Volvo Group said that it will pay $197 million to settle a California investigation into heavy-duty diesel truck engines that regulators said emitted more pollution than allowed under state rules.

The settlement, announced jointly by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and Volvo, covers more than 10,000 heavy-duty diesel engines sold in California between the 2010 and 2016 model years. Regulators said Volvo failed to properly disclose certain emissions-control software systems that affected how the engines handled pollution under different driving conditions.

California officials stressed that the case is not comparable to the intentional “cheat device” scandal that engulfed Volkswagen in 2015. Instead, the dispute centered on software disclosure and emissions calibration issues. CARB said Volvo cooperated fully with the investigation and acted “transparently and in good faith.”

Volvo said the settlement does not include any admission of wrongdoing.

The money will be split several ways. Volvo will pay $13 million in civil penalties, contribute $71 million to California’s Air Pollution Control Fund, spend $108 million on emissions-reduction projects across the state, and reimburse roughly $5 million in investigative costs. The company also agreed to provide software updates and extended warranty coverage for approximately 7,200 trucks still operating in California.

For Volvo, the financial hit is meaningful but manageable. The Sweden-based truckmaker said it will book the full amount as a second-quarter charge when it reports earnings on July 17. About $89 million of the impact will hit cash flow immediately, while the rest will be spread over the next five years.

The settlement involves Volvo Group, the commercial truck and equipment company that owns Volvo Trucks, Mack Trucks, Renault Trucks, and UD Trucks. It is separate from Volvo Cars, the passenger-car company owned by China’s Geely Holding Group.

The case highlights how powerful California has become in shaping the future of the trucking industry. The state has some of the strictest vehicle emissions rules in the world, and truckmakers that want access to California’s massive freight market must comply with CARB standards. The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach together handle more than 40% of U.S. container imports, making California impossible for major truck manufacturers to ignore.

At the center of the dispute were “auxiliary emission control devices,” essentially software systems that adjust engine behavior depending on factors like temperature, altitude, and driving load. California rules require manufacturers to fully disclose how those systems work. Regulators said Volvo’s disclosures were incomplete and that some engine configurations exceeded permitted pollution limits.

The settlement lands as the trucking industry faces mounting pressure to move toward cleaner vehicles. California’s Advanced Clean Trucks rule requires manufacturers to steadily increase sales of zero-emission trucks through 2035, pushing companies including Volvo, Daimler Truck, Paccar, Navistar, and Tesla to accelerate electric and hydrogen-powered truck development.

For trucking companies, stricter emissions rules increasingly mean higher costs. Fleet operators including J.B. Hunt, Knight-Swift, Schneider National, Old Dominion, and XPO depend heavily on manufacturers like Volvo for their truck fleets. Software updates, warranty work, and compliance changes can affect maintenance schedules, fuel economy, and operating costs — especially for smaller trucking firms already dealing with tight profit margins.

Wall Street largely took the settlement in stride. Volvo Group generated roughly $48 billion in revenue and nearly $5 billion in net income last year, making the penalty financially absorbable. Analysts at Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, and UBS have repeatedly warned investors that emissions compliance costs are becoming a permanent expense across the global trucking sector.

The settlement also sends a message to the rest of the industry: California regulators are willing to negotiate with companies that cooperate, but enforcement pressure is only increasing. In recent years, Daimler Truck reached a separate emissions settlement with CARB, while diesel-engine giant Cummins agreed to pay roughly $2 billion in penalties tied to emissions violations involving Ram pickup trucks built by Stellantis.

For Volvo chief executive Martin Lundstedt, resolving the case removes a regulatory cloud hanging over the company ahead of a critical earnings cycle. For California regulators, the agreement adds another major enforcement victory as the state pushes aggressively toward a lower-emissions freight system.

For consumers, the bigger takeaway is simpler: the cost of meeting tougher environmental rules is increasingly becoming part of the price of moving goods across America.

— JBizNews Desk

© 2026 JBizNews. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution without written permission is prohibited.

3-part solution for kids being forgotten in the car.

1. Awareness– yes, it can happen to anyone. Note: this is why I use the words “Forgotten in the Car” and not “Left in the car” that is often used.

It is hard to imagine but it really is possible to forget a kid in the car. I know there are arguments made:

“I am very careful.” “Is your phone more important than you baby.” “How is it possible to forget a child?”

Why then did the new mother with a 2-week-old forget her newborn in the car when she went into Rita’s with her family? Did she really not care about her newborn? Do you know anyone personally that would 1% “not mind” forgetting a kid in the car?

Did you ever forget its Shabbos and turn on a light? Is Shabbos not important to you? Why did Chazal forbid us to read by the candle on Shabbos?

Every tragic story in our community of a child forgotten in the car had nothing to do with careless parents. Why do we think that we are different?

1. Reminder– there is no way to ensure that it will not happen without a reminder.
2. Effective device A person can come to the realization that they need the reminder, but they need to realize that not every solution is actually a solution.

There are 2 main issues with common reminder ideas.

A) It reminds you too often- We all know the story of the boy who cried wolf. After a few times everyone ignored him.

B) A reminder which needs to be set every time- An alarm on your phone would be a great reminder to take your child out, but we all understand that would not work.

Most people subconsciously think that it will not really happen so to rely on constantly setting an alarm each time will not be effective. Putting a pocketbook, shoe, hat or similar ideas can also fall into this category. These solutions often stop being used when we are not in worried mode and must be reminded to make the reminder!

The most effective solution is an automated system that never requires activating or deactivating. There are no decisions to be made at any point. When you hear the alert, you know to take the child out. From my research, the only device that I came across is the KIDZALERT car seat sensor alarm. It only alerts when there is a child in the car seat. It does not require you to activate it or deactivate it. When your child is placed in their car seat, it activates the sensor, when your car turns off, the alarm rings. It only rings when your child is with you, so it is not a matter of “the boy who cried wolf!” Additionally, it is well priced and installs in seconds.

I am sharing the website and phone number where you can get all the information on how it works. They also have sponsorship pricing for askanim that care.

848.999.9391 or www.Kidzsafeusa.com

As a side note- aside from the terrible tragedy of losing a child, in most cases there are costly legal battles that are involved. Even someone spotting a child in the car, and all ends well, can open a legal battle with retainers starting at $10,000.

What are we waiting for? Order yours today for yourself, for your grandchildren. V’nishmartem Meod Linfashoseichem.

Rabbi Nissan G.

NBG Consulting

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

Rebbetzin Esther Liba Zaks a”h, widow of Rav Hillel Zaks zt”l, longtime rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Knesses Hagedolah, passed away on Monday at the age of 91.

The levayah is scheduled to leave this evening at 7:30 p.m. from Yeshivas Knesses Hagedolah on Meshech Chochmah Street in Modiin Illit. The procession will continue to the Shamgar Funeral Home in Yerushalayim and then to Har Hazeisim, where she will be laid to rest.

Rebbetzin Zaks was born in Yerushalayim on the 17th of Iyar, 5695, to her father, Rav Avrohom Moshe Chevroni zt”l, rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Chevron and author of Masaas Moshe, and her mother, Rebbetzin Rochel a”h, daughter of the famed rosh yeshiva Rav Moshe Mordechai Epstein zt”l.

In the 1950s, she married Rav Hillel Zaks zt”l, who would later serve as rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Chevron and eventually found Yeshivas Knesses Hagedolah. Rav Hillel was niftar on the 22nd of Teves 5775. The shidduch was reportedly suggested to Rav Avrohom Moshe Chevroni by Rav Aharon Kotler zt”l during one of his visits to Eretz Yisroel. Following their marriage, the couple lived for a period in the United States.

They later returned to Eretz Yisroel, where Rav Hillel joined the staff of Yeshivas Chevron as a maggid shiur. A year after the passing of his father-in-law, Rav Avrohom Moshe Chevroni, he was appointed rosh yeshiva.

When the community of Maale Amos was established, Rav Hillel became its first rov. Several of the founders of the yishuv were talmidim of Yeshivas Chevron. The family later settled on Rechov Tzefania in Yerushalayim’s Geulah neighborhood, near the yeshiva.

In 1996, Rav Hillel founded Yeshivas Knesses Hagedolah in Modiin Illit, and the rebbetzin stood steadfastly at his side throughout the years, supporting the yeshiva’s growth and his tireless dedication to Torah and delivering shiurim without interruption.

Talmidim described her as a true “mother of the yeshiva,” devoted to the wellbeing of the bochurim and always available with a listening ear and practical assistance. She was deeply involved in the yeshiva and would often personally help with kitchen duties and food preparation for the students.

Students also recalled the extraordinary respect and admiration that existed between Rav Hillel and the rebbetzin, describing their relationship as a living example for others to emulate. One talmid recounted that Rav Hillel would often say regarding his wife, “What is mine and what is yours is all hers.”

She is survived by a distinguished family, including her son, Rav Yitzchok Zev Zaks, rosh yeshiva of Knesses Hagedolah, as well as her sons Rav Yisroel Meir, Rav Aharon, Rav Tzvi Hirsch, Rav Dovid, and Rav Menachem Mendel Yosef. Her sons-in-law include Rav Chaim Mann and Rav Tzvi Wilensky.

Tehei nishmasah tzerurah bitzror hachaim.

{Matzav.com}

The housing market remains hot in much of the country, with rising prices creating affordability concerns for would-be buyers – though some markets are seeing sizable amounts of price cuts over the last month.

Data from Realtor.com found that nationally, the share of active listings that carry a price reduction was at 16.7% in April – a figure that is elevated compared with historical trends but is actually lower than a year ago as prices trended toward an equilibrium.

Several markets across the Sun Belt and Mountain West regions have seen price cuts more frequently than the national average, the data showed.

“Put simply, homes are not moving in these markets,” said Realtor.com senior economist Jake Krimmel. “That’s down in part due to ample supply but also anemic demand at current prices and interest rates.”

ONE TYPE OF PROPERTY IS QUIETLY SAVING AMERICANS THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS

Two of the metro areas also led Realtor.com’s report about major markets with price cuts in April 2025, as Phoenix and Tampa had 31.3% and 29.3% of listings with price cuts last year, respectively.

“Why are these metros continually topping this price cut list? It’s likely part unrealistic expectations and part wishful thinking, but price reductions do mean sellers are getting the message loud and clear,” Krimmel said.

Here’s a look at the five housing markets where price reductions were the most prevalent in April.

THESE 8 US HOUSING MARKETS FAVOR BUYERS

CALIFORNIA BUILT MORE HOMES THAN PEOPLE OVER SIX YEARS – SO WHY IS HOUSING STILL SO TIGHT?

GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE

Israel condemned Ukraine on Monday after President Volodymyr Zelensky attended the state reburial of Ukrainian nationalist leader Andriy Melnyk in Kyiv, honoring a figure whose movement collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II.

“We regret the decision to hold an official state reburial ceremony for OUN leader Andriy Melnyk, who collaborated with the Nazis,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry said. “There is no place for ignoring historical truth and the memory of the victims murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.”

Melnyk and his wife, Sofia, were reburied at Ukraine’s National Military Memorial Cemetery after their remains were transferred from Luxembourg. The ceremony was attended by Zelensky and senior Ukrainian officials as part of a broader Ukrainian effort to return the remains of nationalist figures buried abroad.

Zelensky described the ceremony as symbolic for modern Ukraine and praised what he called “Ukrainian heroes” from past and present generations. He said Melnyk had returned “to a Ukraine that will not falter.”

Melnyk led a faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, known as the OUN, which fought Soviet and Polish control over Ukrainian territory. Parts of the movement also cooperated with Nazi Germany during the war, and the OUN remains deeply controversial because of its connection to violence against Jews and Poles during the Holocaust era.

Yad Vashem also issued a sharp condemnation following the ceremony, warning that honoring Melnyk undermines Holocaust remembrance.

“Honoring the leader of a movement that supported and collaborated with Nazi Germany during the persecution and murder of millions of Jews undermines the moral integrity essential to Holocaust remembrance,” Yad Vashem said. “Yad Vashem is deeply troubled by such national commemorations, which come at the expense of historical truth and the memory of Holocaust victims.”

The ceremony reopened a long-running dispute between Israel and Ukraine over Kyiv’s honoring of wartime nationalist figures linked to Nazi collaboration and antisemitism. Ukraine has not yet publicly responded to the latest Israeli criticism.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Monday that any agreement with Iran should include a requirement for several additional countries, including Saudi Arabia and Turkey, to join the Abraham Accords, the U.S.-brokered agreements aimed at normalizing relations with Israel that were forged during Trump’s first term.

In a social media post, Trump said negotiations are “proceeding nicely” but tied any eventual agreement to expanded participation in the agreements first signed in 2020.

He pointed to Saudi Arabia and Qatar as countries that should “immediately” sign on, followed by Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan. Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates became the first countries to join in 2020.

He wrote that “after all the work done by the United States to try and pull this very complex puzzle together, it should be mandatory that all of these Countries, at a minimum, simultaneously, sign onto the Abraham Accords.”

The president said he brought up the Abraham Accords plan with leaders during negotiations on Saturday.

Trump suggested he may accept “one or two” countries declining to sign, but said most should be willing. Egypt and Jordan already formally recognize Israel and have long-standing peace treaties.

It remains unclear when or how any deal with Iran might be completed, or how Abraham Accords membership might affect an agreement. He suggested even Iran could eventually sign on, if an agreement is reached.

The accords are a series of diplomatic, economic and security agreements created with U.S. influence during Trump’s first term, originally between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, followed by Sudan, Morocco, and more recently, Kazakhstan.

They were framed as an effort to promote cooperation among countries in the Middle East and North Africa, and the administration saw them as partly paving a path toward full ties with Israel.

The Monsey Torah community was plunged into mourning over Shavuos with the passing of Rav Yisroel Sinai Wagshal zt”l of Lanzhut-Monsey, a revered gaon, tzaddik, and longtime mashgiach who devoted his life to Torah, avodah, and chesed. He was 66 years old.

Rav Yisroel Sinai passed away during Shavuos after enduring years of severe suffering following a devastating stroke approximately eight years ago that left him bedridden and paralyzed.

A descendant of an illustrious line of Chassidic leaders and tzaddikim, Rav Yisroel Sinai was widely respected for his warmth, humility, and deep devotion to helping others. Throughout his life, he was known for receiving every person with unusual kindness and a radiant countenance.

He was the son of Rav Yehoshua Mordechai Elazar Wagshal zt”l, Av Beis Din of Lanzhut and one of Williamsburg’s prominent rabbinic figures, who himself was the son of Rav Alter Yaakov Yitzchok Wagshal zt”l, Av Beis Din of Lanzhut.

Through his mother’s side, Rav Yisroel Sinai descended from Rav Yaakov Halberstam of Tshakava zt”l, son of Rav Sinai of Zmigrod zy”a. His lineage traced back to many of the great Chassidic dynasties and luminaries of past generations, including Lizhensk, Zlotchov, Premishlan, Belz, Ropshitz, Dzikov, Melitz, Ohel, Sighet, Sanz, Dinov, Kozhnitz, Kosov, Sassov, Apta, and many others.

After his marriage to the daughter of Rav Moshe Chaim Rubin zt”l of Dinov, son of Rav Menachem Mendel Zeida Rubin zt”l of Glogov and son-in-law of Rav Yekusiel Yehuda Rosenberger zt”l of Dieresh, the couple established a distinguished home built upon Torah and Chassidus.

For many years, Rav Yisroel Sinai served as a dedicated mashgiach in several yeshivos, including Yeshivas Nitra and Yeshivas Noam Elimelech. He profoundly influenced countless bochurim through his teachings, encouragement, and exceptional love for every student.

Those who knew him described a man who lived entirely for Torah and for the welfare of fellow Jews, constantly involved in acts of gemilus chassadim and helping others quietly and selflessly.

He is survived by a distinguished family of children and sons-in-law who continue his legacy of Torah and yiras Shomayim.

Among his sons are Rav Alter Yaakov Yitzchok Wagshal, rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Toras Moshe in Montreal and son-in-law of the Karlsburger Rebbe of Montreal; Rav Zalman Leib Wagshal, son-in-law of the Av Beis Din of Vodkert; and Rav Menachem Mendel Wagshal, son-in-law of Rav Avrohom Rokeach, Av Beis Din of Kozlov.

His sons-in-law include Rav Yoel Labin, son of the Balchov Rebbe; Rav Chaim Yechiel Alter Segal Lowy, Av Beis Din of Tosh Monsey and son of the Tosh Rebbe; Rav Berel Rotenberg, son of the Av Beis Din of Voidislev; Rav Itamar Meislish, son of the Av Beis Din of Vitzen; Rav Berel Leifer, son of Rav Shmuel Binyomin Leifer of Voidislev; and Rav Shlomo Meislish, son of Rav Mordechai Aharon Meislish, rav of Bais Medrash Ichud Avreichim Satmar and son of the Satmar Gaavad of Boro Park.

He is also survived by prominent rabbinic siblings, including Rav Shalom Wagshal, Av Beis Din of Lanzhut-Williamsburg; Rav Naftali Elimelech Wagshal, Av Beis Din of Apta-Williamsburg; and Rav Boruch Yehuda Wagshal of Lanzhut-Beit Shemesh, son-in-law of the Mishkenos Haroim Rebbe.

Among his sisters are the Peshvorsker Rebbetzin, the Ziditchov-Chareidim Rebbetzin, the Rebbetzin of the Netzach Menachem Spinka Rebbe, the wife of Rav Yehuda Elisha Horowitz, Av Beis Din of Ohr Hachaim, and the wife of Rav Naftali Kahn of Divrei Emunah Monsey.

The levayah was held at Bais Medrash Dinov on Albert Drive in Monsey and proceeded to New Jersey, where Rav Yisroel Sinai was laid to rest near his ancestors.

Tehei nishmaso tzerurah bitzror hachaim.

{Matzav.com}

A Monday statement issued by the son of the Amshinover Rebbe, shlita, clarified that his father’s remarks regarding Har HaBayis, which circulated widely on social media in recent days, were taken entirely out of context and do not constitute any halachic ruling permitting ascent to Har HaBayis.

The public statement, highly unusual for the chassidus based in Bayit Vegan, was issued by the Rebbe’s son, Harav Moshe Milikovsky.

According to Rav Milikovsky, the remarks originated in an internal halachic discussion held at the Rebbe’s home approximately a year ago, which was subsequently published in the chassidus’ bulletin, Yirah V’Simchah, intended for an audience familiar with the Rebbe’s style of halachic discourse. The material was then disseminated dishonestly, he said, as though the Rebbe had issued a practical or ideological permit to ascend Har HaBayis — “something that never entered his mind.”

Rav Milikovsky stated unequivocally: “The Rebbe did not, chas v’shalom, permit ascending Har HaBayis in contradiction to the position of all the poskim.” He added that the discussion was discussing hypotheticals and that the Rebbe in fact took a critical stance toward Har HaBayis activism. When the conversation turned to the waving of the Shtei HaLechem on Har HaBayis, reportedly performed there on Shavuos last week, the Rebbe raised a series of practical halachic objections: that the loaves must be baked inside the Mikdash, that removing them after the waving may render them pasul, and that questions of yuchsin, the location of the Mizbei’ach all remain unresolved. When his son asked whether the matter was comparable to the Korban Pesach, the Rebbe distinguished between the two, noting that the Korban Pesach is an individual obligation while the Shtei HaLechem is a karbon tzibur — and that in any case, the Korban Pesach itself requires a Mizbeiach. ‘Are they carrying a Mizbeiach with them too?’ the Rebbe added with a smile, referring to the activists – thirteen of whom were arrested following the waving ceremony – who had entered Har HaBayis.”

“The Rebbe’s position is the position of all the poskim,” Harav Milikovsky wrote, “that in our times ascending Har HaBayis is not permissible in practice, as it could easily lead to a violation punishable by kares, chas v’shalom.”

The Amshinov chassidus, known for its reserved and inward character, rarely issues public statements of any kind, making the clarification itself noteworthy.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio slammed Hezbollah Sunday for its calls to overthrow the Lebanese government.

“The U.S. stands firmly with the legitimate Government of Lebanon as it works to restore its authority and build a better future for all its people,” he wrote on X. “Hizballah’s threats of violence and overthrow will not be allowed to succeed.”

“The era in which a terrorist group held an entire nation hostage is coming to an end,” he declared.

In a separate statement, he condemned “in the strongest terms Hezbollah’s reckless call to overthrow Lebanon’s democratically elected government.”

Hezbollah’s leader, Naim Qassem. (Photo by Stringer/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The scathing remarks come in response to a statement from Hezbollah’s leader, Naim Qassem, who said “the people have the right to go down onto the streets and to bring down the government.”

Qassem was reacting to Israeli strikes on Hezbollah targets and United States sanctions on the Al-Qard Al-Hassan financial institution, which provides financial support to the terror group.

“This is a deliberate campaign to destabilize the country and maintain its power at the expense of the future of the Lebanese people,” Rubio said.

The Lebanese government “is working to deliver recovery, reconstruction, international assistance and a stable future for its citizens with the full support of the United States,” he added. “Hezbollah, by contrast, is actively trying to drag Lebanon back into chaos and destruction.”

Meanwhile, another round of talks between Jerusalem and Beirut is scheduled for early June. The discussions will address dismantling Hezbollah to allow the government of Lebanon complete governance over the country so that the IDF can withdraw from southern Lebanon.

Israel is concerned that the United States will tie a ceasefire with Iran to a cessation of hostilities with Lebanon, fearing that this will impede the Lebanese government’s ability to rein in the terror group and embolden Hezbollah. Naim Qassem has expressed support for this step.

The US Treasury Department has subpoenaed left-wing influencer Hasan Piker and CodePink cofounder Medea Benjamin as part of an investigation into whether or not a group of activists violated US sanctions during a visit to Cuba, according to a Fox News report on Saturday.

Benjamin took to X/Twitter on Sunday to condemn the subpoena, calling the Trump administration “grotesque.”

“Taking medical supplies to pediatric hospitals in Cuba is now a crime? Saving the lives of babies is a crime?” she wrote. “This administration is beyond grotesque.”

Taking medical supplies to pediatric hospitals in Cuba is now a crime? Saving the lives of babies is a crime? This administration is beyond grotesque. https://t.co/xsvQGEYzb8

— Medea Benjamin (@medeabenjamin) May 24, 2026

Piker and Benjamin are among around 40 US nationals who traveled to Cuba as part of the “Nuestra América Convoy,” or “Our America Convoy,” and are suspected of bringing supplies to the Communist Party of Cuba.

According to Fox, the activists may have violated US sanctions laws by financing, coordinating, or delivering goods to Cuba, and potentially engaging in contact with Cuban government personnel or entities.

Sources familiar with the matter told Fox that the subpoenas from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control – called Requests for Information (RFI) – are aimed at obtaining communications, financial, and logistical information related to the trip.

Legal experts explained to Fox News Digital that the subpoenas could determine whether the case can be pursued as a criminal matter under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) or remain a civil enforcement matter handled by the US Treasury. 

The investigation into the Cuba trip is a part of a broader US push to combat foreign influence operations within the country, especially those with ties to political violence, extremist movements, or acts classified by the US government as terrorism, according to the Fox report.

Investigation includes Brazilian Gaza flotilla activist, Ilhan Omar’s daughter

According to Fox, the investigation includes some 40 US citizens who worked with foreign nationals, including Brazilian activist Thiago Avila, who himself had recently been detained by Israel following his sojourn on the Gaza-bound flotilla.

Additional subpoenas are reportedly expected. 

Fox noted that the group of Americans under investigation includes the daughter of notorious anti-Israel congresswoman Rep. Ilhan Omar, Isra Hirsi. Sources told Fox that investigators are also looking into the possibility that Omar herself had funded her daughter’s travel.

Fox noted that the move also coincides with growing concerns among US authorities about foreign actors and foreign-aligned organizations seeking to sow discord, manipulate domestic political discourse, or normalize ideologies that could undermine US national security interests.

The convoy, which included around 650 delegates from 33 countries and 120 organizations and was led by several members of the alleged Singham network, Fox explained, noting that this included the Democratic Socialists of America, of which Piker is a reported headliner.

