Mortgage application volume declined for a second straight week as the average 30-year fixed rate climbed to its highest level in more than a year, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s weekly survey released Wednesday.

Total applications fell 2.9% on a seasonally adjusted basis for the week ending July 31, with the 30-year fixed rate rising to 6.81%. Refinance activity slipped 2% and purchase applications dropped 4%, with both categories running behind last year’s pace. On an unadjusted basis, the index was down 3% from the prior week, and refinance volume sat 9% below the same week a year ago.

Mike Fratantoni, the MBA’s senior vice president and chief economist, tied the move to the aftermath of the July Federal Open Market Committee meeting, noting that longer-term rates rose and carried mortgage rates to their highest point in more than a year.

The Rate Picture

The average contract rate on a 30-year fixed conforming loan rose to 6.81% from 6.76% a week earlier, while the jumbo 30-year rate ticked up to 6.72% from 6.70%. FHA-backed 30-year mortgages averaged 6.43%, and the 15-year fixed rate eased slightly to 6.13% from 6.15%.

The climb has been steady rather than sudden. The conforming 30-year rate stood at 6.76% the previous week, up from 6.69% before that, and it was at 6.65% in mid-July. That is roughly a sixteen basis point move over three weeks — enough to change the monthly payment math on a median-priced home by a meaningful margin, and more than enough to shut down refinance economics for anyone who borrowed in the past two years.

Refinancing accounted for 39.9% of all applications, up modestly from 39.5% a week earlier. FHA loans made up 17.3% of total applications, VA loans 12.3%, and USDA loans 0.5%. Adjustable-rate mortgages represented 7.9% of activity.

Energy Prices Are Driving the Curve

The path of mortgage rates this summer has less to do with housing than with oil.

The MBA attributed the prior week’s move to a spike in oil prices, which pushed the 30-year rate to its highest level since August 2025. Analysts have pointed to inflationary pressure and a firm labor market as supporting expectations that the Federal Reserve could raise rates this year, with rising fuel costs tied to disrupted Middle Eastern energy supply lifting yields on longer-dated Treasuries.

That transmission line runs straight from the Strait of Hormuz to the closing table. Mortgage rates track the 10-year Treasury yield, and the 10-year has been responding to inflation expectations driven by energy. As long as crude stays elevated on conflict risk, the rate relief that buyers and refinancers have been waiting on stays out of reach.

What It Means on the Ground

The purchase side is where the strain is now showing. Purchase applications fell 4% and are trailing year-ago levels, a reversal from earlier in the summer when purchase volume was running ahead of 2025.

Housing inventory has improved in some markets, but elevated rates continue to squeeze affordability for prospective buyers — the classic bind of this cycle, where more homes come to market precisely when fewer buyers can finance them.

Refinance demand has effectively hit its floor. Two weeks ago the refinance index dropped 10% in a single week, and the additional 2% decline reported Wednesday reflects a pool of eligible borrowers that has largely emptied out. Refinance applications had already fallen to their lowest level since May of last year.

Independent tracking points the same direction. The Xactus Mortgage Intent Index fell 2.7% week over week to 122.7 in late July, roughly 6.5% below the same week last year, with the firm’s chief strategy officer, Thomas Lloyd, saying the current rate environment continues to constrain borrower activity.

The MBA survey covers the bulk of U.S. retail residential mortgage applications and is the closest thing the market has to a real-time read on housing demand. The last two readings say the same thing: at 6.81%, the buyer pool is thinning.

JBizNews Desk | New York

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

As YWN warned in the immediate aftermath of the devastating fire that destroyed much of the Agri Star kosher meat-processing facility in Postville, Iowa, the effects are now beginning to reach supermarket shelves across America.

The attached photo, taken at a Jewel-Osco supermarket in the Chicago area, shows a notice informing customers that because of the Agri Star fire, the chain is no longer receiving product from the plant and that “limited availability of certain items” is expected.

The notice reads, in part:

“Due to a fire at the Agri Star Kosher Processing Plant in Iowa… Jewel-Osco will not receive additional product from the plant, which may lead to limited availability of certain items.”

Industry leaders have already acknowledged the seriousness of the situation. OU Kosher has warned that the destruction of the facility has removed a significant portion of America’s kosher meat production from the supply chain, and that consumers should expect reduced availability while efforts are underway to increase production at other facilities.

Despite those efforts, what concrete steps are being taken to prevent widespread shortages and significant price increases ahead of the Yamim Tovim remain largely unknown. While other kosher processors are reportedly attempting to expand production and additional suppliers are being explored, industry insiders acknowledge that replacing Agri Star’s massive output will not be easy.

For now, signs like the one posted in Chicago may be the first visible indication of what many kosher consumers across the country could soon experience.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has disclosed that one of its artificial intelligence models successfully connected to the internet and infiltrated another organization’s computer systems during a security evaluation, making it the latest major AI company to report such an incident as concerns grow over the cybersecurity risks posed by advanced AI.

According to Meta, the breach occurred during testing conducted by an independent security firm. The incident marks the fourth publicly disclosed case in recent weeks involving an AI model gaining unauthorized access to an outside system.

The revelation follows similar disclosures by OpenAI and Anthropic, whose AI models also carried out cyberattacks during testing. Those incidents have intensified calls from experts for stronger safeguards and more rigorous oversight as AI systems become increasingly capable.

A Meta spokesperson told the BBC that the company is investigating the incident and said the breach resulted from a “misconfiguration” by the outside testing organization.

The spokesperson added that the event closely resembled previously disclosed incidents involving AI models developed by other companies.

Meta said the security assessment was conducted by Irregular, the same AI security company that previously tested Anthropic’s models, during which one of its AI systems gained access to the networks of three separate organizations.

An Irregular spokesperson said the Meta incident “is the exact same evaluation-environment issue that was already disclosed by Anthropic last week.”

The company also said it is preparing a report outlining best practices for safely conducting cybersecurity evaluations involving autonomous AI agents.

Meta said it intends to release additional information about the incident once its investigation is complete.

The disclosure comes just weeks after OpenAI and Anthropic each acknowledged that their AI models had independently hacked into outside computer systems during controlled testing.

OpenAI said its AI agents successfully targeted several publicly accessible online services, including the AI development platform Hugging Face.

After OpenAI revealed those findings, Anthropic launched its own review and discovered that its Claude AI model had also carried out attacks against multiple organizations after a “misconfiguration” provided it with internet access.

Daniel Hulme, global chief AI officer at advertising giant WPP, said the incidents should not be interpreted as evidence that AI systems are acting maliciously.

“What they’re doing is coming up with very sophisticated strategies or cyberattacks to be able to achieve the goal that they’ve been given,” Hulme told the BBC.

“When you give an AI a goal, if you don’t think of all the ways it might be able to achieve the goal, it will find a way to achieve a goal that you haven’t thought about.”

The recent disclosures have also prompted questions about their timing, as major AI companies compete for dominance in the rapidly expanding artificial intelligence market.

Both OpenAI and Anthropic are reportedly preparing initial public offerings that could value each company at approximately $1 trillion.

Adding to the growing concern, the United Kingdom’s AI Security Institute announced this week that some AI models it tested attempted to conduct cyberattacks by creating fake online identities to deceive people.

In what the institute described as its most serious finding, Anthropic’s Mythos AI allegedly tried to gain unauthorized access to an online service by sending private messages from fabricated accounts impersonating real individuals.

Anthropic responded by saying the institute’s testing was not “representative of any of our production models.” OpenAI, whose models were also evaluated, likewise said the institute’s findings did not reflect how its AI systems operate under normal real-world conditions.

{Matzav.com}

The first construction contract under President Trump’s Gaza Peace Council has been awarded for a small military support base in southern Gaza that will house an initial contingent of 150 Moroccan troops as part of a proposed international stabilization force.

According to a report by The Guardian, the contract was awarded to Louisiana-based Arkel International, which has previously completed projects for the U.S. government in Iraq and other locations. The agreement has not yet been finalized.

The planned base, measuring roughly 100 by 120 meters, will be located near the Israeli border inside an area currently controlled by the IDF. It will initially consist of tents, cots, chemical toilets, and handwashing stations, with a rapid evacuation route in place if the force comes under attack.

Officials involved in the project said the outpost is intended to serve as the first phase of a much larger base capable of supporting up to 5,000 members of an International Stabilization Force tasked with helping implement future security and governance arrangements in Gaza.

The report said additional contracts are being prepared for facilities supporting the stabilization force and Gaza’s technocratic governing committee. The announcement comes as broader reconstruction plans for Gaza continue to evolve following months of conflict.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Camp Ruach Chaim is set to celebrate a major milestone tonight as campers, staff, parents, and alumni gather for what organizers describe as a historic Siyum HaShas, capping off a summer that blended the excitement of camp with an extraordinary commitment to Torah learning.

The event is scheduled to begin at 7:00 p.m. at Camp Ruach Chaim’s campus at 641, where hundreds are expected to participate in the celebration.

Throughout the summer, campers balanced a full schedule of sports, leagues, trips, competitions, music, and camp activities while dedicating themselves to daily Gemara learning. Organizers say the Siyum reflects the thousands of dapim learned by campers over the course of the season.

The evening will feature divrei Torah and words of chizuk from Rav Dovid Breslauer, with Rabbi Forchheimer also participating in the ma’amad.

Joining the celebration from Eretz Yisroel will be Rav Shia Atik, while the Siyum itself will be completed by Rav Berish Goldenberg.

Also expected to participate is Rav Motti Berkowitz.

Following the Siyum, campers, fathers, and alumni will celebrate with dancing accompanied by Shloimy Schinfeld and his band, featuring performances by Boruch Levine and Eli Marcus.

Organizers say the evening is intended to highlight the camp’s emphasis on integrating Torah learning into every aspect of the summer, with campers making time for Gemara between activities, before davening, and through chavrusas with fellow campers and family members.

The celebration is scheduled to begin promptly at 7:00 p.m. and will mark the culmination of a summer in which Camp Ruach Chaim sought to combine the spirit of camp with a shared achievement in Torah learning.

A livestream will be published when available.

https://thelakewoodscoop.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/wa-1786041561002-x7eq9n.mp4

Screenshot

Samsung has unveiled a new generation of memory technologies designed for artificial intelligence systems and data centers, including a breakthrough architecture that places memory chips directly on top of AI processors. The company says the new design, known as zHBM, could deliver performance up to eight times greater than expected from next-generation HBM5 memory.

Unlike current systems, where memory sits beside the processor, zHBM stacks memory directly above it, dramatically shortening the distance data must travel. Samsung says the design boosts bandwidth, reduces power consumption, and speeds up processing for large AI models. The company also claims the technology can increase memory density by more than tenfold, improve energy efficiency by up to three times, and cut thermal resistance by more than half.

Samsung also introduced zNAND O, a high-speed storage solution designed for real-time AI applications, and V10 BV NAND, a next-generation flash memory featuring more than 400 layers. The company said the new NAND technology increases storage density by roughly 58% while improving read, write, and data transfer speeds.

In addition, Samsung outlined its roadmap for future HBM4E and HBM5 memory, as well as technologies that allow certain processing tasks to be performed inside the memory chip itself, reducing the need to repeatedly transfer data between processors and memory.

Most of the technologies remain in the prototype stage, and Samsung has not announced a commercial release date for zHBM or zNAND O. While consumers are unlikely to see an immediate impact on personal devices, the innovations could significantly improve the speed, efficiency, and cost of AI services in the years ahead.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

President Donald Trump has been picking up the phone to Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh, speaking with him by telephone a number of times since Warsh was sworn in this spring, according to people familiar with the conversations. The two have talked multiple times since Warsh was confirmed in May, with the president asking about Warsh’s forecasts and views rather than pressing him toward any particular decision, one person said, speaking anonymously to describe private discussions. Two others described the contact as irregular and infrequent, and it is not clear whether monetary policy itself has come up.

The calls were first reported Thursday by the Wall Street Journal and picked up by Bloomberg. People familiar with the pattern said the president calls in bursts — several times in a single week, then nothing for stretches — and has sought Warsh’s read on how the war with Iran and the buildout of artificial intelligence are hitting the economy. Interest rates themselves have not been part of those discussions since Warsh’s Senate confirmation, according to people cited in the reporting.

The White House said the president has been deliberate about leaving the new chairman room to work. Spokesman Kush Desai said Trump has repeatedly stressed that he is giving Warsh the space he needs to restore confidence in Fed decision-making, and has reaffirmed both the chairman and the central bank’s independence, while retaining the right to voice his own views. The Fed declined to comment.

Here is why business owners and borrowers care about something as ordinary as a phone call. The Federal Reserve sets the short-term interest rate that ripples through nearly every price of credit in the country — business loans, mortgages, car notes, credit card balances. The institution was built so that the officials setting that rate do not answer to whoever occupies the White House, on the theory that borrowing costs decided for political convenience eventually show up as higher inflation. Presidents appoint the chairman and the Senate confirms him, but day-to-day contact between the two offices has traditionally been kept sparse and formal. Calls and meetings between presidents and Fed chairs have happened before, though historically they have been rare.

What makes the current arrangement worth watching is that the two men are publicly on opposite sides of the rate question.

Warsh took over from Jerome Powell in May when Powell’s term expired. Trump nominated him after a year of hammering Powell for not cutting rates fast enough. Warsh, 55, served as a Fed governor from 2006 to 2011, becoming the youngest governor in the institution’s history at 35, and came to the job from the Hoover Institution and Stanford’s business school after calling openly for a shakeup of how the central bank runs.

That shakeup has not yet produced the cheaper money the president wants. At its July 29 meeting the Fed left its benchmark rate in a range of 3.5% to 3.75%, the fifth straight meeting without a change. The vote was 9-3, with the presidents of the Cleveland, Minneapolis and Dallas regional banks dissenting in favor of raising rates a quarter point. That was the most dissents pointing in a single direction since September 2016. Inflation has stayed high largely because of the Iran war and the spike in energy prices that came with it.

Trump’s public reaction to that decision was measured. Asked at the White House whether he was disappointed, he said Warsh is “fantastic, but he’s got a board,” describing the committee as political and inclined to keep rates where they are.

Warsh has been rewriting how the Fed talks to the outside world, shortening its post-meeting statements and stepping back from the practice of telegraphing where rates are headed. He told reporters the Fed has no quick fix for inflation and said he welcomed the internal argument at the July meeting. He also acknowledged that the reduced signaling has moved the bond market, where the 10-year Treasury yield climbed from about 4.50% in mid-June to 4.64% just before the rate decision.

For companies waiting on financing, the practical picture is unchanged by the reporting. Rates are sitting near 3.6%, and about three-quarters of traders expect a rate increase in September — a move up, not down. The next Fed decision comes in September, and the calls, however frequent, have not altered the direction the committee is leaning.

JBizNews Desk | Washington

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

The U.S. Air Force has reportedly started relocating some of its aerial refueling aircraft from Ben Gurion Airport after Israeli officials raised concerns that their presence was straining airport operations during one of the busiest travel seasons since the October 7 attacks.

According to a Channel 12 News report, the relocation began in recent weeks following pressure from Transportation Minister Miri Regev, who urged defense officials to move the aircraft in order to ensure normal airport operations as passenger traffic continues to surge.

Ben Gurion Airport is expected to handle more than 2.6 million travelers during August, making it one of the busiest months the airport has experienced since the October 7 massacre.

Airport authorities estimate that approximately 100,000 passengers will pass through the airport each day throughout the month, with Thursdays expected to be the busiest, along with Monday, August 17.

Last month, the Israel Airports Authority warned that failure to relocate the American aircraft according to an agreed-upon timetable would create a critical shortage of parking positions for commercial airliners beginning July 23. Officials cautioned that the shortage could have resulted in the cancellation of roughly 10 flights per day, disrupting travel for about 50,000 passengers by the end of July.

The IDF later confirmed that additional U.S. Air Force aerial refueling aircraft would be arriving in Israel. Unlike previous deployments, however, the new aircraft were slated to operate from Israeli Air Force bases rather than Ben Gurion Airport in an effort to reduce interference with civilian air traffic.

In a statement, the IDF said, “The American partner has decided to adjust its force posture in the region, and in coordination with the IDF, it was decided to add additional refueling aircraft to the existing fleet already stationed in Israel.”

The military added that basing the aircraft at Israeli Air Force facilities was intended both to meet operational needs and to lessen the burden on Ben Gurion Airport’s commercial operations.

At the same time, the United States is continuing to strengthen its military presence in the Middle East by deploying additional aerial refueling aircraft, while reports indicate that American fighter jets are also making their way to the region through Europe.

According to the report, the U.S. military currently operates about 30 refueling aircraft at Ben Gurion Airport and another 30 at Ramon Air Base in southern Israel. The additional deployments are expected to restore America’s in-country aerial refueling capacity to levels seen at the beginning of the conflict. Axios reported that U.S. Central Command prefers operating from Ben Gurion because of its superior infrastructure and enhanced security compared to other regional bases that are considered more vulnerable to potential Iranian attacks.

Boeing’s relationship with federal regulators continues to normalize, but the FAA is making clear that routine oversight is back in full force. The agency has proposed mandatory inspections of passenger-seat installations on hundreds of Boeing 737 Max aircraft, a move that highlights the difference between ordinary regulatory scrutiny and the systemic manufacturing failures that once defined the program.

The Federal Aviation Administration published a notice of proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register on July 27 covering the 737-8, 737-9 and 737-8200. If finalized, the proposal would require operators to inspect passenger-seat track fittings throughout affected aircraft and correct any improperly installed assemblies before they create a safety risk.

The Safety Concern

The FAA’s concern is straightforward: passenger seats that are not fully engaged with the aircraft’s floor tracks could detach during severe turbulence, heavy loading or an emergency landing. Beyond the immediate risk of injury, a loose seat could block an aisle during an evacuation, turning a maintenance defect into a potentially life-threatening emergency.

Although the proposal stems from a reported installation issue, the FAA concluded the condition could exist on other aircraft built to the same design standard, prompting it to extend the inspection requirement across the broader fleet.

The Business Impact

The proposal affects 453 aircraft and requires inspections of approximately 69 passenger-seat assemblies per airplane. The FAA estimates the total inspection cost at just over $2.65 million.

Financially, however, the maintenance expense is not the story.

The directive places responsibility on airlines because operators—not manufacturers—are responsible for maintaining aircraft in an airworthy condition. Whether carriers ultimately recover those costs from Boeing becomes a commercial matter rather than a regulatory one. Boeing said it had already issued inspection guidance to airlines in December 2025 and supports making those procedures mandatory.

For airlines, the larger challenge is operational. Scheduling inspections across hundreds of aircraft during periods of heavy travel can temporarily reduce fleet availability even when the repair itself is relatively inexpensive.

Boeing’s Regulatory Recovery Continues

The timing is particularly notable because it comes as Boeing continues rebuilding its standing with federal regulators.

Earlier this month, the FAA restored the company’s authority to issue airworthiness certificates across all 737 Max and 787 Dreamliner aircraft—responsibility the agency reclaimed following the 2019 Max accidents and later production-quality concerns involving the 787.

Rather than immediately returning certification authority, the FAA spent months alternating certification responsibilities with Boeing, comparing inspection results before concluding the company’s manufacturing performance had reached the required standard. The agency has emphasized that audits, factory inspections and oversight of Boeing’s safety culture will continue.

That broader regulatory backdrop changes how investors are likely to interpret the latest proposal.

Stronger Operations Overshadow Routine Oversight

The seat inspection notice arrived just as Boeing reported second-quarter earnings that showed continued operational improvement despite ongoing financial challenges.

Revenue rose to $24.6 billion, commercial aircraft deliveries increased 14 percent from a year earlier, and the company’s order backlog reached a record $715 billion, representing more than 6,200 commercial airplanes. Boeing also generated $631 million in free cash flow, its strongest quarterly delivery performance since 2018.

Investors focused on improving production rates and cash generation, sending shares higher following the earnings report despite another quarterly loss.

What It Means for Business

For airlines, the proposal is primarily a maintenance scheduling issue rather than a major financial burden.

For Boeing, the significance lies in what the FAA’s action does not represent. Unlike the structural, certification and manufacturing failures that dominated headlines in recent years, this proposal reflects routine regulatory oversight of an identified maintenance concern—precisely the type of issue aviation regulators regularly address across the industry.

That distinction matters.

The FAA is no longer responding to a crisis that questions whether the 737 Max should remain in service. Instead, it is carrying out the day-to-day oversight expected of any mature commercial aircraft program. Against the backdrop of restored certification authority, rising production and record backlog, the proposal suggests Boeing has entered a different phase of its recovery—one where ordinary regulatory scrutiny, rather than extraordinary intervention, is becoming the norm.

JBizNews Desk | Washington

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

A newly published exclusive Jerusalem Post report alleges that a network of suspected bot accounts on X systematically amplified posts by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and members of his political circle, with cyber experts claiming the activity can be traced to IP infrastructure associated with New York City Hall. While the findings raise significant questions, the report stops short of alleging that Mamdani, his staff, or City Hall officials directed or controlled the accounts.

The findings, shared exclusively with The Jerusalem Post by the World Zionist Organization (WZO), were compiled as part of the organization’s efforts to combat online antisemitism. According to the WZO, cyber specialists analyzed IP addresses, account activity, and distribution patterns involving numerous suspicious X accounts.

The Jerusalem Post reports that it independently consulted the cyber experts behind the investigation, who said they were “100% sure” the IP addresses could be linked to City Hall infrastructure. However, the report emphasized that the available evidence does not identify who operated the accounts or establish that any city officials instructed them to carry out the activity.

According to the WZO’s analysis, investigators identified dozens—and possibly hundreds—of X accounts displaying remarkably similar behavior. The accounts allegedly posted or reshared content hundreds of times each day, relied almost exclusively on reposting rather than creating original material, frequently had sparse or incomplete profiles, and in many cases appeared to have been created only recently.

Researchers estimated that the number of suspected bot accounts continues to grow, with new accounts appearing regularly.

