A well-known chassidishe photographer has decided to disconnect from WhatsApp and switch to a kosher phone after hearing a powerful message from the Sanzer Rebbe during Hakafos Shniyos.

Photographer Moshe Goldstein said he made the decision after hearing his Rebbe speak about the use of technological devices and the impact they can have on a person’s life and home.

Goldstein explained that the decision was not an easy one, particularly because WhatsApp has become an important part of his livelihood as a professional photographer.

The Sanzer Rebbe promised a happier life to those willing to give up the technological tools he had addressed. The message struck Goldstein deeply enough that he decided to act on it immediately despite the professional inconvenience involved.

“It’s difficult for me,” Goldstein admitted, explaining that WhatsApp is a tool he regularly uses for his parnassah.

Asked how he would now send photographs to members of the media and others who need his work, Goldstein said he intends to return to a simpler method: email.

“You can live calmly with email, and also see that there are children at home,” he said.

Despite the challenges the move may create in his photography work, Goldstein said he is determined to follow through with the decision he made after hearing the Sanzer Rebbe’s words.

{Matzav.com}

A former U.S. Postal Service employee who was caught on surveillance video shoving a 4-year-old boy to the pavement in Monsey has been sentenced to three years of probation, bringing an end to a case that sparked widespread outrage when the disturbing footage surfaced earlier this year.

Gabriel Stan, 39, of Stony Point, was also ordered to complete six weeks of anger-management classes, pay a $1,000 fine and stay away from the child following his conviction for endangering the welfare of a child.

The incident occurred on March 19 while Stan was working as a USPS mail carrier in the Town of Ramapo. Surveillance footage showed the young boy approaching Stan near his Postal Service vehicle before the mail carrier suddenly shoved him backward.

The force of the shove sent the child crashing onto the pavement, with his yarmulke flying off his head. The boy then got back up, retrieved his yarmulke and walked away.

The video quickly spread throughout Monsey and beyond, triggering anger over the apparently unprovoked encounter and prompting an immediate investigation by Ramapo Police.

Stan was arrested the following day and initially charged with attempted assault in the third degree and endangering the welfare of a child, both misdemeanors.

The case was ultimately resolved with Stan pleading guilty to endangering the welfare of a child. He will not serve jail time under the sentence imposed but will remain under probation supervision for three years.

The U.S. Postal Service said Stan is no longer employed by the agency. His employment was terminated following the incident.

The footage drew strong condemnation from elected officials when it became public. Ramapo Town Supervisor Michael Specht described what he saw as deeply disturbing.

“I have viewed the video depicting an incident involving a physical attack on a small child,” Specht said at the time. “The content of this video is very disturbing.”

Specht praised Ramapo Police for moving quickly in the case.

“Ramapo Police have treated this matter with extreme seriousness and have now arrested the suspect,” he said.

Assemblyman Aron Wieder also condemned the incident, calling it “appalling and deeply troubling.”

State Sen. Bill Weber said residents had contacted him after seeing the footage and expressed outrage over what happened.

“I’ve heard from constituents who are deeply alarmed by the assault of a young child in the @TownOfRamapo. I share their concern and outrage,” Weber said.

“He must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law!” he added.

Stan’s sentence includes no-contact provisions protecting the child, along with the three years of probation, anger-management requirement and $1,000 fine.

Gov. Kathy Hochul maintains a double-digit advantage over Republican challenger Bruce Blakeman with less than four weeks remaining before Election Day, but a new Marist poll shows the Nassau County executive leading among independent voters and running even with the Democratic governor in New York’s suburbs.

The statewide survey found Hochul backed by 53% of registered voters, compared with 42% for Blakeman, while 5% remain undecided. The 11-point margin nevertheless masks significant differences across regions and political affiliations that could shape the closing weeks of the campaign.

Among independents, Blakeman leads Hochul 49% to 42%, according to Marist. The two candidates are also deadlocked among suburban voters, with each receiving 48%.

Hochul’s commanding strength in New York City accounts for much of her statewide advantage. The governor leads Blakeman 69% to 24% among city voters. Upstate, however, the picture is reversed, with Blakeman holding a 51% to 45% advantage.

The poll also found a striking gender divide. Hochul leads among women by 29 percentage points, 62% to 33%, while Blakeman holds a narrow advantage among men, 51% to 47%.

Blakeman rejected the survey’s findings during a campaign appearance in Queens on Wednesday, accusing Marist of consistently producing results favorable to Democrats.

“The phony Marist poll by the woke university that always favors Democrats over Republicans,” he charged, before predicting he’ll get “record turnout” in New York City. “I’ve been in the South Bronx, Brooklyn, here in Queens many times just this week.”

Hochul, meanwhile, brushed aside questions about whether the latest numbers gave her reason to worry about the race.

“Being ahead by half a point or 1% is concerning. Double digits means something,” she told reporters Wednesday. “So, I’ll just let you all analyze that.”

The Marist result falls between several other recent surveys that have produced significantly different pictures of the race. A Siena poll released last month put Hochul ahead by nine points, 50% to 41%, while a Quinnipiac University survey released the same day gave the governor a much wider 19-point advantage, 58% to 39%, among likely voters.

The Quinnipiac findings differed notably from Marist on independents as well. Quinnipiac’s September survey had Hochul leading independent likely voters 51% to 45%, while the new Marist survey has Blakeman ahead among independents by seven points.

Another survey conducted in late September by Co/efficient showed Hochul leading 48% to 41%, with 11% undecided, placing her advantage at seven points. Taken together, the recent polling has consistently shown Hochul ahead statewide, although the size of that advantage has varied considerably depending on the poll.

The new Marist numbers also carry an echo of the 2022 gubernatorial contest. A Marist poll released during the closing weeks of that race showed Hochul leading Republican Lee Zeldin by 10 points. Hochul ultimately defeated Zeldin by roughly six percentage points, in what became New York’s closest gubernatorial election in decades.

Blakeman is seeking to build support in the closing stretch by focusing heavily on crime, taxes, affordability and immigration, while Hochul has sought to tie him closely to President Trump and national Republicans. Trump is scheduled to campaign with Blakeman in Syracuse on Friday as Republicans work to boost turnout in Upstate New York and several closely watched congressional districts.

The broader findings from Marist suggest Democrats retain an advantage in New York heading into the midterm elections. Asked which party’s congressional candidate they would support, 55% of registered voters chose the Democrat and 42% chose the Republican.

Independents were much more closely divided on the congressional ballot than in the governor’s race, with 49% supporting a Democratic congressional candidate and 47% backing a Republican. Democrats lead 73% to 25% in New York City and 51% to 47% in the suburbs, while Republicans hold a 52% to 45% advantage Upstate.

The survey also examined the extent to which President Trump is influencing voters’ congressional choices. Forty-four percent said their vote would primarily be a vote “against” Trump, while 22% said their vote would be in support of the president. Another 33% said Trump would have little or no effect on their decision.

Among independents, 49% said Trump was not much of a factor in determining their congressional vote.

Marist also found Trump with a 38% job approval rating among registered voters statewide, while 60% disapproved of his performance.

Economic concerns remain widespread among New Yorkers. Forty percent of those surveyed said their family finances had worsened over the previous year, compared with 18% who said their situation had improved. Another 41% reported little change.

Despite the competitiveness reflected among independents and suburban voters, most respondents believe Hochul will ultimately prevail. Sixty-nine percent told Marist they expect her to be reelected, compared with 27% who expect Blakeman to win.

The Marist survey was conducted from Oct. 1 through Oct. 4 among 1,361 registered New York voters using live telephone interviews, text and online responses. The poll carries a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.

{Matzav.com}

 Chasunas: 

Falk - Svei Fountain Ballroom 

Rosmerin - Follman Ateres Esther

Weitz - Tainsky Kesser Moshe Yehuda

Heisler - Gross Cedar Palace

- Tonight marks the 1st Yartzeit of the four yeshiva bochurim who were killed in a tragic car accident on the NJ Turnpike .

Habachur Shlomo Abba Cohen Z”L

Habachur Chaim Simcha Grossman Z"L 

Habachur Yaakov Kilberg Z"L 

Habachur Aharon Nosson Lebovits Z"L 

- LPD Traffic Alert: Martin Luther King Dr will be closed north bound from Center St to Cedarbridge Ave for planned NJNG construction. Plan alternate route if possible.

Mali and Liel Yahalomi, the Israeli mother and daughter whose disappearance abroad sparked a search in August, landed at Ben Gurion Airport on Wednesday afternoon aboard a flight from Athens.

The pair exited the terminal wearing matching outfits and did not speak with reporters waiting outside. Authorities did not appear to attempt to detain them.

Mali, 50, and Liel, 23, were located in Buenos Aires on August 14, approximately a week after their whereabouts became unknown in Vienna, Austria.

Israel Police confirmed at the time that the two had been found on an intercity bus in the Argentine capital.

The mother and daughter had failed to board their scheduled return flight from Prague, raising concern about their whereabouts.

Their travels began with a flight from Israel to Prague, followed by a visit to Vienna. They apparently traveled through Frankfurt before eventually reaching Buenos Aires.

Their arrival Wednesday marks their return to Israel nearly two months after they were located in Argentina.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

“מי שמחזיק בדירה – יכול לקבל הלוואה מידית”

נפתלי כהן כתבה מקודמת

08:30

The Brisker Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Velvel Soloveitchik, delivered an unusually sharp attack over Sukkos against prominent chareidi institutions that hosted Israeli President Isaac Herzog, accusing them of compromising longstanding principles for government funding and declaring that “the Chazon Ish must be trembling in his grave over what they did to his home.”

Rav Soloveitchik, son and successor of Rav Meshulam Dovid Soloveitchik, made the remarks during a lengthy address at a Simchas Bais Hashoeivah attended by hundreds of talmidim at the Brisker Yeshiva in Yerushalayim.

His criticism focused on Herzog’s recent appearances at two institutions: a visit to a cheder affiliated with Ateres Shlomo in Telz Stone at the beginning of Elul zman, and a visit connected with the Tashbar institutions in Bnei Brak.

Before addressing the controversy directly, Rav Soloveitchik spent approximately an hour discussing the halachos surrounding chibut aravah in the Bais Hamikdash. He then drew a comparison between Chazal’s struggle against the Tzedukim and what he described as the obligation to maintain separation from Zionism today.

“We are in a year when the shofar was not blown on Shabbos and the Daled Minim were not taken on Shabbos,” he said. “Chazal canceled chiyuvim de’Oraisa out of concern that one might come to violate the prohibition of carrying in a reshus harabim on Shabbos. But the Gemara explains that aravah could not be canceled, and therefore they arranged that Hoshana Rabbah would never fall on Shabbos, so that it would not be canceled.”

He continued by citing the Ran’s question as to why Torah obligations such as shofar and lulav could be suspended on Shabbos, while the practice of chibut aravah was protected from ever being canceled.

“The Ran explains that the reason is because the Tzedukim wanted to abolish this practice, as is explained in the Gemara,” Rav Soloveitchik said. “Therefore, they were particular that specifically this matter should never be canceled, even though there is no mitzvah involved. We see that Chazal agreed to cancel mitzvos de’Oraisa, but a practice that the Tzedukim wanted to abolish would never be canceled and was treated even more stringently than shofar and the Daled Minim.”

Rav Soloveitchik then cited the incident described in the Gemara in which esrogim were thrown during a confrontation with the Tzedukim in the Bais Hamikdash.

“We see in the Gemara that when they fought the Tzedukim, they threw esrogim at them in the Bais Hamikdash,” he said. “The question is why they were not concerned about disgracing the mitzvah of the esrogim, which are cheftzei mitzvah. But it is explained in the Rishonim that because it was necessary to fight the Tzedukim, they permitted even disgracing the mitzvah of the Daled Minim and throwing esrogim. The main thing was to disgrace the Tzedukim.”

After citing additional sources regarding Chazal’s battles with the Tzedukim, the Brisker Rosh Yeshiva turned directly to the present day.

“Today, in our generation, when it comes to the battle against the Tzedukim of our generation, the Zionists, there are those who have forgotten Chazal’s battle against them,” he said.

Rav Soloveitchik cited a story about the Chazon Ish, saying that even when he served as sandek on the fifth of Iyar, the date marking the establishment of the State of Israel, he instructed that Tachanun be recited.

“It was all in order to reject the position of the Tzedukim, so that they should not say that the Chazon Ish did not say Tachanun because of the establishment of the state,” he said. “We see how much the Gedolei Yisroel were prepared to set aside halachos so that there should not be even the slightest suggestion of a connection with the Zionists.”

Rav Soloveitchik then turned his criticism toward the Tashbar institutions in Bnei Brak, referring to the historic association of the institution with the Chazon Ish.

“And who could believe,” he said, “that we are standing decades later, and in the home of that very Chazon Ish, where they established Tashbar on taharas hakodesh, in Yiddish, without taking any government funding until a few years ago — and recently they switched to Hebrew and began taking funding — they have now turned the place into a museum in order to receive a little money from the government.”

“And more than that, they dared to bring President Isaac Herzog to affix a mezuzah in that very museum,” he continued. “Someone brought me pictures of it, so it is clear that it actually happened. Have the people of Bnei Brak gone crazy? How can they sink to such a level? Have a little respect for the Chazon Ish! Instead of throwing his budgets back in his face, instead of throwing esrogim at him, they let him affix a mezuzah and even appear before hundreds of children. How can this be?!”

The Brisker Rosh Yeshiva then referred to another rosh yeshiva whom he did not name, but whom he said had previously spent time at the Brisker Yeshiva and had also hosted Herzog before talmidim at the beginning of Elul zman.

“Recently, I was also told about a rosh yeshiva who used to come around here in our yeshiva, someone who also knows how to sing ‘Beshilton Hakofrim,’ and he too dared to do this and brought the president of the state to appear before the students at the beginning of Elul zman,” Rav Soloveitchik said.

“I sent for him to come speak with me about the matter, but he doesn’t respond. He claims that he is busy establishing Torah. How is it that someone wears the hat of kana’us and sings ‘Beshilton Hakofrim,’ and afterward honors the Zionist president in front of hundreds of students, all for a little money?!”

Rav Soloveitchik said his grandfather, the Brisker Rav, would certainly have cried out against such conduct, and invoked the Chazon Ish as well.

“My grandfather, the Brisker Rav, certainly would have cried out over such a thing, and even the Chazon Ish. Apparently, the Chazon Ish is trembling in his grave over what they did to him in his own home,” he said.

“Today, everything is done for money. Soon we will hear the loudspeakers in the streets screaming, ‘Hatzilu! We must have an eighth seat in the Knesset in order to save the yeshivos!’ If they would not honor and flatter the resha’im this way, and if they would not take all their money from them, they would not need to scream ‘Hatzilu!’”

Rav Soloveitchik went on to recount an episode involving Rav Chaim Mann and the maskil Yechiel Michel Pines. According to the story, Pines encountered Rav Mann at the Kosel and asked where he was going. When Rav Mann replied that he was going to Rav Yehoshua Leib Diskin, Pines remarked that he presumably already knew what Rav Yehoshua Leib would tell him — that he should merit sitting in the sukkah made from the skin of the Livyasan — because that was the bracha he routinely gave people.

Rav Mann nevertheless continued, and Pines accompanied him. When they arrived and knocked on Rav Yehoshua Leib’s door, Rav Yehoshua Leib saw them and told Rav Mann, “You should merit sitting in the sukkah of the Livyasan — and whoever does not want to sit there does not have to.”

Rav Soloveitchik applied the story to the roshei yeshiva he had been criticizing.

“I am certain that those roshei yeshiva with the beautiful beards who do everything for a little money are declaring that they do not want to sit in the sukkah of the Livyasan, and indeed they will not merit it,” he said.

The Brisker Rosh Yeshiva concluded with another story about Rav Yehoshua Leib Diskin, recounting how he was imprisoned following accusations made against him by maskilim. Community activists sent an attorney to speak with him, but Rav Yehoshua Leib refused even to look at the lawyer’s face because, he maintained, the man was a rasha.

When the case reached court, Rav Soloveitchik related, the attorney used Rav Yehoshua Leib’s refusal as part of his defense, arguing to the judges that a man so uncompromising in his religious principles that he would not even look at the lawyer who had come to save him could hardly be suspected of acting contrary to his Torah convictions. Rav Yehoshua Leib was subsequently released from prison.

“The Torah tells us, ‘Mesanecha Hashem esna.’ Where is the Jewish feeling for that?” Rav Soloveitchik asked in conclusion.

{Matzav.com}

NEW YORK (VINnews) — Anti-Israel protesters called Mayor Zohran Mamdani a “traitor” and “sellout” Wednesday night as they booed and berated him at an Oct. 7 memorial in Manhattan, with some demonstrators waving Hamas flags during the confrontation.

Mamdani is stone-faced as the protesters call him a traitor and sellout. https://t.co/oXducpYsMR

— Peter Sterne (@petersterne) October 8, 2026

Mamdani was attending a candlelight vigil at Union Square marking the third anniversary of the Hamas-led attacks on Israel when protesters who had marched from City Hall confronted him.

“Shame on you!” protesters shouted.

Others called Mamdani a “traitor” and “sellout,” while additional chants included, “You coward!” and “How do you let this happen?”

The protesters also chanted, “Zohran, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide,” and “Mayor Mamdani, take a stand. Stop the sale of stolen land.”

Some demonstrators wore keffiyehs and carried Hamas flags as they protested Mamdani’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war and accused him of abandoning the Palestinian cause.

Mamdani remained largely expressionless as he stood holding a candle alongside former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander during the vigil.

The confrontation was notable because Mamdani was being attacked by protesters who said he had failed to go far enough in supporting Palestinians, even as Jewish advocates have separately accused him of turning the Oct. 7 anniversary into a political attack on Israel.

Tamar Glazerman, co-founder of Israelis for Peace, described the scene as “a difficult night” involving several hundred counterprotesters.

“Verbally, it was very violent,” Glazerman said.

Lmaooooo the jihadis are now breaking down barricades and chasing @ZohranKMamdani through the streets of NYC screaming at him for attending an October 7th vigil with Jews.

I love it.

This is the chaos Mamdani deserves.

