James Carville, a veteran Democratic strategist who served as the chief strategist for Bill Clinton’s campaign, establishing the “war room” and the phrase, “it’s the economy, stupid,” threw his support behind Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, who is challenging Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) for the Senate seat.

The troubled candidate has come under fire for his Nazi Totenkopf (death’s-head) tattoo, which he inked over as soon as it became a liability, and other scandals, the latest of which involved sexting up to a dozen women who were not his wife.

When pressed by CNN anchor Jake Tapper on whether Carville would be as forgiving of Republicans voting for a candidate who had sported a Nazi tattoo for decades, Carville conceded the point, before quickly pivoting to arguing that defeating Donald Trump is more important.

“What would you say to a Republican who says, if a Republican combat veteran had a Nazi tattoo, you wouldn’t be so forgiving?” Tapper asked.

“It’s true. I would say you’re exactly right,” Carville admitted.

James Carville attends The New York Times DealBook Summit 2025 on Dec. 3, 2025, in New York City. (Photo by David Dee Delgado/Getty Images for The New York Times)

Critics have noted the brazen double standard: supporting actions on his side that Carville would find unforgivable in Republicans and acknowledging and defending that double standard.

In a separate interview, liberally sprinkled with profane language, Carville defended Platner’s behavior.

Graham Platner sports the infamous Totenkopf (Nazi death’s-head tattoo). (From a post on X)

“He’s f—ed up, he’s been shot at, he’s a veteran, he’s a little bit weird, he’s an oysterman,” he said.

“Then his opponent, I can hardly say her name without the utter contempt dripping, Susan Collins, whose spine reminds me of a blueberry jelly from Maine,” he added. “Maybe we need a combat veteran right on that Senate floor who is f—ed up.”

“If you believe, as I do, that the country is in imminent peril — I mean imminent peril — who is most likely to slow this criminal in charge? Susan ‘Blueberry Jelly’ Collins, or five degrees off dead center Graham Platner?” Carville asked. “I think it’s Graham Platner.”

Carville then compared voting for Platner to Franklin Roosevelt’s alliance with Joseph Stalin to defeat Adolf Hitler.

“And you know if Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill could work with Joseph Stalin — who, by the way, well, I’ll tell you this, he was a bad guy, a really bad guy, alright — then I can overlook a tattoo,” Carville added.

Arguing about the importance of winning, the Democratic strategist pointed to Abraham Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus.

“Abraham Lincoln had to suspend habeas corpus, why? Because he had to win a Godd— war, OK?” Carville added. “We got to win this.”

An Israeli singer has sparked widespread attention after claiming that he won the grand prize in Israel’s latest lottery drawing and then shared the news directly with his followers on social media.

According to posts published overnight, singer Osher Biton said he was the sole winner of the 40 million shekel jackpot awarded in the lottery drawing held on Motzoei Shabbos.

The drawing generated enormous interest because the jackpot had reached the maximum amount allowed by law—40 million shekels in the regular lottery and up to 80 million shekels through the Double Lotto option.

Lottery kiosks across the country reportedly saw a surge of customers as tens of thousands of Israelis tried their luck in hopes of winning the record prize. In the end, however, only one ticket matched all of the winning numbers.

Biton, who first gained national recognition through his participation in Eurovision-related competitions and later built a successful music career, chose not to keep the news private.

Sharing a photo of what appeared to be the winning ticket on Instagram, he wrote: “Turns out I’m a millionaire—I didn’t realize it.”

The surprising announcement quickly spread across social media, with thousands of users sharing the post and flooding the singer with congratulatory messages.

The story also brought renewed attention to other notable lottery winners in Israel who publicly disclosed their winnings. Among them were a soldier who won 15 million shekels after serving months in reserve duty in Gaza and another individual who reportedly won 24 million shekels two years after a missile struck his home.

{Matzav.com}

For the first time in years, many American workers are seeing something they have not experienced since the inflation surge of 2022: paychecks that are growing more slowly than the cost of living. Wages are still rising, but prices are rising faster, meaning the average worker’s purchasing power is shrinking rather than expanding.

The latest figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics highlight the challenge. Average hourly earnings rose 3.4% over the past year, reaching $37.53 per hour. At the same time, consumer prices increased 3.8% annually through April, marking the fastest inflation rate since May 2023.

The difference may seem small, but its impact is significant. When inflation outpaces wage growth, workers effectively receive a pay cut in real terms, even if their paycheck is larger than it was a year ago.

The government’s own inflation-adjusted data reflects that reality. Real average hourly earnings fell 0.5% in April and were down 0.3% from a year earlier, ending a period during which wage gains had generally stayed ahead of inflation.

For households, the squeeze is most visible in everyday necessities.

Energy prices have been one of the biggest drivers. Higher oil prices tied to ongoing Middle East tensions pushed overall energy costs sharply higher during the spring. Gasoline, home heating fuels, and transportation costs all increased, creating ripple effects throughout the economy because nearly every product must be manufactured, transported, or delivered using energy.

Food costs have added another layer of pressure.

Consumers have seen noticeable increases in grocery bills, particularly for proteins and other staple items. Beef prices have climbed substantially over the past year, while food-at-home inflation posted some of its strongest monthly increases in nearly two years. Unlike discretionary purchases, food and fuel are expenses families cannot easily avoid, making those increases especially painful.

The challenge extends beyond groceries and gasoline.

So-called core inflation, which excludes food and energy, remains elevated because of persistent increases in housing, insurance, medical services, and other everyday expenses. Rent and shelter costs continue to consume a growing share of household budgets, particularly in major metropolitan areas.

Economists note that inflation had been steadily cooling before renewed energy pressures emerged earlier this year. Progress toward the Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation target appeared encouraging through much of late 2025 and early 2026. However, rising oil prices and supply-chain pressures reversed some of that improvement.

The effects reach beyond individual households.

When consumers feel financially stretched, they often become more cautious with spending. Retailers, restaurants, and consumer-facing businesses frequently see that behavior first as shoppers delay purchases, seek discounts, or switch to lower-cost alternatives. Several major retailers have already reported that even middle- and higher-income consumers are becoming more price sensitive.

The broader economy can feel the impact as well. Consumer spending accounts for roughly two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, making household purchasing power one of the most important drivers of growth.

Relief may not come quickly.

Economists expect energy prices to remain a key factor in upcoming inflation reports, and the Federal Reserve continues to face a difficult balancing act. Cutting interest rates could help reduce borrowing costs but might also risk reigniting inflation. Keeping rates elevated could help contain prices but would leave consumers facing higher costs for mortgages, auto loans, and credit cards.

For now, the reality is simple: a raise does not automatically mean a higher standard of living. When prices rise faster than wages, households feel poorer even as paychecks grow.

That helps explain why many Americans continue to express frustration about the economy despite a healthy job market and steady hiring. Employment remains strong, but for millions of workers, the real measure of economic success is whether a paycheck buys more than it did a year ago. Right now, for many families, the answer is no.

JBizNews Desk — Economy

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WASHINGTON D.C (VINnews)-President Donald Trump called on Israel not to retaliate against Iran following recent strikes, telling the Jewish state that “each of them had their fun” and urging both sides to return to the negotiating table as a nuclear deal appears close.

Trump made the remarks in a phone call during a Fox News interview, amid heightened tensions after Iranian missile strikes and Israeli responses, including actions in Beirut.

“The Iranian strikes didn’t hurt anybody. Hopefully Israel is not going to retaliate,” Trump said. “If Bibi strikes them back it’s just gonna keep going like the last 47 years, or the last 3000 years.”

Trump added that he planned to call Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately.

“I am going to call Bibi right now and tell him not to retaliate,” Trump stressed. “Each of them had their fun. Israel had its strike and Iran had its strike. We don’t need another one.”

Trump expressed optimism about ongoing diplomacy. “We are very close to a final deal with Iran. It is going to be a good deal. I don’t want it to blow up because of what is happening now,” he said.

On Fox News, Trump told Iran: “You’ve launched your missiles, that’s enough, return to the negotiating table and reach an agreement.” He reiterated, “We are very close to reaching an agreement.”

Trump also voiced dissatisfaction with certain Israeli strikes on Beirut, according to the reports.

VINnews will continue to monitor developments in the Israel-Iran tensions and any U.S. diplomatic efforts.

In remarks that have sparked intense discussion throughout Israel’s medical community, Rav Yitzchok Zilberstein sharply criticized the country’s health funds for spending vast sums on advertising and public relations campaigns while, he argued, making it difficult for elderly patients to obtain subsidized life-saving treatments.

The comments were delivered during the Rav’s weekly shiur for physicians and rabbanim at the shul of Mayanei Hayeshua Medical Center. For nearly five decades, the gathering has served as a forum where complex questions at the intersection of halachah and medicine are discussed and analyzed.

Doctors who regularly travel from across the country to attend the lectures were taken aback by the unusually forceful criticism directed at the health funds. Rav Zilberstein argued that instead of expanding access to life-saving medications, the organizations are spending excessive amounts on large-scale advertising campaigns and public relations efforts.

The discussion arose from a complicated question involving an expensive medical treatment that a health fund subsidizes only under highly specific circumstances. A patient sought guidance regarding whether he could take certain steps to obtain coverage for a treatment that doctors deemed medically necessary, even though he did not technically meet the required eligibility criteria.

While Rav Zilberstein devoted much of the shiur to analyzing the halachic dimensions of the case, he used the opportunity to address what he described as a broader and troubling reality affecting many patients.

“In my opinion, the doctor is correct,” Rav Zilberstein said. “A health fund may be jointly owned by its members, but that would apply only if the members were consulted regarding all expenditures. Yet these health funds are pouring out money—yes, pouring it out. You ask why I used that expression? Because when an institution spends money on enormous newspaper advertisements, that is called wasting money.”

“Have you seen these advertisements?” he continued. “Entire pages. What is that? A full page costs a fortune. So I wrote that they are ‘pouring out’ money. They are spending it without justification on things that the public clearly would not approve of, such as massive advertising campaigns, public relations efforts, and other activities unrelated to actual medical care.”

Rav Zilberstein also criticized what he described as the approval of numerous prenatal tests that are often unnecessary and extremely costly.

“They act with excessive generosity and without proportion when it comes to these tests,” he said. “Therefore, there is no justification for the claims they make, and one cannot simply accept their position as binding when they themselves are spending money in this manner.”

Turning to the issue of medication coverage, Rav Zilberstein expressed frustration with what he characterized as inflexible eligibility requirements.

“But when it comes to elderly people who need life-saving medications, suddenly they become inexplicably stingy,” he said. “What do they say? ‘You’re missing this requirement. You’re missing a few points.’ That is stinginess. They have rigid rules. If someone’s protein level is 195, is he not in danger? Why must it be exactly 200 before he qualifies for assistance? These numbers can change within a month. They are constantly changing. Therefore, I say that fairness dictates that one should not automatically accept their position.”

Rav Zilberstein argued that the public would overwhelmingly prefer that health fund resources be directed first and foremost toward life-saving treatments.

“In my opinion, the public would rather see this money spent on life-saving medications,” he said. “As long as the health funds never ask the public how these funds should be used, it cannot simply be claimed that every expenditure reflects the will of the public. If they consulted their members, who would approve these advertisements? A single full-page ad costs an enormous amount of money. And there are many more advertisements—in newspapers, institutions, and elsewhere. The advertising is excessive and unjustified. It is money that should not be spent this way.”

One participant asked what purpose such advertising serves.

“Why are they advertising?” he asked. “Is it to build their reputation or to attract more clients?”

Rav Zilberstein replied, “To bring in more money and attract clients. But it is not justified. You cannot collect money from poor people who need that money to live and then spend it this way. It is not justified. Much of what we do today is not justified. It is not according to the Torah.”

{Matzav.com}

President Donald Trump announced Thursday from the Oval Office that his administration will steer nearly $700 million in federal money into the U.S. coal industry, invoking a Cold War-era law to fund power plants, new facilities and coal-export infrastructure. Speaking around 3:20 p.m. Eastern, Trump said the goal was “to bring down the price of energy and the cost of living for all Americans with the power of clean, beautiful coal.” He was joined by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin.

The funding comes through a combination of authorities that include the Defense Production Act, a 1950 law that allows presidents to support industries deemed vital to national security. The administration argues coal qualifies because the electric grid is facing growing pressure from rising electricity demand, including the rapid expansion of artificial-intelligence data centers, while higher global energy costs continue to affect consumers and businesses.

The largest portion of the package, approximately $425 million, will be used to upgrade 13 existing coal-fired power plants across multiple states, including West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Indiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, Arizona, Oklahoma, North Dakota and Wisconsin. Administration officials say the upgrades are intended to extend the operating life of the facilities and improve grid reliability.

Another portion of the funding is expected to support coal-export infrastructure, while roughly $200 million in Department of Energy grants will help finance two new coal-generation projects and the restart of a previously shuttered facility. According to administration officials, the effort is designed to preserve domestic coal production capacity and maintain dispatchable power generation that can operate regardless of weather conditions.

The White House estimates the initiative will help support 14 power plants, 42 coal mines, and approximately 12,500 jobs tied directly or indirectly to the coal industry.

Investors reacted positively to the announcement.

Peabody Energy rose about 3.7%, extending a rally that has lifted shares more than 30% from recent lows. Core Natural Resources, created through the merger of Arch Resources and CONSOL Energy, gained roughly 2.6%. Alliance Resource Partners added about 2.3%, while Alpha Metallurgical Resources and Warrior Met Coal also moved higher.

The broader coal sector outperformed the overall market, with coal-focused exchange-traded funds advancing more than 2% while the S&P 500 posted more modest gains.

Utilities that consume coal saw a more muted reaction. Shares of Duke Energy, American Electric Power, and other major utility operators posted only modest increases. Transportation companies could also benefit if coal shipments rise, particularly railroads such as CSX and Norfolk Southern, which move significant volumes of coal throughout the United States.

The industry’s financial picture remains mixed.

Core Natural Resources recently reported first-quarter net income of approximately $21 million on revenue of about $1.1 billion, supported by stronger metallurgical coal prices and steady production. Peabody Energy, meanwhile, reported a quarterly loss as lower coal prices and reduced shipment volumes weighed on earnings.

Supporters of the plan argue that coal remains an essential part of maintaining grid reliability.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright has repeatedly described coal, natural gas and nuclear power as the backbone of the U.S. electric system, particularly as electricity demand accelerates. Industry groups and elected officials from major coal-producing states contend that maintaining domestic coal capacity provides both economic and energy-security benefits.

Critics argue the funding represents a costly effort to support a sector that has steadily lost market share over the past decade. Coal generated roughly 45% of U.S. electricity in 2010, but by 2024 its share had fallen to approximately 15% as utilities increasingly shifted toward natural gas, solar, wind and battery-storage projects.

Environmental organizations also point to studies suggesting many existing coal plants cost more to operate than newer renewable-energy alternatives. They argue market forces, rather than government intervention, have largely driven coal’s decline.

The administration counters that reliability—not just cost—must remain a central consideration as electricity demand climbs. Federal officials have increasingly pointed to the enormous power requirements of artificial-intelligence infrastructure, advanced manufacturing facilities and data centers as reasons to maintain a diverse energy mix.

For consumers and businesses, the ultimate question is whether the investment will translate into more reliable electricity and lower energy costs—or whether taxpayers will ultimately shoulder the cost of extending the life of an industry facing long-term economic challenges.

JBizNews Desk

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Toronto’s “Walk for Israel” parade drew about 60,000 participants Sunday in the largest ever rally in its 57-year history, according to the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto.

The Federation said the rally was attended by officials at all levels of government and “again transformed the streets of midtown Toronto into a vibrant celebration of Jewish pride, community and connection.”

“This year’s Walk with Israel was a remarkable demonstration of the strength, resilience and unity of our community,” said Ken Tanenbaum, chair of the Federation’s board. “Today sent a clear message: We stand together with pride, strength and determination. We are grateful to be joined by so many friends and allies.”

Video footage shows throngs of people marching at the Walk for Israel in Toronto on Sunday. (Credit: UJA Federation of Greater Toronto)

“This turnout speaks to the deep connection our community feels to Israel and to one another,” he added.

“We walk for peace, justice, pluralism and the right of every person to thrive in a Toronto that is welcoming, tolerant and safe for all,” stated Brad Bradford, a mayoral candidate and member of the Toronto City Council. “To Toronto’s Jewish community: I stand with you, and I will walk alongside you today and every day.”

Toronto City Council member and mayoral candidate Brad Bradford (center, in black shirt) poses with participants at the Walk of Israel Sunday. (Credit: Brad Bradford)

“What we witnessed today was an extraordinary expression of solidarity, Jewish pride and hope,” said Adam Minsky, president and CEO of the Federation.

“Tens of thousands of people chose to come together publicly and proudly in support of our community, our values and our connection to Israel,” he added. “Today was a powerful reminder that hate will not define us. We choose unity over division, connection over fear and hope over hate.”

As protesters leave their designated area, police move in to protect the participants in the rally. (Credit: Caryma’s Protest Mania)

The rally kept Toronto Police busy, with five arrests made altogether thus far and with police assiduously pushing protesters back who attempted to breach the generous buffer zone intended to prevent a repeat of last year’s “Gauntlet of Hate,” when rallygoers were forced to march between rows of protesters shouting incitement and harassment.

The effort to transfer control of Maimonides Medical Center to NYC Health + Hospitals has encountered yet another obstacle, dealing a fresh blow to a transaction that has already faced mounting legal and regulatory challenges.

Sources with knowledge of the process say the New York State Department of Health recently rejected Maimonides’ newest filing seeking approval of the proposed acquisition after determining that the hospital had not submitted a mandatory Health Equity Impact Assessment (HEIA).

The setback surfaced just as Maimonides officials were anticipating review of the transaction by the Establishment and Project Review Committee of the Public Health and Health Planning Council. When the committee’s agenda for its June 10 meeting was published, however, the proposed takeover was notably absent.

The latest development comes on the heels of a major legal ruling issued last month that significantly complicated the path forward for both Maimonides and NYC Health + Hospitals.

On May 12, Albany Supreme Court Justice Denise Hartman invalidated the Department of Health’s earlier approval of the $2.245 billion deal, finding that regulators allowed the transaction to move ahead without completing the review procedures required under state law.

That court challenge was filed by Refuah Helpline, several Borough Park kehillos, and neighborhood residents who contended that the takeover could materially affect healthcare services relied upon by Brooklyn communities.

A central issue in the current dispute is compliance with the Health Equity Impact Assessment requirement, a provision enacted by New York State in 2023. The law requires a comprehensive independent review of major healthcare transactions to evaluate their potential effects on access to medical care, healthcare disparities, and vulnerable or underserved populations.

Opponents of the transaction maintain that such scrutiny is essential given Maimonides’ role as one of Brooklyn’s most important healthcare institutions, serving hundreds of thousands of patients, including the large Orthodox Jewish population of Borough Park and neighboring communities.

The hospital treats a patient base heavily dependent on Medicare and Medicaid and is home to Brooklyn’s only full-service children’s hospital and Pediatric Trauma Center.

Attorneys representing the petitioners argue that the recent court decision leaves little room for interpretation, making clear that the acquisition cannot move forward unless a HEIA is completed and the proposal undergoes a full review by the Public Health and Health Planning Council.

The latest delay could significantly alter the timetable for the transaction. The Establishment and Project Review Committee is not scheduled to convene again until August 27, and healthcare observers note that conducting a thorough, independent health-equity assessment often requires extensive research, community participation, and detailed analysis.

The proposed acquisition also remains entangled in additional legal disputes.

A separate lawsuit brought by seven members of Maimonides’ board of trustees is still pending in Kings County Supreme Court. The suit alleges that hospital leadership failed to adequately evaluate alternative options before pursuing the transaction.

Meanwhile, the Charities Bureau of the New York Attorney General’s Office has refused to authorize the transfer of Maimonides’ nonprofit assets without judicial oversight, adding another layer of uncertainty to the process.

Hospital officials and NYC Health + Hospitals had originally projected that the transaction would be completed by April 1, 2026, a target date repeatedly cited by leaders of both organizations. More than two months after that deadline, the proposal remains mired in litigation, regulatory scrutiny, and unresolved questions.

{Matzav.com}

JERUSALEM (VINnews)-The Israel Defense Forces held a handover ceremony for command of the 401st Armored Brigade on Sunday, following the serious injury of its previous commander, Col. Meir Biderman, in southern Lebanon last month.

Biderman was severely wounded on May 20 when a Hezbollah explosive drone struck his position. His condition has since improved, according to military officials.

Col. Yoav Schneider, who most recently commanded the 205th “Iron Fist” Reserve Armored Brigade, assumed leadership of the 401st Brigade.

Schneider has a history of resilience in the face of Hezbollah attacks. He was critically injured by anti-tank missile fire while serving as a tank platoon commander during the Second Lebanon War in 2006. After a lengthy recovery, he returned to active combat roles and rose through the ranks.

The 401st Brigade operates in the northern sector, where Israeli forces continue operations against Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon amid ongoing cross-border tensions.

VINnews will provide further updates as details become available.

American employers are announcing layoffs at the fastest pace for the month of May since the pandemic, and retailers remain under growing pressure as consumers pull back on spending and companies rethink how many workers and stores they need.

According to data released Thursday by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, U.S. employers announced 97,006 job cuts in May, a 16% increase from April and the highest total for the month of May since 2020, when much of the economy was shut down during the COVID-19 crisis.

The increase marks the third consecutive monthly rise in announced layoffs and reflects a labor market that remains stable on the surface but is becoming increasingly cautious underneath.

The largest source of cuts this year has been technology, where companies are restructuring around artificial intelligence. Challenger reported that AI-related restructuring accounted for 38,579 announced job cuts in May, the highest monthly total ever attributed to the technology and roughly 40% of all announced layoffs during the month.

The technology sector alone announced 38,242 cuts, underscoring how rapidly companies are reorganizing operations around automation and AI-powered tools.

But retail is facing a different problem.

While technology firms are reducing staff to improve efficiency, retailers are cutting jobs because customers are becoming more selective about how they spend their money.

Major chains have announced thousands of layoffs this year as they respond to slower sales, store closures, and changing consumer behavior. Macy’s, which has been shrinking its store footprint and restructuring operations, has announced some of the largest retail workforce reductions of the year.

The challenges extend beyond traditional department stores.