Piker posts to social media about Cuba convoy participation

On March 10, Piker posted an Instagram infographic of himself with the words “I’m going to Cuba” emblazoned above the photo. 

“I am joining the Nuestra America Convoy,” the post continued.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Hasan Piker (@hasandpiker)

During a recent livestream, Fox reported that Piker had called the US’s indictment of former Cuban President Raúl Castro a “sham” with “no legal standing” and that US President Donald Trump is acting like a “playground bully.”

In addition, during a Saturday livestream where Piker interviewed Ashley St. Clair, he reportedly further “railed against Trump” and “defended the communist leaders of Cuba.”

This post was originally published on here.

The best agreement the United States and Iran could realistically reach on the nuclear file would likely resemble the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action negotiated under the Obama administration, former senior Israeli defense official and Iran nuclear expert Avner Vilan said Monday in an interview with 103FM, as reported by the Jerusalem Post.

“At best, we will get an agreement like Obama’s deal,” Vilan told the Israeli radio station. “There is a period in which the Iranians do not advance toward a nuclear weapon and are under supervision, which is fine. But regarding ballistic missiles, what we hit, we hit. They were not part of the agreement, and the Iranians will be able to take the money they receive and build themselves up.”

According to Vilan, the contacts now underway between Washington and Tehran could yield only a partial agreement, one that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, ease economic pressure on Iran, and defer the nuclear question to a later phase. Israel, he told 103FM, is watching the prospect of an interim arrangement closely, particularly amid reports that Iran could agree to reopen the Strait as part of a broader understanding with the United States.

“As it appears, the most urgent issue is reopening Hormuz. The Iranians need pressure relief,” Vilan said in the interview. He told the station the reported framework could include the release of Iranian funds held in the West, followed by a 60-day window for negotiations on the nuclear file. Iran would then decide whether to accept or reject a nuclear arrangement potentially involving the removal of enriched uranium in exchange for the lifting of US sanctions.

“That is the best result they could receive,” Vilan said. “If and when they reach that point, the regime will survive for a very long time because it will have a continuing economic oxygen line. Nobody is talking about the missiles or the proxies.”

Vilan warned 103FM listeners that sanctions relief could ultimately entrench the Iranian government rather than weaken it. “Regime change does not look like it is going to happen. On the contrary, we are even strengthening it. It is beginning to receive money,” he said.

Addressing Iran’s stockpile of 60 percent enriched uranium is necessary but not sufficient to produce a sound nuclear agreement, Vilan said. “The 60% is perhaps the most urgent issue and a necessary condition, but it is not enough for a good nuclear agreement from a professional standpoint,” he told the station. “We need to ensure Iran is far enough away from obtaining a weapon.”

That, Vilan said, requires guarantees that Iran retains no nuclear material, that its centrifuges remain under supervision, and that it does not operate fortified sites capable of industrial-scale enrichment. “We need to make sure Iran has no path to advance toward nuclear material for a bomb,” he said.

Vilan told 103FM that President Donald Trump now faces three possible courses on Iran. The first is a return to intensive military pressure. “He can go back to heavy fighting, hit them hard, but in the end, we will probably return to roughly the same point,” Vilan said.

The second, Vilan said, is a staged agreement he described as “Hormuz for Hormuz,” which could later evolve into a full nuclear deal. He cautioned the station’s listeners that such a process risks stalling and leaving the two sides locked in an open-ended interim arrangement.

The third option, he said, is simply to wait, an approach he told 103FM the US president does not appear inclined to pursue. “We understand that Trump does not want to wait right now,” Vilan said, citing pressure over oil prices, Gulf state concerns about regional instability, and the possibility that Iran could attempt to outlast the current US administration.

Vilan closed the interview by warning that the diplomatic picture could shift rapidly and that time was not necessarily on Israel’s side. “It is possible that in another 24 hours, we will have a completely different conversation about a return to fighting,” he told 103FM.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV called Monday for robust regulation of artificial intelligence and for its developers to work for the common good rather than profit, issuing a sweeping manifesto on safeguarding humankind as the technology impacts everything from work to war.

“Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity), Leo’s first encyclical, has been eagerly awaited ever since history’s first U.S.-born pope announced days after his election that he considered AI to be the biggest challenge facing humanity today.

In the text, Leo denounced the “culture of power” driving the AI race, especially in developing ever more sophisticated methods of remote warfare. He declared that it was “not permissible” to entrust irreversible, lethal decisions to AI systems, setting up another flash point between the American pope and the Trump administration, which has worked aggressively to deregulate AI development.

“Artificial Intelligence now demands to be disarmed, freed from logics that turn it into an instrument of domination, exclusion and death,″ the pope told a special Vatican presentation of the encyclical, one of the most authoritative types of teaching documents a pope can issue.

Experts in the tech industry, academia and Catholic morality said the document will likely become a benchmark in the debate over AI, a point of reference for policymakers, researchers and ordinary folk alike. It comes as the near-daily developments in the technology trigger concerns over AI replacing human jobs and even human intelligence.

Taylor Black, a Microsoft AI executive and director of Catholic University of America’s AI institute, said the document would prompt people “at the forefront of these tools” to ask questions such as “What does it mean to be human?”

Pope calls out AI companies even as he hosts Anthropic
The Vatican launch also included remarks by the co-founder of Anthropic, which is currently locked in a legal battle with the Trump administration over access to its AI technology. The Vatican decided to involve Anthropic as part of its decade-long effort to engage Silicon Valley in dialogue over the human cost of AI.

And yet in his text, Leo repeatedly blasted the concentration of power and data in the hands of so few people in the private sector as a danger, especially to children and the most vulnerable, and called for external regulation of their work.

“It is not enough to invoke ethics in the abstract; robust legal frameworks, independent oversight, informed users and a political system that does not abdicate its responsibility are required,” he wrote. “A more moral AI is not enough if that morality is determined by a few.”

Leo appealed to AI developers and political leaders responsible for regulating them to slow down and reflect on what they are doing. He urged them to use ethical and spiritual guidelines to make the choice to work not for their own profit or power, but the betterment of humanity.

AI competitors OpenAI and Anthropic are the second- and third-most valuable U.S. private companies, each valued at hundreds of billions of dollars, more than the GDP of many nations. Both companies are heading toward near-trillion dollar IPOs.

Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah welcomed Leo’s criticism and concern. He said such external checks were fundamental to the technology “going well” for humankind since there is so much at stake — “a real possibility that AI will displace human labor at a very large scale.”

“We need more of the world — religious communities, civil society, scholars, governments — to do what His Holiness has done here: to take this seriously, to look closely, and to push events in a better direction,” Olah said. “We need moral voices that the incentives cannot bend.”

Experts say the text will become a benchmark
In a methodical text, the math major pope traced the history of the Catholic Church’s social teaching and applied its core concepts — justice, solidarity, the dignity of work and the universal destination of resources — to the digital revolution.

“I am convinced that this will prove to be a defining document for our era, a profound and prophetic document,” said Paolo Carozza, law professor at Notre Dame Law School and chair of the Meta Oversight Board.

“Pope Leo is offering a clear, comprehensive, and coherent voice urging us to take responsibility for constructing a world in which technology will serve humans rather than degrade them,” he said.

In its strongest chapters, Leo denounced how AI had helped accelerate the “normalization of war” by desensitizing people to its cost. He didn’t name specific conflicts, but cited “opposing imperialisms, between powers that wish to preserve their supremacy, and those that aspire to seize that supremacy.”

He demanded transparency and accountability by AI developers so that the chain of decision-making command in ordering strikes with AI weaponry is always known. He declared that the Catholic Church’s “just war” theory, which provides specific criteria for when force can be justified, was now “outdated” given the technological advances of warfare.

A text in the church’s social justice tradition
Leo signed the text May 15, the 135th anniversary of the publication of “Rerum Novarum” (Of New Things), the most important teaching document of Leo’s hero and namesake, Pope Leo XIII. That document addressed workers’ rights, the limits of capitalism, and the obligations that states and employers owed workers as the Industrial Revolution was underway.

It became the foundation of modern Catholic social thought, and the current pope cited it at the start of his pontificate in relation to the AI revolution, which he believes poses the same existential questions that the Industrial Revolution posed over a century ago. “Magnifica Humanitas” thus becomes the latest chapter in a century-long history of popes adapting “Rerum Novarum” to the social questions of their times, often dwelling on the dignity of work for human flourishing.

AI is evoking both existential fears and utopian vision amid an intensifying debate on whether it will become a catalyst that enriches humanity or a technological toxin that dulls human intelligence while wiping out millions of high-paying jobs.

“The pursuit of greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice jobs, because the human person is an end, not a means, and the economic order must remain subordinate to human dignity and the common good,” Leo wrote.

Leo extended his concern for upholding human dignity in labor to issue the first-ever papal apology for the Holy See’s own role in legitimizing slavery by giving European sovereigns explicit authority to subjugate and enslave “infidels.”

A decade-long dialogue with Silicon Valley
Vatican officials declined to say who contributed to Leo’s encyclical. But Vatican and church officials have been engaged in a dialogue with Silicon Valley tech firms for a decade.

The decision to include Anthropic at the Vatican launch was criticized by some who considered it a papal stamp of approval of the AI firm, which is currently suing the Trump administration after it ordered all U.S. agencies to stop using Anthropic’s technology for its refusal to allow the U.S. military unrestricted use of it.

Brian Boyd, U.S. faith liaison for the nonprofit Future of Life Institute, read the inclusion of Anthropic’s co-founder Olah as a recognition of its prominence in the field and as similar to a papal audience with a head of state: not an endorsement.

Anthropic is an “enormous corporation that is taking onto itself an enormous risk and responsibility,” Boyd said, adding that the company has “demonstrated genuine goodwill and integrity and interest in dialogue.”

Dear Mothers-in-Law,

First, we want to say something important: We truly love having you for Yom Tov.

Your presence brings warmth to the house, excitement for the children, family stories, traditions, and that special feeling that makes Yom Tov feel like Yom Tov. There is something beautiful about having another generation around the table and creating memories together.

We also know that you come because you want to help, spend time with your children and grandchildren, and simply be part of the family experience. We appreciate that more than you know.

With that said, we would like to gently offer one small request on behalf of daughters-in-law everywhere.

After the meal, if possible, please consider going to your room for a few hours to rest, relax, read, nap, or simply enjoy some quiet time — even if you don’t actually need the rest.

It may not seem like a major thing, but those afternoon hours can be incredibly helpful. They give us a chance to clean up the kitchen, reset the house, organize the next meal, and handle the million little things happening behind the scenes.

There is something much easier about moving around freely and getting things done without feeling like someone is watching us work, or feeling like we need to remain socially “on” while simultaneously trying to manage the house.

And if we are being fully honest, those few hours can also give everyone a little breathing room. Not because we do not love you, but because even people who love each other very much sometimes benefit from a little space during a long Yom Tov together.

Ironically, when everyone gets that break, the next seudah is usually even nicer. We return refreshed, calmer, happier, and more able to genuinely enjoy being together.

So please know: Disappearing for a little while in the afternoon is not abandoning the family. It may actually be one of the greatest acts of kindness you can give the family.

With love and appreciation,

The Daughters-in-Law

To submit a letter to appear on Matzav.com, email [email protected]

DON’T MISS OUT! Join the Matzav Status by . Join the Matzav WhatsApp Groups by .

The opinions expressed in letters on Matzav.com do not necessarily reflect the stance of the Matzav Media Network.

The Israel Police has refused a request from the Military Police to allocate thousands of police officers and Border Police troops for a broad arrest operation targeting bnei yeshivos in Chareidi cities, according to senior police sources who spoke to Kikar HaShabbat.

Over the past 24 hours, the Military Police approached the Israel Police with a request to assign significant forces for a proactive operation against Chareidim that would require the deployment of thousands of police officers and Border Police forces.

However, the police refused the request. A senior police official explained to Kikar HaShabbat: “We have a lot of work. We don’t have the resources for such an operation and everything that comes with it. We’re dealing with plenty of work involving crime, protection rackets, and more.”

The dramatic decision comes amid sharp criticism of the police from High Court judges and Attorney General Gali Baharav Miara for not arresting enough bnei yeshivos.

Kol B’Ramah reported earlier today that the Israel Police and the military police are preparing to launch a large-scale operation next week to arrest all Bnei Torah designated as “draft dodgers” in Chareidi cities and areas in the center of the country.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

The IDF announced Monday that it killed a senior Hamas operative tied to the terror group’s weapons manufacturing network during an airstrike in central Gaza on Sunday.

According to the military, Mohammad Abu Mallouh was a leading member of Hamas’s weapons production headquarters and played a central role in providing technical expertise for the terrorists.

The IDF said Abu Mallouh continued producing weapons even during the ceasefire period, posing a danger to both Israeli civilians and troops operating in Gaza.

The military added that precautions were taken to reduce civilian casualties, including the use of precision-guided munitions and aerial monitoring.

By JBizNews Desk

NEW YORK, May 24, 2026 — The late Charlie Munger’s blunt warning about the American healthcare system is aging uncomfortably well.

The longtime Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman argued years ago that if insured families still had to pay thousands of dollars just to have a baby, then they did not really have insurance at all. Today, the numbers suggest the problem has only grown worse.

According to the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker, using data from the Merative MarketScan Encounter Database, the average pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum care bill for women covered by employer-sponsored insurance now reaches $20,416, with families paying an average of $2,743 out of pocket even after insurance.

That does not include many of the costs that come afterward.

Newborn care adds another $5,820 in average medical spending during the baby’s first months, while cumulative healthcare costs for mother and child during the first two years now approach roughly $37,000 per family, according to KFF analysis. Families directly pay more than $4,200 of that amount themselves.

Munger saw the problem years ago.

In a widely discussed 2019 Yahoo Finance interview, Munger argued that a young couple facing a $5,000 deductible to deliver a baby effectively held an insurance product that failed its most basic purpose.

“If you have a policy with a huge deductible and you still can’t afford childbirth,” Munger said at the time, “what exactly are you insured for?”

The Berkshire executive went further, describing the broader U.S. healthcare system as something that had “grown like Topsy by accident” through decades of overlapping government intervention, private-sector inefficiency and distorted incentives.

His criticism was not ideological as much as economic.

Munger repeatedly pointed to Singapore as a model, arguing the country achieved better health outcomes at a fraction of America’s cost through mandatory medical savings accounts, universal coverage and strict cost controls. In his view, America’s healthcare system had become a hidden tax on workers, businesses and manufacturers that quietly weakened U.S. competitiveness.

The gap has only widened since then.

Federal out-of-pocket maximums under Affordable Care Act-compliant plans climbed to $9,200 for individuals and $18,400 for families in 2025. In 2026, those caps rise again to $10,600 and $21,200, according to federal guidance.

For many families, childbirth alone is enough to hit those limits.

The average allowed charge for a Cesarean-section birth now reaches roughly $28,998, compared with $15,712 for a vaginal delivery, according to Health Care Cost Institute and KFF data. About 32% of U.S. births now occur by C-section.

Many parents also get caught by timing.

Pregnancies often span two insurance-plan years, meaning families can hit deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums twice during a single pregnancy and delivery cycle.

The financial pressure arrives at exactly the moment household budgets are already under strain.

One parent often takes unpaid leave or reduced work hours while childcare, housing and basic living costs continue climbing. Industry analysts note that pregnancy remains the single most common cause of hospitalization for Americans covered by employer-sponsored insurance, making maternity costs one of the clearest stress points in the modern benefits system.

The issue has started attracting bipartisan political attention.

Lawmakers introduced legislation in 2025 that would eliminate cost-sharing for maternity care under employer-sponsored insurance plans, similar to how preventive services are currently treated under the Affordable Care Act. The proposal has not advanced, but its introduction reflected growing concern that high-deductible insurance models have shifted too much financial risk onto middle-class families.

Major corporations have spent years trying to address the problem themselves.

Companies including Walmart, JPMorgan Chase, and other large employers have experimented with direct healthcare contracting, bundled maternity-payment systems and employer-run clinics in an effort to reduce healthcare spending. So far, none have meaningfully changed the broader national cost trajectory.

U.S. healthcare spending surpassed 17% of GDP in 2024 — by far the highest level in the developed world — even as American life expectancy continues to lag behind many peer nations.

For Wall Street and corporate America, Munger’s argument still resonates because healthcare costs ripple through nearly every part of the economy.

Rising medical expenses feed directly into wage pressure, consumer spending patterns, government deficits, insurance premiums and employer labor costs. Families paying thousands of dollars out of pocket to have children are not just facing a healthcare issue — they are facing a broader affordability problem affecting everything from home purchases to retirement savings.

That was the core of Munger’s warning.

The question he posed in 2019 remains unresolved in 2026:

If insurance does not meaningfully protect families from the cost of having a child, what exactly is it protecting them from?

JBizNews Desk

© 2026 JBizNews. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution without written permission is prohibited.

NEW YORK (VINnews) – Political commentator Shabbos Kestenbaum clashed with Ana Kasparian, co-host of The Young Turks, during a panel discussion on Al Arabiya English, directly challenging her claims of pro-Israel influence in the defeat of Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., in last week’s Republican primary.

Kestenbaum, a PragerU commentator, accused Kasparian of promoting “deranged conspiracies” about Zionist control of U.S. media and politics. He argued that Massie’s loss stemmed from voter rejection of his positions, including criticism of President Trump.

“Thomas Massie took money from billionaires, Iranians, and PACs while implying Trump was a pedophile,” Kestenbaum said during the exchange. He highlighted Massie’s donations from groups including the National Iranian American Council and noted the congressman’s associations and policy stances that diverged from Trump and Republican priorities in his strongly pro-Trump district.

Massie lost the May 19 primary to Trump-endorsed former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein. Outside spending, including from pro-Israel groups like AIPAC, played a significant role in the high-cost race.0459a9

According to Kestenbaum, Kasparian responded primarily by yelling, interrupting and insulting rather than addressing his points on the substance. Following the debate, Kasparian blocked Kestenbaum on X.e488b2

The exchange, which went viral, featured tense moments, including Kasparian referencing U.S. foreign aid to Israel and broader Middle East policy, while Kestenbaum pushed back against narratives of undue foreign influence.02f72a

Kestenbaum later posted on X praising his performance: “Great debunking Anna Kasparian’s deranged conspiracies straight to her face.”

The debate highlighted ongoing divisions within progressive and conservative circles over U.S. policy toward Israel, campaign finance and the influence of lobbying groups. Massie has been a vocal critic of certain foreign aid and has pushed for greater transparency regarding Jeffrey Epstein-related files.

Israel’s inner security cabinet held a five-hour meeting Sunday night focused on the emerging US-Iran deal, as well as the growing threat posed by explosive drones launched by Hezbollah from Lebanon.

During the session, a heated argument erupted between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich over the proper response to the drone threat, Ynet reported.

According to the report, Netanyahu demanded protective solutions and pressed the IDF to accelerate an effective response to the escalating danger.

Smotrich expressed his opposition to relying primarily on defensive measures, telling Netanyahu, “We can’t endlessly defend ourselves. We need to bring down 10 buildings in Dahieh in response to every drone.”

Netanyahu objected, saying: “What exactly are you proposing? That every time there’s a drone, we demolish 10 buildings? And if there’s a drone from Gaza, we demolish 10 buildings in Gaza? And if it’s from Yehuda and Shomron, we demolish 10 buildings there? And if it’s a drone from a crime family, we demolish 10 buildings in Ramla?”

Smotrich responded: “Absolutely yes. Wars are won through deterrence and exacting a price. Defending ourselves endlessly is October 6 thinking. Show me where you want to stretch the protective nets across Israel’s skies — over Kfar Saba? Maybe Ra’anana too, or only Ramla and Lod?”

During the tense discussion, IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir updated Netanyahu and the ministers on the death of Sgt. Nehoray Leizer, H’yd, from an explosive drone. Zamir said he supports a harsher response to the drone threat in order to restore deterrence.

“You can’t operate with tweezers,” he said, referring to strikes on buildings. “A different equation must be created, including strikes on buildings in Beirut and Tyre to deter the enemy.”

Earlier Monday, Smotrich visited the Civil Administration in Yehudah and Shomron to inaugurate the “Rimon” land registration system.

During the visit, he addressed the drone threat, saying: “This week I approved a massive budget of around two billion shekels for technological solutions to the drone threat. Among other things, the funding will allow civilian bodies to offer outside-the-box solutions and ideas. But the truth is that drones won’t be defeated through defense alone — only through offense.”

“Ten buildings in Beirut should fall for every explosive drone. A strategic threat cannot be answered only with defensive measures, but by changing the rules and the equation. We cannot spread protective nets over the entire State of Israel, nor cover it with automatic machine guns. We cannot defend ourselves endlessly. Imposing a disproportionate and deterrent price on the enemy must be part of the effort to protect our soldiers.”

Israel’s actions in Lebanon are currently limited by the “ceasefire” between Israel and Lebanon declared by the Trump administration, a situation that may worsen if the emerging Iran-US deal is signed.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

New York (VINNEWS/Rabbi Yair Hoffman)

Memorial Day is often confused with Veterans Day, but the two are not the same. Veterans Day honors all who have served. Memorial Day remembers only those who died. It is a day for the fallen, the men who put on the uniform of the United States and never took it off again, the ones who lie in cemeteries in France and Belgium and across the sea, or under white stone rows here at home.

For the Torah community, it is important. The Jewish people were the central target of the Nazi machine. Six million were murdered in Europe. The Allied soldiers who broke that machine were, in a real sense, fighting for Jewish survival, whether they understood it that way or not.

When American troops reached the gates of camps like Buchenwald and Dachau, they were ending the single greatest assault on Jewish life since the Churban.

There is a widespread assumption that gratitude belongs to the category of fine character traits — admirable, refining, the mark of a decent person, but ultimately –

optional.

This assumption is mistaken. In Torah thought, hakaras hatov — the recognition of a good that has been done for us — is a binding obligation, rooted in the psukim of the Torah and elaborated by the Rishonim and Acharonim. Its absence is counted among the gravest of moral failures.

The Teaching of Rav Yerucham Levovitz

In his seminal work Da’as Chochma u’Mussar (Volume III, #12), Rav Yerucham Levovitz zt”l addresses the profound nature of gratitude as a cornerstone of the development of Jewish character. He explains that hakaras hatov is something a person owes, not something he bestows.

The View of the Maharal

This is also the position of the Maharal in his Gur Aryeh on Shemos 14:7, where he cites the pasuk in Shmuel I 15:6. There, Shaul HaMelech warns the Keini to withdraw from among Amalek before the battle, “lest I destroy you with them — for you did kindness with all the Children of Israel when they went up out of Egypt.” The kindness in question had been performed centuries earlier, by an ancestor, to a nation rather than to any living individual. And yet that kindness still generated an obligation that shaped national policy generations later.

Where the Obligation Comes From

The obligation is not derived from just a single pasuk – it emerges from several, each illuminating a different facet of the duty:

“You shall not abhor a Mitzri, for you were a stranger in his land” (Devarim 23:8). The Torah commands us not to despise the Egyptians — the very nation that enslaved and oppressed us — on account of the shelter they once provided when we dwelled in their land. If gratitude is owed even to a people who later turned to cruelty, on account of an earlier benefit, the obligation must be real and binding indeed.

“And you shall walk in His ways” (Devarim 28:9). From here Chazal teach that a person must conduct himself in accordance with the attributes of the Holy One, Blessed is He. The Al-Mighty recognizes the good — and so must we. Gratitude is thus folded into the broader mitzvah of imitating the Divine character.

“And you shall eat and be satisfied and bless Hashem your G-d” (Devarim 8:10). From the word “and you shall bless” the Sages derive that one is moved to bless and to recognize the good of the host at whose table he has eaten — and from this, that there is an obligation to recognize the good toward anyone who does good for us.

“One who repays evil in place of good — evil shall not depart from his house” (Mishlei 17:13). It is forbidden to be ungrateful for a benefit received, and the pasuk attaches a lasting consequence to the failure.