I love this so much for him. https://t.co/Z4B31DvBNA

— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) October 8, 2026

One woman who attended the candlelight service, but declined to give her name, said the confrontation was emotionally difficult.

“It was like, are they even listening to what’s happening over here?” she said.

She criticized the protesters for what she described as having “zero nuance when lots of nuance is needed.”

The Union Square confrontation followed an earlier protest outside City Hall involving about 125 demonstrators who criticized Mamdani’s record on Palestinian issues since taking office.

“Mayor Mamdani, take a side, justice for Palestine,” the crowd chanted.

One protester held a picture of Mamdani welcoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to New York last month.

After the vigil, Mamdani went uptown to Hinds Hall by Ayat, a Palestinian restaurant in Manhattan, to meet with Palestinian families, according to sources cited by The New York Post.

The protests came after Mamdani issued a statement Wednesday morning marking the third anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.

Mamdani acknowledged that Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 people during the attacks. But much of his statement focused on Israel’s subsequent military campaign in Gaza, which he described as an “ongoing genocide.”

That statement drew sharp criticism from Jewish advocates and Israeli officials, who accused Mamdani of using a day of remembrance to advance political arguments against Israel.

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, accused Mamdani of “weaponizing” the memory of the victims.

“Not once do you say ‘Jews,’” Greenblatt wrote on X, referring to Mamdani’s statement. “On Oct. 7, Hamas-led attackers murdered civilians, committed sexual violence, mutilated bodies and took hostages.”

Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon also accused Mamdani of trying to redirect attention away from the victims of the Oct. 7 attacks.

“He’s trying to hijack the day to talk about attacking Israel,” Danon told The New York Post.

Danon called Mamdani “dangerous and sophisticated” and accused him of attempting to appeal to both sides of the conflict while advancing criticism of Israel.

The dueling protests and criticism underscore the deep divisions surrounding Mamdani’s position on Israel and the war in Gaza, with the mayor facing attacks from both Jewish advocates who say he has been hostile toward Israel and pro-Palestinian activists who accuse him of betraying their cause.

Three years after the Oct. 7 massacre, the international activist network behind the Gaza flotilla joined by Greta Thunberg is turning its attention to Yehuda and Shomron, recruiting foreign activists to participate in the upcoming Palestinian olive harvest.

According to Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Ministry, the Global Sumud Flotilla is currently recruiting participants from abroad to travel to Yehuda and Shomron, with the deadline for applications set for Oct. 7.

Those accepted into the program are expected to remain in the area for at least two weeks and undergo training in what organizers describe as “direct action,” along with political and media training.

Participants are also reportedly required to commit to continued political activism after returning to their home countries, indicating that the initiative is intended to extend beyond the olive harvest itself.

The recruitment effort follows the organization’s previous campaigns connected to Gaza, including the flotilla involving Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.

The new initiative is one of several efforts underway to bring international activists to Yehuda and Shomron during the annual olive harvest. Various organizations have promoted programs offering what they describe as a “protective presence” alongside Palestinian farmers.

Israeli officials contend that the campaigns are also being used to develop an international network of activists who can participate in organized political actions and generate media attention surrounding confrontations in the area.

Diaspora Affairs Ministry Director-General Avi Cohen-Scali issued a warning over the recruitment effort, saying Israel would act against foreign activists who arrive as part of organized efforts to provoke confrontations or disturb public order.

“Israel will not serve as a playground for foreign anarchists,” Cohen-Scali said.

He said Israeli authorities would take action against anyone entering the country as part of an organized network whose purpose, in the ministry’s view, is to create provocations and disrupt order.

The olive harvest has repeatedly become a flashpoint in parts of Yehuda and Shomron, with Israeli and international activists accompanying Palestinian farmers in areas near Jewish communities and IDF positions. Israeli security forces are frequently deployed during the season amid concerns about confrontations involving Palestinians, Jewish residents and activists.

{Matzav.com}

A chilling new investigation has revealed that the Flydubai co-pilot who attempted to crash a passenger aircraft bound for Israel had been planning the terrorist attack for months and nearly carried it out during an earlier flight in July. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, the Omani national deliberately pursued employment with an airline operating flights to Israel, intending to carry out a mass-casualty terrorist attack.

The suspect, identified as Hamam al-Hammami, reportedly told investigators that he specifically sought employment with an airline operating flights to Israel. After joining Flydubai, he requested assignments on the Dubai to Tel Aviv route, where he intended to incapacitate the captain and deliberately crash the aircraft into a target such as Ben Gurion Airport.

Investigators discovered that Hammami had considered carrying out the attack in July but abandoned the plan because he cared about one of the crew members aboard that particular flight. His decision was only a postponement, however, as he continued preparing for another opportunity to carry out the attack.

During Flydubai Flight 1073, Hammami attacked the aircraft’s captain with a cockpit crash axe and sent the passenger jet into a dangerous dive. The wounded captain, along with passengers and crew, managed to regain control of the aircraft, preventing what could have become a catastrophic terrorist attack.

The investigation also raised serious questions about aviation security and how a pilot allegedly motivated by extremist ideology was able to gain access to the cockpit of an aircraft carrying passengers to Israel. Hammami reportedly told investigators that his actions were motivated by the situation in Gaza.

The revelations underscore how close the passengers came to disaster and expose the extraordinary danger posed by a terrorist operating from inside the cockpit of a commercial passenger aircraft.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

“OUTRAGEOUS”: 9/11 Families Pack NYC Court as Saudi Arabia Fights to Avoid Trial Over Alleged Aid to Hijackers

Nearly 100 relatives of those murdered on Sept. 11, 2001, packed a federal appeals courtroom in lower Manhattan on Wednesday as Saudi Arabia sought to overturn a ruling that could finally force the kingdom to face trial over allegations that its government agents helped support some of the Al Qaeda hijackers.

The emotional hearing before the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unfolded only blocks from Ground Zero, with families who have spent more than two decades pursuing the case watching as lawyers for Saudi Arabia again argued that the kingdom should be shielded from the lawsuit.

“It’s outrageous, after seeing the evidence of the direct link between the Saudi government agents and hijackers, for them to continue denying their culpability,” said Terry Strada, whose husband, Tom, was killed in the attacks.

“We’re hoping to finally see justice,” added Lisa Friedman, whose husband, Andrew, was killed on Sept. 11.

The dispute before the appeals court stems from a major August 2025 ruling by U.S. District Judge George B. Daniels, who rejected Saudi Arabia’s renewed attempt to have the case dismissed. Daniels found that the families had produced “reasonable evidence” concerning the alleged roles of Saudi nationals Omar al-Bayoumi and Fahad al-Thumairy in assisting two of the hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, after they arrived in the United States.

The ruling did not find Saudi Arabia liable for the attacks. Rather, it rejected the kingdom’s effort to end the case before trial, concluding that the evidence was sufficient for the litigation to move forward. Saudi Arabia appealed that decision, setting up Wednesday’s hearing.

The kingdom has repeatedly and emphatically denied any involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks, maintaining that it neither knew about the plot beforehand nor supported Al Qaeda. Saudi Arabia has also argued that it is protected from the lawsuit by the doctrine of foreign sovereign immunity.

“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has never supported its enemy, Al Qaeda, against its ally, the United States,” Gregory Rapawy, an attorney representing Saudi Arabia, told the court during the roughly 90-minute hearing.

The families contend that Congress substantially changed the legal landscape in 2016 with passage of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, known as JASTA, which created an exception to sovereign immunity for certain claims involving acts of international terrorism committed on American soil.

Gavin Simpson, an attorney representing the Sept. 11 families, argued that Saudi Arabia had “failed” to establish that it was entitled to be dismissed from the litigation.

When Simpson completed his presentation, several family members sitting in the gallery broke into applause, prompting Circuit Judge William Nardini to intervene.

“Please, this is not a moment for such things,” Nardini told the courtroom.

The long-running litigation, first brought more than two decades ago, focuses heavily on al-Bayoumi, a Saudi national who was living in California before the attacks. The families allege that he was connected to Saudi intelligence and provided critical assistance to al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, two of the eventual hijackers.

Among other things, al-Bayoumi helped the men find housing in the San Diego area after their arrival in California and assisted them as they settled into the United States. Plaintiffs have also pointed to his contacts with Saudi officials and other evidence they say undermines his longstanding contention that his encounter with the future hijackers was innocent.

More recent evidence has intensified scrutiny of al-Bayoumi. A video recovered by British authorities shows him filming the U.S. Capitol in 1999 while discussing aspects of the building and its surroundings. Lawyers for the families have argued that the footage shows al-Bayoumi “casing” the Capitol, while Saudi Arabia has disputed that characterization and maintained that the video was innocuous.

Investigators also recovered a drawing of an airplane in one of al-Bayoumi’s notebooks, accompanied by mathematical calculations. The families have cited expert analysis they say indicates that the calculations related to the trajectory of an aircraft toward a target. Saudi lawyers have offered a far more benign explanation, arguing that the sketch was connected to al-Bayoumi helping his son with schoolwork.

The FBI has also described al-Bayoumi in declassified material as an operative of Saudi intelligence, while al-Bayoumi has denied being a spy. He is believed to be living in Saudi Arabia.

Thumairy, the other Saudi national at the center of the lower court ruling, served as an imam at the King Fahad Mosque in Culver City, California, and was also employed by the Saudi government. The families allege that he and al-Bayoumi formed part of a network that assisted the hijackers after they reached the United States.

Daniels wrote in his 2025 decision that Saudi Arabia had failed to provide sufficient evidence overcoming the inferences raised by the plaintiffs regarding the two men’s activities. His ruling cleared a major legal hurdle that had kept the case from reaching trial for years.

Fifteen of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudi nationals. Saudi Arabia has consistently denied that its government had any role in planning or facilitating the attacks, which killed 2,977 people at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and aboard the four hijacked aircraft.

Outside the courthouse Wednesday, the frustration among families extended beyond Riyadh. Several relatives called on President Trump to become personally involved and pressure Saudi Arabia to address the allegations against it.

“We’re all fed up. And it’s time that the president defended us,” said Aaron Sand, whose father, Eric, was killed when the Twin Towers were attacked.

“President Trump, I love ya, but you are not doing enough,” Sand added. “You have to prioritize the family members who were harmed, who lost loved ones because of this nation that claims to be an ally but is very much proving the opposite.”

Brett Eagleson, president of 9/11 Justice, said families were exhausted by the years they have spent traveling to hearings and fighting to keep the case alive.

“Every single one of us is sick and tired of coming here and having to miss birthdays, anniversaries, special events, being with family, but we have to be in Washington. We have to be in New York City. We have to be fighting the Saudi government, who refuses to accept accountability,” Eagleson said.

“Saudi Arabia has spent years trying to avoid answering for what its own agents did in the lead-up to 9/11,” Eagleson added. “A federal judge has already reviewed the evidence and ruled that this case belongs in an American courtroom. We are asking the Second Circuit to uphold that decision so the families who have waited a quarter of a century can finally have their day in court.”

The families are also continuing to seek government records they believe could shed additional light on Saudi contacts and activities in the period before the attacks. Some relatives have accused the U.S. government of keeping relevant material secret even as the country marked the 25th anniversary of Sept. 11 last month.

Victims’ relatives traveled from across the country for Wednesday’s arguments. Among them was Steve Milam, who flew to New York from Dallas. His brother, U.S. Army Major Ron Milam, was killed in the attack on the Pentagon.

“I’m just hoping the judges will see that it is necessary in order to help the families in their healing process that Saudi Arabia be held liable for the tragic loss of our loved ones,” Milam said.

The three-judge panel — Nardini and Circuit Judges Guido Calabresi and Eunice Lee — questioned lawyers for both sides but gave no clear indication of how it would rule. The court is expected to issue its decision in writing at a later date.

{Matzav.com}

Exactly three years to the minute after Hamas launched its October 7 invasion of Israel, Israel Prison Service forces carried out coordinated surprise raids Wednesday morning in five prisons holding security prisoners, conducting extensive searches aimed at uncovering contraband and preventing disturbances or attacks.

The operation began at precisely 6:29 a.m. — the time the Hamas assault began on October 7, 2023 — as Israel marked three years since the massacre that killed more than 1,100 people and saw 251 hostages abducted into Gaza.

The large-scale prison operation was launched following a security assessment ahead of the highly sensitive anniversary, with officials seeking to head off any attempt by security prisoners to exploit the date to cause unrest or threaten prison personnel.

The raids were conducted simultaneously at five security detention facilities across Israel. Officers entered cells and prison wings housing terrorists and other security prisoners and carried out extensive searches for prohibited items and potential security threats.

The operation drew personnel from across the Prison Service’s northern, central and southern districts and included a substantial contingent of specialized forces.

Among those participating were members of the elite Metzada unit, which specializes in complex prison emergencies and hostage situations, along with the Nachshon unit, district units, first-response prison forces and prison intelligence and investigative personnel.

The Prison Service said the goal was to reinforce its control and authority within the facilities, locate contraband and thwart in advance any effort to disrupt prison order, attack guards or compromise the security of the prisons.

The timing at 6:29 a.m. was deliberately chosen to coincide with the exact moment Hamas began its assault three years earlier. The same hour was marked elsewhere across Israel Wednesday with memorial events, moments of silence and ceremonies honoring those murdered on October 7.

The Prison Service did not immediately disclose whether weapons, communications equipment or other prohibited materials were discovered during Wednesday morning’s searches.

The operation comes amid a dramatically changed prison landscape since October 7. Before the massacre, Israel held approximately 16,200 inmates in Prison Service facilities, including roughly 5,200 security prisoners. The war and the detention of thousands of terrorists and terror suspects placed enormous additional pressure on the country’s prison system.

Since the outbreak of the war, Israeli authorities have also significantly tightened the conditions under which security prisoners are held, while increasing searches, intelligence operations and other measures intended to prevent terrorist organizations from maintaining command structures and communications from inside Israeli prisons.

Under the policy of Prison Service Commissioner Kobi Yaakobi, officials said proactive operations aimed at asserting control over security prisoners are conducted throughout the year. Those measures are intensified when intelligence assessments indicate heightened sensitivity or an increased potential for unrest.

The third anniversary of October 7 was considered one such period, leading authorities to increase preventive and deterrence measures throughout the prison system and stage Wednesday’s coordinated operation.

“The Israel Prison Service will continue to act with determination to maintain order, control and security in correctional facilities and to thwart any threat emanating from them,” the service said.

{Matzav.com}

Two-thirds of Republican candidates running in 62 competitive House and Senate races have publicly distanced themselves from President Trump on at least some issues as the midterm elections approach, according to a Reuters review published Wednesday.

The candidates have generally stopped short of rejecting Trump’s broader agenda, instead separating themselves from the president on specific issues such as war powers, economic policy and proposed beef imports.

Reuters also found that roughly a dozen candidates removed references to Trump from campaign materials, while some declined to appear at presidential events or avoided discussing whether they wanted his direct involvement in their campaigns.

The strategy reflects the difficult balance facing Republicans in closely divided districts, where candidates need strong turnout from Trump’s political base while also competing for independent voters.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Three years after the Oct. 7 massacre, Yehuda Avidan, director-general of Israel’s Ministry of Religious Services, has offered a harrowing account of what unfolded behind the gates of the Shura military base, where hundreds of bodies were brought for identification following the Hamas-led attack.

In an extensive interview, Avidan described taking responsibility for the civilian victims within hours of the massacre, working virtually without sleep as bodies poured into Shura, confronting horrifying cases of mutilation and abuse, and participating in the extraordinary halachic effort required to identify victims and prevent women from being left as agunos.

Avidan, an Ashdod resident, said he learned early on the morning of Oct. 7 that something far beyond an ordinary terrorist attack was taking place.

“Because I don’t live in a chareidi neighborhood, the news reached me very quickly, already at 8:00 in the morning. A neighbor came to me and showed me pictures of the vehicle in Sderot, the jeep. When I saw the white pickup truck in Sderot, I told him, ‘My brother, we are in a world war.’ By the end of the holiday, I already knew that we were looking at hundreds of murdered people — while television was showing only 130.”

Under the legal structure in place at the time, responsibility for civilian fatalities belonged to the Interior Ministry. Avidan said that by the conclusion of the holiday, however, he understood that an entirely different system would be required to handle the scale of the catastrophe.

“The first two phone calls I made at the end of the Yom Tov were to Interior Minister Moshe Arbel and Religious Services Minister Michael Malchieli. I told Moshe Arbel, ‘My brother, forget it, you cannot handle these fatalities. This is my field. I am taking responsibility for all of it as though the government decision has already taken effect. Tell your people that I am taking responsibility for this issue.’ He told me, ‘Accepted. Thank you very much. I thank you. It is also absolutely the right thing.’ I put him on a conference call together with Malchieli, we agreed that I would receive responsibility, and from that moment, the rest is history.”

By 8:30 the following morning, Avidan was already holding a conference call with senior ministry officials and the country’s major chevros kaddisha. His instructions reflected the numbers he feared were coming.

“The next day at 8:30 a.m., I was already on a conference call with the entire senior leadership of my ministry and the large chevros kaddisha. I instructed each of them to dig 50 graves around the country and begin preparing. I was simply trying to understand how I was going to handle this thing, all based on personal intuition.”

Half an hour later, approximately 150 people — including Religious Services Ministry officials, religious council leaders and representatives of chevros kaddisha — joined an emergency Zoom meeting.

“At 9:00 in the morning, I scheduled a management meeting at the ministry with the minister and all the heads of the religious councils and chevros kaddisha — there were 150 of us on Zoom. There I made two very simple decisions: First — there are no rules, there are no regulations, do what needs to be done, don’t ask questions. When the accountant and legal adviser began asking questions, I told them: ‘There are no rules, there are no laws, do whatever needs to be done, you have my authorization. Whoever sues you — I will back you.’”

Avidan also decided that all civilian bodies requiring preparation for burial would initially be directed to a single location in Rishon LeZion because of the severe condition in which many victims were being recovered.

“At the same time, I made an immediate decision that I was activating one place in the country to receive all the bodies for preparation for burial — and that was Rishon LeZion, because I understood that the condition of the bodies was not good and kavod hameis required it. At 12:00 we went down to Shura, and from that moment my place of residence was Shura Camp and Rishon LeZion.”

