile elements, was working to assassinate Syria’s new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa. The warning was issued amid the opening of contacts between Israel and Syria and was based on security information indicating that al-Sharaa faced genuine threats and was being forced to devote significant efforts to protecting himself and stabilizing his government.

Against the backdrop of negotiations between Israel and Syria, Israeli defense officials have maintained that the lessons of October 7 require continued IDF presence inside Syrian territory. In recent months, several discussions led by the defense minister and senior security officials concluded with the position that Israel should not withdraw from Syrian territory or the Keter Hermon area, which is viewed as a first line of protection for Israeli communities along the border.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

RIYADH (VINnews)— A 564-kilometer highway carved through the world’s largest sand desert has become a critical alternative trade route for Gulf states amid escalating concerns over the Strait of Hormuz.

The road, stretching from the Batha Haradh intersection in Saudi Arabia to the Omani border crossing, cost roughly $533 million to construct. Workers logged more than 3.3 million hours, operated 750 specialized machines and removed 150 million cubic meters of sand while dunes continued to shift beneath them. It opened in late 2021 with the goals of boosting trade and facilitating pilgrimage traffic, reducing what had been an 18-hour journey through the United Arab Emirates to about six hours.

The conflict in the region has elevated the highway’s strategic value. In March, Dubai Customs and Oman launched a bonded corridor routing goods through Omani ports. Customs declarations surged from about 12,000 that month to nearly 100,000 in April. Sharjah followed with its own agreement in May.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has predicted the strait itself “would become just another body of water within two years.” Every kilometer of asphalt across the Empty Quarter represents a concrete wager that he is correct.

Israel’s Health Ministry issued a public warning Thursday against consuming any mineral water products sold under the “Alaska” brand, after inspectors discovered the products had been brought into Israel from Palestinian Authority-controlled territory without the required approvals.

The warning applies to all bottle sizes and expiration dates of “Alaska – Natural Mineral Water.”

According to the ministry, inspectors from the Northern District Food Service discovered the products during a routine inspection. Officials said the water had entered Israel unlawfully and without the necessary authorization.

As a result, the ministry said the conditions under which the water was produced and its safety are unknown, and the products are not subject to Health Ministry supervision.

The product is described as mineral water treated through reverse osmosis and ozonation and is manufactured or imported by Ein Asia Mineral Water Company.

The Health Ministry urged the public not to consume the products and reminded consumers to purchase food and beverages only from recognized sources and authorized retailers.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Starting Wednesday, the grease-resistant coating on a pizza box sold anywhere in the European Union has to meet a chemical limit that did not exist the day before — the first piece of a law that will eventually reach every package placed on the EU market, including those shipped in from the United States.

The Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation takes effect Aug. 12, setting bloc-wide caps on PFAS, the so-called forever chemicals, in food-contact packaging, along with targets to cut waste, particularly oil-derived plastics. Manufacturers must also supply information letting authorities trace packaging back to its source if problems surface.

PFAS are in food packaging for a practical reason. The chemicals repel water and grease, which is why they have been used in takeaway containers, bakery paper and pizza boxes. They also show up in fast-food wrappers and microwave popcorn bags. They do not break down naturally, can contaminate water, air, soil and food, and researchers have linked their accumulation in humans to several cancers, kidney disease, immune disorders, pregnancy complications and developmental problems in infants.

The scale of what the law is trying to fix explains its reach. Packaging waste in the EU has risen more than 20% over the past decade, driven by online shopping and grab-and-go habits, and packaging accounts for roughly 40% of Europe’s plastic consumption — a dependence an EU official described as an economic vulnerability to major oil disruptions such as the Iran war. Europeans generate 180 kilograms of packaging waste per person annually, of which 35.3 kilograms was fossil-fuel-derived plastic, and only 42% was recycled in 2023. Without action, packaging waste was projected to grow 19% by 2030, with plastic packaging waste up as much as 46%.

For American exporters, the important structural point is that this is a regulation rather than a directive. It applies directly in all 27 member states with no national transposition, replacing a framework that let individual countries interpret obligations differently, and it covers any business inside or outside the EU that sells packaged goods into the bloc. A U.S. food manufacturer no longer faces 27 versions of the rules — it faces one, and compliance is not optional for market access.

The heaviest requirements are still ahead. A new EU-wide waste-sorting label arrives in 2028, and the most consequential measures land in 2030. The bloc is targeting a 5% waste cut by 2030 and 15% by 2040 against 2018 levels, with packaging required to be recyclable in an economically viable way, reuse targets, bans on certain single-use formats, a ceiling on empty space inside packages, and mandatory deposit-return schemes for cans and plastic bottles. Minimum recycled-content requirements for plastic packaging also begin Jan. 1, 2030, and member states must collect at least 90% of single-use plastic bottles and metal beverage containers by 2029.

The law progressively bans packaging judged excessive — double-bottom overwraps, boxes inside boxes, individual mini-portions and hard-to-recycle multilayer plastics — and prohibits single-use plastic packaging for fruits and vegetables that can be sold loose.

Brussels is signaling a soft landing on enforcement. The EU official said non-compliant products should not be pulled immediately and that member states should issue warnings rather than penalties, giving companies time to correct problems. The Commission will open a consultation on harmonized sorting labels later this year.

The commercial effect is a supply-chain problem before it is a legal one. Removing PFAS from a grease-resistant container means requalifying the barrier material, which changes how the box performs with hot food, how it runs through converting equipment, and what it costs. Companies selling into Europe need to redesign product lines, validate recyclability and adopt PFAS-free barriers to keep market access. Suppliers of bagasse, molded fiber and coated paperboard alternatives stand to gain; converters running legacy fluorochemical coatings do not.

A separate EU law regulating plastic waste exports took effect in May, aimed at ensuring the material is handled sustainably. Much of Europe’s plastic waste has been shipped to third countries for decades, and often dumped.

The regulation formally entered into force in February 2025, giving industry an 18-month runway before the first obligations bite this week.

JBizNews Desk | Brussels

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

GAZA CITY (VINnews) — Jamal Mahmoud Abu Kamil, the director of police for Gaza Governorate, was killed Thursday when an Israeli airstrike hit his vehicle in southwestern Gaza City, Palestinian officials and medical sources said.

Abu Kamil, 43, was killed on Al-Rashid Street, according to the Gaza Interior Ministry. Several other people were wounded in the strike, medical sources said.

The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the reported strike in Gaza City. It said separately that an airstrike in Khan Younis killed a Hamas company commander who was allegedly planning attacks against Israeli forces.

The strikes came after a weeklong pause in Israeli airstrikes and as negotiations continue over a U.S.-backed proposal for Hamas to disarm and for Israeli forces to gradually withdraw from Gaza.

Some 10,000 yeshiva bochurim from across Eretz Yisroel gathered in Beit Shemesh for a massive “Talmudo B’Yado” gathering organized by Ichud Bnei Hayeshivos, featuring addresses from leading gedolim, words of chizuk ahead of Elul, and a musical program with some of the most prominent names in Jewish music.

The event was held at the municipal amphitheater in Beit Shemesh, with the participation of roshei yeshiva, rabbonim and public officials. The gathering took on particular significance amid the ongoing upheaval surrounding the draft of yeshiva bochurim, with the gedolim urging the thousands in attendance to remain steadfast in their Torah learning.

Beginning in the afternoon, dozens of buses arrived at the sprawling venue from communities throughout Eretz Yisroel. The amphitheater was divided into designated sections for the various yeshivos represented at the gathering.

The event was organized by Ichud Bnei Hayeshivos, led by Rav Yehuda Weissfish, in conjunction with the Bais Shemesh municipality and Mayor Shmuel Greenberg.

The evening began with a special musical production titled “Ashira Uzo,” featuring noted composer Rav Hillel Paley and Rav Mordechai Orlansky. The presentation focused on the traditional nusach hatefillah and niggunim associated with the yeshiva world as preparations begin for the Yamim Noraim.

The musical portions of the evening also featured Mordechai Ben David, Yeedle Werdyger, Bentzi Stein and conductor and arranger Yoeli Dickman, who performed before the thousands of bochurim.

The emotional high point came with the arrival of the gedolei Yisroel, led by Rav Dov Landau, Rav Moshe Hillel Hirsch, Rav Meir Tzvi Bergman, Rav Berel Povarsky, and Rav Dovid Cohen.

As the gedolim entered the amphitheater, the approximately 10,000 bochurim rose to their feet and welcomed them with powerful singing in a stirring display of kavod haTorah.

The gedolim delivered words of chizuk in preparation for Chodesh Elul, addressing the importance of strengthening limud haTorah and remaining firmly attached to the bais medrash.

Their remarks also addressed the difficult situation facing the yeshiva world amid the ongoing draft crisis. The gedolim called upon bnei yeshiva not to weaken in their commitment to Torah despite the current circumstances, but instead to intensify their learning and increase their dedication to Torah during this challenging period.

Also participating were rabbonim from throughout Beit Shemesh, along with roshei yeshiva, mashgichim, neighborhood rabbonim, dayanim and morei horaah.

Public officials in attendance included MKs Moshe Gafni and Uri Maklev, Bais Shemesh Mayor Shmuel Greenberg, members of the Bais Shemesh City Council and other public figures.

Toward the conclusion of the program, Yeedle Werdyger took the stage to perform several of his well-known songs.

After hours of Torah, chizuk and song, the massive gathering concluded, with the thousands of bnei yeshiva boarding buses for communities across Eretz Yisroel as they prepared for the opening of the Elul zman and their return to the halls of the yeshivos.

{Matzav.com}

Askonim who work closely with government agencies on immigration-related matters are warning members of the frum community not to assume that domestic air travel is automatically safe for someone whose immigration status has expired, remains unresolved, or is otherwise complicated.

The warning comes amid growing concern among those assisting individuals and families with immigration cases over enforcement activity at airports across the United States — including situations involving travelers flying entirely within the country.

Their message is simple: If there is any question about your current immigration status, speak with a qualified immigration attorney before going to the airport.

Of particular concern are individuals who entered the United States legally but later overstayed their authorized period of stay, as well as those awaiting decisions on extensions, changes of status, adjustment of status applications, or other immigration filings.

Those involved say one of the biggest misconceptions they are encountering is the belief that simply having an immigration application pending automatically protects someone from immigration enforcement.

That is not necessarily the case.

“People hear that someone filed an extension or another application and assume that means everything is fine until USCIS gives an answer,” one Askon involved in assisting with immigration-related cases told YWN. “Every case is different. Filing something does not automatically mean that a person has lawful status or that there is no risk of enforcement.”

Another community advocate who works closely with agencies on immigration-related matters said the concern has become significant enough that people with questionable status should not make travel decisions based on what friends or relatives experienced in the past.

“Someone may have flown domestically many times before without a problem,” he said. “That does not mean the next time will be the same. If your status is not completely clear, don’t rely on what happened previously or what happened to somebody else. Have your individual case reviewed.”

Those familiar with the issue emphasized that the warning does not mean everyone with a pending immigration application is unlawfully present or at risk of being detained. Many individuals with pending cases remain in lawful status or have separate authorization permitting them to remain in the United States.

Rather, the concern is for people who mistakenly believe that the existence of a pending application, receipt notice, or other immigration paperwork by itself guarantees that they are protected from enforcement.

The issue can be particularly relevant in the frum community, where families frequently travel domestically for simchos, Yom Tov, summer vacations, medical treatment, business and family obligations. A person may understandably view a flight between two U.S. cities very differently from international travel.

But Askonim involved with government agencies say that anyone with an overstay or unresolved status should no longer assume that the domestic nature of a flight means there is no immigration-related risk at an airport.

They are therefore urging people not to wait until a planned trip — and certainly not until arriving at the airport — to determine where they stand.

Anyone who has overstayed a visa or ESTA admission, is waiting for an extension or change of status, has a pending immigration proceeding, or otherwise has uncertainty regarding his or her authorization to remain in the United States should consult a competent immigration attorney who can review the specific case and advise whether domestic air travel could present a risk.

The warning is not intended to cause panic, those involved stressed, but rather to prevent people from making assumptions about complicated immigration situations based on past travel experiences or the experiences of others.

The bottom line: If you are not 100% sure where you stand, have your case reviewed before you fly.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Seats on the Tel Aviv–New York route are about to become much easier to buy, and that is not bringing the price down. Delta Air Lines returns to Ben Gurion Airport in the first week of September with a daily New York flight, and United Airlines follows a day later with two daily flights to Newark on Boeing 787 Dreamliners. Both carriers pulled out of Israel in March at the start of the war with Iran. Their planes come back days before Rosh Hashanah, straight into the one stretch of the calendar when the route is most heavily booked, and the extra capacity is being absorbed by holiday demand rather than translating into cheaper tickets.

That timing is the whole story of the fare picture this fall. Israelis and American Jews travel in a compressed window between Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot, and airlines price into it accordingly. A year ago the constraint was inventory: economy seats on the New York run sold out months ahead, and travelers who waited were simply shut out. This year, according to the fare index maintained by Israeli travel-tech firm lastminute.co.il, which tracks nonstop Tel Aviv–New York pricing, seats remain available across the September holidays for buyers shopping close to departure. What has not improved is the number on the ticket.

A single economy fare on the route currently runs anywhere from $1,460 to $3,046, and the cheapest carrier changes depending on the departure date. In early September, a coach ticket was available on Arkia for $1,722, on Delta for $2,176 and on El Al for $2,186. Over Rosh Hashanah the Israeli carriers came down slightly, with Arkia at $1,460 and El Al at $1,722, while Delta held at $2,134. Yom Kippur inverted the pattern: the Israeli airlines were asking roughly $3,000 and Delta had seats near $2,500. United was excluded from the comparison because of availability problems on its inventory.

Business class is where the shortage still bites. Premium cabins on the route remain thin, and thin supply produces violent pricing. In early September, business fares ranged from $5,741 on Arkia to $7,365 on El Al. Around Yom Kippur the spread widened to between $6,122 on Arkia and a peak of $9,994 on United — a gap of nearly $4,000 on the same route in the same week.

For travelers, the practical fix is flexibility rather than patience. Because the price on any given flight is being set as much by how many seats remain in that specific cabin as by overall demand, moving a departure by a day or two, or switching carriers, can change the total cost of a trip by hundreds of dollars in economy and thousands in business. Assaf Greenberg, vice president of marketing at lastminute.co.il, said economy availability has improved after a long stretch of scarcity but that the market is still far from returning to full normality, and that real-time comparison across dates and airlines matters more this season than in a normal year.

The structural fix is more metal on the route, and it is arriving slowly. Israir has purchased an Airbus A330 for $85 million and is awaiting final regulatory approvals to launch its own Tel Aviv–New York service, which would put a fourth Israeli-linked competitor into the market alongside El Al and Arkia. American Airlines, which has not flown regular Tel Aviv service since October 2023, had been scheduled to return in January 2027 and pushed that date back to March 2027 earlier this month. Until those seats show up, the corridor is carried by two American carriers and two Israeli ones during the busiest travel weeks of the Jewish year.

Demand itself is softening at the margins even as prices hold. New York’s share of total Israeli holiday-season flight demand has slipped to 2% this year from 2.4% in 2025, and overall demand for the holiday period is down from last year. Bookings already on the books tell a different story about the month itself: passenger volume from Tel Aviv to New York in September is running 29% above August.

The broader airport picture is strong. Roughly 2.6 million passengers are expected to move through Ben Gurion in August, with 47 airlines operating there. The Israel Airports Authority lists Greece, Cyprus, Italy, the United Arab Emirates, the United States and Germany as the leading destination countries. On weekdays this month the airport is handling between 90,000 and 95,000 arriving and departing passengers a day, and on several days the count is expected to pass 100,000.

JBizNews Desk | New York

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

NEW YORK (VINnews) — A special edition of New York Magazine celebrating the rise of Arab and Muslim culture in New York has drawn sharp criticism from Jewish organizations, pro-Israel advocates and former contributors, who argue that the publication portrays Zionism as a form of oppression, embraces allegations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and erases the history of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa.

The issue, titled “Habibi City,” features a six-part series exploring the South West Asian and North African (SWANA) community in New York. In its introduction, the magazine states that while the community has long been present, “over the past decade, and particularly following the war in Gaza, a new generation of artists, chefs, comedians, designers and others has built unprecedented cultural and political capital.” According to the editors, this cultural renaissance was “born out of the pain of the genocide in Gaza.”

The cover essay, written by author Zaina Arafat, presents the aftermath of October 7 primarily as the catalyst for the community’s political and cultural awakening rather than focusing on the Hamas massacre itself.

“In the months after October 7, we became more visible,” Arafat wrote. “We protested, boycotted and wrote opinion pieces. Slowly, out of that resistance, a cultural ecosystem began to flourish. Protests led to friendships, friendships led to dinner parties, and those led to new creative collaborations.”

Arafat argues that belonging to the SWANA community means embracing a shared set of beliefs, including that Palestinians deserve human rights, that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza constitutes “genocide,” and that social justice should take precedence over capitalist values.

Toward the end of the essay, she writes that members of the community continue to confront “xenophobia, Islamophobia and Zionism, along with the consequences of speaking out against them.” Critics say placing Zionism alongside prejudice and discrimination crossed a significant line.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) rejected that characterization, stating that equating Zionism with xenophobia and Islamophobia is fundamentally inaccurate.

“Xenophobia and Islamophobia are forms of prejudice directed at people because of their identity, ethnicity, nationality or religion,” the organization said. “Zionism is not. Zionism is the Jewish people’s movement for self-determination and the establishment of a state in its ancestral homeland.”

The controversy also extended to one of the issue’s food features, which examined Arab, Iranian and Israeli restaurants in New York.

Discussing Israeli cuisine, the article stated that its most popular dishes were Middle Eastern, Arab and North African in origin, noting that some were brought by Jewish immigrants while many were Palestinian. It also quoted an Israeli food editor who had previously argued that Israeli cuisine is based primarily on Palestinian and various Jewish diaspora culinary traditions.

The article further claimed that Israeli chefs in New York had long been able to promote their identity more freely than restaurateurs from other parts of the Middle East, particularly in the years following the September 11 attacks, allowing them to charge premium prices.

Former employees of the Israeli restaurants K’Far and Laser Wolf described the establishments as “safe spaces for Zionism.” One former employee alleged hearing customers say, “We should bomb them all from the air,” adding that the atmosphere struck him as “bloodthirsty.” Another claimed, “I realized everything we were doing was propaganda.”

A Palestinian restaurant owner argued that some Israeli restaurateurs are now distancing themselves from explicitly identifying their cuisine as Israeli because of Israel’s actions in Gaza.

“We’re expressing our national identity more openly, while they’re trying to identify less with theirs because their country is committing genocide,” she was quoted as saying. “If they want to distance themselves from that, it says everything.”

The Palestinian restaurant Ayat received favorable coverage despite featuring a tourist map labeling all of Israel as “Palestine.”

A consultant involved in preparing the food feature later told the New York Post that it amounted to “a hit piece against Jewish and Israeli chefs disguised as an article about Middle Eastern food and culture,” criticizing the magazine’s fact-checking process as deeply flawed.

The advocacy group End Jew Hatred described the issue as “dangerous,” arguing that it increasingly defines belonging to the Middle East according to one’s political position on Gaza while effectively excluding Mizrahi Jews whose families lived throughout the Middle East and North Africa for generations.

The organization also criticized the issue’s treatment of October 7, saying it highlighted the growth of pro-Palestinian activism without acknowledging “the massacre of Jews that actually occurred that day” or the ongoing threats posed by Hamas, Iran and Iranian-backed terrorist organizations.

“Jewish identity is not theirs to erase, and Jewish history will not be rewritten to fit a political narrative,” the group said.

Attorney Abraham Hamra, a Syrian-born Jew living in New York, argued that excluding more than 120,000 New Yorkers of Middle Eastern Jewish heritage from the region’s story “is not an accidental omission, it is exclusion disguised as inclusion.”

“As a Syrian Jew, I know what cultural erasure looks like,” he said.

Former New York Magazine contributor Jordana Horn announced she had canceled her subscription in protest.

“You are deliberately fueling hostility toward Jews in this city,” she wrote. “I have no intention of helping finance it.”

Jewish publication Tablet Magazine summarized the criticism with a pointed observation: “If you don’t believe Israel committed genocide, then, according to this issue, you’re not Middle Eastern.”

An elderly Rav was assaulted by an antisemitic thug in Rome’s historic Jewish Quarter on Wednesday evening.

The Rav said that the assailant, who spoke fluent Italian, yelled at him about Islam and religion, spat at him, cursed him and then began shoving him after he asked him to move away.

The incident ended when a waiter from a nearby restaurant intervened and warned the attacker that the police would be called, prompting him to leave the area.

The Rav chose not to file a formal complaint with police following the incident.

The assault comes amid a series of antisemitic attacks in Rome, including two attacks on Shabbos against a 22-year-old Jewish tourist from France.

The tourist, who wears a kippah, said that the first incident occurred on Friday, August 7, at about 8 p.m. in Piazza Cairoli in central Rome. He said the suspect sprayed him in the face with pepper spray and then shouted, “Free Palestine.”

The next day, the tourist was attacked again near the site of the first attack. He was surrounded by four assailants who kicked him and yelled “Free Palestine.”

The tourist identified one of the four assailants as the same man who had attacked him the previous day. Italian police later arrested the man, an Algerian citizen with a criminal record, and are searching for the other suspects.