“And the borrower is a servant to the lender” (Mishlei 22:7). The borrower is reckoned as significant as a servant to the one who lent to him — precisely because he is bound to him by the obligation of recognizing the good. From here the Acharonim learned that anyone who receives a benefit from his fellow becomes obligated to him in hakaras hatov.

Beyond the psukim, the Rishonim add that the intellect itself — unaided by revelation — obligates a person to recognize a good done to him. It is one of those truths that reason apprehends on its own. The Torah’s commandments here do not impose a foreign demand so much as ratify what a sound mind already knows.

A Consistent Voice Across the Sources

Numerous Midrashim point to this same principle, and the consistency is striking. The recognition of the good is treated throughout rabbinic literature as the most important of the good attributes, while ingratitude is described as the most repugnant of the bad ones. Chazal go further still: to the degree that a person is careless about recognizing the good toward a fellow who has helped him, his very faith — his conviction that everything is in the hands of Heaven — is undermined. The person who cannot acknowledge the human being in front of him who fed him or sheltered him will hardly be capable of acknowledging the Source of all good behind that human being.

From Principle to Practice: A Ruling of Rav Elyashiv zt”l

That the obligation is genuinely operative — capable of generating concrete halachic rulings about real-world conduct — was demonstrated in a celebrated decision of Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv zt”l. Uri Lupolianski, then the mayor of Jerusalem, came before Rav Elyashiv with a question: should he express gratitude to President George W. Bush for the American military support that had helped protect Jerusalem? The posek ruled decisively. Not only was such an expression of gratitude permitted — it was halachically obligatory.

How Deep the Failure Runs: The Brisker Rav

If the obligation is this serious, the failure to meet it must be correspondingly grave — and the Brisker Rav located precisely how grave. Commenting on the pasuk in Parshas Ha’azinu, “Is it to Hashem that you repay this, O people that is vile and unwise (am naval v’lo chacham)?” (Devarim 32:6), he asked what the word naval connotes. He noted that when an animal dies without proper shechitah it is called a neveilah — a carcass. Such a creature has ceased to be a living animal at all.

So too, the Brisker Rav taught, a person who is not a makir tov is an am naval — because he has ceased to be a human being. There exists a long catalogue of bad character traits: arrogance, jealousy, selfishness, a quick temper. A person afflicted with any or all of them is flawed, but he remains a human being — a damaged one, but a human being still. The ingrate alone forfeits the title. Gratitude is not one virtue among many; it is constitutive of being human. To lack it is not to be a poor specimen of a person but to have stepped outside the category.

Why the Haggadah Chose the Parsha of Gratitude

This understanding illuminates a puzzle in the Haggadah. To narrate the Exodus, the Baal Haggadah might have drawn on any of the four parshiyos of Sefer Shemos — Shemos, Va’era, Bo, and Beshalach — that describe the bondage and the redemption in rich detail. Instead, he reached for a comparatively obscure passage: the declaration of the one who brings the first fruits, Mikra Bikkurim, in Parshas Ki Savo. Why bypass the source and choose the lesser-known text?

Rav Elya Baruch Finkel answers that the four parshiyos of Shemos are history — they record what happened. Mikra Bikkurim is not history; it is thanksgiving. It is an expression of hakaras hatov. The Baal Haggadah was fully aware of the narrative parshiyos — indeed, he quotes individual psukim from them throughout Maggid, introduced by the words k’mo she’ne’emar. But the governing theme of Maggid is not history; it is gratitude. When we sit at the Seder, we are saying thank you — and that is exactly what the parsha of Mikra Bikkurim expresses.

Rav Elya Baruch draws from this a further insight. On the words “V’amarta eilav…” (Devarim 26:3), Rashi comments with three words: she’eincha kafui tova — “that you not be an ingrate.” Why does Rashi cast the purpose negatively — that you recite this so as not to be ungrateful — rather than positively, that you recite it because you are a makir tova?

The answer, Rav Elya Baruch suggests, is sobering. A person can never be adequately makir tova to the Ribono shel Olam. There is simply too much to thank Him for — every day, every minute, every breath. Anyone who imagines that by reciting these psukim he has discharged his debt of gratitude has badly misjudged the matter. He has not reached the level of a makir tova, for that level lies beyond human reach. What the recitation accomplishes — and this is no small thing — is to keep him from being a kafui tova, an ingrate. Rashi tells it exactly as it is.

This is the very idea voiced each Shabbos in Nishmas: were our mouths as full of song as the sea and our tongues as full of joyous praise as its waves, we still could not adequately thank Hashem for even one of the countless favors He has done for us. We could speak from now until eternity and never express our full hakaras hatov.

The Debts We Can Never Fully Repay

The same truth, though on an infinitely lower plane, applies to certain people in our lives. A person can never adequately thank his parents. It is simply not possible.

There are others, too, who cross our paths and alter the trajectory of our lives in ways we can never fully repay. The lesson is not that we should despair of the attempt. It is that we must at least try — as much as we are able — to express gratitude, so as to escape the terrible label of kafui tova.

The Measure of Greatness

If gratitude is constitutive of being human, it follows that the greater the person, the greater his hakaras hatov. The annals of Gedolei Yisrael, across every segment of the Torah world, are filled with examples of men who went to astonishing lengths to recognize a good. Their greatness and their gratitude were not two separate things; they were the same thing seen from two angles.

A story told of Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky. A bochur in Torah Vodaas would sleep through minyan, and nothing the dormitory counselors tried could rouse him. At their wits’ end, they came to Rav Yaakov and asked to expel the boy from the dormitory. Rav Yaakov agreed that if the boy was breeding laxity throughout the dorm, he could not remain — but he insisted on speaking with him first. The frightened bochur came to the Rosh Yeshiva’s office, certain he was about to be thrown out. Rav Yaakov asked him simply, “So where will you sleep now?” The boy answered that he did not know. “In that case,” said Rav Yaakov, “I want you to stay with me.” The astonished boy protested that the Rosh Yeshiva had just expelled him from the dorm. Rav Yaakov replied: “Your grandfather supported the Kovno Kollel where I learned when I was in Lita. I owe your family hakaras hatov — and so you may sleep at my house.”

Yet the most moving illustration concerns Rav Elazar Menachem Man Shach zt”l. On a rainy winter day, Rav Shach asked his grandson to hire a cab to take him to a funeral in Haifa. The grandson assumed they were traveling to honor some great man his grandfather had known. They arrived to find the levaya of an elderly woman, attended by barely a minyan, and the grandson could not fathom why his grandfather had come. Rav Shach followed the procession to the cemetery in the pouring rain, waited until the burial was complete, recited Kaddish, and then stood over the grave in the downpour. When at last they returned to the car, he said nothing, until the grandson asked who the woman had been.

Rav Shach explained. In Europe, yeshivos had no dormitories; the boys learned in a shul and slept on its benches, with the older bochurim holding seniority over the few sleeping spots. As the youngest, Rav Shach slept on the floor through the brutal Lithuanian winters. At one point he could bear the cold no longer. Just then a letter arrived from a childless uncle who owned a business, inviting the young Shach to come learn the trade and one day inherit it. He resolved to accept and leave the yeshiva. That very night, a woman whose husband — a blanket manufacturer — had just died, and who had risen from shiva, came into the shul and asked whether anyone needed blankets. Rav Shach said that he did. With blankets beneath him and blankets above him, his nights on the floor became bearable. He decided to stay — and he became Rav Shach.

“Without this woman,” he told his grandson, “there would be no Rav Shach, no Avi Ezri, no Ponevezh Rosh Yeshiva, no Gadol Hador — nothing.” He had tracked her for decades, and when he heard she had died, he felt he had to attend her funeral. As for why he had stood over the grave in the rain after the burial was over, the grandson asked. “It is because I wanted to remember what it felt like to be cold,” Rav Shach answered. “I wanted to fully appreciate what she did for me so many years ago. That is why I stayed out there.”

The thread that runs through all of this is a single, demanding idea. Gratitude is not an ornament upon a good character; it is the foundation of one. The Torah commands it, the Rishonim and Acharonim treat it as a binding obligation, the Midrashim affirm it, and a posek of Rav Elyashiv’s authority renders concrete rulings upon it. The Brisker Rav teaches that its absence forfeits one’s very humanity, and the lives of the Gedolim show that its presence is the very measure of greatness. A person who is not a makir tova is not, in the deepest sense, a mensch.

Returning to the White Stone Rows

And so we return to where we began. On Memorial Day, a Torah Jew stands before the white stone rows and the cemeteries across the sea, and the obligation that fills this article presses upon him with full force. The soldiers who lie there did a kindness — the greatest of kindnesses — to the Jewish people, whether or not a single one of them ever knew it. They broke the machine that had been built to consume us. They opened the gates of Buchenwald and Dachau. Many of them never came home.

The kindness of the Keini, performed centuries before Shaul HaMelech, still bound a nation generations later. The kindness of an Egyptian who once gave shelter still forbids us to despise his descendants. If hakaras hatov reaches that far across time, then surely it reaches the soldier who died eighty years ago so that there might still be a Jewish people to remember him. We did not know his name. We cannot repay him. But that was never the standard. The standard, as Rashi teaches, is only that we not be kafui tova — that we not be ingrates.

We cannot adequately thank these men any more than Rav Shach could adequately thank the woman with the blankets. But like Rav Shach, we can remember what it felt like to be cold. On Memorial Day, that is what the Torah asks of us — not to discharge a debt that can never be discharged, but to refuse, at the very least, to forget.

The author can be reached at [email protected]

Longtime pro-Israel activist Dov Hikind is calling on Gov. Kathy Hochul to deploy New York National Guard troops to the Israel Day Parade on May 31, citing a rise in antisemitic incidents in the city and concern that marchers and spectators could become targets along and around the Fifth Avenue route.

The parade’s official host, however, says it has not asked for the Guard and is content with the NYPD’s preparations.

“We need to make sure bad things don’t happen,” Hikind, the founder of Americans Against Antisemitism and a former state assemblyman who represented heavily Orthodox neighborhoods in Brooklyn, told The New York Post. “We want to make sure there is safety for the Jewish community. I’m calling on Governor Hochul to bring in the National Guard to help the New York City Police Department.”

Hikind said his concern extends beyond the marchers themselves to people carrying Israeli flags or wearing pro-Israel gear in the surrounding neighborhood, whom he said could be targeted on subways or side streets away from the parade’s main security perimeter. Hochul has previously sent Guard members to staff transit hubs at her direction, and Hikind argued the same logic applies to the parade weekend.

The Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, which organizes the 61st annual parade, has not joined that call. JCRC chief executive Mark Treyger told The Post his organization has full confidence in the NYPD and Commissioner Jessica Tisch, and is working closely with city law enforcement and the Community Security Initiative — the joint security program operated by JCRC-NY and UJA-Federation of New York — on parade-day operations.

“Commissioner Tisch, the NYPD, and all of our law enforcement partners have left no stone unturned in preparing for next Sunday’s parade,” Treyger said. “Extensive planning, coordination, and security infrastructure are in place to ensure a safe, successful, and joyful celebration.”

This year’s “Israel Day on Fifth,” themed “Proud Americans, Proud Zionists,” runs from 62nd Street to 74th Street and is expected to draw record turnout, organizers say, in part as a direct response to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s announcement that he will not attend. Mamdani, a democratic socialist and longtime supporter of the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, becomes the first New York City mayor in the parade’s 61-year history to sit it out, breaking with a tradition observed by his predecessor Eric Adams and every mayor since 1964.

“While I will not be attending the Israel Day Parade, my lack of attendance should not be mistaken for a refusal to provide security or the necessary permits for its safety,” Mamdani said in a statement first reported by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I’ve been very clear: I believe in equal rights for all people — everywhere.”

Hikind cited the mayor’s boycott as part of the climate that prompted his call. He also pointed to recent anti-Israel demonstrations outside Jewish institutions including the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan and Young Israel Senior Services in Midwood, a Brooklyn neighborhood he formerly represented in the state Assembly.

The parade is taking shape against a broader rupture between City Hall and the city’s Jewish community. The UJA-Federation of New York and the JCRC declined invitations to Mamdani’s first Jewish Heritage event at Gracie Mansion earlier this month, citing his rejection of “the core pillar of our heritage, the State of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people.” A protest at Gracie Mansion is planned for May 26. Mamdani, in remarks at his Gracie Mansion event, acknowledged the surge in antisemitism, noting that Jewish residents make up roughly 12 percent of the city’s population but account for more than half of its hate crime victims.

The Anti-Defamation League has launched a “Mamdani Monitor” tracking the new administration’s posture toward the Jewish community. Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon, who has marched at past parades, has publicly raised concerns about the mayor’s previously stated willingness to direct the NYPD to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu under the International Criminal Court warrant should he set foot in New York.

The governor’s office has not publicly responded to Hikind’s request.

The parade kicks off Sunday morning, May 31.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

President Donald Trump abruptly postponed the signing of a long-anticipated executive order on artificial-intelligence oversight Thursday afternoon, telling reporters in the Oval Office that he yanked the order off his desk because he feared it could slow the United States in its race against China to dominate the technology.

“I didn’t like what I was seeing,” Trump told reporters during an unrelated event with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, according to remarks confirmed by multiple outlets present in the room. “We’re leading China, we’re leading everybody, and I don’t want to do anything that’s going to get in the way of that lead. I really thought that could have been a blocker.”

The signing ceremony had been scheduled for later in the afternoon, and the White House had already sent invitations to executives from leading AI companies. Representatives from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, xAI and major industry trade groups had been briefed earlier in the week on the contents of the order. Trump added that AI is “causing tremendous good” and reiterated that he did not want federal action to interfere with American competitiveness.

The shelved order would have established a voluntary government review process for so-called frontier AI models before public release, giving federal agencies a window of up to 90 days to evaluate the most powerful new systems for cybersecurity and national-security risks. The framework was reportedly modeled in part on the United Kingdom’s approach, which distributes safety responsibilities across multiple agencies, with the Treasury Department taking a lead role in a proposed clearinghouse for identifying and patching flaws in unreleased AI systems.

The trigger for the policy push, according to people briefed on the discussions, was the emergence of a new generation of cybersecurity-capable models — including Anthropic’s Mythos system, which the company has declined to release publicly because of its ability to identify and exploit software vulnerabilities at unprecedented speed. OpenAI has acknowledged that its newest system has similarly powerful capabilities. Both companies have been quietly partnering with banks, hospital systems and federal agencies to test defensive uses of the technology rather than open the models to the broader public.

The decision to pull the order marks a significant victory for the business-aligned wing of the Trump administration, led by White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks, the venture capitalist and Craft Ventures founder who has consistently pressed for a light federal touch on AI development. Sacks has argued publicly that heavy compliance regimes would crush smaller AI startups and that the United States needs a single national framework rather than a patchwork of rules. In December, Trump signed a separate executive order directing the Justice Department to challenge state-level AI laws deemed onerous to the industry — an order Sacks helped shape.

For the AI industry, the postponement removes — for now — what would have been the most significant federal oversight measure since the administration revoked former President Joe Biden’s 2023 AI executive order on its first day in office. That earlier Biden directive had required leading AI developers to share safety test results with the federal government. Since then, the Trump administration’s posture has been almost exclusively pro-deployment, including scrapping the so-called AI Diffusion framework on chip exports and announcing the Stargate infrastructure project alongside OpenAI and partners.

The reversal also lands in a sensitive market moment. Investors had been watching the planned order closely because of its potential impact on Nvidia, the dominant supplier of graphics processors used to train frontier models, as well as on Meta Platforms, Alphabet and Microsoft, all of which have heavy exposure to the pace of AI model releases. A mandated pre-release review window of up to 90 days would have lengthened product cycles across the ecosystem and complicated the open-weight release strategy that Meta has used for its Llama family of models.

Critics inside the administration’s own coalition had pushed back hard in recent days. Parts of the MAGA movement that distrust large technology companies argued that any voluntary federal framework, even one rooted in cybersecurity, would calcify into a regulatory regime that favors incumbents over smaller competitors. Sacks himself faced renewed scrutiny in December over ethics waivers tied to more than 400 investments his firm holds in technology companies with AI exposure, a controversy that has shadowed his role in shaping the now-delayed order.

A White House spokesperson, asked for further comment on the timing or substance of the postponement, referred reporters to Trump’s public remarks. The president did not give a new target date for the signing, and it remains unclear whether the order will be reworked, narrowed to focus strictly on cybersecurity, or shelved entirely. The order has already been pushed back several times since planning began earlier this spring.

For now, the message from the Oval Office is the one that Silicon Valley wanted to hear: federal Washington is once again standing aside while the largest AI labs continue to set the pace.

© 2026 JBizNews. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution without written permission is prohibited.

TOKYO (AP) — Toshifumi Suzuki, the Japanese businessman credited with creating the 7-Eleven convenience-chain global retail empire, has died. He was 93.

Suzuki, an honorary adviser at Seven & i Holdings, died on May 18 of heart failure at his Tokyo home, the company said Monday.

Suzuki founded the Japanese unit that operates the seemingly ubiquitous 7-Eleven “conbini” outlets, where busy people can hop in and grab sandwiches, rice balls, drinks, chips and other meals on-the-run, use ATMs, pay utility bills and copy documents.

The 7-Eleven stores, now numbering more than 80,000 worldwide, are the biggest convenience-store chain in Japan.

The business started out in Japan under a franchise agreement with the U.S. 7-Eleven in 1973. The first store opened in Japan the following year.

After The Southland Corp., which founded 7-Eleven, ran into financial difficulties the Japanese company bought a majority stake in the 1990’s. It made the American counterpart its 100% owned group company in 2005.

Several years ago, the Canadian retailer Alimentation Couche-Tard, which runs the global Circle K convenience store chain, sought to take over Seven & i Holdings. But it dropped the effort in 2024, citing frustration with negotiations that showed “a lack of constructive engagement.”

Suzuki, born in Nagano Prefecture, northern Japan, in 1932, graduated from the prestigious Chuo University in Tokyo.

Before beginning his career in the convenience store business, he worked at Ito-Yokado, a major Japanese retail chain that sells a variety of products including groceries, cosmetics and clothing, which is also owned by Seven and i Holdings.

Apart from leading 7-Eleven, Suzuki engineered the acquisition of Barney’s Japan in 2015 and added banking functions to the empire.

He said he wanted to provide customers with what he called a lifestyle shopping experience. Over the years, the retailing giant also brought under its wing the Sogo and Seibu department stores.

Suzuki became chief executive of 7-Eleven Japan in 1978. He is widely seen as having innovated how Japanese consumers shop. Convenience stores have led retailers in Japan in implementing new retail technologies.

Funeral services are being held privately with family, and messages, flowers and other condolence gifts were politely declined, according to the company. Details of a public ceremony will come later, it said.

Suzuki is survived by his wife and two children.

NEW YORK (VINNEWS/Rabbi Yair Hoffman) What follows is a fascinating and inspiring new understanding of Naomi based on a shiur given by Rav Uren Reich shlita. This shiur was delivered the same day that the Rosh yeshiva served as the sandek for this author’s einekel.  The pasuk at the beginning of Megillas Rus describes this wealthy, successful lady, Naomi.

How’s everything going for her? And then she leaves with her husband to stay in Moav, and one tragedy after another befalls her, and she comes back bereft of everything that she had before. “Vayehi k’voanah Beis Lechem” — as they come back and they come into Beis Lechem, and everybody’s assembled there, “vateihom kol ha’ir” — everybody was talking about it. “Vatomarna ha’zos Naomi?” Is this the lady that we once knew? Naomi — she’s unrecognizable. “Vatomer aleihen, al tikrena li Naomi.” Don’t call me Naomi.

The word Naomi is from ne’imus — sweet. “Kerena li Mara” — call me bitter. “Ki heimar Shakai li me’od” — Hashem has given me much bitterness. “Ani mele’ah halachti, v’reikam heshivani Hashem; lamah tikrena li Naomi, v’Hashem anah vi, v’Shakai heira li.”

We look at these words, and they sound like the bitter ranting of a woman who’s fallen on hard times — negative and upset.

She, so to speak, spits at those who call her Naomi. Why are you calling me Naomi? I’m not Naomi. I’m now a woman who’s living a bitter life. Things have turned very bad for me.

But it may have meant something completely different.

And I’d like to share a story about my great-grandfather, Rav Shlomo Zalman Pines. Rav Shlomo Zalman Pines lived in Minsk. He was truly “Toraso v’zulaso b’mokom echad.” He was a fabulously wealthy person, part of his family, and he learned yomam va’laylah. And gedolei Yisroel stayed in his house — Rav Zalman Sender, Rav Chaim Brisker. He spent his Shabbosos with Rav Meir Simcha, and he spoke about it till the end of his life — different chiddushim that he discussed with Rav Meir Simcha.

And the wealth in the house was so fabulous that his wife used to tell the grandchildren stories about the maidservants they had, and the gold — they didn’t have silver, they had gold.

They had all kinds of cutlery. And every year, as a very wealthy man, he used to go with his wife to Switzerland for a vacation, and he left his two children behind with a babysitter — this was their minhag b’kviyus.

And one year — I think it was 1914 — for reasons that no one knows, he took both children with him that year. And they were in Switzerland, and on the way out, they realized they were missing certain papers.

They went back to the stantzia to get the papers, and they missed the boat that day, and therefore they decided to go back to Russia the next day. Which was Hashgachah Pratis — they got a telegram: “The Bolsheviks have taken over. There’s a revolution. A lot of unrest. Don’t come back right now. Wait until you know what’s me’ulad yom.”

Shortly afterwards, he got another telegram, or maybe a letter: “They’ve taken over completely. The Russian Revolution — and the scapegoat for everything is the wealthy people. They’ve taken over everything that you have. If you walk into Russia, you’ll be killed immediately. Stay where you are.”

And he realized that it was a gezeiras Hashem that he has to stay in Switzerland.

He had kim’at no money with him at all. He had what he brought with him for the vacation. And he had some very nice leichter, and he had a little bit of a part in the house that he was in in Switzerland.

He was doomed to be a poor man for the rest of his life. “Litvish atam tarchem,” omar, “dar raglov, v’al ma she’amar Baruch Atah Hashem Elokeinu Melech ha’olam — dayeinu emes.”

From then, for the next 30 years until the end of his life — more than 30 years — he never spoke a word about his previous riches. He lived as a very poor man, and he was marbitz Torah yomam va’laylah, sha’arim, sha’arim.

Yeduah — he said on himself, he said to my uncle Reb Dov, he learned Bava Kamma over 100 times b’iyun. He wrote on kol chelkei ha’Torah, atem chochmas Halacha.

But the point that I’m bringing out of it is “mefulag harayim.” Here he’d lived one track as a wealthy person, a baal gedulah, a person who was machnis kedushah l’Yisroel, b’haflagah — and in a moment, so to speak, his life was nehefach, and he was mekabel b’tzidduk hadin, b’ahavah, and never spoke about it.

His wife used to speak to the children about it, but he never said another word.

And what’s the omek of that? What’s the depth of that?

He put that life behind him. He realized that Hashem gives a person a tafkid. His tafkid until now was to live the life of a wealthy person — with tzidkus, with Torah, with avodas Hashem. And now he had a different goral. And he didn’t want to hear about what was before. It’s not relevant. Why be nostalgic about times that used to be and feel that I’m missing something? I’m in a new world, and a new tekufah.

Naomi lived a life of sweetness for a long time. And when she came back, people were comparing the lady they were watching to the lady she used to be. And from the name of a person, they said, comes the tafkid: “Ha’zos Naomi?” Is this the lady that we knew, that was Naomi? “Vatomer aleihen” — and she said to them: I don’t view myself anymore as Naomi. That was my previous life. “Al tikrena li Naomi.” Don’t give me the title Naomi. Naomi is the lady I used to be. “Kerena li Mara, ki heimar Shakai li me’od.”

Now Hakadosh Baruch Hu has given me the trial, the tribulation, of having a bitter life — and seeing if I can endure it with the right kabbalah b’ahavah. “Ani mele’ah halachti, v’reikam heshivani Hashem” — middas harachamim. Now Hakadosh Baruch Hu has decided to give me a different role. “Lamah tikrena li Naomi?” Why talk about the Naomi that used to be? It’s irrelevant. “V’Hashem anah vi, v’Shakai heira li.”