Even premium brands are beginning to feel the effects of a more cautious consumer. Analysts have recently warned that several major apparel retailers could face slower growth as shoppers prioritize essentials and delay discretionary purchases.

The pressure comes at a difficult time for households.

Inflation continues to outpace wage growth, meaning many consumers have less purchasing power despite receiving raises. Rising costs for groceries, fuel, housing, insurance, and other necessities leave less room in household budgets for clothing, home goods, electronics, and other nonessential purchases.

That shift is showing up across the retail industry.

Companies report that shoppers are increasingly searching for discounts, buying fewer items, and trading down to lower-priced alternatives. Even higher-income consumers are becoming more value-conscious, a trend that retailers say has accelerated throughout the spring.

When spending slows, retailers often respond by reducing inventory, closing underperforming stores, and trimming payroll costs.

The current wave of cuts follows an already difficult period for the sector. Retailers announced nearly 93,000 job reductions during 2025, as companies struggled with changing shopping habits, e-commerce competition, inflation pressures, and uncertainty surrounding tariffs and supply chains.

This year’s reductions are building on top of those earlier efforts rather than replacing them.

There is some reason for caution before declaring a broader labor-market downturn.

Overall announced layoffs in 2026 remain below last year’s pace, although that comparison is influenced by unusually large workforce reductions in the federal government during 2025. Excluding those cuts, layoff activity today looks much closer to levels seen in 2024.

That suggests the economy is not experiencing a widespread employment crisis.

Instead, the weakness appears concentrated in sectors most dependent on consumer spending and industries undergoing rapid technological change.

For workers in retail, distribution, logistics, and related industries, however, the distinction may offer little comfort.

Their employment prospects remain closely tied to the willingness of American consumers to spend. As long as inflation continues to strain household budgets and shoppers remain cautious, retailers are likely to remain focused on cutting costs rather than expanding payrolls.

The result is a labor market that remains strong in headline numbers but increasingly fragile for workers whose jobs depend on consumer confidence.

JBizNews Desk — Economy

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JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel says Iran has launched missiles at it in the first such bombardment since a fragile ceasefire took effect in early April, complicating mediation efforts for a deal to end the war.

Tehran had warned of retaliation after Israel on Sunday struck Beirut’s southern suburbs in defiance of Washington’s request days ago to stand down. Israel called it retaliation for the Iranian-backed Hezbollah firing at northern Israel earlier in the day.

Israel’s attack on Beirut came a few days after the Lebanese and Israeli governments agreed to a ceasefire in U.S.-hosted talks, though Hezbollah rejected the deal. The strike on a residential building killed two people and wounded 20, Lebanon’s health ministry said.

Sirens sounded across northern Israel after the detection of an Iranian missile launch. The IDF says all projectiles were successfully intercepted, but warns that additional waves of missiles and rockets could be launched in the coming hours.

Following Israeli strikes in Beirut, the military has reinforced air defenses, increased readiness nationwide, and is preparing for a range of possible scenarios.

As a precaution, schools across Israel have been canceled, and residents are being urged to remain alert and closely follow Home Front Command instructions.

Iran’s World Cup soccer players have received visas to enter the United States, a US official said days before their first match, but Iranian media said on Saturday that some administrative staff had not received their visas.

The White House official told Reuters on Friday, 10 days before Iran plays in Los Angeles, that the players had received their visas, after Iran’s ambassador to Mexico, Abolfazl Pasandideh, had said on Thursday that they had not.

First World Cup with hosts receiving war adversary

Iran’s semi-official news agency Tasnim reported that those who had not received visas included Executive Director Mehdi Kharati, the secretary general of the soccer federation, Hedayat Mombini, and Media Director Mohsen Motamedkia.

Staff members without visas would travel to Mexico with the team while efforts to obtain visas continue, the agency said.

Iran’s football federation said the behavior of co-hosts the US “contradicts international sports laws” and it would take up the matter with soccer’s world governing body FIFA.

“The US government, continuing its hostile actions against the national team … made a non-sporting and completely political decision to refuse visas for key managerial and administrative members of the Iranian national football team,” it said in a statement reported by Iran’s state media.

“This issue will definitely be pursued by the Football Federation through FIFA.

“As the responsible body, (FIFA) has the duty to follow up and finalize the visas for the managerial, executive, technical, and support staff of the Iranian national team who are currently in camp and whom the national team urgently needs.”

FIFA was not immediately available for comment outside business hours in the US.

Geopolitical Contest

The US, Mexico, and Canada are co-hosting the biggest global sporting event, which starts on Wednesday.

This is the first World Cup since its inception in 1930 in which a host nation is set to receive a country with which it is at war.

Tehran negotiated a last-minute move of the team’s base from Arizona to Tijuana, Mexico, due to the visa issues and a growing feeling in Iran that the squad’s presence in the United States should be kept to a minimum.

They are scheduled to land in Tijuana early on Sunday.

Iran is due to play their first Group G match on June 15 against New Zealand in Los Angeles, where they will also face Belgium before taking on Egypt in Seattle.

 Rubio says US to bar people linked to Revolutionary Guards

The US never formally said it did not want the Iranian team to stay on its territory, Ambassador Pasandideh said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, however, told lawmakers on Tuesday that the US would not allow Iran to include in its delegation people linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Mehdi Taj, president of Iran’s soccer federation, was denied entry for the tournament draw in Washington in December. He is a former commander in the Revolutionary Guards.

Iran’s desire to compete in the World Cup underscored its efforts to reach a resolution in the war with Washington, Pasandideh said.

“Iran’s participation in the World Cup – even on the soil of what is seen as its enemy – shows that Iran seeks peace,” Pasandideh said through a Spanish interpreter at the Iranian embassy in Mexico City.

Progress in peace talks between Iran and the US has been slow, with both sides seemingly inching toward an interim agreement even as they continue to carry out military strikes

This post was originally published on here.

WASHINGTON (VINnews) — President Donald Trump cut short a television interview after a heated exchange with NBC moderator Kristen Welker over his allegations of election irregularities.

The interview became increasingly contentious when Welker pressed Trump to provide evidence supporting his claims about election problems in California. Trump defended his position, while Welker challenged the basis for those assertions.

As the discussion continued, Trump criticized several major news organizations, accusing them of unfair and biased coverage. He then indicated that he no longer wished to continue the interview and brought the conversation to an end.

Welker attempted to continue asking questions as Trump prepared to leave, but the president declined to remain for further discussion.

The White House did not immediately issue a statement regarding the exchange.

The interview also touched on a range of domestic and foreign policy issues, including the economy and tensions involving Iran.

The confrontation was the latest in a series of public disputes between Trump and members of the news media. Throughout his political career, Trump has frequently accused major news organizations of bias, while journalists have continued to challenge him on a variety of policy positions and factual claims.

Video clips of the exchange circulated widely online following the broadcast, drawing reactions from both supporters and critics of the president.

A Maryland man admitted to the transportation of a stolen firearm in Ocean County, New Jersey, United States Attorney Robert Frazer announced.

“Trafficking illegal firearms poses a direct threat to the safety of our communities. Vargas admitted to selling firearms, including a handgun stolen out of Texas, for his own profit. This Office will continue working with our law enforcement partners to investigate and prosecute those who bring illegal weapons into New Jersey.”

– U.S. Attorney Robert Frazer

Luiz Vargas, a/k/a, “El Biggie,” 26, of Upper Marlboro, Maryland, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Georgette Castner to a one-count Information charging him with transportation of a stolen firearm.

According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court:

Beginning in January 2025, law enforcement investigated Vargas for trafficking firearms into New Jersey from, among other places, Texas and Maryland. Using a confidential source acting at the direction and supervision of law enforcement, officers conducted four controlled purchases of firearms, which yielded a total of eight firearms: two semiautomatic rifles and six handguns. Two of the handguns were reported stolen out of Texas and Colorado, respectively, and the two semiautomatic rifles had no serial numbers or other identifiable markings on them. On at least one occasion, Vargas provided cocaine to the confidential source after being unable to follow through with a promised sale of firearms. Vargas has never held a federal license to deal or manufacture firearms.

The transportation of a stolen firearm charge carries a maximum potential penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. Sentencing is scheduled for September 30, 2026.

United States Attorney Frazer credited special agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Stefanie Roddy in Newark, with the investigation leading to the guilty plea. U.S. Attorney Frazer also thanked the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations Newark, under the direction of Acting Field Office Director Arthur J. Wilson Jr., the Howell Township Police Department, under the direction of Chief of Police John Storrow, the Ocean County Sheriff’s Office, under the direction Sheriff Michael G. Mastronardy, the Asbury Park Police Department, under the direction of Police Director John B. Hayes, the Freehold Borough Police Department, under the Direction of Chief of Police Chris Colaner, the Lakewood Police Department, under the direction of Chief of Police Gregory H. Meyer, the Little Silver Police Department, under the direction of Chief of Police Paul Halpin, the Marlboro Police Department, under the direction of Chief of Police Peter Pezzullo, the Middletown Police Department, under the direction of Chief of Police R. Craig Weber, the Monroe Police Department, under the direction of Chief of Police Griffin N. Banos, and the Wall Police Department, under the direction of Chief of Police Sean O’Halloran, for their assistance in the investigation.

One hundred days after former Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was assassinated in his office in Tehran, the Islamic Republic has yet to bury the man who ruled the country for more than three decades.

The delay has become one of the most unusual and politically sensitive aspects of Iran’s post-war transition. While senior military commanders and government officials who were killed in the same strike have already been laid to rest, repeated promises of a massive state funeral for Khamenei have yet to materialize.

Officials in Tehran have spoken of plans for a multi-day funeral procession later this month. According to those plans, ceremonies would be held in several cities before Khamenei is ultimately buried in the holy city of Mashhad.

The lengthy delay stands in contrast to Shiite religious tradition, which generally favors prompt burial except under extraordinary circumstances, such as uncertainty surrounding the circumstances of death. Several Shiite clerics have argued that unnecessary delays should be avoided if they risk showing disrespect to the deceased.

The television network Iran International reported that the absence of a funeral has fueled speculation regarding the condition of Khamenei’s remains following the attack in which he was killed. Iranian media reports concerning other officials who died in the same strike described bodies that were recovered only weeks later and identified through DNA testing after suffering extensive damage.

Iranian authorities have released no information regarding the condition or location of Khamenei’s remains. The unanswered questions surrounding his burial have merged with another mystery: the continuing disappearance of his designated successor.

Mojtaba Khamenei, who assumed leadership following his father’s death, has not appeared publicly since the assassination. Officials insist that he survived the attack and suffered only minor injuries, but reports and rumors of more serious wounds have continued to circulate.

If Mojtaba Khamenei is alive and actively governing, he would rank among Israel’s highest-priority targets. Any major public appearance could pose significant security risks.

That reality complicates what would ordinarily be a defining moment for a new leader. The funeral of a supreme leader is not merely a religious ceremony; it is also a powerful display of political continuity. The successor’s absence from such an event would be difficult to explain, while his attendance could expose him to risks that authorities may be unwilling to accept.

For now, 100 days after Khamenei’s death, Iran has officially selected a successor but has yet to present him publicly. It has promised a historic farewell to its longtime leader but has not delivered one. And it continues to grapple with questions that neither official statements nor public ceremonies have been able to answer.

{Matzav.com}

The United States is now spending so much to cover the interest on its debt that the cost has quietly become one of the largest items in the entire federal budget. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Treasury spent about $628 billion simply paying interest on the national debt in the first seven months of this fiscal year, figures released in early May show. That works out to nearly $3 billion a day. Over that stretch, interest cost the government more than it spent on Medicare or Medicaid and trailed only Social Security as a category of federal spending.

The numbers behind that figure are staggering in scale.

Total federal debt is closing in on $39 trillion. The portion held by the public — the part the government actively borrows in financial markets — stands at roughly $31 trillion, an amount about equal to the size of the entire U.S. economy. For the first time outside a major war, the country owes nearly as much as it produces in a year.

Two forces explain why the interest bill has exploded.

The first is simply that the debt grew enormous, the result of years of deficits running between $1 trillion and $2 trillion annually. The second is that interest rates climbed. After a long stretch of near-zero rates, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note has averaged above 4% since 2023.

That combination matters in a way many people miss: each time older, cheap debt comes due, the government has to refinance it at today’s higher rates. So even if Washington stopped adding new debt tomorrow, the interest cost would keep rising as low-rate borrowing from years past gets replaced with expensive new borrowing.

The trajectory is steep.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that net interest payments will roughly double, from about $1 trillion in 2026 to $2.1 trillion by 2036, making interest the fastest-growing part of the federal budget. The agency expects this year’s deficit to reach about $1.9 trillion, equal to 5.8% of the economy. It also projects that federal debt held by the public will climb from about 101% of GDP this year to 120% by 2036, surpassing the previous record of 106% set just after World War II in 1946.

The practical consequence is that interest payments leave less room for everything else the government does.

Money spent servicing past borrowing cannot be used for defense, infrastructure, research, or other priorities. Interest costs are now approaching the size of the nation’s defense budget and are projected to exceed it in the years ahead. By some forecasts, interest payments will eventually surpass all discretionary spending — the portion of the budget Congress appropriates each year.

The effects reach households as well.

Because government borrowing costs help anchor rates throughout the economy, persistently large deficits can contribute to higher mortgage rates, more expensive car loans, and increased borrowing costs for businesses and consumers alike.

In the short term, the picture looks slightly less alarming than the headline numbers suggest.

This year’s deficit has been running somewhat smaller than last year’s at the same point, helped in part by stronger tax collections and tariff revenue. But that is mostly short-term noise. The deeper story runs the other direction. An aging population continues to push up the cost of Social Security and Medicare, deficits remain historically large even during a healthy economy, and interest rates show little sign of returning to the ultra-low levels that prevailed for much of the last decade.

Budget watchdogs have become increasingly blunt.

Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, has warned that the nation’s current fiscal path “cannot be sustainable.” The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the 2025 tax-and-spending law widened projected deficits by roughly $4.7 trillion over the next decade. Meanwhile, the trust funds supporting Social Security and Medicare are projected to face insolvency in the early 2030s, potentially triggering automatic benefit reductions unless lawmakers act.

What makes the debt difficult to grasp is that it is not the kind of problem that arrives on a single dramatic day.

There is no moment when the bill suddenly comes due. Instead, the burden builds slowly and quietly, year after year, narrowing the government’s options as a growing share of every tax dollar goes simply toward paying for borrowing already undertaken.

The bill for decades of deficits has now become one of the largest expenses in the federal budget.

For now, financial markets continue to purchase U.S. Treasury debt readily, and the dollar remains the world’s primary reserve currency, allowing the United States to borrow on a scale few other nations could sustain.

The long-term question is whether that confidence holds as the debt continues to climb.

Absent action from Congress to alter the trajectory, the mathematics point in one direction: the interest bill only grows from here.

JBizNews Desk — Washington

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

JERUSALEM (VINnews) – Two years after the daring Operation Arnon, Israel’s Yamam counterterrorism unit on Sunday released helmet-camera video showing the intense June 8, 2024, daylight rescue of four hostages from Hamas captivity in Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp.

The operation freed Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv, all of whom were abducted from the Nova music festival during the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre in southern Israel.

The newly released clips capture fierce close-quarters combat as Yamam operators fought through heavy fire to reach the hostages, the emotional moment rescuers located them, and the radio transmission declaring, “Hostages in our hands.”

Chief Inspector Arnon Zamora, 27, was fatally wounded in the fighting, just meters from the three male hostages he helped save. Despite his death, the team completed the mission successfully.

Yamam commanders described the raid as a complex daylight double rescue conducted simultaneously in two buildings approximately 200 meters apart. Operators eliminated Hamas guards under heavy fire, extracted the hostages within minutes and withdrew with air support.

The operation marked the unit’s second successful live hostage rescue during the ongoing war against Hamas.

The footage honors the bravery of the Yamam operators and pays tribute to Zamora’s ultimate sacrifice in service of the mission.

All four rescued hostages were reunited with their families and have since begun rebuilding their lives after more than eight months in captivity.

A prominent civil rights attorney and antisemitism law expert is calling on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a federal court ruling that dismissed civil rights claims brought by two janitors who were assaulted, barricaded, and called “Jew-lovers” by rioters who seized Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall during the April 2024 campus unrest.

Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder – CEO and Director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, Director of the Antisemitism Law Clinic at Touro Law, and a former Presidential appointee to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Council – published a sharp legal critique of the ruling in the National Review on Sunday, arguing that U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon made several fundamental errors in dismissing the Section 1985(3) claims of Mariano Torres and Lester Wilson in Torres v. Carlson.

Torres and Wilson, both janitors at Columbia, say they were surrounded by masked rioters during the Hamilton Hall takeover, punched, physically prevented from leaving the building, and called “Jew-lovers” and told they were “working for the Jews.” The two men lost their jobs as a result and remain on workers’ compensation.

Judge McMahon dismissed their civil rights claims, holding that the rioters did not conspire for the purpose of depriving anyone of their civil rights – characterizing the antisemitism as a mere “backdrop” and the violence against Torres and Wilson as a “side effect” of a political protest rather than its objective.

Goldfeder argued that the court misapplied its own legal standard. The ruling relied on Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic, in which the Supreme Court held that anti-abortion protesters who targeted abortion clinics were not conspiring against women as a class. But Goldfeder said that logic does not apply here. Torres and Wilson were not called “Jew-lovers” by a single protester who went off-script, he wrote – they were called that by the mob attacking them, as an explanation for why they were being attacked.

“That is not a side effect,” Goldfeder wrote. “That is literally the frame through which the conspirators themselves understood the situation. The antisemitic vocabulary was the operational logic of the assault.”

Goldfeder also challenged the court’s reasoning that because the rioters planned to use force against anyone who got in their way – not only Jews or their sympathizers – the conspiracy lacked the class-based animus required under the law. He pointed to the Ku Klux Klan as a historical parallel: the Klan also killed white civil rights workers alongside Black Americans, yet no court ever held that this mixed targeting removed the discriminatory character of the enterprise.

“A mixed-target conspiracy does not become non-discriminatory simply because the conspirators are willing to harm anyone who obstructs the mission,” Goldfeder wrote. “If racial or antisemitic animus helps define that mission, identify the enemy, or justify the violence, then the statute is implicated.”

Goldfeder further argued that the court erred in holding that Torres and Wilson could not qualify as a cognizable class of “people who are or are perceived to be Jews or supporters of Jews.” Federal civil rights law across multiple statutes – including Title VII and the Americans with Disabilities Act – protects people targeted based on perceived membership in a protected class, he noted. Whatever Torres and Wilson actually believe about Jews or Zionism, their attackers decided what category they belonged to, and Section 1985(3) should not be the lone exception to that principle.

Speaking to Belaaz, Goldfeder said the case must now go to the appellate court. “Next stop should be the Second Circuit,” he said. “This was not just a protest where things got out of hand. These janitors say they were trapped, attacked, called ‘Jew-lovers,’ and told they were ‘working for the Jews.’ At some point, courts have to stop treating antisemitism as scenery and recognize it as part of the conduct. Tort law can deal with the physical injuries, lost jobs, and workers’ comp issues, but civil-rights law is supposed to deal with the very important issue of why they were targeted.”

Goldfeder acknowledged in his analysis that the state tort system can compensate Torres and Wilson for their physical injuries and lost wages – but argued that is not sufficient. “The state tort system can compensate Torres and Wilson for their injuries,” he wrote. “It cannot name what was done to them. That is what the civil rights laws are for, and the Second Circuit should have the chance to say so on appeal.”

NEW YORK— Americans are quietly eating less, and it’s starting to show up on the books of the country’s biggest food companies. The cause isn’t a recession or the latest diet fad. It’s a class of weight-loss drugs—Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound—that switch off hunger. About one in eight U.S. adults now takes one, and this spring the first cheap, easy-to-swallow pill versions reached pharmacy shelves.

Wall Street is already doing the math on the fallout. J.P. Morgan projects these drugs could erase $30 billion to $55 billion in annual U.S. food and beverage sales by the early 2030s, as users take in about 21% fewer calories and spend roughly 31% less at the grocery store.

Here’s why that number is so big.

The drugs were built to treat diabetes, but they also quiet the brain’s hunger signals, so people feel full sooner and snack less. In April, Eli Lilly won approval for Foundayo, the first weight-loss pill that can be taken without food or water restrictions, and it’s now reaching retail pharmacies. Novo Nordisk has a pill out, too. Cheaper, needle-free options are expected to pull millions more people onto the drugs—J.P. Morgan sees the U.S. user base climbing toward 25 million to 30 million people by 2030, up from about 10 million in 2025.

When that many people eat less, the grocery cart changes.

A Cornell University study tracked roughly 150,000 households and found that within six months of starting the drugs, families cut grocery spending by an average of 5.3%. Higher-income households cut more than 8%. Spending at fast-food restaurants and coffee shops fell about 8%, too. The cuts landed right where food companies make some of their best margins: sweets and salty snacks dropped around 10%. Yogurt, meanwhile, went up. People are swapping chips and candy for protein and fiber.

This is the part that worries Big Food, and the biggest brands are scrambling.

Conagra, which makes Healthy Choice meals, slapped a “GLP-1 friendly” label on more than two dozen of its frozen dinners. Nestlé launched a line called Vital Pursuit aimed directly at people taking the drugs. The shift is now significant enough that nearly three dozen non-healthcare companies discussed GLP-1 medications on earnings calls earlier this year, up from just 14 companies a year earlier.

Restaurants are rewriting menus, too. Olive Garden, owned by Darden Restaurants, added a lighter-portions section. The Cheesecake Factory rolled out smaller bowls and smaller meals. Shake Shack launched a “Good Fit Menu” featuring lettuce-wrapped burgers with up to 52 grams of protein. Even McDonald’s says it is testing high-protein, GLP-1-friendly items as it prepares for more customers with smaller appetites.

The math behind those changes is difficult for some chains. Bank of America found that snacking accounts for roughly 12% of sales at limited-service restaurant chains such as McDonald’s and Taco Bell—and snacking is exactly what these drugs are designed to reduce.

Not everyone is losing. The same medications reducing food consumption are generating enormous growth elsewhere. J.P. Morgan expects the global market for these drugs to reach $200 billion by 2030. Pfizer paid $10 billion last year to acquire a drugmaker developing its own version after outbidding seven competing buyers. And Washington is leaning in: a new Medicare and Medicaid pilot program would cap costs for some patients at $50 per month, potentially expanding usage further.