Victor Fadlun, president of Rome’s Jewish community, said, “Sadly, the hunting season for Jews has reached the streets of Rome as well.”

Israel’s Ambassador to Italy, Yonatan Peled, said that when a Jewish person can no longer walk the streets of a city without fear of being attacked, it is no longer merely a matter of the safety of minorities but of “everyone’s freedom.”

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — An explosion at the Dutch port of Rotterdam on Thursday killed at least one person and injured several others, city police said.

Police said the blast at Europe’s biggest port happened late Thursday morning and that a crime scene has been set up to try to establish what caused it. In a post on social media, they said the explosion “appears to be a workplace accident for the time being,” without elaborating.

At the scene, Rotterdam police spokesperson Daan Valkenburg told The Associated Press that no definitive conclusions had been drawn and that “we are keeping all possibilities open.”

The explosion occurred at a refinery and fuel terminal operated by Gunvor Energy in an industrial section of the sprawling port. Dutch broadcaster NOS said that a maintenance team had been working on a section of pipes there.

Rotterdam’s emergency services coordinator also reported a major power failure in another part of the port and said that a transformer had caught fire under unexplained circumstances. Several companies halted their operations and evacuated workers.

By mid-afternoon, power was fully restored to the area, where a number of oil and gas companies are based. Emergency services later ruled out any link between the blackout and the explosion.

Israeli security forces arrested a 70-year-old Palestinian imam near Me’aras Hamachpeilah in Chevron on Wednesday on suspicion of inciting terrorism and encouraging attacks against Israelis, as more than 14,000 people visited the site under heightened security.

The arrest took place approximately 200 meters from the Me’aras Hamachpeilah complex while large numbers of visitors were gathered at the site and in the Yitzchak Hall.

According to police, the operation was carried out by officers from the Shai District’s “Chetz Yehuda” special patrol unit, acting on intelligence provided by the district’s operations center and in coordination with the IDF Central Command.

The suspect, a Chevron resident who serves as an imam in his local area, was arrested while performing gardening work in the yard of his home.

Police said an initial review of investigative material raised suspicions that the imam had been actively disseminating inflammatory material on social media.

According to authorities, the suspect allegedly published posts encouraging terrorist attacks, violence and public disturbances in Yehuda and Shomron and other areas.

During a search of the suspect’s home, security forces seized his cellphone and a laptop computer. Police said the electronic devices will be examined as part of the ongoing investigation.

The imam was taken into custody and transferred to the Shai District for questioning.

The arrest came amid a major security operation surrounding Wednesday’s tefillos at Me’aras Hamachpeilah. Hundreds of police officers, Border Police personnel, IDF soldiers and volunteers from the Chevron area were deployed to secure the site and the thousands of visitors attending the events.

{Matzav.com}

WARSAW (AP) — A Russian plot to kill a Ukrainian American citizen in Warsaw was thwarted by Poland before it could be carried out, the Polish prime minister said Thursday.

It was the first time that “someone on the order of Russia” sought to attack an American citizen on the territory of another NATO country, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said.

A suspect, who was allegedly recruited by Russia’s secret services, was detained by Polish authorities on Aug. 7.

The American Ukrainian citizen “was uncomfortable for the Putin regime,” Tusk said in a news conference.

The operation was carried out in cooperation with U.S. services, said Tomasz Siemoniak, Poland’s minister overseeing intelligence services. He said the targeted victim was a U.S. citizen “of Ukrainian origin.” Officials did not immediately provide further details.

The Russian Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s plan to give officers gloves that deliver painful electric shocks faced criticism Wednesday from Democratic elected officials and civil rights advocates, who called it unnecessary and cruel.

ICE plans to spend between $10 million and $20 million to outfit officers and agents with “conductive distraction and de-escalation devices,” according to a notice published Monday and revealed first by The Associated Press.

The devices known as the G.L.O.V.E., which stands for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, are normal patrol gloves until an officer presses a button to activate its electrical mode. They must be applied directly to someone’s skin to produce a voltage that causes pain, which is intended to gain compliance from people who are resisting. Unlike Tasers, they do not leave burn or contact marks.

New York AG says she is ‘outraged’ by plan
The size of the purchase suggests ICE plans to give the device to most or all of its officers. The gloves have been used by local departments more often in jails than in the streets, where ICE officers have increasingly used force to extract people from cars and faced protests over their actions carrying out President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

“We are outraged,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said at a news conference Wednesday, where she warned that ICE officers who misuse the gloves in her state could face criminal and civil consequences.

The Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, issued a statement that did not mention the product specifically or explain why it had been chosen.

“ICE is constantly assessing the needs of our officers in the field to ensure they have the tools and equipment necessary to safely arrest and remove criminal illegal aliens from our country,” the statement said. “Every decision is made with careful consideration and appropriately reviewed to ensure that any technology ICE utilizes is consistent with all applicable law enforcement policies and standards.”

Lawsuit alleges shocks from gloves contributed to man’s death
While the devices are marketed as nonlethal and safe for the heart, a pending lawsuit alleges a 43-year-old man died in 2024 after he was shocked 27 times with the gloves and 13 more times by a Taser at a jail in Richmond, Kentucky. An internal investigation found two of the glove shocks lasted 45 and 99 seconds apiece — far more than the manufacturer’s recommended 15-second limit.

“These actions not only inflicted unnecessary pain but also heightened the risk of serious health complications,” the investigation by the Madison County Detention Center found, according to court documents.

An Associated Press review found two other lawsuits alleging injuries from the gloves, including a man with heart problems who was shocked at a Las Vegas trade show and a defendant who said he was laughed at after he was unnecessarily shocked in court. Both cases have been dismissed.

Several Democrats in Congress, including Reps. Pramila Jayapal, Maxwell Frost and Delia Ramirez, said on social media that ICE did not need another weapon.

“This won’t make anyone safer and in fact just gives ICE another dangerous tool to target citizens and immigrants alike,” Jayapal wrote on X.

Former ICE leader, law professor worry gloves will be misused
The manufacturer warns the devices should not be used against some populations that ICE agents routinely encounter: the elderly, small children, pregnant women and the severely handicapped. The device’s user manual also warns it should not be used in response to verbal defiance, or for punishment, torture or horseplay.

“It’s too easy for this to get misused, against a population that doesn’t pose a threat,” former ICE acting director John Sandweg said Wednesday in an interview on MS NOW.

The maker of the Taser recently phased out its drive-stun feature, a similar pain compliance tool that had been misused by some officers.

Michael Mannheimer, a law professor at Northern Kentucky University who has written about police use-of-force and issues in federal law enforcement operations, agreed the gloves raised concerns about officers using disproportionate force.

“One concern I would have is if ICE agents have this at their immediate disposal, will they use it more than they should? Will they jump over lesser force that could be appropriate and successful to attain compliance and instead use this first?” he said.

The notice published in a DHS database indicated the solicitation for a no-bid contract to purchase the gloves could be released as early as Friday, and the contract would last through March 31, 2027. The founder of Compliant Technologies LLC, which manufactures the gloves, declined comment.

For more than a century, Delaware was the automatic choice for corporate America. Build a major company, prepare for an IPO or create a complex corporate structure, and Delaware was where you incorporated.

That assumption is breaking.

More than 60 public companies worth a combined $3 trillion-plus have left Delaware over the past two years, with Texas and Nevada emerging as the biggest challengers. The departures are no longer a handful of angry founders. They are becoming a measurable shift in where American companies choose to put their legal home. 

And the list is still growing. DoorDash disclosed Tuesday that shareholders controlling 54.2% of its voting power approved moving the company from Delaware to Nevada. Its board unanimously supported the move, saying Nevada offered a more predictable, statute-based legal environment. 

A company’s state of incorporation has little to do with where its offices or employees are located. It determines something potentially more important: which laws govern the company and which courts decide fights over mergers, executive compensation, shareholders and board decisions.

For decades, Delaware dominated because companies knew what they were getting. Its specialized Court of Chancery and enormous body of corporate case law gave boards, investors and lawyers something businesses value enormously: predictability.

Then Elon Musk helped turn that advantage into a national debate.

In 2024, Delaware’s Court of Chancery voided Musk’s roughly $56 billion Tesla compensation package. Tesla subsequently moved its incorporation to Texas, and other prominent companies began reconsidering Delaware as well. 

Coinbase, Roblox, Dropbox and Simon Property Group are among the companies that have moved or pursued moves away from Delaware. Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square shifted to Nevada, while companies tied to the Dolan family — including AMC Networks, Madison Square Garden Sports and others — also chose Nevada.

Now the movement is showing up beyond companies already incorporated in Delaware.

ExxonMobil chose Texas as its new corporate home in March, moving from New Jersey rather than Delaware. That distinction matters: Texas is no longer merely competing for companies angry with Delaware. It is competing to become the first choice for corporate incorporation itself. 

The battle is particularly important among new public companies.

For years, Delaware dominated U.S. IPO incorporations. That advantage has weakened as founders, boards and venture investors increasingly consider Texas and Nevada before a company ever reaches the stock market.

The reasons are straightforward.

Companies leaving Delaware frequently point to litigation risk, legal uncertainty, director liability and costs. Founder-controlled companies have been especially willing to move because they are more exposed to lawsuits challenging executive compensation and transactions involving controlling shareholders.

Texas and Nevada saw an opportunity and moved quickly.

Texas created a specialized Business Court for complex commercial disputes and adopted corporate rules designed to give management greater protection and make shareholder litigation more difficult. Texas can now restrict some lawsuits from smaller shareholders and offers companies mechanisms designed to keep internal corporate disputes inside its own courts. 

Nevada has built its pitch around strong statutory protections for directors and officers and a corporate-law system that gives judges less room to second-guess management.

In other words, both states are selling something Delaware once owned almost exclusively: certainty.

Delaware has fought back.

In 2025, lawmakers passed Senate Bill 21, one of the biggest changes to the state’s corporate law in decades, providing companies and controlling shareholders clearer protections for conflicted transactions and limiting some avenues shareholders previously used to challenge corporate decisions.

But the departures have continued.

That does not mean Delaware is finished.

Its greatest advantage remains extraordinarily difficult to copy: generations of corporate case law. Lawyers can often predict how a Delaware court will treat a merger agreement, shareholder dispute or complicated contract because similar cases have already been decided.

Texas and Nevada simply do not yet have that depth.

A board leaving Delaware may therefore gain stronger statutory protection while giving up some legal predictability.

That trade-off is increasingly becoming part of investor negotiations.

Institutional investors and venture firms are paying closer attention to incorporation because the choice can determine how much power shareholders have if something goes wrong. What once amounted to routine paperwork is becoming a governance decision that founders may have to defend.

And Texas is aiming much higher than incorporation.

The state has been building a broader financial ecosystem to challenge traditional centers of American finance. The Texas Stock Exchange began operating as a trading venue in July, while Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange have expanded their Texas presence. Texas also surpassed California this year as the state with the most Fortune 500 headquarters. 

The bigger threat to Delaware, therefore, is not simply the companies that have already left.

It is the companies that never arrive.

Every startup incorporated in Nevada, every founder choosing Texas and every IPO that skips Delaware weakens an advantage the state spent more than a century building.

Delaware remains America’s corporate capital.

But for the first time in generations, it has serious competition.

And $3 trillion worth of departing companies is difficult to dismiss as noise.

JBizNews Desk | New York

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

Ford is preparing to expand U.S. production of Lincoln vehicles as the automaker moves toward ending imports from China for American customers, a move Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick highlighted while discussing the Trump administration’s push to expand domestic manufacturing.

Lutnick joined FOX Business’ Larry Kudlow on “Kudlow” to discuss the Trump administration’s auto tariffs and efforts to expand domestic manufacturing.

“They’re bringing their manufacturing home,” Lutnick said. “Ford is going to rock us with bringing manufacturing back to America.”

Ford plans to expand U.S. production of Lincoln vehicles beginning in 2030 and eventually stop importing vehicles from China for the luxury brand’s American customers. The company expects the expansion to generate thousands of direct and indirect U.S. jobs, but has not disclosed how much it plans to invest or which plants will receive the additional production.

Lincoln’s U.S. lineup currently includes the China-built Nautilus. Ford has not said whether Nautilus production will move to the U.S. under the plan or identified which China-imported vehicles will be affected.

The automaker already has a sizable U.S. manufacturing footprint. Ford said it assembled more than 2 million vehicles in the U.S. in 2025 and employs approximately 56,300 hourly manufacturing workers in the country.

Lutnick pointed to Ford and other automakers as examples of companies increasing their focus on American manufacturing, and argued that tariffs are helping drive investment and jobs back to the U.S.

“Thousands of jobs, thousands and thousands of jobs coming back to America because of these tariffs on automotives,” Lutnick said.

He also emphasized the need to prepare younger workers for increasingly automated manufacturing jobs.

“We’re gonna have to train young people for these high-tech jobs,” Lutnick said. “We are going high-tech in America.”

Lutnick said the administration’s focus extends beyond final assembly to building advanced manufacturing capacity inside the United States.

“We are going to build these factories here in America, and that’s the key,” he said.

Brittany Miller contributed to this report.

The FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies reportedly classified prominent figures including Mike Pompeo, Bill Barr, Rudy Giuliani and several Republican lawmakers as potential “conduits” of Russian disinformation, according to newly released documents detailing a secret counterintelligence operation launched during the 2020 election.

Just the News reported that a spreadsheet recovered from U.S. intelligence files and released Wednesday by the White House Government Transparency Task Force contained dozens of names connected in various ways to the Biden family’s Ukraine dealings and the 2019 impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.

The document reportedly separated individuals and organizations into categories, including those considered “targets” of Russian disinformation and others characterized as “conduits” through which such information could spread.

According to the report, Democratic figures including Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Barack Obama, as well as George Soros, appeared on the list as “targets.” Pompeo and Barr, meanwhile, were reportedly classified as “conduits,” along with conservative media organizations and personalities including Fox News, One America News, filmmaker Michael Caputo and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) were also reportedly identified as “conduits” in the intelligence records.

The spreadsheet, according to Just the News, contained more than six dozen American and foreign individuals and organizations that became connected to the controversy surrounding the Biden family, Ukraine and the first impeachment proceedings against Trump.

An administration official told the outlet that the classifications were connected to a previously secret counterintelligence effort known as “Round River,” which was launched as the 2020 presidential election was underway.

The newly disclosed material also reportedly sheds additional light on the FBI’s use of confidential sources in examining allegations involving the Biden family.

According to the report, a separate FBI letter released publicly indicates that the bureau has identified at least 14 confidential informants who supplied derogatory information concerning the Bidens.

FBI Director Kash Patel addressed the matter in a letter sent to the White House Government Transparency Task Force, saying the bureau is now examining whether information gathered through Round River was subsequently used by the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force to affect other investigations.

Patel said investigators are specifically examining whether the task force used information from the counterintelligence assessment in a manner that caused investigators to focus selectively on confidential human sources whose reporting involved the Biden family.

“While our internal review of the FITF is not yet complete, we are investigating whether the FITF used information learned from the Round River assessment to undermine or influence ongoing investigations by only focusing on the subset of CHS’s (Confidential Human Sources) involving the Bidens,” Patel reportedly said in the letter.

Patel also said that the Foreign Influence Task Force has since been terminated under his leadership, while the FBI’s internal examination of its previous activities remains underway.

{Matzav.com}

https://thelakewoodscoop.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/wa-1786630254307-z7p8x6.mp4

EasyJet cabin crews in France will strike Aug. 15 and 16, creating a weekend disruption risk for American travelers who may successfully cross the Atlantic only to lose the European connection that was supposed to take them to their final destination.

The walkout was announced Wednesday by the SNPC-FO union after negotiations with EasyJet over working conditions failed to produce an agreement. EasyJet said it had made proposals addressing employee concerns, urged the unions to call off the strike and would work to minimize disruption through options including free transfers and refunds.

The important distinction for U.S. travelers is that EasyJet does not operate transatlantic flights to the United States.

Instead, Americans commonly fly into major European cities on United, Delta, American, Air France, British Airways and other long-haul carriers, then use EasyJet for a relatively inexpensive onward flight to destinations across France and elsewhere in Europe.

That means a traveler could leave New York, Newark, Miami, Boston or another U.S. city on schedule, land normally in Europe — and then discover that the EasyJet flight completing the trip has been canceled.

The biggest risk comes when the two flights were purchased separately.

If an American buys a transatlantic ticket to Paris, London, Geneva or another European gateway and separately buys an EasyJet ticket onward, the long-haul airline generally has no obligation to protect that separate EasyJet connection.

The traveler can therefore end up physically in Europe but without a flight to the final destination, potentially having to purchase an expensive last-minute ticket, take a train, book a hotel or rearrange the remainder of the trip.

The strike is scheduled for one of the busiest weekends of the European summer travel season, increasing the potential difficulty of finding replacement seats if cancellations become significant.

EasyJet says it will offer affected customers alternatives including free transfers and refunds, but those remedies apply to the EasyJet booking itself. They do not necessarily cover costs created elsewhere in a separately booked itinerary.

For Americans traveling through Europe this weekend, the practical issue is therefore not whether their U.S. flight is operating.

It is whether the second flight waiting for them after they land still exists.

Travelers with EasyJet segments touching France on Aug. 15 or 16 should monitor their bookings closely before leaving the United States and pay particular attention to how much time and flexibility they have if an onward flight disappears.

JBizNews Desk | Paris

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

MICHIGAN (VINnews) – An Arab American advocacy group filed a proposed federal class-action lawsuit on Tuesday against Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, alleging that the defendants facilitated Israeli military operations in Lebanon that damaged property owned by U.S. citizens.

The 79-page complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan by the Dearborn, Mich.-based Arab American Civil Rights League and several plaintiffs who say they own homes, apartments and other property in Lebanon.

The suit alleges that the companies supplied weapons, aircraft, software, parts and heavy equipment to Israel despite knowing, or having reason to know, that those products could be used “in a manner involving unreasonable risk of harm to the persons and property of the plaintiffs.” The complaint also cites the Leahy laws, which restrict U.S. security assistance to foreign military units accused of human-rights violations.

In one example, U.S. citizen Kareem Hassan Jammal claimed that he owned “multiple houses and apartments in Lebanon” that were destroyed during Israeli airstrikes in 2024 and 2026.

While the complaint includes 18 individual plaintiffs who assert ownership interests in property in Lebanon, it contains only a map labeled “Map of 2026 Israeli Aggression in Lebanon” and does not appear to include deeds, title records or other documentation establishing ownership. (JNS sought comment from the ACRL.)

The plaintiffs are represented by attorney Nabih Ayad, the ACRL’s founder and chairman, who served on the Michigan Civil Rights Commission from 2008 to 2011.

The lawsuit seeks injunctive relief, including a “temporary injunction halting the transfer of further instrumentalities” to Israel.

Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport is moving ahead with plans to install Islamic foot-washing facilities inside restrooms in one of its terminals, a roughly $300,000 privately funded project that airport officials say will provide safer and more appropriate facilities for travelers performing ritual washing.

The project was formally registered with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation on July 31, according to state documents outlining the planned construction.

The new facilities, known as Wudu ablution stations, are scheduled to be completed by the end of the year.

“Project consists of adding Ablution stations to existing concourse level restrooms in Terminal D, one Men’s ablution station in existing men’s restroom and one Women’s ablution station in the existing women’s restroom,” the project details read.

According to the regulatory filings, the approximately $300,000 cost of the project will be covered through private funding.

The specially designed stations are intended in part to address a practical problem that can arise when travelers attempt to wash their feet in conventional restroom sinks. Providing dedicated low-level basins can help prevent water from accumulating on restroom floors while also protecting sink counters from damage.

Dallas-Fort Worth would not be the first major American airport to offer such accommodations. Similar low-level washing basins and interfaith facilities are already available at other large U.S. airports, including Chicago O’Hare International Airport.

News of the project nevertheless sparked criticism from some conservatives on social media, who questioned why an American airport was installing facilities specifically associated with Islamic religious practices. Others on the right pushed back against the controversy, arguing that the project should be viewed as a practical response to the needs of passengers at a major international travel hub rather than an endorsement of a particular religion or ideology.

Conservative activist Ryan Fournier was among those urging critics to consider the practical reasons behind the installation.

“People are freaking out over foot-washing stations at DFW, but let’s look at the actual facts before jumping to conclusions. This isn’t about pushing an ideology—it’s basic airport management,” conservative activist Ryan Fournier wrote on social media.

Fournier argued that dedicated washing facilities could actually improve conditions for all travelers using the airport’s bathrooms by discouraging passengers from attempting to wash their feet in ordinary sinks.

“Safety & Plumbing: People washing their feet in standard bathroom sinks creates soaked, slippery floors and breaks the counters. Low-level wudu basins keep the restrooms dry and safe for everyone,” he continued.

He also noted that accommodations of this type are not unprecedented at American transportation hubs serving large numbers of international travelers.

“Standard Infrastructure: DFW is one of the busiest travel hubs on the planet. Major U.S. airports like Chicago O’Hare and Indianapolis have had these and interfaith rooms for years to handle international traffic cleanly,” Fournier added.

Supporters of the project have therefore framed the new facilities primarily as a sanitation and safety measure, arguing that dedicated basins provide a controlled place for travelers who would otherwise use conventional restroom fixtures for ritual washing.