And the truth is, as we all know, Naomi’s gedulah begins now.

Now, through Rus, Naomi has a connection — as we see at the end of the Megillah, she becomes the one who is the forerunner of Malchus Beis Dovid and Malchus Melech HaMashiach.

So a person who feels deprived because there was something great that he had — whatever it may be — that was taken from him: this is the avodas Hashem. “B’chol me’odecha” — Chazal zogn, “b’chol middah u’middah she’hu moded lecha, hevei modeh lo me’od me’od.” A person has to accept what Hakadosh Baruch Hu gives him. It’s a very, very difficult challenge.

I remember my father, alav ha’shalom — he was a very active person, he was a sociable person, he liked people. And when he became sick, and he was in an old age home, at the beginning he couldn’t deal with the transformation of his life. He spoke to me about it; we spoke. Hakadosh Baruch Hu gives a different tafkid, and he took that discussion and he said it over to many people: “I’ve been mekabel — now I have a different life. Now I have to take care of Mommy, I have to take care of Mommy, and I have to live a slower life, and it takes me half an hour till I walk next door to Minchah. That’s my life. I’m going to be mekabel b’ahavah.”

This is the way we all have to live in avodas Hashem. U’bizchus ha’kabbalos ha’tovos shelanu nizkeh l’mashiach.

The transcriber can be reached at [email protected]

Being arrested four times in two weeks is surely a record, and repeat offender Francis Achille, 64, holds that dubious distinction. According to London’s Shomrim, he was just arrested for the fourth time in two weeks for threatening Jewish children with a baton outside a synagogue.

Shomrim have repeatedly detained Achille for violating his bail conditions, such as not going within 100 meters (about 300 feet) of any synagogue.

“Gets locked up, comes out and reoffends, constantly breaching bail conditions and his Criminal Behaviour Order,” Shomrim posted on X.

“Local residents continue to raise concerns regarding the repeated offending and breaches,” the volunteer patrol group added.

Francis Achille threatens Jewish children with a stick. (Credit: Shomrim)

Achille’s latest arrest in the London borough of Hackney came after threatening Jewish children with a stick. The Stamford Hill Shomrim have worked closely with the Metropolitan Police to detain Achille amid rising concern in the Jewish community over his repeated offenses.

The arrest comes on the heels of the sentencing of another man, Tavius Jean Charles, for death threats against Jews. But the larger context of attacks against Jews across London has the Jewish community on edge. Multiple synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses have been subjected to arson attacks, and a stabbing in the London neighborhood of Golders Green injured two Jewish men last month.

A team of 100 officers has been dispatched to patrol Jewish neighborhoods and combat hate crimes following a warning from Metropolitan Police chief Sir Mark Rowley.

Earlier this month, he said that the rise in attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions in London is “an appalling state of affairs.”

“If you overlay three things now — hate crime, terrorism and hostile state activity — you add all that together, that combined effect with that building of ideology online, that is really dangerous and troubling,” he said. “And Jewish communities feel that, and you can see that in how they talk, how it’s making them change their lives.”

Rowley called for the deployment of an additional 300 police officers to protect Jewish communities in the area, saying that the problem isn’t relegated to “a few racist idiots,” but is “something that is more embedded in society that isn’t being challenged.”

“There’s too much licensing of it in public debate,” he declared, giving voice to a sentiment shared by many Jewish advocates.

The difficulties slowing progress in negotiations for a deal with Iran to end the war stem not only from disagreements between the sides but also from an extraordinary situation inside Iran’s leadership itself — one that is significantly complicating diplomatic efforts, CBS reported.

According to the report, which cites US officials with knowledge of the matter, Iran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is hiding in an undisclosed location with little access to the outside world and can only be reached by a “labyrinth of couriers.”

The officials said this is one of the main reasons negotiations over the emerging agreement are progressing so slowly. When the US sends a proposal, the difficulties in reaching Khamenei result in long delays before the US receives a response.

According to the report, Khamenei is not the only Iranian leader who is in hiding. Most Iranian leaders never see daylight, spending most of their time in highly fortified bunkers and avoiding speaking to each other unless absolutely necessary, the sources said.

“Watching them try to figure out how to talk to each other is almost like watching a sitcom. They are completely exasperated,” one official said.

By design, even the most senior Iranian leaders are not aware of Khameini’s location and have no way to contact him directly.

“This is why you see people saying things like, ‘The supreme leader has agreed to the framework,’ or ‘We’re waiting to hear back on the final deal points.’ Every piece of information he receives is dated and there’s a lot of latency to his responses,” one official said.

Despite the difficulties, a senior US official said on Sunday that Khamenei had already approved the general framework of the current draft agreement.

President Trump wrote on Truth Social that he is in no rush to reach a deal as “time is on our side.”

“The negotiations are proceeding in an orderly and constructive manner, and I have informed my representatives not to rush into a deal in that time is on our side,” he wrote on Truth Social.

“The Blockade will remain in full force and effect until an agreement is reached, certified, and signed. Both sides must take their time and get it right. There can be no mistakes!”

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

A British military aircraft transporting UK Defense Secretary John Healey reportedly suffered GPS interference while flying near Russian territory earlier this week, forcing the crew to rely on backup navigation systems during the flight back to Britain.

The disruption occurred Thursday as the RAF jet returned from Estonia, where Healey had been visiting British troops participating in NATO exercises close to the Russian frontier. According to reports, the aircraft’s signal was jammed for roughly three hours after its GPS capabilities were knocked offline.

British officials believe Russia was likely responsible for the electronic interference, though it remains unclear whether Healey himself was specifically targeted. Reports noted that the aircraft’s route could be tracked publicly through online flight-monitoring services.

The UK Ministry of Defense has not yet issued an official response regarding the incident.

The episode came just one day after revelations that Russian military aircraft had aggressively confronted an RAF surveillance plane over the Black Sea last month in what British officials described as a highly dangerous encounter.

During that earlier confrontation, a Russian Su-35 fighter jet reportedly flew close enough to an RAF Rivet Joint reconnaissance aircraft to trigger onboard emergency systems and disable the plane’s autopilot functions.

A second Russian aircraft, identified as a Su-27, allegedly made six separate passes directly in front of the British plane, at one point coming within just six meters of the aircraft’s nose.

Following that incident, Healey commended the RAF crew for what he called their “outstanding professionalism” during the “unacceptable” Russian maneuvers. Britain’s Ministry of Defense later characterized the encounter as the most serious Russian provocation involving RAF aircraft since 2022, when a Russian pilot described as “rogue” fired a missile near another Rivet Joint aircraft over the Black Sea.

This is not the first time British officials have dealt with suspected Russian GPS interference. In 2024, an RAF aircraft carrying then-Defense Secretary Grant Shapps also experienced GPS jamming while operating near Russian-controlled airspace.

{Matzav.com}

JBizNews — May 25, 2026

Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. is quietly ferrying oil and gas cargoes out of the Persian Gulf using its own fleet, threading vessels past both the Iranian navy and U.S. warships to reach energy-starved buyers, according to vessel-tracking data and people with direct knowledge of the operations cited Sunday by Bloomberg. The state producer, known as Adnoc, has leaned on “dark transits” — sailing the Strait of Hormuz with transponders switched off — to emerge as the most successful exporter operating out of the Middle East nearly three months into the U.S.-Iran war that has paralyzed the world’s most important oil chokepoint.

The disclosure marks a turning point in a conflict that has frozen roughly a fifth of global liquefied natural gas supply and a sizable share of seaborne crude since late February. According to IMF PortWatch data, only two vessels transited Hormuz on May 17, the latest published day, against a pre-crisis baseline of roughly 95 per day — leaving the waterway functionally closed even as Tehran signals a conditional reopening tied to stalled peace talks with Washington.

Adnoc’s edge, traders and shipping executives say, lies in fleet control. While most Gulf producers and Western commodity houses lease tonnage and are hemmed in by owners’ risk appetite, Adnoc has been moving cargoes on vessels controlled by Navig8, majority owned by its shipping and logistics arm, and by joint-venture partner Wanhua Chemical Group. The shipments span crude, clean petroleum products and gas carriers. After clearing Hormuz, vessels typically transfer cargo to client tankers in safer waters or sail directly to India’s west coast before returning to the Gulf for fresh loadings — a short-haul rotation that maximizes proximity to the strait. Adnoc’s Upper Zakum crude loads at Zirku Island, while naphtha and LPG move from the Ruwais mega-refinery.

“With the UAE leaving OPEC and finding ways to send ships through Hormuz in the dark, Adnoc has been willing to take more risks in order to get their oil out,” said Matt Wright, senior freight analyst at Kpler. The UAE officially exited the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries on May 1, freeing Adnoc from production discipline at precisely the moment its storage was filling up and its independent commercial posture was hardening.

Qatar, the world’s third-largest LNG supplier, is now following a similar playbook. The Al Rayyan LNG carrier was spotted north of Muscat, Oman, on Monday after clearing Hormuz en route to top customer China, ship-tracking data reviewed by Bloomberg show. The vessel had stopped broadcasting its signal around May 22 while idling near QatarEnergy’s Ras Laffan export plant. A second Qatari tanker loaded in late March also transited the strait between Sunday and Monday. The covert runs follow the May 10 transit of the Al Kharaitiyat, Qatar’s first successful LNG shipment through Hormuz since the war began. QatarEnergy had previously declared force majeure on contracted deliveries after Iranian strikes forced Ras Laffan offline in March.

Antonia Syn, gas and LNG research analyst at Rystad Energy, said the divergence between the two producers reflects strategy as much as luck. “Adnoc hasn’t declared force majeure, unlike QatarEnergy,” she said, noting that invoking the clause “formally reduces commercial pressure to attempt risky transits, and Adnoc appears determined to avoid fully conceding that gulf LNG is stranded.” The Emirati carriers currently slipping through the strait are older vessels of the same generation as sister tankers scrapped last year, Syn added — a sign Adnoc is putting its most expendable hulls on the front line.

The volumes remain a fraction of pre-war flows. Kpler and satellite-analysis firm SynMax data show Adnoc exported at least 6 million barrels of crude on four tankers from inside-Gulf terminals in April, against pre-war shipments that ran several times that level. Pre-conflict, the Persian Gulf routinely sent three LNG cargoes a day through Hormuz. Saudi Aramco has rerouted shipments entirely through the Red Sea, while Iraq and Kuwait have either halted sales or slashed prices to lure buyers willing to absorb the risk.

War-risk premiums and freight rates have surged in tandem. VLCC rates from the Gulf to China jumped 24% in a single session earlier in the conflict to $1.67 per barrel, the steepest one-day move of the year, Kpler reported. Insurers have layered additional war-risk charges on every cargo, and electronic interference around Iran’s Bandar Abbas port — flagged by the U.S.-led Joint Maritime Information Centre — has disrupted navigation systems, pushing the Baltic and International Maritime Council to advise members to avoid the Arabian Gulf entirely where possible.

For buyers in China, India, Japan and Pakistan, the dark-transit cargoes represent the thin lifeline keeping Asian LNG and crude inventories from buckling. For Adnoc, they represent something more strategic: a demonstration that an OPEC defector with its own ships, its own refineries and its own appetite for risk can keep the lights on in customer countries when its larger neighbors cannot. The longer Hormuz stays effectively shut, the more that capability looks like a structural shift in Gulf energy power.

— JBizNews Desk

© 2026 JBizNews. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution without written permission is prohibited.

President Trump opened Memorial Day with a fiery series of Truth Social posts blasting Democrats, establishment Republicans, and critics of his administration’s ongoing negotiations with Iran, while insisting that any agreement reached would be far stronger than the Obama-era nuclear deal.

“Happy Memorial Day to all, including the Dumocrats, who disrespect our Military and all of the tremendous success that it has had over the last year. God Bless those that have made the ultimate sacrifice. I love you all!” Trump posted on Truth Social at 6:18 a.m. ET.

The president once again used a national holiday to target political opponents, continuing a pattern that has become familiar throughout both of his terms in office.

Earlier Monday morning, Trump lashed out at those attacking the administration’s diplomacy with Tehran, declaring that opponents of the talks “should go home and rest, they do nothing but create division and loss. In other words, they are losers!”

The Iran negotiations consumed much of the president’s weekend as White House officials worked to determine whether a formal agreement could soon be finalized. According to administration officials, a preliminary framework could be completed within days, although Trump later emphasized that he had directed aides not to move too quickly.

“I laugh at all of the Dumocrats, RINOS, and Fools who know nothing about the potential deal I am making with Iran, things that haven’t even been negotiated yet,” Trump seethed on Truth Social before gloating over recent primary defeats of Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.).

“The deal with Iran will either be a great and meaningful one, or there will be no deal,” he continued. “It will be the exact opposite of the JCPOA disaster negotiated by the failed Obama Administration.”

Speculation surrounding the emerging proposal has already triggered concern among Republican foreign policy hawks, many of whom fear the administration could offer Tehran excessive concessions. At the same time, some Democrats have mocked Trump by arguing that the developing framework resembles the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action negotiated during the Obama years — the same nuclear accord Trump withdrew the United States from during his first administration.

A senior administration official said Sunday that the White House believes Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has approved the general outline of a possible agreement. According to the official, Iran has agreed “in principle” to eliminate its stockpile of enriched uranium as part of the broader framework for a peace arrangement.

JERUSALEM (AP) — The deal being discussed between the U.S. and Iran fails to achieve any of Israel’s goals for the war, Israel’s opposition leader Yair Lapid said on Monday, as he accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of failing to influence a better agreement.

Lapid, who is part of an alliance attempting to unseat Netanyahu in elections this year, said details of the emerging deal are “disturbing.”

“The deal is bad for Israel, bad for the region, bad for the citizens of Iran,” Lapid told reporters in Jerusalem.

Israel and the U.S. launched the war on Feb. 28 vowing to destroy Iran’s ballistic missile program, end its support for proxy militant groups across the region and end Iran’s ability to pursue a nuclear bomb. Both Netanyahu and President Donald Trump also said they hoped to create conditions to topple Iran’s government.

According to regional officials, under the current deal being discussed Iran would give up its stockpile of highly enriched uranium and reopen the strategic Strait of Hormuz in exchange for ending a U.S. blockade of Iranian ports and the lifting of sanctions against Iran. Key details on Iran’s nuclear program would then be negotiated during a 60-day period. It is unclear if the deal will address Iran’s missiles or support for regional militant groups.

Lapid expressed gratitude to Trump for launching the war with Israel, but criticized Netanyahu for allowing Washington to negotiate a potential deal with little coordination with Israel.

“The Israeli government is at an all-time low in its ability to influence decisions in Washington,” he said, noting that Trump said last week: “Netanyahu will do whatever I want him to do.”

Lapid, head of the centrist “Yesh Atid” party, briefly served as prime minister in 2022 under a rotation agreement with Naftali Bennett, leader of a small conservative party. Their coalition government ended 12 years of Netanyahu’s rule.

They have once again merged their parties into single faction headed by Bennett as they attempt to unseat Netanyahu in elections which will be held by the end of October.

Lapid has served as Israel’s opposition leader since Netanyahu returned to power in late 2022, while Bennett took a break from politics. Their alliance is aimed at uniting a fragmented opposition united in large part by their shared hostility toward Netanyahu.

Lapid, one of a shrinking number of Israeli politicians who supports the idea of Palestinian independence, said the issue would not be on the next government’s agenda. He said the conditions are not right following the trauma of the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, and wars that have followed.

“There will be no two-state solution in the coming years, because Israelis now understand this will become just another failing terrorist state on our borders,” said Lapid, adding that the Palestinian Authority does not have the ability to effectively prevent attacks against Israel.

But Lapid said he would oppose unilateral steps that would make a future Palestinian state impossible and had received assurances from Bennett, a former West Bank settlement leader, that Israel will not move toward annexing the occupied territory.

Lapid also ruled out cooperation with Arab parties to build a coalition to unseat Netanyahu.

Opinion polls indicate that Bennett and Lapid might not be able to form a governing majority coalition without the support of some Arab lawmakers, as they did in their previous government. They broke a longstanding taboo in 2021 when they invited Mansour Abbas, leader of a small Arab faction, into Israel’s governing coalition for the first and only time in Israel’s history.

Lapid said his previous cooperation with Abbas was “the right government for the moment,” but that Israel is in a very different place after nearly three years of wars and he and Bennett will not build a coalition with Abbas’ party in the next elections.

Iran is demanding the immediate release of $12 billion in frozen assets held in Qatar as a precondition for continuing the talks with the United States, Iran International reported on Sunday night, citing an informed source with direct knowledge of the negotiations.

It is also the only immediate obstacle to further advancing negotiations on the potential Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the two countries, according to the source.

Further, the source emphasized that one of Tehran’s broader requests is that all its assets be unfrozen as part of any eventual comprehensive agreement.

In April, a senior Iranian source told Reuters that the US had agreed to release Iranian frozen assets ​held in Qatar – a claim a US official swiftly denied.

A second Iranian source said the United States had agreed to release $6 billion of frozen Iranian funds held by Qatar, Reuters reported.

What does the MOU include?

The MOU – labeled the ‘Islamabad Declaration’ according to Al Arabiya –  that both parties would sign would start a 60-day ceasefire extension, and would include the possibility of further talks and an extension during the two-month period.

If the MOU is approved by Iran’s Supreme National Council, it will be sent to Mojtaba Khamenei for final approval.

According to Al Arabiya, final negotiations regarding a peace deal will come only after both parties sign the MOU and agree to the 60-day ceasefire.

One important element of the deal is the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. According to Axios, the current draft of the MOU specifies that the Strait would be open without tolls, and Iran would clear the mines it had deployed there.

In exchange, the US would lift its blockade on Iranian ports and waive some sanctions it had imposed, allowing the country to sell oil freely.

Issues relating to Iran’s nuclear capabilities and enriched uranium stockpile would still be largely under negotiation, although the MOU would call for Iran to cease any pursuit of nuclear weapons.

According to Iranian media, the deal would include Washington waiving sanctions on Iranian oil, and both sides agreeing not to attack each other or their allies.

Another issue the MOU addresses, Axios reported, is the ongoing war in Lebanon between Israel and the Hezbollah terrorist group. It specifies that the war will end, with a US official telling Axios it would not be a “one-sided ceasefire,” and that if “Hezbollah behaves, Israel will behave.”

Iran’s central bank chief heads to Qatar after talks about frozen funds

Iran’s Central Bank Chief Abdolnaser Hemmati traveled to Qatar, Iran’s state media reported on Monday, saying the visit follows talks with a Qatari delegation in Tehran regarding Iran’s frozen funds.

Iran has been pushing in negotiations for its frozen funds abroad, including in Qatar, to be released.

Iran’s Ghalibaf, Araghchi, in Doha to meet Qatari PM, sources to Reuters

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi are in Doha to meet the Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, an official briefed on the visit told Reuters on Monday.

The Iranian officials are meeting with the Qatari PM to discuss the terms of a potential ceasefire deal with the US, the official said.

The discussions will primarily focus on the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, the officials briefed Reuters.

Jerusalem Post Staff and Reuters contributed to this report.

This post was originally published on here.

May 25, 2026 — A wave of new immigration barriers and a stalled entry-level hiring market are pushing tens of thousands of foreign graduates of U.S. universities toward the exits, with students, career counselors and labor-market data all pointing to the sharpest erosion of the post-graduation work pipeline in a generation.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported on May 5 that the unemployment rate for recent college graduates ages 22 to 27 held at 5.6% through the first quarter of 2026 — well above the 3.1% rate for all college graduates and the 4.2% rate for all workers — as hiring across white-collar sectors continues slowing amid corporate cost-cutting, artificial-intelligence automation and mounting economic uncertainty.

At the same time, a Trump administration proclamation signed September 19, 2025, imposing a $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions filed from abroad has dramatically narrowed the work-visa runway international students traditionally relied on after graduation.

Together, the two forces are reshaping one of America’s most important talent pipelines.

Approximately 84,000 international students are projected to earn bachelor’s degrees from U.S. universities this spring, according to an Economic Innovation Group analysis of National Center for Education Statistics data. Layered on top are roughly 306,000 master’s candidates and 153,000 doctoral students counted in the latest Open Doors survey sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.

Most are graduating into what the New York Fed describes as a “low-hire, low-fire” labor market — one where companies are slowing recruitment, preserving cash and reducing entry-level openings even as layoffs moderate.

For international students, the slowdown is colliding with visa restrictions at exactly the worst moment.

Erica Ford, an international career development coach at Cornell University who advises roughly 300 foreign students annually, told CNBC that STEM graduates who previously expected multiple offers are now relieved to secure even one. Doctoral candidates are pivoting away from academic research toward industry roles as university funding tightens, while nonprofit employers once considered viable alternatives are shedding staff and freezing hiring.

The pressure is especially severe because international graduates operate under visa deadlines domestic students do not face.

President Donald Trump’s September H-1B overhaul fundamentally changed the economics of sponsorship. The proclamation requires employers to pay a $100,000 surcharge on new H-1B petitions filed for workers outside the United States while shifting the system toward a wage-weighted lottery that favors higher-paid applicants over the previous random selection process.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services later clarified that the fee does not apply to F-1 students adjusting status from inside the country — a carve-out that has slightly improved odds for graduates already working under Optional Practical Training programs because fewer overseas applicants are entering the system.

But the relief is narrow.

The wage-weighted structure still favors senior-level, highly paid positions, leaving entry-level international graduates competing for a shrinking pool of sponsorship-capable employers. Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder and venture investor, has publicly urged the administration to create lower-fee exemptions for startups, warning that the current structure effectively pushes high-skilled immigrants toward only the largest corporations capable of absorbing the cost.

Recruiters across startup, venture-backed and small-business sectors report hiring pipelines drying up almost immediately after the fee took effect.

The student experience increasingly reflects that collapse.

Sid Chakravarthy, a 21-year-old mathematics and economics graduate of Boston University raised in Dubai, told The New York Times he submitted more than 700 job applications, receiving automatic rejections for roughly the first 500 despite meeting qualifications for many of the roles. Sakshi Patel, who completed a master’s degree last year and is pursuing finance positions, described interview processes that abruptly stall once sponsorship requirements surface.

Career offices at major research universities report a sharp increase in international students simultaneously applying for jobs in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and Ireland — countries now aggressively marketing simpler post-study immigration pathways to graduates who once overwhelmingly prioritized the United States.

The enrollment numbers are already beginning to reflect the shift.

International graduate enrollment fell roughly 6% — nearly 10,000 students — during the autumn 2025 term, according to National Student Clearinghouse Research Center data released in January. It marked the first decline in three years after international graduate enrollment surged more than 50% between 2020 and 2024.

Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department issued 15% fewer student visas globally between October 2024 and March 2025. The sharpest decline came from India — historically the single largest source of U.S. graduate students — where visa issuance dropped 43.5%.

NAFSA: Association of International Educators now projects a meaningful contraction in the number of jobs created or supported by international students during the 2025-2026 academic year after the category peaked in 2023-2024.

Business groups, universities and immigration attorneys warn the broader consequences could extend well beyond campus enrollment.

For decades, international graduates have formed a critical talent base for American technology firms, research labs, financial institutions, healthcare systems and startup ecosystems. A growing combination of H-1B costs, visa uncertainty, security reviews, processing delays and weak entry-level hiring conditions now risks redirecting portions of that talent pipeline toward competing economies.

The administration argues the overhaul protects American workers, raises wage standards and prevents employers from undercutting domestic labor markets through lower-cost foreign hiring.

But critics warn the long-term effect may be to weaken one of America’s most successful competitive advantages: attracting and retaining global talent.

Eva Yao, founder of Colorado-based Flari Tech and herself a former H-1B visa holder, told CNBC she now advises foreign graduates to focus almost exclusively on large corporations with the financial scale to absorb the new fees and compliance costs — guidance that runs directly against decades of policy designed to encourage entrepreneurial immigration and startup formation.

For now, the path remains open.

But it is becoming narrower, slower, more expensive and significantly more selective than at any point in the post-1990 era.