The Jerusalem Post states that nearly all of the accounts shared one defining characteristic: they consistently promoted content originating from Mamdani’s official account, New York City government accounts, and accounts belonging to the mayor’s political allies and administration officials.

Investigators documented dozens of accounts with nearly identical activity patterns. In many instances, between 96% and 100% of an account’s posts consisted solely of resharing existing content rather than publishing anything original.

One of the strongest indicators cited by analysts was the extraordinary posting frequency. Several accounts reportedly generated more than 500 posts each day, while others exceeded 800 or even 900 daily posts—a level of activity the analysts said would be difficult to attribute to ordinary human behavior.

As examples, the report cited the account @SnoopyLima13, which allegedly averaged 955 posts per day while reposting content 100% of the time, and @CatCat2005689, which reportedly averaged 864 daily posts, also consisting entirely of repeated shares.

At the same time, the analysts cautioned against drawing conclusions based solely on posting volume. They noted that unusually active accounts may still be operated by individuals or use legitimate scheduling software. However, they said that when such activity is combined with nearly exclusive reposting, empty profiles, recently created accounts, and identical behavior across numerous accounts, the evidence becomes more consistent with coordinated or automated activity.

According to the report, Mamdani’s official account and various municipal accounts frequently appeared to serve as the initial source of content before it spread rapidly through the network of suspected bots.

In several of the analyzed accounts, investigators found that between 98% and 100% of their reposted content originated from the mayor or related city accounts.

Some of the accounts had reportedly existed for only a few days before the analysis was conducted yet were already posting at extraordinary rates. One account, created just three days before being examined, had no followers and only 13 original posts but was already averaging 201 posts per day with a 100% repost rate.

The analysts said this pattern can significantly expand the reach of social media content beyond what would normally occur through organic engagement.

They explained that emotionally charged or controversial posts are especially likely to gain additional traction once artificially amplified. According to their analysis, an initial wave of coordinated reposts boosts visibility through the platform’s algorithm, attracting genuine users whose comments and shares further magnify the content’s reach.

The report concludes that such a process can generate dramatically higher exposure—potentially resulting in millions of views—not necessarily because of widespread organic interest but because of an unusually powerful amplification network.

As one example, the report pointed to a July 27 video posted by Mamdani from his office in which he stated that he could not arrest Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in New York City while accusing Israel of killing thousands. According to the report, the video accumulated millions of views, with the suspected bot network allegedly playing a major role in expanding its audience.

The report also raises questions regarding whether the mayor’s communications operation was aware of the activity.

Because communications staff typically oversee official government social media accounts and coordinate public messaging, the analysts said the existence of a large network consistently amplifying City Hall content naturally prompts questions about whether the activity was known internally or connected in any way to official operations.

Nevertheless, the report explicitly states that the evidence collected so far does not establish that Mamdani, members of his staff, or his communications team instructed the accounts to operate or exercised control over them.

Instead, the analysts conclude that the available information points to significant signs of organized amplification surrounding official and affiliated accounts, while emphasizing that identifying the operators, funding sources, and command structure would require additional investigation.

The WZO announced that it intends to submit its findings to Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, the U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, with a request that the information be forwarded to federal law enforcement authorities for further review.

“There is a need for a thorough, professional, and independent investigation into these hate-amplification operations,” Yifat Ovadia-Luski, head of the WZO’s Department for Combating Antisemitism, told The Jerusalem Post.

“Today’s antisemitism begins online and then moves into the streets, and the spread of hatred on social media is a central driver of that incitement. This is a well-oiled influence machine designed to shape the international arena, and it is making Jews feel less safe in New York City and across the United States.

“We cannot stand by. We are calling for intervention by the US federal authorities.”

{Matzav.com}

President Donald Trump’s proposal to build a fleet of 15 nuclear-powered guided missile battleships could cost an estimated $275 billion through 2056, according to a new report from the Congressional Budget Office, which projects the lead vessel alone will carry a price tag of $23.4 billion.

The nonpartisan budget office estimated that the first ship, the USS Defiant, would require at least eight years to complete after its planned 2028 procurement. It also projected that each of the remaining 14 battleships would cost roughly $18 billion to construct.

Trump first unveiled the new class of warships in December and later directed that the vessels be redesigned to use nuclear propulsion instead of conventional engines.

When introducing the program, Trump described the planned fleet as being “the fastest, the biggest and by far, 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built,” adding that the ships would weigh more than 30,000 tons.

According to the CBO, switching the ships to nuclear power raises procurement costs by approximately 13% compared to a conventionally powered design. However, the agency noted that eliminating the need for fuel purchases could reduce operating expenses over the long term.

The report also warned that carrying out the Navy’s 2027 shipbuilding strategy would require a massive expansion of America’s shipbuilding capacity. It said shipyards would need to more than double their production of large surface combatants by 2035 to meet projected demand.

“The Navy does not currently plan to have Bath Iron Works, in Maine, or Ingalls Shipbuilding, in Mississippi, perform the final assembly of the battleship, even though those shipyards have built all of the Navy’s large surface combatants over the past 40 years,” the CBO said.

“During that time, no other shipyard has performed that work, although in recent years, Bath and Ingalls have outsourced small amounts of work to other facilities to speed construction in the DDG-51 destroyer program.”

The analysis was commissioned by Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee.

“While we continue to see too many Pentagon programs burdened by cost overruns, delays, and unrealistic promises that fail to meet reality, Congress cannot afford to commit to another massive military boondoggle that will only succeed in filling the coffers of the military-industrial complex,” Merkley said.

“I will work with my colleagues on the Appropriations Committee to reject moving forward with this wasteful project, and instead invest in programs that help families thrive.”

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, also criticized the proposal, arguing that Trump’s envisioned “Golden Fleet” is out of step with the future of modern warfare.

“That’s not the way warfare is going to be done,” Reed said, while noting that “some” have argued the ships could remain outside enemy kill zones by carrying long-range missiles.

{Matzav.com}

Family getting up: Monday (8/10/26)Morning

Mr` Ahron Subar
Son

Starting to sit in Monsey Sunday at 6:00

Mr Yonatan Subar
Son

Not sitting at main address

Mr. Reuben Subar
Son

Not Sitting at main address

There is encouraging news regarding the condition of Raizel bas Esther, the 19-year-old Monsey resident who was seriously injured in last week’s jeep rollover near Mitzpe Yericho in Eretz Yisroel.

Sources tell Monsey Scoop that she has been released from the hospital and continues to recover. While she still faces a lengthy recovery and is dealing with injuries sustained in the crash, she remains in Eretz Yisroel and is improving each day.

Raizel was among nine girls and young women injured when the jeep overturned during an off-road trip. She sustained serious injuries and was airlifted to a Jerusalem hospital, where she received treatment.

The family expresses heartfelt appreciation to everyone who has davened and continues to support them during this difficult time. The tzibur is asked to continue saying Tehillim for Raizel bas Esther for a complete and speedy refuah sheleimah.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

An Israeli man living in Germany has filed a lawsuit against a restaurant in Berlin, alleging he was discriminated against because of his Israeli background.

The incident took place in February at a restaurant in the city’s Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood. He ordered hummus and pronounced the dish’s name with an Israeli accent. He said that the waiter corrected his pronunciation, saying the word is pronounced differently in Arabic.

The waiter then told him it was a Palestinian restaurant, treated him rudely, and refused to continue serving him after learning he was from Israel, even indicating that he should leave the premises. When he asked whether he was being refused service because he was Israeli, the waiter replied that he associated his nationality with political support for Israel.

Following the incident, the Israeli contacted Ofek e.V., a counseling and support center for victims of antisemitic violence and discrimination. With the organization’s assistance, he filed a lawsuit in the Berlin Regional Court, alleging that the restaurant employee discriminated against him on the basis of his ethnic origin and subjected him to antisemitic discrimination.

According to the German Taz news outlet, the man first filed a complaint with the restaurant but says he received no response. He later demanded an apology from the owners, but claims that request also went unanswered.

Taz quoted the Israeli as saying that the experience of being asked to leave the restaurant because of his Hebrew accent and background was “extremely humiliating.”

“I believe food should bring people together and build bridges between them, so this hurt me especially,” he said.

Marina Chernivsky, executive director of Ofek, said the case is “an example of many incidents of discrimination” the organization has handled since October 7.

“It illustrates the growing social isolation and exclusion experienced by many Israelis and Jews in Germany since then,” she told Taz. “Antisemitism limits the equal participation of Jews in social life, through both open hostility and more subtle forms of discrimination.”

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

By Julia Parker – JBizNews Desk

LONDON — Indeed said artificial intelligence is creating a two-speed jobs market in the UK, with demand concentrating in experienced workers and roles directly tied to AI rather than lifting hiring evenly across the technology sector. The shift matters for employers, job seekers and investors because it points to widening skills gaps, higher pay pressure in specialist roles and weaker prospects for entry-level digital workers.

The jobs platform said its latest labour-market analysis showed AI-related hiring is becoming more selective as companies move from experimentation to implementation. Businesses are seeking workers able to deploy AI tools in commercial settings, manage data risk and improve productivity, while general technology roles are seeing less uniform demand.

“Demand is concentrating around experienced workers and roles directly connected to AI, rather than flowing evenly through the profession,” said Jack Kennedy, senior economist at Indeed.

The findings add to evidence that AI is reshaping hiring before it produces broad employment gains. For companies, the near-term effect is likely to be a reallocation of recruitment budgets toward machine learning, data engineering, AI product management and governance roles. That could raise labour costs in scarce-skill areas even as vacancies remain subdued elsewhere.

UK employers have been operating in a cooler labour market after higher interest rates, weaker growth and rising payroll costs curbed hiring. Data from the Office for National Statistics have shown vacancies falling from post-pandemic peaks, while wage growth has remained a key concern for the Bank of England as it assesses inflation pressures.

AI hiring may complicate that picture. Companies trying to automate customer service, software development, logistics and back-office processes still need senior staff to integrate systems and measure returns. That gives experienced candidates more bargaining power and leaves younger workers facing tougher competition for roles that once served as entry points into technology careers.

For business owners, the split creates an operational challenge. Firms that delay investment in AI skills risk falling behind competitors using automation to reduce costs or speed up decision-making. But those that hire aggressively may face high salaries and uncertainty over which roles will deliver measurable productivity gains.

Recruiters and training providers could benefit if employers turn to external hiring, certification and reskilling programmes to close capability gaps. At the same time, weaker demand for broader tech roles may weigh on staffing agencies exposed to lower-margin volume recruitment.

The shift is also relevant for investors watching enterprise software, outsourcing and recruitment companies. A labour market tilted toward AI specialists supports spending on tools and services that help companies deploy the technology, but it may also expose slower adoption among smaller firms with limited budgets.

Indeed’s analysis suggests AI is not producing a simple expansion in digital employment. Instead, hiring is becoming more concentrated around workers who can link the technology to revenue, efficiency and compliance.

That leaves policymakers and employers facing the same practical issue: how to broaden access to AI-related skills before the gap between senior specialists and the wider workforce becomes more costly.

JBizNews Desk | London

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

TORONTO (AP) — Toronto police announced the arrests Thursday of a 19-year-old man and a 15-year-old boy in the second shooting at the U.S. Consulate in five months, alleging the attack was part of a gun-for-hire network.

The latest shooting in July followed a March 10 attack on the diplomatic mission that also occurred before dawn. Police arrested two people in that case in June. No one was injured in either shooting.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police also opened a parallel investigation, treating the shooting as a national security incident.

Police said they believe the suspects were recruited through an encrypted messaging app and were offered money to open fire on the consulate.

“There has been significant public interest and speculation about who is behind these crimes,” Police Chief Myron Demkiw said. “That remains a key focus of our investigation.”

Police identified the adult suspect as 19-year-old Xen-Ul-Abdeen Syed, who faces multiple firearm, arson and stolen-property charges, as well as a charge of attacking the premises of an internationally protected person. A 15-year-old also was charged but cannot be identified under Canadian law.

Since the first shooting, police have maintained a visible presence outside the consulate. The July 27 shooting occurred despite a marked police cruiser stationed nearby.

Police said a white Honda Accord pulled alongside the consulate at about 4:46 a.m. and a single shot was fired, striking the front of the building. A brief police chase followed but police ceased the chase as the driver of the vehicle was traveling at an excessive speed.

Chief Supt. Joe Matthews said investigators believe shootings, homicides and arsons are increasingly being commissioned through online apps, with suspects offered varying amounts of money depending on the crime.

“In many circumstances we know they are not getting paid,” Matthews said.

Police also allege the two suspects were involved in setting fire to a vehicle in a community outside Toronto three days before the latest consulate shooting.

Toronto police in June said they believed multiple shootings, including the March incident, could be linked to “multilayered” gun-for-hire networks that have also targeted synagogues in the city.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir toured the Gaza Strip on Wednesday alongside senior Southern Command officers and said the IDF has significantly weakened Hamas and changed the security situation.

Zamir was joined by Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Yaniv Asor, 99th Division commander Brig. Gen. Elad Tzuri, Gaza Division commander Brig. Gen. Liron Batito, and additional commanders. During the visit, he received an operational assessment and spoke with division and brigade commanders operating in the area

“In the Gaza Strip, we are systematically striking Hamas, we have significantly weakened it, and we have changed the security situation,” Zamir said. “The IDF will continue to act proactively, remove threats, and, under all circumstances, provide forward defense for the communities and residents.”

Zamir stressed that the IDF would not allow another threat like the one Israel faced on October 7 to develop along its borders.

“We will not allow a threat to develop along our borders like the one we experienced on October 7,” he said.

Addressing the pursuit of the Nukhba terrorists and others who participated in the massacre, Zamir said, “The images from the communities, the Bibas family, the female observation soldiers, and all the victims of the October 7 massacre are before our eyes every day.”

“We will continue pursuing those responsible for the massacre, and we will not relent until we settle accounts with everyone who played a part in the massacre,” he added.

Zamir said the Gaza front is part of a broader multi-front campaign and that the IDF continues to operate with “a spirit of initiative, offensive action, and commitment to the mission.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

In a major breakthrough for Orthodox Jewish families across New York, the state has approved the first cholov Yisroel infant formula for purchase through the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, ending a long-standing challenge for low-income parents seeking formula that meets their kashrus standards. The change follows a three-year advocacy effort led by the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty (Met Council) in partnership with the Hochul administration.

The issue first came to Met Council’s attention in early 2023 when an Orthodox mother attending one of the organization’s events explained that although she qualified for WIC assistance, she was unable to purchase infant formula that met her family’s cholov Yisroel requirements. While New York’s WIC program offered kosher-certified formulas, none met the stricter cholov Yisroel standard observed by many Chareidi and other Orthodox families.

David Greenfield, Met Council’s CEO and executive director, said the problem represented a significant financial burden for struggling families.

“She just said, ‘Look, I have a problem,’” Greenfield recalled. “‘I qualify for WIC, but I can’t buy formula.’”

Greenfield noted that infant formula is one of the largest expenses facing new parents.

“If you ask anyone who has a baby, the two most expensive items are always formula and diapers,” Greenfield said. “That really was a tremendous pain point, and that’s why we decided to focus on that.”

Following discussions with Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office, Met Council worked closely with the New York State Department of Health to identify a cholov Yisroel formula that satisfied all federal nutritional requirements for inclusion in the WIC program. State officials approved the formula on Wednesday, and it is expected to be added to New York’s list of WIC-approved formulas later this month.

Greenfield described the approval as a seemingly modest regulatory change that will have a meaningful impact on thousands of families.

“It’s a small technical change, but it’s obviously going to make a very significant difference by opening this up to the lowest-income New Yorkers who struggle to make ends meet,” he said.

According to Greenfield, the change is expected to benefit tens of thousands of Orthodox families annually in communities including Borough Park, Williamsburg, Flatbush, Crown Heights, Far Rockaway, Monsey, and Kiryas Joel.

Rabbi Moshe Elefant, CEO of the Orthodox Union’s kosher division, welcomed the decision.

“The inclusion of a cholov Yisroel option for infant formula is an achievement that improves the lives of the most vulnerable New Yorkers,” Rabbi Elefant said.

“It’s also an important step in ensuring that the program delivers on its mandate to bring nutritious food to those in need.”

Greenfield explained that one of the biggest hurdles was helping state officials understand that kosher certification alone did not address the needs of families who specifically require cholov Yisroel products.

“If you’re the state department of health, it’s a little bit confusing, because you’re like, ‘Well, we’re already providing kosher,’” he said. “It’s understanding that there are different levels of kosher.”

He added that Met Council emphasized the cultural and religious importance of accommodating those standards.

“The emphasis we really emphasize is that it’s as much a cultural issue as it is a religious issue,” Greenfield said. “One of the things that we try to educate government officials on is that kosher provision has standards as well. There’s a difference between a plain K versus a Triangle K versus an OK.”

“Once they understood it, they embraced this concept and the idea that this is something that is doable,” he added.

An earlier obstacle involved federal nutrition rules. Previously available cholov Yisroel formulas fell just 0.1 milligrams short of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s minimum iron requirement. Rather than seek an exemption, Met Council eventually identified a British-manufactured cholov Yisroel formula that fully met the federal standards, allowing it to qualify for approval.

Greenfield praised Gov. Hochul for her administration’s willingness to work with the Jewish community to resolve the issue.

“I’ve worked with, I don’t know, the last half-dozen governors in New York state,” he said. “I’ve never found a governor who is more personally invested in trying to help her Jewish constituents than Gov. Kathy Hochul.”

He added, “I can’t think of a single Jewish issue that we’ve come to the governor with where she hasn’t worked very hard to try to accommodate the concerns of the community.”

Calling the approval an example of behind-the-scenes advocacy making a tangible difference, Greenfield said the accomplishment may not generate major headlines but will ease a significant burden for many families.

“This isn’t glamorous. It’s not going to get us into Time magazine or the New York Times,” he said. “But this is the kind of work that can only be done with a dedicated team of people who are really looking at the nuances of rules and regulations.”

JNS contributed to this report.

Earlier today, TLS reported on a large police presence in Westgate.

Authorities say the incident involved an individual experiencing a medical crisis who barricaded himself inside a residence. The Lakewood Police Department’s Special Response Team (SRT) responded to assist patrol officers already on scene.

The situation was resolved peacefully and without injury. Police thanked Hatzolah and Chaveirim for their assistance in helping bring the incident to a safe conclusion.

Officials emphasized that there was never any danger to the public.

The shekel’s rise to levels not seen in decades was interpreted by the markets as a vote of confidence in the Israeli economy. Yet in the economy’s strongest sector, that same sign of strength sounds more like an alarm bell.

What appears from the outside to be a badge of economic excellence looks from within like a sharp cut in revenue: the dollars keep coming in, but once converted into shekels, they are worth far less.

Over the course of a year, the dollar lost more than 20 percent of its value against the shekel, falling in June to around NIS 2.8, the lowest exchange rate since 1993. For the general public, a strong shekel makes flights, cars and imported goods cheaper.

For a technology company, however, the calculation works in reverse. Israeli high-tech companies sell primarily outside Israel, and their revenues are denominated in dollars.

Investments in Israeli start-ups are also made in the US currency, while most of their expenses are paid in shekels.

A company that raised $100 million could, a year ago, use that money to cover salaries and expenses of up to NIS 360 million. Today, it is left with only NIS 300 million.

Not a single customer has been lost, and no investor has withdrawn, yet almost one-fifth of the company’s shekel-denominated income has disappeared.

Wix illustrates the growing pressure

Consider Wix, a symbol of Israeli success. For years, the company sold businesses and entrepreneurs the ability to build a website without any programming knowledge.

It was part of a revolution that made website development simpler, more accessible and less expensive, and also reduced, to some extent, the need for professional website developers.

Now a new, faster and more powerful technology has arrived, one that has seemingly made Wix itself redundant. Artificial intelligence tools can build, write, design and improve digital products within minutes.

Wix must reinvent itself in the age of artificial intelligence. But when such a structural transformation is accompanied by a roughly 20 percent cut in shekel-denominated revenue caused solely by the exchange rate, the consequences are swift.

The company announced that it would dismiss 1,000 employees, about 20 percent of its workforce. The main reason?

“A very significant share of expenses is denominated in shekels, while the vast majority of revenues are denominated in dollars.”

This is not a marginal problem. High tech, as the familiar saying goes, is the engine of the Israeli economy. It accounts for nearly 20 percent of Israel’s GDP and more than 50 percent of its exports.

Because Israeli technology companies operate in a global market, they cannot simply raise their prices. They must cut costs, dismiss employees or relocate jobs abroad.

A series of companies have already announced cutbacks and layoffs.

AI is changing both the products the industry creates and the way its workforce is structured, while the strong shekel is making Israeli employees even more expensive.

At an exchange rate of NIS 2.8 to the dollar, an Israeli engineer earns more than an engineer in Silicon Valley.

Government moves to support start-ups

Once the government understood the scale of the problem, the Finance Ministry convened emergency meetings and rapidly approved an assistance package for the technology sector, focused on start-ups.

The package is worth approximately NIS 1.6 billion, of which around NIS 1 billion is intended to provide rapid support to start-ups. The grants are aimed at companies whose runway has shortened to one year or less and are intended to help extend it by approximately six months.

This is not an attempt to save every technology company or compensate large corporations for currency risks they are capable of hedging.

The objective is to prevent a temporary shock from wiping out young companies with promising technology just before they reach the market.

In the long term, Israel will have to adjust to a stronger shekel. Since June, amid heightened security tensions, the dollar has returned to above NIS 3, although it remains roughly 15 percent below its level a year ago.

But a significant easing of security tensions, progress in relations with Iran or normalization with Saudi Arabia could restore confidence and trigger another wave of investment in Israel.

As recent years have shown, conditions in the Middle East can change in an instant.

The government should not fight a trend that reflects a strong economy. But it is trying to make the transition smoother and prevent companies from making decisions in a state of panic.

Even a powerful locomotive can be derailed when the tracks change too quickly.

The writer is an economic commentator and public policy researcher.

This post was originally published on here.