Fournier said the addition is “just about keeping the bathrooms clean and preventing people from slipping on wet tiles. Plain and simple.”

{Matzav.com}

Ford Motor Co. is giving its Louisville Assembly Plant a massive makeover as it prepares to build a new electric truck in 2027.

The automaker is investing $2 billion to transform the roughly 3-million-square-foot Kentucky factory from gas-powered vehicle production to EV manufacturing, according to an announcement from Ford.

The plant will build Ford’s new Fathom midsize electric truck using the company’s Universal EV Production System, which is designed to cut parts, simplify assembly and speed up production.

“It is simply foundationally different from how we have done things before,” Kevin Young, Ford’s advanced program manufacturing chief, said in a statement. “Operators can see everything in front of them and don’t need to bend or reach to do it.”

The Kentucky overhaul is part of a broader $5 billion investment that Ford says will create 4,000 jobs across the Louisville Assembly Plant and BlueOval Battery Park Michigan.

Under the new system, the Fathom will be built in three major sections – the front, rear and battery deck – allowing employees to work on each section simultaneously before joining them together.

Ford is also turning to large aluminum castings that replace what once was dozens of smaller stamped and welded parts.

The new system will allow the Ford Fathom to be assembled 40% faster than products currently built at the Louisville plant, according to the company.

The plant is also getting a major technology upgrade.

Wi-Fi access points have nearly tripled from 385 to 1,080, and Ford says the plant will have the highest level of final-assembly automation of its factories worldwide.

Employees have also been training in Michigan on the new production process, which the company says is designed to make assembly work easier and more efficient.

“We’ve engineered an 84% reduction in reaching over the fender,” Bryce Currie, Ford’s chief manufacturing officer, said in a statement. “The wiring harness is also more than 4,000 feet shorter and 22 pounds lighter than in our first-gen electric SUV, making it much easier to install.”

Ford remains on track to begin prototype builds using production-ready parts in the first quarter of 2027, with Fathom production expected later that year.

Morgan Stanley is not writing a $1.5 trillion check. What the bank committed to on Monday, Aug. 10, is arranging that much money over the next ten years — underwriting stock and bond sales, lending, advising on mergers, and steering client capital toward American technology and infrastructure companies. The bank earns fees on that activity; the money itself comes from investors, funds and lenders it brings to the table.

The program is called the U.S. Innovation Infrastructure Initiative, and Morgan Stanley says it intends to facilitate approximately $1.5 trillion of capital raising, financing, advisory and related investment activity over the next 10 years, timed to America’s 250th anniversary. It pulls together the firm’s advisory, capital markets, wealth management and investment management arms into one effort aimed at clients building companies and infrastructure the bank describes as central to U.S. economic and national security.

The initiative is organized around three buckets. The first covers technologies and businesses in artificial intelligence, advanced computing and software, quantum, semiconductors, data infrastructure, cybersecurity, aerospace and defense technologies, pharmaceuticals, critical minerals and secure supply chains. The second is the physical layer beneath all of it — financing and developing digital, physical and energy infrastructure for an economy that is becoming more compute-intensive and more power-hungry. The third is capital for founders and growth companies, from formation through scale, liquidity, public listings and access to government funding.

That middle bucket is where the real money lives. The compute buildout driving AI is fundamentally a construction and energy problem: data centers, transmission lines, generation capacity, chip fabrication plants and the supply chains that feed them. Those are long-dated, capital-hungry assets that need project finance, private credit and institutional equity rather than venture funding, and arranging that kind of capital is exactly what a full-service investment bank sells.

Dan Simkowitz, Morgan Stanley’s co-president, said the United States is entering a period of significant investment and innovation across technology, infrastructure and strategic industries, framing the anniversary as a moment to look at what will shape the country’s next chapter.

The competitive context matters as much as the number. JPMorgan Chase said last year it would direct $1.5 trillion toward industries that strengthen U.S. economic security and resiliency over the next decade, and Morgan Stanley’s announcement lands on the same figure and the same ten-year horizon. Wall Street’s largest firms are staking out identical territory, which tells you where they expect the fee pool to be: financing the reindustrialization and compute buildout that both parties in Washington have been subsidizing.

For businesses on the receiving end, the practical question is what actually changes. A commitment to facilitate is a commitment of attention and balance sheet capacity, not a fund with money to deploy. What it means in practice is that a semiconductor supplier, a grid equipment maker or a defense-adjacent manufacturer looking to raise capital should find a more organized front door at the bank, with the private-side and public-side teams working the same account instead of pitching separately. Morgan Stanley says the effort will run alongside its existing work with founders and growth companies, including private company research coverage and its Founders Summit.

There is also a wealth-management angle that is easy to miss. Morgan Stanley’s brokerage and advisory business manages trillions for individual clients, and folding that arm into the initiative signals an intent to route retail and high-net-worth money into private infrastructure and growth vehicles — a category that has been opening up to individual investors through interval funds, evergreen structures and private credit products. That is where a large share of the $1.5 trillion is likely to be sourced.

The obvious caution is that these pledges are measured on the bank’s own scorecard. There is no independent audit of what counts toward $1.5 trillion, and a decade of ordinary underwriting and lending to technology and infrastructure clients would go a long way toward the total on its own. A firm of Morgan Stanley’s size arranges enormous volumes of exactly this activity every year without announcing it.

What the announcement does establish is direction. The bank is telling clients, regulators and Washington that it intends to be the intermediary of record for the AI and infrastructure buildout, and that it will organize itself internally to win that business. For companies in those sectors trying to raise money over the next several years, that is a competitive dynamic worth using — because the other large banks are making the same bet.

JBizNews Desk | New York

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

LONDON (AP) — Large parts of western Europe will be sweltering once again on Thursday, with Britain poised for its fifth heat wave of an exceptional summer that is expected to be the hottest on record.

Forecasters are predicting the mercury to rise as high as 38 Celsius (100 Fahrenheit) in central and southeast England, falling just short of the August record of 38.5 C in 2003.

The Met Office said earlier this week that only average conditions were needed for the rest of August to beat last year’s record for the hottest year.

For a country that’s largely not equipped to deal with these levels of heat, it’s been a particularly uncomfortable few weeks.

That’s particularly true in hospitals where nurses have been known to collapse from heat exhaustion, according to the Royal College of Nursing.

“When nursing staff are collapsing, feeling dizzy, sick or even being admitted to the very hospitals they work in because their workplaces cannot handle the heat, it shows just how badly they are being failed,” said RCN chief executive and general secretary Professor Nicola Ranger.

The bulk of the country is now officially in drought, heaping pressure on water resources for households, agriculture and the environment.

Southern Water, which oversees supplies in the south of England, has applied for a rare drought order which would ban businesses from nonessential water use, including cleaning cars and filling nondomestic swimming pools, saying an “exceptional” lack of rain has threatened supplies in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. Environment Secretary Angela Eagle will decide on the application, which would be the first such ban since May 2006.

Meanwhile, wildfires have been blazing uncontrollably, most notably this week in the New Forest in southern England. Some 1,017 wildfires have been recorded in England and Wales this year, according to data from the National Fire Chiefs Council, the same as last year’s record-breaking total.

Though not on the level as those witnessed in France, Greece and Spain, they provide ample evidence of the need for the U.K. to adjust to a new reality.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said he will consider imposing a ban on disposable barbecues amid the risk of further wildfires as extreme heat continues to grip parts of the U.K.

“I do believe we need to get the message out loud and clear,” he said. “People should not be using those barbecues outside at this moment in time.”

Flock Safety, the embattled AI-powered security camera operator, announced an overhaul to its privacy and security measures Thursday amid growing backlash from consumers and reports of law enforcement abuse. 

As public backlash to the company’s growing network of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) continues to build, the company announced a new set of reforms that includes enhanced privacy protections, strengthening of control for local law enforcement offices and enhanced accountability measures.

To start, Flock is reducing its standard data retention window from 30 days to seven. Previously, all data captured by one of the company’s more than 119,000 cameras nationwide was deleted after the 30-day window. Now, the company announced on Thursday that data will only live on Flock servers for one week.

While law enforcement agencies often respond to privacy-concerned critics by explaining that the Flock system helps them catch criminals, Flock said that 90% of all searches using its product happen within a week anyway, seemingly keeping the privacy reform consistent with law enforcement priorities.

However, for law enforcement agencies that need more time to investigate, Flock announced the launch of “Evidence Mode,” a feature that will allow agencies to preserve data for longer based on state or local policy. 

Another privacy protection the company announced will be the ability for agencies to decide which types of criminal offenses they want to share data about with other municipalities. 

“For example, City A could allow City B to search its cameras for a stolen vehicle or violent crime while blocking searches related to immigration enforcement,” the company said.

Flock has come under fire from privacy advocates and concerned citizens, who expressed worry that Flock will be storing data on servers for the long term. 

Some, such as Knox County, Tennessee Mayor Glen Jacobs have called for a national moratorium on the deployment of Flock’s cameras. 

The backlash has been partially fueled by reports of police abusing the technology to stalk romantic partners. Flock’s latest series of reforms also seek to proactively prevent abuse of its technologies.

A recently released framework called Audit Assistance flags abnormal search behavior. Previously, the feature was optional, with Flock reporting that a third of agencies turned it on. Now, the company tells Fox Business, “Flock is making it standard for every law enforcement customer. When a system detects abnormal activity, the user is locked out in real time until an administrator reviews the searches. Flock is moving to more proactively address and root out misuse of technology.”

Flock will also require a reason for every search going forward.

In July 2025, the company introduced an optional case code requirement. The new reform makes the case code mandatory for searches, though there will be an override for “genuine emergencies” such as missing children, the company said.

“A search without a reason is a search that shouldn’t happen in the first place, and now Flock’s system automatically treats it that way,” Flock told Fox Business.

Despite the public backlash, Flock highlighted the company’s success in helping to locate missing people, pointing out that in the 1 million investigations which Flock’s technology was involved in last year, roughly 10,000 missing people were located.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian drones struck a major refinery deep inside Russia, military officials said Thursday, the fourth in three days in Kyiv’s monthslong campaign to choke Moscow’s vital oil sector.

Russia is one of the world’s biggest energy producers, with oil providing an economic mainstay as its army tries to push deeper into Ukraine in a slow and costly advance more than four years after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion.

The attacks have dented Russia’s refining capacity, bringing shortages at gas stations. Kyiv officials say the onslaught seeks to compel Russian President Vladimir Putin to seek a peace deal. There is no sign that strategy is working.

The refinery targeted is one of Russia’s biggest facilities
Ukraine’s General Staff said that its forces struck the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat oil refining and petrochemical complex in Russia’s republic of Bashkortostan overnight, causing a fire at the facility.

The complex, located southeast of Moscow about 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) from Ukraine’s border, is one of Russia’s largest oil refining and petrochemical facilities, the General Staff said in a Telegram post.

The plant processes up to 74 million barrels of oil annually, producing gasoline, diesel fuel and other products, it said.

Russia’s Bashkortostan governor, Radiy Khabirov, said only that a drone attack wounded two civilians and started a fire in an industrial zone of Salavat.

Wildberries, Russia’s biggest online retailer whose giant warehouses have repeatedly been struck by Ukrainian drones, said a fire started at one of its facilities in the Salavat industrial zone after the overnight attack. The company said the facility was evacuated but that goods were not being stored there.

The attack came a day after Ukrainian anti-ship missiles and drones blitzed a major Russian naval base on the Black Sea coast.

Elsewhere, four explosive experts from Russia’s Emergency Ministry and a security guard were killed Thursday after an unspecified Ukrainian weapon exploded in Sevastopol, a port city in illegally annexed Crimea, the Russian-installed governor of Sevastopol Mikhail Razvozhayev said.

They were inspecting the site of a Ukrainian attack when “an enemy weapon detonated,” he said.

It was not possible to independently verify either side’s reports.

Russian official says another refinery’s repairs could take 6 months
Meanwhile, a Russian refinery in Orsk that was hit by Ukrainian drones earlier this week has suspended operations, Orenburg region Gov. Yevgeny Solntsev said Thursday.

He said that “key infrastructure, which cannot be restored at this time” was struck, including foreign equipment, and “taking (international) sanctions into account,” the repairs could take up to six months, Solntsev said in a rare public admission in Russia of the problems Ukrainian attacks are causing.

Ukraine’s General Staff had reported striking the Orsk refinery, in Russia’s Orenburg region near the border with Kazakhstan, on Tuesday.

Russian drone hits a Ukrainian passenger train, killing 2
Russia has responded by hammering Ukraine with ballistic missiles, jet-powered drones and glide bombs, all of which are powerful and hard to intercept. The strikes have killed more than 16,000 civilians since the war began, according to the United Nations.

Russian attacks featuring 133 long-range strike drones killed at least four people and wounded eight others across Ukraine overnight from Wednesday to Thursday, officials said.

A jet-powered Shahed drone struck a passenger train in the southern Odesa region, killing the engineer and his assistant, Ukraine’s state railway company, Ukrzaliznytsia, said Thursday.

A Russian drone killed two men on Wednesday evening in the southern city of Kherson, regional military administration chief Oleksandr Prokudin said.

Ukraine makes little headway on obtaining Patriot missiles
Ukraine desperately wants more U.S.-made Patriot interceptor missiles that can counter Russia’s ballistic missiles, but stocks of the air defense system reportedly are low because of the Iran war.

Ukraine so far this year has two and a half times fewer Patriot interceptors than in 2025, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saying he makes calls every day to try and source some more.

He said in an interview with CNN broadcast Wednesday evening, parts of which he posted on social media, that he is asking the United States to sell 5% of the interceptor missiles they have in stock to help Ukraine make it through next winter, when Russia’s strikes focus on the power grid.

He has so far obtained just 1%, he said.

In the first half of this year, European countries paid U.S. defense companies at least 3 billion euros ($3.5 billion) for military equipment they sent to Ukraine, according to a report Thursday by Germany’s Kiel Institute, which tracks assistance to Kyiv.

The Trump administration won’t provide its own aid to Ukraine but is allowing other countries to buy U.S. equipment that is sent on.

Military aid provided to Ukraine in the first half of 2026 was close to last year’s level, the Kiel Institute said, but financial and humanitarian aid was 41% lower than in 2025.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered a lighthearted rejection of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s eating habits, declaring that he has no intention of traveling the globe with containers of sauerkraut — while simultaneously mounting an enthusiastic defense of the Pop-Tart.

Rubio, appearing alongside his wife, Jeanette, on “The Katie Miller Podcast,” was asked by host Katie Miller about Kennedy’s reported preference for a diet heavy on red meat and fermented vegetables.

“This is a crazy diet,” Rubio said in jest. “This is a diet that consists of eating sauerkraut and meat. Now you understand, like, this is not a sustainable thing … He has to travel with coolers of sauerkraut! I’m not going to travel the world with a cooler full of sauerkraut. It’s ridiculous. I can’t do it.”

Rubio made clear that his culinary objections did not extend to Kennedy’s broader “Make America Healthy Again,” or MAHA, movement, which he said he supports. His wife, however, quickly complicated his effort to portray himself as supportive of healthy eating by bringing up his fondness for Pop-Tarts.

“No, I don’t eat Pop-Tarts every day,” Rubio said.

“You eat sweets,” Jeanette said.

Rubio then offered a spirited defense of the packaged toaster pastry, portraying it as something closer to an achievement of American ingenuity than a questionable breakfast choice.

“The Pop-Tart is one of the great American innovations in the history of the world, if you think about it. It comes in this beautiful foil package,” Rubio joked.

His wife was not persuaded by the argument.

“He eats all the things you should not be eating. Like every single thing,” Jeanette insisted.

Fox News Digital contacted Kennedy and Mars Inc., the owner of Pop-Tarts, seeking comment on the exchange, but neither immediately responded.

The playful discussion comes as Rubio continues to be mentioned as a possible contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2028, when the party will choose a potential successor to President Donald Trump.

A recent poll in New Hampshire showed Rubio trailing Vice President JD Vance by only 10 percentage points in a hypothetical 2028 Republican matchup, placing the secretary of state among the prominent figures already being discussed as possible candidates.

Rubio has also developed an unusual presence in online political culture, particularly after a photograph of him sitting on a couch in the Oval Office during Trump’s 2025 meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy became the basis for a widely circulated internet meme.

After months of seeing altered versions of the photograph spread across social media, Rubio finally discussed the phenomenon during an appearance last month on Fox News’ “My View with Lara Trump.”

“The meme thing, it was interesting because when it first came out, I hated that picture,” Rubio said. “Because what happened is in that couch, if you don’t have a pillow behind your back, you kind of sink. So, I looked at the picture; I said, ‘Oh, this is terrible,’ I looked like whatever. And then it turned into this other thing. And it was fine, and it’s funny.”

Rubio said he does not spend much time tracking the seemingly endless variations of the meme, although friends and colleagues regularly make sure he sees some of them.

“I don’t really follow it very closely, but people have shown me pictures out there,” he added. “We have a good friend here that works at the White House, Dan Scavino, made a nice board for me. And even since he made that board, we had to update it, so — of all the different pictures. So that stuff is funny.”

Manchester Mayor Joe Hankins has released the following statement in response to recent concerns from residents worried that the township would be willing to approve a large data center.

I oppose the location and construction of any data center in Manchester Township. While there is currently no application before any Township board to construct a data center in Manchester Township, I want to make it abundantly clear that I totally oppose any data center in our town.

I have requested our Township Attorney to draft an ordinance for our next Township Council meeting, to eliminate any provision in our Township Code or policies that could allow the approval of a data center in Manchester Township for the Councils consideration.
I want to make it abundantly clear that I will take all steps together with our Township Council members to remove the posibility of a data center being built in Manchester Township.

I have asked our Township Attorney to present an ordinance to the Township Council members eliminating any provision in our Township Code or policies that would allow a data center in our Town.

No one loves this town more than I do. It is the town I grew up in, the town where I was fortunate enough to build my career as a police officer, the town where I raised my family, and the town where my son and grandchildren live today.

My commitment as your Mayor is unwavering: to listen to our residents, to take every concern seriously, and to act decisively in the best interest of our community.

QUSRA, West Bank (VINnews) — Israeli forces intervened Thursday after settlers surrounded several homes in the West Bank village of Qusra for days, prompting U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee to condemn what he called a “horrific act of terror.”

The incident began Sunday, when dozens of settlers gathered around three homes, throwing stones and blocking residents from leaving. Israeli troops later dismantled two illegal outposts near the homes and detained one Israeli, according to the military.

The Israel Defense Forces said the siege was “illegal, reprehensible and unacceptable” and deployed additional forces to restore order and protect residents.

Huckabee said the U.S. Embassy was coordinating with Israeli authorities over the incident and condemned actions intended to intimidate or harass the families.

The episode comes amid heightened tensions in the area. Israeli officials have repeatedly said that violence by individuals against Palestinian civilians is unacceptable and that security forces will act against those violating the law.

This is another lie. @usembassyjlm has been VERY involved & the IDF & Israel Police have gone at our request to remove the Israeli terrorists doing this. The actions of those doing this to this family’s home is criminal. The WH hasn’t “intervened” because we have kept DC… https://t.co/qrfnCYcOtB

— Ambassador Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) August 13, 2026

Here is evidence that @IDF & @israelpolice went to Qusra to remove illegal trespassers there to intimidate Palestinian residents. It's just not accurate to say @Israel nor @usembassyjlm did nothing to protect Palestinian homeowners/US citizens. pic.twitter.com/UMKyHqdtFJ

— Ambassador Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) August 13, 2026

The United States has made permanent a visa-bond program that can require some foreign business travelers to post as much as $20,000 before receiving permission to enter the country, raising the cost and complexity of doing business in the U.S. for applicants from 50 designated countries.

The State Department’s final rule applies to B-1 business visas, B-2 tourist visas and combined B-1/B-2 visas. Consular officers can require applicants from covered countries to post refundable bonds as a condition of issuance, with the maximum now set at $20,000.

The program began as a pilot designed to reduce visa overstays. The administration says the experiment worked: overstays among participants fell sharply, while visa issuance from affected countries also dropped substantially as some applicants chose not to post the bond.

For business travelers, this is no longer simply an immigration-policy story. It is a cash-flow and access-to-market issue.

B-1 visas are commonly used by executives, entrepreneurs, salespeople, investors, conference attendees and employees traveling temporarily to the United States for meetings, negotiations and other permitted business activity.

For a company sending several employees to the U.S., refundable bonds of up to $20,000 per traveler could tie up significant capital before airfare, hotels, conference fees and other travel expenses are even considered.

The 50-country list is concentrated heavily in Africa but also includes countries in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.

The U.S. Travel Association warned Wednesday that broader use of the program could further discourage international visitation at a time when overseas travel to the United States remains below expectations.

That concern extends beyond hotels and airlines.

International business travelers spend money at convention centers, restaurants, transportation companies and retailers, but their larger economic importance often comes from the business they conduct while here — sales contracts, investment discussions, trade shows, supplier meetings and corporate partnerships.

The bond is generally refundable when the visitor complies with the terms of the visa and departs the United States on time. But refundable does not mean costless. Applicants still have to make the money available upfront and can lose access to it for the duration of their trip and the government’s refund process.

The program therefore creates a new calculation for companies deciding whether an in-person U.S. meeting is worth the additional burden.

A multinational corporation may absorb that expense relatively easily. A small foreign exporter, entrepreneur or family-owned company may decide that a $10,000 or $20,000 bond makes a U.S. sales trip, trade show or supplier meeting impractical.