In the short run, the hit to food companies remains modest—a fraction of overall sales. The industry still has time to adjust, and some companies are already finding growth opportunities in high-protein snacks, nutrition-focused products, and healthier prepared meals.

But the long-run signal is becoming difficult to ignore. For the first time, a medicine—not a tax, not a recession, and not a public-health campaign—is changing how much the country eats. The companies that spent a century getting Americans to eat more now have to figure out how to make money when millions of their best customers simply want less.

JBizNews Desk — New York

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

A political firestorm erupted Sunday after senior chareidi leaders visited imprisoned yeshiva bochurim at Prison 10, drawing sharp criticism from Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

Smotrich accused chareidi lawmakers of displaying “detachment and insensitivity” at a time when Israel is mourning fallen soldiers and comforting bereaved families, while focusing their attention on the issue of yeshiva bochurim detained over military service matters.

The criticism came after Shas chairman Aryeh Deri paid a special visit Sunday morning to imprisoned yeshiva bochurim at Prison 10, expressing support and encouragement. During the visit, Deri said Bnei Torah should not be treated as criminals and pledged that Shas would work to advance a Basic Law: Limud Hatorah, which would formally define the status of Torah learning in the State of Israel.

Accompanied by MK Michael Malchieli and Shas CEO MK Chaim Biton, Deri met with detainees, heard about their prison conditions, and promised to work toward improving their situation. He also distributed copies of “Emunah U’Bitachon” and conveyed the full support of the Shas movement.

United Torah Judaism chairman Yitzchok Goldknopf also visited Prison 10 and met with the detainees. He said the imprisonment of yeshiva bochurim because they are engaged in Torah study is a reality that cannot be accepted and called for a change in policy.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

The IDF has cleared for publication the identity of the reserve soldier killed in Sunday’s deadly shooting attack in the Sharon region. The victim was identified as Master Sergeant (Res.) Chaim Klomity Hy”d, 55, of Tzur Natan, who served as a regional defense fighter in Battalion 8881 of the Ephraim Brigade.

According to the IDF, Klomity was killed during the terror attack near Tzur Natan. Another reserve soldier was seriously wounded in the same incident and was evacuated to a hospital for treatment. His family has been notified.

The attack began at approximately 10:36 a.m., when police received reports of gunfire at a gas station and fast-food restaurant near the entrance to Kochav Yair. Following the initial reports, Central District Commander Amir Cohen declared the incident a terrorist attack and dispatched large numbers of police officers, Border Police personnel, and additional security forces to the area.

Preliminary findings indicate that the terrorist, an Israeli citizen in his 20s from Tayibe, left the city in his vehicle shortly after 10:30 a.m. and embarked on a shooting spree across several locations.

Authorities said the gunman first opened fire at civilians at a gas station in the Tzur Yigal area, wounding two people. He then drove to Tzur Yitzchak, where he fired at a security post at the entrance to the community, injuring another civilian.

The attacker later arrived in Tzur Natan, where he carried out another shooting at a security position, wounding a security guard and a nearby woman. He then continued his rampage, firing at a reserve soldier traveling in his vehicle and fatally wounding him. That victim was later identified as Klomity.

The terrorist subsequently reached the entrance to Sal’it, where he again opened fire toward a security post. The community’s security chief engaged the gunman, returned fire, and exchanged shots with him, forcing the attacker to flee the area.

At the same time, police officers, Border Police units, IDF troops, and civilian emergency response teams established roadblocks and launched extensive search operations. A police helicopter assisted in the manhunt from the air.

At approximately 11:03 a.m., officers from the Tayibe police station located the suspect and began pursuing him. The chase ended in an open area near the quarries between Tzur Natan and Tayibe, where the terrorist was neutralized and killed.

The shooting spree left one Israeli dead and several others wounded with varying degrees of injuries.

As part of the ongoing investigation, several members of the terrorist’s family have been arrested and questioned. Investigators from the Sharon Major Crimes Unit, together with officers from the Tira police station, also arrested an additional suspect believed to have assisted the attacker. Authorities said he is expected to be brought before a court for a remand hearing following the completion of initial questioning.

{Matzav.com}

HaRav Moshe Hillel Hirsch delivered a fiery speech at the Ichud Bnei HaYeshivos gathering in Jerusalem on Thursday evening, addressing the war being waged against the Torah in Eretz Yisrael.

In his speech, Maran referred explicitly to all those who persecute Torah (a reference to Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara and other judicial authorities and the members of the High Court), calling upon Klal Yisrael to have kavanah when they recite the words of the tefillah: וְלַמַּלְשִׁינִים אַל תְּהִי תִקְוָה, וְכָל הָרִשְׁעָה כְּרֶגַע תֹּאבֵד, וְכָל אוֹיְבֵי עַמְּךָ מְהֵרָה יִכַּרֵתוּ, וְהַזֵּדִים מְהֵרָה תְעַקֵּר וּתְשַׁבֵּר וּתְמַגֵּר וְתַכְנִיעַ בִּמְהֵרָה בְיָמֵינוּ in Shemonah Esrei.

The Rosh Yeshivah added: “If all of Klal Yisrael will have proper kavanah during these words, then Hakadosh Baruch will do what needs to be done.”

HaRav Hirsch began his speech by saying, “There’s a very difficult situation today. We are in a war—an actual war. This is a very difficult matter for the bochurim, and they must understand that we’re at war. In a time of war, sometimes things are hard, and one must sacrifice. Circumstances won’t be exactly as usual during a war. I don’t mean the war with Iran; I mean the war between us and those among us who are fighting a battle against us.

“The only way to win this war is through HaKadosh Baruch Hu. There’s no other way — only through Hakadosh Baruch Hu. And there’s a klal: the Gemara in Shabbos says that Hashem says, ‘If I see that they want Me, then I want them. If they don’t want Me, I don’t want them.’ This is ‘mida kneged mida’, as the Gemara says.

“What we need now is that Hakadosh Baruch Hu should desire us. We have no way out of this situation we’re in right now unless we merit special Siyata Dishmaya from Hakadosh Baruch Hu. And in order to merit special Siyata Dishmaya, Hashem must see a special desire in us, that we want to be close to Him. If He recognizes that we want to be close to Him, then He’ll draw close to us. And if He draws close to us, then He’ll do what needs to be done.”

“Without Hakadosh Baruch Hu, we have no eitzah, and only if He draws close to us. And this is through each and every individual. The bochurim must understand that this is not like every other time when one can be lenient. Today, tefillah must be tefillah — tefillah with all one’s koach. I saw in HaRav Wolbe’s sefer, in the name of the Kuzari, that every tefillah brings you close to Hashem, you connect to Him. And this connection must remain with the person until the next tefillah. Tefillah is closeness to Hashem, a bond with Hashem — and it must remain until the next tefillah.

“Bochurim should try to make a change in their tefillos, to daven with kavanh. And then it’s permitted  to have kavanah in the words: ‘’וְלַמַּלְשִׁינִים אַל תְּהִי תִקְוָה, וְכָל הָרִשְׁעָה כְּרֶגַע תֹּאבֵד, וְכָל אוֹיְבֵי עַמְּךָ מְהֵרָה יִכַּרֵתוּ, וְהַזֵּדִים מְהֵרָה תְעַקֵּר וּתְשַׁבֵּר וּתְמַגֵּר וְתַכְנִיעַ בִּמְהֵרָה בְיָמֵינוּ’. If one has kavanah on these words — if all of Klal Yisrael has kavanah — then Hashem will do what needs to be done.”

“The bochurim must understand that we’re not in simple times. It is a different time. One cannot think and behave as usual. We are amid a war against us.”

“What did they think they were doing? That there would be no Limmud Torah? Why did they refuse to pass the law. The law demands that 50% of the Chareidi public will go to the army. It wouldn’t have happened, but according to the law, it would have. What did they want? They wanted 100% in the army. Why? It’s not for the army’s needs. It is explicit — explicit — explicit: they want to destroy the Olam HaTorah. Explicitly — to destroy the Olam Torah.

“And when one thinks about this — that there are people in Eretz Yisrael who want to destroy the Olam HaTorah — it brings one to tears. It’s a terrible thing. And we must fight. And the way to fight — there is a physical way — but we have our way, the way of the mouth: to speak to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, to be mechazeik in Limmud Torah, to be mechazeik in mitzvos, to be mechazeik not to speak lashon hara, to be mechazeik in tefillah — tefillah to the fullest — and be mechazeik b’chol devar, doing what HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants.

“To fulfill ‘In all your ways know Him, and He will straighten your paths.’ In all your ways know Him — in everything we do, to think: Does Hashem want me to do this or not? To live like that. To live with Hashem. And through this, Hashem will be close to us. And if Hashem is close to us — that is the solution. Through this, Hakadosh Baruch will bestow Siyata Dishmaya on us, and we will win this entire war.”

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

A religious soldier from the Golani Brigade was removed from Lebanon on Shabbos for wearing a Moshiach patch on his uniform, Arutz Sheva reported.

The soldier is a member of Battalion 12 who serves in a specialized role countering explosive drones.

According to the report, the battalion’s outgoing commander noticed the patch during a Friday afternoon briefing and ordered him to remove it immediately.

The soldier complied on the spot and removed the patch. Nevertheless, several hours later, after Shabbos had begun, the army ordered him out of Lebanon.

His friends slammed the decision: “It’s absurd that during such an intense period of fighting, the army is busy dealing with things like this.”

A previous incident last month sparked outrage after IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir ordered severe and unprecedented disciplinary action against an IDF soldier for wearing a “Moshiach” patch on his combat vest.

The soldier was punished with a 30-day military prison sentence, and his commanders were also severely disciplined. The soldier’s platoon commander was sentenced to a 14-day suspended prison term, and the battalion commander received a formal command reprimand added to his personal record.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

A year ago, many of New York City’s real estate developers spent millions of dollars opposing Zohran Mamdani’s rise in city politics. Today, the democratic-socialist candidate is proposing a housing strategy that depends heavily on those same developers to help solve one of New York’s biggest challenges: affordability.

That is the central surprise behind Mamdani’s housing proposal, a sweeping blueprint released in late May that calls for $22 billion in city capital spending over five years to build 200,000 affordable homes and preserve another 200,000 over the following decade. The approach is not what many supporters or critics expected. Rather than relying primarily on government construction, much of the plan depends on private-sector investment, private developers, and market-driven construction.

To understand why that matters, it helps to start with how Mamdani built his political brand.

Throughout his political career, Mamdani has championed aggressive tenant protections, rent relief, and a larger public role in housing. During the campaign, he frequently pointed to international models such as Vienna’s social housing system, where government involvement plays a far larger role than it does in the United States. His message resonated with voters frustrated by rising rents, shrinking affordability, and a housing shortage that has pushed many middle-class families out of the city.

Yet housing policy eventually runs into a simple reality: math.

Building and preserving hundreds of thousands of homes requires enormous amounts of capital, construction labor, financing expertise, and development capacity. No city government possesses enough resources to do that alone. The overwhelming majority of those capabilities remain in private hands.

That reality appears to have influenced Mamdani’s thinking. His proposal effectively embraces a model in which government sets the goals and provides incentives, while private developers perform much of the actual building. In many respects, it is a housing strategy built around socialist objectives pursued through capitalist mechanisms.

The mechanics of the proposal reflect that shift.

Rather than positioning the city primarily as a builder, the plan focuses on making construction easier and faster. It relies heavily on zoning changes, streamlined approvals, and expanded development opportunities in areas where housing density can be increased. The proposal builds upon many of the broader housing-production concepts that have gained traction in New York over recent years, including efforts to encourage residential growth near transit corridors and underutilized properties.

For public housing, the plan envisions significant investment in the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), using new financing tools and capital partnerships to modernize aging developments that face billions of dollars in repair needs.

The proposal also includes a substantial emphasis on homeownership.

Mamdani has called for expanding programs that help working families purchase homes and has proposed new pathways for permanently affordable cooperative ownership. That focus on ownership is notable because homeownership has traditionally been viewed as one of the most market-oriented forms of wealth creation. For a politician frequently labeled a socialist, encouraging ownership represents a pragmatic recognition that long-term affordability often depends on helping families build equity rather than remaining renters indefinitely.

At the same time, the proposal maintains many of the tenant-focused priorities that have defined Mamdani’s political identity.

The plan seeks to reduce housing costs for lower-income residents, strengthen tenant protections, improve enforcement against negligent landlords, and expand affordability requirements in city-supported developments. Supporters argue these measures are necessary to ensure that new housing production benefits existing residents rather than accelerating displacement.

However, some of the most ambitious tenant protections face political limitations beyond City Hall.

Major changes to rent regulation generally require action from state lawmakers in Albany. That means any future mayor, regardless of ideology, would need cooperation from the governor and the state legislature to implement some of the more sweeping housing reforms often discussed during campaigns.

The business implications of the proposal are significant.

Developers are not merely participants in the plan; they are essential to its success. If private capital does not flow into projects, if financing becomes more difficult, or if builders determine the economics no longer work, housing production could fall well short of projections.

Construction companies, labor unions, engineering firms, architects, lenders, and suppliers would all stand to benefit if the proposal generates the level of development envisioned. Large-scale projects such as the long-discussed redevelopment of Sunnyside Yard in Queens illustrate the scale of construction opportunities that housing advocates hope to unlock over the coming decade.

Critics remain skeptical.

Some argue the housing targets are overly ambitious and depend on optimistic assumptions about financing, political cooperation, and market conditions. Others question whether developers will fully embrace a program that could also include stronger tenant protections and additional regulations.

Those concerns highlight the central tension at the heart of the proposal.

For years, New York’s housing debate has often been framed as a conflict between tenants and landlords, government and developers, regulation and markets. Mamdani’s housing blueprint attempts to bridge those competing interests by using private-sector resources to pursue public-sector goals.

Whether that balance can actually work remains the unanswered question.

The true test will not come from campaign speeches, policy rollouts, or headline-grabbing announcements. It will come years from now, when New Yorkers can measure whether more homes were built, whether affordability improved, and whether working families found it easier to remain in the city.

If the strategy succeeds, it could become a model for other high-cost cities struggling with housing shortages. If it fails, it may reinforce a lesson that urban leaders across the political spectrum have learned repeatedly: solving a housing crisis is far easier to promise than to accomplish.

JBizNews Desk

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In a dramatic development just days after the tumultuous protest outside the home of Supreme Court Deputy President Justice Noam Solberg in Alon Shvut, a prominent rav affiliated with the Peleg Yerushalmi has issued an unprecedented public letter calling on the community’s rabbanim not to accord the judge any honors in shul.

Rav Tuvia Halevi Shlesinger, one of the senior rabbanim associated with the Peleg Yerushalmi, sent a sharply worded letter last Thursday to the rabbanim of Alon Shvut. In the letter, he describes Justice Solberg as a “mored b’malchus Shamayim” and rules that he should not receive any kibbudim in shul, including being called up for an aliyah to the Torah.

The letter comes amid escalating tensions surrounding the ongoing arrests of yeshiva bochurim and the fierce opposition within the Peleg Yerushalmi to judicial decisions viewed as facilitating increased enforcement against bnei Torah.

The unusual appeal follows the widely publicized incident outside Justice Solberg’s home, where dozens of chareidi protesters gathered in demonstration. According to reports, windows were broken, property was damaged, and planters near the entrance to the residence were smashed. The situation became serious enough that the Gush Etzion emergency response team was mobilized to protect the home.

While leaders of the Peleg Yerushalmi have denied any involvement in the disturbances, individuals closely involved in the struggle against the arrests of yeshiva bochurim say the letter highlights that the campaign is far from over.

According to sources involved in the effort, “Very dramatic days lie ahead, and the campaign will only intensify if the authorities do not leave the bochurim of Israel alone.”

Following the incident, Israel’s Judicial Authority issued a forceful condemnation of the protest.

The judiciary stated that it “views with great severity the violent demonstration near the home of the Deputy President of the Supreme Court.” The statement further described the episode as “a grave and unacceptable event that crosses the boundaries of legitimate protest, in an attempt to undermine the sense of security of judicial officeholders and their family members.”

The Judicial Authority further stated that it would continue working together with law enforcement and security officials to safeguard members of the judiciary.

“Attempts to exert pressure on, intimidate, or deter judges will not affect the fulfillment of their duties,” the statement said.

{Matzav.com}

Hundreds of thousands of space heaters sold at Costco and other major retailers for years are being recalled after reports that the units overheated and caught fire, prompting federal safety officials to warn consumers to stop using them immediately.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) announced Wednesday that more than 255,000 Vornado tower heaters have been recalled.

The agency said the heater’s fan blade can detach from the motor shaft, causing the unit to overheat and potentially ignite. Vornado has received 32 reports of overheating, including eight fires and one smoke inhalation incident, according to the agency.

Costco sent a letter to its members that the recalled Vornado SRTH small room tower heater was sold between August 2013 and January 2017 with the item number 1002889 (UPC 43765008478).

FROZEN FOOD ITEM SOLD AT COSTCO RECALLED OVER SALMONELLA CONCERN

“The fan blade can detach from the motor shaft, which can cause a stopped fan condition, leading to overheating and melting of the enclosure and internal parts,” the wholesaler said. “Melted internal parts can ignite and breach the enclosure if the thermal cut off or fuse does not timely activate, posing a fire hazard.”

OVER 2 MILLION PRESSURE COOKERS RECALLED AFTER DOZENS OF CONSUMERS SUFFER INJURIES

The recalled space heaters were also sold at Kohl’s, Bed Bath & Beyond and ACE Hardware, and online at Vornado.com and Amazon.com, from August 2013 through May 2026 for between $40 and $50, the CPSC said.

The agency said the heaters were manufactured in China.

Both Costco and the CPSC urged consumers to stop using the product immediately and contact the Vornado Recall Team at 888-240-2768.

It seems like there is no breathing space between anti-Jewish violent attacks in Canada, with multiple attacks seemingly happening every week. Just one day after the firebombing of a synagogue in Montreal, the window of a Toronto synagogue was smashed overnight in what observers are calling another Kristallnacht.

The incident took place at Mishkan Avraham, a Jewish house of worship on Bathurst Street in North York.

More ominously still, a bullseye sticker was seen on the outside of the synagogue.

“Was this location targeted by somebody leaving a roadmap for antisemites to have Jewish sites to hit?” wrote Joe Warmington, a pro-Israel opinion columnist for the Toronto Sun. “Was the bullseye put there to send a message? Was the broken glass meant to replicate a modern day Kristallnacht?”

“Perhaps we will never know,” he added. “When there have been dozens of antisemitic attacks in Toronto since Oct. 7th, there is only so many things you can dismiss before you conclude there is a crisis here.”

Police are investigating the incident that has left members of Toronto’s Jewish community concerned about safety ahead of the “Walk for Israel” event, which began Sunday morning. The vandalism occurred right near the route of the “Walk for Israel” event, which typically draws tens of thousands of participants.

“Less than a week after the Prime Minister addressed the Jewish community and spoke of the need to rectify Canada’s failing social compact and to protect Jewish Canadians, yet another synagogue in Toronto was targeted and vandalized in what is being investigated as a hate crime,” B’nai Brith Canada’s Director of Research and Advocacy Richard Robertson said Saturday.

A bullseye sticker is seen on the synagogue’s exterior. (Credit: Ross McLean)

“This incident exemplifies how the approach to combating antisemitism presently being undertaken in this country is not enough – it fails to capture the gravity of the national crisis of antisemitism,” he added.

Toronto Police labeled the incident “Mischief/Damage” on its X account.

“MISCHIEF/DAMAGE: Bathurst St & Glencairn Ave — police responded to reports of damage at a synagogue,” Toronto Police Operations reported. “A window was broken with an unknown object; damage believed to have occurred overnight; no suspect description(s) currently available; no injuries reported; Hate Crime Unit investigating.”

TIRANA, Albania — A proposed $1.4 billion luxury resort development linked to Jared Kushner has become the center of one of Albania’s most visible political and environmental battles, with protesters taking to the streets for a seventh consecutive day as the government insists the project will move forward.

The dispute centers on Sazan Island, a largely undeveloped island in the Adriatic Sea that was once used as a secret military installation during Albania’s communist era. Plans backed by a company affiliated with Affinity Partners, Kushner’s private investment firm, would transform the island and nearby coastal areas into a luxury tourism destination featuring hotels, villas, restaurants, and a marina. Aman Resorts is expected to manage the flagship property.

Despite mounting opposition, Prime Minister Edi Rama said in remarks reported by Reuters that the investment will not be halted while he remains in office.

The project has become a test case for Albania’s efforts to attract major foreign investment while balancing environmental concerns and public opposition.

For the government, the economic argument is straightforward.

Tourism has emerged as one of Albania’s fastest-growing industries, helping fuel economic growth in one of Europe’s lower-income nations. Officials view the Sazan project as an opportunity to elevate Albania’s profile among high-end international travelers and compete more directly with luxury destinations across the Mediterranean.

When Albania’s Strategic Investment Committee granted the project “strategic investor” status in December 2024, officials cited a planned investment of approximately €1.4 billion and projected the development would create roughly 1,000 jobs during construction and operation.

The designation provides expedited permitting and other incentives designed to accelerate major investments.

Project developers say the resort would generate long-term economic benefits while protecting the surrounding environment.

Asher Abehsera, Chief Executive Officer of Sazan Real Estate Development LLC, told CBS News that the company intends to create a world-class destination while focusing on environmental stewardship, job creation, and lasting value for local communities.

He said the company respects the legal and public review processes and remains prepared to move forward as those processes continue.

Opponents see the project very differently.

Environmental activists have organized demonstrations under the banner of the “Flamingo Revolution,” a reference to the flamingo populations that inhabit nearby protected wetlands.

The protests intensified after construction equipment reportedly began arriving at portions of the site last month. Images and videos circulating on social media, including footage showing an activist being removed from a demonstration, helped draw larger crowds into the streets of Tirana.

Conservation groups argue the development threatens environmentally sensitive habitats that support flamingos, loggerhead sea turtles, and the endangered Mediterranean monk seal.

Critics also contend that the approval process lacked transparency.

Aleksandr Trajce, executive director of environmental organization PPNEA, told CBS News that local residents were never given meaningful public consultation before work began.

According to the group, many residents first learned of the development only after machinery appeared at the site and work had already started.

Environmental advocates further allege that portions of protected dunes have been damaged and that at least one sea turtle nesting area may have been destroyed.