U.S.- and Israeli-linked vessels would be barred from transiting the Strait of Hormuz under a draft proposal reported by Iran’s state-affiliated Fars News Agency, sending oil prices sharply higher as traders concluded that the Trump administration’s effort to restore unrestricted commercial shipping may face a significant new obstacle.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude jumped more than 3% to around $78 a barrel, while Brent crude climbed nearly 4% above $82 after the proposal became public, reversing three consecutive sessions of declines fueled by optimism that Washington was nearing a breakthrough to restore commercial navigation through the world’s most important energy chokepoint.

The proposal immediately shifted attention from whether Hormuz would reopen to who would actually be allowed to use it.

The proposal, which remains under review and has not been adopted, would prohibit U.S.-flagged vessels from using the Strait of Hormuz. It would also block Israeli ships and commercial cargo linked to Israeli businesses. Beyond those restrictions, ships from countries Iran considers responsible for wartime damage could be denied passage unless compensation is paid, with penalties reportedly reaching as much as 20% of a violating vessel’s cargo value.

Unlike the separate Iran-Oman discussions over shipping procedures and traffic management, this proposal focuses on eligibility—who would actually be permitted to transit the waterway. Together, the two tracks raise the possibility that commercial shipping could resume without restoring equal access for American and Israeli interests.

That creates a direct collision with Washington’s publicly stated objective.

Throughout the week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said negotiations aimed at restoring commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz were progressing and suggested an agreement could come within days. President Donald Trump likewise indicated an announcement could be imminent as the administration sought to restore freedom of navigation after months of disruption.

Iran’s proposal presents a fundamentally different framework.

Rather than restoring unrestricted commercial access, the draft would allow Iran to determine which countries and companies may use one of the world’s busiest maritime corridors. If implemented in its current form, American and Israeli shipping interests would remain excluded even if commercial traffic resumes for others.

A framework that restores shipping while excluding U.S.-flagged vessels would fall well short of the free-passage objective Washington has publicly promoted and would likely become one of the central issues in any broader understanding between the United States and Iran.

For businesses, the consequences extend far beyond geopolitics.

The Strait of Hormuz normally carries roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas exports. American importers could increasingly depend on third-country carriers to move cargo through the Gulf, raising freight costs, insurance premiums and delivery times. Israeli-linked cargo would continue carrying elevated geopolitical and security risks, costs that shipping companies and insurers would likely pass through global supply chains.

Businesses importing energy, chemicals, manufactured goods and consumer products could ultimately see higher transportation expenses, with part of those costs eventually reaching consumers through higher prices.

Financial markets wasted little time reacting.

After three sessions of falling oil prices on expectations that a shipping agreement was close, traders quickly reversed course following reports of the Iranian proposal. The sharp rebound reflected growing skepticism that any eventual arrangement would restore unrestricted access for all commercial shipping.

The proposal also underscores the continuing gap between Washington’s expectations and Tehran’s public messaging. While U.S. officials have spoken about restoring commercial navigation, Iranian officials continue to maintain that shipping arrangements are being negotiated with Oman rather than directly with the United States. The latest proposal reinforces Tehran’s position that, even if commercial traffic resumes, it intends to retain broad authority over which nations ultimately benefit.

The central question is no longer whether Hormuz reopens—but whether it reopens equally for everyone.

The proposal remains under review and could still be amended, delayed or rejected before becoming law.

For businesses, investors and consumers, Thursday’s market reaction served as a reminder that oil prices—and ultimately transportation and consumer costs—remain highly sensitive not simply to whether a Hormuz agreement is reached, but to whether that agreement delivers the unrestricted freedom of navigation the Trump administration has been seeking.

JBizNews Desk | Wall Street

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

A woman who says she suffered a traumatic brain injury after being struck by a flying bat during a New York Yankees game has filed a $10 million lawsuit, alleging inadequate protective netting at Yankee Stadium left her exposed to a preventable hazard.

Stephanie Duluc, 37, chief of staff at Bronx-based SOMOS Community Care, was seated in the fourth row directly behind home plate during the Yankees’ June 2 game against the Cleveland Guardians when Guardians infielder Jose Ramirez lost control of his bat during a swing, sending it into the stands, according to the lawsuit.

WATCH:

Duluc was attending the game using season tickets owned by her employer.

According to the complaint, the seats are among the stadium’s most expensive and are located in an area where protective netting is legally required because of the heightened risk posed by foul balls and flying bats.

“It is the one location where the law has long required a stadium operator to provide adequate protective screening,” the lawsuit states.

The complaint alleges that although Ramirez’s bat sailed over the netting, the protective screen in that section was “significantly lower” than those in neighboring areas, leaving what the lawsuit describes as an “unprotected opening.”

According to the filing, the bat struck Duluc “with such force that it knocked her from her seat and violently threw her to the ground, causing her to sustain severe and permanent injuries.”

The frightening incident was captured during the live YES Network broadcast, with announcers reacting as the bat flew into the crowd.

“Bat goes one way, ball goes another,” Yankees play-by-play announcer Michael Kay said. “Bat goes into the stands — over the screen too.”

“There’s a woman who got hit; she’s on her feet now,” he added as cameras showed Duluc holding her head.

Duluc alleges the impact left her with a traumatic brain injury, a concussion, chronic sensitivity to light, and lasting injuries to her neck and hands, rendering her completely “unable to return to her professional duties.”

Despite those claims, Duluc appeared on a PIX11 television program in late July—less than two weeks before filing the lawsuit—where she discussed a recent event sponsored by SOMOS Community Care at Fordham University under studio lighting.

Her attorney, Jon L. Norinsberg, rejected suggestions that the appearance conflicted with the injuries described in the lawsuit.

“Ms. Duluc continues to suffer significant residual deficits from her traumatic brain injury, including persistent headaches, sensitivity to light, balance issues, and other cognitive impairments,” Norinsberg said.

“A brief television appearance does not mean she has recovered or is capable of performing her professional duties on a sustained basis,” he added.

The Yankees declined to comment on the lawsuit.

The case is expected to center on the long-standing legal doctrine known as the “Baseball Rule,” which generally shields teams and stadium owners from liability for injuries caused by foul balls, flying bats, and similar game-related risks.

However, the doctrine includes an important exception requiring stadium operators to provide adequate protective screening in the areas considered most dangerous—particularly behind home plate, where Duluc was seated. Whether she can prove the netting was inadequate may ultimately determine the outcome of the case.

The lawsuit comes years after several high-profile stadium incidents—including a fan seriously injured by a shattered bat at Fenway Park in 2015 and a toddler whose skull was fractured by a 105-mph foul ball at Yankee Stadium in 2017—prompted Major League Baseball teams to significantly expand protective netting throughout their ballparks.

Israeli police arrested a 25-year-old East Jerusalem resident on Thursday after he allegedly threatened to kill MK Tzvi Succot and sent him photos of weapons and ammunition.

According to police, the suspect allegedly sent Succot a Facebook message stating that he was armed and would kill the lawmaker when he saw him. Police opened an investigation, questioned the suspect, and took a statement from Succot.

Following the threats, the Knesset and Israel Police conducted a security assessment and raised Succot’s threat level to Level 4, increasing his security protection.

Succot’s office said the threats followed a series of visits he made to schools in the Arab sector and his campaign against protection rackets and illegal weapons. The office said multiple threatening messages, including photos of firearms, were received.

Succot praised police for the swift arrest, saying the threats would not deter him from continuing his public mission to strengthen governance and combat violent crime and illegal weapons.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

(AP) – Sometimes inventions save countless lives. Sometimes they end just as many. Sometimes, they do both.

The United States dropped the first atomic bomb ever used in warfare on Aug. 6, 1945. The olive-green steel cylinder called “Little Boy” exploded above Hiroshima, Japan, killing tens of thousands of people, sickening many more and reshaping global politics forever.

Three days later, the U.S. did it again. The second bomb, named “Fat Man,” went off over Nagasaki where another 70,000 people died and tens of thousands more were wounded.

The airplane, the polio vaccine, the personal computer and other American inventions moved the world into a mostly better future. Though the atomic bomb hastened Japan’s surrender and the end of World War II, it ushered in world annihilation fears and decades of arms races.

Witnesses to a new nuclear era
Traveling to his family home in the days after the Hiroshima bombing, United Press International reporter Leslie Nakashima found his mother safe and his hometown of 300,000 people destroyed. In an Aug. 27 report, he described the bomb’s “stupendous destructive power.”

In Nagasaki about a mile (1.8 kilometers) from the epicenter, Sumiteru Taniguchi was a 16-year-old delivering mail when the explosion threw him from his bicycle. It left him with a web of wounds on his back and three damaged ribs that painfully pressed into his lungs until he died in 2017.

On his way home from discussing Germany’s defeat, President Harry S. Truman declared that “what has been done is the greatest achievement of organized science in history.” In America, jubilant crowds celebrated the war’s end.

The bombs and threats that followed
The Soviet Union went on to explode its own bomb in 1949, followed by British, French, Chinese, Indian, Pakistani and North Korean programs. In the Middle East, nuclear capabilities remain contentious.

Some analysts believe the risk of nuclear destruction has helped quash armed conflicts. But many point to the new and unknown risks created by the violent competition over becoming the next nuclear power.

Artificial intelligence has increased nations’ abilities to defend against terrorism, cyberattacks and drones. The biggest threat to modern civilization is a nuclear weapon in the hands of irresponsible populists, former British diplomat Tim Willasey-Wilsey wrote in a recent essay.

“The greatest danger of a massive global shock would come from the use of a nuclear weapon in anger for the first time since 1945,” he wrote. “A nuclear war will not be about an inability to join dots but another massive failure of human imagination.”

NEW YORK (AP) — Buying a condominium with a mortgage may become more difficult under new lending standards that took effect this week for loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

CNBC reports the the new policies require lenders to conduct more comprehensive reviews of many condominium associations, including their finances, reserve funding, insurance coverage and building maintenance, before mortgages can qualify for purchase by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

The changes are intended to identify buildings with financial or structural concerns and reduce the risk of unexpected special assessments or sharply higher association fees for homeowners.

Industry groups and mortgage professionals, however, told CNBC the new standards could delay loan approvals and, in some cases, result in mortgage denials if condominium projects fail to meet underwriting requirements. Beginning Aug. 3, many transactions that previously qualified for a streamlined review now require a full evaluation of the association’s financial health and the condition of the building.
The Community Associations Institute estimates roughly 40% of condominium purchases involving a mortgage had been processed under the limited review process that has now been eliminated, potentially lengthening closing times.

The stricter standards are part of broader efforts to strengthen condominium oversight following the 2021 collapse of the Champlain Towers South building in Surfside, Florida, which killed 98 people and prompted changes to condo financing and inspection requirements nationwide.

Beginning next year, most condominium associations seeking financing through Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac also will generally be required to reserve at least 15% of their annual budgets for major repairs, up from the current 10% requirement.

Federal aviation officials have opened an investigation into an air traffic incident involving Marine One after commercial air traffic near Washington, D.C., reportedly was not suspended before President Donald Trump’s helicopter departed the White House on Tuesday. The White House stressed that the President was never in danger during the event.

Responding to the reports, White House spokesman Kush Desai emphasized the professionalism of the presidential flight crew, stating, “Marine One flights are piloted by some of the best aviators in the world, and at no point was the president in harm’s way.”

The incident took place shortly after 2:30 p.m. EDT as President Trump boarded Marine One for the flight to Joint Base Andrews, where he was scheduled to transfer to Air Force One for a trip to California.

According to published reports, the presidential helicopter came within roughly one mile of an Envoy Air regional aircraft that had just departed Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport en route to Pensacola, Florida.

The Federal Aviation Administration acknowledged that there was a “momentary loss of separation” between the two aircraft but emphasized that the situation was not considered a dangerous near-collision.

“The air traffic controller was in contact with both the commercial pilot and Marine One pilot during the loss of separation. As the White House has said, the president was never in danger,” an FAA spokesperson said.

FAA guidelines generally call for aircraft to maintain a minimum of 1.5 miles of horizontal separation and 500 feet of vertical separation.

Officials are now reviewing whether those required safety margins were maintained throughout the flight. Both aircraft ultimately continued on their respective routes and landed safely without incident.

Air traffic control recordings indicate that the Marine One crew spotted the departing passenger aircraft, briefly held their departure, and then safely resumed the flight to Joint Base Andrews.

The FAA said investigators are examining why commercial departures were not temporarily halted before Marine One took off and are reviewing communications between controllers and the presidential helicopter crew.

“We are continuing to review the incident and will implement any appropriate corrective actions based on our findings,” the FAA spokesperson said.

The National Transportation Safety Board has also launched its own investigation into the occurrence.

The latest review comes as federal aviation authorities continue closely scrutinizing flight operations around Reagan National Airport following the January 2025 midair collision involving an Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet.

{Matzav.com}

Recent statements by Democrats party chairman, Yair Golan, that he’ll cut government funding to the Bnei Dovid mechina in Eli have created a furor in Israel, even among the anti-Netanyahu bloc.

It should be noted that 34 former talmidim of the mechina in Eli have lost their lives on the battlefield since the October 7 massacre.

Earlier this week, Channel 13 political correspondent Moriah Asraf slammed Golan’s statements, saying that they are not only offensive but are also harmful to the anti-Netanyahu bloc.

Yisrael Beiteinu chairman Avigdor Liberman joined in the criticism, saying that Golan should “just be quiet. That would be his greatest contribution to victory.”

Now, Zionist Home chairman Chili Tropper, who founded the Zionist Home-Reservists party with Yoaz Hendel, has also joined the criticism, and set a clear red line for his potential coalition partners.

Speaking to Army Radio, Tropper said his party would not join a government that embraces Golan’s positions regarding the Eli mechina or the future of the yishuvim.

“I will not be part of a government that closes the Eli pre-military academy or divides Eretz Yisrael,” Tropper said. “If they align themselves with those basic principles, then perhaps we can sit with them. If not, then we won’t.”

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman is urging those attending this year’s 25th anniversary commemoration of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to peacefully turn their backs on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani if he appears at the event, arguing that the mayor should not take part because of his position on anti-Israel rhetoric.

Speaking at a news conference in Albany on Wednesday, the Republican candidate for governor compared the solemn memorial to a funeral service.

“I would equate this to a wake. You don’t go to a wake if you’re not welcome,” Blakeman told reporters.

“I think it’s completely appropriate if family members ask him not to come, but if he does come I think there’s a respectful and peaceful way to protest that and I would suggest that people turn their back on the mayor,” he said.

Blakeman, whose nephew was killed in the South Tower during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, said he intends to participate in a peaceful protest if Mamdani attends the annual remembrance ceremony.

Last week, Mamdani announced that he plans to be present at this year’s observance despite an expanding petition from some relatives of 9/11 victims calling for him to stay away.

“I will proudly honor the families, the survivors, the first responders forever impacted by that horrific terror attack by standing alongside them at this year’s 9/11 commemoration,” Mamdani said.

Blakeman argued that Mamdani’s refusal to denounce slogans such as “globalize the intifada” disqualifies him from participating in the memorial.

“He’s not welcome there because he has yet to say anything in opposition to the global intifada. As a matter of fact, it seems like he supports that phrase, which is part of the reason why we had the tragedy we had on 9/11,” Blakeman said.

Also appearing in Albany on Wednesday was former New York Gov. George Pataki, who was serving as governor during the Sept. 11 attacks, for the opening of the George E. Pataki Center for Leadership and Conversation.

When asked whether Mamdani should attend the memorial, Pataki acknowledged he had concerns about the mayor’s previous remarks but stopped short of saying he should be excluded.

“It’s my nature to be inclusive, and that is my instinct, but Sept. 11 is different. So, I may have comments on that,” Pataki said after saying he had “grave concerns” about Mamdani’s past comments.

{Matzav.com}

BERKELEY (VINnews) – A California jury has convicted David William Denton of arson and vandalism after prosecutors said he set fire to a mezuzah outside Berkeley Hillel during a Shabbat gathering earlier this year.

The 45-year-old was found guilty of using a lighter to ignite the mezuzah affixed to the entrance of the Jewish student center in February while students were inside observing Shabbat. A security guard witnessed the incident, authorities said.

Following the verdict, a judge found the crime was motivated by antisemitic bias and ruled Denton had prior convictions and was on probation or parole at the time of the offense, findings that could increase his sentence.

Prosecutors said Denton faces up to three years in state prison and will be required to register as an arson offender. Sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 3.

The damaged mezuzah was replaced the following day, and activities at Berkeley Hillel continued without interruption.

Denton was previously accused in a separate 2021 case involving vandalism at Jewish institutions in Berkeley, including damage to mezuzahs at multiple locations. A separate robbery charge filed against him in connection with an unrelated incident earlier this year was later dismissed.

WASHINGTON (AP) — When Joe Shearer was a Marine fighting in Iraq, a blast from an enemy mortar round knocked him down and made him vomit. He got up and kept going despite a searing headache.

When a roadside bomb struck his Humvee convoy months later, the explosion’s shock wave swept through his body before headaches and sleeplessness set in for days.

“As long as you got back up and could go back on patrol, that’s kind of what you did,” he said.

Shearer, 40, of Colorado Springs, Colorado, links both events in 2005 to traumatic brain injuries, which were only recently diagnosed. He’s still plagued with symptoms ranging from dizziness and migraines to forgetting daily tasks and responsibilities to his wife and children.

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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org.

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The lasting effects of traumatic brain injuries are raising fresh concerns about the toll of the Iran war on American troops who are suffering those wounds during a conflict without a clear end. Nearly 700 U.S. service members have been wounded by drone and missile attacks on bases in the Middle East and other fighting. Most have experienced traumatic brain injuries and returned to duty, according to public statements from military officials.

The Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, last month called the vast majority of injuries over a two-week period “minor concussions.”

Doctors can’t predict who may have lasting effects from a TBI
Concussions often are termed “mild” TBIs, and many people recover within weeks. But sometimes those with seemingly mild initial symptoms go on to have problems persisting for months or years, such as headaches, dizziness or difficulties with memory or attention that’s sometimes called “brain fog.”

Doctors have no way to predict who will suffer lasting problems, a vexing enough question that there’s medical debate over whether to retire the term “mild TBI.” Repeated blows are known to increase the chances of lasting problems, including a degenerative brain disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. It has gained attention for links to deaths in the National Football League and other sports.

It’s imperative that people recover from a concussion before doing activities that put them at increased risk of another, said Dr. David Okonkwo, a University of Pittsburgh brain trauma specialist.

Doctors also are still learning how explosive blasts injure the brain versus a physical blow.

“The blast wave itself can be injurious,” said Dr. James Kelly, an emeritus professor of neurology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and chief medical scientist at the Invisible Wounds Foundation, which is focused on military brain injuries. “It’s a different cellular injury. Blast is a different thing than a blunt injury to the head.”

Troops have been facing a new type of warfare with Iran in which drones may explode closer to their heads, as opposed to the ground-level roadside bombs and improvised explosives that were more common in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Democratic lawmakers are calling for an investigation into the care that wounded troops received following an Iranian drone strike in Kuwait that killed six U.S. soldiers early in the war. Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin pressed the military in a letter on Wednesday to release the findings of its investigation into the March 1 attack.

“I spoke directly with Wisconsinites who sustained traumatic brain injuries from (President Donald) Trump’s war in Iran and went weeks without so much as a screening, let alone specialized care, for their injuries,” Baldwin said in a statement.

Defense Health Agency spokesman Peter Graves said in an email that “it is policy that service members are screened for TBI.”

Experts say the military has made strides in screening and treating TBIs, a signature injury in Afghanistan and Iraq. More than 500,000 service members were diagnosed between 2000 and 2025, with 82% of cases considered mild and not all of them related to combat. But advocates say the injuries could still be undercounted because symptoms often overlap with post-traumatic stress disorder and other conditions.

A TBI diagnosis can emerge years later
Neither of the two blasts Shearer experienced in Iraq produced obvious injuries, and medics prioritized Marines who were more badly hurt.

“You don’t want to be the guy who goes to sick call or says, ‘Oh, I’m hurt,’ because you’re away from your team,” Shearer said. “There’s this culture of you don’t want to be seen as lesser or weak, so you hide injuries inherently.”

When he came home at age 19, he denied he had PTSD and didn’t know what a TBI was. Plagued by nightmares, sleeplessness and headaches, he initially turned to drugs to self-medicate and considered suicide.

Shearer eventually got help for PTSD, but it took years for him to consider that he suffered traumatic brain injuries. He was working for the Wounded Warrior Project and screening fellow vets for TBIs when he realized he checked many of the same boxes.

He’s since been diagnosed and received treatment. But challenges remain, including vertigo and light sensitivity. He also forgets important conversations with his family.

“I know that some of that stuff is stereotypical, but for me, it’s got a different ring to it,” Shearer said. “There will be no memory of the conversation happening.”

The brain can adapt with treatments and therapies
Memory loss is something Army veteran Frank Sonntag also experienced following a TBI from a mortar blast in Iraq in 2004.

He was in his 50s and training reservists when he felt a blast of wind against his ear from an explosion 70 feet (21 meters) away. He didn’t know he was hurt and didn’t seek treatment for two years, ignoring intensifying headaches and brain fog.

It got to the point where it took 30 minutes to write an email, while colleagues told him he spoke one word every 10 seconds. He considered suicide and was diagnosed only after he got lost driving home. Neurologists prescribed medication for his migraines, among other treatments.

“Speech therapy was one of the greatest things I had,” added Sonntag, 75, of Queen Creek, Arizona. “They taught me how to practice the words I was speaking and how to put sentences together again.”

Kelly Parker, director of independent services at the Wounded Warrior Project, said it’s hard to predict an injury’s trajectory.

“If you’ve seen one TBI, you’ve seen one TBI,” she said.

Screening, early treatment and support can be crucial to returning to a more normal life. Physical, speech and art therapies can lead to improvements, she said.

“There’s still so much we don’t know about the brain, but one thing that we do know is it can heal itself,” Parker said. “We know that new neural pathways can be created, and we absolutely believe that the brain can adapt. We’ve seen it happen.”