That is why the permanent rule matters well beyond tourism. The United States is using a financial guarantee to reduce visa overstays, but the same guarantee could also raise the cost of bringing legitimate business visitors into the American economy.

JBizNews Desk | Washington

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

Almost twenty-one years to the day after Israel evacuated settlements in the northern West Bank as part of the 2005 disengagement, families returned to the former community of Ganim on Thursday, formally reestablishing the settlement.

The move follows a recent Cabinet decision to legalize dozens of settlements and comes as Israel advances plans to reverse parts of the disengagement in the northern West Bank.

Dozens of mobile homes were brought to the site to accommodate the returning families, while a branch of the Bnei David educational institutions (a subsidiary of the Eli pre-military academy) was established there.

The return to Ganim is part of a broader effort to reestablish the four communities evacuated from the northern West Bank in 2005. Homesh and Sa-Nur are also being resettled, while Kadim is expected to be reestablished in the near future. If completed, the moves would effectively reverse the northern West Bank component of the disengagement.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attended the ceremony at Ganim and described the return as the correction of what he called a historic injustice.

“Twenty-one years after the terrible sin of the expulsion from Gush Katif and northern Samaria, we are finally erasing the disgrace of the expulsion from northern Samaria,” Smotrich said.

He thanked the Bnei David institutions in Eli and the rabbis and activists involved in the effort, as well as the families returning to the area.

Smotrich also announced plans for further settlement activity across Samaria, saying that 11 new communities would be established this summer, with plans ultimately calling for 18 communities.

“Instead of the four [evacuated communities], there will be 18 communities, 11 of them immediately, including Homesh, Sa-Nur, Ganim and Kadim,” he said. “And there is more to come.”

The finance minister portrayed the move as having strategic as well as ideological significance, arguing that Jewish communities in northern Samaria provide a security buffer for central and northern Israel.

“Samaria is ours,” Smotrich, who lives in the region, stressed. “It is an inseparable part of the Land of Israel and the State of Israel , the security belt of the State of Israel.” 

“When we are in Ganim, there is security in Afula, Harish and Hadera,” he added, arguing that strengthening Israeli communities in the West Bank would help protect communities inside Israel.

Smotrich said the government’s settlement policy was also intended to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

“We are strengthening the security belt, killing the idea of a Palestinian state and making clear that the Land of Israel is ours forever,” he said.

He also used the occasion to attack potential political opponents, warning that a future government led by opposition figures Gadi Eisenkot, Avigdor Liberman and Yair Golan would, in his view, reverse the current settlement policy.

Such a government, Smotrich claimed, would evacuate the newly established communities and “return us to the dangerous Oslo path” of establishing a Palestinian state.

He called on the national-religious camp to remain in control of the government, with Religious Zionism serving as a central force in shaping settlement and security policy.

The reestablishment of Ganim comes amid heightened tensions surrounding Israeli settlement activity and violence in Samaria. The move also follows a recent four-day blockade imposed by extremist Israeli activists on the Palestinian village of Qusra, an incident that drew international condemnation.

The Qusra confrontation prompted criticism from the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, which demanded explanations from the Israeli government. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee also condemned the rioters, referring to them as “Israeli terrorists.”

The return to Ganim therefore marks not only a symbolic reversal of the 2005 disengagement but also another significant step in the government’s broader effort to expand and legalize Jewish communities throughout the West Bank.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Wholesale inflation dropped last month as gas prices reversed some of their Iran war spike and other costs also cooled, a sign that consumer inflation could grind lower in the months ahead.

The Labor Department’s producer price index — which captures inflation before it reaches consumers — rose 4.7% in July from a year ago, down from a much larger 5.5% increase in June. On a monthly basis, wholesale prices were unchanged from June to July, after they ticked down 0.1% the previous month.

The figures follows the government’s consumer price inflation report, released Wednesday, which also showed a modest cooling last month. Still, consumer prices have risen faster than wages for the past four months, underscoring the challenges many Americans have affording necessities such as rent and utilities. If prices continue to outpace wages, many consumers may be forced to dial back their spending in the coming months.

Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core wholesale inflation dropped to 4.2% in July compared with a year earlier, down from 4.7% in June. On a monthly basis, core prices 0.2%, down from 0.4% from May to June.

After falling in early July, gas prices then rose later that month and in early August, threatening to push inflation back up when August figures are reported next month.

Still, last month’s cooling gives Federal Reserve officials more leeway to avoid a rate hike when it meets next in September. Fed officials are debating whether they should raise their key interest rate to combat inflation, or keep it unchanged in hopes that inflation continues to cool on its own.

Wholesale prices can offer an early look at where consumer inflation might be headed. Economists also watch it because some of its components, notably healthcare and financial services, flow into the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge — the personal consumption expenditures, or PCE, index. That price index will be released later this month.

Fed officials are considering whether to hike rates after leaving them unchanged so far this year. Last week, the government said employers actually cut jobs in July, a sign of economic weakness that could discourage the central bank from raising borrowing costs.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The two most senior members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, flew out of last month’s NATO summit in Turkey on what was effectively a decoy plane following an Iranian threat, while Trump was secretly moved to a smaller military jet, a senior U.S. official said Wednesday.

The official, who was briefed on the situation and spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details of presidential travel, said Rubio was aware of the switch and details of the threat behind it but could or would not say why he had stayed on the plane. The official said Bessent was likely aware but did not know for sure.

The official, however, noted that security precautions for the president — especially one who has been the target of several assassination attempts — are more robust than those for even top members of the Cabinet.

Under the U.S. Constitution, the secretaries of State and Treasury follow the vice president and the highest ranking member of each chamber of Congress in the presidential line of succession.

Trump had flown to the annual gathering of NATO country leaders in Ankara, Turkey, in a new Qatari-gifted and retrofitted red, white and navy blue jet. But ahead of departing Turkey, he said he would fly partway home on an older-model baby blue Air Force One plane instead.

The president at the time said the new luxury jet was being flown out ahead of his departure from Ankara to give some U.S. troops based in eastern England a chance to check out the new Air Force One.

The Washington Post reported this week that Trump wasn’t on the old Air Force One on the return flight from Turkey and that he instead was smuggled onto another jet via a catering cart to avoid a possible Iranian assassination plot. The ruse was carried out as journalists and some White House staff members were led to believe they were on the same plane as the president as he began his journey back to Washington.

The New York Times and CBS News had reported last month that intelligence officials had raised concerns about a potential attack on the president or his jet, triggering additional precautions and the decision not to use the newly inaugurated aircraft gifted to Trump by Qatar for the first leg of Trump’s trip home from Ankara.

Trump acknowledged the transfer late Tuesday.

“It’s only up to the Secret Service. I just follow what they’d like to do, so I go by Secret Service and the military,” the president told reporters at Joint Base Andrews. “They wanted me to go on a different flight, a different plane, equal safety, but they wanted me to do it, so I do it, I do what they say.”

The warning signs are no longer warnings. The question is what we are prepared to do about them.

By Chaskel Bennett

History has a way of forcing a people to confront hard truths.

What if the warning signs are no longer warnings?

I fear we have crossed that threshold.

For generations, many believed that antisemitism was the residue of history, a prejudice that would fade as societies became more educated and enlightened. They believed the lessons of the Holocaust had been learned. They thought that if they contributed to our communities, defended democratic values and lived proudly as Jews, hatred would remain on the fringes, and this time would be different.

They were wrong.

What we are witnessing today is not random or temporary. It is the normalization of antisemitism across democratic societies, cloaked in new language, amplified by technology and increasingly legitimized by institutions and political movements that know better.

The cities may change. The accents may be different. The slogans remain the same. So do the targets.

On university campuses, in the streets of New York, from Europe to Australia, online and inside international institutions, the pattern is unmistakable. Jewish students are harassed. Synagogues require extraordinary security. Jewish businesses are targeted. Israel is singled out. Terror is rationalized. Violence is excused. Too often, decent people remain silent.

And now there is Michigan.

Abdul El-Sayed has won the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate. He has campaigned alongside incendiary anti-Israel streamer Hasan Piker. His father-in-law, a major financial backer of the super PAC supporting him, holds leadership roles in organizations federal prosecutors have linked to the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood network.

El-Sayed could soon be a United States senator.

New Yorkers should recognize the chessboard. Senator Chuck Schumer’s seat is up in 2028, and the Democratic Socialists have their sights on it. The political forces that propelled Zohran Mamdani to victory are eyeing a far greater prize: one of New York’s two seats in the United States Senate.

This is no longer happening on the fringes. It is happening in our time, in our neighborhoods and at our polling sites.

The Jewish community can matter enormously in what happens next. We can sit back, shake our heads and ask, “What will be?” Or we can organize, participate and send a message that will reverberate far beyond any single election.

If this does not get our attention, what will?

Every era presents its own test.

Those who came before us endured exile, pogroms, persecution and the Holocaust. They rebuilt Jewish life from the ashes with extraordinary faith and determination. Together, they and we built thriving communities, strong institutions and the freedom to live proudly as Jews.

Our generation is being asked whether we have the resolve to protect what they began, preserve what we have built and leave it stronger for those who follow.

One of the greatest dangers facing the Jewish people today is not only the reemergence of antisemitism. It is believing someone else will confront it.

Someone else will speak up. Someone else will organize. Someone else will vote. Someone else will defend our people.

Apathy is accomplishing what our enemies could never have achieved on their own. Our indifference is suffocating us.

The blessings of freedom, security and opportunity in America are real. But if they blind us to unmistakable warning signs, they become a dangerous substitute for resolve and action.

If we are to prevail, with God’s help, we must strengthen our Jewish identity and connection to our heritage, deepen our commitment to Torah and tefillah, invest in Jewish education, reinforce our institutions and accept responsibility for our future.

Our adversaries are capable, well-funded, energized and organized.

We must be more determined. We must outthink them, outwork them, out-organize them and, yes, outvote them.

That means showing up where political power is actually decided. In New York and other overwhelmingly Democratic communities, that often means voting in the Democratic primary. Sitting it out because changing party registration feels like an ideological betrayal confuses symbolism with strategy. That is not principle. It is political malpractice and setting us back.

Our adversaries register and vote.

Allow me to say it straight: We aren’t. And then we have the unbridled chutzpah to complain about the results on Election Day.

Yes, voting is a basic prerequisite to protecting ourselves, but exercising our civic duty cannot simply end at the ballot box. It should be the beginning of a communal awakening.

Every Jewish family should adopt a Jewish cause. Choose an organization that strengthens Jewish life and make it your family’s responsibility. Donate. Volunteer. Advocate. Invest your time, resources or voice. The amount matters less than the commitment.

When a Jewish-owned business is targeted because it is Jewish or supports Israel, outrage is not enough. Shop there. Eat there. Recommend it. Support it.

Every act of bullying or intimidation should be answered with greater investment in Jewish life. Our answer to those who seek to weaken us must be to strengthen what they seek to destroy: our shuls, our yeshivas, our chesed organizations and the institutions that sustain Jewish life. The responsibility is ours.

Living as a Jew in America today can no longer be a spectator sport. We are all in this together.

We did not choose this moment. The moment has chosen us.

Whether we like it or not, the age of complacency is over.

It’s time to get back to work.

Chaskel Bennett is a Jewish communal leader and advocate who serves on the boards of several prominent Jewish nonprofit organizations. He can be reached at [email protected].

The views expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of YWN. Have an opinion you would like to share? Send it to us for review.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — The disappearance of an Israeli mother and daughter in Vienna took another dramatic turn Thursday as the investigation was transferred to Lahav 433, Israeli authorities intensified their search and Bank of Jerusalem shares swung sharply amid speculation surrounding the case.

The Rishon LeZion Magistrate’s Court issued a gag order Thursday at the request of Lahav 433, barring publication of details about the investigation until Sept. 13.

The investigation was transferred to Lahav 433 on Wednesday evening. Police Commissioner Danny Levy is overseeing operations from two command posts, one in Israel and one abroad, operating around the clock.

Mali Yahalomi, a manager at Bank of Jerusalem, and her daughter Liel disappeared during a trip to Vienna on Friday, Aug. 7. Their family says they had remained in regular contact throughout the trip before communications suddenly stopped.

The case has also triggered unusual activity on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. Bank of Jerusalem shares fell as much as 12% Thursday before recovering some of the losses and were still down about 3% amid widespread speculation over Yahalomi’s connection to the bank.

Unsubstantiated rumors circulating online suggested that bank funds could somehow be connected to the disappearance. The bank has strongly rejected any such connection.

Bank of Jerusalem CEO Yair Kaplan told employees that “aside from the fact that she is a bank employee, no connection has been found between the incident and the bank.”

The bank also conducted an internal review and said that “no findings were identified indicating any irregular activity involving the bank’s funds or assets.”

Meanwhile, investigators are pursuing multiple possibilities in Vienna.

The Israeli defense establishment currently believes there is no indication that the disappearance was nationally motivated. Three Israeli sources familiar with the investigation said extensive intelligence checks had examined the possibility of involvement by terrorist or hostile elements, with no current indication of a pro-Palestinian or Iranian cell.

Vienna police have said there is “no indication of criminal activity,” raising the possibility that the women were not abducted and may have left on their own.

Authorities are also examining whether the mother and daughter obtained a significant amount of cash before disappearing.

Phone-location data obtained by Israeli and Austrian authorities reportedly placed the women near Vienna’s train station during Shabbat. The area includes an open municipal park. Investigators are also examining whether location data may have been deleted from their phones.

The family, however, has pushed back strongly against reports suggesting investigators are leaning toward a voluntary disappearance.

“We view with great severity the briefings disseminated in recent hours, which create the impression among the public that a conclusion has already been reached,” the family said. “The family possesses information that substantially contradicts some of the claims that appeared in the reports.”

The family also said police had told them there was no unusual activity in the women’s bank accounts.

“We make it unequivocally clear that, at this stage, there is no basis for ruling out the possibility of a nationally motivated terror incident,” the family said.

Despite Vienna police saying there is currently no indication of criminal activity, authorities have elevated the investigation to the highest levels and continue examining all possibilities.

The combination of the disappearance, conflicting assessments, a sweeping gag order and the unexpected market reaction surrounding Yahalomi’s employer has added another layer of mystery to a case in which investigators have yet to publicly establish what happened to the mother and daughter.

‎⁨אלול - אנגלית ⁩

President Donald Trump is facing a new federal lawsuit over a premium Truth Social service that can deliver his posts to paying subscribers fractions of a second before they reach the broader public, with two media organizations arguing that the arrangement unlawfully gives wealthy customers preferential access to potentially market-moving presidential announcements.

The Intercept Media and the nonprofit Freedom of the Press Foundation filed the lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, challenging the Truth API service on First and Fifth Amendment grounds, according to CNBC.

“President Donald Trump is charging $100,000 per month for advance access to his official government announcements on Truth Social, the social media platform he owns,” the lawsuit states.

The plaintiffs contend that allowing subscribers to obtain Trump’s statements more quickly is particularly problematic because the president frequently uses Truth Social to announce policies and other government actions that can immediately affect financial markets.

“This scheme is extraordinary, corrupt, and unconstitutional, and Plaintiffs bring this case to stop it,” the suit continues. “There is no legitimate interest, let alone a significant one, in permitting President Trump to profit from selling government information.”

Trump Media, the parent company of Truth Social, introduced Truth API in July. The service offers subscribers machine-readable feeds of posts from Trump and other prominent accounts on the platform, with subscriptions reportedly reaching $100,000 per month.

Trump remains Trump Media’s largest shareholder through the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust.

At the center of the lawsuit is Trump’s extensive use of Truth Social as a vehicle for communicating presidential decisions and administration developments. The plaintiffs argue that because some of those announcements can influence financial markets, even a tiny advantage in receiving them could potentially have significant value to trading firms and other sophisticated subscribers.

According to the complaint, Trump has published between 9,000 and 11,000 Truth Social posts since returning to the White House in January 2025.

“Often his posts have no immediate corresponding announcement from the White House,” the suit states. “In other words, President Trump’s posts are the only way to get official government news.”

The lawsuit says Truth API currently provides accelerated access to posts from 10 of Truth Social’s most prominent accounts. In addition to Trump, those accounts reportedly include the White House, Vice President JD Vance, FBI Director Kash Patel, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Trump Media, however, maintains that the service does not provide customers with private or unreleased information. Instead, the company says subscribers are receiving posts that have already been publicly published, with the API allowing computers to obtain and process them more quickly.

Trump Media CEO Kevin McGurn stressed that distinction during an earnings call Monday.

Truth API “provides machine-readable feeds of publicly available Truth posts from the platform’s top accounts in milliseconds,” McGurn said, according to CNBC.

“Our customers will get published and publicly available posts fractionally faster,” he said.

McGurn also disclosed that more than 10 customers have already signed up for the service, paying substantial monthly fees.

The customers are paying “generally in the range of $60,000-$100,000 a month,” McGurn said.

He added that Trump Media is also holding discussions with hyperscalers, major news organizations and developers of large-language models about potential use of the service.

The lawsuit names several additional defendants beyond Trump. They include his executive assistant Natalie Harp and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino, both of whom have posted to Trump’s Truth Social account on his behalf.

The Executive Office of the President and the White House Office are also named as defendants as the plaintiffs seek to block what they contend is an unconstitutional system of preferential access to presidential communications.

{Matzav.com}

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Thousands of tons of military equipment, including D9 bulldozers and combat vehicles, have arrived in Israel as part of a special procurement and transportation operation by Israel’s Defense Ministry and military.

The ministry said Thursday that another cargo ship carrying thousands of tons of military equipment and weapons had been unloaded and received in Israel.

The shipment is part of an ongoing effort to support the Israeli military’s preparations for a range of possible scenarios, the ministry said.

אלפי טונות של ציוד צבאי, דחפורי D9 ורכבים קרביים הגיעו לישראל במבצע רכש ושינוע מיוחד של משרד הביטחון וצה"ל

כחלק ממאמץ התמיכה המתמשך בהיערכות צה"ל לכלל התרחישים, משרד הביטחון השלים את קליטתה ופריקתה בישראל של אוניית מטען נוספת, שעליה אלפי טונות של ציוד צבאי ואמצעי לחימה.

>> pic.twitter.com/mPCJX7g6Ab

— משרד הביטחון (@MoDIsrael) August 13, 2026

Democratic lawmakers are pressing the War Department for answers about conditions aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln following reports that the strain of a prolonged deployment has taken a serious mental and physical toll on the roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines serving aboard the vessel.

A report by Navy Times on Tuesday said at least two sailors had to be stopped from going overboard. Other relatives who spoke with the publication described their loved ones as being in a deep emotional slump during the carrier’s extended deployment.

The Lincoln originally set out last November on a planned seven-month mission in the South China Sea. In January, however, the carrier was redirected to the Arabian Sea ahead of Operation Epic Fury against Iran, where it has remained ever since.

More than 200 family members reportedly met with acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao last week to discuss their concerns. One military spouse said her husband sent her a message saying that “he hopes he doesn’t wake up tomorrow,” according to an attendee who spoke with Stars and Stripes.

“When she can email me, she’s definitely down,” Shelby Sanders, whose mother is serving aboard the Lincoln, told Navy Times. “I think they’ve had five weeks of non-stop combat operations or something like that, so that makes it really tough to communicate consistently or even know if we’ll be able to. It sucks.”

Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.), whose district includes part of San Diego County, has also raised concerns about conditions aboard the carrier. In an Aug. 7 post on X, Levin said the Lincoln had “[m]oldy showers, broken toilets, no hot water for weeks, meals that came down to half a cup of rice and two tortillas,” along with a “ship’s store out of soap, deodorant, and toothpaste” and “sailors so worn down that, according to one family member, the ship’s own doctor warned they need to reach port soon or people are going to start losing their minds.”Levin escalated his criticism Wednesday, writing on X: “Today would be a great day for [President] Trump to fire [War Secretary] Pete Hegseth and replace him with someone who is actually competent,” he said. “Every American and every soldier deployed abroad would be safer for it.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) separately warned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Cao in a Wednesday letter that the Lincoln “has not made a port call in over 200 days, setting a record for consecutive days at sea.”

Blumenthal said the carrier had been the subject of “widespread reports of shortages of basic supplies, water contamination, plumbing issues, deteriorating mental health, deck safety concerns, and disruptions in the mail system, which have caused many care packages in route to the ship to be lost in transit for months,” adding that the Navy “must ensure that decisions to extend carrier deployments account not only for immediate operational requirements, but also for their cumulative effects on crew safety, equipment readiness, maintenance schedules, and the ability of the carrier force to meet future contingencies.”

The senator, who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, asked the Navy to provide its own assessment of conditions aboard the Lincoln, including the physical and mental readiness of enlisted personnel to carry out their duties. He also sought an explanation of whether keeping the carrier deployed remains necessary to support US military objectives against Iran.

The Navy disputed reports of a rise in suicidal behavior aboard the ship.

“We have not observed an increase in suicidal ideations or attempts aboard the ship,” the Navy told CNN in a statement Thursday. “We take every service member’s well-being seriously and have religious, medical and mental health professionals available to assess and address concerns as they arise.”

Blumenthal concluded his letter by arguing that the sailors and Marines aboard the carrier deserve greater support after such an extended deployment.