And a generation of international graduates is beginning to recalibrate its future around that reality.

JBizNews Desk

© 2026 JBizNews. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution without written permission is prohibited.

Hundreds of protesters gathered overnight in Yerushalayim in an attempt to prevent the arrest of a yeshiva bochur by military police, leading to violent confrontations and the deployment of Border Police forces.

The incident began overnight, when military police arrested Yosef Levy, a talmid of Yeshiva Pe’er Yosef, in the Armon Hanatziv neighborhood of Yerushalayim, for allegedly not identifying himself to military police officers. He was taken to a police station for further questioning.

Following the arrest, a large protest erupted at the scene. Demonstrators claimed that police used heavy force to disperse the crowd, including stun grenades.

At the same time, dozens of additional protesters gathered at Kikar HaShabbos in Yerushalayim to protest the arrest. During efforts to disperse the demonstration, Border Police officers were filmed striking protesters with batons.

The developments come after Police Commissioner Danny Levy recently instructed police officers to detain any draft deserter encountered and transfer him to military police custody for further handling.

Until now, Israeli police had generally refrained from arresting draft deserters directly. Critics of the new directive have described it as a major policy shift driven by pressure from the attorney general, whom many in the Olam HaTorah accuse of aggressively targeting bnei yeshivos.

Just before Shavuos, an avreich from Ofakim was stopped on a highway and transferred to military police custody, marking one of the first known implementations of the commissioner’s new policy.

{Matzav.com}

Submitted by the family: “On the I-195, everyone walked out with no scratches! B”H. Family with baby on board. Wear a seatbelt, It saves lives!”

He added, “On Motzei Yom Tov, My family was going back to Lakewood from Baltimore. It was raining and the roads were slippery. At about 1245 we were on the I-195 and hydroplaned, we lost control and headed directly into a tree. We spun around landed backwards on the shoulder. Airbags went off. We were all buckled and our baby was properly strapped into her doona. We were all able to walk out safely, unscratched.”

“Buckles saves lives”

“Thank you hashem”

With reports that the United States expended more than half of its overall Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors during Operation Epic Fury (Operation Roaring Lion) against Iran, Lockheed Martin has broken ground for a new munitions production center in Troy, Alabama.

The THAAD is designed to intercept threats both outside and inside the atmosphere-occupying a crucial middle tier of the United States defensive air defense layers. The system is built on a hit-to-kill method where it relies on the kinetic energy from the collision to destroy the hostile missile during its terminal phase of flight. The system can detect and track missiles at distances over 2,000 kilometers and engage the target at altitudes up to 150 kilometers.

According to a press release by Lockheed Martin, the facility will add 87,000 square feet of production space for THAAD interceptors and “future work with Next Generation Interceptor (NGI).” The infrastructure, Lockheed said, forms part of its broader $9 billion investment plan over the next decade to grow the overall production capacity of munitions and to modernize over 20 of its facilities across the United States.

“This partnership is critical to surging our munitions capacity, and Lockheed Martin has leaned in aggressively. Today is a testament to that partnership and that progress,” said the Honorable Michael Duffey, Under Secretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment, during his remarks at the groundbreaking ceremony.

In addition to the US, THAAD is operated by the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia which inaugurated its first batteries in July of last year. 

During the month-long war with Iran, The Washington Post quoted several American officials as stating that over 200 THAAD interceptors were fired in defense of Israel, roughly half of the Pentagon’s total inventory. 

Many US allies have raised concerns over the possible depletion of the interceptor stockpiles, with the US not having enough production to replenish the levels used during the war with Iran at the current rate in the short term.

A US Congress study published in the midst of the war shed worrying light on the inventory of interceptors available to the US, saying that “there is concern that the rate of use of THAAD interceptors during Operation Epic Fury has further reduced the limited stock of interceptors.”

“It could take three to eight years to replenish the THAAD missile stockpile, each of which costs an estimated $12.7 million.” The Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), which provided some of the materials to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), found that the first days of the current US Operation Epic Fury were more intensive than the opening of any other air campaign in the history of the US military, with 5,197 munitions across 35 types carrying a munitions-only replacement bill of $10 – $16 billion in four days.

In January Lockheed Martin signed a framework agreement with the US Department of War to quadruple the production of THAAD interceptors from 96 to 400 per year.

Understanding the urgency, Lockheed Martin Chairman, President and CEO Jim Taiclet said at the ceremony in Troy that the company “is ready now to meet the urgent demand to expand production capacity. We have already invested well over a billion dollars in this expansion, which directly strengthens deterrence and helps ensure our service members and allies have the capabilities they need when they need them.”

This post was originally published on here.

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Ten years ago, the path of a religious girl at the end of ulpana (religious high school for girls) was clear: a year or two of national service (or military service if you were a bit rebellious), then a degree (probably in teaching), and later marriage. Only a few, the “very religious girls of the class,” would deviate from this track into a full year in a midrasha (religious women’s Torah study program).

Over the years, however, midrashot have managed to carve out their own place in the life path. Whether before national or military service, or afterward, girls from the religious sector are increasingly flocking to a year dedicated entirely to Torah study. On the occasion of Shavuot, the article asks: how did the world of midrashot become a trend that is sweeping everyone?

Tzipi Abeta, an 12th-grade teacher at Ulpanat Segula, describes very high percentages of students choosing to go to a midrasha. “I see that it is on the minds of the vast majority of girls,” she told the Kipah website, attributing the trend also to the school’s guiding approach, which holds an annual “midrasha conference” with representatives from various institutions. “This is something that didn’t exist in previous years,” she admits, “it’s a broad and very important trend.”

When asked to estimate the numbers, she guesses: “If eight years ago maybe 10% of the girls went to a midrasha, today it’s around 30% or more.” Abeta mainly knows about students who go directly after ulpana, but also hears about many who choose the path after national service. The school itself is also in the process of opening a midrasha in two tracks, one for students from France and one regular track.

When asked what caused the trend, she says: “Today the language of midrashot is very present in ulpanot. There is a midrasha in almost every school for girls who stay in the afternoon to study Torah.” She adds: “In recent years there it has become an accepted idea that there should be spiritual strengthening before going to the army, whether in a hesder yeshiva, preparatory program, or yeshiva. Girls used to go to national service or the army as they were. Today girls are already part of a very high-level academic world, so it is only natural they will also connect to Torah and faith at a high level.”

When asked whether this is part of a broader religious strengthening trend, she does not commit fully: “It’s not necessarily about being more religious. It’s a simple desire of the soul. I’ve seen girls who seemed distant and didn’t always pray, and they were thirsty for this encounter with Torah.”

Rabbanit Naama Frenkel, head of the midrasha in Lod (a branch of Midreshet Lindenbaum), sees the growth firsthand. She founded the midrasha nine years ago together with Rabbi Udi Abramovitz. In the first year, 22 students studied there. For next year, 57 girls have already registered. “Our midrasha is before service, and its growth is strongly connected to the fact that more girls are enlisting in the army,” she says, and adds: “But even girls who go to national service are looking to build their spiritual world.”

She says there is now much greater awareness of the importance of Torah study for women. “Today girls invest a lot in music, gymnastics, dance, and many other things, and there is an understanding that you also need to invest in the most important thing in our lives—our spiritual existence.” She also notes a significant increase in short introductory visits, where high school seniors experience the midrasha for a few days.

Regarding admissions, she explains: “There are admission requirements, but you won’t find dry criteria published on the website. We look for girls who love learning. We know the phenomenon of girls who struggled in high school but suddenly flourish in the midrasha and study all day, we know how to identify that. The conditions are that the girl is ready for a full day of study, able to function within a group, and that her worldview fits the midrasha.”

A student, Ayelet Yudin, a first-year national service volunteer, says it was clear to her she wanted to go to a midrasha before her service. She studied last year at Midreshet “Tachlit” in Akko, and says it was “the most accurate and best decision of my life.” She debated between military and national service but ultimately felt she needed a year of exploration first.

She says she is far from alone. In her opinion, at least 50% of girls in her class went to a midrasha. She links this to the rising rate of religious girls enlisting in the army: “Many girls who enlist go to a midrasha first.”

Like boys’ yeshivas, midrashot are also divided into different styles—different approaches, learning methods, and atmospheres. For Yudin, enthusiasm was most important: “That the girls genuinely love the place, that the staff is good, and that the learning is interesting.”

She believes there is a kind of positive social pressure to go to a midrasha: “Yes. It has become much more popular. There is some social pressure, but mainly an understanding that it is a meaningful year, time to reset your personality, gather tools, and organize your inner world.”

When asked about the challenge of sitting and studying Torah all day, she replies: “True. But there is something very flexible in midrashot, with varied classes. If a lesson doesn’t interest you, you can learn with a partner or do something else. There are no exams, the learning is very different. In a way, it becomes addictive, you don’t notice you’ve been studying all day.”

Emergency responders and MDA medics were called overnight to Rechov HaRav Kahaneman in Bnei Brak following a traffic accident involving two vehicles, one of which was carrying a chosson and kallah.

Hatzalah volunteers provided initial medical treatment at the scene to eight injured individuals of various ages, including the chosson and kallah. All of the injuries were classified as minor.

The injured were later transported by MDA ambulances and a Hatzalah ambulance to Mayanei Hayeshua Medical Center in Bnei Brak for further treatment.

{Matzav.com}

U.S. House appropriators unveiled a fiscal 2027 spending bill that includes the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), with proposed cuts drawing criticism from housing advocates.

The Transportation, Housing and Urban Development and Related Agencies Appropriations (THUD) Act, 2027, approved by the House Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee, provides a total of approximately $71.377 billion in discretionary budget authority for HUD and the Department of Transportation.

“[The new THUD bill] builds on the work we accomplished last cycle to ensure our nation’s transportation and housing infrastructure and programs best serve the needs of the American people,” said U.S. Rep. Steve Womack, who chairs the THUD subcommittee. “Whether it be in the sky or along our waterways, rail lines and highways, this bill supports the safe, efficient and reliable movement of people and goods nationwide.

“It also invests in housing and wrap‑around services for our nation’s most vulnerable – such as women, children, and veterans – while advancing policies that make housing more affordable for all Americans.”

While expressing satisfaction with some aspects of the bill, the National Association of Local Housing Finance Agencies (NALHFA) encouraged lawmakers to fund HUD and programs such as the tenant-based rental assistance account — commonly known as the Housing Choice Voucher Program — at the same level as the current year.

“NALHFA’s efforts with Congress to advocate against the FY27 Presidential Budget request to eliminate the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Program and HOME Investment Partnerships Program were successful, as the programs remain funded in the FY27 House bill,” NALHFA stated.

“NALHFA members are encouraged to contact their elected officials and advocate in support of level funding for HUD at a minimum of $77.3 billion, level funding for tenant-based rental assistance at a minimum of $38.4 billion, an increase in CDBG funding to $4.2 billion, an increase in HOME funding to $1.5 billion and level funding for homeless assistance grants at a minimum of $4.417 billion for FY27.”

Tenant-based rental assistance, public housing

THUD legislation provides $34.083 billion for the Housing Choice Voucher Program, or Section 8.

The bill also includes $4 billion that would become available Oct. 1, 2027.  

A White House request to HUD last year included a proposal to eliminate Section 8 vouchers. However, such a move would require congressional action, which has not garnered necessary support to this point.

The Public Housing Fund is set to receive $7.069 billion for the fiscal year — a $1.25 billion cut compared to the 2026 fiscal year allotment.

An additional $50 million is provided for public housing agencies experiencing or at risk of financial shortfalls, to be distributed through a need-based application process, the bill states.

The bill prohibits Section 8 assistance to students under age 24 who are unmarried, childless, non-veterans and not disabled, with certain exceptions for former foster youth.

Homelessness assistance, CDBG

Homeless assistance grants total $4.161 billion — with $3.779 billion going to HUD’s Continuum of Care program and $290 million for emergency solutions grants.

In late 2025, the Trump administration tried reshaping the Continuum of Care program by limiting “Housing First” funding and prioritizing transitional housing tied to work and treatment requirements.

Lawsuits from states and advocacy groups followed — with Congress and federal courts later blocking the policy changes and preserving the existing grant structure.

The Community Development Fund has been allocated $5.853 billion, including $3.3 billion for the CDBG program.

Project-based assistance, housing for elderly and disabled

The Project-Based Rental Assistance account is slated to receive $18.575 billion and an additional $400 million in October 2027.

That allocation next October will raise the fiscal year total $432 million above what given in 2026.

Housing for the elderly will receive $1.062 billion — including $122 million for service coordinators and congregate service grants.

Housing for persons with disabilities is funded at $295.6 million, a $9 million increase over 2026.

The bill also requires HUD to take action when multifamily housing projects with project-based assistance receive failing physical inspection scores.

Within 15 days of a failing Real Estate Assessment Center inspection, a notice of default with a timetable for correcting deficiencies will be issued, the bill says.

If an owner fails to correct deficiencies, legislation states that HUD may impose civil money penalties, abate contracts, transfer projects to new owners, seek receivership or pursue other remedies.

This article was written by Jonathan Delozier and generated with the assistance of HousingWire Automation. It was reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication. The system helps convert company announcements and industry data into HousingWire-style news coverage.

This post was originally published on here.

The Lakewood Scoop’s famous ‘Click-it & Lick It’ program is back for the 14th year!

This year, the Howell Police Department will once again be giving out our coupons!

It’s simple – wear a helmet and get a coupon for a free ice cream!

TLS recognized the need for increased awareness and safety in regards to helmet-wearing in Lakewood, so we decided to do something about it. But since summonses can’t be issued, we figured a treat would do the trick.

As a result, the first of its kind ‘Click-it and Lick it’ was born – founded and sponsored by TLS.

(The idea has since been copied by other police departments.)

In the coming weeks, patrol officers from the Lakewood and Howell Police Departments will be patrolling with bundles of gift cards like the ones pictured, and if they observe your child with a helmet, he or she will be receiving the card for a free kiddie ice cream at Sprinkles (located in the Gourmet Glatt Plaza on Route 9, and in Todd Plaza). It’s that simple!

(Talking about Sprinkles for a moment, Lakewood’s favorite ice cream shop, did you know they can come to you for your next birthday party, day camp or corporate event? That’s right – with a full bar of shakes, crepes, waffles, smoothies and much more!)

(BE SURE TO CHECK OUT SPRINKLES’ WEBSITE!)

In addition to the positive reinforcement aspect of the program, we felt the program will also increase the comfort level of children when approaching police officers to report a crime, suspicious behavior, or G-d forbid if the child is lost.

IMPORTANT NOTICE TO PARENTS: This program is specifically being done in conjunction with the Lakewood and Howell Police Departments for security and safety reasons. Cards will ONLY be given out by patrol officers in a MARKED police car. No private citizens whatsoever will be distributing these cards. Children should be told never to approach a stranger’s vehicle – even if he or she claims to be from the Law Enforcement community. If you see someone other than a police officer attempting to give a child the ice cream card, please report it to the LPD, HPD & TLS immediately.

Australia’s spy chief told the Royal Commission on Antisemitism Monday that Jew hatred was left unchecked after the Bondi Beach massacre, leading to its normalization in Australian society. He also said Iran was behind at least two of the attacks, and possibly more, leading to the expulsion of Iran’s ambassador to Australia.

“There is no doubt that the war in the Middle East invoked a range of emotions in Australia,” said Mike Burgess, director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization. “Some of those violent aspects … and those behaviors, including antisemitism that, in our view, were left unchecked, were therefore normalized and gave more permission for violence … and Jewish Australians were on the receiving end.”

Starting in late 2024, antisemitism “escalated in severity from threatening, intimidating behavior ‌to direct targeting of people, businesses and places of worship,” he added.

In this video, Mike Burgess warns that the threat from terror attacks has increased since the Bondi Beach massacre due to the normalization of violence. (From a post on X)

Jewish and even non-Jewish leaders from within and without had been warning Australia for years that it must address escalating antisemitism in the country.

In December 2025, Australian Opposition Leader Sussan Ley said: “We have seen a clear failure to keep Jewish Australians safe. We have seen a clear lack of leadership in keeping Jewish Australians safe. We have a government that sees antisemitism as a problem to be managed, not evil that needs to be eradicated.”

J7, the Large Communities’ Task Force Against Antisemitism, visited Australia just days before the attack to urge the government to do more to combat antisemitism. “We came from around the world to show our solidarity with the Australian Jewish community and make clear that we are one Jewish family,” the delegation said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in a letter months before the attack on Bondi Beach that his policies toward Israel (namely, recognition of a Palestinian state, which rewarded Hamas terror) would encourage antisemitic violence.

Burgess informed the commission that Iran was behind at least two attacks, one on a kosher restaurant in Sydney and the other on Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne. He said that Iran was possibly behind other attacks as well.

“They use their network of proxies and agents to do their bidding, and that is to bring harm to Jewish people wherever they are in the world,” he explained.

Israeli Juvenile Court Judge Noam Shilo has issued a public apology after sparking outrage by comparing Palestinian minors who entered Israel illegally to Jews during the Holocaust.

The remarks were made in response to a complaint filed against him with the Judicial Ombudsman, retired judge Asher Kula, following controversial comments Shilo made during a court proceeding involving two Palestinian teenagers.

“I deeply regret what was said. I had absolutely no intention of harming the sacred memory of the Holocaust and the terrible tragedy that befell the Jewish people during World War II,” Judge Shilo wrote in his response.

He added, “I should not have shared my feelings, even in an off-the-record conversation.”

Shilo also noted that many members of both his father’s and mother’s families were murdered during the Holocaust in mass shootings and extermination camps in Poland, Latvia, and Ukraine.

According to Shilo’s explanation, the hearing involved two approximately 14-year-old minors who, he said, appeared “malnourished, thin, weakened, and younger than their age.”

After deciding to release the minors without issuing an order against them, prosecutors requested a delay in implementation of the ruling in order to file an appeal.

Shilo stated that during an off-the-record discussion with prosecutors and defense attorneys, he expressed sympathy for the teenagers, who had allegedly entered Israel to sell inexpensive products to drivers near the Tira-Taybeh junction. He said their appearance reminded him of children during World War II who attempted to bring food home to their families.

The judge emphasized that he ultimately agreed to delay his ruling for 24 hours, during which the minors remained in custody. The following day, the Central-Lod District Court accepted the state’s appeal, convicted the minors, and sentenced them to prison terms equivalent to the time they had already spent in detention while waiving financial penalties.

“I apologize from the depths of my heart to anyone who was hurt or may have been hurt by my statement,” Shilo wrote, adding that he would continue judging minors “with dedication,” as he has throughout nearly 17 years serving as a juvenile court judge.

Judicial Ombudsman Asher Kula accepted the apology and wrote in his ruling: “One who admits and abandons his wrongdoing will be shown mercy. A judge who courageously acknowledges his mistake and retracts it actually strengthens public trust in both himself and the judicial system.”

The controversy first emerged last month in a report by i24NEWS, which revealed that Shilo had presided over the case of two 15-year-old Palestinian minors who infiltrated Israel after climbing over the security fence and were later apprehended by police.

At the time, the judge declined to convict or punish them, citing their age and physical condition. During the hearing, he remarked: “They remind me of Jews who stole potatoes during the Holocaust.”

The comparison triggered widespread public backlash, prompting prosecutors to appeal the ruling. The District Court later overturned the decision, convicted the two minors, and imposed prison sentences.

In an earlier statement, the judicial system’s spokesperson’s office said the judge’s comments “stemmed from the human association that arose in light of the minors’ young and emaciated appearance, which reflected their distress and nothing more.”

{Matzav.com}

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — The Council of the Israel Land Authority has approved a decision to revoke eligibility for charedi draft evaders to receive subsidized housing in the “Price for a Tenant” program (“Dira LeHaskir / Mechir LaMishtaken”). After a legal struggle and attempts by Housing Minister Haim Katz to introduce softened wording, the council passed a version that prohibits charedi individuals who have not enlisted from participating in housing lotteries, which can lead to significant reductions on new housing.

According to the approved wording, eligibility for participation in the lotteries is conditional on the fact that, based on data from the Israel Defense Forces, the individual or either spouse is not defined as a draft evader who has not resolved their military status. Any change to this decision would require a new resolution by the Israel Land Authority Council.

The decision to revoke eligibility aligns with a ruling by the High Court of Justice, which required the imposition of economic sanctions on charedi individuals who do not enlist. Following the council’s decision, a lottery for 4,000 housing units for reservists will be launched tomorrow. Another lottery for 4,000 units for the general public, including charedi applicants, is pending receipt of IDF data regarding draft evaders. The data may arrive later today or tomorrow, after which the second lottery may also proceed, while excluding the charedi draft evaders.

The Deputy Attorney General, Dr. Gil Lemon, is currently examining whether the loss of eligibility for subsidized housing will also apply to charedi draft evaders who already won lotteries but have not yet signed purchase contracts. It is unclear how many couples this may affect.

The loss of eligibility for subsidized housing is described as the most severe sanction imposed on charedi draft evaders, and it will not be lifted unless a law regulating military service is passed. Without such legislation, this sanction is expected to significantly affect the economic structure of charedi households and could serve as a major incentive for enlistment.

In addition, a decision is expected by next week regarding the removal of two additional benefits for charedi draft evaders: eligibility for municipal tax (arnona) discounts and public transportation subsidies. Another sanction, set to take effect at the start of the next school year, is the expansion of the removal of daycare subsidies for any charedi individual who did not serve in the military (including those who are employed).

Japanese researchers are moving forward with plans for a revolutionary hypersonic passenger aircraft capable of flying at speeds more than twice as fast as the retired Concorde jet, potentially shrinking flights from Tokyo to the United States to just two hours.

The project is being developed with the involvement of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, known as JAXA, which recently completed a major test of an experimental aircraft at its Kakuda Space Center in Miyagi Prefecture, according to Interesting Engineering.

During the test, engineers placed the prototype aircraft inside a specialized ramjet engine testing facility designed to recreate the extreme conditions associated with hypersonic flight.

Researchers simulated speeds of Mach 5 — approximately five times the speed of sound.

According to reports, the experiment successfully validated key systems required for hypersonic travel, including the aircraft’s thermal protection technology, flight control systems, and ramjet engine combustion performance under extreme temperatures and pressure.

Such testing is considered essential because aircraft traveling at those speeds can encounter external temperatures approaching 1,000 degrees Celsius.

The next stage of development could involve attaching the experimental aircraft to a sounding rocket or similar launch platform in order to conduct a real-world Mach 5 flight demonstration.

Japan’s efforts are part of an intensifying international race to develop ultra-fast next-generation transportation systems. If successful, the aircraft could dramatically transform long-distance travel by cutting a trip from Tokyo to the United States from roughly half a day to approximately two hours.

Part of the aircraft’s speed advantage would come from operating at altitudes reaching nearly 17 miles above Earth — more than twice the cruising altitude of standard commercial jets.

At Mach 5, the aircraft would travel at roughly 3,300 miles per hour, making it about six times faster than conventional passenger planes.

The famed Concorde, which remained in service until 2003, reached speeds of approximately Mach 2 and had a maximum recorded speed of about 1,400 miles per hour.

Despite the excitement surrounding the project, researchers caution that commercial hypersonic travel remains many years away.

Hideyuki Taguchi, a professor at the Tokyo University of Science, told Mainichi: “Developing a conventional aircraft typically takes about 10 years. Since the development of hypersonic passenger aircraft requires two stages of demonstration — an experimental aircraft followed by a passenger aircraft — we hope development can be completed in about 20 years.”

Tetsuya Sato, a professor at Waseda University, added: “This result is still only a first step. Our dream is to connect it to a flight demonstration.”

Japan is not alone in pursuing ultra-fast commercial aviation technology.

Among the most closely watched projects in recent years are NASA’s X-59 experimental aircraft and Boom Supersonic’s XB-1, both of which have recently completed important test flights aimed at solving longstanding challenges involving speed, noise, and fuel efficiency.

{Matzav.com}

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Officials close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are currently advancing a complex and unprecedented move aimed at disqualifying the United Arab List party from participating in the next Knesset elections. As first reported yesterday by Channel 13 News, the move is already in advanced stages, although no exact election date has yet been set.