When Avidan arrived at Shura, he found senior representatives of the police, military, Health Ministry and other agencies attempting to respond to a catastrophe on a scale none of the existing systems had been designed to handle.

“I arrived there as a relatively new director-general, only eight or nine months into the job. You come, and suddenly standing next to you are Deputy Commissioner Yoav Telem, Deputy Commissioner Shlomit Landes, Lahav 433 personnel. Suddenly you see deputy commissioners everywhere, the Health Ministry, the police, the army… They didn’t even know what the role of the Religious Services Ministry was.”

Within hours, Avidan said, it became clear that the overlapping responsibilities threatened to create chaos.

“By the afternoon, I already understood that it was beginning to become a mess, and I announced: ‘Gentlemen, according to the law, I am responsible for the identification. I am responsible for everything concerning the fatalities.’ From that moment, I took command and began coordinating the entire operation. The police were responsible for the identification, and we began working like machines.”

The identification of civilians posed challenges substantially different from those involving soldiers. The military had extensive identifying information readily available for its personnel, while civilian records were scattered among different government agencies and databases.

“Unlike the army, where identification can take half an hour because they have all the data, with us, among civilians — anyone who had not been in the army, his information did not come up. It took us a day or two to arrange the transfer of information between the agencies, and then things began moving.”

What followed were days and nights confronting scenes Avidan said remain seared into his memory: hundreds of victims, many burned beyond recognition, alongside evidence of horrific abuse inflicted during the massacre.

Among the most wrenching episodes was the case of a father and daughter whose fate remained uncertain. An instinct that something was wrong ultimately led authorities to reopen a grave, where investigators made an extraordinary discovery: the father and daughter had died together, still embracing one another.

The immense identification challenge also created grave halachic questions. In cases where a married man could not conclusively be identified, his wife could potentially remain an agunah, unable to remarry without sufficient evidence of her husband’s death.

To address those cases, a discreet halachic committee was established under the leadership of then-Rishon LeZion Rav Yitzchak Yosef. Working largely outside the public eye, the committee examined the most complicated identification cases and the evidence available in each one, seeking halachically valid grounds to establish deaths and release women from the status of agunah.

The work at Shura ultimately became one of the least visible but most painful fronts of the aftermath of Oct. 7. Behind the casualty figures were teams required to examine what remained after the massacre, establish identities, preserve kavod hameis, return victims to their families and confront unprecedented halachic questions — all while new bodies continued arriving.

{Matzav.com}

The accident happened shortly after 7:00 PM at the intersection of 9th Street and Madison Avenue.

Avoid the area.

MIAMI (VINnews) — For many French cooks, a kitchen without butter is hard to imagine. For Olivia Ostrow, it is the rule.

The Paris-born restaurateur, who appeared on Food Network’s “24 in 24: Last Chef Standing,” runs Maison Ostrow, a glatt kosher French-Mediterranean restaurant in South Florida. Because the menu is meat-based, dairy cannot be mixed into the dishes — a constraint that cuts against a cuisine built on butter, cream and cheese.

“Can you really make great French food without butter? Yes and no,” Ostrow told Fox News Digital.

Duck fat is one stand-in. Her kitchen has also developed its own nondairy versions of ingredients that would otherwise be off limits. She said the restaurant makes its own cheese and a butter alternative, and serves house-made baguettes with about seven versions of that spread, including truffle, spicy and Provençal. Some diners are surprised to learn it is not conventional butter.

Butter is not the hardest gap to close. Asked which dish is toughest to adapt, Ostrow said desserts. Her team built a stand-in for mascarpone for a tableside tiramisu and reworked steak au poivre, whose classic peppercorn sauce is usually creamy. Chefs also spend hours on sauces and dressings, including a dairy-free product meant to taste like blue cheese.

She said a dish does not go on the menu if it would not meet what a diner expects in a traditional French restaurant in Paris. The testing raises labor costs. “Yeah, my labor’s a little high because we work a little harder,” she said.

Ostrow opened her first glatt kosher restaurant about a month before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel. She said Jewish identity had long been central to her life, and that the aftermath strengthened her decision to treat the business as a public statement rather than retreat. “I did not feel that I needed to go into hiding,” she said. “I felt like I needed it to grow my business and make it even more of a statement.”

She is now looking beyond the original restaurant, with plans to expand the Maison Baguette sandwich concept and Ostrow Privé, a kosher fine-dining service for private jets and yachts. The company is also moving toward grab-and-go food at airports, she said.

More than 75 retired American generals, admirals and senior national security officials rejected accusations Wednesday that Israel committed genocide in Gaza, arguing that the IDF’s conduct does not meet the legal definition of genocide and pointing to extensive Israeli efforts to reduce civilian casualties, according to an open letter released by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America.

The signatories include former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Philip Breedlove, former U.S. Strategic Command commander Gen. Kevin Chilton and former Marine Corps commandant Gen. James Amos.

The retired military leaders argued that civilian casualties, regardless of their scale, do not by themselves establish the specific intent required under international law to prove genocide.

They pointed to Israeli evacuation warnings, humanitarian corridors, tactical pauses and decisions to cancel strikes because civilians were present as evidence inconsistent with an effort to deliberately destroy Gaza’s civilian population.

Many of the signatories previously commanded American forces fighting terrorist organizations that embedded personnel and weapons among civilians, and they warned that distorted interpretations of the laws of war could eventually undermine America’s own ability to fight enemies using similar tactics.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Over Sukkos, hundreds of Jews visited the home of Rosh Yeshivah HaGaon HaRav Moshe Tzvi Bergman, including Gedolei Yisrael, Roshei Yeshivah, Rabbanim and marbitzei Torah, Degel HaTorah representatives, mayors and public figures.

On erev Hoshanah Rabbah, a Simchas Yom Tov gathering was held at the Rosh Yeshivah’s home, during which he delivered forceful remarks.

The Rosh Yeshivah said: “Throughout this recent period, we have merited to witness open nissim. From every direction, enemies rise up to destroy us, and HaKadosh Baruch Hu performs open nissim for us. We can tangibly see how HaKadosh Baruch Hu shelters us and protects us with special hashgachah.

“Just yesterday, we saw such a great neis with the [FlyDubai] plane, which could have ended in a terrible disaster, chas v’shalom. It is awe-inspiring to see the Yad Hashem so clearly.”

“Morai v’Rabbosai, for a long time now we have been in a state of war over the Olam HaTorah world, over the integrity of the Torah world. We should know that this is the real war — there are those who want to destroy Klal Yisrael, chas v’shalom.”

“Baruch Hashem, the bochurim and avreichim are standing strong in an extraordinary way and are moser nefesh for this, as required by halachah. And I can say that halavei (if only) I could be zocheh to share the lot of those who are moser nefesh.

“And now comes a time when everyone is busy with politics. Everyone is talking about who will be at the top. We need to know that this is not our role. We need only to sit and learn Torah. We must do what needs to be done, but the main thing is to sit and learn.

“We are maaminim bnei maaminim in the eternal promise, ‘For it shall not be forgotten from the mouths of his descendants.’ And this does not depend on anyone. The Torah Hakedoshah will prevail.”

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

President Trump is reportedly considering another military strike against Iran before the November 3 midterm elections, with the White House asking the Pentagon to prepare operational plans for a possible attack in the coming weeks.

Two senior administration officials reportedly confirmed that preparations are underway, with U.S. Central Command developing military options. No final decision has been made, and the scope of a potential operation and its targets remain under discussion.

One option being considered is a limited strike that would allow Trump to present a military achievement against Iran before voters head to the polls.

According to the report, White House officials hope a demonstration of American military strength could shift public sentiment surrounding the war, which has weighed on support for Trump and Republicans amid sharply higher fuel prices.

However, advisers are divided over the timing.

Some believe the administration should wait until after the elections, warning that another attack could trigger Iranian retaliation, push energy prices higher and draw the United States into a broader military confrontation.

Those risks, they fear, could damage Republican efforts to retain control of Congress.

The Pentagon is also reportedly examining plans for a more extensive operation after the elections, including additional strikes against Iranian energy infrastructure.

Trump has hinted in recent days that the campaign could resume with greater intensity after the vote, while leaving open the possibility of earlier action.

The deliberations come as Washington considers expanding its military presence in the Middle East.

Reports last week indicated that the United States was exploring the possibility of concentrating three aircraft carriers in the region, alongside thousands of additional troops and aircraft, to give the president greater flexibility to resume strikes.

Indirect contacts between Washington and Tehran are continuing, but significant disagreements remain, particularly over ceasefire arrangements and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

U.S. officials reportedly assess that Iran’s leadership is under heavy economic pressure, though negotiations have not produced a substantive breakthrough toward an agreement.

A White House official said all options remain available to the president at any time, but declined to address whether another strike would take place before the elections.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Wikipedia is facing renewed accusations of anti-Israel bias over the opening sentence of its main article on the Oct. 7 massacre, which describes the Hamas-led assault as “a series of coordinated armed incursions from the blockaded Gaza Strip” — language critics say inserts an implied justification for the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust before even describing what occurred.

The controversy is the latest flashpoint in a much broader battle over Wikipedia’s treatment of Israel, Zionism, Hamas and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Jewish and pro-Israel organizations have repeatedly accused activist editors of manipulating articles to advance an anti-Israel narrative, an issue that has become increasingly significant as Wikipedia material is also used by search engines and artificial-intelligence systems.

“It’s yet another example of the Wikipedia editors’ anti-Israel bias,” Alyza Lewin, president of U.S. affairs at the Combat Antisemitism Movement, said. “They modify entries to support a distorted narrative that erases Jewish history and the Jewish experience. This time they added the word ‘blockaded’ to try and justify Hamas’s barbaric Oct. 7 massacre.”

Lewin said the wording echoes rhetoric that has repeatedly surfaced among anti-Israel activists since the massacre, including claims that “resistance is justified” and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres’s controversial statement that Oct. 7 “did not happen in a vacuum.”

The disputed word did not appear in the article’s opening sentence from the beginning. “Blockaded” was added in February, setting off what initially was only limited opposition on the article’s Wikipedia “talk” page, where editors debate proposed changes and disagreements over content.

The dispute gained new life in August as additional editors challenged the wording. On Sept. 11, a formal discussion was launched to determine whether there was sufficient consensus among Wikipedia editors to retain “blockaded” in the article’s first sentence.

Under Wikipedia rules governing highly contentious Israel-Palestinian articles, participation in such discussions is restricted to established editors who have been active for at least 30 days and have made at least 500 edits.

“The edit ignores Hamas’s history of diverting humanitarian aid intended for Gaza’s civilian population,” Lewin said. “Indeed, Hamas used pre-Oct. 7 aid to build a massive terror tunnel network under homes, schools and mosques from which it launched its attacks, cynically exploiting civilians as a human shield and then crying ‘genocide’ when Israel defended itself.”

The argument over the word carries particular significance because of the enormous reach of Wikipedia. The online encyclopedia is among the world’s most heavily visited websites, and its material frequently surfaces prominently in internet searches and can influence the information used by artificial-intelligence systems.

Criticism of the phrase also comes against the backdrop of Guterres’s remarks shortly after the massacre. Speaking at the U.N. Security Council, the secretary-general said the attacks “did not happen in a vacuum” and that “the Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.”

The remarks provoked an angry response from Israel. Gilad Erdan, then Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, said Guterres’s comments “expressed an understanding for terrorism and murder.”

The Wikipedia editor who initiated the formal debate over retaining “blockaded” defended the terminology, writing that “Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip is a defining feature of this topic and necessary context for a non-specialist reader.” The editor argued that high-quality sources supported describing Gaza that way in the article’s opening sentence and maintained that doing so was consistent with Wikipedia’s requirement for neutral language.

In making the case, the editor cited Palestinian-American historian Rashid Khalidi, describing him as the “preeminent expert in modern Palestinian history.” Khalidi’s background has itself been the subject of controversy. Jonathan Schanzer, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, has said that Khalidi served as a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization during a period when the PLO was designated by the United States as a terrorist organization. Khalidi has denied that characterization.

The Wikipedia editor defending the wording went still further, comparing the inclusion of Gaza’s “blockaded” status to providing context about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising against an oppressive regime.

“We must not create an exception to obfuscate through omission here,” the editor wrote.

Opponents of the wording argued that placing “blockaded” in the opening sentence does more than provide geographical or historical context. They said its placement before a description of the massacre risks suggesting a causal or moral explanation for Hamas’s actions.

A different Wikipedia editor wrote Tuesday that “blockaded” should be removed because “the word suggests justification.”

“To the unedified reader, it may well connote the most extreme version of what ‘blockade’ might mean, like the complete stoppage of all food and supply into a territory,” the editor wrote.

The debate remained unresolved, with editors continuing to argue over whether the word constitutes necessary context or injects a political interpretation into the opening description of the massacre.

The controversy is hardly the first involving Wikipedia’s coverage of Israel. Critics have accused groups of highly active editors of working together to reshape articles dealing with Israel, Zionism, Palestinian terrorism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Wikipedia’s own arbitration process has previously taken disciplinary action against several editors involved in the contentious subject area.

Outside investigations have also alleged coordinated editing campaigns aimed at changing the framing of Israel-related articles, including efforts to emphasize criticism of Israel while minimizing or removing material concerning Palestinian terrorism, antisemitism and violence. The accusations have intensified since Oct. 7, as battles over individual words, descriptions and sources have played out across numerous Wikipedia entries.

The consequences, critics argue, extend far beyond people who deliberately visit Wikipedia. Material from the encyclopedia is frequently reproduced or summarized elsewhere online, meaning editorial decisions made by a relatively small number of volunteer contributors can potentially influence how millions of people encounter information about Israel and the Middle East.

Max Abrahms, an associate professor of political science at Northeastern University who studies terrorism and the Middle East, said the problem is connected to a broader ideological imbalance in academia.

“The removal of pro-Israel scholars and even Israel-neutral ones” from academia has impacted “Wikipedia and many other forms of discourse influencing the public,” Abrahms said.

“Zionist-free higher education reduces balanced scholarship and contributes to Wikipedia’s bias,” he said. “The same is true of podcasts and social media, where almost no pro-Israel scholars can be found.”

Abrahms argued that those concerned about the trend should focus on strengthening intellectual diversity within universities rather than treating individual Wikipedia disputes in isolation.

“Philanthropists who care about Israel and intellectual pluralism must make targeted investments to ensure there are faculty to teach the younger generation, which will also have all sorts of additional benefits like objectively correct entries on Wikipedia,” he said.

OpenAI published AI-generated full or partial solutions Tuesday to more than 370 outstanding mathematical problems, including some that have long been considered grand challenges in the field. 

The volume of results stunned many mathematicians, while the way OpenAI has gone about tackling the problems and publishing the solutions divided the field. Some said they were enthusiastic about the results, seeing huge new areas for mathematicians to explore. Others said the approach OpenAI and other AI companies have taken to solving mathematical problems constitutes an assault on mathematics as a human academic discipline.

OpenAI said it achieved the results using an unreleased internal AI model. It said that on average the model took about three hours of computing time to arrive at each solution.

The massive cache of new solutions includes full or partial results for many of the problems mathematicians have considered the most important to the field. The results come weeks after OpenAI said it had used an unreleased internal model to solve the Navier-Stokes equations, one of the seven Millennium Prize problems for which the Clay Mathematics Institute offers a $1 million award. In the most recent batch of results, OpenAI said it had made progress on three other Millennium Prize problems but had not fully solved them.

AI companies have been targeting mathematical problems as a way of showcasing the capabilities of their models. AI researchers have also said that training their AI models on difficult math problems may help them learn many skills that generalize to other domains in the real world. For instance, it may help teach the models logical reasoning skills as well as how to be persistent in the face of difficult problems. It may also teach the models to do well in domains such as physics or economics that involve a lot of mathematics—although so far, it is unclear exactly how a model’s mathematical capabilities may generalize to domains, such as law or business strategy, which involve logical reasoning, but do not have objectively verifiable correct solutions.

Meanwhile, some of the traits learned in tackling very difficult mathematical problems—such as persistence—may increase safety risks. In recent “rogue AI” incidents, AI agents went to extreme lengths to achieve results in an evaluation, including taking unauthorized and illegal actions. Faced with a seemingly impossible challenge, a human might simply give up rather than resort to these kinds of unauthorized steps.

Dan Litt, a professor of mathematician at the University of Toronto, told Fortune he was excited about OpenAI’s results. “My view is that this is great for mathematics,” he said, adding that there were several solutions that OpenAI published that impacted problems he was interested in and was eager to understand the solutions OpenAI’s AI model found. “I think that it’s great to have new solutions to questions that I and others are interested in.”

Litt cautioned, however, that he is worried about the effect the solutions may have on the field of mathematics, especially if a perception that AI has “solved math” leads funding organizations to withdraw support for mathematical research or discouraged promising young mathematicians from entering the profession. “It’s important that society reaffirms support for human mathematical expertise if we want to get anything out of the progress on these problems that AI has made.”

Showing the work

When OpenAI published its Navier-Stokes solution, two mathematicians, who had also been working on a solution to the problem using AI tools, including OpenAI’s, accused the company of either intentionally or inadvertently feeding their work in progress to its AI model, helping point it in the direction of the solution. OpenAI denied this was the case, saying it did not feed its model the two mathematicians’s work and that the model could not have picked up any clues about their research from its training data because the cutoff for that data preceded the date on which the two mathematicians had begun using OpenAI’s Codex AI product to work on Navier-Stokes.

In response to the latest results, Tristan Buckmaster at New York University, one of the mathematicians involved in the earlier controversy, told the New York Times that it remained unclear whether mathematicians using OpenAI’s models had inadvertently helped point the company’s internal AI system toward the solutions it found. “There’s likely to be a bunch of results where they take someone’s work and then take it to completion,” he told the Times. Given the number of results being released simultaneously, he said “I don’t think they’ve done their sort of due diligence at all” to ensure the AI model had not plagiarized anyone’s work.

Last month, following criticism from mathematicians in the wake of its Navier-Stokes solution, OpenAI said it was forming an independent advisory group on mathematics and artificial intelligence hosted at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. 