Army veteran Spencer Milo said some people struggle to understand why he’s still dealing with migraines, seizures and forgetfulness after so many years out of uniform.

His first TBI occurred in Iraq in 2008, when his Humvee smashed into a wall to evade fire. His second came from the blast of a suicide bomber in Afghanistan in 2011.

“I’ve had fellow service members that were even with me on those days, and they’re like, ‘Dude, why can’t you just kick it?’” said Milo, 41, of Parker, Colorado. “I really wish it was that simple. It’s tough because when you can’t see something, it’s hard to believe that it’s really there.”

Two Israeli defense companies, including Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, have been removed from a major security project at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport after Italy’s highest administrative court ruled that an Italian company should instead take over the contract for the airport’s counter-drone system, the Jerusalem Post reports.

According to the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero, Italy’s Council of State ordered Aeroporti di Roma (ADR), which operates the airport, to replace the Israeli consortium with the Italian electronic warfare company ELT (Elettronica S.p.A.). The decision removes Israeli companies Altintech and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems from one of Italy’s most significant civilian infrastructure security projects.

The ruling reverses a May 2024 decision by the Regional Administrative Court of Lazio, which had upheld the original award of the contract to the Israeli consortium. ADR has been given 60 days to complete a new agreement with ELT.

In addition to overturning the earlier ruling, the court directed that the case be referred to the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office to determine whether the procurement process warrants a criminal investigation.

At the heart of the dispute was the legal classification of the radar system installed at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport.

Experts from Italy’s Defense Ministry concluded that the radar should be considered military equipment based on its technical capabilities, its classification under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, and its inclusion in Italy’s national registry of military equipment. According to the court, the required authorizations for importing and operating military equipment had not been obtained.

ADR disputed that assessment, maintaining that the radar is a dual-use system that has already been deployed at other European airports and for securing major public events.

The airport operator said it will comply with the court’s decision while ensuring that security operations continue without interruption, emphasizing that counter-drone protection at Fiumicino Airport will remain fully operational throughout the transition.

For more than 50 years, Project SEED has been transforming Jewish communities across North America by bringing the beauty, warmth, and sweetness of Torah to thousands of Jewish families. Each summer, hundreds of yeshiva bochurim, seminary students, kollel couples, and educators travel to 63 communities across the United States and beyond, inspiring adults and children alike through Torah learning, day camps, recreational programs, and meaningful personal relationships.

Beyond its impact on the communities it serves, Project SEED has also become one of Torah Umesorah’s greatest incubators for future Torah leadership. Generations of Project SEED alumni have gone on to become rabbanim, roshei kollelim, principals, mechanchim, mechanchos, and community leaders, often pointing to their summers in SEED as the first time they experienced the profound privilege and lifelong fulfillment of inspiring another Yiddishe neshamah. In this way, Project SEED has not only planted seeds of Torah in communities across North America—it has also planted the seeds of the next generation of Torah educators and builders.

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While the summer program is the cornerstone of Project SEED’s outreach, its mission does not end when Bein Hazemanim is over.

This week, Project SEED launched a special two-day Chizuk Tour designed to strengthen and encourage communities that have been impacted by decades of Project SEED programming. The unique initiative brings together accomplished Bnei Torah—many of them Project SEED alumni themselves—who are returning to the very communities where they once spent summers teaching and inspiring.

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The goal is to demonstrate that Torah growth continues long after the summer ends. Community members not only reconnect with yeshiva bochurim during the summer months, but now also have the opportunity to meet successful baalei batim who have built lives centered around Torah while balancing careers, families, and community leadership.

The first stop on the tour is Jacksonville, Florida, where the local Torah community continues to experience remarkable growth. The city recently welcomed four additional yungerlite to its kollel, further strengthening its expanding network of Torah learning and communal life.

Participants on the Chizuk Tour include Harav Shalom Kamenetsky, shlit”a, whose divrei chizuk are expected to inspire audiences throughout the trip, together with renowned singer Joey Newcomb, whose uplifting kumzitz and music help create an atmosphere of warmth, achdus, and inspiration.

Following Jacksonville, the tour will continue to Miami, Houston, and Columbus, bringing Torah inspiration and encouragement to each community along the way.

Visit Tuprojectseed.org for additional photos and videos.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

NEW YORK (AP) — Dr. Anthony Fauci is sitting before Congress, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is on TV debating COVID lockdowns and Americans can’t agree on what science to trust.

If you squint, you might think it’s 2020 again.

Six years after COVID-19 thrust the world into the fear and uncertainty of a global pandemic, Republicans in power aren’t leaving it in the past. Instead, they’ve recently returned its familiar political arguments to center stage for new scrutiny, demanding accountability for the scientists and media figures whom they feel deceived and mistreated Americans years ago.

The efforts ramped up last week, when a Republican-led Senate committee chaired by Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul subpoenaed the now-retired, 85-year-old Fauci to testify about his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The former National Institutes of Health immunologist repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment, after accusing the lawmakers of trying to coerce him to perjure himself to justify criminal charges. In response to his choice, on Thursday, the committee passed a vote to hold Fauci in contempt, a stunning move that could motivate the Justice Department to initiate an investigation.

Separately, Kennedy, a politically independent former anti-vaccine activist who now serves as the Republican President Donald Trump’s health secretary, spent part of his weekend in a combative live debate with CNN host Dana Bash about how the pandemic was managed and the media’s role in it.

Political scientists and historians say the focus on COVID grievances half a decade after the virus’ peak demonstrates how some wounds it opened have never been closed. Democrats, meanwhile, have slammed the federal government’s blaming of Fauci as a performative distraction that’s not based in facts.

While both Paul and Kennedy have spent years airing their frustrations about COVID, the Republican takeover of Congress and the White House last year created a new platform for them to steer how America remembers the pandemic, and who is held responsible for it, according to Matt Dallek, a political scientist at George Washington University.

It’s also allowed them to use the administration’s resources to surface new information.

“The response to COVID has become a touchstone for Trump’s Republican Party,” Dallek said. “They’re using their power now to argue they were right all along.”

Pandemic grievances have simmered for years
When the coronavirus began spreading widely in 2020, under Trump’s first administration, groups of Americans revolted against requirements imposed by local authorities and businesses telling people to wear masks and stay at home to control the spread of the virus.

When a vaccine became available, those sentiments were supercharged. Figures like Kennedy, then a leader of the anti-vaccine movement, accused the federal government of trampling on personal liberties by supporting vaccine mandates and social media takedowns of dissenting ideas.

While Trump has long expressed pride in his first-term Operation Warp Speed effort to disseminate COVID-19 vaccines quickly, saving millions of lives, his second administration’s approach to the vaccines has taken a different tone.

Under Kennedy’s leadership, U.S. regulators have limited the availability of COVID-19 vaccines for Americans. Kennedy on CNN on Sunday questioned whether the COVID-19 vaccine protected children, even as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says on its website that they “help keep children from getting really sick from COVID-19.”

Frances Lee, a Princeton University political scientist, said debates over COVID-19’s origins and the government’s handling of it have erupted on the fringes for years. Now that some of the leaders of those debates are in power, they’re hashing it out on the national stage — something she said needed to happen eventually.

“There are aggrieved parties, people who have a sense that they were done wrong during the pandemic and that there’s never been an accounting for that,” Lee said. “Most people don’t want to think about this topic, but nevertheless there are constituencies – so Congress is speaking to those constituencies.”

Lee said Kennedy’s decision to surface numerous diary entries that Fauci had made on a government computer – and Paul’s decision to publicize them last week – created an opening for “the first real showdown” in years around the pandemic’s handling.

While some of the entries – including Fauci’s uncertainty in the pandemic’s earliest days about how best to curb the virus – already were reflected in a 2024 memoir and in interviews at the time, they have nonetheless drawn attention from people who blame Fauci for policies they believe infringed on their rights as hundreds of thousands of people were dying.

Also discussed at Fauci’s hearing last week was whether NIH-funded research in China may have played a role in how the pandemic started. During the hearing, Trump’s White House also posted on social media to direct attention to a federal website that used to feature information on COVID vaccines, testing and treatment that has been transformed into a page supporting the theory that the pandemic originated with a lab leak.

Many scientists believe the virus most likely emerged in nature and jumped from animals to people, coming to light when it spread at a wildlife market in the Chinese city of Wuhan. There’s no new scientific evidence supporting the theory that the virus might instead have leaked from a laboratory, a theory Paul champions. A GOP-led subcommittee that studied the question in 2024 found no evidence linking Fauci to wrongdoing.

Fauci has long said publicly that he was open to both theories but that there’s more evidence supporting COVID-19’s natural origins.

Many dismiss the idea that Republicans’ COVID fact-finding is genuine
As Republicans hold up the Fauci hearing and contempt vote as important accountability, Democrats have called the process disingenuous. Paul said Thursday he’d invited Fauci to appear for a private, transcribed interview, but Democrats accused him of not allowing the full, bipartisan committee to be present for it.

Paul also opted to refer the committee’s contempt vote directly to the Justice Department, instead of to the full Senate, as often happens with contempt resolutions. He said he did not “want to waste time” with that route, while Democrats insisted it should be done that way.

Last week’s hearing, at which Fauci pleaded the Fifth, came after the immunologist had repeatedly appeared before Congress over the years and talked about his thinking in the beginning of the pandemic and how it changed over time. Critics have raised concerns that the ordeal surrounding him will deter scientists from taking government jobs for fear of being similarly targeted.

Paul has long argued that Fauci should be criminally investigated, based on his belief that the scientist has been dishonest to Congress about National Institutes of Health-funded research and COVID’s origins. Fauci’s attorney last week called Paul’s accusations about the scientist “false and disgraceful.” More than 150 infectious-disease experts also came to Fauci’s defense, writing that “no credible evidence has been produced to support these absurd charges” and that they are urging elected officials to “stop these witch-hunts.”

Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute said the hearing didn’t represent legitimate truth seeking.

“They were looking for a platform in which they could attack him, and he would not respond, and he would say ‘plead the Fifth’ over and over again,” Ornstein said.

He said while some Republicans are likely true believers that Fauci committed crimes, bringing him to the forefront serves a dual purpose in a midterm election year — distracting voters from less favorable headlines, including on the economy and foreign conflicts.

“They’re preaching to the right-wing choir here,” he said.

Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, said there are real lessons to learn from the pandemic, including more deeply examining which efforts to contain the virus worked and didn’t work. But he said Republicans in Congress aren’t chasing those.

“A review of revisionist history will accomplish nothing,” he said. “We won’t be any better prepared for the next pandemic.”

WASHINGTON D.C(VINnews)-Vice President JD Vance on Thursday pushed back against a report of a tense exchange with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, describing their recent meeting in Washington as a “good, honest, open conversation” and reaffirming Israel’s status as a close U.S. ally.

Responding to a report by Axios journalist Barak Ravid, Vance said Netanyahu “did not confront me.” He characterized the discussion as “pleasant but direct.”

“As I have said time and again, Israel is an excellent partner. It is an ally of the United States,” Vance said. “Like France, Britain, or any other ally of the United States, we also have differences of opinion at times.”

Vance said the American media has been “fascinated by this dynamic,” but emphasized that his role is to advance U.S. interests alone.

“When our interests and Israel’s interests coincide, we discuss how to achieve our common goals. And when my position differs from that of the Israeli Prime Minister, we have a direct and honest conversation about it,” he said. “I did not feel that I was confronted.”

The comments marked a more measured tone from the vice president toward Israel following the reported meeWASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance on Thursday pushed back against a report of a tense exchange with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, describing their recent meeting in Washington as a “good, honest, open conversation” and reaffirming Israel’s status as a close U.S. ally.

Responding to a report by Axios journalist Barak Ravid, Vance said Netanyahu “did not confront me.” He characterized the discussion as “pleasant but direct.”

“As I have said time and again, Israel is an excellent partner. It is an ally of the United States,” Vance said. “Like France, Britain, or any other ally of the United States, we also have differences of opinion at times.”

Vance said the American media has been “fascinated by this dynamic,” but emphasized that his role is to advance U.S. interests alone.

“When our interests and Israel’s interests coincide, we discuss how to achieve our common goals. And when my position differs from that of the Israeli Prime Minister, we have a direct and honest conversation about it,” he said. “I did not feel that I was confronted.”

The comments marked a more measured tone from the vice president toward Israel following the reported meeting.ting.

President Donald Trump shared a pair of lighthearted moments with a young child during an event in Nevada on Wednesday, drawing laughs after stopping a toddler from wandering off the stage before joking that he didn’t want the boy to “be Biden and fall off the stage.”

The moments took place at the Red Rock Casino Resort and Spa in Las Vegas, where Trump invited Sandra and Brad—a local couple—and their two young children onto the stage while highlighting his administration’s Trump Accounts program and its “no tax on tips” policy.

As Sandra began speaking to the audience, one of the children suddenly started walking toward the edge of the stage. Trump quickly stepped in and gently stopped the toddler before he could wander away.

“I don’t want him to be Biden and fall off the stage,” Trump quipped, drawing laughter from the crowd.

The family’s interaction with the President continued later in the event when Sandra told Trump that her son had something he wanted to say.

“He did want to say a little something to you, Mr. President,” Sandra said.

“Yes, thank you, thank you very much,” Trump replied.

The toddler then spoke a few unintelligible words before his mother quietly encouraged him, “Thank you for my Trump Account.”

“Thank you for my Trump Account,” the little boy repeated into the microphone, prompting enthusiastic applause from those in attendance.

“Good job,” Trump responded with a smile, applauding the child as the audience continued cheering.

Earlier in the program, Trump introduced the family to those gathered, explaining that Sandra works as a waitress at a Las Vegas casino while Brad is an officer with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

The President said the couple had benefited from his administration’s tax policies and had opened Trump Accounts for both of their children.

“It’s a beautiful family,” Trump said as they joined him on stage.

Trump is the father of five children and grandfather to 11 grandchildren.

(AP) – WK Kellogg said Thursday that it will remove artificial colors from all its cereals by the end of this year.

The change comes a year ahead of schedule. Kellogg said last August that it would remove synthetic dyes from its cereals by the end of 2027.

But the company said Thursday it has identified fruit- and vegetable-based juices that will give cereals like Froot Loops and Apple Jacks their distinctive colors. The Battle Creek, Michigan-based company said it has also invested in equipment that will allow it to transition to natural colors.

The company said it is also removing BHT, an artificial preservative, from the small number of cereals that still contain it.

“More and more consumers are looking for foods made with simple, recognizable ingredients and we are proud to meet those expectations even sooner than planned,” Kellogg’s Chief Growth Officer Doug VanDeVelde said in a statement.

Kellogg has faced pressure for years to remove artificial ingredients from its cereals, which it has already done in other countries like Canada. In 2024, dozens of people rallied outside Kellogg’s headquarters and delivered petitions with 400,000 signatures asking the company to remove artificial dyes and BHT.

That pressure has grown under President Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has urged food companies to phase out petroleum-based artificial dyes. Last August, Kellogg also signed an agreement with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton saying it would “permanently remove toxic dyes” from its cereals by the end of 2027.

Retailers are also forcing companies to act. Earlier this year, Target said it would stop selling cereals that contain artificial colors by the end of May. Walmart has also said it will remove artificial colors from its store brands by January 2027.

Submitted: Do you have a used Tallis that is sitting in your closet or shul?

Kanfei Yehudah needs these taleisim for the Chevrah Kadisha of Bergen County.

If the Tallis is in good condition, it is professionally cleaned and given to a mosad where it is once again being used for a mitzvah.

You can drop off the Tallis on the porch of 115 Arbutus Drive, Lakewood, New Jersey, or call 908-670-1791.

Thank you in advance.

Former Likud ministers Gilad Erdan and Yuli Edelstein are expected to issue an official announcement of the launch of their new political party later on Thursday.

According to Yisrael Hayom, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is working to prevent former Beit Shemesh Mayor Aliza Bloch from joining the party by offering her a reserved spot on the Likud list.

It is unclear whether Bloch will accept the offer or choose to join Erdan’s new party.

At the same time, Yaakov Bardugo, a Channel 14 political commentator who is considered close to Netanyahu, sharply criticized Erdan and Edelstein.

Speaking in an interview with Galey Yisrael, Bardugo said sardonically, “Gilad Erdan and Yuli Edelstein are carrying two remarkable flags together. The first is ‘Just Not Netanyahu,’ and the second is ‘Hatred of Chareidim.”

He continued: “I don’t recall Gilad Erdan ever saying a word against the Chareidim, and now he suddenly presents himself this way…First they’ll have to cross the electoral threshold, and only then can they talk about forming a government.”

Erdan is expected to continue recruiting additional high-profile figures in an effort to ensure his party passes the electoral threshold. Recent media reports said he has approached several public figures, including former Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, former Olympic medalist Oren Smadja, and former military officer Chezi Nehama.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

A sustained decline in the U.S. dollar is squeezing Latin America’s food exporters, reducing profits on some of the products American businesses import most heavily—including coffee, bananas, avocados and agricultural ingredients used throughout the packaged food industry.

The financial pressure is straightforward. Most exporters sell their products in U.S. dollars while paying workers, transportation and operating expenses in local currency. As the dollar weakens, every export shipment converts into fewer local-currency earnings, even if sales volumes remain unchanged. In Colombia, industry groups representing coffee, bananas, avocados, flowers, sugar and palm oil argue the currency shift has become structural rather than temporary and are urging the incoming administration of President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella to adopt policies supporting exporters.

The Colombian peso has strengthened roughly 22% against the dollar since early 2025, climbing from about 4,308 pesos per dollar in January 2025 to roughly 3,334 by early July 2026—the strongest level in approximately six years. For exporters whose contracts remain denominated in dollars, that appreciation has sharply reduced local-currency revenue.

Coffee producers have been among the hardest hit. Economic think tank ANIF estimates that every 100-peso change in Colombia’s exchange rate shifts coffee export revenue by approximately 34 billion pesos, or about $10 million, assuming shipment volumes remain constant. Between September 2025 and May 2026, ANIF estimates coffee producers lost between 1.4 trillion and 1.6 trillion pesos in potential revenue compared with 2025 exchange rates.

Unlike many manufacturers, agricultural exporters have little ability to offset currency losses through higher prices. Colombian bananas compete directly with producers across Latin America and other global growing regions, leaving exporters with almost no pricing flexibility. The same pressure is affecting Hass avocado producers, who have invested heavily in expanding exports but now face shrinking margins despite steady international demand.

Operating costs are moving in the opposite direction. Export association Analdex says domestic freight expenses have risen nearly 30% this year while labor and energy costs have continued climbing, creating a double squeeze in which exporters earn less from currency movements while paying more to produce and transport goods.

For American importers, a weaker dollar does not automatically translate into cheaper food. Currency losses reduce growers’ profitability, limiting their ability to invest in replanting, equipment, maintenance and future production. Those decisions typically affect supply several growing seasons later, potentially tightening availability and placing upward pressure on prices long after exchange rates stabilize.

The export volumes involved are significant. Colombia shipped a record $1.309 billion of bananas in 2025, a 21.6% increase from the previous year, exporting approximately 133 million 20-kilogram boxes from nearly 53,000 hectares of farmland. The European Union purchased 65.8% of those exports, while the United States accounted for 17.3% and the United Kingdom 13.6%. Colombia also exports roughly 700,000 metric tons of coffee annually, a smaller volume than bananas but with substantially higher value per shipment.

Weather has compounded the industry’s challenges. Flooding damaged roughly 1,200 hectares of Colombian banana production, affecting about 2.3% of productive acreage before the onset of the dry season. Industry analysts now project banana exports could decline by roughly 5%, with losses potentially reaching 10% if El Niño conditions intensify.

Coffee markets face additional uncertainty from higher freight and energy costs linked to ongoing geopolitical instability, making it more difficult for exporters, traders and roasters to lock in long-term pricing agreements.

The impact reaches directly into the United States. Importers supplying New York’s Hunts Point Produce Market, specialty coffee roasters throughout Brooklyn and northern New Jersey, and supermarket wholesalers handling Latin American produce all face suppliers operating under increasing financial pressure. Exporters with shrinking margins often demand shorter payment terms, negotiate more aggressively and redirect shipments toward markets offering stronger returns. With Europe already purchasing nearly two-thirds of Colombia’s banana exports, growers have viable alternatives when deciding where to ship their products.

For investors and businesses, the broader lesson extends well beyond agriculture. A stronger local currency is often celebrated as evidence of economic confidence, but for export-driven industries it can function as a significant earnings cut. When revenues are earned in dollars while costs continue rising at home, even healthy demand cannot fully protect profitability.

JBizNews Desk | Bogotá

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

Hundreds of civilians were reportedly killed or wounded in three U.S. airstrikes in Yemen last year, while the Pentagon has yet to publicly disclose the casualty figures or provide Congress with a full accounting of the incidents, NBC News reports.

The strikes were carried out in April 2025 as part of Operation Rough Rider, the 53-day U.S. military campaign launched against the Iranian-backed Houthis. Pentagon officials had previously maintained that no civilian casualties were assessed during the campaign.

However, a Pentagon letter sent to Sen. Elizabeth Warren said three strikes “more likely than not resulted in civilian casualties” and required further investigation. The attacks included an April 17 strike on the Ras Isa port in Hodeida, an April 28 strike on a site identified by the Pentagon as the “Ayn Wadi Barracks Warehouses,” and an April 6 strike on a private residence.

Two people familiar with the strikes said approximately 150 civilians were likely killed in the first two attacks and roughly 200 others were wounded. The number of casualties from the strike on the private residence remains unclear.

CENTCOM launched a separate command-directed investigation into the April 28 strike to determine whether any policies were violated or whether there was misconduct by U.S. forces.

The 2027 National Defense Authorization Act requires the Pentagon to release unredacted investigations and supporting documents related to the three strikes. Congress may withhold certain funding, including travel funds for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, if the Pentagon fails to comply.

A Pentagon official said the department had nothing to announce at this time and would submit its annual report on casualties resulting from U.S. military operations during the 2025 calendar year in the coming months.