“The men and women aboard the Lincoln have answered the call to serve their country. The Department owes them not only adequate supplies, maintenance, and support during this deployment, but a sustainable force-generation model that does not rely on repeatedly extending sailors and ships to meet persistent operational demands,” Blumenthal concluded.

“Our servicemembers deserve nothing less than the full support of their government and the American people deserve a military strategy that is worthy of the sacrifices we ask them to make.”

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — The most intriguing development in Charedi politics ahead of Israel’s October elections may be emerging from Beit Shemesh.

Moti Leitner heads Hatzibur HaCharedi (The Charedi Public), a new party built around a central claim: hundreds of thousands of Charedim who work, support their families and seek greater economic opportunity have no genuine political representation.

After four decades in which Shas and United Torah Judaism have dominated Charedi politics, Leitner believes a significant segment of the community has been overlooked. His movement grew out of the local Derech party in Beit Shemesh, where it won two City Council seats, and has since expanded into a nationwide campaign.

“They Feel They Don’t Count”

Before launching the party, Leitner spent a year visiting Charedi communities across Israel.

“I kept hearing the same message,” he says. “A father working long hours but still unable to make ends meet. A kollel wife struggling every month to balance the household budget. Young men who left yeshiva, entered the workforce and suddenly felt like outsiders.

“These people are not on the margins. They are at the center of Charedi life, yet for years the political system has been telling them they don’t count.”

How Is This Different?

Critics dismiss Hatzibur HaCharedi as simply another Charedi party. Leitner disagrees.

“We answer to ordinary Charedi families—their livelihoods, their children’s education and their ability to build a dignified future. Too often, current representatives focus on slogans instead of practical solutions.”

He argues that Israel needs a confident, economically secure Charedi community, while the Charedi community needs an Israel that respects Torah and religious life.

“These are not competing goals,” he says. “They depend on one another.”

Why Form a New Party?

Leitner acknowledges that he first approached both Shas and United Torah Judaism, hoping to secure meaningful representation for working Charedim within the existing parties.

“We weren’t looking for positions – we presented policy proposals,” he says. “After months of discussions, we simply stopped hearing back.”

That silence, he says, convinced him to appeal directly to voters.

“At that point, you either go home or give the public a choice.”

The Army Debate

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Leitner’s platform concerns military service.

He argues that Israel needs two clear tracks.

“A young man genuinely dedicated to full-time Torah study should receive a real legal exemption – not a temporary political arrangement that will collapse in court. Genuine Bnei Torah deserve legal certainty and the ability to study with dignity.”

At the same time, he says, those who are not learning full time should contribute in some capacity to the country’s defense or national service.

“For most of Israel’s history, some version of this balance existed,” he says. “After October 7, it became clear that the future of the Charedi community and the future of Israel cannot be separated.”

Leitner himself served in a classified technological unit after the Hamas attacks.

“I wanted to contribute,” he says. “But I also saw firsthand how unprepared the army was to receive Charedim.”

He believes responsibility lies on both sides.

“It is easy to blame only the Charedi community. The army also failed for years to build frameworks that respected Charedi religious life.”

He points to the Chashmonaim Unit as proof that appropriate military service is possible but says many more such frameworks are needed.

“We cannot ask parents to send their sons into environments that undermine everything they have spent eighteen years building.”

Torah and Service

Leitner rejects the notion that Torah study and national contribution are mutually exclusive.

“If someone is truly learning seriously, we should protect that. If someone serves, we should protect his Yiddishkeit there as well.

“The goal should never be to challenge a young man’s mesorah, but to allow him to contribute while preserving it.”

Education and Employment

Another pillar of Leitner’s platform is expanding educational opportunity.

He argues that many Charedi young men who eventually enter the workforce begin years behind because they were denied basic skills in English and mathematics.

“I reject the idea that all Gedolim oppose these subjects,” he says. “Many support them.

“A Charedi child should remain fully Charedi while also having opportunities later in life. Those goals are not contradictory.”

He summarizes his philosophy simply:

“Charedi identity must be preserved, and opportunity must be expanded.”

Rabbinic Support

One criticism repeatedly leveled at new Charedi parties is the absence of endorsements from leading Rabbanim.

Leitner says the relationship between rabbinic leadership and politics has become more complicated than many assume.

“Over the years, some politicians and donors have become so influential that pressure sometimes runs in the opposite direction,” he says. “I don’t want to discuss specific cases, but there have been instances where rabbanim faced political pressure.”

He says Hatzibur HaCharedi already has the backing of numerous communities and Rabbanim, although some have chosen not to announce their support publicly.

“I won’t use Rabbanim as political trophies,” he says. “many have privately encouraged us but are not yet comfortable speaking publicly because of the current atmosphere.”

Can the Party Cross the Threshold?

Some commentators have questioned whether the party can enter the Knesset.

Leitner rejects suggestions that a vote for Hatzibur HaCharedi would be wasted.

“Independent polling in April showed support equivalent to about six-and-a-half seats,” he says. “That is above the electoral threshold.”

He also claims the party appeals beyond the traditional Charedi electorate.

“We’re attracting support from Charedi, traditional, Religious Zionist and even some secular Israelis who believe the relationship between Israel and the Charedi community needs a new approach.”

Why Is Israel Different From America?

Leitner says one of his inspirations came from observing Charedi communities in the United States.

“There, people remain deeply committed to Torah while also working, building businesses and supporting their families. No one assumes that having a profession makes someone less committed to Judaism.”

He believes Israeli society has become unnecessarily polarized.

“People are told they must belong entirely to one camp or another. There’s very little room for someone who wants to remain completely Charedi while also gaining the tools needed to earn a respectable living.”

He notes that many American Charedim who immigrated to Israel have supported his movement because they are familiar with a more balanced model.

“But many Israeli Charedim want exactly the same thing,” he says. “They don’t want to leave the Charedi world. They simply want to support their families with dignity.”

A Personal Journey

Leitner says his views are shaped by personal experience.

“I married young, and by my early twenties I realized I needed to earn a living. I was starting from scratch. I had to improve my English and mathematics, learn new skills and eventually entered the high-tech industry.”

While grateful for that opportunity, he believes the process should not have been so difficult.

“We need to make that path much easier for the next generation,” he says. “Parents who want to give their children both a strong Torah education and the practical tools to support a family should be able to do so without feeling they’ve compromised their Charedi identity.”

For Leitner, that vision lies at the heart of Hatzibur HaCharedi.

“The people we’re speaking for have always existed,” he says. “The question in October is whether they’ll finally have somewhere to go.

NEW YORK (AP) — If you bought something from an overseas vendor last year, it might be time to check your bank account.

Shippers including FedEx and UPS that acted as customs brokers for imported packages and received tariff refunds from the U.S. government have started to pass on those refunds to the customers that originally paid the tariffs.

The refunds to consumers are the last step in a monthslong process that kicked off in February when the Supreme Court struck down sweeping tariffs implemented by President Donald Trumpin March 2025 under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act on goods from almost every country. The court ordered the government to return the tariffs it collected.

So far, about $100 billion in tariffs have been refunded to companies who paid them under a system set up by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

That doesn’t mean Americans will get anywhere close to what they paid in tariffs, since most were paid indirectly. In 2025, the Trump tariffs amounted to an average tax increase of $1,000 per U.S. household, according to the Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C., group that studies taxes.

But some consumers are getting some of what they paid directly back from shippers including UPS, DHL and FedEx. The refunds are being rolled out in phases based on what date they were paid. Shippers have said they’ll return the refunds on a rolling basis as they receive them.

Tariff refunds from shippers will be directly refunded to credit cards or bank accounts
FedEx said it has begun the process of issuing $800 million in tariff refunds it received from the government back to the customers that paid them. Customers don’t need to apply to receive their refund, but they can enter tracking numbers for purchased items into a portal on the FedEx website to see whether or not they are due a refund.

UPS said in April it had paid $5 billion in tariffs on behalf of clients and would begin the process of applying to the government for refunds. In the first phase, it applied for $500 million in refunds and said customers should get refunds one to three months after it receives reimbursement from the Treasury.

DHL similarly said that it has filed claims for almost all eligible shipments where it served as the importer of record and is returning the refunds it has received.

“The volume and pace of refunds continue to depend on CBP’s processing of claims,” DHL said in a statement.

Major retailers say they could give back some refunds but mostly will use them to lower prices
Unlike shippers who collected tariffs directly from customers, most big retailers passed on tariffs in indirect ways, changing their product lineups or partly absorbing higher costs, making a consumer refund unlikely.

Amazon executives said last week the company received $600 million in tariff refunds in the second quarter.

In a call with investors, Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky said the company isn’t the importer of record on most of the goods it sells and that it has absorbed some tariff costs. But he said the company has “identified a limited set of circumstances where we can trace that we pass specific import charges on to customers.” In those circumstances, he added, “we will proactively contact affected customers and automatically issue refunds to them.”

Otherwise, he said, Amazon will use tariff refunds to lower prices for customers.

That echoes what other large retailers have said. In May, Cori Barrie, outgoing CEO of Best Buy, the nation’s largest consumer electronics chain, said the retailer is an importer of record of only about 2% to 3% of what it sells and that the company would use any refund it gets to “deliver value back to our customers.”

And Costco CEO Ron Vachris said the company planned to return “in some form” the tariffs that were passed on to consumers.

“How much we return and when depends on a variety of factors, including how much refund money we receive and when it arrives as well as developments in the lawsuit filed against the company regarding the return process,” he said in a quarterly earnings call in May.

Dozens of class-action lawsuits have been filed
Some shoppers are suing to get the tariffs they paid in the form of higher prices back from companies. More than 80 class-action lawsuits have been filed by customers across the country against retailers including Costco, Nike, Amazon, Walmart and others.

The lawsuits will face difficulty because plaintiffs will have to prove they paid for price increases that were specifically tied to the tariffs, according to Lori Leskin, partner and co-chair of law firm Arnold & Porter’s Consumer Products Practice Group. None of the lawsuits have yet been certified as class action, which would mean they apply to all customers.

“It’s going to be very hard for anyone to establish that the price increase they paid was due to tariffs and not some other market force,” she said. “Most of them are just talking about price increases, and to be able to trace a price increase due to a single factor is going to be really difficult given the multifactorial approach that most companies take.”

The Trump administration is preparing to spend at least $900 million on a sweeping series of construction, renovation and security projects throughout the White House complex, with officials arguing that much of the work is essential to modernize and protect the executive mansion.

According to The Washington Post, which reviewed contracting and planning documents, the combined price tag for the projects could reach at least $927 million, substantially more than had previously been publicly disclosed.

Among the projects are President Donald Trump’s planned ballroom at the site of the East Wing, improvements to Lafayette Square, a new helipad, and construction of a visitor screening facility.

Rather than requesting a single congressional appropriation covering the entire modernization program, the administration has drawn funding from a combination of private contributions and transfers from other federal government accounts.

Publicly available budget documents indicate that $875 million has been directed to the White House Repair and Restoration account since Trump returned to office.

Of that amount, $500 million was transferred from the Secret Service and White House Military Office, according to the Post, while another $305 million came from private donors. Records reviewed by the newspaper indicated that an additional $70 million was transferred into the account from a source that was not identified.

White House spokesman Davis Ingle defended the extensive work, describing the projects as long-needed improvements to the executive mansion and its surrounding grounds.

“President Trump continues to implement long-overdue and necessary renovations to beautify the People’s House as we celebrate our great Nation’s 250th anniversary of independence,” Ingle said in a statement to the Post.

“Thanks to the Builder-in-Chief, the White House will be properly glorified and remain in excellent condition for generations to come.”

The newly disclosed spending comes as the administration remains locked in a court fight over Trump’s proposed 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom, one of the most prominent elements of the broader construction effort.

A divided federal appeals court ruled Friday that construction of the above-ground portions of the ballroom cannot move forward without authorization from Congress. The 2-1 decision, however, permits certain underground security-related construction to continue.

Trump has said he will take the dispute to the Supreme Court, arguing that the appeals court ruling could jeopardize national security.

The president has stressed that the project encompasses considerably more than the ballroom itself, saying the work includes bomb shelters, medical facilities, missile-resistant construction, defenses against drones and other security improvements designed to protect the White House complex.

Trump has also repeatedly maintained that taxpayers will not bear the cost of constructing the ballroom itself, saying that portion of the project is being financed through private contributions.

According to the White House, $400 million in private donations will finance the ballroom, while federal funds are being directed toward the security infrastructure connected with the larger construction and modernization effort.

The appeals court delayed implementation of its ruling for two weeks, providing the Trump administration with an opportunity to ask the Supreme Court to intervene and allow the project to proceed.

{Matzav.com}

The Kosel Rav, HaRav Shmuel Rabinowitz, who also serves on the committee overseeing the maintenance of holy sites throughout Israel, issued a warning on Thursday amid the crisis caused by the High Court decision last week freezing funding transfers approved by the Knesset Finance Committee for religious needs and Chareidi educational networks.

Following a temporary court order delaying budget transfers approved by the Knesset Finance Committee, Religious Services Ministry Director-General Yehuda Avidan announced earlier this week that, in the absence of a budgetary source for ongoing operations, all services provided by the National Center for the Development of Holy Sites will be halted at the beginning of September.

The budget crisis threatens to cause an operational collapse and the closure of holy sites ahead of Selichos and the Yamim Noraim. The result, officials warn, would pose a genuine risk of pikuach nefesh at the kever of Rashbi in Meron and at other holy sites.

“The situation at the holy sites has reached a red line,” officials at the Religious Services Ministry said.

In response, Rav Rabinowitz sent a letter to Deputy Attorney General Gil Limon, issuing an ultimatum that if the budget for the National Center for the Development of Holy Sites is not resolved, he will step down from the “Vaadas HaChamisha” — the body charged by the state with managing the Rashbi complex on Har Meron and other holy sites.

In his letter, HaRav Rabinowitz issued a stark warning to Limon, stating unequivocally that the situation constitutes pikuach nefesh without exaggeration — both at the Rashbi complex and at other holy sites.

“Just five years after the devastating Meron disaster, hundreds of thousands of mispallelim are expected to visit ahead of the days of Selichos and the Yamim Noraim,” he wrote. “Operating such a complex and sensitive site without an approved budget and stable management would pose serious safety and security risks.”

Rav Rabinowitz continued by writing that as the chairman of the Committee of Five, unless the budget is immediately resolved and the current deadlock is broken, it will be impossible for him to shoulder the heavy responsibility, and he will be forced to resign from his position immediately.

He ended his letter with a sharp warning: paralyzing the National Center for the Development of Holy Sites ahead of the Yamim Tovim will jeopardize the safety and security of hundreds of thousands of visitors. Urgent legal and budgetary intervention is the only way to prevent that outcome.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Israeli-American high-tech entrepreneur Oren Dobronsky, who recently received a reserved slot on the Likud Party’s candidate list for Israel’s upcoming elections, could face a multi-million-dollar U.S. tax bill if he is elected to the Knesset and chooses to take his seat.

According to the report, Dobronsky would be required to renounce his U.S. citizenship before being sworn in as a member of the Israeli parliament. Under U.S. tax law, certain American citizens who relinquish their citizenship are subject to an “exit tax,” which treats them as if they had sold their worldwide assets on the date they give up their citizenship.

The tax may apply not only to realized gains but also to significant unrealized capital gains, potentially resulting in a substantial tax liability.

Dobronsky, who has lived in the United States since 2000 and built several companies there, accumulated much of his wealth during his years in America. As a result, the report estimates that his exit tax liability could amount to millions of dollars.

The issue has prompted speculation in political circles over whether Dobronsky would be willing to incur such a financial cost in order to serve in the Knesset—and potentially lead Israel’s national artificial intelligence strategy, a role envisioned for him by Likud.

The question could become even more significant if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is unable to form the next government, leaving Dobronsky to decide whether to pay the tax in order to serve as an opposition lawmaker.

Neither Dobronsky nor Likud responded to requests for comment, according to the report.

Prime Minister Netanyahu recently announced that Dobronsky would receive the first reserved slot on Likud’s electoral list, placing him 11th overall, ahead of many veteran party members and making him virtually assured of entering the Knesset should Likud perform as expected.

The appointment reflects Netanyahu’s intention to have Dobronsky spearhead Israel’s artificial intelligence policy after the election. The move reportedly came despite interest from Deputy Minister Almog Cohen of the Otzma Yehudit party, who currently oversees aspects of Israel’s AI portfolio and had also sought a reserved position.

In announcing the appointment, Likud described Dobronsky as “a successful businessman, one of the pioneers of Israel’s high-tech industry, and a committed man of the Right.”

The party said that after the election, Dobronsky would lead efforts to advance artificial intelligence across government, education, healthcare, the economy and other sectors.

During the war, Dobronsky attracted attention for a series of outspoken public statements. Among other remarks, he argued that Israel should not merely defeat Hamas but should “flatten Gaza,” and said the country should continue the war until Hamas is destroyed even if that meant not all hostages would return alive. He also voiced support for proposals to encourage the emigration of Gaza residents and backed the IDF’s ground operation in Rafah.

Dobronsky also came under criticism in June after posting sharply worded comments on X directed at U.S. President Donald Trump, accusing him of excluding Israel from negotiations with Iran and criticizing the administration’s handling of the talks.

Following the backlash that erupted after his placement on the Likud list was announced, Dobronsky issued a public apology.

“President Trump is the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House,” he wrote. “In one instance, when I did not have all the facts, I lost my temper and published something I regret. I apologize for that and express my deep respect for President Trump.”

By Rabbi Pinchos Lipschutz

I’m back on an El Al plane, heading for Eretz Yisroel, expecting to spend a couple of weeks in Yerushalayim.

Making the trip was not an easy decision. The specter of another war with Iran was hanging in the air. President Trump had been bombing Iran for fourteen straight nights and had repeatedly threatened to go all out against them. Had that happened, Israel would most likely have been drawn into the conflict, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to be there for that.

Our flight was scheduled for Monday morning, and I decided that if Shabbos passed without incident, we would go.

When Shabbos was over, I turned on my phone and saw that not only had the president not ramped up his attacks on the evil regime in Iran, but he had announced that, inexplicably, he was putting everything on hold.

As I waited to see how things would develop, I was reading seforim describing the aliyah of the talmidei HaGra and the talmidim of the Baal Shem Tov. I read about what motivated these great people to leave behind their homes in Eastern Europe, the lives they were accustomed to, and whatever comforts they had, and to undertake the treacherous journey to Eretz Yisroel, where they knew they would face a life of deprivation and hardship.

Reading about why they went, and what they went through to get there, became a source of encouragement for me.

War or not, I would go.

I hadn’t made any particular plans for what I would do while I was there, but would simply follow the path of the multitudes of Yidden who, throughout the generations, yearned to be in Eretz Yisroel and took advantage of every opportunity to spend time in Hashem’s land.

And if there would be a war, I decided, I would make the best of it. I would not spend my time there angling for a way to get back “home.” I wasn’t looking forward to sitting in a bomb shelter, but if that was how Hashem had planned my vacation, I would accept it.

Every day, we put our lives in the hands of Hakadosh Boruch Hu and trust that He will care for us. In Eretz Yisroel, however, we feel it more.

The Torah (Devorim 11:12) tells us that Eretz Yisroel is different from every other land: “Eretz asher Hashem Elokecha doreish osah tomid einei Hashem Elokecha bah mereishis hashonah ve’ad acharis Shonah.”

It is a land upon which Hashem’s eyes are constantly focused, “from the beginning of the year until the end of the year.”

Perhaps that is part of what makes being there so different. We are always dependent on Hashem wherever we live, but in Eretz Yisroel, that dependence is palpable. You feel it.

As it turned out, there was no immediate need to worry. Despite President Trump’s bluster and threats, there was no war. Iran continues in its evil ways, and the world watches.

But perhaps the real question is not why I was willing to go to Eretz Yisroel with the possibility of war hanging over the country. The real question is why, throughout our history, Jews have been willing to do far more.

They left behind homes, families, livelihoods, and familiar surroundings. They traveled for months under conditions that are difficult for us to imagine. Some endured hunger and disease. Others arrived in a land where they had no means of supporting themselves and little of the physical comfort they had known in Europe.

And they did it willingly.

What were they looking for?

The answer is not simply that they wanted to live in a holy place. They were seeking something that cannot be measured in comfort, convenience, or even safety.

They wanted to be in the place where a Yid feels closest to the Ribono Shel Olam. They wanted to be in Hashem’s Chosen Land.

The stories of the talmidei HaGra and the talmidim of the Baal Shem Tov are especially moving because these were not people who had nothing to lose. They had homes. They had communities. They had positions of honor and lives that were familiar to them. Yet, the pull of Eretz Yisroel was stronger. The desire to live lives of kedusha in artzeinu hakedosha and help usher in the era of Moshiach pulled them out of their homes and away from their extended families to begin new lives in Eretz Yisroel. In the years since, many have followed their example, and as time passed, the challenges of settling there eased.

Those people understood something that we sometimes lose sight of.

For thousands of years, Yidden have davened, pleaded, sung, and begged to return to Yerushalayim, to Eretz Yisroel.

Every day, Jews around the world turn toward Yerushalayim. Three times a day, we ask to be returned to our land. At the end of the Seder, we proclaim, “Leshanah haba’ah b’Yerushalayim.” At its height, as Yom Kippur concludes, we cry out the same words.