Late last month, the group released a set of recommendations for the publication of AI-generated mathematical proofs. The recommendations included that AI-generated proofs should be published following the conventions of a traditional mathematical research paper, so that human mathematicians could more easily scrutinize and learn from the results. It also recommended that for each solution, an AI company should make public the name of the model used, the prompts used, the model’s “chain of thought” (or an output of its reasoning steps), the time it took the model to arrive at the solution, and an approximation of how much that computing time cost. It said that the company should also disclose how it decided to have the AI try to solve that particular problem and, if many results were published at once, that the company should publish a report detailing why those problems were targeted and how many other problems of comparable difficulty the model tried and failed to solve.

OpenAI published the latest mathematical solutions to GitHub, the code repository site. It followed some, but not all, of the steps the advisory group had recommended. The group published a statement on Tuesday saying “we reaffirm our published recommendations on responsible release.” It said its discussions with OpenAI had been “constructive” but that “ultimately it is up to the mathematical community to assess the extent to which our recommendations were followed successfully, and whether there are others we should suggest.”

The company released a blog post on Tuesday in which it said it had “drawn on” the advisory group’s advice about how to publish the solutions. “For future releases, we are committed to further improving the quality of the papers via the citations, mathematical exposition, and presentation of the results for better understanding,” OpenAI said. It said it was sharing formalizations of the proofs for many of the problems—these are versions of the proof that can be verified by specialized computer software—and would share more of these as it obtained them. It also said that for 10 problems it was publishing summaries of its model’s reasoning, estimates of the compute spent, and statistics about the number of attempted problems.

Litt, who was not a member of the advisory group, told Fortune he approved of most aspects of how OpenAI published the solutions. Having them on GitHub made them easily accessible for other mathematicians to study, he said, and he credited the company for not making too much of any particular advance in a blog post or marketing material intended for a non-technical audience. He also said he thought OpenAI lacked the capability to publish all the results in research papers that would meet rigorous academic standards, both because the AI models don’t write mathematical exposition well enough and struggle to cite prior mathematical work, and because OpenAI doesn’t employ enough mathematicians with expertise in enough areas to understand all the proofs the AI models can generate.

While some mathematicians have complained that AI-generated proofs, such as OpenAI’s Navier-Stokes solutions, are difficult to follow, making it hard for mathematicians to build on the results, Litt said he thought such concerns were “overstated.” He said mathematical writing was often difficult to follow any way. “I think to extract understanding from [the OpenAI results], there will be a huge amount of human labor involved, but it’s not so different from the labor that mathematicians have been doing forever,” he said.

OpenAI said it wanted its solutions “to push the frontier of human knowledge and enable further progress in mathematics.” It said it would be funding a series of workshops, conferences, and programs around helping mathematicians understand the results its AI system had generated.

The end of ‘Math 1.0’

The independent math advisory group said in its statement on OpenAI’s release that “the future of mathematical research cannot consist only of understanding results produced by AI labs. Mathematicians must be able to formulate their own questions, develop their own approaches, and explore directions that have not been selected as examples of an AI system’s capabilities. Equitable access to powerful research tools and adequate computational resources are essential to that freedom.”

Terence Tao, a UCLA mathematics professor considered among the world’s greatest living mathematicians, has been increasingly critical of the way AI companies have gone after mathematical problems, arguing that it is the process of arriving at solutions—not so much the solutions themselves—that advances mathematical understanding, and that by solving so many interesting problems so quickly, AI companies are discouraging students from becoming mathematicians, robbing the field of its future.

In a social media post on Mastodon Tuesday, Tao reiterated these criticisms. “Problems are being solved autonomously by AI prompters who have no interest in the broader field itself once their initial target is ‘solved,’ and do not understand the AI output well enough to answer questions on the result, give talks, or otherwise interact with the rest of the field,” he wrote. “Many fewer seminars, workshops, collaborations, or other activities are being generated from these results compared to traditional breakthroughs; few people are joining the community around the field as a consequence; and promising open directions are now being withheld from the public in fear that this will cause their own research to be ‘scooped.’”

Tao said that OpenAI’s mass publication of math solutions marked the end of “Math 1.0,” in which finding solutions to unsolved conjectures and problems, even if those solutions could not easily be understood at first, served as the field’s engine. He said there would now need to be a “Math 2.0” era that “will need to decenter the role of raw problem solving and value mathematical progress more holistically—for instance by elevating the role of exposition, but also that of community building and opening up new directions of study.”

Litt said he agreed with Tao that the field must change. He said OpenAI’s publication of such a massive set of solutions would help get the entire field “on the same page and understanding that we need to be a little bit radical about rethinking” things such as what kinds of contributions it rewards and how it trains PhD. students. And while Tao has generally sounded wistful about this transition, Litt said he was “optimistic” about it.

“One of my collaborators told me, I feel like I’ve been crawling my entire life, and now I can fly,” Litt said of the advent of AI as a tool for solving mathematical problems. “It’s like incredible what what we can do now.” He said he thought AI would enable human mathematicians to engage in much more “open-ended exploration” than was possible before. “We should expect mathematicians to be like way more productive in the future,” he said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Tesla will finally show off its long-delayed second-generation Roadster on Oct. 15, nearly nine years after it first unveiled the electric sports car and began taking $50,000 deposits from buyers who are still waiting for a car.

The event will be held outdoors in Waco, Texas. It was originally scheduled for Oct. 1, but Tesla pushed it back two weeks, citing a severe weather forecast for central Texas. The company said pricing, specifications and its long-term production plans are unchanged.

Tesla first revealed the Roadster as a surprise at the end of a truck event in November 2017. At the time, CEO Elon Musk promised a car that could go from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 1.9 seconds, faster than any street-legal production car then on the market, with a range of 620 miles on a single charge. Production was originally targeted for 2020. That date came and went, followed by several more.

In plain terms, some customers handed Tesla $50,000 almost a decade ago for a car that does not yet exist, and they are about to find out whether the wait was worth it.

The deposits are not small. A standard reservation costs $50,000: a $5,000 payment by credit card, followed by a $45,000 wire transfer due within 10 days. Buyers who wanted a spot in the limited Founders Series paid $250,000 upfront. Tesla has never said how many people have reserved a Roadster or how much money it is holding in deposits. Last month, ahead of the reveal, the company reopened its reservation list on the same $50,000 terms.

For buyers, that money has effectively been an interest-free loan to Tesla. To put it in perspective, with short-term Treasury rates above 4% today, $50,000 parked in a high-yield savings account could earn roughly $2,000 a year in interest. Instead, deposit holders have been waiting with nothing but a place in line.

Tesla has not announced an official price. The base Roadster has long been expected to cost around $200,000, putting it in the same range as high-end sports cars from Porsche and Ferrari rather than Tesla’s everyday models like the Model 3 and Model Y. Production is expected to begin in 2027, but a reveal is not the same as a delivery date, and Tesla has not given buyers a firm timeline for when they will actually receive their cars.

The stakes go beyond one car. The Roadster has become a symbol of Tesla’s habit of announcing bold products and then missing deadlines. The Cybertruck arrived years late, and the Semi truck took far longer than first promised to reach customers. A strong showing on Oct. 15, with a production-ready car, firm specifications and a clear delivery schedule, would help repair that reputation. Another round of prototypes and promises would do the opposite.

Musk has hinted that the new Roadster will be more radical than earlier prototypes. He has talked for years about an optional “SpaceX package” that would use small rocket-style thrusters to boost acceleration and handling. Tesla’s teaser for the event carried the words “Go for launch,” and invitations sent to reservation holders point to a site near SpaceX’s rocket test facility in McGregor, Texas, just outside Waco. Whether those features make it into a car that people can actually buy is one of the biggest open questions.

The market has also changed since 2017. When the Roadster was first shown, a sub-2-second electric supercar sounded like science fiction. Today, several electric hypercars from China and Europe already post eye-popping acceleration numbers, and luxury brands like Ferrari are moving into electric sports cars. The Roadster will no longer have the field to itself.

For the deposit holders, the answer comes in one week. They will learn what the car looks like, what it can do, how much it costs and, most importantly, when they can finally drive one home.

JBizNews Desk | Austin

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

If you’d never heard of red-dyed diesel before it suddenly entered the news cycle this week, you’re not alone. Even President Donald Trump said he was unfamiliar with the fuel at a campaign rally in Grand Island, Neb., on Monday, Oct. 5. “I don’t know what the hell it is, but whatever it is, it’s supposed to be very good,” he told the crowd.

Moments later, Trump signed an executive order onstage that temporarily allows red-dyed diesel on public roads and defers the federal excise tax normally owed on highway fuel through Dec. 31. Despite Trump calling the fuel “tax-free,” the tax hasn’t gone away—at least not yet. The order directs the Treasury Department to defer payment without interest or penalties, and to explore ways to eliminate the deferred bill entirely.

The move comes as diesel prices hover near record highs, squeezing truckers and farmers in the middle of harvest season. It also follows the administration’s retreat from a proposed ban on U.S. diesel exports, which Trump said last week “we were never going to do.”

What is red-dyed diesel?

Alan Krupnick, a senior fellow at Resources for the Future and director of its Industry and Fuels Program, explained the fuel to Fortune: “It’s the same as regular diesel, but dyed red so inspectors can make sure it’s being sold only for off-road uses, [such as] for agricultural vehicles.”

What’s different about red-dyed and regular diesel, then, aside from the color? “It is [sold] tax-free to give agriculture and other heavy, off-road vehicles and other users a break,” Krupnick said.

Gilbert Metcalf, a visiting professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and a former deputy assistant secretary for environment and energy at the U.S. Treasury Department, described it the same way. “This is the same diesel that you can buy at a gas station; it just has red dye in it. That’s to indicate that it’s not subject to the federal diesel tax.”

How much could drivers actually save?

That federal tax is 24.4 cents per gallon: a 24.3-cent excise tax plus a 0.1-cent “Leaking Underground Storage Tank” fee, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. On a 250-gallon fill-up for an 18-wheeler, that works out to about $61. The White House’s claim that truckers will save more than $100 per fill-up assumes states suspend their own diesel taxes as well, which the order encourages but can’t require.

Measured against the pump price, the federal tax is a sliver. Diesel averaged about $6.20 a gallon nationally the week of Oct. 5, per the EIA, down from a peak of roughly $6.53 in late September. Before the U.S. and Israel launched their war against Iran in late February, the national average was about $3.76, according to AAA. A 24.4-cent break amounts to about 4% of today’s price—a modest savings for everyday motorists, and perhaps not much more for heavier users in trucking, farming, and other industries.

Why economists say it won’t move prices

The bigger problem is that a small cut in per-gallon costs does nothing to change the basics of supply and demand. Metcalf sees little potential for the executive order to have any meaningful impact.

“I don’t see this having really any impact on supply…. On the supply side, it’s not going to lead to any more diesel coming online, all it does is change some of the diesel that’s out there [to be] usable by anyone,” Metcalf said. “But that doesn’t change the total amount of diesel that’s out there. And if you look at U.S. refineries, they’re operating at near record capacity levels. There’s no ability to process more or create more diesel. That’s the supply side.”

Could farmers end up paying more?

“On the demand side,” Metcalf continued, “if we shift some of that diesel into road use, what does that mean? It means that the diesel is going to be more expensive for farmers and other off-road use, like construction.”

In other words, opening red-dyed diesel to highway drivers may slightly reduce on-road fuel costs while actually raising the effective price paid by the off-road users the fuel was meant to help. Farmers who already burn red-dyed diesel in their tractors and combines don’t gain a new tax break from the order.

Diesel prices have surged primarily because of two overseas conflicts: the war with Iran, which has disrupted tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, and the Russia-Ukraine war, where Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian refineries prompted Moscow to restrict its own diesel exports. With global supply tight and U.S. refiners already running hard, the system has little slack.

Only a return to more stable global production and refining will have a true and lasting impact on domestic diesel prices. A temporary tax deferral is unlikely to deliver much relief, and it may even backfire if it drives up fuel costs for farmers, construction firms, and other off-road users.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

LONDON — Just days after passengers aboard a Flydubai flight to Israel survived a terrifying midair plunge, another international passenger jet has suffered a dramatic descent from cruising altitude — this time a British Airways Boeing 777 flying from London to Chicago.

British Airways Flight BA295 was cruising at roughly 37,000 feet when it rapidly descended to about 9,000 feet over Ireland, losing approximately 28,000 feet in under 10 minutes.

Oxygen masks deployed in the cabin as the crew declared an emergency and abandoned the transatlantic flight.

The timing immediately drew attention because of the extraordinary Flydubai incident only days earlier. In both cases, passengers suddenly found themselves aboard major commercial aircraft descending tens of thousands of feet from cruising altitude.

But the circumstances were very different.

The Flydubai flight plunged dramatically during an alleged cockpit attack that authorities have described as a terrorist incident. Passengers and crew intervened before reserve pilots regained control of the aircraft and landed safely.

In the British Airways case, there is no indication of sabotage or an attempt to bring down the aircraft.

What is confirmed is that BA295 descended rapidly during an emergency after what British Airways has described as a “technical issue.”

Flight-tracking data showed the aircraft transmitting the international 7700 emergency code before losing roughly 28,000 feet of altitude. Passengers reported turbulence and oxygen masks dropping into the cabin.

The precise technical failure has not yet been publicly identified by British Airways.

Reports have pointed to a possible cabin-pressurization problem, but that has not been formally confirmed by the airline.

The aircraft turned back toward Britain rather than continuing across the Atlantic.

Because the Boeing 777 had departed Heathrow carrying fuel for the long flight to Chicago, it remained airborne for several hours before returning to London.

The aircraft ultimately landed safely at Heathrow. Passengers were able to disembark and no serious injuries were reported.

British Airways said the flight returned because of a technical issue and that its teams were working to assist affected passengers.

The two emergencies are not believed to be connected.

Still, the proximity of the incidents is striking.

Within days, passengers aboard two major international flights experienced aircraft descending tens of thousands of feet during serious midair emergencies.

In the Flydubai case, authorities say the aircraft plunged during an alleged attempt to interfere with the flight.

In the British Airways case, the aircraft rapidly descended while the crew was responding to an emergency.

Different causes. Different circumstances.

But after the Flydubai scare, another passenger jet dropping roughly 28,000 feet from cruising altitude with oxygen masks deploying in the cabin is enough to put travelers around the world on edge.

JBizNews Desk | London

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

Israel is reportedly identifying a growing willingness within Hamas to resume fighting, while voices inside Gaza are pushing for an offensive on the assumption that another confrontation with Israel is inevitable.

The assessment comes alongside accounts from Gaza sources describing preparations on the ground, including the transfer of weapons from underground facilities into hospitals and schools.

Sources also reported that dozens of Hamas operatives have been moving around Nasser Hospital.

Additional accounts published Wednesday described Hamas activity at Shifa, Al-Aqsa Martyrs and Nasser hospitals. According to those accounts, operatives are exploiting crowded conditions and using infrastructure beneath the hospital compounds.

Other testimony described Hamas command-and-control centers in areas still under the terrorist organization’s control, armed men continuing to patrol streets and the operation of Hamas’s internal security apparatus.

The accounts also claimed that Hamas maintains detention and interrogation facilities inside hospital compounds and beneath them.

The reported shift follows a markedly different assessment published on September 17, when Hamas was said to have decided against responding to Israel’s elimination of two brigade commanders within days of each other.

At the time, the organization reportedly feared that retaliation would give the IDF grounds to continue the war. A survey cited in that report found that fewer than 10% of participating Gazans supported an armed confrontation.

The latest assessment suggests that some inside Gaza now favor initiating an attack rather than waiting for fighting to resume.

Concerns about armed activity at Nasser Hospital have also been raised by Doctors Without Borders.

The medical organization said it suspended some operations at the hospital in January after staff witnessed masked armed men, intimidation and arbitrary arrests of patients. It also reported an incident involving a suspected transfer of weapons.

Doctors Without Borders resumed its principal activities at Nasser in April, saying conditions had improved and measures had been taken to restrict weapons and armed personnel from entering the compound.

The latest reports raise renewed concerns about Hamas’s use of civilian institutions as the prospect of another round of fighting grows.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Elon Musk’s net worth once again topped the $1 trillion mark this week—and few people have had a closer look at the forces behind his success than his former deputy Linda Yaccarino.

The 30-year media veteran was tapped as CEO of then-Twitter in 2023, stepping in as Musk was remaking the social platform from the ground up, and she got a firsthand look at the philosophy driving his companies, from Tesla to SpaceX: Move fast, rethink everything, and don’t wait for tomorrow.

“The reason his companies are singular in what they deliver is because of the insatiable sense of urgency. There’s not a deadline for a project or to ship something, a product—it’s now,” Yaccarino told Fortune. 

That mindset, she said, changes how you approach virtually any challenge. Rather than simply working toward a deadline, it forces you to strip a project down to its most essential pieces and figure out what actually needs to happen to succeed.

“A lot of people talk about first principles, but that’s what it forces you to do,” Yaccarino added.

And she saw it almost immediately. When she arrived, Twitter was in the middle of another round of upheaval, including the retirement of its blue-bird logo and, eventually, its transformation into “X”—all with a fraction of its pre-Musk staff. Misinformation, hate speech, and bots also became growing concerns, issues that have continued to follow X since her 2025 departure.

For Yaccarino, though, the flux was part of the appeal. For all the challenges that came with running X and working for Musk, she said the hardest moments in a career can ultimately be “like a gift.”

Before working with the world’s richest man, Yaccarino’s career began with a clerical error

That belief in leaning into difficulty began taking shape long before Yaccarino ever worked for Musk.

Yaccarino grew up on Long Island to an Italian-American family, and she and her two sisters were raised with what she calls an “immigrant mentality”: Work hard, rely on yourself, and remember that family matters regardless of professional success or failure.

That confidence was tested early in her career while as a telecommunications student at Penn State University. Yaccarino landed an internship at NBC for the summer before her senior year. But when she showed up at 30 Rock for her first day, the company had no idea who she was.

“They had literally no record of me,” Yaccarino recalled. “So, soul crushing to say the least.”

She went home that night feeling like she had failed. But the setback quickly became a footnote. NBC asked her to return the next day, placing her in the sales department, and marking the start of a three-decade career in media.

“That’s where the love affair happened,” Yaccarino said. “I got to be amongst the ranks of people that were leading industry and inspirational in pop culture, newsmakers of the headlines. And who couldn’t become a fan and a disciple of the industry at that time?”