According to information from two sources very close to Netanyahu, internal discussions in the Prime Minister’s circle focused on leading a legal and political effort to designate the “Islamic Movement – Southern Branch,” the official parent movement of Ra’am, as a terrorist organization.

The main basis for the new development, according to those same sources, is the Islamic Movement’s activity in transferring money and donations to the Gaza Strip during the war, something viewed in the Prime Minister’s circle as solid security and legal grounds for disqualification.

To carry out the plan, the move would require a combination of two parallel tracks: promoting particular legislation in the Knesset, alongside obtaining official security opinions from the relevant security agencies, chiefly the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet). It should be noted that the Prime Minister’s Office has not yet issued an official response to the report.

Ra’am chairman MK Mansour Abbas sharply responded to the reports about efforts to disqualify his party. Abbas directly accused Netanyahu and also sent a warning message to the security establishment.

“Netanyahu seeks to decide the upcoming elections by disqualifying Ra’am in an anti-democratic manner,” Abbas attacked. “It is the duty of the Shin Bet to act in a statesmanlike and lawful manner and preserve the democratic order and its institutions, not to become a tool in the hands of the political echelon during election season. Our response to this anti-democratic move will be at the ballot box.”

By JBizNews Desk

NEW YORK, May 25, 2026 — If you want to understand where Meta Platforms is spending its money, look at Alexandr Wang.

The 28-year-old founder of Scale AI is the executive Mark Zuckerberg has placed at the center of the biggest transformation in Meta’s history — and one of the most expensive bets in Silicon Valley. Wang is Meta’s first-ever Chief AI Officer, the head of a newly created division called Meta Superintelligence Labs, and the youngest Chief AI Officer at any Fortune 50 company. Nearly everything Meta is now doing in artificial intelligence runs through him.

The deal that brought him into the company stunned Wall Street.

In June 2025, Zuckerberg agreed to pay roughly $14.3 billion for a 49% stake in Scale AI, the data-labeling company Wang started from a Y Combinator house in 2016. The price bought Meta nearly half the company — but more importantly, it brought Wang directly into Meta’s executive ranks.

He entered as Chief AI Officer, immediately took control of a brand-new AI division built around him, and was given authority over Meta’s top AI leadership teams.

The assignment is massive.

Meta expects to spend between $115 billion and $135 billion in 2026 alone, much of it tied to AI infrastructure, chips and data centers. Zuckerberg has repeatedly told investors the company’s mission is to build what he calls “personal superintelligence for everyone.”

Wang is the executive responsible for turning that slogan into a real business.

His rise reads like a Silicon Valley movie script.

Born in New Mexico to Chinese immigrant physicists, Wang left MIT at 19 to build Scale AI alongside co-founder Lucy Guo. The pair reportedly slept on air mattresses while trying to grow the business. Within less than a decade, Scale AI became one of the most important hidden companies in the technology industry, supplying the labeled data used to train AI systems across Silicon Valley.

OpenAI, Microsoft, Google and Meta all became customers.

When Zuckerberg concluded Meta was falling behind in the AI race, he did not simply invest in Scale AI — he hired the founder running it.

Since arriving at Meta, Wang has moved aggressively.

He dismantled Meta’s older AGI Foundations structure, reorganized the company’s AI operations into four new groups under Meta Superintelligence Labs, and made one of the boldest strategic shifts in the company’s modern history: pulling back from Meta’s open-source AI identity.

For years, Meta’s Llama models had become the company’s flagship AI product and a centerpiece of Zuckerberg’s open-source strategy. Under Wang, Meta pivoted sharply. On April 8, 2026, the company released Muse Spark, its first major proprietary foundation model under the new structure.

The decision signaled a dramatic shift away from Meta’s prior philosophy and immediately sparked debate across Silicon Valley.

Not everyone inside Meta agreed with Wang’s direction.

Yann LeCun, the Turing Award-winning AI pioneer who led Meta’s FAIR research division for years, departed the company in late 2025 after publicly criticizing Wang as “young and inexperienced.” Months later, LeCun raised more than $1 billion for his own AI startup, setting up what many inside the industry now view as a philosophical rivalry over the future of artificial intelligence.

Reports have also suggested tension between Wang and Zuckerberg himself.

The Financial Times reported in late 2025 that Wang privately complained about the level of oversight Zuckerberg maintained over AI operations. Then in March 2026, new reports claimed Zuckerberg had quietly reduced Wang’s authority by creating a parallel AI engineering organization under Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth and executive Maher Saba.

Meta publicly rejected the idea.

Company spokesperson Andy Stone responded on X that Wang “still runs MSL” and continues to hold “growing, not waning influence” inside the company.

For investors, however, the internal politics matter less than the broader direction of Meta itself.

On May 20, Meta announced roughly 8,000 layoffs even as the company continued accelerating its AI spending plans. The contrast captured Zuckerberg’s current strategy clearly: reduce labor costs where possible while pouring tens of billions of dollars into artificial intelligence infrastructure.

To Meta’s leadership, AI is no longer a side business. It is the future of the company.

The financial stakes are enormous.

Meta’s advertising machine — powered by Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger — generated roughly $46.6 billion in quarterly ad revenue last year while serving more than 3.5 billion daily users across its platforms.

If Wang successfully uses AI to improve ad targeting, recommendation systems, creator tools and user engagement, the return on Meta’s investment could be enormous. If he fails, the company will have spent more building its AI strategy than the total value of many public corporations.

For now, Zuckerberg appears fully committed.

The Meta CEO reportedly spends between five and 10 hours a week personally coding AI-related projects and is said to be building his own internal AI assistant to help manage the company more efficiently.

The message to Meta employees and investors has become increasingly clear: artificial intelligence is no longer just another Meta initiative.

It is the company’s entire future.

And the person Zuckerberg has chosen to lead that future is Alexandr Wang.

JBizNews Desk

© 2026 JBizNews. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution without written permission is prohibited.

Americans across the political spectrum are expressing growing frustration over rising living costs as families gather for Memorial Day weekend, with new polling showing widespread concern about inflation, grocery bills, gas prices, and overall financial stability.

A CNN survey found that majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and independents said they have changed the way they shop for groceries in recent months in an effort to stay within their budgets.

The same poll found that 59 percent of Americans have also reduced spending on entertainment and nonessential purchases as household expenses continue climbing.

More than three-quarters of respondents said policies implemented by President Trump have contributed to higher living costs in their communities. Even among Republicans, 55 percent said Trump’s policies have played a role in increasing expenses.

Poll after poll has pointed to deepening economic unease among voters nationwide. In the latest New York Times/Siena survey, nearly half of all voters rated the economy as “poor,” representing an 11-point increase since January.

Meanwhile, Gallup reported that Americans’ confidence in the economy has fallen to its lowest level in four years.

Fuel prices have become another major source of frustration, with average gas prices nationwide climbing above $4.50 per gallon, according to AAA.

Polling conducted by Fox News found that nearly 80 percent of voters — including a majority of Republicans — believe the Trump administration bears responsibility for the spike in fuel costs. Large numbers of respondents also blamed oil companies, the war in Iran, and government regulations for the increase.

Overall, the Fox survey found that 57 percent of voters now believe Trump’s policies have harmed the country, an increase from the 51 percent who expressed the same view one year earlier.

{Matzav.com}

All Township and other county and federal government offices will be closed today in observance of Memorial Day.

There will be no trash pickup on Monday: Monday’s garbage and recycling will be picked up on Tuesday. Tuesday’s garbage and recycling will be picked up on Wednesday. There will be no bulk collection this week.

Banks are closed and there is no USPS delivery.

As earlier reported on TLS Communities, local parades have been canceled due to the inclement weather.

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — A school vice principal who tried to break up a fight between two students was beaten and suffered a nervous breakdown. Despite this, Israel’s National Insurance Institute of Israel initially refused to recognize her as a workplace injury victim until the labor court ruled otherwise.

The incident took place about two years ago at an elementary school in southern Israel. A fight broke out between two students, and the student being attacked fled and hid in the vice principal’s office. She tried to prevent the attacking student from entering the room, and during the confrontation he assaulted her as well, kicking and punching her while cursing at her. Additional staff members who were present tried to help and calm the student, but without success.

“The student struggled with the vice principal and screamed that he wanted to kill the student hiding in her office,” one of the school’s educators recounted. “He continuously kicked the office door, and kicked and shoved her. We tried to help the vice principal, and together we managed to get the student into an adjacent room.”

While holding the office door shut and trying to block the student, she managed to call his mother and urgently ask her to come to the school. Only after the mother arrived was she able to calm her son down.

The vice principal, who had more than 20 years of experience in education, began suffering from chest pains, trembling, and crying. She was taken to the emergency room, where doctors performed a catheterization procedure. Following the incident, she also began receiving psychiatric treatment.

A short time later, she asked the National Insurance Institute to recognize the case as a workplace accident, but her request was denied. “It was not proven that an unusual traumatic event occurred during and because of work, which caused the psychological injury that developed,” the decision stated.

She was forced to file a lawsuit in labor court through attorney Elishar Feingersh of the law firm Markman Tomshin & Co.. Following the lawsuit, her condition was recognized as a workplace accident.

“Violent incidents can lead to psychological harm and even trigger illnesses such as strokes, heart attacks, and even diabetes,” attorney Feingersh explained.

The vice principal said that she had recently encountered many violent incidents, but that this case was the breaking point. “After decades in the education system, during which I viewed my work as a life mission, I never imagined that my attempt to protect a helpless student would lead to the end of my professional career,” she told Ynet and Yedioth Ahronoth.

“When I stepped between the two students to prevent a disaster, I found myself under a violent and brutal attack by a young student who directed unimaginable rage at me. The physical injuries passed, but the emotional trauma left deep scars that prevent me from returning to the classroom. My sense of security completely collapsed, and the realization that I had no protection in the place that was supposed to be the safest forced me, with enormous heartbreak, to leave the profession and the students I loved so much.”

The NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau has launched an investigation after a viral social media photo appeared to show two uniformed Bronx police officers making hand gestures associated with the Mac Baller Brims, a violent Bronx-based faction of the Bloods gang tied to murders, shootings, and armed robberies.

The image, which surfaced on Instagram on May 4 before spreading widely on X, shows two masked officers posing with a young man inside what appears to be a McDonald’s restaurant. In the photograph, one officer is seen crossing his middle finger over his ring finger, while the second displays three fingers with his index finger bent backward.

According to the New York Post, both gestures are recognized as signs connected to the Mac Baller Brims.

“This incident is under internal review,” an NYPD spokesperson told the Post, confirming that the matter is being investigated by the Internal Affairs Bureau.

Sources cited by the newspaper identified one of the officers as Shane Cruz, who joined the department in 2024 and was reassigned earlier this year from the 43rd Precinct in Soundview to the 73rd Precinct in Brownsville.

The second officer is also assigned to the 43rd Precinct, though he has not yet been publicly identified because his badge number cannot be seen in the image.

A law enforcement source told the Post that Cruz’s reassignment had nothing to do with the circulating photo and claimed the officers had merely been “messing around” with a young man they knew personally.

Eric Sanders, an attorney and former NYPD officer, told the newspaper that the gestures shown in the photograph were legitimate Mac Baller Brims hand signs and argued that both officers should immediately be placed on modified duty pending the outcome of the investigation.

Retired NYPD Assistant Commissioner Kevin O’Connor said the officers appeared to be attempting Bloods-related signs, though he suggested they may have done so incorrectly. He also questioned whether the blue clothing worn by the civilian in the photo — a color commonly associated with the rival Crips gang — indicated the exchange may have been intended as a joke.

Michael Alcazar, a former NYPD detective who now teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told the Post that investigators would likely review the officers’ backgrounds and determine whether the conduct violated department standards.

He added that if either officer failed to disclose prior gang affiliations during the hiring process, it could potentially result in termination from the department.

The Mac Baller Brims have long been a focus of both federal and state prosecutors in New York.

In 2019, federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged 13 alleged members and associates of the gang with racketeering, drug trafficking, and firearms crimes linked to violence in the Mount Hope section of the Bronx between 2017 and 2019. A superseding indictment filed the following year added murder charges.

In another major case, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office indicted three alleged gang members in May 2023 in connection with a series of armed robberies targeting smoke shops in Chelsea, Union Square, and the West Village.

The controversy comes as the NYPD continues grappling with recruiting and staffing challenges.

In February 2025, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch reduced the department’s college credit requirement for recruits from 60 credits to 24, citing a growing hiring crisis and the fact that 29 percent of applicants — roughly 2,275 people — had been disqualified under the previous standards during 2023.

Tisch, who remained police commissioner after Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s election victory, has repeatedly emphasized internal discipline and accountability since taking over the department in November 2024 under Mayor Eric Adams.

Iran executed a man accused of spying during the ongoing war with Israel and the United States, marking the first time the Islamic Republic has imposed a death sentence for wartime espionage tied directly to the current conflict, AFP reported.

Iranian state judiciary outlet Mizan Online identified the executed man as Mojtaba Kian. According to the report, Kian, “who sent information related to the country’s defense industry units to the enemy, was hanged early this morning.”

The regime claimed that Kian secretly transferred classified information concerning Iran’s military production infrastructure during the approximately 40-day war.

Since the outbreak of fighting, Iranian authorities have sharply escalated arrests and executions involving alleged cooperation with what Tehran calls the “Zionist-American enemy.” However, until now, those executed had allegedly committed their offenses before the war began.

Sunday’s execution marked the first known case involving accusations connected specifically to intelligence activity carried out during the conflict itself.

According to court documents cited by Iranian media, Kian “sent multiple messages to hostile networks affiliated with “the Zionist-American enemy”, including coordinates and information on facilities producing parts related to the country’s defense industries.”

Iranian authorities further alleged that the information was transmitted through foreign satellite television channels. While the judiciary did not identify the specific broadcasters involved, Tehran has repeatedly accused Persian-language media outlets operating abroad of serving as intelligence arms for Israel.

Iran has long accused Israel of conducting sabotage operations inside the country and has routinely arrested, prosecuted, and executed individuals accused of cooperating with Israeli intelligence services.

Human rights organizations say Iran remains one of the world’s leading executioners, second only to China, and accuse the regime of using executions to intimidate the population and suppress dissent.

Amnesty International reported last week that more than 2,150 people were executed in Iran during the past year.

According to the organization’s findings, at least 2,707 executions were carried out worldwide in 2025, with Tehran alone responsible for 2,159 of them — more than double the number attributed to the Iranian regime in 2024.

{Matzav.com}

By JBizNews Desk

NEW YORK, May 24, 2026 — A new cancer therapy being developed by Merck & Co. and China’s Sichuan Kelun-Biotech has produced one of the strongest oncology trial results of the year, cutting the risk of tumor progression or death by as much as 65% in a late-stage lung cancer study ahead of the annual American Society of Clinical Oncology conference.

The drug, known as sac-TMT, belongs to one of the fastest-growing and most closely watched categories in cancer medicine: antibody-drug conjugates, or ADCs. These therapies are designed to function like precision-guided weapons against tumors — using antibodies to identify cancer cells before delivering targeted chemotherapy payloads directly into them while limiting damage to surrounding healthy tissue.

The latest results come from a Phase 3 trial known as OptiTROP-Lung05, where researchers tested sac-TMT in combination with Keytruda, Merck’s blockbuster immunotherapy drug, against Keytruda alone in patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer.

According to data scheduled for presentation at the ASCO annual meeting in Chicago beginning May 29, the combination achieved what researchers described as a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in progression-free survival, meaning patients lived substantially longer without their cancer worsening.

The results add to a growing string of major wins for sac-TMT across multiple tumor types.

In a separate late-stage breast cancer study last year, the drug reduced the risk of progression or death by roughly 65% compared with conventional chemotherapy. Another lung cancer study showed the therapy lowered the risk of death by approximately 40% in heavily pretreated patients whose disease had stopped responding to prior therapies.

The consistency across different cancers and treatment settings is one of the reasons sac-TMT is increasingly viewed as one of the most important pipeline assets inside Merck’s future oncology strategy.

The drug targets a protein called TROP2, which appears on the surface of many common solid tumors, including lung, breast, ovarian, and several gastrointestinal cancers. Because the target exists across multiple cancer types, successful TROP2 therapies potentially represent multibillion-dollar franchises capable of treating millions of patients globally.

For Merck, the timing is critical.

The company’s dominant cancer medicine, Keytruda, generates more than $25 billion annually but faces major patent expirations beginning later this decade. Investors and analysts have spent years asking how Merck intends to replace that revenue stream once generic competition emerges.

Sac-TMT is rapidly becoming one of the clearest answers.

Merck is currently running at least five global Phase 3 lung cancer trials involving the drug, alongside additional studies in breast, ovarian, and other solid tumors. The company originally secured worldwide rights outside greater China through a massive licensing agreement signed with Kelun-Biotech in 2022 worth roughly $1.4 billion upfront and potentially up to $9 billion in milestone payments.

At the time, some investors questioned whether the deal was overly aggressive.

The latest ASCO data is making the transaction look increasingly strategic.

The lung cancer findings may also represent a broader scientific milestone beyond Merck itself.

According to researchers involved in the study, OptiTROP-Lung05 is believed to be the first successful Phase 3 trial showing that combining an antibody-drug conjugate with an immune checkpoint inhibitor improves first-line lung cancer outcomes versus immunotherapy alone.

That matters because pharmaceutical companies worldwide have been racing to determine whether ADCs can work synergistically with immune therapies like Keytruda, Opdivo, and Tecentriq.

If successful, the combination approach could fundamentally reshape standard treatment regimens across several major cancers.

There are important limitations investors and physicians are watching closely.

The OptiTROP-Lung05 study was conducted entirely in China and compared sac-TMT plus Keytruda against Keytruda alone. In the United States, frontline lung cancer treatment more commonly includes Keytruda combined with chemotherapy rather than as a standalone therapy.

As a result, the trial itself is unlikely to directly support U.S. regulatory approval.

Instead, analysts are focused on ongoing multinational studies testing sac-TMT against the broader global standard of care. Those results, expected over the next 18 to 24 months, will likely determine whether the therapy becomes a worldwide commercial breakthrough.

Even so, regulatory momentum is already building.

Kelun-Biotech has filed for approval in China, where regulators have accepted the application for review, while the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has already granted sac-TMT breakthrough therapy designation for certain lung cancer settings, potentially accelerating future review timelines.

The implications extend beyond one company or one drug.

Antibody-drug conjugates were once viewed as a niche technology area plagued by toxicity problems and repeated late-stage clinical failures. That perception changed dramatically after the success of AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo’s Enhertu, which transformed treatment expectations in breast cancer.

Now nearly every major pharmaceutical company is racing to establish leadership in ADCs.

Pfizer, Roche, AstraZeneca, Gilead Sciences, and Merck have collectively committed tens of billions of dollars toward acquisitions, licensing deals, and research partnerships tied to the category.

For patients, the stakes are far more personal than market share.

Lung cancer remains the deadliest form of cancer globally, causing approximately 1.8 million deaths annually worldwide. Survival rates remain stubbornly low despite years of advances in immunotherapy and targeted medicine.

A treatment capable of significantly delaying tumor progression — particularly in earlier lines of therapy — represents the kind of advance oncologists believe could gradually shift long-term survival curves over time.

For Merck investors, the central question is becoming increasingly straightforward.

The company no longer simply needs to defend Keytruda.

It needs to prove it can build the next generation of oncology leadership before Keytruda’s patent clock expires.

And based on the latest data emerging ahead of ASCO, sac-TMT is beginning to look like one of the company’s strongest candidates to do exactly that.

JBizNews Desk

© 2026 JBizNews. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution without written permission is prohibited.

The IDF Spokesperson announced on Monday morning that Sergeant Nehorai Leizer, 19, from Eilat, a combat engineering soldier in Battalion 601 of the “Iron Tracks” Brigade (401), was killed in battle in southern Lebanon.

According to the investigation, yesterday at around 3:30 p.m., Hezbollah launched an explosive drone toward an IDF force operating near the Christian village of Dibel in southern Lebanon, about 5 kilometers from the border. The drone exploded on the upper section of a Namer armored engineering vehicle (an engineering version of the Merkava APC). As a result of the shrapnel, Sgt. Nehorai Leizer was killed.

Sgt. Nehorai Leizer is the 11th casualty since the “ceasefire” in Lebanon began. Seven of those killed died as a result of explosive drones — five in Hezbollah attacks inside Lebanese territory and two inside Israel. In the same incident in which Sgt. Nehorai Leizer was killed, another IDF soldier was seriously wounded. The soldier was evacuated to a hospital for medical treatment, and his family has been notified.

Nehorai will be laid to rest today at 5:00 p.m. in the military section of the cemetery in Eilat.

Rotem David-Leizer, Nehorai’s mother, wrote on Facebook: “They ripped my heart out. Why? Why? God, why?” His sister May wrote: “My little brother. My whole world. My heart stopped beating together with yours.”

The Eilat Municipality stated: “Nehorai, of blessed memory, one of the finest sons of the city, came from a long-time Eilat family. He was the son of Rotem (a kindergarten teacher) and Lucien ‘Luchi’ (an employee of the Eilat Municipality), and the younger brother of May and Roi. He graduated from the Eilat school system, attending the ‘Harei Eilat’ elementary school and the ‘Goldwater’ high school.”

The statement continued: “As a teenager he was active in the ‘Dealer’ and youth leadership movements. He completed a year of national service and afterward enlisted in the Combat Engineering Corps, serving as a driver of an engineering Namer APC.”

The principal of Goldwater High School said that Nehorai was “a high-quality young man, a leader, yet also humble and modest. He was loved by his friends. He studied theater and also completed advanced physical education studies. He was socially active throughout his school years as a youth guide and later as a youth movement activist.”

The municipality concluded: “Nehorai, of blessed memory, was a hero of Israel, the salt of the earth, who fought bravely to defend the State of Israel. May his memory be blessed.”

An explosive drone struck a residential home in Metula on Monday afternoon, the first time since the beginning of the fighting in southern Lebanon that an explosive drone has directly hit a residential building inside Israel.

The building suffered damage, but Baruch Hashem, no one was physically injured in the attack.

Medical teams at the scene treated one person suffering from shock.

The drone was one of three Hezbollah explosive drones that exploded inside Israel since this morning. On Sunday morning alone, 30! explosive drones detonated near IDF troops operating near the Lebanese border, killing one soldier and seriously injuring another soldier.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

The drone that struck the home was part of a broader attack involving several explosive drones launched by Hezbollah toward Israel.

“Following alerts activated regarding hostile aircraft infiltration in several areas in northern Israel, the Hezbollah terrorist organization launched several explosive drones toward IDF forces and Israeli territory,” the IDF said.

“An explosive drone impact was identified in Metula. The incident is being investigated by security authorities.”

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

WATCH:

Target delivered a first-quarter result Wednesday that few on Wall Street expected, posting earnings per share of $1.71 against the $1.46 consensus estimate, revenue of $25.44 billion against expectations of $24.66 billion, and the company’s first positive comparable-sales quarter in more than a year.

Comparable sales rose 5.6%, store traffic increased 4.4%, and chief executive Michael Fiddelke raised the company’s full-year outlook for both revenue and earnings, signaling growing confidence that Target’s turnaround strategy is beginning to gain traction.

The surprise was not only the earnings beat but the breadth of the improvement. Target said sales increased across all six major merchandise categories, led by beauty, hardlines and food. Both digital and in-store traffic improved, and the gains were spread across geographic regions and demographic groups.

“First quarter financial results were stronger than expected, providing encouraging early signs that our clarified strategy is resonating with our guests and driving broad-based growth across our business,” Fiddelke said in the earnings release.

Speaking with analysts after the report, Fiddelke said the company is seeing consumers respond positively in categories where Target emphasizes “style, design, and value,” particularly across its private-label brands.

The company raised its full-year sales growth forecast to approximately 4%, double the roughly 2% growth guidance it issued earlier this year. Operating margin is now expected to exceed the 4.6% adjusted margin Target posted in 2025, while earnings per share are projected to land near the high end of the previously guided $7.50 to $8.50 range — above the $8.14 Wall Street consensus.