Operation Rough Rider included hundreds of U.S. airstrikes against more than 1,000 targets in Yemen. The campaign ended with an agreement under which the Houthis pledged to stop targeting American civilian and military ships, while the United States agreed to halt air and naval strikes in Yemen.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

An Israeli mother and her son escaped what could have been a deadly attack on Thursday after mistakenly driving into the Palestinian Authority-controlled city of Jenin, where they were surrounded by an Arab mob that pelted their vehicle with rocks and attempted to drag them from the car.

The pair, residents of Shomron, were traveling to Afula to visit friends when a navigation error directed them into Jenin. Moments after entering the city, they were confronted by Arab terrorists.

According to preliminary reports, the attackers hurled a brick at the vehicle and rushed toward it in an apparent attempt to assault the occupants.

Despite the terrifying encounter, the mother managed to speed away from the scene. She and her son escaped without physical injury and drove to the Jalame Checkpoint, where they met up with IDF troops. Their vehicle sustained damage during the attack.

Describing the ordeal, the mother said, “My eldest son and I wanted to get to Afula to meet friends. While driving, when we were stuck in traffic, I understood that we had misnavigated and that Waze brought us through Jenin. When the traffic cleared, dozens of Arabs started approaching us. They tried to open the doors, threw rocks at us, and attempted to stop us. We drove at full speed, and I managed to get out of there with my son. Thank G-d we survived.”

Following the incident, IDF forces entered Jenin, shut down businesses in the area where the attack occurred, and launched an investigation, including questioning suspects believed to have been involved.

Security officials said the circumstances surrounding the attack remain under investigation as efforts continue to identify and apprehend those responsible.

The Association of Yeshiva and Torah Institution Administrators and a group of 23 donors filed two separate petitions with Israel’s High Court of Justice on Thursday challenging a policy that would deny Section 46 tax-deductible status to yeshivos attended by students who are subject to military service and have not regularized their status, JDN reported.

Section 46 of Israel’s Income Tax Ordinance allows donors to qualifying public institutions to receive a tax credit for their contributions. The petitions challenge directives issued by Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara and subsequent actions by the Israel Tax Authority requiring Torah institutions to verify the military status of their students before receiving or renewing Section 46 approval.

The Association of Yeshiva Administrators is asking the High Court to cancel both the Attorney General’s directive and the Tax Authority’s decision. It argues that the authorities have no legal authority to create a new ground for disqualification unrelated to tax law or to make Torah institutions responsible for verifying the military status of their students.

The petition further argues that requiring institutions to provide students’ personal information for comparison with IDF databases constitutes a disproportionate violation of privacy. It also claims that applying the policy only to Torah institutions, while not imposing similar requirements on other organizations that may include individuals subject to military service, amounts to selective enforcement and unlawful discrimination.

The association is also requesting an interim order directing the Tax Authority to stop requiring declarations regarding students subject to military service, resume processing applications, and forward them to the Knesset Finance Committee pending a final ruling. The petition describes the directive as “an unprecedented administrative maneuver” that fundamentally changes a long-standing policy.

The association argues that the Attorney General’s directives “could lead to a dangerous slippery slope that is inconsistent with both the law and the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, and could ultimately affect every nonprofit organization whose donors receive tax recognition under Section 46.”

The petition illustrates this concern by comparing the policy to hypothetical situations in which municipalities would be required to turn off publicly funded streetlights in areas where someone subject to military service might walk, soup kitchens would lose tax-deductible status because they serve individuals subject to military service, or emergency responders would be prevented from providing medical treatment if such individuals were among the injured.

In the separate petition, the 23 donors argue that the government cannot use a mechanism intended to encourage charitable giving as an indirect enforcement tool in matters related to military service. They contend that the directive violates property rights, equality, privacy, and freedom of religion and conscience without explicit statutory authority.

The donors are seeking an immediate temporary injunction freezing implementation of the directive, followed by an interim order suspending it until the court reaches a final decision. Alternatively, they ask that the matter be returned for renewed consideration after a comprehensive review, examination of alternatives, and the establishment of clear and equal standards.

Both petitions argue that the sanction does not directly target those subject to military service, but instead harms the institutions themselves, all of their students, and their donors. They further contend that revoking Section 46 approval could significantly reduce donations and inflict severe financial harm on the institutions.

The policy was formulated following earlier legal proceedings concerning funding for yeshivos and benefits related to students subject to military service. In a petition filed by the organization Israel Hofsheet, the state informed the court that it would not approve new Section 46 applications for Torah institutions until a mechanism was established to ensure that approval would be granted only to institutions whose students had regularized their military status.

That petition was dismissed after the High Court determined that the state had effectively adopted the petitioner’s position. However, the court noted that challenges by the institutions and donors to the new framework could be heard in separate legal proceedings. The association and the donors are now seeking such a ruling from the High Court.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

Senate investigators have obtained a copy of the iPhone Dr. Anthony Fauci used while running the government’s Covid-19 response, adding a potentially significant cache of records to a widening congressional inquiry. The Department of Health and Human Services transferred the device to the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis. According to Johnson’s spokesperson, the phone was used by Fauci during his tenure as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The disclosure landed hours before a separate escalation. On Thursday morning, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted 8-5, with two additional no votes by proxy, to approve a resolution holding Fauci in contempt of Congress. The vote fell along party lines, with all Democrats opposed.

What the Contempt Vote Does

The resolution follows Fauci’s July 29 appearance before the committee under subpoena, where he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 111 times and declined to answer any question posed to him.

Ordinarily, a committee contempt resolution advances to the full Senate before any referral to prosecutors. Committee Chairman Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told CBS News he intends to bypass that step and send the resolution directly to the Justice Department as a referral. Under the standard route, a floor vote would be subject to the filibuster; if the Senate did vote to hold Fauci in contempt, the Justice Department would decide whether to prosecute. A conviction carries penalties of up to $100,000 in fines and one to 12 months in prison.

Paul framed Thursday’s vote narrowly. He told the panel the question before it was “whether to hold a witness responsible for his contempt toward Congress” — not, he said, Fauci’s pandemic policies or public statements.

The Pardon Is the Legal Crux

The dispute turns on an unusual legal question, and it is worth spelling out because both sides are making a coherent argument.

Fauci received a pardon from President Joe Biden covering any offense from Jan. 1, 2014, through Jan. 19, 2025 — a grant Biden described as preemptive, given Republican scrutiny of Fauci. Republicans argue that immunity removes the risk of self-incrimination, and therefore removes the basis for invoking the Fifth Amendment. If you cannot be prosecuted, the reasoning goes, you cannot incriminate yourself.

Democrats counter that the protection survives the pardon. Ranking member Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., wrote to colleagues that a federal pardon does not extinguish Fifth Amendment protection where a witness still faces a “real and appreciable” risk of federal or state prosecution. That argument has practical weight: at least four Republican-led states have opened their own investigations into Fauci, and the 2025 pardon would not shield him from prosecution over anything said in present-day testimony.

Peters also warned of precedent. He argued that punishing a witness for asserting a constitutional protection would give future witnesses grounds to refuse to appear at all, and that they would cite this vote as justification. Democrats attempted repeatedly to table or postpone Thursday’s vote and were blocked by the Republican majority.

Fauci has characterized the inquiry in blunt terms. In his opening statement last week, he said Paul has “an unhinged obsession” with him and suggested the hearing was convened to trap him into lying under oath.

Why the Phone Matters

A device copy is materially different from a document production. Paper records are curated — someone decides what is responsive and what is not. A phone image captures text messages, call logs, app data and deleted-but-recoverable material in one pass, without an intermediary selecting what investigators see.

The phone follows an earlier transfer that reshaped the inquiry. Paul’s committee released more than 1,100 pages of Fauci’s personal journals covering 2019 to 2022. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he located the files on government servers after an eight-month search and handed them to Paul and Johnson. The entries chronicled Fauci’s media appearances and interactions with journalists and public figures, alongside his concerns about the virus and frustrations with the federal response.

More may be coming. Paul and Johnson have received millions of additional Fauci-related pages from government servers and continue to press for more. Johnson said publicly that he hopes the device will answer questions Fauci declined to address at last week’s hearing.

The Unresolved Question Underneath

The investigation’s central allegation — that U.S.-funded research in Wuhan contributed to the pandemic’s emergence — remains contested rather than settled. A 2025 World Health Organization report, produced over three years by the 27-member Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens, addressed the question directly, and its conclusions have not ended the debate in Washington.

For business readers, the durable takeaway sits slightly to the side of the political fight. This case is becoming a working test of how federal records law applies to personal devices used for official business, and of whether a pardon can be leveraged to compel testimony. Both questions have implications well beyond public health — for any executive, contractor or agency official whose work communications live on a personal phone.

JBizNews Desk | Washington

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(AP) – Dr. Stacy Norton was only 7 years old when her mother died of colon cancer, one of several family members struck by aggressive tumors at unusually young ages. Decades later, Norton rolled up her sleeve to help test if a new kind of vaccine might protect her and her own children from cancer.

The Houston doctor is among an estimated 1 million Americans who have Lynch syndrome, a faulty gene passed from a parent that puts them at extremely high risk of colorectal cancer and more vulnerable to certain other cancers, too. They’re often urged to get yearly colonoscopies — far more often than usual — that can spot and remove precancerous growths called polyps.

Now scientists are creating vaccines that aim to go further, teaching the immune system to intercept this type of brewing colon cancer before it turns into a full-fledged tumor. At least three potential Lynch syndrome vaccines are in development, including two in early clinical trials in the U.S. and a third beginning in Britain.

The shot that Norton helped test appears promising enough that its lead researcher, Dr. Eduardo Vilar-Sanchez of the MD Anderson Cancer Center, expects a larger study to begin early next year.

“It gives me hope,” said Norton, 59, of Houston Methodist Willowbrook Hospital. She had already survived a different Lynch-caused cancer and has two children in their 20s who inherited her mutation. If a vaccine pans out, “perhaps they won’t have to have a colonoscopy every single year for the rest of their lives.”

Lynch syndrome is caused by an inherited genetic mutation
Everyone has what are called mismatch-repair genes, which are essentially spellcheckers to help fix DNA mistakes that can occur when our cells multiply. With Lynch syndrome, one of those genes can’t do its job properly, making it harder for the body to stop a buildup of abnormalities that can lead to tumors, often before age 50.

Colorectal cancer is the most common consequence. The average person has a 5% risk of developing it during their lifetime. A Lynch carrier’s risk can reach as high as 80% depending on which faulty gene they inherit, Vilar-Sanchez said.

Another big risk is endometrial, or uterine, cancer. Lynch carriers also are more likely to get other cancers including pancreatic, stomach, ovarian and certain skin cancers — and a kind of brain tumor that killed Norton’s sister at age 25.

Norton knew some of her mother’s relatives had also experienced colon cancer, but she was in her 40s before a gene test confirmed she has Lynch syndrome. She switched from every-so-often to yearly colonoscopies. As an obstetrician/gynecologist familiar with other Lynch risks, Norton also decided to have a precautionary hysterectomy. Surgeons discovered early-stage cancer in her removed uterus.

Possible vaccines to stop gene-caused cancer
Today there are two cancer-preventing vaccines, the HPV and hepatitis B shots that block infection from those tumor-causing viruses. But developing vaccines to prevent gene-caused cancer is more challenging than alerting the body to foreign intruders like a virus.

Lynch-fueled growths “tend to accumulate hundreds of mutations that are going to generate proteins that are novel, not made by our normal cells,” Vilar-Sanchez said. “You can train the immune system to recognize those proteins.”

In a first-step study, Norton and 44 other Lynch carriers tested a vaccine made by Swiss biotech Nouscom that teaches the immune system to spot 209 of those abnormalities in Lynch-caused precancers. That revved up tumor-eliminating T cells and a year later, colonoscopies showed fewer precancerous growths and no advanced polyps, the MD Anderson team reported in Nature Medicine.

“Can we even further stimulate the immune system” to keep up with Lynch syndrome-spurred tumor formation, asked Dr. John Marshall, a Georgetown University oncologist and adviser to the Colorectal Cancer Alliance who wasn’t involved with the study. “This early paper suggests that yeah, maybe we can.”

For the first time since 2014, Norton’s own colonoscopies one and two years after vaccination were polyp-free. She’s also part of a subset of study participants given a booster shot a year later; more data on that is expected this fall.

Oxford University researchers are beginning initial testing of a similar approach to attack Lynch-spurred precancers, a vaccine made by Massachusetts-based Moderna using the mRNA technology behind its COVID-19 shot.

And scientists are awaiting results from a slightly larger study comparing California-based ImmunityBio’s Tri-Ad5 vaccine, which flags some different cancer markers, to a placebo.

Is Lynch syndrome tied to the rise in young adult colon cancer?
About 158,000 people are diagnosed with colorectal cancer in the U.S. each year, most of them over 50. Cases in younger adults are increasing, though it isn’t clear why.

Lynch syndrome affects about 1 in 279 people. While most don’t know it, more may be learning they have the inherited disorder, Vilar-Sanchez said, as genetic testing is increasingly discussed with people with Lynch-related cancer in the family or who get certain tumors at young ages. That in turn can show if close relatives might also be at risk.

For the average person, U.S. guidelines call for routine colorectal cancer screening — with a colonoscopy or other kinds of tests — to begin at age 45. But at any age, get a checkup for symptoms such as blood in stool or rectal bleeding; changes in bowel habits such as diarrhea, constipation or narrowing of stool that lasts more than a few days; unintended weight loss; and cramps or abdominal pain.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration said it plans to overhaul Head Start, tossing out many of the regulations that are the hallmark of the early education program for the nation’s poorest children.

Officials from the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the federally funded preschool program, said the proposed changes would encourage more local decision-making. Early childhood policy experts argue the deregulation could undermine Head Start’s position as the gold standard in early education.

Head Start centers serve around 700,000 of the nation’s most vulnerable children, including those who are homeless, in foster care or disabled. That wouldn’t change under the overhaul.

But Alex J. Adams, an assistant secretary at Health and Human Service, said the department is hoping to give Head Start centers the flexibility to change the way they operate. That means eliminating most of Head Start’s regulations, such as standards for low staff-to-student ratios or requirements to provide services to preschoolers’ families.

“Federal mandates can certainly hinder local decision-making, drive up costs and limit the program’s reach,” Adams said on a call with reporters. He highlighted a decade-long decline in Head Start enrollment. “If we get this proposed rule right, we will grow the number of Head Start slots.”

On a call previewing the proposed changes, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy spoke reverently about Head Start, which was started by his uncle Sargent Shriver during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration.

“It’s a program that works for the most vulnerable of the poorest kids in our society, and it’s really important we protect it,” Kennedy said.

But the changes would undermine many of the things that make Head Start distinct from other early education programs, policy experts say.

“The model was created with intentionality,” said Khari Garvin, who oversaw Head Start under President Joe Biden, a Democrat. It was designed, he said, “as part of a strategy to move families out of poverty.”

What makes Head Start different
Head Start, which began in the 1960s as part of Johnson’s War on Poverty, is currently governed by more than 100 pages of regulations. Those regulations require centers to have low staff-to-student ratios and a research-backed curriculum, among other things, and they ensure centers are providing wraparound services that are critical to children in poverty, including medical and dental screenings and parent coaching.

The proposal would toss out nearly all of that rule book. Instead, Head Start’s 1,600 operators — which include nonprofits and school districts — would look to state and local childcare licensing requirements for guidance on many aspects of the program.

Once the proposed regulations are published online, the public will have 60 days to weigh in. The final rules could face legal scrutiny, further delaying their implementation.

While the proposed rules largely loosen requirements, Adams emphasized that centers have the option to continue to operate as they had in the past. He estimated the new rules could generate more than $2 billion in savings and potentially allow Head Start to serve more children.

The proposal adds in at least two new requirements, officials said. It includes a 5% cap on administrative expenses, down from 15% under current rules, and new nutrition provisions championed by Kennedy.

State rules are more lenient
Overall, experts emphasize, state childcare licensing requirements are far more lax than Head Start’s current regulations. State rules are largely focused on ensuring children are healthy and safe. Generally speaking, they do not require centers to provide things like medical or dental screenings, they don’t specify ways to engage with parents, and they don’t speak to what — if anything — should be taught in childcare settings.

Shantel Meek, who heads the Children’s Equity Project at Arizona State University, co-authored an analysis that compared state licensing requirements with Head Start standards and found massive gaps.

“Whereas licensing is, like, the bare minimum to keep kids safe, Head Start includes keeping kids safe but also ensuring that kids are developing, growing, learning well,” Meek said. “It’s a totally different purpose.”

Critically, states allow adults to care for far more children than is allowed under Head Start standards. In Mississippi, for example, one Head Start teacher is only allowed to teach up to four 2-year-olds. State childcare regulations would permit up to a dozen 2-year-olds to be supervised by one adult.

Head Start, which operates in all 50 states, has long had support from both Democrats and Republicans. But it has faced repeated threats under the Trump administration, whose budget chief, Russell Vought, had previously called for it to be eliminated. Not long after Trump, a Republican, took office again in early 2025, some Head Start programs had to briefly shutter because they had problems accessing their federal money. Later, a budget draft eliminated Head Start’s funding, but it was restored after widespread backlash.

In a call with reporters, Kennedy said he believes Head Start is effective. He cited research showing its graduates have fewer law enforcement encounters, do better in school and have better jobs than their peers. He added that he tried to shield Head Start from many of the cuts that hit the rest of his agency.

Still, the Trump administration succeeded last year in laying off much of Head Start’s support staff and closing half of its regional offices.

Billionaire investor Bill Ackman warned that New York City’s rent freeze, tax policies and limits on development could worsen the city’s affordability crisis by discouraging construction and investment.

In a wide-ranging interview with Fortune published Wednesday, the Pershing Square Capital Management founder argued that government policy is driving up housing and energy costs in New York.

“The answer isn’t socialism – socialism is a disaster,” Ackman said. “Watch what happens to New York City if [Mayor Zohran] Mamdani succeeds in implementing these plans.”

Ackman said New York’s housing shortage stems in part from rules that make it difficult and costly for developers to build.

“It’s so high because left-wing mayors have made it very difficult for developers to build here, and Mamdani, by freezing rents, is just going to make the problem worse,” he said.

New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board voted in June to freeze rents on one- and two-year leases for rent-stabilized apartments.

Ackman argued that rent controls can shift more costs onto tenants in market-rate units. He also claimed roughly 60,000 apartments have been pulled from the market because landlords cannot recover renovation costs under current regulations.

“If you make it hard to build where people want to live, and you don’t let landlords recover renovation costs, they’ll pull units off the market,” Ackman said.

He pointed to Austin, Texas, as an example of a city where increased construction helped bring rents down.

Ackman also blamed New York’s energy policies for adding to residents’ cost of living.

“Why are energy costs so high in New York State? Because we’ve shut down nuclear power, it takes 15 years to get a pipeline approved, and we’ve banned fracking – so we’re importing natural gas from Pennsylvania,” he said. “That’s just bad policy, and we can fix a lot of it with better policy.”

Ackman then turned to taxes, arguing that New York should encourage wealthy residents and businesses to invest in the city rather than risk driving them elsewhere.

“You want people like Ken Griffin locating Citadel here – spending $250 million on an apartment, because that purchase makes a building economically viable, which creates construction jobs and brings in wealthy residents who pay taxes,” Ackman said. 

He added, “You don’t want to discourage people like Elon Musk from locating their businesses here.”

Ackman has previously been critical of New York City’s new pied-à-terre surcharge, which applies to certain high-value properties that are not used as an owner’s primary residence.

He also criticized California’s Proposition 40, which could impose a one-time tax equal to 5% of the net worth of billionaires who were California residents on Jan. 1, 2026. 

“Look at what’s happening in California right now with the wealth tax – they say it’s ‘one time,’ but it’s never one time,” he said.

Ackman also said many Americans have not benefited directly from the wealth generated by the stock market.

“One of our biggest challenges as a country is that almost half the country isn’t participating in the growth in value created by capitalism – the stock market,” he said.  

He argued that workers without retirement accounts or stock investments may be less likely to believe that the economic system is working for them.

“Part of that is people feeling left behind – wages can’t compound as quickly as stocks, so everyone needs to participate in the market to believe in capitalism,” he said. 

Mamdani could not immediately be reached by FOX Business for comment.

FOX Business’ Michael Dorgan and Alex Nitzberg contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON D.C. (VINnews) – President Donald Trump recently told donors he wants Vice President JD Vance to win the 2028 presidential election, according to a report by The Washington Post, signaling he could eventually back Vance as his preferred successor.

The newspaper, citing people familiar with the private remarks, reported that Trump has made the comments behind closed doors while continuing to publicly leave open the question of whom he would support in the next Republican presidential primary.

According to the report, some Trump advisers cautioned that the president has not made a final decision and continues to encourage competition among potential contenders, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Trump has repeatedly declined to endorse a 2028 candidate publicly, saying it is too early to make such a decision.

President Donald Trump is forcefully rejecting reports that the U.S. military is running low on key munitions following the war with Iran, insisting the nation has abundant supplies, production is accelerating, and those responsible for leaking claims of shortages will face serious consequences.

In a Truth Social post early Thursday, Trump dismissed the reports outright.

“The U.S. has massive amounts of ‘munitions,’ especially of certain types,” Trump wrote. “Additionally, large amounts are being manufactured and shipped to the U.S. as needed. Defense companies are building the largest number of plants and factories in our country’s history. The ‘leakers’ of these treasonous statements are being hunted down. Long term jail sentences will be sought!”

Trump’s comments followed several reports published this week alleging that the United States has depleted much of its inventory of long-range precision weapons during months of combat operations against Iran.

Reuters reported that the Army has used a significant portion of its stockpile of long-range precision missiles—including Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and the newer Precision Strike Missile (PrSM)—during the five-month conflict, citing multiple sources familiar with the matter.

According to Reuters, the reduction in available missiles has sparked concern within the Trump administration over America’s preparedness for future military confrontations and its ability to deter adversaries such as Russia and China.