After graduating in 1985, Yaccarino gradually climbed the ranks in media sales and advertising at Turner and NBCUniversal. In 2020, she was named chairman of global advertising and partnerships at NBC, where she helped notably lead the company’s early advertising strategy for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. In total, she was overseeing some $13 billion in annual ad revenue.

But when Musk asked her to make the jump to tech, Yaccarino said it was hard to pass up: She saw him as “singular in his ability to transform human conversation and movement,” and being part of that mission at Twitter/X was “consequentially important” at the time.

Yaccarino’s advice for Gen Z: ‘Go to the uncomfortable’

After two turbulent years at the helm of X, Yaccarino resigned from the social platform in July 2025 and began thinking about where to take her career next. She said she had plenty of options but wanted a path that would challenge her again, so she sought advice from her mentor, billionaire financier Michael Milken, who now chairs the Milken Institute.

“He said, Linda, ‘You have so many paths to take, and they’re all good paths. So you’re not going to make a mistake, but don’t choose a good path,’” she recalled. “‘Choose another consequential one. You spent so much time doing world-changing types of things at X. Be consequential again.”

That advice led Yaccarino to becoming the CEO of eMed, a $2 billion healthcare startup focused on telehealth and GLP-1 treatments, backed by investors including Tom Brady.

It’s also a lesson she encourages Gen Z to carry into an increasingly AI-driven workplace: Don’t simply get better at what everyone else is doing. Find the skills and experiences that make you stand out.

“Celebrate those skills that you have that are at the intersection of art and science, or magic and math—not just what the screen tools give you,” Yaccarino said, adding that human skills like empathy and decision-making are also critical.

Above all, she encourages people to run toward problems. Otherwise, she said, their careers could be “kind of boring”—something her own career, thanks in part to Musk, has been far from.

“Comfort is complacency—that’s not going to make you consequential in your career or your life,” Yaccarino said. “So, go to the uncomfortable.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Approximately 100,000 people are expected to visit the kever of Rav Ovadia Yosef zt”l in Yerushalayim next week, as final preparations are completed for the massive annual aliyah l’kever marking his yahrtzeit.

The pilgrimage to the Sanhedria cemetery is scheduled to begin Tuesday evening, the night of 3 Cheshvan, and continue through Thursday, with organizers preparing transportation, security and crowd-control arrangements for the tens of thousands expected to arrive from across Israel.

A special steering committee has been established to oversee the logistical and operational aspects of the event, working together with police and other relevant authorities. Dozens of security personnel and ushers will be stationed throughout the area to direct the crowds and maintain order.

Transportation is expected to be one of the largest components of the operation. Buses carrying visitors are scheduled to arrive from approximately 70 cities throughout Israel during the yahrtzeit, while public transportation companies are preparing to significantly increase service on local routes serving the area of the kever.

Under the traffic plan, visitors will enter the kever complex from the intersection of Sderot Eshkol and Eretz Chefetz. Bloy Street will be designated for exiting the area only.

Traffic arrangements will also be altered around the Sanhedria Junction and on roads leading toward the cemetery because of the enormous number of visitors anticipated during the event.

Special tents for tefillah will be erected at the site, along with refreshment stations providing drinks for those coming to the kever. Ushers and security personnel will be deployed at multiple points throughout the complex to keep pedestrian traffic moving safely during the three-day period.

Organizers are strongly urging visitors not to arrive in private vehicles because of the heavy congestion expected around Sanhedria and restrictions that will be imposed on private traffic near the cemetery.

Those who do travel toward the area by car are being advised to use municipal parking lots or park in nearby neighborhoods and continue to the kever using public transportation.

The public is also being asked to follow all instructions issued by police officers, security personnel and ushers throughout the yahrtzeit.

Rav Ovadia Yosef, one of the most influential Sephardic poskim and Torah leaders of the modern era, was niftar on 3 Cheshvan 5774, October 7, 2013. His levayah drew an estimated 800,000 people to the streets of Yerushalayim, making it one of the largest funerals in Israel’s history.

In the years since his petirah, his kever in Sanhedria has become a destination for large numbers of visitors throughout the year, with particularly enormous crowds arriving each 3 Cheshvan to mark his yahrtzeit and daven at his resting place.

{Matzav.com}

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir warned Wednesday that Israel must remain constantly prepared for a surprise war, drawing a direct connection between the intelligence and readiness failures surrounding the Yom Kippur War and the October 7 massacre, according to the IDF.

Speaking during an exercise of the IDF’s new 38th Division, Zamir described the two events as “two painful shortcomings, two failures, with a connecting thread between them.”

“Reality is constantly sending us signals,” Zamir said, adding that the military has an obligation to identify those signals, listen to them and continually adjust its assumptions.

Zamir said the possibility of a surprise attack must remain a constant concern throughout the IDF rather than something considered only when intelligence indicates that an enemy is preparing for war.

The remarks came exactly three years after Hamas shattered Israel’s assumptions about Gaza by launching its massive surprise invasion of southern Israel.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

(JNS) – A new documentary featuring previously unreleased security camera footage from inside Beersheva’s Soroka Medical Center during the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre aired this week on Israel’s Kan News public broadcaster.

The film, “The Shift” (“HaMishmeret”), produced by the Kan 11 TV program “Zman Emet,” gives a unique view of the hospital’s emergency department as 674 wounded patients arrived with injuries from the southern border.

The documentary premiered earlier this week at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who attended with his wife, first lady Michal Herzog, described the film as “a historical document” in a press release.

He praised the hospital’s staff, saying: “The film captures the scale of the trauma and the magnitude of the heroism on October 7th.”

Dr. Ori Galante, who heads Soroka’s internal medicine intensive care unit, is featured in the film. He said it honors “the extraordinary people of Soroka, every single one of them, women and men, each in their own role, from the first cleaner to the last doctor.”

“These are people who put their own lives at risk, left their families at home, and rushed to the hospital that Saturday, driven by a deep inner conviction to help others, regardless of their religion, race, gender, or political beliefs,” Galante said.

“A hospital is not supposed to be able to function under circumstances like these. The reason we succeeded, and what made all the difference, was the people,” he added.

Rich Americans are getting richer, but not all equally. The K-shaped split that let high earners pull away from low earners now cuts through the top 1% too, with the ultra-rich far ahead of the rest.  

The average household in the top 0.1% is now worth about $204 million, or 7.7 times as much as one in the rest of the top 1%, according to a Fortune analysis of Federal Reserve data. That ratio is the highest in the Fed’s quarterly series going back to 1989, up from 6.2 times at the end of 2019. Currently, the Fed counts 136,779 households in the top 0.1%

The top 0.1%’s wealth has more than doubled since the end of 2019, from $13.4 trillion to nearly $28 trillion in the second quarter of 2026. Over the same period, the rest of the top 1% saw its wealth grow 68%, from $19.3 trillion to $32.5 trillion.  The top 0.1% now holds 15% of the nation’s household wealth, up 0.5 percentage point since the first quarter. 

“We are talking about continued redistribution upward and further concentration of wealth at the top,” Markus Schneider, an associate professor of economics at the University of Denver, told Fortune.

Why the ultra-rich pulled ahead

The clearest difference between the two groups is what they own. 

More than half of the top 0.1%’s assets are in stocks and mutual funds, which left the group well-positioned to ride the stock market’s repeated record highs in recent years, largely driven by AI and tech. The top 0.1% holds  almost as much in stocks and mutual funds as the rest of the top 1% combined—$16.2 trillion versus $16.7 trillion—even though the rest of the 1% has nine times as many households, Fed data shows. 

The rest of the 1% also has more of its wealth tied up in real estate and defined-contribution retirement accounts. It holds $4.7 trillion in real estate, compared with nearly $2 trillion for the top 0.1%, and about $1.7 trillion in in those retirement plans, compared with just $230 billion for the top 0.1%, Fed data shows. 

The different mix helps explain why their fortunes are split, according to Eric Zwick, a professor of economics and finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He said when stocks rise faster than home prices, the households with more of their wealth invested reap more gains. 

“It’s been an extraordinarily good period for public markets, and a lot of that is driven by some of these really high-performing tech companies,” Zwick told Fortune. 

Zwick also said high interest rates have slowed the housing market, and that home prices have fallen in some parts of the country “relative to what’s going on in the stock market.”

The gap has widened before. It expanded substantially from 2003 through 2007 ahead of the 2008 financial crisis, per the Fed data, rising from about 5 times in early 2003 to 6.3 times in late 2007. The previous high was 6.5 times, in early 1998.

What the data can’t say

Zwick noted the Fed data can’t reveal whether the top 0.1% owns more AI stocks than the rest of the 1% because it assumes every group holds the same mix of stocks. The data also counts whoever is in the top 0.1% in a given quarter rather than tracking the same households over time, which could hide how many people move in and out of the group as some companies grow and others shrink. 

“There were companies that were doing really well 10 years ago that are struggling now, and there are companies that came out of nowhere that are now some of the biggest companies in the economy, and that means that people who own those companies or top workers of those companies are suddenly moving above other people,” he said. 

He also cautioned against assuming the K-shaped divide in the 1% is permanent.

“It sort of feels like it’s an artifact of the very specific economic shocks that are happening right now, as opposed to some super deep structural change in the economy,” he said. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Republican political organizations have assembled an extraordinary campaign war chest approaching $1 billion as the November midterm elections enter their final weeks, pouring enormous sums into competitive House and Senate races across the country, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.

MAGA Inc., one of the largest groups supporting Republican candidates and President Trump’s political agenda, had approximately $416 million available by late August and dramatically accelerated its spending during September.

Texas has emerged as one of the most expensive battlegrounds, with Republican groups spending more than $100 million as both parties fight over races that could determine control of Congress.

Republicans hold a financial advantage overall, while Democratic organizations have also amassed hundreds of millions of dollars for advertising, turnout operations and competitive races.

The November 3 election will determine control of Congress for the final two years of Trump’s current term, with both parties treating a relatively small number of competitive races as decisive.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Vice President JD Vance marked the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre on Wednesday with a brief message remembering the Jews and Americans murdered in the terrorist assault on Israel and invoking the traditional Jewish expression honoring the deceased.

Vance posted the message on his official X account Wednesday afternoon, three years after Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel, attacking communities, military installations and the Nova music festival.

“Three years ago over 1,000 Jews (including 49 Americans) were brutally murdered in Israel in one of the worst Islamic terrorist attacks of our lives. May their memory be a blessing.”

The message was notably focused exclusively on the victims of the Hamas attack. Vance did not use the anniversary statement to criticize Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza or to address Palestinian casualties.

The vice president’s statement came as Israel and Jewish communities around the world held memorial ceremonies for the victims of the Oct. 7, 2023, assault, in which Hamas-led terrorists murdered approximately 1,200 people and abducted 251 hostages into Gaza. Memorial events in Israel began at 6:29 a.m., the time the attack began three years earlier.

Vance’s reference to the American victims highlighted the significant U.S. toll from the attack. Americans were among those murdered and kidnapped during the Hamas invasion, making Oct. 7 not only the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust but also a terrorist attack that directly claimed American lives.

The statement comes amid considerable attention to how American political leaders are marking the anniversary. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries condemned the Hamas massacre in his own statement Wednesday but also called the devastation in Gaza “reprehensible” and demanded a dramatic change in American policy that would include the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani went further, using his Oct. 7 statement to accuse the Israeli government of an “ongoing genocide” in Gaza and denounce what he called “occupation and apartheid.” Mamdani’s remarks drew criticism from several Democratic members of Congress as well as Jewish organizations and Republican officials.

Vance’s message also comes against the backdrop of an evolving relationship between the Trump administration and the Netanyahu government. In recent months, the vice president has emphasized that while Israel remains an important American partner, the United States will pursue its own interests and will not necessarily agree with the Israeli government on every issue.

“Israel has been an important partner when it comes to military technology, when it comes to intelligence sharing, but also sometimes the United States doesn’t always agree with Israel,” Vance said last month.

Vance has nevertheless consistently placed responsibility for the Gaza war’s origins on Hamas. Discussing the conflict in October 2025, he stressed that the fighting began with the terrorist assault on Israel and said the Trump administration remained focused on eliminating the terrorist threat while addressing humanitarian needs in Gaza.

His position on Oct. 7 itself has also remained consistent. On the first anniversary of the massacre in 2024, when he was President Trump’s running mate, Vance attended a memorial gathering on the National Mall in Washington and declared that the attack would not be forgotten.

“My friends, I know I speak for all of us and saying we will never forget October the 7th. We’re going to reject anti-Semitism in our schools, rejected in our foreign policy. And if we do this the right way, we’re going to reject it in the ballot box on November the 5th, 2024.”

At that same 2024 gathering, Vance said Israel had the right to defeat the terrorist organization responsible for the massacre.

“We want to give Israel the right and the ability to finish what Hamas started. Israel didn’t start this. Hamas did. But Israel is going to finish it.”

{Matzav.com}

Iran has transferred approximately $200 million to Hezbollah for payments to Lebanese families displaced during the war with Israel, marking the terrorist organization’s first major aid distribution to its support base since the conflict began, Reuters reported Wednesday.

Hezbollah plans to distribute initial payments of approximately $3,000 to some 50,000 families, prioritizing residents of villages that were destroyed or remain inaccessible because of the fighting.

Getting the Iranian money into Lebanon has become considerably more difficult because of sanctions and an international crackdown on financial networks connected to Hezbollah.

Sources said intermediaries moving the latest $200 million charged fees of approximately 20%, roughly four times the normal rate, because of the increased risks associated with transferring Iranian money to Hezbollah.

The transfer comes as Hezbollah attempts to rebuild after suffering extensive losses in its war with Israel while continuing to provide payments to its fighters and families of terrorists killed in the fighting.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Shas chairman Aryeh Deri attended a memorial and appreciation ceremony Wednesday honoring United Hatzalah volunteers on the third anniversary of the October 7 massacre, Kikar H’Shabbat reported.

The event honored the extraordinary courage and dedication of hundreds of United Hatzalah volunteers who were among the first responders to operate in the Gaza border communities under heavy attack, saving the lives of countless civilians and soldiers.

“I came here to recognize your tremendous contribution to Am Yisrael,” Deri said. “You saved the lives of many civilians while risking your own lives. Mossad chief Roman Gofman told me that the Chareidi Hatzalah volunteers saved his life on October 7.”

“The work of the organization’s volunteers on October 7, as well as their daily work throughout the country saving lives without distinction, is a testament to the spirit of mutual responsibility and mesirus nefesh that characterizes Am Yisrael.”

Gofman was the commander of an IDF base in the Negev during the October 7 massacre. He rushed into battle against the Hamas terrorists and was seriously wounded in a gun battle outside Sderot.

United Hatzalah president and founder Eli Beer tearfully recalled the harrowing events of that day: “In those difficult moments, when no civilian organization could enter other than the security forces, United Hatzalah volunteers ran straight into the fire and risked their lives to save others,” he said. “They treated hundreds of wounded people, soldiers and civilians alike, under relentless gunfire. Among those they saved was Mossad chief Maj. Gen. Roman Gofman, whose life was saved thanks to the resourcefulness of our volunteers in the field.”

United Hatzalah president and founder Eli Beer speaks at the event.

Beer also revealed a humanitarian initiative that took place behind the scenes: At the request of Rabbi Aryeh Deri and his wife, Yaffa, he arranged a meeting between the mothers of hostages Omer Shem Tov and Sasha Trufanov and philanthropist Dr. Miriam Adelson, who has significant influence in the United States, in an effort to assist in securing the return of their sons.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

The USPS driver arrested yesterday in Jackson was charged with several offenses, police say.

As first reported on TLS, the Jackson Police Department’s Special Response Team, along with Federal Postal Police, took the USPS employee into custody in connection with an incident that occurred in Jackson on September 26.

The subject was taken into custody without incident and charged with possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, unlawful possession of a weapon, criminal attempt, criminal mischief, and harassment.

The investigation is ongoing.

MIAMI (VINnews) — The long rush of East Coast households into Miami has cooled sharply as South Florida’s housing and living costs have climbed past the bargain that once drew retirees and working families from New York and other high-price metros.

Net migration into Florida from elsewhere in the United States fell to 201,191 people, about 551 a day, according to a June report from the Shimberg Center for Housing Studies at the University of Florida. That is well below the post-pandemic peak of 598,737 new residents in 2022, or roughly 1,640 a day.

Miami-Dade County, anchored by the city of Miami, led the state in domestic out-migration, losing nearly 73,000 residents to other counties and states last year, the center reported. New York City has long been Miami’s largest out-of-state feeder market, but interest from that metro has faded. A Realtor.com review of cross-market traffic found that New York City shoppers accounted for 11% of nonlocal online views of Miami listings this fall, down about two-thirds from a 2023 peak.

The cost gap that once favored Florida has closed. An August report from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, based on 2024 data, put Miami’s cost of living 14.1% above the national average, second among major cities only to San Francisco. New York City ranked fourth, at 12.5% above average. In Realtor.com’s 2026 metro report cards, Miami received an F on affordability and homebuilding. About 43.2% of Miami purchases were all-cash, the site reported.

Anthony Lamacchia, founder and chief executive of Lamacchia Realty, which has offices in New England and South Florida, told Realtor.com that Miami is “a victim of their own success.” He said Central Florida is now his firm’s top outbound market because buyers have been priced out of the south, and that the squeeze became clear in 2022 after prices jumped.

Lamacchia also tied part of the shift to reforms that followed the 2021 collapse of Champlain Towers South in Surfside. State rules now require older condominiums to complete structural inspections and fully fund reserves, which he said has pushed up condo fees and insurance premiums. Some corporate relocation clients, he said, tour properties for a weekend and decide the numbers no longer justify a move.

Ana Bozovic, a Miami agent and founder of Analytics Miami, told Realtor.com that fewer lower- and middle-income households are moving into South Florida. Land, construction, insurance, financing and labor have all risen, she said, so new housing is being built for affluent buyers because that is where development math works. Luxury sales, by contrast, hit record volume across the tiers she tracks in the first half of 2026. A December Realtor.com luxury report found Miami had overtaken New York City as the center of million-dollar listings.