The controversy has now expanded beyond environmental concerns into legal and political territory.

Earlier this week, SPAK, Albania’s anti-corruption prosecution office, opened an investigation into aspects of the project, including land transactions connected to the development and legislative changes approved in 2024 that reduced certain environmental protections in the area.

The investigation arrives during a period of heightened scrutiny of Albania’s government amid separate corruption allegations involving senior officials.

The project’s connection to Kushner has added another layer of attention.

Kushner, the founder of Affinity Partners, is married to Ivanka Trump, daughter of President Donald Trump. The couple has publicly discussed their interest in the island, with Ivanka Trump recently describing on the “Founders” podcast how they discovered Sazan while sailing and became captivated by its natural beauty and development potential.

That connection has fueled criticism from opponents, some of whom have carried banners reading “Albania Is Not For Sale.”

For now, neither side appears willing to compromise.

Supporters see the development as a transformational investment capable of generating jobs, expanding tourism, and attracting international capital. Opponents argue that the environmental and public costs are too high and that the approval process has lacked transparency.

With prosecutors now reviewing elements of the project and demonstrations continuing across the country, the future of one of the largest proposed tourism investments in Albania’s history may ultimately be decided in courtrooms as much as on construction sites.

JBizNews Desk — Europe

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The biggest sporting event ever hosted across the United States, Canada, and Mexico is less than two weeks away, yet many American hotels are facing an unexpected problem: the international visitors they were counting on have not arrived.

The 2026 FIFA World Cup was expected to deliver a tourism boom worth billions of dollars, filling hotels, restaurants, airports, and attractions across the country. Instead, hotel operators in host cities are reporting bookings that are falling well below expectations, raising concerns that one of the world’s largest sporting events may not deliver the economic windfall many communities anticipated.

According to a recent survey cited by Fortune, hotels in all 11 U.S. World Cup host cities are seeing weaker-than-expected reservations.

The numbers are striking. In Kansas City, roughly 85% to 90% of hotel owners reported bookings below expectations. In Philadelphia and San Francisco, approximately 75% of hotels expect to miss projected occupancy targets. Even Miami, one of the strongest-performing host cities, saw nearly 45% of surveyed hotels reporting softer-than-expected demand.

Those results stand in sharp contrast to the promises made when cities bid for World Cup matches.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino famously described the tournament as the equivalent of hosting “104 Super Bowls,” highlighting the enormous economic impact expected from millions of visitors traveling across North America during the month-long event.

The missing visitors appear to be coming primarily from overseas.

Historically, international travelers have been the most valuable World Cup tourists. They stay longer, spend more money, and generate substantial revenue for hotels, restaurants, retailers, transportation providers, and local attractions.

Current travel data suggests those visitors are not arriving in the numbers originally projected.

Flight analytics firm Cirium reports that advance bookings into the United States for July are running approximately 14% below year-ago levels, an unusual trend for a period expected to experience a major tourism surge.

Industry analysts point to several factors.

Long visa-processing times remain a challenge for travelers from many countries. Higher airfare prices, a strong U.S. dollar, and concerns surrounding immigration procedures have also made travel to the United States less attractive and more expensive.

Hotel operators participating in the survey frequently cited visa delays and geopolitical concerns as significant barriers preventing international fans from finalizing travel plans.

The World Cup arrives at a difficult moment for the broader U.S. tourism industry.

International travel to the United States has been under pressure for more than a year. Industry estimates show overseas visitation declined during 2025, resulting in billions of dollars in lost tourism spending. Early 2026 figures have continued to show weakness, creating additional pressure on destinations that expected the World Cup to reverse the trend.

The New York-New Jersey region illustrates the challenge.

MetLife Stadium, which will host the World Cup Final, was expected to become one of the tournament’s biggest economic beneficiaries. However, local transportation costs generated criticism after New Jersey Transit initially proposed premium World Cup train fares that many travelers viewed as excessive before later reducing the prices.

For host cities, the stakes extend beyond hotel occupancy.

Foreign visitors typically spend heavily on dining, transportation, entertainment, shopping, museums, and local attractions. Economic projections assumed that approximately 1.2 million international visitors would travel to North America for the tournament, generating significant local spending and tax revenue.

If those numbers fall short, cities may struggle to achieve the economic returns used to justify infrastructure improvements, transportation upgrades, and event-related investments.

There may be one silver lining for domestic travelers.

With international demand weaker than anticipated, some hotels have begun releasing inventory and adjusting room rates to attract additional guests. That could translate into better availability and lower prices for Americans planning summer trips to host cities.

The World Cup will still attract massive television audiences, packed stadiums, and global attention. Millions of fans are expected to attend matches across North America.

But for now, many hotel operators are confronting an uncomfortable reality: the international tourism surge they were promised has yet to materialize.

Whether late bookings close the gap remains to be seen. With kickoff rapidly approaching, however, the countdown clock is ticking.

JBizNews Desk — Travel & Tourism

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Israel’s Health Ministry has begun distributing protective equipment to hospitals nationwide to ensure the safe treatment of any suspected Ebola cases, even as officials stressed that the likelihood of the virus reaching the country remains low.

The ministry said the measure is a precautionary step tied to an outbreak of the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola that has spread through the Democratic Republic of the Congo since early May. Nearly 1,000 cases and more than 200 deaths have been reported. The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern on May 17, citing rapid case growth and geographic spread within Congo.

As part of its preparations, the ministry is encouraging hospitals to set up dedicated complexes for treating patients suspected of carrying the disease. It described the move as a preliminary step in a low-probability scenario and emphasized that early preparation does not reflect any change in its risk assessment.

The ministry said it is also working to distribute professional guidelines to relevant medical teams and hospitals in the coming days. The facilities, it said, are prepared to receive a suspected Ebola case should one reach Israel.

There is no known spread of the virus outside Africa, apart from patients flown securely to Europe and the United States for medical treatment. The ministry said it is continuing to monitor developments worldwide and will update medical teams and the public as needed.

Officials recommended avoiding non-essential travel to areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda where cases are known. Travelers returning from those countries who develop a fever or unusual symptoms within 21 days were asked to stay home, avoid contact with others, and immediately contact the ministry’s hotline.

The outbreak, centered in Congo’s northeastern Ituri Province, has since reached the neighboring provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu, with imported cases confirmed in Uganda. It is the 17th Ebola outbreak in Congo since 1976 and comes only months after a separate outbreak there was declared over in December.

The Bundibugyo strain poses an added challenge: there is no vaccine or virus-specific treatment for it, unlike the more common Zaire strain. The WHO has said that late detection, the absence of approved therapeutics, widespread armed violence, and high population mobility leave Congo especially vulnerable.

Ebola is a lethal infectious disease with high fatality rates, transmitted primarily through direct contact with a symptomatic patient or with blood, secretions, and other body fluids.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

A local resident who accidentally discarded his vehicle’s key fob along with household garbage received an unexpected assist from Chaveirim after realizing the key was likely buried somewhere among 16 garbage bags.

Faced with the daunting task of searching through every bag by hand, one of the Chaveirim members (#243) came up with a creative solution.

Rather than opening and sifting through all 16 bags, the bags were brought one at a time near the vehicle and placed inside. The team then attempted to start the car with each bag present.

Since modern vehicles can detect a key fob that is nearby, the process quickly narrowed down the search. After testing the bags individually, they identified the bag containing the missing key fob, sparing the resident from having to dig through all of the garbage.

The clever idea turned what could have been a lengthy and unpleasant search into a quick recovery

A Yerushalayim court on Sunday extended the detention of 52 suspects arrested in connection with last week’s violent disturbance outside the home of Deputy Supreme Court President Justice Noam Solberg, ruling that the alleged actions reflected a significant level of seriousness and danger. At the same time, police arrested an additional suspect in the case, prompting protests that led to major traffic disruptions in the Yerushalayim area.

The Yerushalayim Magistrate’s Court ordered that the 52 suspects remain in custody for four more days, until June 10, as investigators continue examining the events surrounding the riot and the damage caused at Justice Solberg’s residence.

Two additional suspects were released to full house arrest through June 11 under restrictive conditions that include a prohibition on contacting other individuals involved in the case, as well as financial guarantees.

During the hearing, which was conducted by video conference, several of the detainees appeared relaxed and smiling, with some applauding. An Israeli flag was visible on the wall behind them, while several suspects covered the Star of David on the flag with their hats.

A police representative told the court that two detainees attempted to escape while being transported by bus near Hebron on their way to a police station. He also noted that many of the suspects initially refused to identify themselves during questioning. According to the officer, “Only on Friday did a significant number of detainees who had refused to identify themselves finally agree to do so,” and he urged the court to consider that conduct when deciding whether to extend their detention.

Police further argued that the large number of suspects had significantly complicated the investigation, explaining that every investigative action had to be repeated for each individual involved. As a result, authorities maintained that the time already spent in custody had not been sufficient to complete the necessary investigative work or gather additional evidence.

Attorney Roi Politi, who represents some of the suspects, requested that his clients be released to house arrest. He argued that the bus in which the detainees were held after their arrest effectively functioned as a “detention center on wheels.” He also contended that only a minority of the suspects had actually entered the property and that the remaining investigative steps could be carried out without continued detention.

In its decision, the court stated that the suspects were part of “a large group that gathered together with the purpose of reaching the home of the deputy president.” The judge also referenced the reported escape attempts and noted that investigators had thus far been unable to carry out many of the required investigative actions due to the succession of court hearings and the suspects’ observance of Shabbos. The ruling added that “the prior organization, the joint arrival at the scene, and the actions taken there demonstrate the severity and dangerousness” of the alleged conduct.

Meanwhile, police continued their investigation and made another arrest in the case. Detectives from the Judea and Samaria District’s major crimes unit detained a man in his twenties from Beit Shemesh after attempting to question him while he was driving near Beitar Illit.

According to police, the suspect refused to comply with detectives’ instructions and barricaded himself inside his vehicle. Officers eventually forced their way into the car, arrested him, and brought him in for questioning.

The arrest sparked protests that shut down the Tunnels Highway for more than an hour. Demonstrators reportedly blocked the route connecting Jerusalem and Gush Etzion, causing significant traffic disruptions.

Police later reported that the disturbances included road blockages, the obstruction of buses, the placement of rocks and barriers on roadways, and the setting of fires in traffic lanes. Police and Border Police forces were deployed to the area and worked to disperse the demonstrators and restore the flow of traffic.

{Matzav.com}

Following the lack of change in the condition of HaMekubal HaTzaddik Rav Dov Kook, a decision was made to add a name as a segulah for his refuah.

HaRav Kook has been hospitalized for several weeks at Poriya Hospital in Tiveria and needs great Rachamei Shamayim.

The shaila of adding a name was asked to HaMashgiach HaRav Dan Segal, who instructed that the name “Chizkiyahu” be added. HaRav Kook’s father-in-law, HaGaon HaRav Yitzchak Zilberstein, was also consulted about the name.

HaRav Kook’s talmidim received great chizzuk from the name, saying that for many years, the Rav has frequently referred to Perek 38 in Yishayahu, which describes Chizkiyahu HaMelech’s illness and recovery. He often recommended to people seeking a yeshuah in health-related matters to recite the pessukim about Chizkiyahu’s tefillah out of an emunah in their power to awaken Rachamei Shamayim.

His talmidim also noted that HaRav Kook has had a special connection to Chizkiyahu HaMelech since his youth, often mentioning him and the connection between emunah, refuah, and geulah.

About a week and a half ago, in a rare move, HaRav Dan Segal requested that an atzeret tefillah be held in his Beis Medrash in Jerusalem for the recovery of HaRav Kook. The two tzaddikim have maintained a special connection for many years.

HaRav Segal asked the posek, HaGaon HaRav Bentzion Kook, a cousin of Rabbi Dov Kook, to deliver divrei chizzuk. HaRav Bentzion said: “This is our opportunity to express our gratitude to the Rav. We all troubled him with requests to daven for this one and that one, for one yeshua and another, and he was moser nefesh for these tefillos. His tefillos are lengthy because he literally is moser nefesh for every individual, and especially for Klal Yisrael. Let us repay a bit of his mesirus nefesh toward us by davening for his refuah, and may Hashem send him a refuah sheleimah.”

Afterward, HaRav Segal led the tefillos, saying: “In truth, the tefillah is not for him but for us.”

The public is requested to continue davening for the refuah sheleimah of HaRav Chizkiyahu Dov HaKohen ben Shoshana b’toch sha’ar cholei Yisrael.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

Going out to eat has become expensive enough that a growing share of Americans are doing it less often. According to the National Restaurant Association, menu prices rose 3.6% over the year through April, the slowest pace in 15 months but still piled on top of years of steep increases. Restaurant prices climbed about 4.1% in 2025, roughly double the rate of grocery inflation, and the cumulative effect has changed how often families are willing to sit down at a table someone else sets.

The increases have built up over time.

Food and labor costs for restaurants have each risen roughly 35% over the past five years, and operators have passed much of that along. A dish that cost $20 a few years ago can now cost significantly more, and a mid-range meal for two can easily run $50 to $100 before tip. For many households, an ordinary dinner out now feels like a real expense rather than a casual choice.

Consumers are responding by going out less.

A survey by research firm YouGov found that 37% of Americans are dining out less frequently than a year ago, a figure that climbs to 44% among lower-income households, while only 8% say they are eating out more. Among those cutting back, nearly seven in ten point to the rising cost of restaurant meals.

The perception is widespread. Eighty-two percent of Americans believe restaurant prices have gone up over the past year, but only 28% think the prices are fair for the quality they receive, a gap that is steadily eroding the appeal of eating out.

When people do go out, they are looking for ways to spend less.

More than half say they have changed their dining habits to save money, most often by choosing less expensive restaurants, using coupons or discounts, ordering fewer items, or skipping drinks. Higher-end dining is feeling it most. Nearly half of lower- and middle-income diners say they visit fine-dining establishments less frequently than they did in 2024.

“Value has become the deciding factor shaping where and how they choose to eat,” said Nora Hao, a senior sales director at YouGov.

It is not only about price.

A report from consulting firm McKinsey & Company examining what diners want in 2026 found that among consumers who said eating out “wasn’t worth the money,” the biggest complaints were not simply the bill itself but food quality and portion size, with more than half citing each concern.

In other words, diners are not merely chasing the cheapest option. They are weighing whether the overall experience justifies the cost and increasingly deciding that it does not.

Delivery, once the easy answer for convenience, is also losing ground.

Service charges, delivery fees, marked-up menu prices, and tips have pushed the cost of a delivered meal dramatically higher than picking it up in person. Diners have noticed. Spending on delivery fell about 12% last year while pickup orders rose 14%, as consumers stepped away from fee-heavy delivery platforms to keep costs under control.

The pullback is showing up across generations.

Younger diners are leading the retreat, with Generation Z reducing spending at quick-service restaurants over the past two years, while Generation X and baby boomers are eating out less frequently and searching harder for deals when they do.

For restaurants, the result is an unusual squeeze.

Total sales continue to rise because menu prices are higher, but foot traffic has softened as customers visit less often. That leaves operators trying to protect already-thin profit margins while serving a more selective customer base.

Some restaurants are cutting costs wherever possible, replacing printed menus with QR codes and streamlining operations. Others are experimenting with new approaches to keep tables full. Many national chains are leaning more heavily on loyalty programs, discounts, and targeted promotions to give customers a reason to return.

Dining out is not disappearing.

Americans still value the simple pleasure of being served a meal, celebrating a special occasion, or gathering with family and friends. Most still go out to eat at least occasionally.

But the casual habit of grabbing dinner without thinking much about the cost is increasingly becoming something else: a purchase that requires planning, budgeting, and consideration.

Restaurants, in turn, are adjusting to a customer who shows up less often, watches the bill more closely, and expects the experience to be worth every dollar spent.

JBizNews Desk — Consumer Economy

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He came in calm. Too calm.

Neat. Polite. Measured. Polished. The kind of young man people assume is doing just fine.

But when he sat down, there was a quiet heaviness about him that didn’t match the picture.

“For me,” he said slowly, choosing each word, “life just feels… flat. I don’t feel excited about anything. No energy. No spark.”

We had spoken in previous sessions about practical ways to bring more vitality into his life — more movement, more connection, more things to do that might peak his interest. He told me what he had tried. And then, as he continued talking, something subtle caught my attention.

He would say a few words… then pause. Think. Reflect. Then release another short phrase. Then pause again.

Every sentence sounded like it had gone through quality control.

After a few minutes, I gently interrupted.

“Do you notice what you’re doing when you speak?”

He looked up, surprised. “No. What?”

“You say a few words, then stop and think, then carefully choose the next ones.”

He smiled faintly. “Yeah… I do that.”

“Why do you think that is?”

He thought for a moment and then deflected. “Well, why do you think I’m doing it?”

“I honestly don’t know,” I said. “I’m just holding up a mirror. But I don’t think it’s random.”

He leaned forward, eyes drifting downward. He was thinking. After a moment, he looked at me and said quietly, “I think I’m protecting myself.”

He explained that he is constantly careful with his words — editing them in real time, trying to avoid being misunderstood or blamed.

When I asked where the fear of being blamed or misunderstood came from, he answered without hesitation.

“My wife misunderstands me all the time. I’ll say something which I think is benign and innocent, and to her it’s a problem. So I learned to be careful.”

“You’re speaking contemplatively,” I reflected. “Not just thoughtfully but protectively. You’re thinking while you talk, trying to make sure nothing can be used against you.”

Exactly.

My instinct told me though, that this learned behavior predated his wife. So I asked him to close his eyes.

“When was the first time you can remember that you felt the need to be careful with what you said?”

He started to think and think. I stopped him.

“Don’t analyze or overthink now. Just go with the first thing that comes up for you.”

His answer came immediately.

“Eighth grade.”

He described a boy who was struggling everywhere — at home, in school, socially. He was failing classes, sleeping through lessons, constantly being criticized. He felt invisible and desperate to belong.

At the time, the iPod was the status symbol. Having one meant you were okay. You fit in. For a boy who already felt like he was failing, it felt huge.

His parents refused to buy it for him — even when he offered to pay for it himself.

So he did something vulnerable. He went to his Rebbi.

He wasn’t asking him to intervene. He just wanted to be understood. To hear, “I get that this is important to you and how you wish you had one.”

Instead, the Rebbi said matter of factly, “If that’s the case, I’ll talk to your parents.”

His stomach dropped.

The Rebbi may have had good intentions but the last thing he wanted was that kind of exposure. He begged him not to.

When I asked what he felt in that moment, he answered immediately.

“Betrayed.”

And the year only got worse. He was depressed and disengaged. The same Rebbi eventually advocated to the school board that he be expelled.

I asked him to slow down.

“Go back there,” I said. “What was that boy feeling when he went to his Rebbi in the first place?”

He closed his eyes.

“I just wanted someone to understand me,” he said quietly. “I felt a yearning to be understood. Maybe a desire and hope for connection as well.”

Instead, vulnerability led to danger. Trust led to exposure. Hope led to humiliation.

I asked him to imagine that boy, that younger version of himself, standing in front of him now.

“How do you feel toward him?”

“I feel bad for him.”

“What kind of bad?”

“Compassion.”

I asked him to let that boy know it — to let the adult version of himself communicate compassion to the child he once was.

He did.

Then I asked him, “How does that boy feel toward you, now that you conveyed that to him?”

He paused for a moment and then opened his eyes, shaken.

“He doesn’t trust me,” he said. “He says, ‘Who says I can trust you?’”

The room went silent.

And suddenly, everything made sense — the careful speech, the constant self-monitoring, the emotional flatness.

He wasn’t broken.

He was surviving.

He had learned early on that he cannot trust people because they may end up betraying him. He also learned that he needs to be very careful with what he says. He can never let his guard down and just speak his mind but rather needs to choose his words judiciously.
But, how much joy can you feel when you’re always guarding yourself?

How alive can you be when every word and action is filtered through a fear of betrayal?

There was no dramatic breakthrough that day. No tidy resolution.

Just awareness.

And sometimes, awareness is the first crack in the wall.

Because once a person understands why they learned to live this way, they can finally ask the question that opens the door to change:

Is the protection still worth the prison?

And that is when the real work begins.

* Details may have been changed to protect confidentiality and to enhance the story line. If this story resonates with you, I’d love to hear from you — feel free to drop a comment below or to reach out directly.

Yaacov Weiss, LCSW, specializes in helping men find healthier and more stable footing in marriage. He can be reached at [email protected]

Amid growing tensions over the draft of yeshivah students and the widening divide between segments of the chareidi and Religious Zionist communities, Rav Aviad Gadot said the overwhelming majority of the Religious Zionist public does not identify with the harsh rhetoric often directed at Torah learners.

Speaking on the Kol Chai program Tzav Ma’atzar, hosted by Bnei Brak Deputy Mayor Gudi Silman, Rav Gadot—who heads the Torat HaLechima and Chotam organizations—discussed the future of the Torah world, relations between the chareidi and Religious Zionist sectors, and the broader struggle over the Jewish identity of the State of Israel.

At the outset of the conversation, Rav Gadot referred to a story highlighted in an earlier broadcast involving the wife of an avreich who has been detained in a military prison. He said the suffering described by the family reflects far more than an isolated personal hardship.

According to Rav Gadot, the issue represents “the pain of the entire Jewish people” and underscores a deeper crisis concerning the relationship between the state and its Jewish character.

Silman noted that some voices within the Religious Zionist community have become increasingly critical of the chareidi public and those dedicated to Torah study. He asked whether those sentiments represent a broad trend within the sector or merely the views of certain groups.

In response, Rav Gadot argued that the phenomenon should not be viewed as representative of the Religious Zionist community as a whole. Instead, he described it as part of a broader ideological process involving the formation of what he called the “faith-based camp,” a movement seeking to redefine and strengthen the Jewish identity of the state.

He said that while tensions sometimes exist between different factions within Religious Zionism, those disagreements do not reflect the views of the entire community.

Expanding his remarks to Israeli society at large, Rav Gadot maintained that there is a growing desire among many Israelis to reconnect with Judaism and Torah values. At the same time, he argued that the country’s educational system and other public institutions have drifted away from their Jewish foundations.

He also voiced criticism of both the judicial system and elements of the security establishment, claiming that flawed underlying assumptions within those institutions have had a broader impact on Israeli society.