The results stand in sharp contrast to the broader narrative that the American consumer is slowing sharply. Lowe’s described the housing market this week as the weakest since the financial crisis, while home-improvement spending remains under pressure from elevated mortgage rates. Walmart has continued leaning aggressively on price competition. Home Depot has relied heavily on professional contractor demand.

Target, which had been viewed as the laggard among major big-box retailers for nearly two years, suddenly delivered numbers that looked far closer to Costco than to its own recent history.

Gross margin expanded to 29.0% from 28.2% a year earlier, helped by supply-chain efficiencies, higher advertising revenue from the company’s Roundel media business and lower markdown activity. Selling, general and administrative expenses also increased, which initially pressured the stock in premarket trading despite the earnings beat, though shares later stabilized.

Fiddelke’s strategy has focused heavily on repositioning Target around what management calls “busy families,” emphasizing private-label brands such as Cat & Jack, A New Day and Threshold while reducing less productive inventory categories.

The company has also continued prioritizing digital fulfillment, particularly same-day Drive Up services, which management sees as a major long-term growth driver.

The broader economic takeaway from the quarter is more nuanced than a simple retail rebound. Target’s customer base skews somewhat more affluent and suburban than the national average, and much of the strength came from discretionary categories such as beauty, apparel and home décor.

That reinforces the “split-economy” thesis that has increasingly defined corporate earnings over the last 18 months: higher-income consumers continue spending relatively freely, while lower-income households remain under pressure from inflation, housing costs and elevated borrowing rates.

For investors who had largely written off Target after five consecutive quarters of negative comparable sales, the earnings report marks the first meaningful evidence that Fiddelke’s turnaround strategy may be working.

The next challenge will come during the summer months, particularly if oil prices remain above $100 per barrel and rising gasoline costs begin to eat into discretionary household budgets.

Still, management’s decision to project sales growth in every quarter of 2026 suggests Target believes the momentum is durable rather than temporary.

JBizNews Desk

© 2026 JBizNews. All rights reserved.

LISTEN:

https://matzav.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Bitachon4Life-Shiur-1778-Semichah-Part-78-Mitzvah.mp3

​​For more info, email [email protected].

President Isaac Herzog has frozen further review of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s pardon request, Kan News reported on Sunday evening.

According to the report, Herzog’s decision came after Netanyahu failed to respond to his invitation to hold talks with the prosecution.

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara agreed to hold talks but was not expected to approve a pardon without an admission of guilt, something that Netanyahu has repeatedly said he will not agree to.

The cases against Netanyahu have fallen apart one by one in the courtroom, with multiple claims disproven or withdrawn. In addition, multiple incidents of police investigators acting illegally in the cases have been revealed in the courtroom.

Netanyahu’s testimony in his ongoing trial is expected to conclude in the near future, and once it does, the pardon request could become irrelevant.

In February, U.S. President Donald Trump criticized Herzog over the matter, saying: “He should be ashamed that he is not granting Netanyahu a pardon.”

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

As negotiations between Washington and Tehran remain deadlocked, US President Donald Trump convened a high-level meeting Friday with senior US national security officials, including the CIA director, secretary of defense, and vice president, to discuss scenarios for a possible return to military confrontation with the Islamic Republic.

At the same time, Qatar and Pakistan launched last-minute, ultimately fruitless mediation efforts to prevent further escalation.

Sources close to the White House say Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with the stalled diplomacy and is now weighing the option of a “decisive final military operation” as a way to end the crisis.

Although no final decision has yet been made, the confrontation appears to be approaching a potentially dangerous turning point, raising a deeper strategic question: Does the CIA, in coordination with Mossad, now see regime change not as a distant aspiration but as an increasingly realistic objective?

If one moves beyond merely examining the “behavior of the regime” and confronts the larger question, who exactly is the United States truly dealing with in Iran’s regime?, one arrives at a dilemma that America’s intelligence community, particularly the CIA, has wrestled with for decades.

The United States still speaks to the Islamic Republic’s “diplomatic façade,” while real authority remains concentrated within the ideological-security structure of the IRGC and, outwardly, the office of Khamenei.

When the upheaval of 1979 succeeded in Iran, the CIA did not truly understand who Khomeini was, nor did it fully grasp that the ideological engine driving him, the dictatorship of the Shiite cleric and the doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih, would ultimately give birth to a religious dictatorship and a Shiite Islamic caliphate in Tehran.

The CIA also failed to accurately foresee that America’s most loyal and strategically important ally in the Middle East, the late Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, would ultimately lose power. Even after the 1983 bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut, the CIA still appeared unable to fully comprehend the mushroom-like rise of Islamist terrorism across the region. That reality cannot simply be concealed or erased from history.

During the years 1975–1978, whenever SAVAK, one of the CIA and Mossad’s closest intelligence partners during the Cold War, warned the CIA that the KGB stood behind both Marxist terrorist movements and Islamist militant networks, those warnings were frequently dismissed or underestimated.

Khomeini’s inner circle also cultivated the illusion that the CIA had orchestrated a coup in Iran in 1953 and removed a so-called “popular prime minister.” Yet few ever asked a more fundamental question: when exactly had that prime minister been elected by the Iranian people, under what election, and through what constitutional authority?

Under Iran’s constitutional monarchy, the Shah possessed the legal authority to appoint and dismiss prime ministers. That populist prime minister had ruled under martial law, attacked and burned opposition newspapers, and effectively paralyzed the national parliament. Had he succeeded, Iran itself could very likely have fallen into the orbit of the Soviet Union in 1953.

What remains remarkable is that even figures close to Khomeini later acknowledged maintaining contacts with the United States and the CIA between 1953 and 1979. In that sense, the narrative of the so-called “CIA coup” in Iran gradually evolved into a repetitive, mythologized, and politically convenient tale. The late Shah himself later wrote in his memoirs that the CIA neither protected him nor stood by its longtime ally, and that in 1979 it ultimately “stabbed him in the back.”

Creating a ‘new Middle East’

Now, after 47 years, the CIA, in coordination with Mossad, may have assumed responsibility for a campaign against the Islamic Republic in pursuit of what many describe as a “new Middle East.”

On the first day of the attack, Tehran’s dictator, Ali Khamenei, was removed from the scene. Since 2001, following the September 11 attacks and the formal launch of the war on terror, the CIA has gradually removed a series of obstructive figures from its path: from Imad Mughniyeh (2008) and Osama bin Laden (2011) to Qassem Soleimani (2020) and Ali Khamenei (2026).

In each of these historic eliminations, cooperation with Mossad reportedly continued in various forms.

But why did the Tehran regime not collapse after the humiliating death of Ali Khamenei? Because regime change was never Washington’s primary objective. Nor has genuine political will for regime change ever truly existed within Washington’s strategic establishment. Even though, over the past 47 years, with the rise of the radical Khomeinist Shiite caliphate in Tehran, America effectively surrendered the Iranian arena to Soviet influence, while the regime itself increasingly fell under the dominance of Russophile networks and figures.

Under these circumstances, the CIA now confronts several major dilemmas. Iran’s formal government is no longer the true center of power. In practice, the presidency, the foreign ministry, and even parliament have gradually evolved into ceremonial, hollow, and largely ineffective institutions.

Strategic decisions, regarding nuclear activity, chemical and biological capabilities, regional terrorism, military structures, and security networks, are ultimately made by the regime’s core power structure.

In reality, the Trump-Netanyahu strikes accelerated the emergence of a military junta in Iran, making any future negotiations significantly more difficult because power no longer hides solely behind the façade of the Shiite clerical establishment.

To put it differently: America negotiates with the state Iran presents, not the system that actually rules it. It has not been long since Trump correctly designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization.

Many of Khomeini’s followers, who had received military and terrorist training in Yasser Arafat’s camps in Palestine, later became founders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an institution that, notably, does not even contain the word “Iran” in its name.

Over the course of this 40-day war, America’s security establishment gradually came to realize that Iran increasingly resembled a military garrison disguised as a nation-state.

IRGC has ‘become the system’

The IRGC is no longer merely a military force; it has evolved into an ideological army, an economic empire, a vast network of intelligence organizations, an internal security apparatus, and the mafia-like engine driving regional terrorism. Even during the ceasefire period, the IRGC effectively emerged as the de facto actor shaping the succession to Khamenei.

One particularly striking detail was that individuals affiliated with the IRGC, some of whom reportedly appeared on CIA watchlists, continued to participate openly within Iran’s diplomatic delegations in Pakistan, while the CIA observed the situation without any meaningful response.

And this is the crucial point: the IRGC no longer protects the system. It has become the system.

Throughout 1,400 years of Islamic caliphates, succession crises have repeatedly shaped the destiny of regimes and ruling structures. Following Khamenei’s death, Iran entered that same historical pattern. Yet after 37 years of dictatorship, the removal of Khamenei did not lead to the collapse of the structure itself.

Although the power structure became increasingly fragmented, the IRGC steadily absorbed authority into its own hands. They raised cardboard images of Mojtaba Khamenei and claimed he remained alive, hoping to preserve the regime’s security cohesion, maintain internal control, and ensure institutional survival.

The IRGC did not merely manufacture a symbolic leader. It reconstructed command centers, intelligence networks, financial structures, and security command systems while simultaneously shaping the broader architecture of Iran’s future order.

The CIA likely understands this transformation. Washington’s politicians do not.

Certainly, elements within the American intelligence community understand that “civilian diplomacy” in Iran is deeply constrained and that the real nucleus of power prioritizes regime survival above all else. The elimination of individual commanders or officials means little to the system itself. Amid economic collapse and the broader destruction of Iran, survival remains the regime’s overriding objective.

Yet Washington still feels compelled to pretend that Iran’s foreign ministry remains the regime’s principal actor — even though its leadership itself emerges from the broader IRGC structure. This contradiction becomes increasingly visible when Iran’s foreign minister resembles little more than a puppet figure with virtually no authority over the regime’s actual strategic direction.

What exists in Washington today is an ongoing conflict between intelligence realism and diplomatic theater, a taboo contradiction that major media institutions continue to reinforce and reproduce.

One must also openly acknowledge another deeply uncomfortable reality: the United States fears the collapse of the Islamic Republic as much as it fears its survival. Washington simultaneously fears a nuclear-armed Iran and an uncontrolled Iranian collapse that could destabilize the Persian Gulf and the broader region. This dual fear has produced a state of strategic paralysis.

Many in Washington fear the collapse of the Islamic Republic more than the consequences of its continued survival. Meanwhile, the demands and aspirations of the Iranian people themselves were neither prioritized nor meaningfully represented in negotiations between Washington and Tehran.

The central problem is no longer Iran’s diplomacy. The deeper problem is that America may still be negotiating with institutions that no longer truly govern Iran. Washington does not negotiate with Ahmad Vahidi or with the real nucleus of power directing events inside the country. Instead, it continues wasting time speaking to political puppets.

Washington still speaks to the façade of the Iranian state while the security apparatus quietly absorbs the state itself. For these reasons, the CIA’s dilemma in dealing with Iran’s hardline power structure has not been successful, and likely will not be.

The central challenge facing Washington is no longer Iran’s nuclear program alone. It is whether the United States is ultimately prepared to acknowledge that the institutions it negotiates with may no longer be the institutions that truly govern Iran.

LISTEN:

https://matzav.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Tefila4Life-Shiur-1087-Now-Vayevarech-Dovid.mp3

The U.S. housing market is showing its clearest signs of stabilization in nearly four years, according to two major industry reports released Thursday, May 21, 2026. Redfin said home purchase cancellations declined slightly in April, while Realtor.com reported contract signings climbed to their strongest level in three years — a sign that both buyers and sellers are slowly returning to the market after a prolonged housing slowdown.

Redfin said just over 47,000 home purchase agreements fell through in April, equal to 13.4% of homes that went under contract during the month. That was slightly lower than March and tied with January for the lowest cancellation rate since September 2024.

At the same time, Realtor.com’s Spring 2026 Housing Market Progress Report found contract signings rose 4.5% year-over-year in April, marking the strongest annual increase since 2022.

Taken together, the reports suggest the housing market may finally be finding balance after several difficult years shaped by high mortgage rates, affordability pressures, and economic uncertainty.

“We’re seeing some buyers cancel purchase agreements, but no more than usual, and when buyers do back out, it’s typically because of post-inspection repair costs and appraisals,” said Timothy Hourigan, a Redfin Premier agent in Syracuse, New York.

For buyers, the market is beginning to feel more manageable.

Sellers who spent much of 2023 and 2024 pricing homes aggressively are increasingly adjusting expectations. More homes are being listed closer to realistic market value from the beginning, reducing the number of deals collapsing after inspections or financing negotiations.

Mortgage-rate stability has also helped.

While rates remain elevated compared with pandemic-era lows, buyers are adapting to the new environment. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate fell for several weeks in April before rebounding modestly in May as inflation and geopolitical tensions pushed bond yields higher again.

Industry analysts say stable rates matter almost as much as lower rates because buyers gain confidence when financing costs stop swinging wildly week to week.

The recovery is not happening evenly across the country.

The strongest momentum is currently concentrated in the Midwest.

According to Realtor.com, Kansas City posted a 12.5% increase in new listings alongside a 20.7% jump in contract signings. Louisville saw listings rise 13.6% while contract signings climbed 18.9%. Indianapolis, Columbus, and Cincinnati also showed strong buyer and seller activity simultaneously.

Across the 50 largest U.S. metropolitan markets, 34 cities recorded higher contract signings this year compared with the same period in 2025.

The Sun Belt tells a slightly different story.

Markets such as Phoenix, Austin, Jacksonville, and parts of Florida are seeing contract signings improve even while new listings decline. Analysts say that is largely because home prices in those markets have already corrected significantly over the past 18 months, finally attracting buyers back into the market.

In Phoenix, new listings dipped slightly while contract signings rose more than 8%. Austin saw listings fall but buyer activity rise nearly 8% as well.

The cancellation picture also varies sharply by city.

Atlanta currently has the highest cancellation rate among major U.S. markets, with nearly 1 in 5 home contracts failing to close in April. Other high-cancellation markets include San Antonio, Jacksonville, and parts of Florida, where affordability pressure and insurance costs continue affecting buyers.

Meanwhile, San Francisco posted the lowest cancellation rate in the country, helped partly by renewed demand tied to the artificial intelligence technology boom and a rebound in high-income hiring.

For buyers, the market now offers more negotiating power than at any point in years.

In many markets, sellers are increasingly agreeing to price reductions, repair credits, and closing-cost assistance in order to keep deals together. Buyers are also regaining the ability to include inspection contingencies and financing protections — terms that largely disappeared during the ultra-competitive housing frenzy of 2021 and early 2022.

For sellers, the message is becoming clearer as well: homes priced realistically are still selling, while overpriced homes are sitting longer and attracting weaker offers.

The improving stability is also important for mortgage lenders and real estate companies.

When home deals collapse, lenders lose money on underwriting, appraisals, staffing, and processing costs. Stabilizing contract completion rates help companies including Rocket Mortgage, United Wholesale Mortgage, loanDepot, Guild Mortgage, and major bank lenders improve operational efficiency.

Real estate brokerages and platforms including Zillow, Redfin, Compass, eXp World Holdings, and Anywhere Real Estate also benefit when transaction volumes increase after several difficult years for the industry.

Nationally, housing inventory continues improving gradually.

New listings are now roughly 22% above the lows reached in 2023, though supply remains well below pre-pandemic levels in many regions. Analysts say the market is no longer deteriorating — it is slowly normalizing.

The housing market still looks very different from the boom years of 2021 and early 2022, when bidding wars, waived inspections, and all-cash offers dominated the market. Mortgage rates remain elevated, affordability remains challenging, and many first-time buyers are still struggling with down payments and monthly payment costs.

But for the first time in years, both buyers and sellers are beginning to move again instead of waiting on the sidelines.

For everyday Americans considering buying or selling a home, the message from the latest data is relatively simple: inventory is improving, sellers are negotiating again, and the market is becoming more balanced than it has been in years.

— JBizNews Desk

© 2026 JBizNews. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution without written permission is prohibited.

HOLLYWOOD, FLORIDA (VINnews) – A Hollywood solo practitioner turned an $84,000 real estate commission dispute into a $47.8 million jury verdict, calling the case a matter of principle rather than money.

Hollywood, Florida, solo lawyer Josef Timlichman, who represented plaintiff Miles Goldstein Real Estate LLC, said the dispute was never simply about an unpaid commission.

“This is not a case about $84,000,” Timlichman told litigation reporter Lisa Willis.10155e

A Miami-Dade County jury returned the $47.8 million verdict on May 14 against Reuben Ezekiel and related defendants in connection with the 2020 sale of a waterfront home in the exclusive Golden Beach community. The award included approximately $19.83 million in compensatory damages and $28 million in punitive damages.

The case, Miles Goldstein Real Estate LLC v. Reuben Ezekiel et al., stemmed from allegations that Ezekiel and others engaged in fraud, tortious interference with a business relationship and civil conspiracy to cut broker Alexander Goldstein out of a buyer’s commission on the $2.8 million property sale. Goldstein had worked with the buyer for more than a year and helped negotiate the price, according to court filings and reports.

Timlichman, of Josef Timlichman Law, PLLC, described the verdict as a landmark in Florida real estate commission cases due to the significant punitive damages component. He said the outcome sends a broader message about ethical conduct in society.

Defense attorney Pete Solnick called the verdict “so excessive that it shocks the conscience of the court,” according to published reports. Post-trial proceedings are pending.

The case was filed in 2020 in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit Court in Miami-Dade County.

Israeli intelligence officials now believe that the violent demonstrations and repeated clashes along the Gaza border fence in the months leading up to October 7 were part of a deliberate Hamas operation aimed at preparing for the massive terror assault on southern Israel.

According to newly uncovered intelligence assessments, Hamas operatives exploited the protests to study Israeli military response patterns and locate vulnerable areas along the security barrier.

Israeli officials say terrorists posing as civilian demonstrators, balloon launchers, and rioters collected operational intelligence during the disturbances and even marked specific sections of the fence that would later serve as breach points during the invasion.

The findings, first reported Sunday by the Israeli news outlet Srugim, indicate that Hamas identified 114 separate locations along the Gaza border fence in advance of the attack.

Those same locations were reportedly activated simultaneously on October 7, when more than 6,000 Hamas Nukhba terrorists and armed Gazans poured into southern Israel.

According to the report, some of the breaches were narrow openings intended for individual gunmen, while others were large enough to allow motorcycles and pickup trucks to move through rapidly, transforming parts of the border into what Israeli officials described as a “terror highway” leading directly into Israeli communities.

The intelligence conclusions are reportedly supported by an internal Hamas document attributed to slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

Officials involved in the assessment say the document indicates that Hamas leadership believed Israel had completely misread the purpose of the border unrest and failed to grasp the broader military operation being quietly developed behind the scenes.

Israeli intelligence sources cited in the report said Hamas determined that Israeli officials “did not take the staged protests seriously” and failed to realize that the disturbances were being used to gather intelligence and rehearse the large-scale infiltration that unfolded on October 7.

{Matzav.com}

BALTIMORE (VINnews) – Maryland Governor & potential Democrat Presidential Candidate Wes Moore accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of committing “war crimes” in Gaza but stopped short of labeling the conflict a genocide.

“I know as a military person that you cannot use food as a negotiating tool,” Moore said in a Politico interview. “That is a war crime.”

Moore, a former Army officer, made the remarks during a wide-ranging conversation with Politico senior political columnist Jonathan Martin.

When asked whether he considers himself a Zionist, Moore replied: “The state of Israel has a right to exist, but I also think that so do Palestinian people.”

The Democratic governor’s comments come amid ongoing tensions in the Israel-Hamas war. Moore has previously expressed support for Israel’s right to defend itself and condemned Hamas following the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, while also calling for humanitarian considerations in Gaza.

A $25,000 reward is now being offered for information leading to the safe return of Esther, the missing Toronto teenage girl whose disappearance has sparked widespread concern and ongoing search efforts throughout the community.

Newly released posters distributed Sunday identify the girl as possibly going by the names “Esti” or “Sylvia” and include updated information about her last known movements. According to the latest details, Esther was last spotted in downtown Toronto on a bus at approximately 12:35 a.m. on May 16.

Authorities also released a new surveillance image showing Esther wearing gray sweatpants and a green top, believed to be the outfit she was wearing at the time she disappeared.

The updated posters prominently announce a reward of up to $25,000 for information leading to her safe return and urge anyone with information to come forward immediately.

The case has drawn major attention in Toronto and beyond, with volunteers, community organizations, and law enforcement continuing intensive efforts to locate her.

Family members and organizers involved in the search continue pleading with the public to remain alert and report any possible sightings or information that could assist investigators.

Anyone with information is urged to call 647-478-2230 immediately.

{Matzav.com}

A yeshiva bochur who recently enlisted in the IDF described a painful and humiliating confrontation he says he experienced at a train station in Haifa, where a woman allegedly screamed at him for not serving in the military — and then spit in his face after he showed her proof that he had just signed his enlistment papers.

The incident came to public attention after media personality and Channel 14 host Yinon Magal shared on X a WhatsApp message he received from the young man, identified only as Ariel.

In the message, Ariel wrote: “Hi Yinon, I’m a yeshiva bochur and today I signed enlistment papers for the IDF. On my way back, a leftist woman around 60 years old started screaming at me about why I’m not enlisting. When I showed her the document proving that I signed up for the army, she spit in my face. And then people say this isn’t pure hatred of chareidim.”

Magal responded in disbelief, writing: “She spit in your face?? Crazy.”

Later Sunday evening, Ariel recounted the incident in an emotional interview with Yaakov Grodka on Kol Barama Radio’s main news program, describing the ordeal in greater detail.

“I was returning from the enlistment office after signing my IDF draft papers,” Ariel said. “At the train station, a woman around 60 years old approached me and started screaming that I’m a chareidi who doesn’t enlist. When I showed her the document proving that I had literally enlisted that very day, she simply spit in my face.”

The yeshiva bochur openly described the emotional toll the encounter took on him.

“After she spit on me, the thought crossed my mind that maybe this whole thing was a mistake and why I even needed to enlist in the first place,” he shared. “I felt deeply humiliated, and it took me a long time to calm down. At the same time, I’m not looking for anyone’s appreciation — this is something between me and myself, and I’m completely at peace with it.”

Ariel also said he believes the woman’s behavior reflected deep-seated hostility toward the chareidi community rather than anger over military service itself.

“That woman didn’t want to see chareidim in the army — she simply hates chareidim,” he said. “They hate that we are in the government, and they hate our very existence. While she was publicly humiliating me and spitting at me, several of her friends were standing there laughing together with her.”

{Matzav.com}

A quiet meeting between former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot and Degel HaTorah chairman MK Moshe Gafni took place last week immediately after Rav Dov Landau’s dramatic declaration regarding the “dismantling of the right-wing bloc,” according to a report aired Sunday evening on Channel 12 News.

The reported meeting comes amid mounting political turmoil surrounding the draft law and intensifying efforts by opposition figures to reshape alliances ahead of a possible election campaign.

According to the report, the atmosphere during the meeting was positive despite the sensitive backdrop surrounding the ongoing debate over the enlistment of bochurim and members of the chareidi community.

At the same time, Eisenkot has recently come under attack from political rivals who argue that his proposed draft framework is significantly softer on chareidi enlistment than the positions advanced by Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Lieberman.

Under Eisenkot’s proposal, approximately 30 percent of bnei yeshiva would receive exemptions and would not face sanctions. Bennett and Lieberman, however, continue insisting on universal enlistment policies under the principle that “whoever does not serve receives nothing.”

Sources close to Eisenkot declined to confirm or deny that the meeting took place, saying only that “he is operating through numerous channels to advance elections and bring down the government.”

Meanwhile, representatives for Gafni’s office stated that they “do not comment on meetings held by Gafni with various public figures.”

Last week, Eisenkot made clear that the issue of military service remains a red line for him politically, even if it leads to another round of elections.