Jiayi Xu, a senior economist at Realtor.com, said high-end jobs and capital are a boost, but hospitals, schools, restaurants and construction sites still need workers who can afford to live nearby. Bozovic said a city that looks like a place of opportunity will keep drawing people willing to absorb high costs, and that the task is to turn that wealth into broader affordability. She said she is optimistic Miami can do that.

NEW YORK (VINnews) — A pasta-station sign in a Columbia University dining hall on Wednesday labeled one of its sauces “October 7th Blush Sauce,” the third anniversary of the Hamas-led attack on Israel.

The printed board, marked “Today’s Special” and carrying the Columbia Dining logo, listed the item under sauces beside marinara, turkey bolognese and garlic oil. The blush sauce carried dietary codes for gluten-free, dairy and vegetarian. Other items on the board included regular pasta, whole wheat penne, spinach and sundried tomatoes, and garlic parmesan rolls.

Simone Saidmehr, New York correspondent for Haaretz, posted a photograph of the sign on X on Wednesday afternoon. The post drew more than 1,500 likes within hours.

Blush sauce, a creamy tomato pasta sauce, is a regular offering in Columbia dining halls. The university’s online menu for John Jay Dining Hall on Wednesday evening listed the same station’s sauces as marinara, blush sauce and garlic oil, without a date attached to the blush sauce.

One person replying on social media wrote that the wording appeared to be a copy-and-paste error by whoever printed the menu and that the sign had been corrected. Columbia Dining had not issued a public statement as of Wednesday evening, and the claim of a printing error could not be independently confirmed.

The listing landed on a campus that has been a focus of protests, disciplinary cases and federal scrutiny since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack, in which Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people in Israel, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostages. Jewish students and outside groups have repeatedly accused the university of failing to protect them from antisemitic harassment during subsequent demonstrations. Columbia has said it is committed to combating antisemitism while protecting free expression.

Wednesday’s menu photograph renewed that argument online, with critics calling the date on a routine sauce insensitive and others saying the label simply reflected the calendar date.

Prof. Eytan Gilboa is cautioning against drawing premature conclusions about Iranian involvement in the attempted attack aboard Flydubai Flight FZ1073, warning that public declarations blaming Tehran could create expectations for an Israeli or American military response before investigators have established who was behind the plot.

Gilboa made the comments after President Donald Trump publicly said he personally believes Iran was responsible for the attempted attack aboard the Israel-bound flight. Investigators have not publicly announced evidence establishing an Iranian role, and Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has said it remains too early to determine whether Tehran was involved.

Trump initially said that, based on what he was hearing, he believed there could be an Iranian connection. Asked whether the United States would retaliate if Iran was found responsible, Trump warned that Tehran would be “hit very hard.” He subsequently went further, saying that he personally believes Iran was behind the attack.

Speaking with Avi Mimran, Gilboa warned that statements of that nature carry consequences beyond simply identifying a possible suspect.

“The moment you say that Iran is involved, it means that Israel has to act against Iran. So he doesn’t always think two steps ahead or three steps ahead, and it’s not good that he does this,” Gilboa said.

Gilboa also discussed the attention the attempted attack has received in the United States, saying the incident immediately evoked memories of the Sept. 11 attacks, particularly United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back against the terrorists who had hijacked the aircraft.

The comparison, he said, reflects the extent to which the attempted attack on the Flydubai flight is being viewed as a threat with implications extending well beyond Israel.

Gilboa also addressed concerns about foreign interference in Israel’s upcoming election. He noted that countries including Russia, Iran, China and North Korea have previously been accused of trying to influence political processes in other countries through online operations, disinformation and other methods.

At the same time, Gilboa stressed that he has no information at present that would allow him to determine whether foreign governments are currently attempting to interfere in Israel’s election or what methods they might be using.

He said Trump appears reluctant to become overly involved in Israeli electoral politics and argued that both Israel and the United States should refrain from intervening in each other’s domestic political affairs.

Gilboa also addressed the escalating fighting in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia is backing a major campaign against the Houthis aimed at restoring areas surrounding the strategically critical Bab el-Mandeb Strait to the control of Yemen’s internationally recognized government.

Forces aligned with the Yemeni government and backed by Saudi Arabia have launched a broad offensive in the area amid heavy airstrikes against Houthi positions.

The discussion comes as the Flydubai incident continues to expose questions surrounding Israel’s procedures for screening foreign airline personnel.

During a Knesset discussion Tuesday, lawmakers were told that 1,240 airline crew members carrying passports from countries that do not maintain diplomatic relations with Israel have entered the country since the beginning of the year.

The revelation has added urgency to efforts to overhaul the screening process following the Flydubai attack, with Israeli officials now moving toward requiring flight crews from designated high-risk countries to submit their information for security vetting 48 hours before operating flights to Israel.

{Matzav.com}

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Binyomin Netanyahu on the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 massacre, offering his support to Israel and declaring that those responsible for the Hamas-led attack are now “paying a very big price.”

“I spoke with Bibi Netanyahu, and I wished him well, and I wished the people of Israel well. That was a horrible day, a horrible tragedy – horrible,” Trump told reporters.

Trump then delivered a pointed message about the consequences faced by those responsible for the attack.

“The other side is paying a very big price for what they did on October 7, believe me,” the president said.

Trump did not disclose precisely when the conversation with Netanyahu took place or reveal whether the two leaders discussed other issues during the call.

The conversation came as Israel marked three years since the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, when approximately 1,200 people were murdered and 251 were abducted into Gaza.

Memorial ceremonies were held across Israel on Wednesday, including in communities along the Gaza border and at the site of the Nova music festival massacre, as survivors, bereaved families and officials commemorated the victims of the deadliest terror attack in Israel’s history.

Trump’s remarks come as the situation in Gaza remains unresolved despite the ceasefire and hostage agreement reached under his administration last year.

The first stage of Trump’s Gaza plan produced a ceasefire and the release of the remaining living hostages held in Gaza, but several of the plan’s central objectives have yet to be fully implemented.

Most significantly, Hamas has not been fully disarmed, Israel has not completed the withdrawal envisioned under the plan, and the enormous task of rebuilding Gaza has barely begun. Israel continues to control roughly two-thirds of the Gaza Strip, while military operations have continued despite the ceasefire framework.

In July, Trump announced what he called a “HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza,” describing it as a major step in the implementation of his 20-point Gaza plan.

Under the framework, Hamas is to surrender its weapons in stages, Israeli forces are to withdraw as the disarmament process is completed, and an International Stabilization Force is eventually to work alongside a new Palestinian police force to maintain security.

Implementation, however, has proven difficult. Israel has maintained that it will not complete its withdrawal until Hamas is genuinely disarmed, while disagreements have persisted over how that disarmament would be carried out and verified.

The Gaza Health Ministry says at least 1,400 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire took effect in October 2025. The Hamas-run ministry does not distinguish in its figures between civilians and combatants.

Meanwhile, the Trump-created Board of Peace has sought to move forward with reconstruction plans despite the unresolved security situation. In September, the board unveiled an initial $2.45 billion program aimed at beginning reconstruction and governance projects in the devastated territory.

The scale of the rebuilding challenge is far greater. International estimates have placed Gaza’s long-term reconstruction and recovery needs in the tens of billions of dollars, with the United Nations and European Union estimating that the process could require more than $70 billion over the coming decade.

Against that backdrop, Trump’s anniversary conversation with Netanyahu offered no indication of a new diplomatic breakthrough. Instead, the president focused publicly on the enormity of the Oct. 7 attack and the consequences that have followed for those responsible.

“The other side is paying a very big price for what they did on October 7, believe me,” Trump said.

{Matzav.com}

Three years after the October 7 massacre, the IDF has opened to journalists a sprawling Hamas tunnel complex near Kibbutz Nachal Oz that military officials say was used by terrorists involved in one of the deadliest battles of the attack and later served as part of the underground network into which Israeli hostages were taken. Pasted markdown

The tunnel, stretching approximately a mile and a half beneath Gaza, contains reinforced doors, living quarters, electricity, running water, air conditioning and other infrastructure that allowed Hamas terrorists to remain underground for extended periods. An IDF commander described the network as effectively “a city under a city.”

The newly exposed tunnel lies less than half a mile from Nachal Oz, one of the communities and military positions hit hardest when Hamas launched its massive invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

“It is hard to imagine, but it [the tunnel] is all connected and goes back to [Gaza City],” an IDF commander in the southern Gaza Strip told reporters.

From above ground, there was little to indicate what lay underneath. The entrance was concealed in an area that has since been largely leveled, with what appeared to be an ordinary screen door leading down into the underground system.

Once inside, however, reporters encountered an extensive Hamas installation built for prolonged use. A massive reinforced door had been installed near the entrance, designed to delay Israeli soldiers attempting to enter while giving terrorists time to escape through another route.

The underground compound included several rooms, sleeping quarters, a bathroom and sink, air-conditioning equipment and a functioning water system. Electrical wires ran along the narrow corridors, lights were installed along the walls, and pipes carried water through the complex.

“Many thousands [of Hamas terrorists] could live in the tunnels,” the commander said.

The revelation comes exactly three years after the October 7 attack, in which approximately 1,200 people were killed across southern Israel and 251 people were abducted into Gaza.

Nachal Oz was among the scenes of the most devastating fighting. Hamas terrorists attacked both the IDF base and the neighboring kibbutz, overwhelming Israeli defenses before murdering soldiers and civilians and abducting Israelis into Gaza.

A subsequent IDF investigation into the fall of the Nachal Oz military base described what happened there as a “systemic failure.” There were 162 soldiers stationed at the base that morning, including only about 90 who were armed, when waves of Hamas terrorists descended on the facility.

Military investigators later determined that Hamas had gathered extraordinarily detailed intelligence about the base before the attack. The terror group knew its layout, the location of barracks and bomb shelters, where commanders slept, the number of soldiers ordinarily stationed there, where surveillance cameras were positioned and how long it was expected to take Israeli reinforcements to arrive.

Hamas had even calculated that it could reach and penetrate the base within approximately 15 minutes of crossing the Gaza border. The terrorists took slightly longer than that to break in, but major Israeli reinforcements would not arrive for hours.

At approximately 6:30 a.m., surveillance soldiers began detecting Hamas squads moving toward the border carrying explosives. Terrorists subsequently blasted through sections of the border defenses and began pouring into Israel on foot, motorcycles and pickup trucks.

The Nachal Oz base was located only about 850 meters from the Gaza border. Despite that proximity and its critical surveillance role, investigators found serious weaknesses in its defenses. Guard positions were inadequately manned, troops were not prepared for an assault of such magnitude and Hamas rapidly overwhelmed the forces attempting to defend the installation.

Approximately 215 Hamas terrorists ultimately stormed the base in several waves. Fifty-three Israeli soldiers were killed there, including 16 female surveillance soldiers, and 10 soldiers were abducted into Gaza.

Seven of those abducted were female surveillance soldiers. Ori Megidish was subsequently rescued by Israeli forces. Noa Marciano was killed in captivity and her body recovered by the IDF. Liri Albag, Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, Naama Levy and Agam Berger were eventually freed in hostage agreements.

Images of the captured surveillance soldiers became some of the most haunting footage from October 7. Several were seen bloodied and injured after being taken prisoner, surrounded by armed Hamas terrorists.

The IDF base’s extensive network of security cameras captured portions of the assault as Hamas fighters overwhelmed the facility. Terrorists attacked soldiers in shelters and eventually set fire to the command center after Israeli troops inside refused to surrender.

At the same time, Hamas terrorists invaded nearby Kibbutz Nachal Oz. Seven people were abducted from the kibbutz itself, while residents were murdered and homes were burned during the attack.

The tunnel now shown to reporters was part of the underground system used after the assault. According to the IDF commander who led journalists through it, 18 soldiers and civilians abducted from the Nachal Oz area were taken into the tunnel network. Israeli military officials believe some hostages may subsequently have been held inside portions of the complex during the Gaza war.

The scale and sophistication of the facility provide another glimpse into the underground infrastructure Hamas constructed beneath Gaza over many years. Rather than serving merely as passageways, portions of the network were built as functioning subterranean bases where terrorists could eat, sleep, communicate and remain hidden for extended periods.

An IDF commander who has been involved in operations against Hamas’s underground infrastructure estimated that Israeli forces have destroyed at least 32 miles of tunnels during operations under his command since the war began.

But the military believes hundreds of miles of Hamas tunnels remain beneath Gaza. The commander estimated that dismantling the remaining network — believed to total more than 300 miles — could “take years.”

The journalists were also taken to an IDF position inside Gaza overlooking Deir al-Balah. Israeli officials said the territory presently under IDF control represents nearly 70 percent of Gaza and that there are “no Palestinians inside the IDF-controlled territory.”

Despite the ceasefire that has prevented a return to the full-scale warfare seen earlier in the conflict, Israeli troops continue to face attacks from Hamas. Military officials said terrorists detonated a roadside bomb against an IDF engineering vehicle only days before the journalists toured the area.

Israeli officials also say Hamas is using the relative lull to replenish its ranks and rebuild its capabilities.

“Hamas is doing everything to rebuild,” an IDF official from a Gaza Strip military post said. “A Gaza boy at the age 15 [in 2023] is now recruitable.”

The tour also brought journalists to Kibbutz Kfar Aza, another Gaza-border community devastated on October 7. Sixty-four residents were killed there, including children, and numerous residents were abducted.

IDF spokeswoman Rona Epstein, who grew up in Kfar Aza, told reporters that her brother, Netta, was among those murdered. During the Hamas attack, Netta threw himself on a grenade to shield his partner, Irene Shavit. When IDF soldiers eventually reached the scene, they found Shavit alive beneath his body.

Kfar Aza was home to approximately 1,000 people before October 7 and had employed Gazans in an effort to foster peaceful relations between the communities. Three years later, only about 200 residents and volunteers are living there.

The newly exposed tunnel near Nahal Oz stands as another physical reminder of what was waiting just across the border before October 7: an extensive underground military infrastructure running beneath Gaza, close to Israeli communities that would become some of the principal targets of the deadliest terrorist attack in Israel’s history.

{Matzav.com}

Microsoft’s Windows operating system, the longstanding flagship of the company’s software empire, is getting a revamp for the AI age.

The company unveiled a variety of updates to Windows on Wednesday, including incorporating AI agents and other AI tools directly into the PC software, as Microsoft seeks to ensure that its products remain at the center of a rapidly changing tech industry.

Speaking at San Francisco’s Dogpatch Studios, Chief Executive Satya Nadella said Windows is becoming a “hybrid intelligence” system, meaning there will be capabilities for cloud-based AI, as well as AI that runs locally through products like the coding tool GitHub.

“Just having the [AI] model doesn’t do much for anything,” Nadella said, explaining that Microsoft is bringing together local AI, AI-powered software, and devices built natively for AI, such as the new Surface Laptop Ultra that the company unveiled at the event. “Some of the things you’ve been using all click together.”

Microsoft was one of the first Big Tech companies to recognize the importance of generative AI, investing $13 billion in OpenAI and partnering with the company years ago. But the alliance between the two companies weakened, and Microsoft is now trying to find its lane in a crowded AI landscape as competitors like Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic take the lead developing the most advanced large language models, and Meta carves out a space with its Muse personal AI assistant.

A big part of Microsoft’s plans involves integrating the reimagined Copilot AI app seamlessly into Windows. This means having Copilot run tasks without having to access the cloud when those tasks don’t need heavy compute, according to Jacob Andreou, the head of Copilot. A user, for example, will be able to have Copilot autonomously pull all of the files they need to file taxes from various parts of their laptop and do so without accessing the cloud, making it cheaper and faster.

“Copilot now truly understands your PC,” he said. “It’s copilot built natively for Windows.”

While Microsoft operates one of the industry’s largest cloud computing services, the company is betting that having a strong presence throughout the “tech stack” could give it an edge as AI transforms the way businesses operate. Local AI has become a popular way for coders and other users to experience the technology because it can be cheaper and safer than running AI on the cloud.

Microsoft is also tying its updates to its new Surface Laptop Ultra, a high-end device built for developers and creators. A user on the Ultra, the company showed, can play video games while editing a video and running AI workloads. Nadella was joined on stage by Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang. The new Surface Laptop Ultra uses Nvidia’s RTX Spark “superchip,” which Huang called “a beast” of a product.

The Ultra will cost $2,599, while the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box that works alongside the Ultra will cost $5,999. The laptop will be available beginning October 16, and the box in November.

Nadella has recently refocused Microsoft on the basics after initially also pursuing general consumer AI with Copilot. Microsoft aims to own the enterprise side of AI workflows and cloud computing. Wednesday’s event was an extension of presentations it made at its June Build conference. During the conference, it introduced an AI wearable badge-like device and a cube-like device with a voice-activated screen, though it hasn’t yet provided an update.

Microsoft is reorienting its Copilot AI brand and its leading software for the AI era. It is also positioning its devices as the vehicle best suited to optimize customers’ workflows, without bogging down users with numerous Copilots. Microsoft received many initial user complaints about Copilot’s nonstop presence within the Windows OS.

The company’s redesigned Copilot app will now be a central interface through which customers can chat with AI bots, tap AI tools to help accomplish tasks, write code, and access a new Autopilot feature that brings agentic capabilities.

An Autopilot feature on the app will let users name their agent, assign it a role and a goal, and then set it loose on tasks such as project updates, tracking work decisions and deadlines, reminding colleagues when commitments are due, gathering prep materials, and reaching out to partners.

Microsoft is betting that this new “super app” will boost Copilot by connecting AI directly to its already lucrative business tools. As OpenAI and Anthropic push into enterprise offerings, Microsoft is racing to protect its turf and keep pace with customer expectations.

In July, the company said its Microsoft 365 Copilot had surpassed 30 million paid seats, with net seats added doubling quarter over quarter. Its shares have rebounded over the past six months on the strength of its cloud computing business, fueled by AI demand and Copilot growth. Its next quarterly earnings report is expected later this month.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is launching a broad federal initiative aimed at studying and assisting people who say they suffered serious injuries following vaccination, including a new National Institutes of Health clinic devoted to such patients and proposed changes intended to encourage doctors to report suspected vaccine side effects.

Kennedy traveled to the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland, earlier this week for an unannounced visit in which he met with patients who believe they were injured by vaccines and unveiled elements of the new program, according to people familiar with the initiative.