Addressing the draft controversy, Rav Gadot said he believes a sustained public campaign surrounding chareidi military service has significantly influenced public discourse, including discussions within the Religious Zionist community itself.

Nevertheless, he stressed that most Religious Zionist Israelis do not embrace the more extreme anti-chareidi rhetoric that has emerged in certain circles.

“Most of the public is not a partner to the extreme voices,” he said.

The discussion also touched on the military service of Religious Zionist soldiers. Rav Gadot argued that tensions have developed in recent years between senior military commanders and leaders of the hesder yeshivah world, creating additional friction within the broader religious community.

As the interview concluded, Rav Gadot called for greater unity among Israel’s various religious sectors, emphasizing that preserving the Torah world and safeguarding the Jewish identity of the state should be viewed as a shared national mission rather than a political dispute.

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. consumers haven’t stopped spending money since the Iran war drove up fuel prices, but many shoppers are reassessing what they buy and where, according to company executives and retail analysts.

The behavior changes observed so far are subtle, such as altered routines for buying gasoline and fewer visits to clothing and furniture stores. They also are uneven across the population. During recent earnings calls with analysts, executives from American mainstays like Walmart, McDonald’s and Dollar General cited overall shopper resilience as well as noticeable cutbacks by lower-income customers.

But the new signs of strain cited by major retailers as generous income tax refunds helped shore up their sales make some economists and analysts think they will see a wider retrenchment when the refunds are gone and consumers face the cumulative impact of more expensive gas and higher prices for food, clothing, insurance and other goods and services.

Trevor Chapman, a communications executive in West Hills, California, said that instead of going to a local independent gas station, he and his wife now plan their fuel stops around Costco stores with filling stations. The couple also is doing more online food shopping to avoid impulse buys, he said.

“Gas is a kind of catalyst,” Chapman said. “It trickles down into the entire budget. We’re trying to keep everything as normal as possible. But it’s starting to feel like it’s adding up more and more.”

Well before the U.S. and Israel launched the war, many consumers already were being more choosy with their discretionary purchases, fatigued by several years of stubborn inflation and tariffs on imported goods imposed last year.

The U.S. Commerce Department reported last week that higher prices, not more purchases, accounted for most of the growth in Americans’ spending in April, when a key inflation gauge reached the highest level since October 2023.

Topping up instead of filling up
Members-only warehouse stores like Costco, Walmart’s Sam’s Club and BJ’s Wholesale Club have seen more traffic at their fuel pumps since the war began in late February, according to the companies. Fuel typically costs less at the wholesale clubs.

But many drivers are not filling their tanks up, Walmart Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey told analysts late last month. For the first time since 2022, Walmart customers and Sam’s Club members are buying an average of less than 10 gallons per trip, he said.

“That’s an indication of stress,” Rainey said.

Costco members also are making changes. They are visiting store gas stations more frequently to “top up in between what would have normally been a gap between getting the tank to empty because of the concern about what might the gas price be tomorrow,” Chief Financial Officer Gary Millerchip said in late May.

Meanwhile, the gas price surge has hurt convenience stores, where 80% of all fuel is sold in the U.S., according to Jeff Lenard, a vice president at the National Association of Convenience Stores.

A sales analysis by the trade group found that the number of pump transactions at the properties of 130 convenience store companies fell by nearly 10% across March and April compared to the same two months last year. The number of sales inside the companies’ stores dropped by 10.4%, according to the analysis.

“When you lose gallons to the big box, you also lose in-store sales,” Lenard said.

Changing eating habits
Higher gas prices did not stop many Americans from dining out in the first two months of the war with Iran. Tax refunds helped, the National Restaurant Association said. Customer traffic at U.S. restaurants in April was unchanged from the same month last year, although a 2.6% increase in restaurant spending resulted largely from higher menu prices, according to market research firm Circana.

But cracks are starting to form as budget-conscious U.S. residents shoulder the combined weight of paying more for gas and other consumer goods on top of increasing costs in other areas from inflation past and present.

The price of gas won’t help bring customers with household incomes of $45,000 or less back to U.S. fast-food restaurants, McDonald’s Chairman and CEO Chris Kempczinski said last month. People in that income group began scaling back their fast-food purchases after the period of inflation that accompanied the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the trend picked up speed last year.

U.S.-based restaurant consulting firm Revenue Management Solutions analyzed 14.6 billion restaurant transactions from the last four years and found that as gasoline gets more expensive, restaurant visits gradually decline, according to Chief Research Officer Sebastián Fernandez. The analysis indicated the impact doubles when gas hits the $4 mark, which it did as a nationwide average on March 31.

Consumers also are making concessions when they shop for groceries, according to Stew Leonard, president of an eight-store supermarket chain his father founded, Stew Leonard’s. He’s noticed customers buying meat in bulk to freeze and being less tempted to buy the products showcased during live food demonstrations or offered for sampling.

“It’s telling me that people are sticking more to their shopping list,” Leonard said.

Dollar General CEO Todd Vasos also cited $4 a gallon gas as a tipping point that had more consumers with household incomes above $100,000 frequenting the discount chain. Vasos told analysts Tuesday that many of Dollar General’s core shoppers, who have mid-to-low incomes and live in rural areas, were paring back their food spending.

Sophie Tolsdorf, 29, of La Grange, Kentucky, said she is one of the consumers stocking up on meat when the price is reasonable. She also switched to buying whole fruit instead pre-cut fruit in containers and cut back on the rawhide bones for her dog that cost $40 a pack.

“He might have noticed,” Tolsdorf said. “He’s definitely a little bit bored during the workday now.”

Needs versus wants
Before the war, retailers had spent multiple earnings seasons highlighting consumer caution and selectivity as factors that could weigh on sales of nonessential products. Shoppers appear to have curbed their discretionary spending even more as the cost of buying gas went up, said Marshal Cohen, chief retail advisor at Circana.

Between April 25 and May 23, U.S. retailers sold 6% fewer non-grocery products than they did during the comparable four-week period of 2025, Cohen said. Housewares, clothing, footwear and sports equipment had the biggest declines, anywhere from 5% to 7%. Circana reported that toys and beauty items remained bright spots, registering at least an 8% increase in the number of units sold.

Location intelligence company Placer.ai, which tracks people’s movements based on cellphone usage, saw visits to the gas stations of BJ’s, Costco and Sam’s Club stores start to accelerate in early March, aligning with a sharp rise in fuel prices, according to R.J. Hottovy, the company’s head of analytical research.

By early May, Placer.ai’s data showed four consecutive weeks of reduced foot traffic at clothing, electronics and home furnishing stores, and more trips to grocery stores and dollar stores.

“Consumers are prioritizing value-oriented retailers like warehouse clubs, superstores, and off-price chains,” Hottovy said.

US President Donald Trump is facing widening opposition within his own party as Republican lawmakers in Congress, long reluctant to defy him, are showing a greater willingness to break ranks with the US president.

Just over the past week, multiple factions of Republicans in the Senate and House of Representatives have stepped forward to rebuke his war against Iran, reject $1 billion in funding tied to his White House ballroom, force a retreat on his $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, and block his legislation on domestic spying.

The House also defied Trump by passing a bill on Thursday to provide aid to Ukraine and impose new sanctions on Russia, a measure that seems destined for a veto by the president.

Republicans and Democrats are skeptical that Trump faces an actual revolt. But a growing coalition of Republicans is showing a willingness to break with him, including those Trump has personally helped to drum out of office, and could pose a threat to his most ambitious initiatives between now and Election Day.

“I think what you’re seeing as you get closer to the election is that people are going to vote the way they think their constituents want them to,” said Republican Senator Thom Tillis, who announced his retirement from the Senate last year after opposing the president’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill.

Democrats largely dismissed the idea, saying there has been no evidence that the party at large is willing to defy him on major issues.

“The people that are breaking with him are ones that were put out by Trump,” said Senator John Fetterman, a Democrat who sometimes supports Trump-backed initiatives. “That actually demonstrates his absolute control over the party.”

One White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, chalked Republican dissent up to “election-year politics.” “Not every single member will absorb the political cost on every single issue,” the person said.

“While the media and Democrats attempt to sow nonexistent divisions, we look forward to continuing this close relationship to continue fulfilling President Trump’s agenda,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said.

A new willingness to resist Trump

For years, Republican lawmakers have shown public fealty to Trump by backing controversial cabinet picks, showing little or no resistance to his executive orders, and supporting his signature legislation despite misgivings about the ballooning deficit and cuts to the Medicaid healthcare program for low-income Americans.

Lawmakers and aides say frustration and resentment have grown since Trump opposed the reelection bids of Republican Senators Bill Cassidy and John Cornyn and endangered the Republican agenda in Congress with a series of badly timed announcements.

The inflection point came just before the US Memorial Day holiday, when Trump’s decision to oppose the reelection of Cornyn and the announcement of his “anti-weaponization” fund forced Senate Republicans to abandon a $70 billion immigration enforcement funding bill and leave town in a mood of anger and frustration.

“That was kind of like a perfect storm of events,” a Senate Republican aide said.

The Senate ultimately passed the immigration enforcement funding bill on Friday, and Republicans voted against a Democratic amendment to block the funding, even as some worry it could be used to pay January 6 Capitol rioters and other Trump political allies.

Trump appointed loyalist Bill Pulte to replace Tulsi Gabbard as a temporary Director of National Intelligence, even though key Republicans have misgivings.

Senator Mitch McConnell made it clear he would not back Pulte as a permanent DNI, saying the law required nominees with extensive experience. “No nominee who falls short of this requirement will earn my vote,” he said in a statement.

Battles over nominations loom

Republican opposition on the floors of the House and Senate has been mostly symbolic to date.

Three electorally vulnerable Senate Republicans – Susan Collins, Jon Husted, and Dan Sullivan – joined an attempt by Democrats to ban Trump’s “anti-weaponization” fund on Thursday in a measure that didn’t pass, along with two other Republican attempts to end the fund.

“This whole exercise is to pass President Trump’s top agenda item to secure the border and fund ICE. What’s happening on the floor right now shows the solidarity that we have with the president,” Republican Senator Jim Banks, a Trump ally, said as lawmakers voted.

Trump’s next big challenge is likely to be his expected nomination of his former attorney, Todd Blanche, as permanent U.S. attorney general, a move that could face an uphill battle in the Senate. The first stop would be the Senate Judiciary Committee, a panel that includes Trump retribution casualty Cornyn, who said his support would depend on how Blanche answers certain questions.

“The attorney general is not the president’s private lawyer,” Cornyn told reporters. “I want to make sure he understands the difference and is committed to making sure that the law is enforced.”

This post was originally published on here.

NEW YORK CITY (VINnews)-The New York Knicks and the United States Secret Service have implemented enhanced security protocols for Game 3 of the 2026 NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden, aiming to ensure the safety of fans and attendees amid heightened expectations for the high-stakes matchup.

According to an official announcement from the Knicks, the measures include a strict no-bag policy, with personal items restricted to the bare minimum. Fans will undergo TSA-style screening, including additional magnetometers and thorough inspections. The team is urging spectators to arrive at least two hours before tip-off to avoid delays at security checkpoints.

“No storage will be available for prohibited items,” the notice states, directing fans to review the full list of banned belongings in advance.

The tightened security comes as the Knicks host a critical game in the NBA Finals, drawing significant attention and high-profile interest. While many Knicks supporters expressed frustration over the potential for long lines and added inconvenience on an already electric night at the Garden, others acknowledged the necessity of the precautions.

The announcement drew a mix of reactions online, with some fans voicing concerns about the impact on the game-day experience while others prioritized safety.

Ticket holders are advised to check the Knicks’ official website or app for the complete list of prohibited items and updated arrival guidelines.

A revealing interview by the Israeli Yated Ne’eman with MK Moshe Gafni, combined with a week of political drama in Yerushalayim, exposed the growing fractures within Israel’s governing coalition, the escalating battle over the draft law, and the increasingly volatile atmosphere surrounding the country’s legal and political institutions. From threats of early elections to a dramatic State Comptroller vote and growing tensions between the government and the Attorney General, the past week offered a glimpse into a political system that appears to be moving steadily toward a new electoral showdown. Matzav.com presented portions of the interview, which was conducted in Hebrew.

Speaking shortly after the State Comptroller election, Gafni left little doubt that the relationship between the chareidi parties and their traditional coalition partners has fundamentally changed. During the interview, a Likud staffer approached him to coordinate a vote against an opposition bill. Gafni’s response was telling.

“We’re in the opposition,” he said.

When reminded that he had just voted for Michael Ravilo, the coalition-backed candidate for State Comptroller, Gafni dismissed the suggestion that the vote reflected continued loyalty to the coalition.

“There’s no connection. We’re not part of the coalition bloc and we vote on every issue individually.”

The exchange perfectly captured the current reality facing Degel HaTorah and much of the chareidi political leadership. The automatic alliance with the broader right-wing bloc is no longer being taken for granted.

Gafni confirmed that he supported Ravilo’s candidacy and explained the decision in simple terms.

“He is observant, so it was natural for us to vote for him.”

Asked whether Netanyahu had personally lobbied him before the vote, Gafni denied that any such discussion had taken place.

The conversation quickly turned to the issue dominating chareidi public life: the draft crisis and the growing number of yeshivah students facing possible arrest.

Gafni defended his recent directive instructing chareidi municipal representatives to suspend cooperation with police authorities. He rejected suggestions that the move had been impulsive or emotional.

“This didn’t come to me off the cuff,” he said. “Our representatives have close and productive relationships with police district commanders and local commanders on community matters and issues unique to the chareidi public. The moment the police say that part of their job is to arrest and imprison Torah learners, we will not cooperate with them.”

He stressed that many of the cooperative efforts between local officials and police are performed voluntarily and argued that continuing such relationships under current circumstances would be impossible.

Asked whether the directive had produced tangible results, Gafni suggested that it had.

“First of all, I did what needed to be done. It was a necessity. They attacked me in the Knesset, but I stood my ground. Regarding your question, there has definitely been an impact from the letter I wrote, but I’m not getting into that right now. When everything is finalized, I’ll discuss it publicly.”

According to Gafni, dissatisfaction with the policy extends beyond the chareidi community itself. He claimed that many senior police officials privately oppose the current approach because it damages years of trust-building between law enforcement and religious communities.

Looking ahead, Gafni issued a stark warning about the consequences of continued pressure on the chareidi public.

“They are creating a chareidi uprising,” he said. “That is ultimately what will happen. If you continue restricting the public in every area of life, it becomes a dictatorship, and it will lead to a chareidi uprising. We pay taxes and live here. If we are not allowed to live under all these decrees in every sphere of life, there will be an uprising. That is where this is leading.”

The possibility of early elections also featured prominently in the interview. Gafni made clear that his party sees little value in a Knesset that cannot pass legislation protecting Torah learners.

“As far as we are concerned, elections should happen as soon as possible. If the Knesset does not pass the draft law, then from our perspective it is not worth much. That is why we support early elections, as we were instructed to do.”

Although Netanyahu continues trying to advance draft legislation, Gafni indicated that the chareidi parties have effectively stepped back from those efforts.

“He is trying, and I know he is trying. But we are no longer involved, based on the instructions we received. We are not asking him for anything anymore.”

Perhaps the most revealing moment came when Gafni was asked how committed his party remains to the traditional right-wing bloc.

“Quite literally,” he replied. “The bloc, from our perspective, is a bloc of those who uphold Torah and mitzvos and the value of Torah study. Whoever wants can join us. We are not joining anyone anymore.”

The veteran lawmaker also addressed criticism that the chareidi parties made a strategic error at the beginning of the government by prioritizing judicial reform rather than securing draft legislation first.

“There were different circumstances then,” he said. “No one believed or anticipated what would happen with the judicial reform. Perhaps there should have been accompanying measures like an override clause. But that no longer matters. Something like that will not happen again.”

Gafni also expressed concern about what he described as organized efforts to suppress chareidi voter turnout. According to him, outside activists are investing significant resources into campaigns aimed at convincing religious voters that their representatives have failed.

“The number of seats held by Degel HaTorah and by the chareidi parties generally will be critically important,” he said. “Their goal is to harm everything connected to the chareidi public and, of course, to win the elections. They are investing enormous amounts of money and operating through internal channels as well.”

He claimed that some individuals inside the community have been recruited to assist those efforts.

“You can see fingerprints in the posters and videos being distributed. There are internal people who took money and sold themselves. I hope the public will not fall for this campaign.”

Asked whether he fears losing seats, Gafni replied simply, “I very much hope the public will not be persuaded.”

Reflecting on his long political career, Gafni described the current period as the most difficult he has ever witnessed.

“This is the hardest period by far. The public became accustomed, rightly so, to a certain standard of living, and now almost every area is being harmed. Institutions, budgets, daycare centers, education, municipal tax benefits—everything is being affected. There are additional matters we are dealing with that we are not even discussing publicly.”

He also confirmed plans to advance Basic Law: Torah Study, legislation that has sat dormant for years.

“I initiated it. The faction signed it. It remained frozen because people argued it could interfere with the draft law. Now that the draft law is not moving and arrests have begun, I asked whether it should be brought forward. Shas also requested it. The Gedolei Torah instructed me to advance it, and it will be brought next week.”

According to Gafni, the legislation is intended to serve as a counterbalance to legal doctrines centered on equality.

“The law is meant to be a counterweight to the principle of equality as a value in its own right. The Attorney General will probably try to strike it down as well, but we are making every effort.”

Toward the end of the interview, Gafni voiced his strongest criticism yet of the coalition partners who signed agreements with the chareidi parties but failed to deliver.

“They signed coalition agreements. They received everything they wanted. When the time came to fulfill their commitments, not only did they fail to do so, but they cooperated with the Attorney General and the media in ways that made a solution more difficult.”

His conclusion was blunt.

“I am very disappointed in this partnership and in their silence. They are responsible for the fact that there is no law. They should not come afterward with complaints.”

The interview came amid growing criticism of Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, who has become a central figure in many of the government’s political battles. Critics argue that she has repeatedly obstructed government initiatives, including appointments, judicial reforms, and matters related to the draft law.

Those tensions intensified further after the government suffered another setback in its effort to remove her. Meanwhile, supporters of the Attorney General insist she is simply carrying out her legal responsibilities and protecting the rule of law.

Another major political story this week was the dramatic election of Michael Ravilo as State Comptroller.

Initially, former Supreme Court Justice Yosef Elron appeared positioned for victory. In the first round of voting, Elron received 60 votes compared to 57 for Ravilo. The opposition needed only one additional vote to secure an outright victory.

But Netanyahu refused to concede defeat.

After personally intervening and lobbying wavering lawmakers, he managed to reverse the outcome. In the second round, Ravilo prevailed by a vote of 61 to 57.

The victory was viewed by Netanyahu’s supporters as proof that reports of the coalition’s collapse may be exaggerated. Critics, however, argued that the election exposed deeper problems involving political pressure and the secrecy of parliamentary voting.

The result also highlighted a broader shift inside Netanyahu’s leadership style.

For years, critics accused him of appointing individuals who later turned against him. Recent appointments suggest he is now determined to place trusted allies in key positions.

Supporters argue that figures such as David Zini, Roman Gofman, Doron Cohen, Shmuel Ben Ezra, and now Ravilo possess the necessary qualifications and experience for their respective roles. Opponents contend that personal loyalty has become a central consideration.

Either way, Netanyahu appears increasingly committed to shaping the country’s institutions with appointments that reflect his worldview.

The political spotlight also remains fixed on the opposition, where Gadi Eisenkot continues to emerge as a potential challenger to Netanyahu.

Polls suggest Eisenkot has steadily gained ground and may eventually surpass Naftali Bennett among voters seeking an alternative to the current government.

His supporters portray him as thoughtful, responsible, and statesmanlike. Yet questions remain about whether those qualities alone are enough to defeat one of Israel’s most formidable political campaigners.

Unlike Netanyahu, whose political career has been defined by relentless campaigning and constant engagement, Eisenkot projects a quieter image. Admirers see maturity and seriousness. Skeptics see a lack of urgency.

That debate is likely to intensify as election season approaches.

Meanwhile, speculation about opposition mergers continues to dominate political discussions. Bennett and Yair Lapid have repeatedly called for broader alliances, while Eisenkot and Avigdor Lieberman have been more cautious.

Political history offers mixed lessons. While mergers can strengthen parties near the electoral threshold, larger unions sometimes blur ideological identities and drive voters elsewhere.

For that reason, some analysts believe separate campaigns followed by post-election coalition-building may ultimately prove more effective than grand pre-election alliances.

Whatever path emerges, one reality is becoming increasingly clear: Israel’s political system is moving rapidly toward a decisive moment.

The coalition is under strain. The draft crisis continues to deepen. Legal battles are escalating. Political alliances are shifting.

And with elections up ahead, every major player is already positioning for the fight ahead.

{Matzav.com}

The price of a new car has climbed so high that buying one is becoming a luxury many Americans can no longer manage. According to Kelley Blue Book, the car-pricing arm of Cox Automotive, the average new vehicle sold for about $48,699 in April, a figure reported in mid-May that sits just below the $50,000 mark the industry once considered unthinkable. To get into those cars, buyers are taking on bigger loans, longer terms, and heavier monthly payments than ever before.

The monthly bill tells the story.

Average new-car payments reached a record of roughly $772 at the end of last year, according to the research site Edmunds, and a record 20.3% of people financing a new vehicle now commit to payments of at least $1,000 a month. The average amount borrowed for a new car also hit a high of $43,899 in the first quarter, up from $41,473 a year earlier.

To make those numbers work, more buyers are stretching their loans far into the future.

A record 22.9% of financed new-car purchases in the first quarter carried loan terms of at least 84 months, or seven years, Edmunds found. A decade ago, that figure was about 10%. The cost of stretching is steep: a $43,899 loan at a 6.9% interest rate over 84 months works out to roughly $660 per month and more than $11,575 in interest over the life of the loan.

“Consumers are having to work harder to make the numbers fit,” said Jessica Caldwell, head of insights at Edmunds.

Behind the averages is a market increasingly splitting along income lines.

The share of new-car buyers earning less than $100,000 annually fell to about 37% last year, down from 50% in 2020, according to Cox Automotive. Households earning $150,000 or more now account for roughly 43% of new-vehicle sales.

In short, wealthier buyers are increasingly the ones keeping the new-car market moving while many middle- and lower-income shoppers are being pushed toward used vehicles or out of the market entirely.

Interest rates are a major reason.