The report noted that these precision weapons have been heavily relied upon because they enable U.S. forces to strike targets from long distances, minimizing the need for more dangerous manned bombing missions.

Reuters also said military officials have warned that inventories of defensive systems, including Patriot and THAAD interceptor missiles, have been significantly reduced during the conflict, although the Pentagon has attempted to replenish regional defenses by shifting weapons from other stockpiles.

CBS News similarly reported Tuesday, citing two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, that the United States has expended nearly its entire global inventory of long-range precision missiles during the Iran conflict.

The CBS report added that dwindling supplies of both defensive interceptors and precision strike missiles have become a growing concern within the administration, with officials questioning whether the military can sustain the pace at which those weapons were used during the early stages of the war.

According to U.S. officials who spoke with CBS, the greatest concern centers on Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors, which are being consumed faster than defense manufacturers can replace them.

A July analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated that before the war, the United States possessed roughly 2,330 Patriot interceptors. By the end of July, that number had fallen to between 759 and 827. The report also estimated that THAAD interceptor inventories had dropped from 452 before the conflict to between 234 and 278 as of July 27.

A separate CSIS study concluded that it may take until at least the middle of 2029 for Patriot and THAAD stockpiles to recover to their pre-war levels.

War Department Secretary Pete Hegseth has repeatedly dismissed reports that the military is facing any critical shortage of munitions.

“That is a manufactured story that the media wants to peddle, and ultimately our stockpiles are great, and they’re only getting stronger,” Hegseth said during a June 14 appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell also rejected the reports.

“America’s military is the most powerful in the world and has everything it needs to execute at the time and place of the President’s choosing,” he said in a statement to CBS News. “We have executed multiple successful operations across combatant commands while ensuring the U.S. military possesses a deep arsenal of capabilities to protect our people and our interests.”

Late Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also denied a Washington Post report claiming Trump and Hegseth had engaged in a heated dispute during a Cabinet meeting at Camp David over alleged shortages of military munitions.

The Tel Aviv District Court on Wednesday ordered the Israel Prison Service (IPS) to immediately allow a reservist charged with security offenses to put on tefillin after he again claimed during a court hearing that his rights had been violated while in custody.

The court also instructed the IPS to examine his claims—including that he had been denied food for 36 hours—and submit a response within seven days.

Judge Oded Maor noted that this was not the first time the detainee had raised complaints about his treatment by the IPS. He said that on a previous occasion the court had already requested the prison service’s response, and the IPS stated that it had no record of any complaints from the defendant. However, the judge stressed that the repeated allegations warranted further examination.

He emphasized that the court was not determining at this stage whether the claims were true, but added that “they cannot be ignored.”

Addressing the allegation that the detainee had gone 36 hours without food, the judge wrote, “This is a claim that should not be heard from a detainee—or from anyone.”

He stressed that the authorities are obligated to treat detainees humanely and safeguard their dignity and physical well-being, noting that detention does not strip a person of fundamental rights.

“Detention is not punishment,” the judge wrote, adding that detention conditions cannot be used as a means of punishment, humiliation, or violence.

The judge ordered the IPS to allow the detainee to put on tefillin before shekiah that same day after he claimed he had been prevented from doing so, and further instructed prison officials to ensure he is able to do so on a daily basis. The court also ordered that he be allowed to speak by telephone with his attorney.

The defendant, whose identity remains under a gag order, served in both regular and reserve duty in a classified military unit. He has been indicted on charges of contact with a foreign agent and attempted transmission of information for the benefit of the enemy.

According to the indictment, an investigation conducted by the Lahav 433 Arzim Unit, the Defense Ministry’s security directorate, and the Shin Bet found that he had been in contact with an individual who identified himself as an Iranian intelligence operative. He was later allegedly asked to help recruit another soldier to establish contact with the same operatives.

His attorney, Nati Rom, has argued that the case amounts to “an isolated incident involving, at most, a lack of caution,” and said his client, who devoted his life to Israel’s security, “is being held as though he were a Nukhba terrorist.”

Rom also argued that there is no allegation that his client acted with malicious intent or sought to harm Israel’s security.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

Abu Dhabi National Oil Company is changing how it prices every barrel of crude it sells, replacing the Murban futures benchmark it spent years building with a regional physical pricing benchmark as volatility from the Iran conflict continues reshaping Middle Eastern energy markets.

Beginning November 1, ADNOC will calculate monthly official selling prices for all of its Abu Dhabi crude grades—including Murban, Das, Umm Lulu and Upper Zakum—using prompt-month Platts Dubai pricing instead of Murban crude futures. Price differentials to Dubai will be announced during the month before cargoes load, bringing pricing closer to actual market conditions at the time of shipment.

The move ends a pricing framework that has been in place since the launch of the ICE Futures Abu Dhabi Murban contract in 2021. Under that system, buyers typically committed to prices roughly two months before cargoes loaded. The new approach shortens that timeline to approximately one month, reducing the disconnect between contracted prices and actual shipping conditions.

That timing matters. During the Iran conflict, freight rates, insurance premiums and security risks surrounding the Strait of Hormuz have changed rapidly, leaving refiners and traders exposed when oil was priced weeks before those costs became known. By narrowing the pricing window, ADNOC reduces the risk that customers pay based on market conditions that no longer exist when shipments actually depart.

The change also follows the United Arab Emirates’ departure from OPEC and OPEC+, which became effective May 1 and gave ADNOC greater flexibility over production and commercial strategy. Earlier this year, Platts removed the pricing floor linking Murban to Dubai after expanding Murban production increased its influence within regional crude markets. ADNOC’s decision now extends that evolution to its official sales program.

The reversal is notable because ADNOC spent years promoting Murban futures as the Middle East’s first internationally traded regional crude benchmark capable of competing with Brent. ICE Futures Abu Dhabi said it will continue listing Murban futures contracts that already have open interest while suspending future contract months without active positions.

In practice, the transition has already begun. Since June, ADNOC has been selling cargoes through spot tenders priced against Dubai differentials, making the formal announcement more of a confirmation than an unexpected policy shift. Market participants had largely expected any change to apply only to offshore marine grades, but ADNOC instead expanded it across its full production portfolio.

The company said the revised pricing mechanism reinforces its commitment to transparent pricing while continuing to meet all contractual delivery obligations. ADNOC also stated the change is not expected to materially affect outstanding debt securities, including bonds and sukuk issued under its financing programs.

Energy market specialists believe the implications could extend well beyond Abu Dhabi. Joel Hanley, Executive Director for Strategy and Development at S&P Global Energy, said aligning benchmark timing more closely with physical trading reduces basis risk and could encourage broader changes across global oil pricing systems. As Gulf crude increasingly trades on similar timelines, benchmark consistency becomes more valuable for both producers and buyers.

That possibility carries significance for American energy companies. Saudi Aramco, Kuwait Petroleum and Iraq’s state oil marketer all rely on similar official selling price systems. If other Gulf producers shorten their pricing windows as well, refiners, commodity traders, airlines and industrial fuel consumers could face meaningful changes in how they hedge Middle Eastern crude purchases and manage future fuel costs.

For businesses across the United States already navigating elevated diesel, jet fuel and freight expenses after two years of geopolitical disruptions, the new pricing mechanism will not necessarily reduce energy costs. It should, however, make pricing more closely reflect actual market conditions at the time oil is delivered, reducing one source of uncertainty in an energy market that has experienced little stability.

JBizNews Desk | Abu Dhabi

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

Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted along party lines Thursday to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress after he repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment during a committee hearing last week.

Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times while refusing to answer questions concerning the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, CNN reported. Republicans said his refusal could expose him to federal contempt charges.

Democrats attempted to postpone the vote until lawmakers could hear from Fauci’s attorney, David Schertler, and legal experts regarding his right against self-incrimination. Republicans rejected the request, arguing that Fauci’s sweeping presidential pardon removed the need for him to invoke the Fifth Amendment.

Committee Chairman Sen. Rand Paul said he plans to send the panel’s recommendation directly to the Justice Department, bypassing the usual step of seeking approval from the full Senate. Paul acknowledged that there is little precedent for the procedure, saying the committee’s action amounts to a referral and recommendation.

Vice President JD Vance would first be required to approve the committee’s departure from longstanding Senate procedure in his constitutional role as president of the Senate. The Justice Department would then decide whether to bring formal charges against Fauci.

Schertler denounced the vote as a “crude political stunt” and accused Paul of pursuing a personal vendetta against Fauci. Any charges would likely face a lengthy legal challenge concerning the scope of Fauci’s Fifth Amendment protections.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani received a hostile reception at an NYPD National Night Out Against Crime event on Staten Island, where loud boos and jeers from the crowd cut his appearance short, forcing him to leave the stage after speaking for less than a minute.

The incident unfolded at the Midland Beach boardwalk during the NYPD’s 43rd Patrol Borough National Night Out Against Crime celebration, which drew approximately 3,500 residents and families, according to the Staten Island Advance.

As Mamdani walked toward the podium, attendees erupted in boos and shouted profanities, with some in the crowd repeatedly yelling for him to leave, according to videos posted on social media.

Despite his typically lengthy public appearances, the mayor delivered only a brief greeting, wishing those in attendance a “Happy Night Out Against Crime,” before being escorted away from the stage while smiling.

Many people in the audience expressed their displeasure by giving Mamdani a thumbs-down gesture as they continued booing and heckling him while he exited the area.

Although his appearance on stage ended quickly, Mamdani later stopped to pose for photographs with several attendees, according to the report.

The tense reception stood in sharp contrast to the spirit of the annual National Night Out events, during which the NYPD and city officials hosted more than 70 gatherings across New York City as part of a “community-building campaign” designed to strengthen partnerships between police and local residents and “help make our neighborhoods safer, more caring places to live.”

Anduril Industries is in advanced talks to build a drone boat production site at Sparrows Point, the 3,300-acre former Bethlehem Steel complex in Baltimore County, in a deal that could run into the hundreds of millions of dollars and return shipbuilding work to one of the East Coast’s largest deep-water industrial sites.

The defense manufacturer has signed a memorandum of understanding with the operators of the yard, according to reporting published Monday by The Wall Street Journal citing people familiar with the discussions. The facility would handle both manufacturing and on-water testing of the company’s unmanned surface vessels.

No lease has been signed, and the people cautioned that the talks could still fall apart. The office of Maryland Gov. Wes Moore has been involved in the discussions, and any agreement would likely carry state incentives to offset Anduril’s costs. A spokesman for Moore declined to comment. A spokesman for Tradepoint Atlantic, which owns Sparrows Point, did not respond to requests for comment.

The site’s recent history is one of reinvention. Investors began acquiring the former Bethlehem Steel property in 2014 for redevelopment and renamed it Tradepoint Atlantic. It now hosts fulfillment and logistics operations for retailers including Amazon and Home Depot, and two years ago it served as the staging ground for rerouted cargo traffic and wreckage recovery after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse — a role that demonstrated the site’s deep-water capacity under emergency conditions. Its shipbuilding past runs deeper still: a 32,000-ton vessel launched at Sparrows Point in 1956 was at the time the largest cargo ship in the country.

Geography is a substantial part of the appeal. A Baltimore-area production site would put Anduril’s boat manufacturing within reach of Washington and of the Coast Guard’s largest shipyard, making testing and integration with the Coast Guard fleet considerably simpler, one of the people familiar with the matter said. That proximity matters for a product line still working its way through certification and fielding.

Anduril’s maritime operation is young and geographically thin. The company revamped a Seattle shipyard for low-rate production, and prototypes of the vessel it is developing with South Korea’s HD Hyundai Heavy Industries are being built in Korea. It also holds a partnership with United Kingdom-based Kraken Technology Group. A Maryland facility would be its first East Coast production capacity for the category.

The push comes despite a recent setback. Anduril lost a Navy competition for medium-size drone boats, an award that left out several bidders and prompted defense-technology executives to take complaints to Congress and, in some cases, to sue the government. Anduril is not among the companies suing.

Entering unmanned surface vessels also puts a large, well-capitalized manufacturer into a field crowded with startups competing for Navy work — including BlackSea Technologies, already based in Baltimore. Anduril has expanded into nearly every corner of defense contracting, from jets to submarines to counterdrone systems, and it now arrives in a market where smaller firms have been the incumbents.

The capital behind the expansion is considerable. Anduril closed a $5 billion round in May at a $61 billion valuation, led by Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, and has been working to roughly double capacity across its weapons-systems production. Reuters reported on July 24 that the company is in talks for a further raise that could value it near $100 billion, potentially structured in two tranches. That balance sheet is what makes a nine-figure commitment to an idle industrial site plausible.

Demand is the other half of the equation. Drone boats have moved from experiment to fielded capability for militaries worldwide — Ukraine used them to significant effect against Russian forces in the Black Sea, and the U.S. military’s own wartime debut came in the conflict with Iran, where autonomous vessels built by Saronic recovered two Apache crew members after their helicopter was shot down and carried out strikes on Iranian shipping and submarine infrastructure. Surveillance, however, remains the dominant use.

For Maryland, the calculation is straightforward. Sparrows Point employed generations of steelworkers and shipbuilders before the industry left, and the redevelopment that followed has leaned heavily on warehousing and logistics — sectors that generate volume but comparatively modest wages. Advanced manufacturing at scale would change that mix, and it would do so on a site that already carries the berthing, rail access and acreage that took a century to assemble and cannot be easily rebuilt elsewhere.

Whether it happens turns on terms that have not been agreed. The memorandum of understanding is a framework, not a commitment, and the incentive package that would likely accompany any deal has yet to surface publicly. What the talks confirm is that the Navy’s appetite for uncrewed hulls has outrun the handful of small yards currently building them, and that the search for capacity has turned toward the industrial waterfronts the country stopped using.

JBizNews Desk | Baltimore

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

The newly formed HaTzibur HaCharedi party has issued a formal response to Matzav.com following several reports concerning the party, strongly denying claims that individuals associated with Gadi Eisenkot played any advisory role in its formation or strategy.

In a statement sent to Matzav.com by Menachem Fischer on behalf of the party, HaTzibur HaCharedi rejected reports based on a Kan 11 News report alleging that Ronen Manelis, Ronen Aviani, and Inbar Gitti were involved in advising the party during its early stages.

“We regret that the reporter chose to run with false information,” the statement said. “To be clear: Ronen Manelis, Ronen Aviani, and Inbar Gitti have never advised the HaTzibur HaCharedi faction. Any other claim amounts to serious defamation.”

The party said it was established independently in response to what it described as widespread demand within the Chareidi community for new political representation while remaining aligned with the right-wing bloc.

“The HaTzibur HaCharedi faction arose from the outcry of hundreds of thousands of Charedim seeking representation, while remaining committed to the right-wing bloc and camp,” the statement read.

The party also accused unnamed activists within the established Chareidi political parties of attempting to undermine the new movement.

“A group of panicked Askanim from the Charedi parties, who have staked everything on breaking apart the right-wing bloc and who are now in a state of panic, are busy spreading lies instead of looking the real problems facing Charedi society straight in the eye. We will not be deterred.”

In addition, the party asked Matzav.com to note that Avi Wartelsky has not served as an adviser to HaTzibur HaCharedi for some time.

Matzav.com had previously reported on Kan 11’s claims regarding the alleged involvement of associates of Eisenkot in the party’s early organizational efforts, as well as subsequent political developments involving the new faction. The party’s statement rejects those reports in their entirety.

{Matzav.com}

When financial anxiety spikes, the impulse to aggressively pay off a car loan or mortgage seems like a bulletproof step toward financial freedom, but credit repair expert and influencer Micah Smith warns that suddenly paying off those loans can actually backfire and drag down your credit score.

Instead, turning around a credit score — sometimes taking a profile from the 400s into the 700s in just one month — comes down to precise timing, strategic balance targets and leveraging forgotten rules hidden inside consumer credit law.

“It really takes a deep understanding of how credit works, but 400s to 700s is very realistic,” Smith told Fox News Digital.

“The biggest thing we look at right away is, how is the positive credit being used? Is there any positive credit there? Then we take a look at the negative items. What kind of negative items are there?” she continued. “You really want to assess those two things… and are there any quick wins available on the credit report?”

Smith has previously broken down how credit utilization — or amounts owed — makes up 30% of a standard FICO credit score calculation, while payment history accounts for 35%. But to see a quick improvement in your credit score, it’s important to note that credit card issuers report account balances to the credit bureaus once per month on the account’s statement closing date, not the payment due date.

The credit expert emphasized that maintaining an overall utilization ratio below 10%, and ideally under 7%, signals low credit risk and generates maximum point gains in scoring models.

“Most people don’t realize how much their credit card usage is impacting their credit score,” she said. “You can call your credit card company and say, ‘When is my closing date?’ And… you wanna get your balance down to 6% utilization or less. So if you have a $1,000 credit card, you want that balance to be $60.”

“The other thing you can do is, if you’re eligible, you actually also can ask for a credit limit increase to widen that gap. So that way the balanced limit ratio, you can widen it by asking for a credit limit increases. If it’s an inquiry, it’s not that big of a deal. It’s two to five points. It’s nominal. But sometimes, that can actually increase a person’s credit score by not having to part ways with a ton of money.”

Smith also cited a June 2026 LendingTree survey, which found that 84% of credit cardholders who requested an interest rate (APR) reduction were successful, yet only 23% of cardholders actually asked for one.

“You can help yourself by picking up the phone, making a phone call, and you can actually pay down your debt a lot faster just by simply asking for a reduction in the interest,” she noted.

“Half the money that you win or lose in life will be done at the negotiation table. So I would take a look at all of your bills, see what can be negotiated. People underestimate — rent can be negotiated, utilities can be negotiated, credit cards can be negotiated.”

There are times, however, when paying off debt or loans can backfire, according to Smith. Installment loans, including mortgages, auto loans and student loans, differ from revolving credit such as credit cards. When an installment loan is paid off, the account status shifts to “closed,” which can reduce credit mix diversity — worth about 10% of a FICO score — and pause active positive payment reporting.

“The most common mistakes that we see in credit today that backfire badly would blow your mind… They will actually have enough money to pay off student loans in full. They’ll have enough to pay off their cars in full, they might have enough money to pay off their mortgage in full thinking that they’re going to drive their credit scores up. And actually, it takes the credit scores backwards,” she warned.

“When you pay off an installment loan, it’s closed. So that positive history, it stops calculating into the credit score. And so you actually end up suppressing the score,” Smith continued. “This is why it’s so important to know where to apply the appropriate funds because if you apply it in the wrong places, thinking it’s going to drive the credit score upwards, you’re going to find yourself very, very disappointed.”

While securing a rapid score boost provides an immediate surge of confidence and momentum, Smith stresses that a 30-day triage plan is only the first step. To ensure quick credit wins turn into long-term financial security, the focus must shift from temporary fixes to automated systems.

“Short-term fixes, those are amazing. We’re so grateful when we get these really quick short-term fixes, but it ultimately hasn’t addressed the underlying problem,” she said. “People need to be reminded more than they’re taught… It’s not because you understand credit so well, it’s because you don’t and you haven’t built the habits yet. And so we’re reinforcing those habits day after day, week after week, month after month. And so we’re constantly focused on reminding more than teaching, and I think that’s a very important principle that we all need to know.”

The lockup agreement that has kept SpaceX employees and early investors from selling their stock expired at Thursday’s opening bell, and those shareholders are free to sell during today’s session. Up to 911.5 million shares — worth roughly $101 billion — became eligible for sale, the first opportunity insiders have had to convert their holdings into cash since December 2025.

So far, the market has absorbed it calmly. Shares fluctuated between gains and losses of less than 3% in early trading, with nearly 93 million shares changing hands in the first thirty minutes — about 40% of the previous full day’s total volume. By late morning the stock was trading 0.8% higher at $109.10, after falling as much as 2.9% earlier in the session. It closed Wednesday at $108.27.

What a Lockup Is, and Why This One Is Different

When a company goes public, only a portion of its shares are released for trading. Founders, employees and pre-IPO investors sign agreements barring them from selling for a set period — typically 180 days. The purpose is to prevent a wave of insider selling from overwhelming a stock in its first months, before it has established a trading history. The date those restrictions lift is the lockup expiration.

SpaceX did not follow the standard template. The company structured its lockup with a staggered, nine-stage release schedule rather than a single 180-day expiration, a design intended to reduce the risk of a sudden flood of selling. Under that arrangement, up to 20% of restricted shares became sellable starting Thursday — the second trading day after the company’s second-quarter earnings release. SpaceX posted those results after the close on August 4.

Today’s release is therefore the first stage, not the whole event. A second tranche of 319 million shares is scheduled for August 12, with additional releases continuing through year-end. The complete 180-day lockup runs into early December, at which point as many as 5.33 billion shares would be eligible to trade. A separate extended lockup covering Chief Executive Elon Musk and select other shareholders runs until June 2027.

The Supply Math

The reason this matters comes down to supply and demand. During the restricted period, SpaceX’s share price was set in a market where most of the company’s stock could not participate. The June initial public offering floated 638.9 million shares. Thursday’s unlock adds roughly 43% more, lifting the freely tradable portion of the company to 11.8% of shares outstanding from 4.9%. In absolute terms, shares available for trading climb toward 1.55 billion from about 639 million.

One constraint is working in shareholders’ favor. A separate tranche of up to 455.8 million shares stays locked because SpaceX trades below its $135 offering price — a provision that ties part of the release to the stock’s performance, and one that is currently binding.

Why the Stock Was Already Under Pressure

SpaceX enters this test bruised. Shares sank almost 14% Wednesday, the stock’s second-worst day on record, after the company’s first earnings report as a public company. Revenue reached $7.8 billion for the quarter, and the shares have fallen more than 50% from their June 16 peak of $225.64.

The sell-off on strong revenue requires explanation. The earnings report disclosed larger-than-expected capital expenditures on artificial intelligence. SpaceX is committing substantial sums now to computing infrastructure that will not generate returns for years. Investors decided they were not prepared to fund that timeline, and sold — the same pattern that has hit several technology names this earnings season, where results beat estimates and the stock falls anyway because expectations had already outrun them.