The initiative represents one of Kennedy’s most significant moves yet on an issue he championed for years before becoming President Trump’s health secretary: his contention that Americans reporting serious health problems after vaccination have often been ignored or dismissed by the medical establishment.

A centerpiece of the effort is a new NIH clinic that will both study and provide care to patients with suspected vaccine injuries. Kennedy attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the clinic during his visit to the Bethesda campus.

The administration is also working on a new medical billing code that would allow physicians to be reimbursed for the time involved in filing reports of serious suspected vaccine reactions. The proposal is designed to increase reporting to the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, known as VAERS, which is jointly administered by the CDC and FDA.

VAERS accepts reports of health problems occurring after vaccination, but a report by itself does not establish that a vaccine caused the condition. The system is intended to detect potential safety signals that can then be investigated using additional data and research.

Kennedy’s initiative is expected to extend beyond the new clinic. Federal officials have been examining ways to modernize the government’s vaccine-injury reporting and compensation systems, areas Kennedy has repeatedly argued are inadequate for people who believe they have suffered genuine vaccine-related injuries.

The federal government already recognizes that vaccines, like other medical products, can in rare cases cause serious adverse reactions. The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, created by Congress in 1986, provides a special legal mechanism through which people alleging injuries from certain vaccines can seek compensation without first bringing a conventional product-liability lawsuit against a vaccine manufacturer.

Under that program, claimants can receive compensation for medical expenses, lost earnings, pain and suffering and, in cases involving a vaccine-related death, payments to an estate. Some conditions appearing within specified periods after particular vaccines are listed on the government’s Vaccine Injury Table and receive a presumption of causation, while other claims require evidence establishing that the vaccine caused the injury.

Kennedy has been openly dissatisfied with how that system operates. In July 2025, he disclosed that he had assembled a team to examine major changes to the compensation program, saying the government needed to better serve people who have suffered legitimate vaccine injuries.

Those efforts have since generated a fierce debate within medicine and public health. Kennedy and his supporters argue that patients reporting debilitating symptoms after vaccination deserve serious investigation, medical care and a fair opportunity to obtain compensation. Medical organizations agree that genuine vaccine injuries should be identified and compensated but have strongly objected to proposals they say could presume causation for conditions where scientific evidence has not established a link.

That dispute became particularly intense this year over a petition seeking a dramatic expansion of the Vaccine Injury Table. Medical and infectious-disease organizations warned Kennedy in May that adding hundreds of conditions without adequate scientific evidence could overwhelm the compensation system and make it harder for patients with well-established vaccine injuries to receive timely assistance.

The new NIH effort could potentially address one of the central points of disagreement by placing greater emphasis on research intended to determine which reported conditions actually have a causal relationship with vaccination and which merely occurred afterward.

Kennedy’s latest move comes amid a much broader transformation of federal vaccine policy under his leadership. He has overhauled the CDC’s vaccine advisory structure and pursued significant changes to federal vaccination recommendations, actions that have triggered lawsuits and intense opposition from state officials and major medical organizations.

Kennedy’s critics argue that his approach risks undermining confidence in vaccines that have prevented enormous numbers of illnesses and deaths. His supporters counter that investigating possible adverse effects more aggressively should strengthen rather than weaken public confidence by demonstrating that federal health agencies take safety concerns seriously.

The controversy is particularly sensitive because establishing that an illness occurred after a vaccination is fundamentally different from demonstrating that the vaccine caused it. Serious medical events occur naturally in large populations, meaning researchers generally need controlled studies, epidemiological data and other evidence before determining whether a particular condition occurs more frequently among vaccinated people than would otherwise be expected.

Kennedy has nevertheless made clear that people who believe they have been injured will occupy a more prominent place in federal health policy. Speaking last month at a conference hosted by Children’s Health Defense, the organization he previously led, Kennedy pledged to continue fighting for people who report vaccine injuries and told attendees that they have a “strong and steadfast friend at the White House.”

The administration has not yet publicly released all of the new initiative’s details, including precisely how the NIH clinic will select patients, which vaccines and medical conditions will be studied, how large the research program will become, or how much federal funding will be devoted to it.

But the establishment of a dedicated NIH clinic, combined with efforts to pay physicians for reporting suspected adverse reactions and Kennedy’s continuing push to overhaul the compensation system, signals that vaccine injury is becoming a distinct research and policy priority within the nation’s health agencies.

{Matzav.com}

The White House is pushing back forcefully against claims that President Trump suggested Iran should attack Los Angeles or San Diego, saying his controversial remarks at a Nebraska campaign rally were being stripped of their broader context and that Trump was actually arguing that the war had prevented a nuclear-armed Iran from gaining the ability to destroy an American city.

The controversy erupted after Trump addressed supporters Monday in Grand Island, Nebraska, while defending the ongoing war with Iran and acknowledging the economic pain Americans have experienced, particularly from higher fuel prices. The president argued that those costs were comparatively minor if the conflict prevents Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and threatening the United States.

“We want to see a tremendous victory. You want to see a tremendous victory because it verifies all the things we did. And again, remember, with the war, it’s just artificial. It’s a little bit high. It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe.”

Trump then delivered the comments that quickly ignited a political firestorm.

“They can take out a city. Let them take — let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay, and it’s going to be over with very soon. It’s essentially almost over with, and they might keep going a little long,” he continued.

“You know, they always say they have a big threshold for pain. They need it. Let me tell you, they need it. But it’s going to end very soon, and it’ll end one way or the other,” Trump added.

The wording immediately drew condemnation from California officials, who interpreted the remarks literally as Trump saying the destruction of Los Angeles or San Diego would constitute an acceptable price for the war.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom accused Trump of effectively inviting an enemy nation to attack two major American cities.

“After sending the National Guard and Marines to occupy California, Donald Trump is now saying our foreign enemies should ‘take out’ Los Angeles and San Diego,” Newsom claimed. “He is deranged and dangerous.”

Newsom subsequently announced that he was “directing the State Threat Assessment Center to actively monitor the situation in the event that foreign actors interpret the President’s remarks as an invitation to target California,” while suggesting that Trump’s comments could potentially be “treasonous.”

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass similarly condemned the president, arguing that his language could have real-world security consequences.

“The President of the United States suggested that a foreign government attack Los Angeles. His statements against our city are dangerous and could potentially compromise our safety.”

“The role of a president is to protect the country, not to actively threaten it and encourage attacks on American lives,” she added. “In the face of irresponsible threats, as Angelenos, we know how to stand together and protect our city.”

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria also joined the criticism, declaring that his city could never be treated as expendable in a military conflict.

“San Diego is not collateral damage,” Gloria said. “We are not expendable. And we are never a ‘small price to pay.’ Keep our city out of your reckless war talk.”

The White House, however, says that interpretation badly misrepresents Trump’s point. Administration officials said the president was discussing the potential consequences of allowing Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon and was arguing that the temporary economic costs associated with preventing that outcome are a small price compared with the destruction that a nuclear Iran could eventually inflict.

The White House’s Rapid Response account issued an unusually blunt response after a Los Angeles Times headline characterized Trump as suggesting that Iran be allowed to attack the California cities.

“No, he didn’t, you buffoons,” Rapid Response said.

“He was saying the U.S. is fighting to STOP Iran from having the ability to take out LA and San Diego with a nuclear weapon — which they would if they had the chance,” it continued.

White House Communications Director Steven Cheung offered the same explanation, saying the uproar surrounding the remarks is “not rooted in reality”.

“He was clearly stating US cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped,” Cheung said. “America is safer because of the President. Iran has no nuclear, no navy, no air force, and no money”.

A review of Trump’s broader comments during the Nebraska appearance shows that the remarks came during an extended discussion of the economic consequences of the Iran war, particularly gasoline prices, and his contention that Americans were paying a relatively modest price to eliminate a far greater potential threat.

Trump had made that argument more explicitly earlier, telling a Nebraska news outlet that the higher cost of fuel would subside once the conflict ended and directly linking the economic sacrifice to preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

“We’re going to get [the cost of fuel] down,” Trump said. “But it’s all going to come pouring down as soon as the war’s over, which will be very soon. And we will not have Iran having a nuclear weapon. And that’s going to be — and I say it and I say it proudly — a relatively small price to pay for keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of a lunatic nation.”

Trump has repeatedly argued that Iran’s nuclear ambitions ultimately posed a threat beyond Israel and the Middle East. In his February State of the Union address, shortly before the U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran began, Trump warned that Tehran was “working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America.”

Iran, however, is not currently known to possess a nuclear weapon or an operational ballistic missile capable of striking the continental United States directly from Iranian territory. Its longest-range operational ballistic missiles fall far short of the distance required to reach California, although U.S. officials have long warned that technologies developed through Iran’s space-launch program could contribute to a future intercontinental ballistic missile capability.

That distinction has become part of the broader argument over Trump’s remarks. Critics contend that regardless of his intended point, a president should not use language that can be heard as suggesting an enemy could be permitted to destroy American cities. The White House counters that Trump’s meaning becomes apparent when the comments are viewed alongside his repeated warnings about what Iran could eventually do if permitted to acquire nuclear weapons and long-range delivery systems.

{Matzav.com}

California is moving closer to effectively banning the fabrication of many popular engineered-quartz countertops, as state regulators confront a rapidly worsening epidemic of silicosis that has sickened nearly 600 countertop workers, led to dozens of deaths and forced scores of patients to undergo lung transplants.

The proposed regulation would prohibit workers in California from fabricating or manufacturing engineered-stone countertops and similar products containing more than 1 percent crystalline silica. That would encompass most traditional engineered quartz, which can contain more than 90 percent crystalline silica.

The California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board voted unanimously in May to begin the process of establishing the prohibition, directing Cal/OSHA to pursue emergency rulemaking. Cal/OSHA has since moved the proposal forward, releasing a draft standard in September and soliciting public comments as regulators work toward a final rule.

The danger is not primarily to homeowners who have quartz countertops installed in their kitchens. Rather, the crisis involves workers who manufacture and fabricate the slabs, particularly those who cut, grind, drill and polish engineered stone. Those activities can release extremely fine particles of crystalline silica into the air, which workers can inhale deep into their lungs.

Repeated exposure can cause silicosis, a progressive and incurable disease in which scar tissue develops in the lungs, eventually making it increasingly difficult for patients to breathe. Severe cases can require lung transplantation and can be fatal.

The scale of California’s outbreak has risen dramatically. Researchers reported in August that California health officials had identified 592 cases of engineered-stone silicosis between January 2019 and June 2026. Of those workers, 65 had undergone lung transplants and 31 had died. Researchers cautioned that the actual number of cases is almost certainly higher because many workers have never been screened or have been misdiagnosed.

The disease has struck workers at unusually young ages. California officials have said that approximately 98 percent of workers diagnosed with industry-related silicosis in the state are Latino men and that the average age of workers who died was under 50.

Engineered stone has become enormously popular because it can offer the appearance of natural stone while being durable, consistent and available in a wide variety of designs. Unlike slabs of natural granite or marble, engineered quartz is generally produced by crushing quartz and combining it with resins and pigments.

That manufacturing process is at the heart of the health concern. Traditional engineered stone can contain extraordinarily high concentrations of crystalline silica, meaning that cutting and grinding it can generate large amounts of dangerous silica dust.

California has already tried imposing stricter workplace rules rather than eliminating the material. An emergency silica standard was adopted in late 2023, followed by permanent requirements in 2025 governing such practices as cutting, grinding, polishing, cleanup, respiratory protection and exposure monitoring.

But state officials concluded that those measures have not been enough. Cal/OSHA and Standards Board staff found that workers fabricating and installing artificial stone continued to face significant exposure risks and that the silicosis crisis was worsening despite existing protections.

California health officials have also warned that even commonly required safeguards, including wet-cutting methods designed to suppress dust, may not always reduce silica exposure sufficiently to prevent disease. The sophisticated equipment and controls needed to maintain extremely low exposure levels can also be difficult and expensive for smaller fabrication shops to implement consistently.

The proposed rule therefore represents a fundamental change in strategy: instead of attempting only to control the dust generated by high-silica engineered stone, California would largely remove the hazardous material itself from fabrication workplaces.

Importantly, the proposal is not a blanket prohibition on every product marketed as quartz or engineered stone. The key threshold is crystalline silica content. Under the draft approach, engineered-stone products containing more than 1 percent crystalline silica would be prohibited from fabrication, pushing manufacturers and contractors toward low- or no-crystalline-silica alternatives.

Manufacturers have already begun developing substitute products using materials such as amorphous silica, which carries a substantially lower silicosis risk than crystalline silica.

California would not be the first jurisdiction to take drastic action. Australia banned the manufacture, supply, processing and installation of engineered stone beginning in 2024 after its own surge in silicosis among countertop workers. California officials and researchers have repeatedly pointed to the Australian response while considering how to address the growing number of cases in the state.

The California epidemic was barely recognized several years ago. The state identified its first known countertop-fabrication silicosis case in 2019. That worker was diagnosed at just 32 years old and died of respiratory failure at 38. Investigators subsequently discovered additional cases among workers at the same company, helping reveal what has since become a statewide occupational-health crisis.

By November 2025, California had confirmed 432 cases, including at least 25 deaths and 48 lung transplants. By June 2026, those figures had climbed to 592 cases, 31 deaths and 65 transplants — illustrating how rapidly additional victims are being identified.

Enforcement has also intensified. Through its silica enforcement initiative, Cal/OSHA has issued more than 900 citations carrying approximately $1.9 million in proposed penalties and conducted hundreds of workplace consultations reaching more than 27,000 employees.

The proposed ban would directly affect California’s countertop-fabrication industry and could have broader implications for manufacturers, contractors, kitchen remodelers and consumers. High-silica engineered quartz has become one of the most widely used countertop materials in American homes, and California’s enormous construction and remodeling market means a prohibition could accelerate the industry’s shift toward alternative products nationwide.

For now, however, quartz countertops have not simply been “banned” in California. The state is still in the rulemaking process. The Standards Board authorized Cal/OSHA to pursue an emergency prohibition, and regulators released a draft in September targeting fabrication and manufacture of artificial stone containing more than 1 percent crystalline silica.

If the rule takes effect substantially as proposed, California would become the first U.S. state to impose such a sweeping restriction on high-silica engineered stone, transforming a product found in countless kitchens into the target of one of the nation’s most significant occupational-health crackdowns in years.

{Matzav.com}

Federal officers busted in a door made an arrest at a Lakewood-area home today following an investigation, TLS has learned.

Sources told TLS the investigation apparently began a while back after the suspect allegedly ordered drugs online that were intercepted while going through the U.S. Postal Service system. However, someone in the household apparently continued the illegal activity, leading federal authorities to investigate further.

Yesterday, a drone was spotted flying overhead and was apparently conducting surveillance in the area.

Today, federal officers arrived at the home.

Moments after someone went outside to pick up the mail, officers reportedly busted down the door and entered the residence, making an arrest.

The investigation remains ongoing

A special service is taking the concept of a mobile shul to an entirely different level, offering families and event organizers the ability to have virtually everything needed for a fully functioning minyan delivered directly to their location.

Known as “The Rolling Shul,” the service provides a complete portable shul setup for occasions where a regular shul may not be readily available, including family events, retreats, weekends away and other gatherings throughout the tristate area and beyond.

Rather than forcing organizers to piece together a temporary shul on their own, The Rolling Shul delivers and arranges the entire setup at the requested location.

Available equipment includes an aron kodesh, bimah and amud, along with custom bookcases already stocked with siddurim, chumashim and seforim. Sifrei Torah and talleisim can also be provided, allowing organizers to have the necessities of a functioning minyan prepared in advance.

The service even offers bris equipment, making it possible to create an appropriate setting for a bris milah at a location that does not ordinarily have the necessary furnishings.

The idea is simple: instead of finding a shul near the event, bring the shul to the event.

The Rolling Shul handles delivery, setup and arrangement, with its promotional message summing up the concept: “You plan the event, we bring the shul.”

The service is available throughout the tristate area and beyond, with full shul setups brought directly to the customer’s location.

For additional information, The Rolling Shul can be reached at 848-240-4321 or [email protected].

More than 1,200 foreign airline crew members from countries that do not maintain diplomatic relations with Israel have been permitted to enter the country since the beginning of 2026, including citizens of Syria, Lebanon and Oman, according to newly revealed figures that are raising fresh questions about Israel’s screening of foreign aviation personnel.

The number, reported Tuesday by Kan News, has taken on particular significance following the attempted hijacking of a FlyDubai flight bound for Tel Aviv, after it emerged that the Omani co-pilot accused of carrying out the attack had previously drawn the attention of authorities in his own country over concerns about extremist activity.

The figure does not mean that the 1,200 crew members were suspected of terrorism or other wrongdoing. Rather, it highlights the extent to which foreign airline personnel from countries ordinarily subject to heightened Israeli entry restrictions routinely arrive as part of international flight crews — and has fueled questions about exactly how those individuals are vetted before being permitted to fly into Israel.

The Omani co-pilot at the center of the FlyDubai attack, Imam Al-Hamami, had not previously escaped the notice of authorities. According to reports that emerged following the attack, Omani officials had become concerned about his online activity and what they regarded as an excessive interest in radical ideology.

Those concerns were serious enough that Al-Hamami was reportedly removed from flying duties at Oman Air, the country’s national carrier. He was transferred to an office position and sent through an anti-extremism program.

But the information apparently stopped there. The Wall Street Journal reported that the concerns surrounding Al-Hamami were not transmitted to other relevant authorities or entered into a system that would have prevented him from obtaining another aviation job abroad.

Al-Hamami subsequently secured employment with FlyDubai. According to information published since the attack, the airline did not approach Omani authorities for a detailed account of his previous employment or the reasons he had stopped flying for Oman Air. Instead, the hiring process reportedly relied on a criminal-background check that did not reveal the earlier security concerns.

The apparent gap proved particularly consequential because Al-Hamami was not merely hired as a commercial pilot. He was assigned to routes serving Israel and had reportedly flown into the country several times before the attempted hijacking without being identified as a potential security threat.

Only after the attack did investigators begin piecing together the history of warnings surrounding him. Reuters reported that Al-Hamami subsequently told investigators in the United Arab Emirates that he had planned the attack even before FlyDubai hired him, a revelation that has intensified scrutiny of how he was able to secure the position and repeatedly operate flights to Israel.