And here I was, sitting on an airplane, heading to Yerushalayim, with the privilege of spending two weeks in Eretz Yisroel.

How blessed is our generation.

If only we would appreciate our blessings.

There is another thought that occurred to me as I sat on the plane.

We have become accustomed to something that is anything but ordinary.

We can wake up in New York, Los Angeles, London, or Paris, and by the next morning be in Yerushalayim.

We take it for granted.

We complain about the flight. We complain about the airport. We complain about the food. We complain about the traffic when we land.

And then we get into a car and drive through Yerushalayim.

Stop for a moment and think about that. For centuries, a Yid could spend his entire life dreaming about that moment. Our grandparents and great-grandparents longed to see Yerushalayim. They yearned to be able to walk through the streets of the Holy City.

For many of them, the dream remained a dream.

For others, the dream was so powerful that they abandoned everything they knew and undertook journeys that we would consider unimaginable.

And we?

We can book a ticket on our phone. A few clicks, a few hours in the air, and we are there. Perhaps because it is so easy, we don’t appreciate what we have.

There is a danger in miracles becoming routine.

When something extraordinary happens once, we are overwhelmed by it. When it happens every day, we begin to regard it as normal.

That may be one of the great challenges of our generation.

We were born into a world in which Jews can live in Eretz Yisroel as Jews. We can walk freely through Yerushalayim. We can learn Torah there, daven there, raise children there, and build communities there.

We can visit the Kosel whenever we want.

We can travel throughout the land that our ancestors could only dream of seeing.

And somehow, it has become ordinary.

Perhaps the seforim I was reading before the trip were reminding me not to let that happen.

They were reminding me that Eretz Yisroel is a gift.

A gift purchased with the yearning, sacrifice, and mesirus nefesh of generations.

A gift that carries responsibility, and a gift that should never be taken for granted.

Yet, Eretz Yisroel is going through a very difficult period.

Bnei Torah have been dealing with a campaign against them that would have been difficult to imagine not that long ago. Cynical propagandists have unleashed a vicious political war against the Torah community, turning the issue of military service into a weapon with which to attack an entire way of life.

The result, coming in the midst of an actual war against Israel’s mortal enemies, has been nothing short of a typhoon.

Instead of the Jewish people standing together against those who seek to destroy us, an increasingly bitter internal struggle has developed. The political and social divisions have become so deep that the country sometimes seems to be fighting a civil war while simultaneously fighting an external war.

And with elections approaching, the battle is only becoming more intense.

There is something particularly painful about this, because Eretz Yisroel is not merely a country. It is the home of the Jewish people.

For generations, the secularization of Israeli society was not merely tolerated. It was deliberately cultivated. Torah study and religious observance were pushed to the margins as the founders of the state sought to create a new Israeli Jew—more secular, more nationalistic, and less connected to the Jewish religious tradition.

The tragedy is that many of the early leaders had grown up differently.

They may not have been observant themselves, but they came from homes and communities where Torah, mitzvos, and Jewish tradition were familiar. They had parents and grandparents who were religious. They had relatives who were frum. They knew what Shabbos was. They knew what a bais medrash was. They knew that the Jewish people have a Torah.

And even when they fought against religious influence, many understood that the Torah community is an authentic and indispensable component of the Jewish people.

That understanding led to what became known as the religious status quo.

Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, despite being a secular socialist, reached an accommodation with the religious parties that included the famous arrangement granting exemptions from military service to yeshiva students.

The arrangement was far from perfect, and the Torah community certainly did not view the secular leadership as its natural ally. But there was an understanding that there was room in the Jewish state for Jews who lived according to the Torah.

There were other surprising connections as well.

Shimon Peres, who became one of Israel’s most prominent secular leaders, grew up with a Jewish religious background and had studied Torah with his grandfather. He also met the Chofetz Chaim as a youngster. Later, he played a role in preventing the draft of religious girls, for which the Torah community was eternally grateful.

Menachem Begin came from Brisk and, despite becoming a secular political leader, understood the world of Torah and the place of religious Jews within the Jewish people in a way that is difficult to find among today’s political class. He was familiar enough with Yiddishkeit that when he was hiding from the British, he hid in plain sight by living as a religious Jew in Yerushalayim.

When Begin came to power, it represented a historic change in the relationship between the government and the Torah parties.

There was still disagreement. There was still tension. There were still battles.

But there was a basic recognition that we, too, were entitled to support and rights.

That has changed.

Today, many of the politicians leading the campaign against the Torah community have little meaningful connection to Torah, halacha, or the culture and traditions of Jewish religious life.

And that lack of familiarity matters.

It is difficult to understand someone whose world you have never entered.

If you don’t understand why a person can spend his life learning Torah, you will see a yeshiva student as someone avoiding responsibility.

If you don’t understand what Torah means to a Yid, you will see Torah learning as merely another career choice.

If you don’t understand that the Jewish people survived exile because we remained connected toTorah, you will have difficulty understanding why the Torah community regards the preservation of Torah learning as an existential matter.

And if your ideal is to become “k’chol ha’amim”—like all the nations—then Torah will inevitably come to be viewed as an obstacle to that goal rather than the foundation of Jewish existence.

They don’t understand us at all.

This is not simply a political disagreement.

It is a disagreement over what a Jewish state is supposed to be.

Is Israel merely a country inhabited by people who happen to be Jewish, or is it the Jewish state whose identity is rooted in the history, heritage, and Torah of the Jewish people?

Those are two very different visions.

During my trip, I met Moshe Gafni, Knesset leader of Degel HaTorah. He asked me a question that has stayed with me: “Do people in America realize how bad the situation of the Torah community is in Israel?”

People in positions of leadership within the Torah community are deeply concerned about what the next elections will bring and what kind of government will emerge afterward. They understand that the coming political battles are not merely about personalities or parties. The decisions made now may determine the relationship between the State of Israel and the Torah community for years to come.

Every election is important. But some elections are pivotal.

President Ronald Reagan famously warned that freedom is never more than a generation away from extinction. The same principle can apply to institutions and traditions. What one generation takes for granted, the next generation may no longer understand, and the generation after that may actively oppose.

The coming elections may therefore represent a turning point in Israel’s relationship with its Torah community.

And there is another development that should trouble every Jew.

As the State of Israel has become increasingly estranged from Torah, and as the Torah community has increasingly been portrayed as the problem rather than as an essential part of the Jewish people, something else has been happening in the world.

Hatred of Jews has been rising.

Antisemitism has become more brazen, more mainstream, and more politically acceptable.

On American college campuses, in European cities, and increasingly within the Democrat Party, which once considered itself a friend of the Jewish people and which many Jews supported and still support, anti-Israel rhetoric has often crossed the line into something much darker.

It is a troubling irony. We spent two thousand years praying to return to Eretz Yisroel. We finally returned. A Jewish state was established. Jews poured in from across the globe.

And yet, at the very moment when we have more Jewish power than we have had in two thousand years, there are those working to separate the Jewish state from the very thing that made us a nation in the first place: Torah.

That should frighten us, not because frum Jews need special privileges, but because a Jewish state without a Jewish soul is ultimately a contradiction.

Eretz Yisroel was not promised to us merely so that we could become another nation, with theaters, universities, and a government. It was given to us so that we could become the nation Hashem chose us to be.

But despite all of this, Eretz Yisroel remains Eretz Yisroel.

It is the land Hashem promised to our forefathers. It is the direction toward which we turn three times a day when we daven. Its air is holy. Its soil is holy. And many of the people who live there are visibly holy.

On this visit, I discovered a new gem.

A friend suggested that I daven on Shabbos morning at the Kerem Avrohom shul. It is literally a stone’s throw from the new developments on the Schneller property in Geulah, where I was staying.

The contrast could hardly be greater.

Jerusalem Estates is a modern high-rise development, with contemporary architecture and beautifully appointed apartments equipped with all the latest amenities.

And in its very shadow stands this little shul, a throwback to another Yerushalayim.

The shul is small and has only a few regular mispallelim. To reach it, you climb an outdoor flight of steps to the second floor. There is nothing grand about it. No marble lobby. No impressive entrance. No architectural statement.

Just a little shul.

But what a shul!

As soon as I heard how close it was, I was eager to daven there. I remembered having been there as a bochur, when I was learning in Brisk. Rav Dovid Soloveitchik’s yeshiva had learned one of the sedorim there, and I had gone there several times and regularly passed it.

Rav Elazar Menachem Man Shach had lived in Yerushalayim when he first came to Eretz Yisroel and he had learned in this very shul.

Now I had the opportunity to return.

The people were warm and welcoming. After davening, several of the mispallelim came over to greet me, asking my name and where I am from.

One of the men who approached me was an older Yid who was the baal korei.

I complimented him on his laining and asked him his name.

“Yadler,” he told me.

I asked if he was related to the famed Yerushalayim maggid, Rav Bentzion Yadler.

He looked at me and told me that he was his father’s father.

I took another look at him.

I studied his face and features, trying to discern in him the remnants of the Yerushalayim of old, the world of the legendary maggid whose name is woven into the story of Yerushalayim.

Apparently, he noticed me looking at him.

He looked me straight in the eye and said very seriously: “Ihr hut ah zechus vos ihr hut gedavent du! You have a zechus that you davened here!”

Indeed, I did.

I looked around the shul and noticed a plaque thanking the Jews of Vilna who had contributed toward the construction of the building.

Then I saw the date, 5654. I made a quick calculation and realized that it was the year 1894.

I stood there for a moment, contemplating those numbers.

What did the world look like then?

What did Yerushalayim look like?

What did life look like for the Yidden who built this little shul?

The world has changed almost beyond recognition since then. Empires have risen and disappeared. Nations have been created and destroyed. Technology has transformed every aspect of human life. Yerushalayim has expanded far beyond what it was back then and become a major city.

Yet, this little shul is still there.

Torah is still being learned there.

Tefillos are still being recited there.

Yidden are still walking up those same steps to stand before Hakadosh Boruch Hu.

The rov of the shul is the fourth member of his family to occupy the position, going back to the famed brothers, Rav Yonah and Rav Eliyohu Rom.

I went over to him and said shalom aleichem. He asked my name and whether I was related to Rav Yisroel Lipschutz, the author of the Tiferes Yisroel on Mishnayos. I told him that I wasn’t, and that my family came from Kovno. He smiled and told me that I had come to the right place and should feel at home.

He then told me something else.

The famed gaon, Rav Yehoshua Leib Diskin, who lived in the Old City of Yerushalayim, would venture beyond the walls during the summer and daven in this very shul.

Rav Yehoshua Leib Diskin had previously served as the rov of Kovno.

Suddenly, my own connection to the place felt a little more personal.

I had been doubly blessed.

I had the zechus to be in Yerushalayim, and I had the zechus to daven in a small, unassuming shul where great gedolim had stood before me—where Rav Yehoshua Leib Diskin had davened, where Rav Shach had learned, and where the yeshiva headed by the son of the Brisker Rov, populated by talmidim who would go on to become Klal Yisroel’s roshei yeshiva, rabbeim, and rabbonim, had once learned.

This is Eretz Yisroel.

For all its problems, for all its struggles, for all the political turmoil and uncertainty, there is no place like it.

Every step taken there is a mitzvah.

Every corner has a story.

Every stone seems to hold a secret.

The land preserves and transmits a heritage that stretches back thousands of years, and everywhere you turn, you encounter the people who lived there, dreamed there, struggled there, davened there, and refused to give up on it.

Perhaps that is why, especially now, we need to concentrate on the good.

It is Elul.

The month when we prepare ourselves for the Yom Hadin has arrived.

And the Torah gives us a remarkable formula for approaching that judgment.

The Kedushas Levi, in this week’s parsha, Parshas Shoftim, explains the pesukim of “Shoftim veshotrim titein lecha bechol she’arecha.”

We are commanded to establish judges and officers. But there is another message hidden within these words.

If we learn to judge others properly, with fairness, compassion, and kindness, then “veshoftu es ha’am mishpat tzedek”—we can bring about a more merciful judgment upon Klal Yisroel.

The way we judge others influences the way we ourselves are judged.

That is a powerful thought with which to enter Elul.

We are all preparing for the Yom Hadin. We are examining ourselves, thinking about where we can improve, where we have fallen short, and what we can do differently in the coming year.

And we all have much to daven for.

Klal Yisroel is in a serious situation.

Our brothers and sisters in Eretz Yisroel are living with danger from without and painful divisions within. The Torah community is facing challenges that could have consequences for generations. Antisemitism is rising around the world. The Jewish people need rachamim.

An important thing we can all do now is to help arouse the middah of chesed.

Judge others favorably.

Speak more kindly.

Assume the best.

Look for the good.

Give people the benefit of the doubt.

And perhaps, in that zechus, we will merit that Hakadosh Boruch Hu will look upon us with that same middah.

The summer is coming to an early end this year, and the heady days of Elul have arrived.

We spent the summer trying to maximize the days of bein hazemanim. Now we have entered a different season, one in which we have to maximize something far more precious: the days of Elul.

We were given a gift in Eretz Yisroel.

We were given the gift of a generation that can travel to Yerushalayim with a boarding pass.

We were given the gift of Torah, of tefillah, of Jewish life, and of the ability to walk in the footsteps of generations who dreamed of being where we are.

Let us not take any of it for granted. Let us appreciate the blessings we have each day in our lives.

Let us see the good. Let us judge one another favorably.

And let us use these precious days of Elul to arouse the middas hachesed, so that we and all of Klal Yisroel may be judged favorably and merit a kesivah vachasimah tovah, a year of good health, yeshuah, hatzlocha, brocha, and, if he has not come before the new year begins, bias Moshiach Tzidkeinu.

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — An investigation has been launched into Issa Ghrayeb, a lecturer at Jerusalem’s Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, following a report by Israel’s Channel 14 alleging that he made a series of statements sharply critical of the State of Israel and the Israel Defense Forces.

Ghrayeb, an Israeli citizen born in Nazareth who studied at Bezalel before joining its faculty, is at the center of allegations stemming from material published in Germany. According to the report, Ghrayeb has referred to Israeli cities—including Nazareth, Haifa and Jerusalem—as being located in “Palestine” and has described IDF soldiers as “Israeli occupation forces.”

The revelations have raised questions about the responsibilities of a publicly funded Israeli academic institution toward its students and the broader public. Beyond his social media activity, Ghrayeb recently received a prestigious artist’s fellowship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), where he was reportedly presented as being from the “Palestinian territories.”

According to the report, inquiries with the German organization found that, in his self-declared application, Ghrayeb listed his place of residence as “East Jerusalem and Ramallah,” despite being an Israeli citizen born and raised in Nazareth.

The German report also alleged that on October 17, 2023, just ten days after the October 7 Hamas attack and before Israel launched its ground operation in Gaza, Ghrayeb published a call to stop what he described as Israel’s “genocide” against Palestinians, without mentioning the Hamas-led massacre.

The opening of the investigation follows concerns that Ghrayeb’s actions, including his alleged denial of Israel’s legitimacy and his criticism of the Israeli military while serving as a lecturer at a state-funded academic institution, may go beyond the bounds of legitimate conduct.

Authorities are now examining whether Bezalel’s administration was aware of Ghrayeb’s public statements over the years and how the institution has addressed allegations that one of its faculty members has publicly described Israeli cities as part of “Palestine.”

The case has also renewed debate over the extent of academic freedom and the responsibility of publicly funded institutions when faculty members make controversial political statements in public forums.

What would Halacha say if the surrogate and the parents were all Jewish?

New York (VINNEWS/Rabbi Yair Hoffman) A surrogacy fight featured in the New York Times on Thursday August 13th had  stretched across three states. It ended this week in a Dallas delivery room. The case raises a set of questions that may someday be applicable halachically.  But let’s get to some of the case’s details first. 

What Happened

A woman in Alaska agreed to serve as a surrogate mother for a couple living in Los Angeles. The embryo was made from the couple’s own genetic material and then implanted in her womb.

At about twenty weeks of pregnancy, doctors found out that the baby, r”l, had a rare and serious heart defect called hypoplastic left heart syndrome. The left side of the heart does not form properly. A baby born with it needs a series of major surgeries in order to survive.

The intended parents decided to end the pregnancy. The surrogacy contract they had signed gave them that right. But the surrogate refused. After consulting with legal advisors, she traveled to Texas, where abortion is banned, to find doctors who could treat the baby instead. Also, a house-guest, Rabbi Yitzchok Brandys, informed me this morning that according to Texas law, the surrogate mother is the legal mother. Lawyers, anti-abortion organizations, and eventually the Texas attorney general all got involved. The baby was born on Wednesday in Dallas.

Now what if every person in this story had been Jewish, and that the case had come before a beis din instead of a courthouse. What would the halacha be?

There are as many as six different questions here, and perhaps more.  Let’s take them one at a time.

Question One: Could the Parents Demand an Abortion?

The Rambam (Hilchos Rotzeach 1:9) rules that a fetus may be aborted only when it threatens the mother’s life. In that situation the fetus has the status of a rodef, a pursuer. Rav Moshe Feinstein zt”l in his famous teshuvah in Igros Moshe (Choshen Mishpat 2:69), ruled that abortion is a form of retzicha and is forbidden except to save the mother’s life.

Rav Moshe wrote that teshuvah in order to disagree with the Tzitz Eliezer (13:102 and 14:101-102), who had permitted abortion if it were to happen within 40 days of the pregnancy in a case of Tay-Sachs disease. But even the Tzitz Eliezer’s heter would not help here. Tay-Sachs is always fatal and involves terrible suffering. Hypoplastic left heart syndrome is different. With surgery, most of these children live into their teenage years and beyond. A condition that can be treated is simply not comparable. Also, the Tzitz Eliezer’s heter was only if the mother would have life-threatening psychiatric trauma as determined by a certified doctor.  Here, that determination may not apply in regard to the Los Angeles couple.

Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach zt”l and Rav Elyashiv zt”l both ruled strictly in this general area as well. And twenty weeks is far past any point that even the most lenient opinions discuss. That is 140 days – not 40 days.

So the surrogate, in refusing, would have been doing exactly what halacha demands. The parents could not have hired her to do it either, because of the rule of ein shliach lidvar aveirah — a person cannot appoint an agent to commit a sin.

Question Two: Does the Contract Bind Her?

A clause in a contract that obligates a woman to have an abortion is a condition to violate a Torah prohibition. Such a condition is void halachically. This is because of the principle of masneh al mah shekasuv baTorah — a person cannot make a binding agreement to break the law of the Torah. [Rav Chaim Kanievsky zt”l invoked this principle forbidding the freezer of BMG fame].

There is a second problem with the contract as well. A contract cannot transfer ownership of a human being. A child is not property and cannot be the object of a kinyan. Poskim also raise the issues of asmachta (a commitment a person never seriously intended) and davar shelo ba la’olam (selling something that does not yet exist) regarding surrogacy contracts generally.

Question Three: Who Is the Mother?

This is the hardest question, and it is the one that would decide the custody fight.

Two women have a claim. One provided the egg — all of the child’s genetic material from the mother’s side comes from her. The other carried the pregnancy and gave birth.

The arguments on each side are strong.

The Nishmas Avrohom Vol. II Even ho’Ezer Siman 2:2 cites Rav Elyashiv zt”l that the birth mother is the halachic mother in such cases and not the donor mother. This is also the view of Rav Eliezer Yehudah Waldenberg, author of the Tzitz Eliezer (Vol. XV #45). However, in recent years, Rav Avrohom Sherman has been disputing that this was, in fact, Rav Elyashiv’s position. He stated that Rav Elyashiv held that it was just the DNA mother.

Rav Moshe Shternbuch, however, in his Teshuvos v’Hanhagos Vol. IV Siman 284 concludes that such a child has no halachic mother.

The Story of Dina

An interesting source in the discussion comes from psukim.

The pasuk lists “the sons of Shimon: Yemuel, Yamin, Ohad, Yachin, Zohar, and Shaul, son of the Canaanite woman” (Bereishis 46:10). Chazal explain that Shaul was the son of Shimon and Dina. After Shimon and Levi rescued Dina from Shechem, she was too ashamed to leave the city, and she made Shimon promise to marry her.

The Mefarshim immediately ask the obvious question. The shevatim had the status of Bnei Noach, who may marry a paternal sister. But Dina was Shimon’s sister from the same mother, and that is forbidden even to a Ben Noach (Sanhedrin 58a). How then was this permitted?

There is a well-known Maamar Chazal cited by Rashi on Bereishis 30:21. Leah knew through ruach hakodesh that Yaakov Avinu would father only twelve sons. When she became pregnant for the seventh time, she realized that another boy would leave Rachel Imeinu with fewer shevatim than even Bilhah or Zilpah. She davened so that Rachel Imeinu be spared that shame, and her male fetus became a female.

The Targum Yonasan (Bereishis 30:21) goes a step further. At the very time that Leah Imeinu conceived a boy, Rachel Imeinu conceived a girl. In answer to Leah’s tefillah, the two were exchanged. Rachel’s female fetus was moved to Leah and was born as Dina, and the male fetus conceived in Leah was moved to Rachel and was born as Yosef.

Several Rishonim — the Moshav Zekeinim miBaalei haTosfos and the Tosfos haShalem al haTorah on Bereishis 46, in the name of the Riva — use this to answer the question about Shimon. If Dina was conceived by Rachel, then Rachel was in some sense her mother, not Leah. That would make Dina only Shimon’s paternal sister, and permitted to him to marry back then.