A buyer’s credit score now determines dramatically different outcomes. According to Experian, borrowers with top-tier “super-prime” credit paid an average new-car loan rate of about 4.66% late last year, while borrowers with “deep subprime” credit paid roughly 16.01%.

Lenders have also become more selective with borrowers whose credit scores fall below the high-600s, leaving many consumers facing either sharply higher financing costs or loan denials altogether.

Tariffs are adding fresh pressure.

A 25% tariff on imported vehicles took effect in early April, and a related tariff on imported parts was later modified to allow automakers to recover some costs over a two-year period. Even so, 2026 model-year vehicles are arriving about $2,000 more expensive on average than the prior year, far above the typical annual increase of roughly $400.

Analysts at Cox Automotive warn that as cheaper pre-tariff inventory disappears from dealer lots, vehicle prices could rise further. Discounts are already becoming less generous. Sales incentives fell to about $3,262 per vehicle in April, the lowest level since the summer of 2024.

There is some relief for used-car shoppers.

After years of limited supply, roughly 400,000 additional late-model used vehicles are expected to enter the market this year as more lease returns become available. That should help stabilize used-car prices.

The catch is financing.

Used-car loan rates often run between 10% and 11%, meaning many budget-conscious shoppers are settling for older vehicles with higher mileage than they might have considered just a few years ago.

The affordability squeeze is also expected to weigh on sales.

Cox Automotive forecasts new-vehicle sales will decline about 2.4% this year to roughly 15.8 million units, which would mark the first annual decline since 2022. Edmunds projects a similar result, with sales trending toward approximately 16 million vehicles.

For dealers, automakers, and lenders, the industry is adapting through longer loan terms, greater focus on higher-income customers, and increased emphasis on used vehicles.

For everyday households, the shift is more personal.

The automobile has long been one of the defining purchases of middle-class American life. Increasingly, however, buying a new vehicle requires either a seven-year financial commitment or an income level that allows buyers to absorb a near-$50,000 sticker price without much concern.

As prices continue climbing and financing becomes more expensive, the new-car market is increasingly being built around the people who can afford it.

JBizNews Desk

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Israel and Honduras have signed a new agreement aimed at expanding technological cooperation between the two countries, marking another step in the growing relationship between Jerusalem and Tegucigalpa.

The agreement, signed last week, promotes Israeli technology initiatives and broadens cooperation in areas including agriculture, water management, health education and security.

Israel’s Ambassador to Honduras, Nadav Goren, described the government agreement as “another milestone” in the relationship between the two nations.

Honduran Foreign Minister Mireya Agüero said the Memorandum of Understanding reinforced more than 70 years of diplomatic ties and friendship between Israel and Honduras.

Israel has long provided Honduras with defense equipment, cybersecurity expertise and support in fields such as agriculture, water innovation, healthcare and technology.

Honduras recognized Israel shortly after the Jewish state was established in 1948 and has maintained support for Israel at the United Nations over the decades. In 2021, Honduras relocated its embassy to Jerusalem, following the United States and Guatemala.

Earlier this year, Honduran President Nasry Asfura visited Jerusalem and said he hoped for a “new era” in relations with Israel, following tensions during the previous left-wing administration over the war in Gaza.

MK Yaakov Asher delivered a forceful and unusually candid address at the Bnei Yeshivah Conference organized by HaIchud, declaring that the struggle facing the Torah world is nothing less than a religious battle while emphasizing that the chareidi community will remain firmly guided by Torah principles and the direction of Gedolei Yisroel.

Speaking at the gathering held at Yerushalayim’s Dan Hotel, Asher addressed growing concerns within the chareidi public over the challenges confronting yeshivah students, Torah institutions, and religious education. He stressed that despite the mounting pressure, the community’s response would remain rooted in Torah values and absolute adherence to rabbinic leadership.

During his remarks, Asher sought to reassure attendees who are worried about the future and the direction of current events.

“We are living through a time when people are asking what will be and are genuinely concerned,” he said. “As Degel HaTorah chairman MK Moshe Gafni has said, I do not believe that, in the history of the chareidi perspective, we have ever experienced a period like this. But one thing we do know: what you are doing here, and what is being built through your efforts—the preservation of the Torah world, support for bnei Torah, and strengthening the observance of mitzvos—is the force that sustains us. The war we are facing today is a religious war, and we are not sitting quietly. Not us, not those who bear public responsibility, and not the Gedolei Yisroel, who are concerned about every detail and guide us in the path we must follow.”

Asher went on to outline what he described as the proper framework for the public struggle ahead, insisting that any response must remain within the boundaries established by Torah leadership and rejecting calls for independent or extreme action.

He emphasized that the battle over the future of the chareidi community and its educational system would be fought through spiritual and educational means, without compromising the values that define the Torah world.

“We will wage this struggle in our way—in the way of Torah, in the way of bnei Torah. We will protect our children, we will protect our education, and we will not endanger the education of our children for any goal. We will know how to fight, we will know how to stand up for what is ours, and with Hashem’s help we will also see salvation. But we will do so while preserving the Torah and the image of the ben Torah. We will not become militias, and we will not lose our way. We will proceed exactly as Gedolei Yisroel instruct us, and that is what guides us. This power of Torah, of yiras Shamayim, and of the character of bnei Torah—is the strength from which the Jewish people draw their power. And with Hashem’s help, we will soon merit the fulfillment of the posuk: ‘יָקוּמוּ וְיָפוּצוּ אויְבֶיךָ וְיָנֻסוּ מְשַׂנְאֶיךָ מִפָּנֶיךָ.’”

{Matzav.com}

President Donald Trump said the United States would work alongside Iran to retrieve and destroy its stockpile of highly enriched uranium if the two countries reach an agreement to end their three-month-old war, and that he would degrade Iran’s military further and seize the material by force if no deal comes together.

The remarks, among his most detailed yet on the state of negotiations, came in an interview with NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that aired Sunday. The sit-down with moderator Kristen Welker was taped Friday at a farm in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, in a barn with a metal roof; a rainstorm and a technical glitch repeatedly interrupted it, and Trump ended the conversation roughly 50 minutes in after a tense exchange over election claims and his criticism of the press.

“We’re very close,” Trump said of a deal with Iran. “We have a couple of points; they don’t even seem like big points. They’ve conceded the fact that they will not have nuclear weapons.”

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“If we make a deal that now we’re friendly, we’ll all go together. It’ll be our equipment. We’ll take it out and destroy it, whether it’s on-site or whether we take it off-site,” Trump said. “And we will go with them, or without them. But we won’t have people shooting at us.”

“Now, if we don’t make a deal, then we’re going to take them out militarily very harshly,” he added. “And we’ll wait till we do that before we go, in which case we’ll have safety either way.”

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Trump said the U.S. could track Iran’s nuclear material from orbit, crediting his Space Force. “If anybody walked there, if you walked over there, I would be able to read your first name on your lapel,” he said. “And these are cameras up in space. It’s pretty amazing technology.”

The president described the two sides as “very close” to a pact but said he was holding out for tighter language. Iran had agreed not to develop nuclear weapons, he said, but he insisted on broadening the prohibition. “I said, ‘Well, what happens if they, not develop, but they go out and purchase, they acquire?'” Trump recounted. “So, they don’t have the right to develop or purchase, acquire or buy.” He said Iranian negotiators initially resisted, “and then they didn’t.”

Trump argued that economic desperation would ultimately force Iran’s hand, describing a country he said could not afford to keep fighting. The costs to Tehran are “not sustainable,” he said, because “they have an economy that’s shot.” He cast the standoff as a contest Iran cannot win, saying its leaders had run out of room to maneuver: “They’ve got no choice.”

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The pressure stems in part from Iran’s months-long closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the maritime chokepoint that carries roughly a fifth of the world’s oil. The shutdown has sent oil prices climbing worldwide and lifted gas prices at home — a political liability Trump acknowledged even as he insisted Iran was suffering far more. He framed the trade-off in terms aimed at his farm-state audience.

“Fertilizer was very cheap. Everything was cheap. Gasoline was very low. Everything was very low. I could’ve kept it that way,” Trump said. “But I said, I have to take a little bit of a turn. The farmers are going to understand it better than anybody. We’re going to have higher gasoline. We’re going to have a little higher fertilizer, etc., etc. But I’m going to get rid of a nuclear weapon in the hands of very dangerous people.” Relief at the pump would follow a settlement, he said: “When we have a completion, you will see things like you’ve never seen. The oil will go down.”

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Trump said any new agreement would not immediately release Iranian assets frozen under sanctions, a sequence he said would reward good behavior rather than precede it. That “comes after,” he said. “If they behave, if they do a good job, we start talking.” He criticized former President Barack Obama, who negotiated the 2015 nuclear accord that Trump abandoned in his first term, for sending cash to Tehran. Trump said he did not regret failing to strike his own deal back then: “They weren’t ready. No, this is much better.”

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The president said he had no plans to withdraw the roughly 50,000 U.S. troops in the region despite a fragile, repeatedly violated ceasefire, arguing he might still need them as leverage. “It would be foolhardy to do that because maybe we may use them,” he said, adding that the troops would stay “until such time as we have a completion.” He said he did not consider them to be in danger.

Trump asserted that the war had hollowed out Iran’s arsenal. “We have totally destroyed their military,” he said. “Most of the drone factories have been knocked out, most of the launching pads have been knocked out and most of the missile manufacturing areas have been knocked out. But they still have capacity.” He estimated Iran retained “21%, 22%” of its prewar missiles — “a lot of missiles, but it’s not what it was when we first attacked.” Days earlier, Iran had launched strikes across the Persian Gulf, including a hit on Kuwait International Airport, demonstrating it still has firepower.

He pushed back on critics urging a faster resolution, comparing the conflict to a far longer war. “I’m into three months. You know, Vietnam lasted 19 years,” Trump said. “And all they do is say, ‘Whoa, when are you going to win?’ If I were a Democrat, nobody would be talking that way.” He said reaching a deal takes time because of how long the two countries have been adversaries: “These people have been fighting for 47 years. They’ve been killing Americans.”

Trump said he found Iran’s new leadership “more rational, very smart” following Israeli and U.S. strikes that killed former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and many of his deputies. The ayatollah’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, has succeeded him and is “part of” the approval process for any agreement, Trump said. He said he would be open to speaking with the new leader directly — “I would if he’d like to” — but had not yet done so, describing him as seriously hurt: “He’s pretty badly injured. So there’s a certain bravery there.” Asked whether he knew the leader’s location, Trump said, “I don’t want to say whether or not I know where he is. But there’s a good probability that I do.”

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The campaign, which the administration has called “Operation Epic Fury,” was declared concluded last week by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who told lawmakers that recent U.S. strikes near the Strait of Hormuz were defensive responses to Iranian attacks on shipping. A ceasefire first reached in April has been extended several times but has frayed amid renewed exchanges of fire.

On the domestic front, Trump offered a fuller defense of the roughly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund his administration has championed and did not rule out compensating Jan. 6 defendants charged with assaulting police. Asked directly whether those who attacked officers should receive taxpayer money, he said, “I wouldn’t be inclined to say so, but I have to see it.” He went on: “If it was up to me, I’d pay them the kind of money that they deserve. People have been destroyed.” He argued many had pleaded guilty only “because they were frightened” and told Welker to “look at the tapes.”

The fund’s future is uncertain: a federal judge temporarily blocked it on May 29, and the acting attorney general told lawmakers days later that the administration was “not moving forward.”

Trump also claimed that last week’s elections in California were “rigged,” citing the slow vote count. “Do you think it’s appropriate that they have an election and five days later, they’re nowhere close to picking a winner?” he said. Pressed for proof of cheating, he replied, “All I have to do is look.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) — Police on the Greek island of Crete on Sunday arrested a 37-year-old Palestinian man on suspicion of planning “terrorist” attacks and belonging to the militant group Hamas.

Police said in a brief statement the man is also under investigation for traveling abroad to undergo training.

Searches in homes in both Crete and the Greek capital, Athens, turned up a number of mobile phones, a laptop, external hard drives and bank cards. The suspect will appear before a magistrate later Sunday.

The suspect, an electrician who has been living in Crete for the past year, had placed an online order for what police said were “chemical agents” that could be used in the manufacture of explosives.

Police said the man’s arrest is linked to the detention of four Palestinian men in Cyprus who are also being investigated on “terrorism-related” charges and “belonging to a criminal organization.”

Greek authorities said the 37-year-old was in touch with one of the four Palestinians in Cyprus with whom he traveled to Malaysia for training on making explosives using commercially available chemical agents.

Cypriot law enforcement authorities initially placed two Palestinians in custody on May 22 following what they said was the evaluation of gathered intelligence.

Authorities said they discovered in two residences used by one of the men suspected material that could be used in the manufacture of explosives.

Cypriot police detained another two Palestinian men on May 29 as part of the same investigation.

Greek authorities said the 37-year-old s was in touch with one of the four

Residents and bystanders who witnessed Sunday morning’s deadly shooting attack in the Sharon region described scenes of panic and chaos after a terrorist opened fire in broad daylight, killing one person and wounding five others across multiple locations.

One local resident, whose home is near the scene of the attack, said he immediately recognized the sound of gunfire.

“I recently moved to the Sal’it area, and my house is very close to where the attack occurred. I heard shots and realized right away that it was automatic weapon fire,” he said.

According to the resident, the shooting was followed by a massive emergency response.

“There was a tremendous commotion. I looked out my window and saw ambulances everywhere and a lot of chaos. Later I learned that there were casualties in Kochav Yair as well and that another incident was unfolding there. Since then, security forces have been operating throughout the area.”

The resident said the attack confirmed fears that many locals have harbored for years.

“When I heard the gunfire, I felt immediately that this was something highly unusual. On one hand, it was always something we worried about, but it took many years before it actually happened. The security fence around these communities does not always provide a full sense of safety. I regularly travel through the avocado groves nearby and see many Palestinian workers in the area every day. I do not believe the situation is being handled properly.”

Other eyewitnesses described just how close they came to the gunfire.

“I got out of my car and started walking toward Aroma when suddenly I heard shots,” one witness recalled. “At first, we had no idea what was happening. Looking back, I was only about ten meters from the first bullet that struck the man at McDonald’s.”

The witness said he watched another victim collapse moments later.

“I saw a man at the gas station holding his shoulder and then falling to the ground. Unfortunately, the terrorist was in a vehicle, and nobody was able to stop him at that point. I’m left with feelings of fear and anxiety. It’s absolutely terrifying. It was sheer luck that I wasn’t hit by that bullet.”

As previously reported, the attacker, Omar Yassin, who was known to police and had a criminal history, carried out a deadly shooting spree that left one person dead and five others seriously wounded. The attack unfolded across four separate locations in the Sharon region, including Kochav Yair, Tzur Yitzchak, Sal’it, and Route 5533 near Tzur Natan.

{Matzav.com}

[Video below.] As he prepared to travel to the United States on behalf of Keren Olam HaTorah, Rav Dov Landau received a special visit from Rav Dovid Cohen, Rosh Yeshivas Chevron, and shared the personal difficulty he feels about undertaking the demanding journey.

The meeting took place ahead of Rav Landau’s planned departure on Motzaei Shabbos as part of a major fundraising effort aimed at supporting yeshivos and Torah institutions facing significant financial challenges. The two gedolim discussed the mission and the urgent needs confronting the Torah world.

During the visit, Rav Landau made an unusual request, asking Rav Cohen to bentch him with Birchas Kohanim before the trip. Rav Cohen readily agreed and offered heartfelt blessings for a successful journey, good health, and continued strength in carrying the burden of leadership on behalf of Klal Yisroel.

Rav Cohen said, “May Hakadosh Baruch Hu give the Rosh Yeshivah the strength to endure the trip, with health and with vigor, to sustain the Torah world and establish Torah throughout Klal Yisroel.”

Rav Landau responded emotionally, expressing both gratitude and the weight he feels regarding the upcoming mission.

“Amein, thank you very much for the brachos and good wishes. It is very difficult for me, very, very difficult. It is impossible to describe how difficult it is.”

As the conversation continued, Rav Landau spoke more openly about the personal challenge involved in leaving Eretz Yisroel and undertaking the extensive fundraising campaign.

“For me, it is doubly difficult. There is no alternative.”

When Rav Cohen emphasized the importance of strengthening the Torah world during this critical period, Rav Landau replied that despite the hardship, the responsibility leaves him with no choice.

“It is impossible to describe what it means for me personally. And I have no solution. We must do it.”

Those present said the remarks reflected the profound sense of responsibility Rav Landau feels toward the yeshivah world and the future of Torah learning.

As the meeting drew to a close, Rav Cohen once again offered words of encouragement and blessing.

“Hashem should help that the Rosh Yeshivah have the strength, that there be success, that it be beneficial, and that there be siyata d’Shmaya.”

Rav Landau thanked him warmly for coming.

“Amein, thank you. I appreciate that you took the trouble to come and bentch me.”

WATCH:

{Matzav.com}

NEW YORK— For two years the fear has been simple: artificial intelligence is coming for the entry-level job. The reality is more useful to understand. AI isn’t erasing the bottom rung so much as splitting workers into two groups—the ones who use it, and the ones whose work it quietly replaces.

The good news is that workers who know how to use AI tools are becoming significantly more valuable. PwC studied nearly a billion job postings worldwide and found that employees with AI skills earn a 56% wage premium over workers in similar jobs without those skills. Just a year earlier, that premium was 25%. The gap is widening quickly and extends far beyond the technology sector.

The reason is straightforward. Employees who know how to use tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Grok, and Perplexity can draft reports, conduct research, analyze information, summarize documents, and complete projects more efficiently. Companies get more output from the same employee, making those workers more valuable.

At the same time, companies are looking for fewer people to perform basic office tasks that software can increasingly handle on its own. The World Economic Forum says some of the fastest-shrinking occupations include data-entry clerks, administrative support positions, bank tellers, and other roles built around repetitive processes.

That distinction matters. AI is replacing tasks, not talent. Workers who know how to use the technology become more productive and often more valuable. Jobs built largely around repetitive paperwork, scheduling, data entry, and basic processing are becoming easier to automate.

The numbers support that conclusion. In a survey of nearly 1,500 employers, the Strada Institute for the Future of Work found companies were almost three times more likely to say AI is increasing entry-level hiring than reducing it. IBM has gone even further, announcing plans to expand U.S. entry-level hiring while redesigning those positions to remove repetitive work now handled by AI.

The challenge for new workers is that the traditional learning ground is changing. The Brookings Institution estimates AI could perform more than half of the tasks in a typical entry-level office job, while the World Economic Forum estimates roughly one-third of entry-level work hours are already automatable. The busywork that once helped young employees learn the ropes is disappearing.

The takeaway is simple: the safest skill is no longer doing repetitive work. It is knowing how to use the tools that do repetitive work. Workers who learn to work alongside AI are increasingly earning more, getting hired faster, and creating opportunities that did not exist a few years ago.

To help workers and businesses adapt, JBiz will host a two-day executive training program on July 13–14, 2026, at the Sheraton Eatontown Hotel in New Jersey. Led by professionals with hands-on experience using today’s leading AI platforms, the program will provide practical training on ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Grok, and Perplexity, helping participants understand what each platform does best and how to use them effectively in the workplace.

Participants will leave with practical skills they can begin applying immediately to improve productivity, communication, research, reporting, and day-to-day business operations.

For corporate inquiries, team registrations, group packages, and reservations Visit or Contact [email protected] – 212-659-5270 x104.

JBizNews Desk — New York

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JERUSALEM (VINnews) — A manuscript long believed to contain a commentary by the medieval Torah commentator Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, known as Rashi, has been identified as an apparently lost copy of a Torah commentary by Rabbi Samuel ben Meir, known as Rashbam, Rashi’s grandson and one of the leading Torah commentators of the medieval period, according to several Israeli media reports.

The discovery has generated interest among scholars of Jewish texts and medieval manuscripts. According to the reports, the manuscript had been housed for years in the Ginzburg Collection at Russia’s National Library and was cataloged as a copy of Rashi’s commentary.

Researchers said the document lacked identifying features and began in the middle of the Book of Genesis, making its authorship difficult to determine.

The manuscript came under renewed examination by researcher Israel Dovitsky, who noticed details that raised questions about its traditional classification.

Scholars reviewing the document concluded that it was not a copy of Rashi’s commentary but rather a manuscript of Rashbam’s commentary on the Torah, a work that had long been considered lost in its original form.

Experts say the reclassification is significant because it sheds new light on the transmission of medieval Jewish texts and may offer valuable material for the study of Rashbam’s interpretation of the Torah.

The discovery is being viewed as an important development in the field of Jewish manuscript research and the study of the writings of the early medieval rabbinic scholars known as the Rishonim.

The world’s largest technology companies are pouring money into a new kind of software, AI “agents” that can operate a computer on their own to get tasks done. At its Build developer conference in early June, Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella said the era of operating systems and individual apps is giving way to “agent-first” computing, in which artificial intelligence acts across programs and devices rather than waiting for a person to click through each step. It was one of the clearest signals yet that the industry sees self-directed software as the next major shift in how people use computers.

For years, tech companies tried to build digital helpers for routine online chores, things like assembling a shopping cart, tracking an order, or planning a trip. Those early assistants could answer questions or draft a little text, but they could not really do much. The new generation is different. These agents can take action on their own: browsing the web, filling out forms, clicking buttons, and writing and running computer code to complete multi-step jobs with limited human help.

The capabilities have advanced quickly. OpenAI’s Operator now succeeds on roughly 87% of complex web-browsing tasks, according to company testing. Anthropic’s Claude can control a computer directly, write software on its own, and coordinate teams of smaller “sub-agents” working in parallel. Google’s Project Mariner can juggle about ten tasks at once on cloud-based machines. What was a research demonstration a year ago is now being sold as a product.

The competition has settled into a five-way race among OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, each spending heavily and each holding a different advantage. At Build, Microsoft released free open-source tools for developers to build agents, added an agent called Scout to its Copilot assistant, and said Copilot would now route each task to whichever model fits best, including those from OpenAI, Anthropic, and open-source providers. Google, meanwhile, has rebranded much of its enterprise AI strategy around agents and introduced multi-agent tools that can, for example, have one agent build a website while another creates the brand artwork.