Short sellers moved in aggressively. S3 Partners data show 35% of the available float is currently sold short. That is an unusual concentration of capital positioned against a company roughly two months into public life.

Wall Street Is Split on What It Means

Analysts have largely resisted treating the unlock as a verdict on the business. Mizuho’s Brett Linzey noted that while the step-up in potential supply is meaningful, “eligible for sale does not mean the full tranche will be offered into the market.” Bank of America’s Ron Epstein framed the expiration as a near-term technical drag rather than a judgment on the company, arguing that working through the lockup should eventually relieve pressure on the stock. Morgan Stanley has gone further, characterizing the expiry as an opportunity rather than a risk.

There is a bull case buried in the setup. Short sellers must eventually buy shares to close their positions. If insider selling proves lighter than expected and institutional buyers step in, those shorts become exposed — and a stock that was supposed to fall on supply could instead rise on forced covering. This morning’s muted price action is the first evidence in favor of that scenario.

What to Watch

Volume above all. The first useful signal is trading volume. The early pace suggests activity but not panic. Whether that holds through the afternoon determines whether insiders are steadily distributing stock or standing aside.

The $135 mark. The IPO price is both a psychological reference point and a mechanical one, since it governs whether the additional 455.8 million shares unlock.

The August 12 tranche. With 319 million more shares due in under a week, any selling deferred today does not disappear — it moves.

The distinction worth holding onto is that a lockup expiration is a supply event, not a business event. Nothing about SpaceX’s contracts, operations or outlook changed between Wednesday’s close and Thursday’s open. What changed is how many shareholders are permitted to sell. The market will spend the next several weeks establishing what the stock is worth once that restriction is fully gone.

Intraday figures as of late morning trading, Thursday, August 6.

JBizNews Desk | Wall Street

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

Lithuania’s defense minister warned that Russia could attempt a false-flag operation in the Baltic region using captured Ukrainian drones to test NATO’s resolve and weaken support for Ukraine.

According to Lithuanian intelligence assessments, Moscow could use drones made to appear Ukrainian in an effort to provoke a regional crisis and gauge the alliance’s response. Defense Minister Robertas Kaunas said one objective would be to create uncertainty within NATO and reduce backing for Kyiv.

The warning comes amid growing concerns among Lithuania, Poland, and other Baltic nations that Russia could carry out sabotage or limited attacks against neighboring countries to divert attention from the war in Ukraine and undermine Western unity.

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda previously said intelligence suggested Russia could target critical infrastructure, prompting increased security around energy and transportation facilities. The Kremlin dismissed the allegations, calling them “fearmongering” designed to justify military buildups against Russia.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar began a diplomatic visit to South America on Wednesday, with stops in Ecuador and Colombia aimed at strengthening Israel’s diplomatic engagement across Latin America.

The visit includes official meetings with government leaders and senior officials, as well as Sa’ar’s participation in Friday’s inauguration ceremony of Colombia’s President Abelardo de la Espriella, where he will represent the State of Israel.

During the inauguration events, Sa’ar is expected to hold a series of bilateral meetings with political leaders and senior officials from across the continent as part of Israel’s broader diplomatic outreach in the region.

Sa’ar begins South America tour with landmark Ecuador visit

The visit follows an announcement made two weeks ago that Sa’ar and Colombia’s designated foreign minister, Omar Bula Escobar, reached an agreement to relocate Colombia’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, marking a significant development in bilateral relations.

Before traveling to Colombia, Sa’ar is making an official visit to Ecuador. According to the Foreign Ministry, the trip marks the first visit by an Israeli foreign minister to the country in 44 years.

Speaking ahead of the visit, Sa’ar said Israel has made significant progress in rebuilding and expanding its relationships throughout Latin America.

“Through determined and systematic diplomatic efforts, we have succeeded in strengthening and renewing Israel’s relations with many countries across Latin America,” Sa’ar said. 

“We are continuing our effort to bring Latin America closer to Israel. Israel and its citizens will benefit from this in every sphere, diplomatically, economically, and through tourism.”

The Foreign Ministry said the visit reflects Israel’s continued efforts to deepen diplomatic, economic, and people-to-people ties with countries throughout the region while expanding cooperation with longstanding and emerging partners.

This post was originally published on here.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Hundreds of mourners gathered Thursday at Mount Herzl Military Cemetery to bid farewell to Maj. (res.) Harel Birenstock, an Israeli reservist killed in southern Lebanon, as his family remembered him as a devoted husband, father of four, military commander and man whose joy for life inspired everyone around him.

Birenstock, 34, was killed Wednesday when an explosive device detonated during Israeli military operations in southern Lebanon. Master Sgt. (res.) Tamir Vaknin, 33, was also killed in the blast, and four other reservists were seriously wounded.

Standing beside the couple’s four young children, Birenstock’s wife, Elia, recalled the moment he left home after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack. She said he hugged her, told her to “be strong,” and that she had tried to live by those words ever since.

“But this time I can’t be strong,” she said through tears. “I need you to send me strength.”

Israel buried another hero today.

Major (Res.) Harel Birenstock, 34, gave his life defending the people of Israel during combat in southern Lebanon.

Today, family, friends, and a grateful nation said their final goodbye.
May his memory be a blessing. 🇮🇱💔

Photos by Yonatan… pic.twitter.com/GXIAZWRNYV

— Hananya Naftali (@HananyaNaftali) August 6, 2026

She promised their children would grow up “in a happy home, with dancing and songs,” and asked mourners to remember her husband for the smile that could light up a room.

“Remember Harel with that smile,” she said. “Within a minute everyone loved him, and within five minutes everyone was his friend. He was a man full of life, joy and laughter.”

The wife and the children

Birenstock’s mother recalled their final goodbye before he returned to reserve duty, saying he had surprised his grandparents with one last visit before heading north. Fighting back tears, she questioned how a son “full of energy” could now lie silent, lamenting the growing number of Israeli families grieving loved ones lost in the war.

“We will get up and become strong because that’s what Harel would have wanted,” she said. “But first, I want to cry a little more.”

His father described his son as someone who constantly pushed himself to achieve more and said he had never been prouder than to watch the life Harel built with his family.

“I loved you so much, and I was proud of the path you chose,” he said. “You made us the happiest parents.” He pledged that despite the family’s loss, “No one can defeat the Birenstock family. Joy and happiness will always remain in our home. Am Yisrael Chai.”

His brother remembered Birenstock as a leader who never took shortcuts and thanked him for teaching him the meaning of friendship and responsibility.

His sister called him the family’s hero, recalling that he had completed four marathons and devoted himself to the soldiers under his command, often going to extraordinary lengths to boost their morale. She said he believed every soldier deserved to return home safely.

Friends said Birenstock had completed six reserve deployments since the war began, repeatedly setting aside his career and family life to answer the military’s call. They described him as a humble leader who could always be counted on and whose optimism never faded.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered condolences to the families of Birenstock and Vaknin, calling the two reservists “among our finest sons” who fought courageously in defense of Israel. He also wished a speedy recovery to the soldiers wounded in the same explosion.

Vaknin was scheduled to be laid to rest Thursday evening in his hometown of Eilat.

Maj. (res.) Harel Birenstock

WATCH:

Wall Street opened Thursday pulling in two directions at once. The Dow, which closed at a record on Wednesday, gave back a small piece of it, while the Nasdaq edged higher — but underneath the flat headline numbers, a handful of memory-chip and advertising-tech stocks were falling hard after telling investors their next few months won’t be as good as the last few. The pattern of this earnings season is holding: companies are beating estimates and getting sold anyway, because expectations had already run past the results.

The Dow slipped 62 points, or 0.1%, to 54,288 in early trading. The S&P 500 edged up 9 points, or 0.1%, to 7,733, while the Nasdaq gained 45 points, or 0.2%, to 26,409. The Russell 2000 hovered just under the flat line near 3,017, and the volatility index sat around 15.8 — a quiet reading that tells you traders are not braced for a shock.

Wednesday set the stage. The S&P 500 snapped a four-session winning streak as investors locked in profits from technology stocks, even as the Dow climbed to another record high, with the index closing at 7,723.55.

Market Movers

SanDisk was the morning’s heaviest weight. Shares tumbled roughly 9% after the memory-chip maker issued guidance that fell short of Wall Street’s expectations. The stock had been one of the year’s biggest winners, up more than 400% in 2026, which is precisely why a merely-good forecast was treated as a disappointment.

Western Digital slid alongside it. The company posted quarterly results that topped analyst estimates, but shares moved lower anyway, suggesting investors were focused more on the outlook than the latest earnings. Both companies sell into the same story — artificial-intelligence data centers buying storage faster than manufacturers can supply it — and both are now being asked how long that shortage lasts.

AppLovin fell hardest of the group. Shares plunged 14% after the advertising technology company delivered earnings that disappointed investors.

SpaceX faces its own test today, unrelated to earnings. A lockup expiration frees employees and early backers to sell for the first time since the June debut, with roughly 911 million shares becoming eligible to trade — more than doubling the stock’s freely tradeable float. The stock has been sitting near all-time lows going in. Eligible to sell is not the same as selling, but with short interest already elevated, the market is watching whether a bid shows up.

Nvidia is the counterweight. The chipmaker rose Wednesday after SpaceX said it would exclusively use Nvidia chips, a gain of more than 3% on the session.

Before the bell, ConocoPhillips, Howmet Aerospace, Datadog and Constellation Energy reported. Cloudflare and Monster Beverage follow after the close, along with Airbnb, DraftKings and Celsius Holdings.

The Labor Picture

The morning’s economic data landed on the strong side. Applications for unemployment benefits edged up to 199,000 in the week ended August 1, staying below 200,000 for a third straight week, with the four-week moving average falling to the lowest level since September 2022. That was an increase of 1,000 from the previous week’s revised 198,000, against economist expectations of 202,000.

In plain terms: almost nobody is getting laid off. That matters for Friday, when the July employment report arrives and gives the Federal Reserve its clearest read yet on whether the labor market is tight enough to keep rate cuts off the table.

Commodities

Oil firmed on diplomacy rather than disruption. West Texas Intermediate traded near $76.03 a barrel, up about 1.1%, with Brent holding around $80 after closing Wednesday at $79.43. The United States, Iran and Oman are negotiating an interim arrangement under which inbound ships would transit Iran’s territorial waters while outbound ships sail through Oman’s waters in coordination with Tehran. Iran’s foreign ministry has said a deal is reachable “if certain third parties do not obstruct this process.”

For businesses across the tri-state area, that negotiation is the number that matters most this week. A functioning Hormuz corridor pulls war-risk insurance premiums down, shortens shipping timelines, and eventually shows up at the diesel pump and in freight invoices. It has not happened yet.

Gold climbed to about $4,327 an ounce, up roughly 0.5% and near multiweek highs — the market’s standing hedge against the deal falling apart. Bitcoin traded near $64,400, little changed.

JBizNews Desk | Wall Street

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

Finance of America Companies Inc. (FOA) grew its reverse mortgage and home equity funding volume 21% year over year in the second quarter of 2026, even as non-cash fair value marks in its portfolio business drove a net loss of $29 million from April through June.

The Texas-based lender on Tuesday reported $730 million in funded volume for the quarter ending June 30, up from $602 million during the same period in 2025, according to the company’s earnings release. First-half 2026 volume reached $1.33 billion, up 14% from $1.16 billion in H1 2025.

FOA reported $0.10 in basic earnings per share, or $1 million in net income attributable to Class A common shareholders for the quarter. On a diluted basis, the company posted a loss of $1.28 per share, or a $29 million net loss for the period, reflecting the impact of non-cash fair value adjustments in its portfolio.

On an adjusted basis, the company reported $0.84 in earnings per share, or $19 million in adjusted net income, a 53% year-over-year improvement. Adjusted EBITDA totaled $35 million for the quarter and $79 million for the first half of 2026.

“The second quarter of 2026 reinforced what we’ve been communicating over the past several quarters: that the operational improvements and investments we have made are now translating into a stronger, more scalable business,” CEO Graham Fleming said in a statement. He cited strengthening demand, improved conversion and sales productivity, and growth in proprietary products serving older homeowners.

Performance by segment

FOA’s retirement solutions segment, which originates reverse mortgages and other home equity products, continued to drive growth. Second-quarter funded volume in the segment rose 21% year over year to $730 million.

Total revenue in retirement solutions increased 19% from a year earlier to $74 million, with revenue margins holding near 10.1%, the company reported. Pretax income for the segment was $10 million for the quarter, flat compared to a year earlier, while adjusted net income was $15 million, also in line with Q2 2025.

For the first half of 2026, the segment’s pretax income grew 43% year over year to $20 million, while adjusted net income increased 21% to $29 million.

The company’s portfolio management segment — which earns net interest income and fair value changes on portfolio assets including securitized reverse mortgage collateral — reported a sharp swing driven by valuation marks. The pretax loss was $26 million in Q2 2026, compared with a profit of $108 million in Q2 2025 and a $36 million profit in Q1 2026.

The company attributed the segment’s quarterly loss primarily to negative non-cash fair value adjustments on retained interests in securitizations, which were partially offset by higher accreted yield on residual interests.

Despite the quarterly loss, year-to-date adjusted net income in portfolio management improved 24% to $46 million, up from $37 million in the first half of 2025. Total segment revenue for the quarter fell to $1 million, compared to $130 million in Q2 2025.

Balance-sheet and servicing growth

As of June 30, Finance of America reported $85 million in cash and cash equivalents, up 85% from $46 million a year earlier but down from $108 million at the end of March. The company said strong cash generation from originations and capital markets activities funded most of its recently completed acquisition of Onity Mortgage Corp.‘s servicing portfolio of Home Equity Conversion Mortgages (HECMs).

Total assets rose 24% year over year to $37.3 billion, driven largely by securitized loans held for investment tied to HECM and other nonrecourse obligations, which increased 25% to $36 billion. Assets under management in the portfolio management segment climbed 24% year over year to $37 billion.

Total equity stood at $407 million at the end of Q2 2026, down from $473 million a year earlier. Equity attributable to common stock was $297 million, equating to book value of $33.20 per common share. Tangible equity totaled $246 million, or $13.31 per share, the company said.

Leaders on Onity asset purchase, overall performance

During a Q&A segment at the end of Tuesday’s earnings call, company leaders offered insights into the acquisition of HECM assets and reverse mortgage personnel from Onity, which closed July 1.

“Perhaps the clearest demonstration of our execution this quarter was the strength of our cash generation, allowing us to invest in strategic growth and strengthen the balance sheet,” Fleming said. “The Onity transaction … represents more than the acquisition of servicing assets. It diversifies our servicing footprint, broadens the population of homeowners we can serve, and creates additional opportunities to introduce our proprietary solutions.“

Fleming previously told HousingWire‘s Reverse Mortgage Daily that the transaction included 13 staff members from Onity across originations and operations. He told investors and analysts during Tuesday’s earnings call that the assets had a book value of about $70 million and “we’ll expect to earn yields in the mid-teens.”

“We hired about 13 people — originators and operations staff — from Onity into FOA as part of this transaction,” Fleming said. “We’ve diversified our subservicing platform with Celink and now Onity, which we think is good for FOA and good for the industry. We’ll be able to come up with best-in-class service across both agreements, which will be good for consumers.”

FOA President Kristen Sieffert also weighed in on the growing opportunity to serve senior homeowners across the country, who not only are sitting on nearly $15 trillion in equity but also represent the majority of today’s buyers and sellers.

“Last quarter, I said we were reaching an inflection point in the platform. The second quarter gives us greater confidence in that view,” Sieffert said. “Historically, growth depended more heavily on generating additional top-of-funnel opportunities. Now we’re demonstrating our ability to generate more production from the pipeline we already have.”

She also touched on the rising demand for private-label reverse mortgages and the implications for secondary market investors.

“We’ve seen growing demand for proprietary products recently, mostly as a function of the proprietary products offering better cash flow to the consumer. … Whatever is best suited for the customer is where that demand lands, and right now that’s with the proprietary channel,” Sieffert said.

“The market opportunity ahead of us is still large and underpenetrated, but the real story this quarter is conviction. We’re building a stronger, more valuable business, not simply a bigger one.”

This article was written by Neil Pierson and generated with the assistance of HousingWire Automation, then reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication.

This post was originally published on here.

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — IDF officials are warning of a growing security problem caused by repeated attempts by settlement activists to cross Israel’s borders, saying the incidents divert troops from operational missions, expose military deployments and increase the risk of kidnappings and escalation.

The phenomenon, which began with unauthorized attempts to enter the Gaza Strip, has expanded to Israel’s northern borders with Syria and Lebanon. The Uri Tzafon organization is demanding that Israel establish settlements in Southern Lebanon, stressing that they will provide security for Northern Israel, while Chalutzei HaBashan have a similar demand in Syria – to protect the Golan by establishing civilian communities over the border.

In the latest incident Tuesday, 15 Israeli civilians, most of them teenage girls, crossed into Lebanon near the village of Ghajar before being located by security forces, according to a Ynet report.

The search took place as the IDF was responding to a deadly incident in Majdal Zoun, where two reservists were killed and four others seriously wounded by an explosive device inside a booby-trapped building.

Military officials said large forces, including the Dvora reconnaissance unit of the 91st Division, were forced to divert from other missions to locate the civilians. One of the girls remained missing inside Lebanon for about four hours before being found.

“This is getting out of hand,” a senior Northern Command officer said. “It directly draws attention away from missions.”

The officer said troops preparing for operations such as ambushes or arrests can suddenly be redirected to search for civilians who crossed the border.

“You prepare a force for a mission, for a night in an ambush or to carry out an arrest, all to defend the border and protect residents. Then an incident like this develops, and you are drawn into it for hours. The mission is delayed or does not happen. This is a real blow to security.”

Officials said the crossings create additional dangers beyond the diversion of forces, including revealing military deployments and response times to hostile groups.

“That could be exploited in the future for attacks,” one official warned.

Another officer said the problem often begins before the actual crossing.

“They arrive at night, damage locks and gates, cause destruction and simply go inside,” he said. “They have no set hours. They take advantage of developments in the sector and show up without warning.”

Security officials stressed that the activists are exposing themselves to serious risks, including abduction, explosive devices and encounters with hostile operatives.

“Their entry is not merely entry into a closed military zone,” one official said. “Imagine if one of them were abducted into Syria or deeper into Lebanon. Where would that take the sector, and where could it drag the country?”

The military also raised concerns over unauthorized crossings into Syria, where activists have attempted to enter areas across Israel’s northeastern border.

“In Syria, the danger is significantly greater because the area is freely accessible to the enemy and to local residents,” one official said. “The activists break through fences and risk being kidnapped.”

IDF officials also criticized the police response, claiming there is insufficient deterrence.

“The same people return again and again,” a northern officer said. “We go inside, arrest them, call up forces, including special forces, and invest enormous effort in catching them and handing them over to police. But in the end, nothing is done.”

The officer said many suspects are released within hours without significant legal consequences.

“They are detained for a few hours, and it even turns the arrested activist into a hero,” he said.

Reservists from the Dvora unit also expressed frustration, saying some were called away from family vacations to assist in searches while other troops were engaged in combat-related missions.

Officials warned the phenomenon could increase as Israel approaches elections.

“We do not hear anyone in the government condemning these incidents or saying that they are wrong and harm operational continuity,” a senior security official said. “As the election gets closer, we are taking into account that this will intensify.”

He added: “This has to be addressed now, and these people must not be given backing. It is possible to demonstrate a presence and wage a political struggle, but not this way.”

Residents of Ghajar described seeing large numbers of troops and police enter the village during Tuesday’s search.

One resident told Ynet: “I think the religious Jews will end up taking over Lebanon too.”

He said the group had arrived at a nearby lookout point before moving toward the border. “I feel sorry for the children and women. It is very dangerous,” he said. “All the army and police forces came to our village. Believe me, they are crazier than we are.”

Police rejected the military’s criticism, saying investigation files from recent incidents had been transferred to prosecutors and were awaiting decisions on possible indictments.

Police officials said courts often release suspects shortly after arrest and argued that stronger coordination between law enforcement, prosecutors and the judiciary is needed to create deterrence.

They also emphasized that responsibility for securing Israel’s borders rests with the IDF.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration has approved a new kind of flu vaccine for older people, the first made with the same mRNA technology that was key to ending the COVID-19 pandemic, manufacturer Moderna said.

The shot, named mFlusiva, is intended for adults age 50 or older. Other brands of flu shots already have begun arriving in pharmacies ahead of fall vaccination season, and Moderna said late Wednesday that it expects some of its new version to be available soon at select retailers.

While there already are multiple flu vaccine options in the U.S., including three specifically recommended for people age 65 or older, tens of thousands of Americans die from influenza every year and older adults are among the most vulnerable.

Flu vaccines must be updated annually to best match circulating strains of the virus. Vaccines made with the Nobel Prize-winning mRNA technology are faster to manufacturer than other types, and experts say this additional option might help if the shape-shifting flu virus mutates in a way that requires suddenly brewing new doses.

Moderna, which is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said the FDA granted full approval for mFlusiva’s use in people ages 50 to 64, based on a study of 40,000 people that found the new shot reduced flu cases by about 27% compared with another routinely used flu vaccine brand. For people 65 or older, the biotech and pharmaceutical company said the FDA granted what’s called accelerated approval for the shot — based on a smaller study showing it generated a strong immune response compared with an existing high-dose vaccine for seniors – while it conducts an additional postmarketing study.

Moderna’s data showed no major safety issues although the shot did cause some temporary reactions including injection site pain, fever, headache, tiredness and aches that occurred somewhat more than with today’s flu shots.

The FDA action comes after a highly unusual public dispute over mFlusiva earlier this year. A then-top FDA official blocked the company’s application, a sign of the agency’s heightened vaccine scrutiny under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Days later, the agency changed course after Moderna publicly challenged the ruling — and in June a panel of independent advisers to the FDA unanimously recommended the vaccine’s approval.