These Rishonim appear to say that maternity follows conception, not birth. So in our case, the Los Angeles couple may be the parents. 

The Maharsha holds that Leah’s fetus was not changed from male to female at all. Rather, it was swapped with Rachel’s female fetus — so calling her “Yaakov’s daughter” is exactly correct.

Proof One: The Convert Pregnant With Twins

The Gemara in Yevamos (97b) discusses a non-Jewish woman pregnant with twins who converts during her pregnancy. Her geirus works for the fetuses as well.

Normally a ger is considered like a newborn child and is no longer halachically related to his biological relatives. Yet the Gemara rules that these twins remain halachic brothers even after the conversion.

Some poskim see this as proof that the maternal relationship is created at birth, or at least during pregnancy. The twins converted in the womb, which should have erased their earlier relationship. The fact that they are still brothers must be because they gestated in the same woman and were born from her.

This proof can perhaps be challenged in two ways. First, Rashi in Yevamos 98a holds that the rule of a convert being like a newborn does not apply to fetuses at all — in which case the twins would remain brothers no matter what. Second, even if maternity normally runs through heredity, in an ordinary pregnancy the same woman supplies the egg and carries the child. So even if conversion cuts the original link, perhaps pregnancy and birth create it again.

Proof Two: The First Forty Days

The Gemara in Yevamos (69b) states that during the first forty days after conception an embryo is maya b’alma — merely water — and does not yet have the independent status of a nefesh. Some Acharonim hold that even those who require a fetus to have its own geirus would agree that no geirus is needed if the conversion happened during that period.

Implantation in a surrogate always takes place well within forty days of fertilization. Based on that, one could argue that the surrogate is certainly the mother, since the embryo only becomes established as a nefesh after it is already inside her.

This too, however, can be answered. Even during the maya b’alma stage the embryo carries the potential to become a child, along with all of its genetic traits — and that potential came from the woman whose egg was fertilized. This would put the ball back in the court of the Los Angeles woman.

Proof Three: The Three Partners

The Gemara in Niddah (31a) teaches that there are three partners in the creation of a person: Hashem, the father, and the mother. The father provides some genetic material, the mother provides other material. And Hashem gives the spirit and soul, the light of the face, sight, hearing, speech, the ability to walk, understanding, and insight.

On its face this Gemara seems to say that the connection between a child and a parent is exactly the biological material that the parent contributed. A surrogate contributes none of it. And the fact that the father’s contribution develops inside a woman’s body does not make her the father’s partner in place of him — so the same should hold for the egg donor whose contribution develops inside a surrogate.

The weakness here of all this is that this is Divrei Aggadetah, and halachic conclusions are generally difficult to draw from Aggadetah.

Proof Four: Back to Dina

The Rishonim who permitted Shimon to marry Dina because she was conceived by Rachel Imeinu seem to prove clearly that maternity follows heredity rather than pregnancy. But three problems have been raised.

Firstly, the Torah itself consistently calls Yosef the son of Rachel and Dina the daughter of Leah — the opposite of what the proof requires.

Secondly, the exchange of the fetuses may have happened at the very end of each pregnancy. If so, Rachel would have carried Dina for nearly the entire nine months, and that could be the real reason Rachel counts as her mother. That would prove nothing about a woman who supplies only an egg.

Thirdly, halachic conclusions are not drawn from maasei nissim — miraculous events.

The Three Positions

Most poskim agree that there is no airtight proof either way, and that each posek must decide by his own judgment. Some refuse to rule on the question at all, holding that this generation is not on the level to decide such weighty matters on judgment alone.

Three positions have emerged.

1. Maternity is determined by heredity. The egg donor is the halachic mother.
2. Maternity is determined by pregnancy and birth. The surrogate is the halachic mother.
3. It cannot be determined. Both women must be treated as mothers, l’chumra.

The relevant sources include the Tzitz Eliezer (15:45, 19:40, 20:49 and 22:55) and the Nishmas Avraham (volume 4, Even HaEzer 2), which cites Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach zt”l and Rav Elyashiv zt”l. See also Yeshurun 21, page 535, by Rav Avraham Sherman, quoting Rav Elyashiv zt”l and Rav Avigdor Nebenzahl shlit”a. Rav Zalman Nechemia Goldberg zt”l wrote two essays on the subject, the first in Techumin 5, page 248, and the second in Asya 65-66, page 45. Rav Moshe Sternbuch shlit”a and Rav Shmuel Wosner zt”l also addressed the question.

A substantial number of contemporary poskim lean toward the birth mother, or toward treating the matter as a safek requiring both women to be considered. That said, the question remains genuinely open, and no one should assume it is settled.

In a Teshuvah sefer, where would this question even be placed?  The answer touches all four sections of Shulchan Aruch. Whom must the child honor for kibbud Av v’eim? Which women are his maternal relatives, and therefore forbidden to him in marriage? Whom does he inherit from? For whom does he sit shiva? And most urgently — if the surrogate is not Jewish, does the child require geirus?

In the Texas case as it actually happened, that last question would be the whole ballgame. But in the version under discussion here, where everyone is Jewish, the child’s Jewishness is not in doubt no matter which opinion is followed. That removes the single most serious practical problem in surrogacy cases and leaves the questions of yuchsin, kibbud, yerushah — and standing in a custody fight.

Question Four: Who Gets Custody?

The father is the genetic father as at least a safeik, although I once heard a psak from Rav Elyashiv that it is clearly the father.  Rav Moshe Feinstein did not hold of that position, but the Satmar Rebbe did (See his Teshuvos EH #1).

As for the mother, everything depends on Question Three. If the surrogate is the halachic mother, she has a real claim, not a nuisance claim. The Gemara in Kesubos (102b), codified in Even HaEzer 82:7, places a child under the age of six with the mother. Beis din retains the authority to depart from that where the welfare of the child requires it.

If the surrogate is the full halachic mother, the intended mother would have no halachic maternal status at all. If the egg donor is the full halachic mother, the picture reverses. And if the matter is treated as an unresolved safek, beis din would be left to decide on the basis of the child’s welfare rather than on a clean rule.

Question Five: Must the Baby Be Treated?

Once the baby is born, as happened here, he is a full nefesh. The thirty-day rule that people often cite affects aveilus and pidyon haben — it has nothing to do with the obligation to save a life. Shabbos is desecrated for a newborn precisely because of safek pikuach nefesh.

Two arguments might be raised against surgery.

The first is that a baby with a fatal heart malformation might be classified as a treifah. But even granting the classification, a treifah’s life must be saved, Shabbos is violated on his behalf, and here the treatment exists and can restore him to full viability.

The second is Rav Moshe Feinstein’s well-known position (Igros Moshe, Choshen Mishpat 2:73-74) that one is not obligated to prolong the suffering of a dying patient. That applies to chayei sha’ah — the last hours or days of a life that is ending. It does not apply to a child who has decades ahead of him after a series of repairs. Weighing the risk of the surgeries themselves is legitimate; the Gemara in Avodah Zarah (27b) permits risking chayei sha’ah for the chance at chayei olam.

Where parents refuse life-saving treatment for a minor, beis din acts as avihen shel yesomim, the father of orphans, and appoints an apotropos — a guardian — for the child. A child has independent rights. Parents are not owners.

That principle is the halachic parallel to what the Texas attorney general did, though beis din arrives at it through guardianship rather than through a state’s interest in the child.

Question Six: Is Surrogacy Permitted at All?

This question sits underneath everything else, and it is worth noting that the poskim are divided here as well.

The Tzitz Eliezer (15:45) opposed surrogacy in the strongest terms. Rav Elyashiv zt”l and Rav Wosner zt”l also opposed the practice. Rav Ovadia Yosef zt”l and Rav Zalman Nechemia Goldberg zt”l permitted it under conditions, and Rav Goldberg helped shape the safeguards written into Israel’s 1996 Embryo Carrying Agreements Law.

Related questions include whether an unmarried or divorced woman may serve as a surrogate, whether a married woman may, and whether a non-Jewish surrogate should be used or avoided.

A Closing Thought

Lila Rose, whose organization assisted the surrogate in the Texas case, put the objection to surrogacy in a single sentence: the child was being treated like a product, the product had a defect, and so the parties tried to send it back.

The Torah’s answer to that is contained in the Gemara in Niddah quoted above. There are three partners in the creation of a person, and the third partner is the One who gives the soul, the sight, the hearing, the speech, and the understanding. No contract signed between the other two partners can dispose of what the third one gave.

This article, of course, is a theoretical question. Any practical question in an actual case must be brought to Gedolei haPoskim.

The author can be reached at [email protected]

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee says President Donald Trump is intensifying pressure on Iran on multiple fronts, arguing that the combination of devastating American-Israeli military strikes and economic pressure has left Tehran weaker than at any point since the Islamic Revolution nearly five decades ago.

In an interview with Newsmax, Huckabee said Trump has demonstrated that his campaign against Iran extends well beyond military action.

“He’s not just proven that he was willing to bomb them, but he’s also willing to bankrupt them,” Huckabee stated.

Huckabee said the joint U.S.-Israeli military campaign caused “an enormous level of damage” to Iran’s defense capabilities, leaving the regime in its most vulnerable position since 1979.

The ambassador also addressed the extraordinary security measures recently taken to protect Trump from a potential Iranian assassination plot during the president’s departure from Turkey, praising the Secret Service for what he described as a highly sophisticated operation.

Last month, Trump was secretly flown out of Turkey aboard an alternate U.S. military aircraft after security officials became concerned about a possible Iranian threat. Cameras initially captured Trump boarding the familiar blue-and-white Boeing 747 serving as Air Force One, creating the appearance that the president would depart aboard the aircraft as usual.

Instead, Trump and a small group of senior aides were subsequently removed from the 747 without public notice and transported across the airport in a catering truck. They were then placed aboard an Air Force C-32A, a modified Boeing 757, which carried them out of the country.

“The president is obviously the most targeted person in the world,” Huckabee remarked, praising the agency’s performance.

“The number one job of the Secret Service is to protect the president, whatever it takes. What they did was a masterful operation,” he said.

Huckabee also dismissed criticism that the operation deliberately misled reporters and others who believed Trump was leaving aboard the conventional presidential aircraft.

“It fooled everybody, and that is why it was effective. I’ve heard some people complaining … that he shouldn’t have somehow fooled the reporters. “Well, what was he going to do? Tell them that he was taking a different plane?”

“It was all about the security for the president. It was a brilliant plan, and it was executed flawlessly,” he declared.

Huckabee said Americans should be grateful that trained security personnel are prepared to employ such measures when necessary to protect the commander in chief.

“That’s why we have a professional staff of highly trained people who guard the president,” he noted, stating further, “And I’m glad they do, because I would hate for something to happen to this president right now. We need him. He’s doing an effective job, and the least thing he needs to be worried about is his own safety, right?”

The ambassador also highlighted Israel’s role in providing intelligence concerning potential Iranian threats against Trump, pointing to the episode as an example of the practical value of the U.S.-Israel security relationship.

“There are threats against the president from Iran,” he observed, noting, “They continue all the time. The Israeli Mossad was one of the reasons that they knew that the plot was real. “When people say, what’s the benefit of our relationship? There’s one right there.”

Trump discussed the secret aircraft switch with reporters Tuesday, saying he followed the instructions given to him by the Secret Service and military officials responsible for his security.

“Well, it’s only up to Secret Service. I just follow what they’d like to do, so I go by Secret Service and the military. They wanted me to go in a different flight, a different plane … but they wanted me to do it, so I do it. I do what they say, Trump explained.

“I guess there was a threat out there. I didn’t really ask too much about it. I get a lot of threats. I have a lot of threats that you don’t know about,” he added.

Trump also used his remarks to reiterate his deep distrust of the Iranian government while asserting that the United States currently holds a commanding position in its confrontation with Tehran.

“Iran is going fine, going just absolutely fine,” Trump remarked to reporters on the tarmac following an official trip to Ohio.

The president said he remains deeply skeptical of anything Iranian leaders say and claimed the United States currently has complete control over the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz.

“I’m the last person to trust Iran. They’ve lied to me constantly. We have total control over the Hormuz Strait right now. They don’t have control. We have total control. We own it. And at some point, maybe they’ll do something, and then they get blown away.”

He continued, “But we right now, we’re in a very good position. We have a country that has been the bully of the Middle East for 50 years. It’s been saying 47 for four years. And they’re no longer the bully of the Middle East.”

Trump’s latest comments followed questions he faced a day earlier about his warning that ongoing diplomatic negotiations represented Tehran’s final opportunity to reach an agreement before facing “decapitation.”

Asked what would happen next if Iran failed to satisfy U.S. demands, Trump offered a terse response.

“You’ll find out.”

When pressed on whether another major military escalation against Iran remained a possibility, the president made clear that the United States retains that option.

“Well, we certainly have that ability if we want to do that. You’ll find out.”

Target has created a chief artificial intelligence officer role for the first time and filled it from a rival’s bench. The retailer said Tuesday it named Chandhu Nair as chief AI officer and senior vice president, hiring him from Lowe’s, where he was senior vice president of stores, data, AI and innovation. Nair spent more than six years at the home improvement chain. Target also named Purvi Shah senior vice president of user experience — Shah has been with the company for four years.

The pairing is the point. Target is putting the executive who builds the AI and the executive who designs how customers encounter it on the same footing, rather than treating AI as a back-office technology function.

Nair’s brief spans employee tools, inventory management and how customers shop online. That is a wide remit at a company whose problem has been showing up in every one of those places at once.

The hire lands inside a turnaround. Target’s 2025 net sales fell 1.7% to $104.8 billion, and the company went through five straight quarters of revenue declines. Michael Fiddelke, who took over as chief executive earlier this year, responded in March with a $6 billion plan for 2026 — roughly $5 billion in capital spending to open 30 new stores and remodel more than 130, plus about $1 billion in operating investment aimed at store staffing, training, marketing and new technology including AI. He also cut prices 5% to 20% on more than 3,000 items across apparel, home, baby and grocery.

The early returns were better than expected. Target’s fiscal first quarter showed net sales up more than 6% and same-store sales up 5.6% — its first positive comparable-sales figure in five quarters — with traffic across stores and digital up 4.4% and digital comparable sales up 8.9%, driven by same-day delivery through Target Circle 360. Shares still fell nearly 4% that day as investors questioned whether the pace would hold through the rest of the year.

AI is threaded through what Fiddelke has promised next. Target Trend Brain, an internal tool trained on social media and fashion show data, helps designers decide what is trending. The company has partnered with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini to let shoppers buy products directly through those assistants, and the CEO wants agentic models that help customers find what they are looking for, along with better sales forecasting. Target also launched a conversational AI gift-finding tool last holiday season.

For a retailer with roughly 2,000 stores, the forecasting piece may matter more than anything customer-facing. Buying the wrong inventory is what produces markdowns, and markdowns are what have been eating Target’s margins.

The competitive backdrop explains the urgency. Walmart has been rolling AI tools and agents across its stores and supply chain for both customer experience and internal processes, Gap struck a partnership with Google’s Gemini this year, and Best Buy has arrangements with OpenAI and Google. Walmart said in June it was using AI to streamline employee work including translation and task management.

The job title itself is spreading fast beyond technology companies. Meta, Google and IBM have chief AI officers, and so do Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Accenture and PwC. What is different at a mass retailer is the measurement: a pharmaceutical company can point to research pipelines, while Target’s AI investment has to show up in traffic, basket size and gross margin within a few quarters or investors will call it overhead.

Nair is not the first person to build an AI function at Target. Ashwin Rao served as the company’s first head of AI from 2016 to 2022, leading teams that built models for pricing, merchandising, customer experience and supply chain logistics before leaving for building products distributor QXO. The difference now is seniority — the work reports in at the top rather than sitting inside the technology organization.

The announcement comes just over a week before Target has to show numbers. The company reports second-quarter results on Aug. 19, with Walmart following the next day. Target has told investors the quarter includes its largest food and beverage transition in more than a decade, the rollout of Target Beauty Studio to more than 600 stores, and an overhaul of nearly 75% of its decorative accessories assortment.

Whether the AI office becomes central or ornamental will be visible in those quarterly reports well before it is visible in any press release.

JBizNews Desk | Minneapolis

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PARK RIDGE, N.J. (VINnews) — Cyberattacks on two municipal water systems in Cape May County have prompted new bipartisan federal legislation aimed at strengthening defenses for small and midsize utilities across the country.

The incidents, part of a broader campaign that targeted water systems in as many as 12 states last month, affected the City of Cape May Water and Sewer Department and the Borough of Woodbine Water Department. Officials said quick action by a small number of people prevented customers from losing service. No drinking water was contaminated and no customer data was compromised, authorities said.

“Have there been other attacks in New Jersey? Absolutely, and there will be other attacks in New Jersey,” said Michael Geraghty, chief information security officer at the New Jersey Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Cell. He noted that many attacks are blocked, but some succeed.

On Wednesday in Park Ridge, U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., joined local officials to announce two bipartisan bills. One would provide artificial intelligence security tools to water utilities and power stations in communities most in need. The other would create a rapid-response notification service giving small and midsize towns a direct point of contact during an attack.

“This is about fighting the bad guys, fighting our adversaries, fighting China, fighting Russia, fighting Iran, before they get here,” Gottheimer said.

Bergen County Prosecutor Mark Musella said water utilities can be easy targets for criminals who exploit remote vulnerabilities. His office maintains cybercrime, counterterrorism and digital forensics units that monitor online threats.

Reports have suggested Iran was behind the broader campaign. American Water and Veolia, two of New Jersey’s largest water utilities, said last week they were not affected.

WATCH:

Wealthy homebuyers are increasingly looking to lower-tax, business-friendly states such as Texas as taxes and regulation play a bigger role in where affluent Americans choose to live and invest, according to Mauricio Umansky, founder and CEO of global brokerage The Agency.

“That trend is definitely happening,” Umansky told FOX Business of affluent residents leaving high-tax blue cities and states. “… But not only tax friendly — business friendly.”

Umansky, whose firm has 170 offices across 17 countries, said policies that raise the cost of owning or selling high-end real estate are affecting luxury markets.

He pointed to New York City’s pied-à-terre tax and Los Angeles’ Measure ULA, commonly known as the “mansion tax,” as examples.

“The pied-à-terre tax is really hurtful,” Umansky said. “In Los Angeles, we have the ULA tax, which is very hurtful.”

Those policies are helping redirect some wealth toward markets including Texas, he said.

“You are seeing a lot of the wealth go, and they’re going to places like Dallas, Texas,” Umansky said. “You’re seeing a lot of growth there. So there’s a shift.”

Texas is not the only market drawing interest. Umansky said buyers with greater flexibility are considering other parts of the country, including the Southeast, as remote work gives them more freedom over where they live.

Still, Umansky said the movement of wealth does not mean traditional luxury strongholds such as California and New York are collapsing.

“We’re definitely seeing a trend of exodus, but still growth,” he said, describing the market as a “very mixed” picture.

Los Angeles is beginning to show signs of recovery at the high end, Umansky said, as sellers become more flexible on pricing and buyers begin making offers.

The Hamptons also remains strong, while California continues to generate significant wealth, including from the artificial intelligence boom. Both California and New York remain critical economic engines despite some residents looking elsewhere, Umansky said.

Umansky added, “I think it’s super imperative for our country that we continue to protect California and New York.”

His comments come as New York City faces scrutiny over its new pied-à-terre tax on luxury second homes, including recent criticism from billionaire investor Bill Ackman and Citadel founder Ken Griffin.

President Donald Trump argued in a Truth Social post Tuesday that the tax could ultimately cost the city more than it generates if wealthy property owners and taxpayers relocate to lower-tax states such as Florida and Texas.

Trump’s comments came one day after a New York judge temporarily restrained Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration from moving forward with parts of the tax rollout after three homeowners sued over how the city implemented the surcharge.

Staten Island Supreme Court Justice Wayne Ozzi ordered the city to take down a disputed property roll covering more than 900,000 homeowners and temporarily barred officials from imposing or collecting the surcharge based on the roll without first making the individualized determination and providing the notice required under state tax law. A hearing on the dispute is scheduled for Aug. 31, while an appeal filed by the city triggered an automatic stay of the judge’s order.

The lawsuit challenges the administration of the tax rather than the legality of the surcharge itself. 

FOX Business’ Brittany Miller contributed to this report.

Paramount Skydance is now willing to discuss selling CNN outright if that is what it takes to get its Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition through the courts. Chief legal officer Makan Delrahim said at Politico’s California Agenda conference on Tuesday that a possible CNN sale is “on the table” as an option for resolving the antitrust suit brought by California and 11 other states against the $110 billion transaction.

That is a substantial escalation. Twenty-four hours earlier, the reported plan was an editorial oversight board — a governance structure meant to reassure regulators that Paramount would keep its hands off CNN’s newsroom. Selling the network is a different order of concession entirely: instead of promising restraint, the company gives up the asset.

The deal itself is largely cleared everywhere else. Paramount agreed in late February to pay $31.00 a share in cash for Warner Bros. Discovery, an equity value of $81 billion that reaches $110 billion once assumed debt is counted, after outbidding Netflix. Both boards approved it unanimously and the companies expected to close in the third quarter. The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division signed off in mid-June. Britain approved the takeover after extracting five-year guarantees covering programming and the editorial independence of Channel 5 news drawn from CNN International and CBS News, which leaves the California suit as the last obstacle standing.