The clearest battleground is software coding, which has become the leading business use for agents because the agents themselves are built out of code. Anthropic has surged ahead in this area on the strength of Claude Code, prompting OpenAI to shift much of its focus from consumers to businesses with a rival product called Codex. Enterprise sales now account for a significant share of OpenAI’s revenue, and its coding tools have attracted millions of users. Google is using its scale to compete aggressively on pricing even as Chief Executive Sundar Pichai recently acknowledged that the company remains behind some rivals in parts of the agent race.

Adoption inside companies is moving fast, at least according to industry surveys. Research cited across the sector suggests a large majority of business teams are already experimenting with agents, with many organizations deploying a dozen or more. Helping that spread is a shared technical standard known as Model Context Protocol (MCP), originally developed by Anthropic, which allows agents from different companies to connect to the same applications and data sources much like devices plugging into a common electrical outlet.

The reason the technology giants are betting so heavily is simple. If agents can reliably handle office work, customer service, scheduling, research, software development, and routine digital tasks, they could unlock enormous productivity gains and reshape the software industry. Whoever controls the agent people and businesses rely upon by default could ultimately control the most valuable layer of computing, much as smartphone makers once controlled the app economy.

The vision is a shift from people using apps to people simply telling an agent what they want done.

There are real reasons for caution. The technology remains early and far from perfect. Agents still make mistakes, can take incorrect actions without supervision, and require oversight for important tasks. Despite the enthusiasm, the financial results remain mixed. Industry research shows that while a large share of chief executives rank artificial intelligence among their highest priorities, only a relatively small percentage report substantial financial gains so far. Reliability and trust remain the biggest obstacles separating impressive demonstrations from everyday business use.

For now, the AI agent race represents the technology industry’s most expensive wager since the arrival of the smartphone. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, OpenAI, and Anthropic are betting that within a few years software capable of acting independently will become the normal way people get work done. Whether that prediction transforms daily life or proves overhyped will depend on something less exciting than the demonstrations on stage: whether these agents can consistently do the job correctly, day after day, without someone constantly watching over them.

JBizNews Desk — Technology

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New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani renewed his call to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), arguing that the agency’s practices are fundamentally flawed and cannot be fixed through reforms.

Speaking on MSNBC’s “The Weekend,” Mamdani was asked about reports that detainees at New Jersey’s Delaney detention facility had launched a hunger strike to protest conditions inside the center.

Co-host Eugene Daniels raised the issue by asking, “Just over the river here in new Jersey, there’s the Delaney facility. There are folks there that are on hunger strike over the conditions. What’s your reaction? And I guess, more importantly for New Yorkers, what prevents a facility like that from opening here in New York?”

Mamdani responded by expressing concern over the conditions reportedly faced by detainees and said the situation reinforced his belief that ICE should be dismantled altogether.

“I think there are a few things. One is a reaction of pain and seeing what people have to go through in these kinds of facilities. And these are conditions that they offend the conscience of so many, not just here in New York City but frankly, across the country. This is partially why I have put forward a vision alongside so many others to say that ICE should be abolished, that there is no way to reform this kind of cruelty that we’re seeing endemic in the way that immigration is being enforced across the country. When it comes to our city, we are proud of our sanctuary city policies. We are proud of the policies we’ve put forward, and also the executive orders we’ve put forward to ensure that every single agency is complying with those policies.”

Mamdani also defended New York City’s sanctuary-city policies, saying city leaders remain committed to limiting cooperation with federal immigration enforcement efforts and ensuring local agencies follow those directives.

Daniels then questioned whether calls to abolish ICE could hurt Democrats politically, noting that some party leaders in Washington have warned against using such rhetoric.

“What do you say to people who say language? And there’s Democrats in DC who say language like, abolish ICE or unhelpful for the political health of the Democratic Party?”

Mamdani dismissed those concerns, arguing that Democrats should embrace a clearer and more aggressive ideological vision.

“I think if we we’ve listened to them before and look where we are. I think it’s time to develop a new vision for this party, one that is unflinching in its beliefs and also uncompromising in its principles.”

The remarks place Mamdani among the most outspoken progressive voices on immigration policy, as debates continue nationwide over border security, detention facilities, sanctuary-city policies, and the future role of ICE under President Trump’s administration.

{Matzav.com}

The Bethel Church Road improvement project is scheduled to begin in July following the conclusion of the school year, Mayor Kuhn and Council President Burnstein told TLS.

The project will include repaving Bethel Church Road, installing new sidewalks along the southern side of the roadway, and creating dedicated pedestrian crossing areas to improve safety and accessibility for residents, students, and visitors.

Council President Burnstein praised Mayor Kuhn’s leadership and commitment in advancing the project.

“This important investment in our community would not have been possible without Mayor Kuhn’s hard work and dedication,” said Burnstein. “I am proud to have played a part in helping bring these long-awaited improvements to our residents.”

Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu used the opening of Sunday’s Cabinet meeting to address the deadly terror attack in the Sharon region, while also outlining Israel’s ongoing military operations in Gaza and Lebanon. He praised the security personnel who responded to the attack and emphasized that Israel continues to wage an aggressive campaign against terrorist threats on multiple fronts.

Referring to the shooting attack that left one Israeli dead and several others wounded, Netanyahu said Israel’s security forces work constantly to thwart terrorist activity, even though not every attack can be prevented.

“We are fighting terrorism on all fronts. In Judea and Samaria and along the seam line, the IDF, ISA, and the Israel Police foil hundreds of attacks every year, though unfortunately not all of them. This morning, an abhorrent terrorist set out, reached Kochav Yair, and unfortunately managed to murder an Israeli citizen and wound others before being neutralized. First and foremost, I praise the rapid-response teams that acted immediately against the terrorists. I praise the officers of the Israel Police who neutralized the terrorist and also apprehended his accomplice,” Netanyahu stated.

The prime minister also provided an update on the war against Hamas, asserting that Israeli forces are steadily increasing their control over territory throughout Gaza while continuing to target the terror group’s leadership and military infrastructure.

He also revealed that Israel is continuing to expand its control over the Gaza Strip. “In the Gaza Strip, we are squeezing Hamas from all sides. We currently hold over 60% of the Strip’s territory, and we will soon reach 70%. We are not allowing them to rearm or harm us, and we are also eliminating their senior commanders.”

Turning to the northern front, Netanyahu highlighted recent military successes against Hezbollah, saying Israeli forces have inflicted significant losses on the terror organization and uncovered major underground facilities used for terrorist operations.

Regarding Lebanon, the Prime Minister stated: “Our forces have eliminated 350 terrorists in the past week alone. They captured the Beaufort Ridge, where they discovered a massive underground infrastructure. We are completing the elimination of the terrorist villages adjacent to our border. We are striking them very hard, and we know that Hezbollah is on the run. We will not allow firing at our territory or our communities, and we will act accordingly.”

{Matzav.com}

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — The first and last mistake of the Hamas captors of Maksim Harkin – was to believe him. For two and a half years of harsh captivity underground in the Gaza Strip, he conducted a nerve-wracking mind game in which every wrong word meant possible death. They saw him as just another civilian abducted from Israeli territory; they did not know that beneath the civilian clothing was an IDF officer, the only one left alive from the group of prisoners who were held with him.

Now, as he marks his 38th birthday, Harkin reveals for the first time what took place in the darkness,  the moments of heavy pressure that led him to declare his conversion to Islam, the staged videos in which he was forced to participate, the secret journal he buried in the soil of Gaza, and the surprising spiritual turning point that led him to undergo a complicated circumcision procedure precisely after his release.

The moment of kidnapping in the fields between Kibbutz Be’eri and Re’im was the turning point in which his survival strategy was decided. Seconds before the terrorists bound his hands, Harkin made a quick decision: he took out his phone and his public and military documents, and threw them into the bushes. He knew very well that revealing he was an IDF officer would turn him into a strategic asset, but would also immediately endanger his life. “Did you think that if they discovered you are an officer your fate would be worse?” he was asked in the special interview at the Kan Broadcasting Corporation, and he answered firmly: “What do you mean worse? I would have survived maybe a few hours.”

The passage into the darkness of the tunnels was sharp and violent. “The terrorists also came from open areas,” he recalls the dramatic moment of capture, “you hear screams and prayers of people and crying and death… and shooting… you understand you are next in line. The first bullet missed them, passed by my ear, and then I collapsed and asked G-d… I asked Him to help my family raise my children, it’s a pity I won’t see how they grow up.”

He was taken into the depths of the earth, 30 meters underground, completely cut off from daylight, trapped inside a tight concrete box. The harsh physical conditions were accompanied by a strict regime of isolation and enforced silence. With him in the cell were additional hostages, including Segev Kalfon, but they were forbidden to make any eye contact or speak. “Three months after we were kidnapped they did not let us talk,” says Kalfon, his fellow captive. “Once we spoke… they beat us. They put a mask on my head for three days.”

To survive in the darkest moments, the two developed a small fantasy, an anchor of sanity that kept them alive: “We would sit and always say: Max, if we get out alive, the first thing we do – we tell the Red Cross to stop at a Yellow gas station, we buy an instant coffee and sit with a cigarette, looking at the sky. That was our dream.”

In total isolation, mental and religious pressure from the captors began to form. Talk about Islam became frequent, and Harkin understood that for him, surrendering to the religious “game” was the only means of reducing hostility and preserving his life. “Talk about religion… it’s the only way to somehow connect with them and maybe get a bit more information and understanding,” he explains.

The forced conversion process in captivity was defined by him as a tactical and calculated move. The captors allowed him to shower – a rare and valuable commodity in the tunnels – and provided him clean clothes for the ceremony. “They do a ceremony where you raise a finger, say some ‘verses’ in Arabic… you say it three times I think, and that’s it, like you are Muslim. And from here you are supposed to meet requirements and conditions.”

The main requirement was full participation in the five daily prayers, kneeling alongside his captors on the mat. But while his mouth recited the Arabic verses, his thoughts were elsewhere entirely. “In prayer you stand, say what you need to say, like without putting real meaning into it. And what do you think? You are talking to G-d, just there in captivity.”

The conversion opened a small window of trust from the captor commander, nicknamed “the Joker.” Near his birthday, the captor gave him a simple notebook so he could write Qur’an verses. Harkin used this gift to lead a double life under Hamas’ nose. In the main section he copied the religious verses as required, but the last part of the notebook became a secret personal diary, where he hid letters to his mother and future interactions with his young daughter. “I turned it into a diary, a book no one will read… and I mark for myself a space where I can keep a secret… this is how I remind myself I am still alive, that I am a father and a son.”

This diary, which contained the most authentic testimony of his life in captivity, never left the Gaza Strip. Knowing clearly that the militants would conduct a thorough search before release, Harkin made the painful decision to bury the notebook deep in the ground, under the concrete slab in the house where he was held, moments before being forced to leave.

A significant part of the abuse he endured was devoted to exploiting him for psychological warfare purposes. Harkin, classified by his captors as “Prisoner No. 24,” was forced to participate in propaganda videos produced under carefully staged and highly controlled conditions. In these videos, Hamas producers tried to make him appear severely wounded as a result of IDF airstrikes.

“The production starts with bandages, maybe iodine, tomato paste and sand,” he describes behind the scenes of the Gaza videos, “I have no medicine, they smear it on you, they make you look like a real wounded person in their opinion, and they start filming.” Even in these moments, Harkin tried to use tone of voice and subtle body language to signal to his family that the video was forced and staged.

The physical and mental abuse peaked when the captors decided to use him to send direct messages to Israeli decision-makers. During captivity, they filmed a video in which they beat him severely, and sent the footage directly to the mobile phone of one of the government ministers. “Once they filmed how they beat me and sent it to one of our ministers in the government… ‘eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth,’ it was a message to Itamar Ben Gvir.”

After two and a half years of determined survival in the darkness, Maksim Harkin was released and returned to the arms of his mother Talia and his daughter Monica. But returning home was not the end of the journey, but the beginning of a long process of rebuilding his erased identity. He began writing down the memories he had buried in Gaza, in order to produce a book reconstructing the lost diary.

Harkin, born in Ukraine to a Jewish mother and a Christian father, was not circumcised in childhood. Precisely the experience of forced conversion and prolonged captivity under Hamas awakened in him a deep inner drive to complete his Jewish identity. During a trip to Russia, where he met the Chabad community and Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar, he made the decision to undergo circumcision at the age of 38.

“For me it is closing a circle, completing what was missing,” he explains emotionally, “G-d gave me a chance to live again, I need to give at least the respect I can and be whole with myself. And I went and did it and I enjoy it and do not regret it for a moment.”

As part of the ceremony, he was given the official Jewish name: Maksim Zalman Zelig Harkin, after his mother’s Jewish ancestors.

Despite the horrors he experienced, the frequent flashbacks and constant comparisons to life outside the tunnels, Harkin refuses to let feelings of revenge govern his new life. “There is no revenge in me. Because if there is revenge in me, then how am I better than them? There is none. But I believe G-d makes an accounting for everyone, everyone will receive exactly what they deserve. Today as a father and a brother, the most important thing for me is that my children become good people. Good in character, in soul, in heart… good will always defeat evil, always.”

The Bank of Israel quietly bought $801 million in foreign currency during May, a move aimed at cooling the shekel’s sharp rise after it surged to levels not seen against the dollar in more than three decades. The central bank is being careful with its language. It says the purchases were made only to “maintain the orderly functioning of the markets,” not to defend a specific dollar-shekel rate. But the message to traders was hard to miss, if the shekel moves too far, too fast, Jerusalem still has tools

This is not a crisis of Israeli weakness. It is almost the opposite. The shekel has been boosted by foreign investment, strong Israeli equities, a lower risk premium, global dollar weakness, and growing market confidence that Israel can emerge from war with its strategic position strengthened. In normal countries, a powerful currency is a national flex. In Israel’s case, it has become a policy headache.

For consumers, the stronger shekel is good news. It makes imported goods, flights, online shopping, fuel-linked costs and foreign-currency purchases cheaper. It also helps push inflation lower, giving the Bank of Israel more room to cut interest rates. That is why the central bank recently lowered its key rate to 3.75%, while Governor Amir Yaron has signaled that faster easing could be possible if inflation expectations keep falling.

But the same strong shekel is hammering Israel’s exporters. Many Israeli companies earn revenue in dollars but pay salaries, rent, taxes and overhead in shekels. When the dollar collapses against the shekel, their income shrinks in local terms while their costs stay high. That squeeze is already hitting the economy’s most important engine: high-tech. Wix has cited the strong shekel, along with AI, in a major layoff round. Other major Israeli tech and export-heavy companies are under similar pressure.

The numbers show why the pressure is rising. Israel’s foreign exchange reserves reached about $238.7 billion at the end of May, up nearly $3 billion from the previous month. Part of that came from valuation gains on the Bank of Israel’s existing reserve assets. But part came from direct foreign-currency purchases. The central bank went into the market and bought dollars or other foreign currency to absorb some of the shekel’s force.

That matters because the Bank of Israel had spent recent weeks projecting caution. Senior officials said intervention remained in the toolbox, but they did not sound eager to use it. They argued that the shekel’s rise reflected real strength in Israel’s economy, not just speculation. Now the policy has shifted from “we are watching” to “we acted.”

A man counts stacks of Israeli shekel and US dollar banknotes at an informal money exchange stall in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on July 2, 2024 amid the ongoing conflict in the Palestinian territory between Israel and Hamas. (Photo by Bashar TALEB / AFP) (Photo by BASHAR TALEB/AFP via Getty Images)

The central bank is walking a narrow line. If it does nothing, exporters and tech companies could keep bleeding competitiveness, pushing some jobs and investment abroad. If it does too much, it risks looking like it is manipulating the currency or fighting a market trend driven by genuine capital inflows.

The next test is whether the dollar-shekel rate stabilizes or traders keep pushing Israel’s currency higher. If the shekel keeps gaining, the Bank of Israel may face the same question again, let the market celebrate Israel’s strength, or step in to stop that strength from turning into damage.

NEW YORK (VINnews) — Barry Davey, a long-time member of the Jewish military association AJEX (Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen) and a retiree from Chelsea in central London, did not grow up Jewish and only renewed his Jewish life later in life. A bar mitzvah ceremony held for him at age 86 represented a significant and deeply personal moment, allowing him to celebrate a major Jewish milestone for the first time.

Together with friends, supporters, and members of the Jewish community, he celebrated the event in a ceremony organized in cooperation between AJEX and a boys’ club supporting at-risk teenage boys in the Jewish community.

The ceremony, which took place at the Royal Chelsea Hospital, was led by Rabbi Nir Nadav, a military rabbi in the Royal Logistics Corps of the British Army. Members of the boys’ club were given aliyot (honors of being called up to the Torah) during the service, and AJEX representatives participated in the prayer service, helping create a meaningful celebration that brought together veterans, community organizations, and friends on this special day.

Barry said he felt “overwhelmed and grateful; it means a lot to me and it’s something I will never forget,” he said.

AJEX Chief Executive Fiona Palmer said:

“Being at Barry’s bar mitzvah, in such a special and iconic place, was extraordinarily moving. It was a unique event. Seeing him go up to the Torah and hearing him speak about what being part of the Jewish people means to him was incredible. AJEX is delighted to have been part of the team that helped make it happen. Thank you to everyone who worked so hard and created such a wonderful atmosphere. Congratulations, Barry!”

The British-based The Jewish Chronicle reported that although Barry was born Jewish, he only began his journey with Judaism about two decades ago, when his son married a Jewish woman.

He was not raised Jewish. His mother had hidden her Jewish identity due to World War II and changed her name when she came to Britain from France. “It was never talked about in the family,” he said. “I never grew up knowing Jewish ways. It was very strange because I knew where I came from, but I didn’t know anything about the real life of being a Jewish person.”

That changed, he said, “when my son came back home from Bolivia and said: ‘I’m going to marry a Jewish woman.’ He had no idea I was Jewish at all.”

“But that moment, when he said he was going to marry a Jewish woman, was magical,” Barry said. “In that moment, when he told me, and I told him where I came from, it was one of many magical moments my son and I experienced together.”

Anthropic called on the world’s leading artificial-intelligence labs Thursday, June 4, to consider a coordinated slowdown or temporary pause in building the most advanced AI systems, warning that the technology is approaching the point where it could improve itself without human help. The recommendation came in a report from the company’s research arm, the Anthropic Institute, written by Marina Favaro, who leads its internal research, and co-founder Jack Clark, the company’s head of policy.

The company said the world having the option to slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development would “likely be a good thing,” arguing it would give governments, institutions, and safety researchers time to catch up with how fast the technology is advancing. It is a striking message from a company that is itself one of the fastest-moving developers in the field.

At the center of the warning is a concept researchers call recursive self-improvement. In plain terms, it describes the moment an AI system becomes capable of improving itself, or designing and building its own successor, without much human involvement. The report said models are showing early signs of moving in that direction, a threshold the company said could bring major disruption if it is crossed before society is ready.

Anthropic backed the warning with data about its own operations. The company said more than 80% of the code merged into its systems is now written by its Claude models, and that its engineers ship roughly eight times as much code per quarter as they did in the years from 2021 through 2025. In other words, the company says its AI is already accelerating the pace at which AI itself is built.

The report was careful to add limits. Anthropic said the industry is not yet at recursive self-improvement, and that such a future is not inevitable. But it warned the moment could arrive sooner than most institutions are prepared for. In comments to BBC News, Clark said AI reaching the point of writing its own code fully could be possible within about two years.

The proposal faces an obvious problem, which Anthropic acknowledged: if a single company slowed down on its own, competitors would simply race ahead. For that reason, the company argued any pause would have to be coordinated globally and verifiable. The Anthropic Institute said it plans to research and develop systems that would let frontier developers confirm rivals have actually stopped, and ensure no bad actor uses a coordinated slowdown to quietly pull ahead.

The call lands at a moment of intense commercial pressure across the industry. Anthropic recently completed a funding round that valued the company at nearly $1 trillion and has filed confidential paperwork to begin the process of going public. Its run rate, a measure startups use to project annual revenue from recent sales, is on track to reach about $50 billion in annualized revenue by the end of this month, up from roughly $9 billion at the end of 2025. The company has emerged as a front-runner against OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, which is also expected to pursue a public listing.

That commercial position fuels a long-running criticism. Anthropic has emphasized AI safety since its founding, but skeptics, including venture capitalist David Sacks, have argued that its policy advocacy is designed in part to slow the progress of competitors. A public call for rivals to consider pausing is likely to renew that debate, even as Anthropic frames the recommendation as a matter of public risk rather than competitive advantage.

The stakes extend across an industry that is spending hundreds of billions of dollars on data centers, chips, and talent. A coordinated pause would affect the entire race, from the largest technology companies to the startups built on their models. Anthropic’s central recommendation is not that development stop now, but that governments and labs preserve the ability to pause and build the infrastructure that would make such a pause credible if it became necessary.

The report arrives the same week that a bipartisan group of House lawmakers unveiled draft legislation to regulate AI, underscoring how questions about the technology’s speed and safety are moving to the center of policy discussions. Anthropic’s proposal adds a prominent industry voice to that conversation, with the company arguing that the option to slow down, backed by ways to verify it, should exist before the technology reaches a point where stopping becomes far harder.

JBizNews Desk — Artificial Intelligence

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

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Guests attending a recent Chaim Medical fundraising event experienced a seamless evening, but behind the scenes, an extraordinary logistical operation was unfolding.

In just four hours, the venue was transformed into four completely different event environments, showcasing the creativity, planning, and execution of YF Productions and its event partners.

From setup to breakdown and every transition in between, crews worked tirelessly to reconfigure the space multiple times throughout the program, creating distinct experiences for attendees while maintaining a smooth and professional flow.

A key role in the operation was played by Rentastic Party Rental, whose team supplied and coordinated a wide range of event infrastructure and equipment. The extensive setup included staging, tables, chairs, barriers, fencing, entrance and security gates, equipment, décor elements, and numerous logistical components required to facilitate the rapid transformations. Crews worked around the clock to ensure each setup was completed on schedule, allowing guests to experience multiple unique environments within a single evening.

The ambitious production required careful coordination between event designers, logistics teams, production crews, and vendors to execute the complex transitions seamlessly. The result was a dynamic and immersive event that kept attendees engaged throughout the evening while supporting the important work of Chaim Medical.

For more information about Rentastic Party Rental and its full range of event services, visit www.RentasticParty.com.

New York (VINNEWS/Rabbi Yair Hoffman)  This is one of the most painful subjects in our community. It is also one of the most misunderstood. When a young person walks away from Torah and mitzvos, most people look outside the home for the cause. They blame bad friends, a phone, or the culture all around us. Those things are real, and a wise parent does not ignore them.