New Hampshire Avenue is closed between Route 88 and Swarthmore Avenue following an accident involving a garbage truck that resulted in a ruptured gas tank this morning.

The closure is causing heavy traffic delays in the area.

Professional sports teams and leagues have gotten in bed with sports gambling websites, and now, perhaps the most famous sports team in the entire world has gone another step.

The New York Yankees and Polymarket announced Thursday a deal in which the site has become the team’s official prediction market partner for the rest of the season.

“We are excited to begin a relationship with Polymarket — Major League Baseball’s prediction market partner,” Yankees SVP of partnerships Michael Tusiani said in a release. “Through signage and fan experience opportunities, we look forward to elevating Polymarket’s brand awareness both at Yankee Stadium and across our fan base.”

“We are proud to become an Official Prediction Market Partner of the New York Yankees. Yankees fans are among the most active on our platform and passionate in sports, and Yankee Stadium is a natural home for Polymarket, where the questions driving our markets come to life throughout the season,” Polymarket’s president of sports business development Ari Borod said.

Polymarket will have a presence both at Yankee Stadium and on Yankees broadcasts on the YES Network and Amazon Prime Video. As part of the sponsorship package, Polymarket purchased tickets to premium hospitality areas and suites.

Exclusive fan experiences, including an outfield catch for children, Kids Run the Bases, and lineup card delivery experiences.

The Yankees are just the second team in North America’s four major sports leagues to have a deal with Polymarket, joining the NHL’s New York Rangers. Polymarket is also Major League Baseball’s exclusive Prediction Market Exchange partner and is also the National Hockey League’s official prediction market partner.

For what it’s worth, Polymarket gives the Yankees a 97% chance of missing the postseason. The team has struggled offensively without Aaron Judge (Giancarlo Stanton and Cody Bellinger have also hit the shelf), but the pitching has been dynamic, and trade deadline reinforcements figure to help out down the stretch as the team seeks its first World Series since 2009.

Rav Yitzchok Zilberstein, a member of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah, delivered powerful words of chizuk at the bar mitzvah of his great-grandson, expressing confidence that the next generation of bnei Torah will safeguard Klal Yisroel. He also shared a moving story illustrating how wisdom and good judgment can prevent conflict and transform anger into harmony.

The simcha, held in Bnei Brak, celebrated the bar mitzvah of the bochur Dovid Segal, son of Rav Yosef Halevi Segal, one of the prominent avreichim in Kollel Ponovezh, and grandson of Rav Avraham Yaakov Zilberstein.

Rav Zilberstein listened attentively and with obvious nachas as the bar mitzvah bochur delivered his drashah. The drashah focused on whether one recites Shehecheyanu upon purchasing a new pair of tefillin. The young bochur concluded by citing his great-grandfather’s psak that the accepted custom is not to recite the berachah directly on the tefillin. Instead, one should take a new fruit, recite Shehecheyanu over it, and have in mind to include the new tefillin as well.

Following the drashah, Rav Zilberstein addressed those gathered with heartfelt words directed to the broader tzibbur.

“Klal Yisroel does not know exactly what tomorrow will bring. We simply do not know. Even our leaders themselves do not know what tomorrow will be. But there is one thing we do know. What do we know? That children like this, who are growing up here, will protect us in every way. That is our foundation—a sweet child standing here and speaking such beautiful divrei Torah. Ashreichem v’ashrei chelkechem.”

Rav Zilberstein then shared a story to illustrate the importance of acting with wisdom and sensitivity.

“As is well known, on Erev Yom Tov many people travel from Bnei Brak to Yerushalayim, each one going to spend Yom Tov with his Rebbe or Rav. A large crowd was waiting at a bus stop when bus after bus passed by completely full. Since they had filled up at earlier stops, none of them stopped at the final station. The people waiting there became extremely angry. They were upset not only because some of the buses had left late, but also because none of them stopped.”

“They said that if another bus came by, they would smash its windows. Then a very wise driver arrived and did something incredibly clever. His bus was actually scheduled to travel from Bnei Brak to Tiveria. He stopped, got off the bus, and asked the crowd, ‘I see there’s a big commotion here. What’s going on?'”

“They explained that every bus was passing without taking on passengers and that everyone was furious. The driver responded, ‘I’ll call my supervisor. Look, there is a tremendous chesed that can be done for the people of Bnei Brak. There simply aren’t enough buses.’ He then requested permission to change his route from Bnei Brak–Tiveria to Bnei Brak–Yerushalayim.”

“And that is exactly what he did. He immediately changed the destination sign so that instead of Tiveria, it read Bnei Brak–Yerushalayim. It is unbelievable. He was a Bnei Brak resident, but more importantly, he had tremendous seichel. The people showered him with blessings, telling him, ‘You saved us. You are a wise man. May Heaven bless you.’ No one cursed him. Instead, everyone blessed him and described how long they had been waiting.”

“What did I learn from this? I learned something truly remarkable. If a person wants to be a proper Jew, he must also be a Jew with seichel! That driver understood that had he arrived from the outset as a Yerushalayim bus, they would have broken his bones because of their anger and frustration. So what did he do? He simply changed the destination and route number. It is unbelievable. What does Tiveria have to do with Yerushalayim? But he had seichel. With that wisdom, he saved everyone from machlokes, lashon hara, and every other negative trait. Instead of curses, there were endless blessings, and everyone wanted to kiss him.”

“That is what it means to be a true oved Hashem. A true oved Hashem is someone who sees anger and tension among people and, through wisdom, transforms it into blessing. Such a person will receive tremendous reward.”

Rav Zilberstein concluded with a call for every Jew to strive to create a Kiddush Hashem through refined conduct and noble character.

“We must know that the greatest mitzvah today is to make a Kiddush Hashem. Proper behavior. Refined behavior. Nobility and gentleness, just as our family knows how to conduct itself, following the example of Rav Elyashiv and our grandparents from every side.”

“HaKadosh Baruch Hu should help that this young boy grow to greatness, and may HaKadosh Baruch Hu help all of Klal Yisroel that we should be blessed with seichel, to know how to conduct ourselves and fulfill the will of the Creator. May HaKadosh Baruch Hu grant us every blessing, and let us say Amen.”

{Matzav.com}

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli prosecutors Thursday charged a settler for the killing of a Palestinian community leader last year in the West Bank, according to an indictment filed in district court.

In the document, prosecutors accuse Yinon Levi, who lives in the south of the West Bank, of reckless manslaughter in the death of prominent Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen in July 2025. The charge holds a lesser punishment than murder under Israeli law. The indictment also charges Levi with armed trespassing and malicious property damage.

It is extremely rare for Israel to charge settlers with violence against Palestinians. Israeli rights group B’Tselem said that the charges against Levi mark the first time since Oct. 7, 2023, that an Israeli has been indicted for the death of a Palestinian in the West Bank.

A lawyer for Levi, Avichay Hajbi, did not confirm whether an indictment was handed down, but told The Associated Press that the prosecution had made a “mistaken decision.” He said the defense would respond to the accusations in court.

Levi was shown in video footage shooting at crowds of Palestinians in Hathaleen’s village, Umm al-Khair, on the day the activist was killed. Witnesses said one of the shots Levi fired struck Hathaleen, who was standing meters away.

FILE -Yinon Levi works on his farm in the South Hebron Hills, West Bank, May 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo, File)

One video showed Levi firing two shots, while another, which family members say was taken by Hathaleen himself, showed Levi firing toward the person holding the camera. The footage cuts, but the person can still be heard moaning in pain.

Hathaleen was a prominent voice advocating against settler violence and was involved in the 2025 Oscar-winning film “No Other Land,” which chronicled the fight by Palestinian residents to protect their homes and villages. A teacher and father of three, he often hosted international activists and dignitaries in his home.

His public profile and the videos capturing the moment of the alleged shooting ignited global calls for Levi’s prosecution.

Levi was among the Israeli settlers sanctioned by the United States and other Western countries over allegations of violence toward Palestinians in 2024. U.S. President Donald Trump lifted the U.S. sanctions after taking office the following year.

The Likud party has submitted a formal request to Central Elections Committee Chairman and Deputy President of the High Court Justice Noam Sohlberg, asking him to reconsider his decision prohibiting party representatives from reporting, in real time, which voters have already cast their ballots.

In a letter sent to Sohlberg, the party called for the restriction on the use of election-day voter tracking and turnout applications to be revoked.

As an alternative, Likud requested that if the directive remains in place, it should apply only beginning with the next election rather than the current campaign. The request was submitted by the party’s legal adviser, attorney Ilan Bombach, following the political backlash sparked by the ruling earlier this week.

Likud argues that prohibiting party representatives from reporting voter turnout at polling stations significantly hampers campaign operations. The party contends that the ruling sets an unprecedented precedent and changes “the rules of the game in the middle of the game.”

Earlier on Thursday, Likud MK Avichai Buaron proposed an alternative: the Central Elections Committee itself should distribute the information to all parties in real time.

Under Buaron’s proposal, Central Elections Committee staff stationed at polling places would collect voter turnout data and distribute it to all parties every hour in an identical manner. He argued that such a system would preserve voter privacy while ensuring equal treatment for all parties contesting the election.

“If the chairman of the Central Elections Committee objects to party representatives reporting voting data to their parties, then the committee itself should provide a transparent, impartial, and official alternative,” Buaron said.

He added, “The Central Elections Committee’s staff are present at every polling station and have real-time access to voter turnout data, which they can easily distribute to all parties once every hour.”

Buaron also criticized recent decisions by the Elections Committee, saying that “the interventions, appointments, and controversial decisions made by the committee, which clearly affect the election process and the activities of right-wing parties, are deeply concerning.”

He said the committee’s role is to ensure that elections are conducted fairly and transparently, not to restrict parties’ field operations.

“We all want fair elections,” Buaron said. “If there is a problem with party representatives reporting voter turnout data, the solution is simple: the Elections Committee should provide the information itself to all parties.”

Concluding his remarks, Buaron said, “This is 2026, not 1956. There is no technological or democratic justification for denying parties basic real-time turnout information. We will not give up our demand for fair and transparent elections.”

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City has activated its heat and flash flood emergency plans as temperatures are expected to approach 100 degrees Thursday and severe thunderstorms threaten the area.

The National Weather Service has issued a Heat Advisory through Friday evening, with heat index values near 100 degrees and the potential for heavy rain and localized flooding.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani said the city is opening hundreds of cooling centers, expanding Code Red outreach to homeless residents, clearing catch basins, deploying emergency crews and extending hours at outdoor pools.

Officials are urging residents to stay hydrated, limit outdoor activity during the hottest part of the day, check on elderly and vulnerable neighbors, and avoid flooded streets, downed power lines and fallen trees during storms.

The city also advised residents of basement apartments to prepare for possible flooding and encouraged New Yorkers to sign up for Notify NYC emergency alerts.

ROME (AP) — Italy placed all of its major cities under the highest heat alert Thursday as a blistering heat wave gripped Europe, setting a national temperature record in Austria, fueling wildfires in France and disrupting energy and transport systems across the continent.

The extreme weather has pushed temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in several countries, prompting health warnings for millions of people.

Across Europe, authorities are grappling with the consequences of extreme heat: health alerts for millions in Italy, record temperatures in Austria, drought-related disruptions to energy and shipping in Central Europe, and wildfires stretching from France to the Balkans.

Scientists and officials warn that such events are becoming more frequent and intense as the climate warms.

Climate change drives more extreme summers
From the Mediterranean to Central Europe, prolonged heat, drought and wildfire conditions are increasingly becoming defining features of summer. The current heat wave has exposed vulnerabilities in public health systems, power generation, transportation networks and tourism infrastructure, forcing governments and businesses to adapt to more frequent periods of extreme weather.

Italy’s Health Ministry placed all 27 cities monitored under its national heat surveillance system on red alert Thursday — the first time this year the entire network has been under the highest warning level simultaneously.

The alerts stretch from Trieste in the northeast to Palermo in Sicily and signal a health risk for the entire population, not only vulnerable groups such as older adults and people with chronic illnesses.

Authorities urged residents and tourists to avoid direct sunlight during the hottest hours of the day, remain indoors where possible and drink plenty of water as temperatures in some areas approached 40 C (104 F).

The heat has also forced adjustments at major tourist attractions. The ministries of tourism and culture extended evening opening hours at landmarks including Rome’s Colosseum and Pantheon.

Cooling mist fans have been installed at the Colosseum’s entrances and additional medical stations have been made available.

Austria breaks national temperature record
The most intense temperatures were recorded in Austria, where the mercury reached 41.2 C (106.2 F) on Wednesday in the village of Bad Deutsch-Altenburg near the Slovak border, according to GeoSphere Austria. It was the highest temperature ever recorded in the country.

Austria is also facing severe drought. Rainfall from Jan. 1 through June 30 was 27% below the long-term average nationwide, while some eastern regions received only half their normal precipitation.

Climatologist Alexander Orlik said some parts of the country had not experienced such dry conditions since 1885.

Hungary cuts power use as drought hits nuclear plant
In Hungary, prolonged drought and record-low water levels on the Danube River have severely affected the country’s only nuclear power plant, which relies on river water to cool its reactors.

Plant operators have reduced output to about 10% of normal production, prompting the government to introduce emergency conservation measures as a record-breaking heat wave grips the country.

Authorities have asked major industrial users and households to cut electricity consumption, particularly during peak demand hours between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. Freight trains have been barred from operating during those hours, while decorative lighting on landmarks in Budapest has been switched off.

Several major companies, including energy company Mol, pharmaceutical maker Gedeon Richter and automakers Suzuki, Mercedes-Benz, Audi and BMW have announced plans to curb electricity use.

The government also canceled parliamentary sessions this week in an effort to conserve power.

The heat wave has shattered temperature records across the country. On Wednesday night, Budapest recorded its warmest overnight low temperature on record, with temperatures falling only to 28 degrees Celsius (82 degrees Fahrenheit), underscoring the persistence of the extreme heat.

Germany worries about shrinking rivers
Germany faced growing concerns over the impact of drought on transportation and industry as water levels on the Rhine and other rivers continued to fall.

Transport Minister Steffen Bilger met affected organizations Thursday and warned that low water levels posed major challenges for inland waterway shipping, industry and the broader logistics chain.

Environmental group BUND urged authorities to focus not only on the economic impacts but also on making rivers more resilient to climate change by retaining more water in landscapes and reducing withdrawals during periods of drought.

France remains on high wildfire alert
In southeastern France, firefighters maintained a large presence in the Var region after authorities said a major wildfire there was no longer spreading but remained capable of reigniting.

The blaze, which began July 20, has burned more than 60 square kilometers (23 square miles), making it the largest recorded in the region in recent decades.

Authorities warned that strong winds and extremely dry conditions left southeastern France at very high risk for additional wildfires.

Balkans battle fires and drought
The heat wave reached its peak across the Balkans on Thursday as temperatures neared 40 C (104 F) and authorities battled drought and wildfires.

In Serbia, firefighters struggled to contain several blazes after days of dry weather. One major fire burned through pine forests west of Belgrade, while another spread near the central town of Kraljevo, where difficult terrain complicated firefighting efforts.

In neighboring Croatia, tourists in Dubrovnik sought refuge in shade and avoided beaches during the hottest hours of the day as temperatures soared along the Adriatic coast.

Several Israeli Torah institutions are joining together to obtain legal guidance and representation following a new investigation by the Charity Commission for England and Wales into British charities that support institutions beyond the Green Line.

The effort is being coordinated through Rabbi Nechemya Malinowitz, a member of the World Zionist Organization executive on behalf of Eretz Hakodesh and founder of the Igud Yeshivos and Seminaries for Bnei Chul. Several mosdos affected by the investigation have turned to Rabbi Malinowitz in recent days seeking assistance.

In response, the association has begun gathering the relevant institutions in order to provide coordinated legal advice and unified representation before the British authorities. Officials involved in the effort say contact has already been made with a British law firm specializing in the field, as well as with government and regulatory figures, in order to assess the implications of the inquiry and prepare a joint response.

The Charity Commission announced this week that it had opened a fact-finding statutory class inquiry into concerns involving multiple charities operating in areas the UK refers to as illegal Israeli settlements. According to the Commission, the inquiry will examine the extent of charitable funds used in those areas, the purposes for which the money was spent, and whether the spending was in furtherance of the charities’ registered charitable purposes. The initial inquiry includes eight unnamed charities, though the Commission said the probe may later be expanded to include others.

It is important to note that, contrary to some inaccurate reports, the inquiry is directed at the British charities and their trustees, not at individual donors themselves.

The investigation comes after Labour MP Melanie Ward, formerly chief executive of Medical Aid for Palestinians, submitted a complaint in June alleging that 32 British charities had transferred at least £28 million to institutions operating beyond the Green Line.
The Igud warned that any expansion of the inquiry could have serious implications for numerous mosdos that rely on donations from the United Kingdom. The association is urging any institution that receives donations from Britain, or operates through a British “friends of” charity, to contact the Igud as soon as possible so information can be centralized and a proper legal strategy can be prepared.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Op-Ed By Moti Leitner

Around a year ago, the Charedi community suddenly seemed to become the subject of every front page, television debate and political confrontation in Israel. Questions about Torah study, military service, education, employment and the relationship between Charedim and the state were no longer being discussed quietly. They had become the center of a national storm.

Much of the public discussion was hostile, simplistic and disconnected from the reality of Charedi life. Yet as I watched our established Charedi political representatives respond, I became increasingly troubled. Their answer to every attack was another accusation. Their answer to every difficult question was another slogan. There was anger, blame and endless talk about what could not be done, but almost no serious discussion about what could be done.

So I decided to listen. I traveled across the country and met Charedim from different communities, backgrounds and stages of life. I spoke with avreichim and working fathers, mothers struggling to support large families, educators, business owners, young people trying to find their place and those who had already begun to feel that there was no place for them at all. I listened to people from Chassidish, Litvish and Sephardi communities, including those who remain deeply connected to the existing institutions and those who increasingly feel pushed to their margins.

The details differed, but the message was remarkably consistent: people were not happy. They did not feel represented. They did not believe their voices were being heard. Many felt trapped between two political camps, neither of which truly understood them. On one side were those who spoke about the Charedi community as a problem to be solved, often proposing measures from outside without understanding our values, responsibilities or way of life. On the other side were the parties that had claimed to represent us for four decades, but had become more effective at preserving their political power than addressing the mounting difficulties within our homes and communities.

The people I met did not want to abandon Torah life; they wanted to protect it. They did not want outsiders to dictate their future, but they also understood that refusing to confront reality was placing that future in danger. They asked difficult but necessary questions. How can a father support his family with dignity without feeling that he must choose between earning a living and belonging to his community? What future is being offered to a young man who is not suited to full-time Torah study? Why are educational options so limited for those who need a different path? How can military or national service be made appropriate for those who are able and willing to serve without requiring them to sacrifice their religious identity? How can genuine Torah learners receive the respect and support they deserve while other members of the community are given the tools to build independent lives?

These questions are not attacks on the world of Torah. Ignoring them is what threatens the world of Torah. That listening campaign led to the establishment of HaTzibbur HaCharedi – The Charedi Public Party, a new political home for Charedim who believe that protecting Torah requires responsible leadership, honesty and practical solutions.

We stand for strengthening genuine Torah study, expanding educational and professional opportunities, enabling dignified employment, developing appropriate frameworks for military or meaningful national service, and helping Charedi families become more economically self-reliant.

None of this means weakening our identity or allowing others to determine who we should become. It means ensuring that every member of our community has a place, a future and the ability to contribute according to his or her circumstances and abilities.

The answers will not come from opposition politicians who seek to impose their worldview and plans upon us. They do not possess the trust, understanding or cultural sensitivity required to produce lasting change.

However, after many decades of political representation without meaningful progress on the central challenges facing our community, we must also acknowledge that the answers will not come from the existing Charedi parties. If they were going to provide those answers, they would have done so by now.

The answers must come from within the Charedi community itself. Those without connections, without access to the portals of power. They must be developed by people who love Torah, understand Charedi life and recognize both the pain within our community and our responsibilities to the wider Jewish people. At the same time, they must be advanced through cooperation with other parts of Israeli society.

We cannot secure our future through hermetic isolation, nor can Israel build its future through coercion. A strong Charedi community and a strong Am Yisrael are not competing goals. They depend upon one another. Israel needs a Charedi community that is confident, economically secure and able to contribute its values and talents to the country. The Charedi community needs an Israel that respects Torah, protects religious life and treats Charedim as partners rather than as a burden or an enemy.

We have spent too many years shouting past one another. The result has been greater poverty, deeper alienation, growing resentment and diminishing trust. We now have a small window in which to choose another path. HaTzibbur HaCharedi – The Charedi Public Party was created because our community deserves more than excuses, and Am Yisrael deserves more than endless confrontation. We can protect the world of Torah, restore dignity and opportunity to thousands of families, and build a healthier relationship with the rest of Israel. But first, the Charedi public must finally be heard.

The writer is Chairman of HaTzibbur HaCharedi – The Charedi Public Party, a new political home for Charedim who believe that protecting the world of Torah requires responsible leadership and practical solutions to the challenges facing our community. We stand for genuine Torah study, increased educational options, dignified employment, appropriate military or national service, economic self-reliance and a stronger partnership between the Charedi community and all of Am Yisrael.

The Israel Land Authority, with security provided by Israel Police, demolished several illegal structures built on state-owned land during enforcement operations carried out this week in central and northern Israel.

In Kafr Qasim, authorities demolished an illegally constructed four-story building after a final court ruling. The operation was carried out under heavy police security following extensive preparations.

A day earlier, enforcement teams demolished an illegally built home in the Galilee village of Bi’ina after the occupants failed to comply with a court order requiring them to remove the structure themselves.

The Israel Land Authority said the demolitions are part of an ongoing effort to remove illegal construction, free state land for planned development, and enable the legal marketing of residential plots. Officials added that the government intends to seek reimbursement from those responsible for the full cost of the demolitions and evacuations while continuing to enforce additional court orders against illegal structures.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)