“There are profound disagreements between myself and the chareidim, and the distorted reality that has developed cannot be accepted,” Eisenkot said during a conference hosted by the Association of Corporations.

Reports published roughly two weeks ago indicated growing communication between chareidi political figures and Eisenkot. According to those reports, chareidi representatives urged him not to rush into alliances with Bennett or Yair Lapid, while expressing the view that Eisenkot’s enlistment framework is more practical and leaves room for compromise.

Shortly after those reports surfaced, Eisenkot was seen touring Tel Aviv’s Carmel Market, where he also declined to rule out joining a future coalition government that includes chareidi parties.

By JBizNews Desk

NEW YORK, May 24, 2026 — Japan’s Nikkei 225 crossed 65,000 for the first time in history Monday while the Dow Jones Industrial Average held above 50,000 and oil prices fell sharply on hopes the Strait of Hormuz may reopen soon — a combination that would have sounded almost impossible during the 2008 financial crisis, when soaring oil prices and collapsing financial markets nearly broke the global economy.

The Nikkei surged past the 65,000 mark in early Asia trading as Brent crude fell more than 4% to below $99 a barrel and West Texas Intermediate dropped toward $92 after President Donald Trump said negotiations with Iran were “proceeding in an orderly and constructive manner.” Trump also said he instructed negotiators “not to rush into a deal” because “time is on our side,” while keeping his threat of renewed military strikes against Iran on the table if talks fail.

The Dow sat above 50,000 after Friday’s record close at 50,579.70, while the S&P 500 closed at 7,473.47 and the Nasdaq Composite ended at 26,343.97 — all near historic highs despite a Middle East war that has kept global oil markets under extreme stress for nearly three months.

For most investors and consumers, the obvious question is simple: how?

The world in 2008 looked nothing like the world today. That September, Lehman Brothers collapsed. Bear Stearns had already failed. AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by the U.S. government. Citigroup and Bank of America survived only on federal lifelines. The Dow crashed below 6,600. Oil had touched nearly $147 a barrel that July before collapsing as the global economy froze. Credit markets seized. Home values evaporated. Unemployment doubled. And the consensus view, voiced from Davos to Washington, was that American financial dominance was finished, that emerging markets would lead the next era, and that the U.S. consumer was permanently broken.

If anyone had told a trader in October 2008 — staring at a 6,500 Dow and $147 oil still ringing in their ears — that 18 years later the Dow would be above 50,000, the Nikkei would be at 65,000, oil would be elevated again on a new Middle East war, and markets would be hitting records anyway, that trader would not have believed it. Nobody would have. The world that produced today’s prices had to be built, piece by piece, and most of the construction happened quietly.

The U.S. transformation started with energy. In 2008, the United States was the world’s largest oil importer, sending hundreds of billions of dollars overseas every year to pay for crude. The shale revolution changed that completely. New drilling and fracking technology unlocked the Permian Basin in Texas, the Bakken in North Dakota, the Marcellus in Pennsylvania, and the Eagle Ford in south Texas. By 2018 the U.S. had become the world’s largest oil producer. By 2020 it had become a net energy exporter. Today, when Brent trades at $99, much of that money flows to ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Pioneer Natural Resources and hundreds of independent American producers — not to OPEC. In 2008 a $100 oil price drained the U.S. economy. In 2026 it is closer to a wash.

The second transformation was the rebuilding of the banking system. The 2008 crash was not really about oil. It was about leverage. American banks had stacked a pyramid of mortgage-backed securities on top of subprime loans, and when housing turned, the whole credit system collapsed. After the crisis, the Dodd-Frank Act, the Federal Reserve’s annual stress tests, and tighter international capital rules forced banks to hold far more capital and far less risk. Today JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo are among the strongest-capitalized banks in the world. Energy shocks now hurt margins. They do not detonate the financial system.

The third transformation was the rise of the technology economy. The companies leading the Dow and the S&P 500 today are not the companies that led them in 2008. General Motors went bankrupt. General Electric was broken up. AIG, Citigroup, Bank of America and Kraft were removed from the Dow or restructured almost beyond recognition. In their place came Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia — added to the Dow in November 2024 — Amazon, added in February 2024, plus Visa, Salesforce, and UnitedHealth. These are software-margin businesses with very little direct exposure to the price of oil. Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms and Broadcom alone now make up roughly a third of the S&P 500’s market capitalization, and they are growing earnings on a structural AI capital-spending wave that has no real 2008 parallel. Meta has committed to $115 billion to $135 billion in 2026 capital expenditures, almost all of it on AI data centers. That kind of spending becomes someone else’s revenue — and most of it flows straight back into the U.S. corporate sector.

The fourth transformation is the economy underneath all of it. The U.S. economy of 2008 was still heavily industrial. The U.S. economy of 2026 is roughly 80% services. Software, healthcare, financial services, entertainment, professional services — none of them care much about the price of crude. A barrel of oil at $100 is a meaningful input cost for an airline, a chemical company or a trucker. It is a rounding error for a software company billing $50,000 per seat or an asset manager charging fees on $5 trillion in AUM.

Asia’s transformation runs in parallel — and the Nikkei story is the clearest example. For most of the period after 2008, Japan was written off. The country’s stock market spent more than three decades trying to climb back from its 1989 bubble peak of 38,915. It did not break that record until 2024. The consensus view was that Japan was structurally finished — aging population, deflationary economy, frozen corporate culture, government debt over 250% of GDP. The country was a global cautionary tale.

Then the rebuild happened, also quietly. The Tokyo Stock Exchange forced listed companies to improve return on equity, unwind cross-shareholdings, and treat shareholders as actual owners — a corporate governance revolution that took a decade to play out and is still going. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway publicly invested in Mitsubishi Corp., Mitsui & Co., Sumitomo Corp., Itochu Corp. and Marubeni Corp., signaling to the world that Japanese trading houses were undervalued cash machines. A weaker yen turbocharged Japanese exporter earnings. And then artificial intelligence arrived — and Japan turned out to own essential pieces of the AI supply chain.

Japanese companies supply the equipment, materials and precision components that make modern AI chips possible. Tokyo Electron, Advantest, Disco Corp., Lasertec, Shin-Etsu Chemical, SUMCO, Fujikura and Furukawa Electric are now essential vendors to Nvidia, TSMC, Samsung Electronics and the broader global semiconductor industry. The Nikkei’s 24% year-to-date gain in 2026 is the world’s strongest among major equity indices and is being driven by the same AI capital expenditure wave lifting U.S. tech — except Japan gets it twice, because falling oil prices also reduce the country’s enormous energy import bill. Nomura Securities senior strategist Takashi Ito put it plainly: “even a modest easing of inflation can provide meaningful relief.”

The Federal Reserve’s position has also changed dramatically since 2008. Back then, the Fed under Ben Bernanke was slashing rates to stop the financial system from collapsing, eventually pushing them to near zero and launching quantitative easing. Today, newly sworn-in Fed Chair Kevin Warsh is holding rates elevated to fight inflation that has stayed above the central bank’s 2% target for years. Markets are climbing despite high interest rates, not because of cheap money — a fundamentally different and arguably healthier dynamic. Fed Governor Christopher Waller said Friday he wants to hold rates steady but would not rule out hikes if energy-driven inflation proves durable. A Hormuz reopening cuts directly against that risk and reopens the path to the rate cuts Warsh has signaled he prefers.

Why are markets rising to new heights in a time like this, instead of crashing? Because the modern economy is built on a different foundation. The U.S. is energy-independent. Banks are over-capitalized. The largest companies sell software, not steel. Earnings are growing on an AI capital expenditure wave measured in hundreds of billions of dollars. Japan has rebuilt itself into a core AI supplier. And the financial system has the shock absorbers it lacked in 2008. The same headlines that crushed the world 18 years ago — Middle East war, $100 oil, central banks under pressure — are now hitting an economy designed to absorb them rather than buckle under them.

None of this means markets are risk-free. Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has ordered enriched uranium reserves to stay inside the country, contradicting Washington’s central demand. Tehran is reportedly working with Oman on a permanent toll system for the Strait of Hormuz, which Trump has rejected outright. The U.S. blockade of Iranian ports remains in place. Goldman Sachs head of oil research Daan Struyven estimates every additional month the strait stays shut adds roughly $10 to the year-end oil price. The math runs in both directions, and the gap between Trump’s threat to strike and his “time is on our side” patience is the gap traders will reprice the moment the next Truth Social post lands.

But the bigger story is the one most investors lived through without quite noticing. The world that made the Dow at 50,000, the Nikkei at 65,000, and oil at $99 impossible in the same sentence has been replaced by a different world entirely. In 2008, nobody would have believed it. In 2026, it is the tape.

— JBizNews Desk

© 2026 JBizNews. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution without written permission is prohibited.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., warned Sunday that artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics could replace American workers and even damage children’s social development if the technology is controlled by billionaires prioritizing profits over people.

Speaking at a “Fight Oligarchy” rally in Maine, the Vermont independent argued that AI could deepen economic inequality and worsen an ongoing mental health crisis among young people.

“Kids are lonelier and lonelier,” Sanders said. “I do not want the next generation to have as their friends AI bots. I want them to have other kids, other human beings as their friends.”

Sanders said artificial intelligence and robotics are poised to become “the most transformative economic revolution in the history of this country” and warned that the technology could eliminate jobs across multiple industries.

WORKERS FACE GROWING ‘AUTOMATION ANXIETY’ AS TECH LAYOFFS SURGE, AI ADOPTION ACCELERATES

“What is the function of AI and robotics?” Sanders asked the crowd. “It is to replace human labor.”

The senator pointed to automation in manufacturing and the future expansion of driverless vehicles as examples of looming disruptions to the workforce.

“Truck drivers and cab drivers, Uber drivers, Lyft drivers, etc. will be losing their jobs in the not too immediate future,” Sanders said.

META SHIFTS 7,000 WORKERS INTO AI ROLES AS LAYOFFS, MANAGER CUTS LOOM

While Sanders acknowledged AI could provide benefits, including reducing the workweek while maintaining wages, he argued the technology must be regulated to ensure it benefits workers rather than wealthy tech executives.

“What we have got to do is make sure that AI and robotics work for all of the people, not just the billionaires who are developing that technology,” he said.

Sanders also warned about the potential societal impacts of artificial intelligence, including misinformation and growing social isolation among children.

EXPERT SAYS MASSIVE AI INVESTMENT IS ‘LAYING THE GROUNDWORK’ FOR AMERICA’S FUTURE

“If AI undermines our democracy by putting stuff on screens in which you cannot tell truth from fiction, that’s a bad thing,” Sanders said.

The senator specifically criticized Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, claiming corporate leaders are prioritizing profits over workers as AI rapidly expands.

“These guys are in it for the money,” Sanders said. “They want more wealth and more power, and they do not care what happens to workers.”

The remarks came during Sanders’ latest stop on his nationwide “Fight Oligarchy” tour, which has focused heavily on wealth inequality, corporate power and opposition to President Donald Trump.

GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE

During the speech, Sanders also accused billionaires and superPACs of trying to “own and control the United States Congress” and called the U.S. political system increasingly dominated by wealthy interests.

Experts trying to prevent a tank of hazardous chemicals from exploding in Southern California found a “potential crack” in the container that might be reducing the pressure, a fire official said on Sunday.

Since Friday, officials have warned that the tank, which contains methyl methacrylate, a flammable chemical used in plastics and manufacturing, could rupture and spill up to 7,000 gallons (26,500 liters) of toxic material or explode and endanger other tanks on the GKN Aerospace site.

Evacuation orders were issued on Friday for an area in Garden Grove, a suburb roughly 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of Los Angeles. Tens of thousands of people are covered by the evacuation orders.

TJ McGovern, interim fire chief of the Orange County Fire Authority, said in a video message posted on social media that a team of specialists on Saturday night found “a potential crack in the tank, which could potentially be relieving some of the pressure in there.”

Discovering the potential crack was “positive intel,” McGovern said.

Authorities are still trying to determine whether the possible crack has relieved pressure in the tank, a spokesperson for the Orange County Fire Authority told Reuters. Lowering the pressure could help avert an explosion, he said.

Officials focused on measuring pressure of tank

Although officials for now are focused on measuring pressure, the spokesperson said, the crack eventually could allow authorities to gradually drain the chemicals.

On Saturday, Craig Covey, division chief of the Orange County Fire Authority, said the tank’s internal temperature was increasing by about one degree an hour and had reached as high as 90 degrees. But early on Sunday, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin told CNN’s “State of the Union” program that local officials were working to stabilize the tank by keeping its temperature under 85 degrees Fahrenheit.

“I’m being told this morning that the most likely scenario is one of a low-volume release, where the local authorities are going to be able to monitor, neutralize, and contain the threat,” Zeldin told CNN.

Crews were preparing for a possible spill by looking for ways to dike, dam, and divert the liquid into a holding area at the commercial site, rather than allow it to reach storm drains, river channels, or the ocean, Covey said.

Health officials have said they ​were concerned that ⁠vapor from the chemical could cause severe respiratory problems with prolonged exposure. Air monitors deployed in Garden Grove were not detecting any chemicals or pollutants on Sunday, the EPA said.

No chemical leak detected

Sensors located around the tank itself have not picked up any chemical leaks in the air, the fire authority spokesperson said.

The Orange County Fire Authority and the Garden Grove mayor’s office did not respond to requests for comment on Sunday. On Saturday, officials said firefighters were exploring whether a heavy flow of cooling water might slow the curing process inside the tank enough to reduce pressure and prevent an explosion.

The incident began on Thursday at the GKN Aerospace facility, which specializes in the manufacturing and testing of windows and canopies for commercial and military aircraft, according to its website.

California Governor Gavin Newsom on Saturday declared a state of emergency for Orange County.

This post was originally published on here.

A suspect accused of carrying out a months-long spree of antisemitic and racist graffiti at San José State University was arrested Wednesday, university officials and campus police announced.

Since the fall of 2025, threatening graffiti targeting Jewish students has repeatedly appeared across the campus. University President Cynthia Teniente-Matson said the incidents caused “real harm” to students.

“The acts have targeted individuals and communities we proudly welcome to SJSU, and I hope you all join me in condemning hate and violence while standing in solidarity with our community,” Teniente-Matson said Thursday.

The incidents began in October, when racist and discriminatory messages were discovered in student housing and on dormitory bulletin boards, according to a university webpage tracking the attacks.

The following month, antisemitic, anti-Asian and anti-Muslim graffiti, along with threats of violence, were found inside a bathroom at MacQuarrie Hall, prompting an investigation and increased police patrols.

Senator Bill Cassidy later stated that the graffiti included swastikas and threats of mass shootings.

On March 4, new threats appeared in the same building’s bathroom, warning of a terrorist attack planned for March 11.

“SJSU, Sorry, But for Allah 3/11 Will Be 9/11,” one message read alongside “Kill All Jews,” according to Cassidy. Other graffiti referenced killing Jews and praised Al Qaeda terrorist Osama bin Laden.

In response, campus police expanded security measures and coordinated with additional law enforcement agencies.

Further antisemitic threats were discovered on March 24, April 3 and April 8, with more messages later appearing at the Student Union and Art Building threatening an attack on May 4.

Authorities said the suspect was arrested Wednesday following a joint investigation involving multiple agencies, including the FBI.

The suspect has been banned from campus and faces multiple charges, including felony vandalism, felony criminal threats, and possible hate crime enhancements.

When President Trump announced Operation Epic Fury at 2 a.m. on February 28 in an eight-minute Truth Social video, the scope was vast. The United States and Israel would not just hit Iranian nuclear sites. They would destroy Iran’s missile arsenal, dismantle its proxy networks, “annihilate” its navy, and see the Islamic Republic itself replaced. “It will be yours to take,” Trump told Iranians watching the address. “This will probably be your only chance for generations.”

Three months later, the war’s stated aims have shrunk almost beyond recognition. The framework now circulating in Washington and Tehran is narrow, transactional and limited to two questions: when ships start moving again through the Strait of Hormuz, and what happens to roughly 1,000 pounds of highly enriched uranium that Iran is being asked to dispose of “in principle.” Regime change, regional containment, dismantling proxies, ending the missile threat — none of those appear in the memorandum of understanding now being negotiated.

The collapse of ambition has come in stages.

Phase One: A War About Everything

The administration laid out four military objectives at the opening of Operation Epic Fury — preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon, destroying the missile arsenal, degrading proxy networks, eliminating the navy — along with a fifth, political objective of regime change. Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu jointly called on Iranian civilians to seize control of the country once its leadership had been decapitated. Mossad chief David Barnea had designed the underlying plan, presented to senior Trump officials in mid-January. By February 13, Trump was publicly endorsing regime change as “the best thing that could happen” and telling reporters “there are people” he wanted to take over.

The opening salvo killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and much of the senior Iranian command. It also triggered the most extensive missile and drone barrage of the war, with more than 600 attacks against U.S. facilities in Iraq alone, according to a senior State Department official.

Phase Two: The Rationale Begins to Wobble

Within days, the administration’s case for war began contradicting itself. Trump had spent months insisting that Operation Midnight Hammer, the June 2025 strikes, had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program. Now his envoy Steve Witkoff was warning that Iran was “a week away” from bomb-grade material.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the strikes as a counterproliferation operation with a “very specific mission.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth assured reporters the mission was “very, very clear.” Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters after a classified briefing that the goals of the operation had changed “four or five times” in a matter of weeks.

By mid-March, an Axios report indicated that Trump now viewed regime change as merely “an additional victory” — not a requirement — and intended to end the war once his stated military objectives were met.

Phase Three: The Timeline Starts to Slip

Trump initially said the war would run four to six weeks. On Day 26, the administration submitted a 15-point ceasefire proposal to Iran through Pakistani intermediaries, covering sanctions relief, nuclear rollback, IAEA monitoring, missile limits and reopening the Strait. On the same day, it ordered up to 4,000 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne to the region. Iran responded by mocking the proposal — its military spokesman said the United States was “negotiating with itself” — and posted five counter-conditions designed to be unacceptable, including Iranian sovereignty over the Strait and war reparations. Trump extended his deadline for strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure by ten days. Then he extended it again.

Phase Four: Declare Victory, Keep Fighting

On April 8, the United States and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire that the White House framed as a vindication. “Peace Through Strength: Operation Epic Fury Crushes Iranian Threat,” read the official press release. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted the war had always been “a four-to-six-week military operation to dismantle the military threat posed by the radical Islamic Iranian regime.” The administration informed Congress that hostilities had ended, a move that conveniently kept the operation under the 60-day War Powers Act threshold.

The fighting did not actually stop. U.S. and Iranian forces continued exchanging fire around the Strait of Hormuz. Iran kept hitting commercial shipping. The Pentagon kept describing the conflict as ongoing under the Epic Fury name even as Rubio publicly declared on May 5 that the operation was “over.”

NBC News reported that the Pentagon was considering re-naming the conflict “Operation Sledgehammer” if the ceasefire collapsed entirely, a tacit admission that one war ended on paper and another may already be underway.

Phase Five: A Transactional Endgame

The deal Trump described Saturday as “largely negotiated” is, in substance, a sliver of what the war was launched to accomplish. The 12,000-mile missile threat that Trump warned could “soon reach the American homeland” goes unaddressed. Iran’s regional proxies, which Hegseth had vowed to defang, are not on the table. The Iranian government — which Trump told its citizens they had a generational chance to overthrow — is not only intact but party to the deal, with Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the man killed in the opening strike, having reportedly signed off on the “broad template.”

What remains is two items. Iran agrees in principle to dispose of its highly enriched uranium, with the method to be worked out. The Strait of Hormuz reopens without tolls. Everything else — sanctions, missiles, proxies, future enrichment — is pushed into a second round of talks scheduled for sometime in the next 30 to 60 days.

A senior administration official summarized the U.S. position to reporters this weekend with a three-word doctrine: “No dust, no dollars.” The phrase fits comfortably onto a press release. It would not have fit the war Trump announced in February.

The Political Math

The contraction tracks Trump’s domestic situation. His approval rating has fallen to 37 percent, the lowest of his two terms combined, in the most recent New York Times/Siena poll. Gas prices stand at $4.56 a gallon, a four-year high. Nearly 80 percent of voters blame his administration for the price spike, according to a Fox News poll. Republicans in Congress moved this past week toward a resolution forcing him to end the war without further authorization and stripped $1 billion in security spending from his reconciliation package.

Iran has its own pressures. Its missile salvos had fallen by 70 to 85 percent within days of the opening strikes, according to the Hudson Institute. The Strait blockade has redirected more than 100 commercial ships and choked off the economic recovery Tehran needs to consolidate the new leadership. A senior administration official told reporters this weekend that most people in the Iranian system “don’t love the deal, but they also don’t like the idea of going back to war.”

Both sides, in other words, have arrived at the same place by different routes — needing an exit more than they need a victory.

What’s Left

The war was launched on the premise that Iran was an imminent nuclear threat to the United States, that its missiles could soon reach American territory, and that its regime was a destabilizing force that needed to be replaced. The deal now under negotiation accepts the regime, defers the missile question, leaves the proxies in place, and addresses the nuclear issue through a process that, as Rubio acknowledged, must still figure out “what happens to this material that’s very deep somewhere.”

The administration has framed the trajectory as success — a war fought, objectives met, peace through strength. Critics, including some Republicans, see something closer to a retreat dressed up in a press release. The deal, if it holds, will end a three-month war that killed thousands and displaced millions across Iran, Lebanon, Israel and the Gulf. It will not deliver most of what Trump said the war was for.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio forcefully defended the Trump administration’s ongoing negotiations with Iran on Sunday, dismissing criticism from fellow Republicans as “absurd” amid growing backlash over a possible agreement involving the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear program.

Speaking during a press conference in India, Rubio rejected suggestions that President Trump would approve any arrangement that strengthens Tehran’s nuclear position.

“The idea that somehow this president, given everything he’s already proven he’s willing to do, is going to somehow agree to a deal that ultimately winds up putting Iran in a stronger position when it comes to nuclear ambitions is absurd,” Rubio said.

“That’s just not going to happen. But our preference is to address this through a diplomatic means, and that’s what we are endeavoring to do here. I think we’ve made some progress. I’m always cautious when I say that because you can agree to things on paper; they actually have to be implemented,” he added.

Rubio’s comments followed President Trump’s announcement that negotiations with Iran were “largely negotiated” after discussions with Arab allies throughout the Middle East. Trump indicated that one major component of the agreement would involve reopening the Strait of Hormuz, the critical global shipping route that has remained effectively shut amid the regional conflict.

“Final aspects and details of the Deal are currently being discussed, and will be announced shortly,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “In addition to many other elements of the Agreement, the Strait of Hormuz will be opened.”

The emerging framework has sparked alarm among several Republican senators and conservative foreign policy figures, many of whom fear the administration could concede too much to Tehran after months of military confrontation.

Sen. Lindsey Graham warned that any agreement allowing Iran to maintain regional leverage would dramatically alter the balance of power in the Middle East.

“If a deal is struck to end the Iranian conflict because it is believed that the Strait of Hormuz cannot be protected from Iranian terrorism and Iran still possesses the capability to destroy major Gulf oil infrastructure, then Iran will be perceived as being a dominate force requiring a diplomatic solution,” Graham wrote in a post on X.

Sen. Ted Cruz also expressed deep concerns over reports surrounding the negotiations, suggesting some voices within the administration may be pushing the White House toward a dangerous compromise.

“President Trump’s decision to strike Iran was the most consequential decision of his second term. He was right to do so, and we achieved extraordinary military results—including destroying all of their missiles & drones and sinking their entire navy,” Cruz wrote.

“If the result of all that is to be an Iranian regime—still run by Islamists who chant ‘death to America’—now receiving billions of dollars, being able to enrich uranium & develop nuclear weapons, and having effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, then that outcome would be a disastrous mistake,” he continued.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also voiced skepticism over the direction of the talks, comparing the rumored framework to Obama-era negotiations that conservatives long criticized.

“The deal being floated with Iran seems straight out of the Wendy Sherman-Robert Malley-Ben Rhodes playbook: Pay the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)] to build a WMD program and terrorize the world,” Pompeo said in an X post.

{Matzav.com}