It may not be politically correct to say it, but a not insignificant part of the time, however,  a child who leaves is reacting to something inside the home, not outside of it.

Teens who reject their family’s way of life are, at times, reacting to hurt and fights with their parents, and the parents do not see it. They are not reacting to some flaw they were born with, or to the outside world.

There is also a second concept, a scientific one, that helps explain why the damage goes so far. Deep in the brain is the amygdala. It is the alarm system that warns us of danger. It does not care about hashkafa or theology. It cares about safety. When a child spends years in a religious setting feeling like a failure — or worse, feeling neglected or abused — the brain starts to connect things. Slowly, the symbols of Torah, like Shabbos, or the Gemara, or shul, or Tzniyus, get tied to pain. An effective moshol is an electrical outlet that shocks you every time you touch it. After a while, your body screams at you to stay away.

Looked at this way, “leaving” is often not about beliefs at all. It is a way to survive. A life of Torah is supposed to calm a person and make him feel steady. But when it does the opposite and fills him with stress, the teen runs in order to feel safe.

Here is the hopeful part. A parent cannot change a child’s nature, and cannot block out the whole world. But a parent can change the relationship. And that relationship, more than anything else, decides whether Yiddishkeit feels like safety or like pain.

So here is an article written backwards  It does not claim to have all the answers. But it is a suggestion that may open up our eyes. Imagine someone wanted to push a child to leave. Suppose that was the actual goal. Here is how to do it. Read each one, and the right thing to do may become more clear.

Turn The Home Into a Courtroom

Make the house a place where the child is always being judged. Let every talk come back to grades, behavior, and what he or she did wrong. One Torah educator asked a set of parents to record everything they said at home for a few days. When they listened to it later, they were shocked at how often they criticized their children. Most parents who do this have no idea they are doing it. Too much criticism is the number one thing that breaks the bond between parent and child. A child who feels the home is a courtroom will stop showing up to be judged.

Build A System That Values Only One Kind Of Child

Set up a system where only one thing matters: being smart and able to sit and learn for many hours. Make sure any child who does not fit that mold knows he or she is worthless.

Picture the boy in the back row who kept drumming on his desk. The teachers called it a problem and wanted to punish him. Then a teacher named Mr. Johnson did something different. He handed the boy a pair of drumsticks and told him he was made to be a drummer. That boy did not have a behavior problem. He had a talent waiting to come out, like a statue waiting inside a block of marble. When a school treats one kind of child as better than the rest, it turns into a prison instead of a place that helps children grow. A child who is told that who he is just isn’t good enough does not only leave the school. He leaves the system that he thinks approved of that rejection.

Treat Every Question As Rebellion

When a child asks why, treat it as back-talk instead of curiosity. Shut him down with “we don’t ask that.” The Sefer Chasidim teaches that the mitzvah to respect parents also places a duty on the parents. They should not be so harsh that the child cannot hold himself back and rebels. A child who is not allowed to ask his questions at home does not stop having them. He just takes them somewhere else, to people who are happy to answer.

Make Yiddishkeit Joyless For The Child

Take out all the joy and leave only the rules. And make sure the joylessness lands on the child in particular. Let the adults enjoy their friends, and their lively Torah talk. Meanwhile, the child’s whole experience of Shabbos is being corrected: sit still, stop fidgeting, why aren’t you bentching. Yiddishkeit is passed down through the generations, and parents are the ones who pass it. If the relationship carrying it is broken, what gets passed down will be broken too. A child who only tastes the rules, while the warmth happens over his head, has been handed an empty box and told to treasure it.

Make Kedusha Sound Like Nothing But A List Of No’s

Turn a holy life into a cold list of rules, especially about closeness and marriage. Fill the child with the fearful, and often simply wrong, messages about these things that push so many people away. This is actually a twisting of the tradition. The Holy of Holies was the most sacred place that ever existed. Inside it were the Keruvim, two figures shown in a loving embrace. The Gemara tells of a student named Kahana who hid to learn even how his teacher Rav acted with his wife, saying, “it is Torah, and I must learn.” Real closeness in Judaism is built on being open and a little vulnerable, not just on following rules. Take the human warmth out of religious life and leave only a wall of no’s, and you have removed its soul while keeping its rulebook.

Compare, Constantly

Hold up the neighbor’s son, the cousin in the better yeshiva, and the sibling who just gets it. And get the child wrong while you do it. One father complained that his son never opened a sefer at home. But that same son was learning hard at an out-of-town yeshiva and only came home once a month, when he naturally needed to relax. The father read it as laziness. A child who is always measured against others, and against a false picture of himself, learns he will never be good enough. And a child who decides he can never measure up eventually stops trying.

Choose Shame Over Guidance

Answer every mistake with a label and some embarrassment. Be the father who calls his daughter with a learning disability “lazy” or “a manipulator from day one.” Shame tells a child that he or she is bad. Guidance talks about what the child did. Only one of the two lets him stay in the room.

Make Love Depend On Being Religious

Show the child, in a hundred small ways, that your love goes up and down with how observant he or she is. Rav Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg pointed to exactly this as the root of rebellion. If there are rebels, he said, it is because they were never given real love. The trap is the gap between loving and accepting. Almost every parent loves his child. Many find it much harder to accept the child as she really is. And a child can feel the difference.

Never Apologize, And Never Go First

Hold the line that a parent is never wrong and should never have to make the first move. Use the easy excuse: that you can’t be expected to change while the child is still acting up. But a parent and a child do not share the relationship equally. Most of the responsibility sits with the parent. It is the parent’s job to build something warm and steady, no matter how the child is acting right now. A parent who can never say “I’m sorry” and never goes first teaches that the system is stiff, harsh, and not worth staying in.

Treat A Struggling Child As An Embarrassment

Care more about what people will say than about the child in front of you. Think of the father whose sad, withdrawn son left the Shabbos table in the middle of the meal and went to his room. The father was not worried about a clearly hurting boy. A child who feels he has become an embarrassment to the family has already started to leave.

Model Bullying, Then Call It Religious

Teach a child that pushing people around is how strong people act. Teach him that connections to great rabbis are tools to use, not relationships to live. Picture a father who builds a close relationship with a great Rav. Then he uses it as a weapon. He drops the Rav’s name to win arguments, to pressure a neighbor, to lean on a rebbe, and to shame anyone in his way. The whole time, he acts like the Rav’s most devoted follower. The child sees all of it. He learns two things at once: that bullying works, and that religion is just the costume it wears. The same thing happens at home when a parent puts down a spouse at the table or picks on the weaker child. Often, mean behavior is a cry for love that never came. A child raised to bully in Hashem’s name usually sees through it in the end. When the child rejects the bullying, the Yiddishkeit it was wrapped in is also rejected.

Now Do The Opposite

Read the list backwards and the way home appears on its own. Stop criticizing, and mean it — a put-down said with a smile or “for his own good” is still a put-down. Put the relationship ahead of the behavior. For a while, be willing to overlook the late mornings and the hanging around so you can rebuild the bond underneath. Do not use every right you have just because you have it. A rule that makes a child angrier costs more than it is worth. Notice small progress as it comes, instead of holding back your approval until the child is finally perfect. And change the belief at the bottom of it all. The child is usually not acting out of meanness or laziness. She is acting out of a real pain that can be reached.

Under every one of these is a single idea. It is not observance. It is attachment — a safe, loving connection. The opposite of a child disconnecting is not a stricter standard. It is the unconditional love of a parent. The day a child pulls up to the house in a car on Shabbos, or shows a tattoo —is a huge crossroads. The parent’s own dream lies shattered on the floor. Every instinct says to set a hard boundary, or to cut the child off to protect your other children or your values. But the lifeboat for that child is the parent who chooses the child over the broken dream. Real safety is what finally lets a stressed-out heart relax. Only from a place of safety can a person ever come back and see Hashem as a reason to celebrate instead of a reason to feel ashamed. When a child feels loved no matter what he has chosen, the pain slowly loses its grip.

None of this is meant to blame parents. Raising children is some of the hardest work there is, and most parents are doing it while carrying heavy loads of their own. It is meant to show how much power a parent holds. The same power that can drive a child away is the power that can bring her home. In any home where a child is struggling, the most important sentence may also be the simplest. Make the child’s happiness, not your own nachas, the goal.

The author can be reached at [email protected]

Target is recalling several varieties of its Up & Up brand baby wipes after testing identified bacterial contamination that could pose a serious health risk to infants, young children and people with weakened immune systems.

The voluntary recall affects select lots of Up & Up Fragrance Free Baby Wipes and Up & Up Fresh Cucumber Scented Baby Wipes sold in Target stores nationwide, including in the Lakewood area, and through the retailer’s website.

According to the company, testing conducted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration identified the presence of Burkholderia cepacia complex and Burkholderia gladioli in samples of the products. The bacteria can cause serious and potentially life-threatening infections, particularly in newborns, infants and immunocompromised individuals.

Healthy users who come into contact with contaminated wipes may experience localized skin infections, especially if they have cuts or other minor skin injuries. However, in vulnerable populations, infections could spread to the bloodstream and lead to severe complications, including sepsis or pneumonia.

Target said it initiated the recall following customer complaints about product discoloration and FDA testing results.

The affected products were manufactured by supplier Sapro Temizlik Urunleri and include multiple package sizes of Up & Up Fragrance Free Baby Wipes and Up & Up Fresh Cucumber Scented Baby Wipes.

The recalled fragrance-free wipes were sold in 20-count, 72-count, 216-count, 800-count and 1,200-count packages. The cucumber-scented wipes were sold in 72-count, 216-count and 800-count packages.

The recall covers specific manufacturing lots produced in late December 2025 and bearing expiration dates in June 2028.

Target and the manufacturer said they have received consumer complaints and reports of adverse events, including skin irritation, eye irritation and infections that may be linked to use of the products. The reports remain under investigation.

Consumers are advised to stop using the recalled wipes immediately and return them to any Target store for a full refund.

Additional information is available through Target Guest Relations at 1-800-440-0680.

JERUSALEM (VINnews) —  A dramatic development has emerged in the investigation of the rioters who attacked the home of Noam Solberg, Deputy President of Israel’s Supreme Court. Investigative materials collected over the past two days indicate that the protest was meticulously planned in advance, with an actual intention to physically harm the senior judge.

According to a report by Channel 12 News, senior officials involved in the investigation admitted they were surprised by the level of audacity and advance planning. Police investigators are speaking of a “clear intention to carry out a pogrom”, an especially unusual term that reflects the seriousness of the findings.

Officials involved in the investigation said that the rioters arrived equipped with GoPro cameras, and some carried false identities in an effort to make arrests more difficult and obstruct the investigation. This detail suggests a much higher level of preparation than would be expected in a spontaneous protest.

Police believe that had a large Border Police riot-control (Yasam) force not arrived quickly and dispersed the crowd, the suspects would have carried out their alleged intention to physically attack Justice Solberg.

“These were people who came to carry out a pogrom and leave,” a source familiar with the details told Channel 12 News.

According to the report, police intelligence had already received a concrete indication during the afternoon of the incident that a protest was being planned. However, despite the advance warning, police were unable to determine the exact location where the gathering would take place, preventing them from preparing adequately to stop the event beforehand.

The commander of the Judea and Samaria District, Moshe Pinchi, commented on what he described as a dangerous escalation:”We will show zero tolerance, arrest everyone, and bring them before the court.”

On Sunday, approximately 44 suspects, including some who allegedly identified themselves using false identities, will be brought before the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court, where police will request that their detention be extended for a second time.

At the initial hearing, the detention of some suspects was extended, while 19 suspects were released to house arrest. However, police obtained a stay of execution on the release order.

As previously reported, dozens of extremist protesters unexpectedly arrived at Justice Solberg’s home earlier this week. According to the report, they smashed windows, broke flower pots, and caused significant damage to the house and to the judge’s vehicle. The incident occurred while Justice Solberg, his wife, children, and grandchildren were inside the home and directly witnessed the acts of vandalism.

A growing divide is emerging in the American workforce, and it is showing up directly in workers’ paychecks. According to a new analysis released on May 28 by the Indeed Hiring Lab, the research division of the employment platform Indeed, salaries for white-collar and salaried workers are rising noticeably faster than wages for hourly employees, creating another sign that the economic recovery is benefiting some workers far more than others.

The report, authored by economist Sneha Puri, examined millions of job postings across the country and found that advertised pay for salaried positions increased 2.9% between the first quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026. By comparison, advertised pay for hourly jobs rose just 1.7% during the same period.

While both categories saw gains, the gap between them continues to widen.

The findings matter because job postings often provide an early look at labor-market trends before they appear in broader wage data. Employers typically adjust compensation for new hires before making larger changes across their existing workforce, making advertised pay an important indicator of where wages may be heading.

The report suggests that workers already occupying higher-paying positions are seeing stronger income growth, while many hourly employees are falling further behind.

That distinction has significant economic implications.

Salaried workers are more likely to be employed in professional, management, administrative, technology, financial, and other white-collar roles. These jobs often come with additional benefits such as healthcare, retirement contributions, paid leave, and bonus opportunities.

Hourly workers, meanwhile, are more commonly found in retail, hospitality, logistics, manufacturing, customer service, and entry-level positions where compensation is often tied directly to hours worked.

When salaried compensation rises faster than hourly wages, income inequality naturally expands.

The situation becomes even more concerning when inflation is taken into account.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, consumer prices increased 3.8% during the twelve months ending in April. During that same period, average hourly earnings nationally increased approximately 3.6%.

In practical terms, many workers are losing purchasing power.

Even employees receiving raises may find that those increases fail to keep pace with rising costs for housing, food, transportation, healthcare, and energy.

For hourly workers experiencing only modest wage growth, the squeeze is even more severe.

The Indeed report found that the disparity extends across numerous industries.

The wage advantage for salaried workers appeared in nearly every major white-collar sector examined. Perhaps more surprising was evidence that hourly wages were weakening in certain technology-related fields.

Indeed found that advertised hourly pay actually declined in some information technology and software development positions, highlighting how hiring patterns can vary significantly even within industries traditionally associated with strong wage growth.

The result is that two workers performing similar functions may experience dramatically different earnings trajectories depending on how they are classified and compensated.

Economists say part of the explanation lies in a labor market that is gradually cooling after several years of extraordinary demand.

As unemployment has risen modestly and job openings have become less abundant, employers face less pressure to aggressively increase wages.

Hourly workers often feel those effects first because employers generally have access to a larger pool of potential candidates for many hourly positions.

Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, noted that when labor markets soften, companies no longer need to compete as aggressively for workers, reducing pressure to offer larger pay increases.

The timing of the report is particularly significant because it arrived just before the release of the government’s official May employment report, one of the most closely watched economic indicators each month.

Leading into that report, payroll processor ADP reported that private-sector employers added approximately 122,000 jobs in May, exceeding expectations and marking the strongest monthly hiring gain since January 2025.

Yet even within that positive hiring data, signs of slowing wage momentum were visible.

ADP found that workers who changed jobs received average pay increases of approximately 6.5%, down from the larger gains seen during the post-pandemic hiring boom. Workers who remained with their employers saw pay increases of approximately 4.4%, a respectable figure but one that still offers limited protection against rising living costs.

For workers hoping that switching jobs would continue producing substantial salary increases, the trend suggests those opportunities may be becoming less lucrative.

For households already struggling with higher costs, that reality creates additional financial pressure.

Many Americans continue facing elevated expenses for housing, groceries, insurance, utilities, and transportation. When wages fail to keep pace with inflation, even workers receiving raises may find themselves effectively earning less in real terms.

For businesses, however, the trend presents a more complicated picture.

Slower wage growth helps employers manage labor costs and protect profit margins during periods of economic uncertainty. Companies facing higher borrowing costs, rising operating expenses, and slower economic growth have been looking for ways to control expenses without resorting to major layoffs.

At the same time, suppressing wage growth carries risks.

Workers who feel underpaid are more likely to leave, become disengaged, or seek opportunities elsewhere. Employers may also find it harder to attract qualified workers if compensation fails to keep pace with market expectations.

Interestingly, the strongest hiring growth in May came from the smallest employers.

ADP reported that companies with fewer than 19 employees added approximately 49,000 jobs, suggesting that demand for workers remains healthy in certain segments of the economy despite broader concerns about economic slowing.

The larger story emerging from the data is one of uneven economic progress.

Salaried professionals continue to pull ahead.

Hourly workers continue to lag behind.

And inflation continues to reduce purchasing power for both groups.

As policymakers, businesses, and economists await additional employment and wage data, the central question remains whether wage growth can eventually accelerate enough to outpace inflation—or whether the divide between higher-paid salaried employees and hourly workers will continue widening.

For millions of Americans, the answer will determine whether their next raise actually improves their standard of living or simply helps them keep up with rising costs.

JBizNews Desk — Economy

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A boom truck overturned off a delivery truck on the Exit 5 ramp of the Prospect Expressway, prompting a significant recovery operation and causing disruptions in the area.

The incident left the boom truck overturned on the ramp, requiring specialized heavy-duty recovery equipment to remove it safely. A large tow truck and crane were brought to the scene, where crews spent time carefully lifting the vehicle and placing it onto a tow bed for removal.

The cause of the incident and whether any injuries were reported were not immediately known.

photos: Dovid Jaroslawicz

A federal appeals court appeared unconvinced Friday by the Trump administration’s argument that courts lack the authority to halt construction of the new White House ballroom, even if the project were ultimately found to violate federal law.

During a hearing before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, two judges repeatedly questioned administration attorneys over their claim that the project has advanced too far to be stopped, particularly after the demolition of the East Wing and the commencement of large-scale construction.

Judge Patricia Millett pressed government lawyer Yaakov Roth on whether there were any limits to the administration’s position.

“When did it become a fait accompli?” Judge Patricia Millett asked. “If this were complete lawlessness by the government … it couldn’t be stopped?”

Roth responded bluntly.

“On these theories, I think that’s right,” replied Yaakov Roth, a Justice Department attorney.

Millett continued to challenge the administration’s reasoning, questioning whether the government could effectively shield any project from judicial review simply by acting quickly enough.

“If the government decides, very quickly, to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty — the people whose ancestors that was the first thing they saw coming to this country, but the government moved too fast — nothing can be done?” the judge asked.

“I think that’s right, yes,” Roth responded.

The dispute stems from President Trump’s ambitious White House renovation plan, which includes construction of a large ballroom that has become one of the administration’s highest-profile building projects. While a federal district judge temporarily blocked the work in March, the D.C. Circuit later suspended that ruling, allowing construction to proceed while the legal battle continues.

Friday’s arguments highlighted the administration’s aggressive defense of the project, which Trump has repeatedly championed as part of a broader effort to reshape and modernize portions of Washington’s most iconic buildings.

Millett was not alone in expressing concern. Judge Bradley Garcia also appeared skeptical of the administration’s sweeping legal arguments.

Judge Neomi Rao, meanwhile, focused much of her questioning on whether the lawsuit should be allowed to proceed at all. Rao suggested the National Trust for Historic Preservation may lack standing, particularly given the administration’s contention that the ballroom serves important security functions in addition to hosting events.

Roth argued that preservation concerns raised by opponents pale in comparison to the security considerations involved in the project.

“The balance of harms and public interest are so lopsided in favor of this project,” Roth said. “It’s an architectural preference on one hand and the safety and security of the president of the United States on the other hand.”

The administration also maintained that courts should not intervene even if the project were eventually determined to be unlawful. According to Roth, any corrective action would need to come from Congress rather than the judiciary.

“Congress can figure out how to deal with that, given the fact that we have these national security imperatives,” Roth said. “It’s well along. They’ve installed like 3 million pounds of steel rebar. … Congress would be the appropriate entity to decide: How do we balance these considerations at this juncture?”

Attorneys for the National Trust for Historic Preservation argue that the White House grounds are part of a federally protected national park and therefore cannot be substantially altered without congressional approval. They contend that the administration lacks authority to make such sweeping changes on its own.

“They just don’t want to go to Congress,” the trust’s attorney, Tad Heuer said, stressing that, under the Constitution, “Congress controls federal property.”

Heuer acknowledged that smaller additions to the White House over the years—including recreational facilities such as tennis courts and swimming pools—may also have been installed without explicit congressional authorization. However, he argued that the ballroom project is fundamentally different because it required the complete removal of the East Wing.

President Trump has repeatedly mocked the lawsuit and questioned the legitimacy of those challenging the project.

In a social media post, Trump claimed the lawsuit was “brought by a woman walking her dog, who has absolutely No Standing to bring such a suit.”

The National Trust, however, says its legal standing is based on historian and retired professor Alison Hoagland, who has served on preservation boards and frequently visits the White House area.

Notably, Hoagland’s sworn court declaration makes no mention of a dog.

The case now presents a significant test of executive authority, judicial oversight, and congressional control over federal property, as construction of Trump’s signature White House ballroom continues while the courts weigh whether it was authorized in the first place.

{Matzav.com}

A Turkish minister vowed that Israel would once again come under the control of Turkey, as it had been before the Ottoman Empire collapsed and Turkey became its successor state.

Turkey’s Interior Minister Mustafa Çiftçi uttered these terrifying words at a speech at an AK Party council meeting Saturday. Çiftçi had served as governor of the Turkish city of Corum and later the city of Erzurum.

“Just as we witnessed the liberation of Damascus, Aleppo, and Karabakh, God willing, one day we will also witness the liberation of Jerusalem,” he said.

Turkey’s Interior Minister Mustafa Çiftçi delivers a speech in which he talks about retaking Israel, once a province of the Ottoman Empire. (From his X account)

“Just as in the past, those lands will be ours once again,” he said. “God willing, they will come under our sovereignty and dominion once more. Because we have a global leader like Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at our helm. A world leader,” he said.

“When I was governor, I had a heartfelt plea to the Almighty … The plea I nurtured deep within me was this: O Lord, grant me the governorship of Jerusalem, even if just for a single day,” he added.

The relationship between Israel and Turkey has been marked by turbulence. After the disastrous Mavi Marmara incident, in which Turkish flotilla activists were killed during an interception by the IDF, Israel repaired relations with Turkey. But since Oct. 7, 2023, Turkey has grown increasingly hostile to Israel. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan went so far as to say, at a prayer service marking the end of Ramadan, “May Allah, for the sake of his name … destroy and devastate Zionist Israel.”