The problem is the calendar. With no settlement in sight, the case is headed toward a trial before U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín set to begin March 2, 2027. If proceedings run that long, the ticking fees alone could reach into the billions. David Ellison has set Sept. 30 as his settlement deadline, now the most closely watched date in the industry.

Ticking fees are the mechanism worth understanding, because they explain the urgency better than any statement from either side. In a large cash acquisition, the buyer typically owes the seller’s shareholders a rising payment for every month past an agreed target date that the deal stays open. The price of Warner Bros. Discovery therefore climbs the longer the litigation drags. Waiting eighteen months for a trial verdict is not a neutral option for Paramount; it is an option with a price tag attached, and that price tag is what makes divesting CNN thinkable.

The states allege the merger violates the Clayton Act, and California Attorney General Rob Bonta has argued it would eliminate competition, push prices up and reduce the volume and quality of what gets made. The attorneys general have already rejected Paramount’s pledge to release 30 films a year as unenforceable, saying the company would still be positioned to raise prices and cut quality even if it honored the commitment. Bonta has given no public indication of which structural divestitures he would accept — which is precisely why Paramount is now naming its most politically sensitive asset out loud.

Delrahim knows the terrain from the other side. He served as a senior antitrust official during President Donald Trump’s first term. He said Paramount has been transparent and is prepared to work with both parties, adding: “We’re not naive to know that politics does not exist.”

He also raised a second lever. Delrahim became the first Paramount executive to acknowledge publicly that the Los Angeles-based company might leave California, following media reports citing unnamed sources about a possible relocation. Asked directly, he framed it as a matter of duty to shareholders, and said of Xavier Becerra, California’s likely next governor, that were he in the job he would not want to lose Hollywood from the state.

Read together, the two moves are a negotiation conducted in public. One offers the state something it says it wants; the other reminds the state what it stands to lose.

Whether CNN would find a buyer at a workable price is a separate question. Warner Bros. Discovery previously said the network was not for sale despite interest from Barry Diller, describing it as central to the company’s future after its planned split. Cable news is a declining audience business carrying substantial fixed newsgathering costs, and a forced sale under a court deadline is not the setting in which sellers get paid well.

Meanwhile the oversight board discussions, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, continue in parallel. The two ideas are not alternatives so much as rungs on the same ladder: the board is what Paramount would prefer to give, and the sale is what it is signaling it can give if the board proves insufficient. Which rung the company ends on will be decided in the next seven weeks.

JBizNews Desk | Los Angeles

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Channel 12 News published new details about a troubling incident that occurred near the Gaza border several days ago.

As Yisrael Beiteinu chairman Avigdor Liberman revealed on Wednesday, about 50 Hamas terrorists had gathered near the border for a training exercise simulating a raid and takeover of an Israeli yishuv. Despite repeated requests from soldiers in the field to carry out a preemptive strike, commanders refused to authorize the attack.

“If this isn’t a threat that we’re allowed to strike, then what is?” an officer who was present during the incident asked angrily in a conversation with Channel 12. “We wanted to strike, and they wouldn’t authorize it. We feel that our hands are tied in the face of terrorists who are already sitting and planning the next massacre.”

According to the report, the incident occurred at approximately 3 a.m. on Tuesday, when the IDF received real-time intelligence indicating an unusual gathering of some 50 Hamas terrorists engaged in suspicious activity inside the Gaza Strip near the Israeli border.

The IDF initially assessed that the gathering was a routine training exercise but nevertheless prepared for the worst-case scenario: that the terrorists were preparing for a surprise raid into Israel or an assault on one of the IDF posts in the area. In response, the Gaza Division sharply raised its alert level and deployed numerous forces to positions along the border.

The IDF also deployed a Zik UAV to monitor the suspicious activity from the air. However, according to sources familiar with the incident, the drone was unable to visually identify the gathering of terrorists indicated by the intelligence. At that point, soldiers radioed commanders and requested authorization to carry out a preemptive strike in the area where the terrorists were believed to have gathered.

The soldiers made clear that immediate action was necessary to eliminate any possibility of a surprise attack and maintain deterrence. But the response they received from commanders left them frustrated: commanders refused to authorize the strike on the grounds that no specific threat had been visually identified. The forces remained on heightened defensive alert until the morning, when the suspicious gathering dispersed.

The IDF confirmed the details of the report to Channel 12 News, explaining that the strike was not carried out because no unusual gathering was identified through surveillance systems. The military also stressed that, contrary to claims being made, there has been no change in the rules of engagement regarding terrorists in the Gaza Strip.

For the soldiers in the field, however, those explanations were far from satisfactory. Anger among troops in the Gaza Strip is growing amid a strong sense that senior commanders are “tying their hands.”

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

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New York (VINNEWS/Rabbi Yair Hoffman)

THE QUESTION

On Wednesday afternoon, the moon slid directly in front of the sun in a solar eclipse watched by over a million Americans. In other words, the sky itself announced the arrival of the new moon – the molad: Wednesday, August 12, at about 1:37 in the afternoon.

But the molad we had announced in shul was Thursday, August 13, at 1:15 in the morning — almost twelve hours later.

So when the Rema tells us to wait 72 hours after the molad before saying Kiddush Levana, which molad is he counting from? Counting from the real molad, the 72 hours are up on Shabbos afternoon. Counting from the announced molad, they are not up until 1:15 Sunday morning.

Can a person then bentch kiddush levana this Motzaei Shabbos at a decent hour, or not?  Inquiring minds want to know.

THE ANSWER

Let’s start with what the announced molad actually is. It is called the molad ha’emtza’i — the average molad. It is a fixed piece of arithmetic locked in when the calendar was set by Hillel the Second around 400ish or a bit before: 29 days, 12 hours, and 793 chalakim, every single month, forever. It was never designed to tell anyone where the moon really is.

The real new moon runs early some months and late others, sometimes by as much as fourteen hours in either direction. This month’s gap of about eleven and a half hours is completely ordinary.

So the question is what are the 72 hours measuring — the calendar, or the moon?

The TaZ answers this directly: v’lav b’yamim talya milsa ela me’eis shenehenin me’oram b’tov — it does not really depend on days at all, but on the point when a person can benefit from the moon’s light. The Mishnah Berurah says the same thing: shenehenin k’var me’orah. The three days are not a number with a life of its own. They are a rough stand-in for a physical fact — the moon has grown bright enough to be usable.

Benefiting from light is a fact about the sky, not about math. When a stand-in and the real thing disagree, and the real thing is sitting right there in plain view, the real thing should win.

By Motzaei Shabbos the moon will be about three days and seven hours old, roughly eleven to thirteen percent lit. No one can claim that light is not being benefited from. And there is no room to argue about the timing, because the eclipse was an observed event. It functions less like a cheshbon and more like eidus.

THE OTHER SIDE — WHICH IS NOT WEAK

The counter-argument is that the entire Jewish calendar now runs on the average molad. Rosh Chodesh, the yamim tovim, every yahrtzeit — all of it. The Rambam’s calculations of the true molad were written for a beis din taking testimony from witnesses, a system not currently operating. And “three days” is itself a deliberately rough number to begin with; the Mekubalim say seven, the Shulchan Aruch codifies seven, the Rema says three. Injecting astronomical precision into a number that was never meant to be precise is a strange move.

There is also a consistency problem. If the real molad governs in a month when it falls earlier, then in a month when it falls later shouldn’t we compensate when it falls later? This would push Kiddush Levana back an extra half-day past what everyone assumes. Very few people are prepared to live with that. A rule that only gets invoked when it makes things easier is not really being treated as a rule.

A SECOND MACHLOKES NOBODY MENTIONS

Also, in B’Shvilei HaMinhag, Rabbi Elyakum Dworkes observes that according to Shulchan Aruch (O.C. 426:2) we do not bentch levana except on Motzaei Shabbos, when a person is mevusam u’vegadav na’im — refreshed and in nice clothing.

But the Shulchan Aruch immediately adds a limit: this is only when Motzaei Shabbos falls before the tenth of the month. If Motzaei Shabbos would land on the eleventh or later, we do not wait for it — because maybe it will be cloudy for two or three nights straight, the moon will not be seen, and the zman will slip away entirely. That is the Rema, and the Magen Avraham (s.k. 3).

The logic underneath is a general rule worth knowing: when there is a real risk of losing a mitzvah completely, we do not delay it just to perform it in a nicer way. But when the only concern is the softer principle of mitzvah haba’ah l’yadcha al tachmitzena — don’t let a mitzvah go stale — that applies only if the later performance would be no better. If waiting produces a genuinely more beautiful mitzvah, waiting is permitted.

But not everyone agrees. There is a whole school of poskim who hold that one should not wait for Motzaei Shabbos at all — that as soon as three days have passed, a person should go outside and say Kiddush Levana, precisely so as not to let the mitzvah sit. This is the position of the Bach, and it is discussed in the Biur Halacha on siman 426, in Shu”t Shevus Yaakov (vol. 3, siman 34), in the Siddur Ya’avetz in Hilchos Kiddush Levana, and in Shu”t Beis Yaakov (siman 142), brought in Shaarei Teshuvah.

The Chacham Tzvi (siman 106) actually proves from a sugya in Yevamos (39) that a mitzvah may be delayed for the sake of doing it better.

How so?  The Gemara says yibum belongs to the oldest brother. If he refuses, we turn to the others. But if he says “wait until the oldest brother comes back from overseas,” we do not listen to him. The Nimukei Yosef explains that we refuse because of the danger that the mitzvah gets pushed off and never happens. The Chacham Tzvi asks: why did the Nimukei Yosef need to add the reason of iggun — leaving the woman stuck? The answer he draws out is that delaying for hiddur is normally acceptable; here it was the woman’s plight, not the delay itself, that forced the issue.

And why do we wait for Motzaei Shabbos in the first place? The Chesed L’Avraham Tinyana (O.C. 78) gives a striking answer. The takanah itself was built around Motzaei Shabbos, because that is when a person is in a state of joy. That is why the Maharil ruled that Kiddush Levana is not said on Motzaei Shabbos Chazon, and not before Yom Kippur — the awe of the coming judgment crowds out the simcha, and the Shechinah is received only through joy.

On that view, waiting for Motzaei Shabbos is not a delay at all. It is the mitzvah being done the way it was designed. The Haghos Maimoni records that the Maharam would put on a heavy, dignified cloak even on a weekday, in order to open his heart and bless with joy.

WHY THIS SETTLES THE PRACTICAL QUESTION

When these two positions meet this particular week – this is what happens:

The shita that says don’t delay — the Bach, the Shevus Yaakov, the Siddur Ya’avetz, the Beis Yaakov — want the bracha said at the earliest legitimate moment. On the real molad, that moment is Motzaei Shabbos.

The shita that says wait for Motzaei Shabbos — the Shulchan Aruch, the Rema, the Chesed L’Avraham — is pointing at Motzaei Shabbos.

Both roads lead to the same night. That is unusual, and it is worth noticing.

There is also a position quoted in the name of the Ya’avetz that if the 72-hour mark will arrive at any point during a given night, the bracha may be said earlier that same night. Sunday 1:15 a.m. falls inside the night of Motzaei Shabbos, which runs until alos. So even someone who insists on the announced molad has a recognized basis to bentch levana right after Shabbos.

THE PRACTICAL DETAIL MOST PEOPLE MISS

Also, a three-day-old moon does not stay up. It sets roughly two and a half to three hours after shkiah. In the New York area this Motzaei Shabbos, with shkiah near 7:55 p.m., the moon will likely be gone by somewhere around 10:15 to 10:45 p.m. — worth checking against a local table for the exact minute.

Which means the “just wait for the announced 72 hours” plan does not actually exist. At 1:15 Sunday morning there will be no moon in the sky to say a bracha on. The real choice is between saying it early Motzaei Shabbos or waiting until Sunday night.

The Rema’s own reason for not waiting past the tenth was the risk that the moon simply would not be available. Here the moon really is unavailable at the hour the strict reckoning points to.

BOTTOM LINE

There is solid ground to say Kiddush Levana this Motzaei Shabbos. The TaZ’s reason points to the physical moon. The eclipse establishes the true molad beyond any doubt. Seventy-two real hours will have passed by Shabbos afternoon. The Ya’avetz permits it independently even on the announced count. The Bach and those with him actively want it said at the first opportunity. And the Shulchan Aruch’s own preference for Motzaei Shabbos — mevusam u’vegadav na’im — together with the Chesed L’Avraham’s explanation that the joy of Motzaei Shabbos is the heart of the takanah, is a real reason to want it then rather than merely permission to have it then.

That said, sof zman Kiddush Levana this month is not until about August 27. Nobody is under pressure. Anyone who would rather not enter the machlokes at all can simply wait for Sunday night, when both reckonings agree and the moon stays up longer besides.

As always — ask your Rav.

The author can be reached at [email protected]

Nelson Peltz already owns the largest single piece of Wendy’s. He is now assembling partners to buy the rest of it and take the burger chain off the public market entirely, which would end more than two decades of quarterly scrutiny over a turnaround that has not turned.

Trian Fund Management, the firm Peltz co-founded, is forming a consortium of investors for a take-private bid, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Wednesday. The group could include BlueFive Capital, an Abu Dhabi firm known for backing Bugatti, and Flynn Group, among the longest-serving franchisees in the Wendy’s system. A bid is expected within weeks, though the timing could shift. The Financial Times reported the plan first.

Shares jumped 13% and were briefly halted for volatility, reaching their highest level in seven weeks and posting the biggest intraday gain since late June. The stock is up only about 2% for the year.

The ownership arithmetic explains why this can move quickly. Peltz personally holds 16.24% of Wendy’s, and Trian holds 7.85%, according to regulatory filings. A combined position above 24% would trigger a mandatory filing and independent director review once a formal offer lands. Wendy’s said it would thoroughly review any proposal from Trian consistent with its fiduciary duties. Trian executive Peter May and Peltz’s son Bradley sit on the company’s board, which means the independent directors, not the full board, will have to run the evaluation.

What makes the target affordable is also what makes it a project. Wendy’s carries a market value of roughly $1.44 billion, for a chain with about 7,000 locations. The company reported second-quarter results on Aug. 7 that were worse than expected: U.S. same-restaurant sales fell 7.0% against forecasts for a 4.7% decline, the sixth consecutive quarter of falling comparable sales. Management withdrew its full-year outlook and cut the quarterly dividend in half, to 7 cents from 14 cents. Burger King has since passed Wendy’s to become the second-largest burger chain in the country by system sales.

Those problems are not Wendy’s alone. Across the U.S. fast-food industry, discounting has stopped working on budget-conscious customers the way it used to, and chains that spent the past two years competing on value meals are discovering that price cuts trained diners to wait for the next promotion rather than to visit more often.

The company has a fix already in motion. Bob Wright, named permanent chief executive in May, has centered his plan on rebuilding the menu around compelling value, sharper marketing and better digital ordering. Wendy’s separately launched a restructuring called Fresh Start, aimed at domestic sales and a refreshed menu while closing its weakest restaurants, and signed a franchise agreement to build as many as 1,000 locations in China over a decade.

Wright’s background is the tell. Before Wendy’s, he oversaw a going-private process at Potbelly. A board that hires an executive with that experience while its largest shareholder gathers co-investors is a board considering the same destination.

Closing restaurants, rebuilding a menu and rewiring a digital business are all things that look worse in quarterly reporting before they look better. Under private ownership, those costs land on a balance sheet nobody has to defend on an earnings call every ninety days. That is the case for the deal, and it is the case Peltz has been making for months. Trian disclosed in a February filing that it considered the stock undervalued and was approaching potential co-investors about options including a go-private transaction.

He has been here before and stopped. Trian explored a Wendy’s takeover in 2022 and ultimately walked away. Peltz helped found the firm in 2005 and built his reputation campaigning to replace management and redirect strategy at public companies; he said earlier this year that he is now open to buying businesses outright. His association with the brand runs back further than that, to an activist campaign more than twenty years ago.

The open question is price. Independent directors evaluating a bid from the company’s own largest holder, with two of his associates in the boardroom, will be under pressure to show the offer reflects what Wendy’s is worth after a turnaround rather than what it is worth at the bottom of one. A stock that jumped 13% on the mere report of a bid has already told the buyers what the market thinks of the current valuation.

Trian, BlueFive Capital and Flynn Group did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

JBizNews Desk | New York

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Goldman Sachs is paying as much as $2.25 billion for NEOS Investments, but the more important story is what it is buying: a fast-growing corner of the investment business built around investors who want income, downside protection and the convenience of an ETF.

NEOS manages roughly $30 billion across 19 exchange-traded funds, many of which use options to generate regular income rather than simply trying to track an index.

That is increasingly attractive to both investors and Wall Street.

Traditional passive ETFs transformed investing by offering cheap access to stocks and bonds. But because their fees are extremely low, they are not always particularly lucrative for the companies managing them.

Active and options-based ETFs are different.

They can charge meaningfully higher management fees because the strategy involves more than simply copying an index. Some sell options against stock portfolios to generate income. Others are structured to provide a degree of downside protection or specific investment outcomes.

For an asset manager, that can mean recurring fee income that is considerably more predictable than investment-banking revenue, which rises and falls with mergers, IPOs and corporate borrowing.

That helps explain Goldman’s interest.

The bank has been deliberately expanding its asset- and wealth-management businesses so a larger percentage of its revenue arrives every quarter whether Wall Street is experiencing a deal boom or a slowdown.

NEOS fits directly into that strategy.

Goldman already manages about $40 billion in income and outcome-oriented options-based ETFs. Adding NEOS would help lift its actively managed ETF assets to approximately $80 billion and place Goldman among the eight largest active ETF providers.

It follows Goldman’s acquisition of Innovator Capital Management, another specialist in defined-outcome ETFs, which the bank completed earlier this year.

Taken together, the purchases show Goldman is not simply trying to sell more ETFs.

It is trying to own more of the investment products financial advisers increasingly use for clients seeking income and protection without abandoning the stock market.

That demand has become particularly important as millions of Americans reach retirement age.

A retiree may still want exposure to the S&P 500 but may also want monthly income and less sensitivity to a major market decline. Options-based ETFs attempt to package those goals into a product that can be bought and sold as easily as an ordinary stock.

There is a tradeoff.

Generating additional income by selling options can limit some of the upside when markets rise rapidly, and downside-protection strategies do not eliminate investment risk.

But investors have been pouring money into the category anyway.

For Goldman, every dollar that remains in those funds can generate management fees year after year.

That is why paying billions for an ETF company can make economic sense even though NEOS itself does not resemble the enormous industrial or technology businesses usually associated with multibillion-dollar acquisitions.

Goldman is buying the future fees attached to $30 billion of investor money — and the possibility that those assets grow substantially over time.

NEOS co-founders Troy Cates and Garrett Paolella are expected to become partners at Goldman Sachs after the transaction closes, which is currently expected in the first quarter of 2027.

The broader shift is worth watching.

Wall Street spent decades making enormous profits helping companies raise money and complete acquisitions.

Increasingly, the biggest banks want businesses that keep generating fees long after the deal is finished.

JBizNews Desk | New York

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The federal government is fighting a court order that could force it to return tariff payments to a much broader group of U.S. importers — including companies that never filed lawsuits — after Customs and Border Protection already processed and certified roughly $100 billion in refunds tied to tariffs later struck down. 

The dispute matters because it could determine whether thousands of businesses automatically recover money they paid under the invalidated tariffs or whether they must individually sue the government to get it back.

A judge at the U.S. Court of International Trade ordered refunds to extend beyond the companies that originally challenged the tariffs, effectively treating the ruling as one that should benefit all similarly situated importers. The government is appealing that approach, arguing the court went too far by granting relief to companies that were not parties to the cases. 

The distinction is especially important for smaller businesses.

Large importers typically have customs lawyers, trade consultants and litigation budgets capable of preserving refund claims and filing lawsuits quickly. Smaller importers may not know they are entitled to money back until administrative deadlines have already passed.

Once an import entry is finalized, or “liquidated,” Customs generally cannot simply reopen it indefinitely. The government’s position is that companies whose administrative refund window has closed can still pursue refunds — but they must file their own lawsuits. 

That turns what sounds like a straightforward refund into a legal and financial calculation.

A company might be owed $50,000, $500,000 or several million dollars. But recovering it could require lawyers, court filings and months of litigation.

For a large corporation, that may be an easy decision.

For a small importer, the cost of pursuing the refund could eat into the amount it hopes to recover.

The scale of the underlying reversal is enormous. The Supreme Court earlier this year invalidated the challenged emergency tariffs, triggering a refund process covering millions of import entries. Government filings show about $100 billion has already been processed and certified for repayment. 

The remaining fight is therefore no longer primarily about whether the tariffs were lawful.

That question has largely been decided for the duties at issue.

The business question is who gets the money back automatically — and who has to fight for it.

That distinction could create an uneven outcome in which companies that were sophisticated enough to preserve claims recover their money while others that paid the exact same unlawful tariff receive nothing unless they go to court.

For importers, the practical lesson is simple: do not assume a refund will arrive automatically.

Companies that paid the affected tariffs should review their import entries, determine whether those entries have already been liquidated and confirm whether any administrative or judicial deadline applies to their claims.

With tens of billions of dollars still potentially at stake, the tariff fight has moved from the loading dock to the courtroom.

JBizNews Desk | Washington

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