Authorities in the UAE are now examining the conduct of FlyDubai personnel involved in hiring Al-Hamami and whether proper procedures were followed before he was permitted to fly for the carrier.

Investigators in Abu Dhabi and Yerushalayim are also reportedly examining whether Al-Hamami’s radicalization may have begun earlier, including during a period in which he lived in Australia. Authorities are seeking to reconstruct his activities and determine when warning signs first appeared and whether information existed that could have prevented him from gaining access to an Israel-bound cockpit.

The attempted attack has now expanded into a broader examination of the system governing foreign airline crews entering Israel. Unlike ordinary travelers, airline personnel operate under specialized aviation procedures, raising questions about which Israeli agency is ultimately responsible for ensuring that potentially dangerous crew members are identified before they reach the country.

Transportation Minister Miri Regev said over the weekend that the responsibility for intelligence screening and security vetting of foreign flight crews does not rest with the Transportation Ministry. She said those duties belong to Israel’s security authorities.

The Wall Street Journal, however, has reported that the failures were not confined to FlyDubai or Oman. Its reporting also pointed to shortcomings on the Israeli side, including within the mechanisms overseen by Israeli authorities and the Transportation Ministry for screening foreign airline crews entering the country.

The disclosure that more than 1,200 crew members from countries without diplomatic relations with Israel have entered since January is now adding urgency to that dispute. Among those personnel were citizens of countries that remain formally hostile to Israel, including Syria and Lebanon, as well as Oman, which has no diplomatic relations with Israel.

The central question facing investigators is no longer only how Al-Hamami was hired by FlyDubai, but how information about a pilot who had reportedly already been flagged for extremist concerns failed to follow him through the international aviation system — and how he was subsequently able to fly repeatedly into Israel before allegedly attempting to bring down a passenger aircraft bound for Tel Aviv.

{Matzav.com}

Israeli forces launched several brigade-level operations across Judea and Samaria on Wednesday targeting suspects accused of supporting the October 7 massacre, terrorism and incitement, as security forces marked three years since Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel, according to the IDF.

IDF and Shin Bet forces carried out warning interrogations and other operations against individuals identified by security officials as supporting terrorist activity.

The raids followed a separate operation launched to demolish monuments and memorials erected across Judea and Samaria in honor of terrorists.

Israeli forces have increasingly focused on incitement and public glorification of terrorism as security officials warn that online radicalization can rapidly translate into attacks carried out by individuals without formal organizational affiliations.

The operation was deliberately carried out on the anniversary of the Hamas massacre, which left approximately 1,200 people dead and resulted in 251 people being abducted into Gaza.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

A new book by former senior Biden administration official Brett McGurk is revealing extraordinary behind-the-scenes details of the negotiations that produced the January 2025 Gaza hostage deal — including heated confrontations in which incoming Trump envoy Steve Witkoff reportedly threatened Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with President Donald Trump’s wrath if Israel backed away from an agreement.

According to details from the book reported by The Times of Israel, the outgoing Biden administration and incoming Trump team worked unusually closely during the final days of negotiations, as both sought to secure the release of hostages before Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025.

Trump had already publicly warned there would be “hell to pay” if the hostages were not released by the time he entered office.

The negotiations accelerated in early January after Hamas provided a list of hostages it was prepared to release but presented additional demands, including the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences and changes to the extent of an IDF withdrawal inside Gaza.

McGurk and Witkoff traveled to Doha, where Qatar’s prime minister reportedly believed the gaps could be narrowed to approximately 110 prisoners serving life sentences and an Israeli withdrawal of roughly 700 meters.

McGurk remained uncomfortable with the concessions. Witkoff, according to the account, had a dramatically different reaction.

“This is all [EXPLETIVE REMOVED], we’re saving lives here, and we can’t fail because of a line on a map or seventy-five or 100 prisoners,” Witkoff reportedly said.

The confrontation became considerably more intense during a January 11 meeting in Yerushalayim.

Netanyahu pushed back against the proposed terms and argued that additional pressure should be placed on Hamas. Witkoff reportedly lost patience.

“We’re closing this deal tomorrow. If you want to fight over ten or twenty prisoners, you’ll never get the hostages. Come on,” he told Netanyahu.

McGurk then proposed providing Israel with a letter from President Biden affirming Israel’s right to resume military operations if Hamas violated the agreement. Witkoff said Trump would sign the same commitment.

When Netanyahu’s advisers continued raising objections, Witkoff reportedly made clear that the incoming president was behind him.

“What Brett just said, that’s Trump’s position, so if you want to walk away, you can call Trump, and you’ll hear it from him. Come on, guys… You want to call Trump, Bibi?”

Netanyahu reportedly attempted to explain the political difficulties he faced with members of his coalition and Cabinet.

Witkoff was unmoved.

“So you’re leaving hostages in tunnels for what, another hundred days, forever, all for three hundred meters? That’s your position? Are you kidding me?”

The meeting was halted while Netanyahu consulted with his Cabinet. Later that night, according to McGurk, Witkoff informed him that Netanyahu had agreed to the terms.

Several days later, on January 15, the negotiations appeared to finally reach the finish line. McGurk threatened to leave Doha and tell Trump that Qatar and Egypt had failed to deliver Hamas.

Shortly afterward, Hamas gave its approval.

The atmosphere immediately changed.

Then-Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar opened a bottle of whiskey and poured drinks for those in the room. Witkoff, who generally does not drink alcohol, reportedly made an exception. Mossad Director David Barnea raised his glass and said, “L’chaim!”

Trump quickly announced that an agreement had been reached.

But the celebration nearly proved premature.

The following day, Netanyahu reportedly introduced another demand: Israel wanted advance approval of the identities of all 110 Palestinian prisoners who would be released.

Witkoff erupted.

“Are you [EXPLETIVE REMOVED] kidding me right now?” he reportedly said.

Barnea responded: “That’s our prime minister.”

Witkoff shot back: “No, no, you opened that whiskey. I told Trump we had a deal, there’s one thing you don’t do with me, or with Trump. Back out of a deal.”

According to the account, Witkoff threatened to immediately call Trump and have him publicly declare that members of Israel’s government did not care about their own hostages.

That prompted an angry response from Barnea.

“Steve, I run the Mossad! Don’t tell me about the hostages. I’m sorry, you crossed a line.”

Barnea asked for 45 minutes to speak with Netanyahu.

Witkoff gave him 30.

Barnea subsequently returned and confirmed that Israel would proceed with the agreement.

The first hostages were released on January 19, 2025 — Biden’s final full day as president and one day before Trump returned to the White House.

McGurk’s account portrays the deal as the product of months of negotiations and major changes on the battlefield — including the elimination of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and Israel’s devastating blows against Hezbollah — but also makes clear that Trump’s election fundamentally changed the diplomatic dynamic.

Even before taking office, Trump and his team were willing to apply intense pressure to all sides — including Netanyahu — to make certain the agreement was completed.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

President Donald Trump has turned the long-running battle over daylight saving time into an extraordinary public feud with Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, publishing what he said was the Arkansas senator’s personal cellphone number and urging voters to call him directly and demand that he stop blocking legislation to end the twice-a-year changing of the clocks.

Trump’s move came as he intensified his push for the Sunshine Protection Act, legislation that would make daylight saving time permanent across most of the United States. The bill passed the House in July by a lopsided 308-117 vote but has since run into resistance in the Senate, with Cotton emerging as one of its most vocal Republican opponents.

“Everybody in Arkansas, Tom Cotton, a friend of mine, is holding up a very important Bill,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, accusing Cotton of standing in the way of what the president argues is an overwhelmingly popular change.

Trump then took the highly unusual step of posting Cotton’s cellphone number.

“To the Great People of Arkansas, please let your Senator know it would be a GREAT Bipartisan WIN for the United States Senate, and for America, itself,” Trump wrote. “Call Tom on his cellphone.”

Reporters who called the number reached either voicemail or a message indicating that the recipient was unavailable, with the voicemail box at one point becoming full.

Trump argues that Americans are fed up with moving their clocks forward and backward every year and that keeping daylight saving time permanently would provide an additional hour of afternoon and evening sunlight during the winter.

“We want to get away from this ridiculous way and custom of — every twice a year, turning your clocks back, turning your clocks forward, being late to dinner, being late for very important meetings, it’s ridiculous,” Trump told reporters.

“It discombobulates everybody,” the president said.

Trump has also argued that permanent daylight saving time would benefit sports and recreation by keeping daylight later into the afternoon and evening.

“You know who wants it? The farmers want it. You know who wants it? Sports want it,” Trump said. “Professional sports and amateurs that would like to play tennis at night, would like to play golf a little bit without having to run home after 14 holes.”

The president also shared a letter from PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp backing the legislation and arguing that additional evening daylight would allow Americans to play millions of additional rounds of golf each year.

Trump has framed the issue as more than a matter of convenience. He has argued that later sunsets could also reduce crime by allowing people to return home from work and other activities while it is still light outside.

“A table full of very distinguished people just told me that they HATE, immediately after a mandatory time change, going home at night – and it’s DARK,” Trump wrote.

“It’s depressing!” he added. “One of the gentleman stated that, ‘I just hate going home in darkness.’ It’s also, in Crime Ridden Blue States, a lot more dangerous to be walking home in the dark!”

Cotton, however, has refused to budge.

“No one likes changing the clock, me included, but Congress has enacted permanent Daylight Savings Time multiple times before and repealed it each time once Americans experienced absurdly late sunrises in the winter,” Cotton wrote. “Arkansans don’t want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and I’ll always put Arkansas first.”

Cotton’s central argument is that permanent daylight saving time simply transfers the problem from the evening to the morning. During the darkest weeks of winter, sunrise would come considerably later in many parts of the country, meaning children could be waiting for school buses and commuters could be traveling to work before sunrise.

The United States has tried year-round daylight saving time before. Congress instituted it during the energy crisis in the 1970s, but public support quickly deteriorated as Americans experienced dark winter mornings, and the experiment was cut short.

Trump responded to Cotton’s argument by accusing him of getting the issue exactly backward.

“If Tom Cotton were putting Arkansas first, he would give them an extra hour of daylight and, more importantly, they wouldn’t have to run all over their houses, farms, work places, and everywhere else, twice a year, having to change their Clocks, and often forgetting to do so,” Trump wrote.

The president then turned up the political pressure, arguing that Republicans should seize what he sees as an easy bipartisan legislative victory.

“Give the Republican Party a Senatorial WIN, for a change!” Trump wrote. “TAKE THE WIN TOM, JUST TAKE THE WIN! YOU NEED IT, AND SO DOES OUR BELOVED REPUBLICAN PARTY!”

Cotton is seeking reelection in Arkansas this November, although his race is not considered competitive. Trump carried Arkansas with more than 64% of the vote in the 2024 presidential election.

Cotton is also not the only Republican senator skeptical of the legislation. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana has called the Sunshine Protection Act “dead as disco” and expressed doubt that Senate Majority Leader John Thune will bring it to the floor.

The dispute comes just weeks before Americans are scheduled to change their clocks again. On Nov. 1, most of the country is due to “fall back” one hour and return to standard time for the winter. The Sunshine Protection Act would eventually eliminate that ritual by keeping most of the country on daylight saving time year-round.

Polling has shown widespread dissatisfaction with the current system, although Americans remain divided over what should replace it. A 2025 AP-NORC poll found that only 12% of U.S. adults favored continuing to change the clocks twice a year, while 47% opposed the practice and 40% were neutral.

Trump’s decision to publicize Cotton’s number also recalled a similar episode during his first presidential campaign. In 2015, after then-Sen. Lindsey Graham criticized him, Trump publicly read Graham’s cellphone number during a campaign appearance and encouraged people to call him.

Now, more than a decade later, Trump has revived the tactic against another Republican senator — this time over what might ordinarily seem like one of Washington’s least dramatic policy disputes: what time Americans should see when they look at the clock.

{Matzav.com}

A senior IDF official has acknowledged that young Military Police soldiers are effectively incapable of carrying out arrests of chareidi yeshiva bochurim when confronted by hundreds of protesters, following the dramatic collapse of an attempted arrest in Modi’in that ended with the bochur being released.

“We are dealing with enormous protest operations. Young soldiers in the Military Police have absolutely no chance against an event like this,” the senior military official said. “We need much more significant police assistance, with much larger forces.”

The admission followed the chaotic events in Modi’in, where Military Police arrived to arrest Yairi Lieberman, a student at Yeshivas Ohr Hachaim who is approximately 20 days away from his wedding.

When Military Police arrived at the building, the “Black Color” alert system was activated, rapidly bringing hundreds of protesters to the scene. Demonstrators arrived from Modi’in as well as Modi’in Illit, Yerushalayim and Beit Shemesh, eventually making their way all the way to the apartment on the 11th floor.

“Suddenly, at around midnight, I heard knocking at the door, and they told me, ‘Go in, go into the room — it’s the Military Police,’” Lieberman recalled. “While they gave me time to get ready, I managed to call ‘Black Color.’”

Within a short period, hundreds of people had converged on the building. The Military Police ultimately departed without taking Lieberman into custody.

The episode has now triggered a bitter dispute between Israel Police and the IDF, with each side presenting a sharply different account of how the arrest unraveled — and, in particular, who made the decision to release Lieberman.

An internal Israel Police review placed responsibility squarely on the Military Police, saying that a small military force had operated in direct violation of established procedures.

According to the police account, the Military Police arrived to arrest the draft evader but, instead of immediately removing him from the location once the arrest had been carried out, allowed him an extended and unreasonable amount of time to prepare to leave.

That delay gave protesters time to surround the building in large numbers, eventually leaving the military force itself in serious difficulty. Israel Police said its officers were then summoned on an emergency basis to rescue the Military Police personnel and restore order.

Police also emphatically rejected any suggestion that their officers had ordered Lieberman’s release.

“The decision to release the draft evader and provide him with an order to regulate his status was made by IDF officials and not by Israel Police,” police said.

The IDF, however, presented the opposite version of events, maintaining that the decision to release Lieberman was effectively made by Israel Police.

The failed arrest comes amid mounting pressure from the attorney general for authorities to significantly increase enforcement against chareidi draft evaders.

During a discussion on the issue Tuesday, it was revealed that 64 draft evaders had managed to leave Israel without being apprehended and were arrested only when they subsequently returned to the country.

A document presented during the proceedings stated that proactive enforcement operations have effectively been absent for some time and called for action by the Military Police and military prosecutors. IDF officials said proactive enforcement will resume during October, with operations coordinated between the Military Police and local Israel Police stations.

A senior official in one of the chareidi parties said the developing situation had vindicated the position taken for years by the Peleg Yerushalmi regarding the draft issue.

“The situation we find ourselves in now, and throughout the recent period, in which there is no draft law and there are efforts by the legal authorities to push the IDF and police to resume the arrests, which will clearly lead to riots and demonstrations, proves to us first and foremost that the ‘Peleg Yerushalmi’ was right throughout the years in all of its arguments regarding the draft issue.”

The Modi’in confrontation follows several other recent cases in which attempts to arrest yeshiva bochurim were disrupted by rapidly mobilized protesters.

On the night of Hoshana Rabbah, authorities attempted to arrest a yeshiva bochur at the Paz-Hayarkon gas station on Namir Road in Tel Aviv and transfer him to the Military Police.

Within minutes, hundreds of yeshiva bochurim arrived at the scene and succeeded in removing him from the area. The protesters subsequently blocked Namir Road, with hundreds dancing and singing in the roadway.

At the same time, two other bnei yeshivos were arrested in Eilat and transferred to the Military Police.

Yakir Ralbag, formerly a student at Yeshivas Chevron-Knesses Yisrael and currently learning at Rav Sosovsky’s yeshiva in Beit Meir, was arrested in Eilat and immediately handed over to the Military Police.

His arrest followed that of a Yerushalmi kollel yungerman who had reportedly been listed as absent from military service for more than 450 days. The avreich, who married only about three months ago, was apprehended while on a family vacation in Eilat.

{Matzav.com}

Three years ago, my family stood just a few miles from Gaza with absolutely no idea how much our lives, Israel, and the Jewish world were about to change. On Thursday of Chol Hamoed Sukkot 2023, about 36 hours before the October 7 massacre, I toured southern Israel with my extended family. There were around 35 of us. We visited Kibbutz Nahal Oz, ate lunch in Netivot, met soldiers stationed near the Gaza border, and ended the day riding bikes through Kibbutz Be’eri as the sun was setting.

I remember taking a picture of that sunset in Be’eri. It was beautiful and peaceful. At the time, it was just another photo from a family trip. Looking at it now is completely different. Our guide that day was Ilan Fiorentino, a member of Kibbutz Nahal Oz who served as the community’s security chief and spent years helping protect the people around him. He showed us the area, spoke to us about life near the Gaza border, and shared his community with us. I remember how warm he was and how proud he seemed to be of the place he called home.

That would be the last tour Ilan ever gave. Thirty-six hours later, on October 7, he was killed defending his kibbutz from Hamas terrorists. The places we had just visited became scenes of unimaginable destruction. Communities we had walked through were invaded. People we had met were suddenly missing, murdered, fighting for their lives, or taken hostage. For me, October 7 was never something happening in a faraway place on a television screen. I had stood there 36 hours earlier, and three years later, that feeling has never really left me.

So much has happened since that morning. We have mourned families and communities shattered by the massacre, watched Israeli soldiers leave their homes and families to defend the country, prayed for hostages held in Gaza, attended funerals, said Tehillim, celebrated rescues and homecomings, and watched an entire generation of Jews become more connected to one another. There were moments of overwhelming darkness, but there were also moments that showed me what the Jewish people are capable of. I saw that for myself when I returned to Israel just a few months later, in January 2024.

It was a completely different Israel from the country I had left after Sukkot. The war was everywhere. Hostage posters lined Ben Gurion Airport. Israeli flags seemed to hang from every car and building. Families from the South were still displaced from their homes. Soldiers filled the streets, and entire communities had reorganized themselves around helping one another. But what I remember most from that trip is not the fear. It is the strength.

I spent time packing toys and supplies for displaced children and for the children of soldiers, tied tzitzit for chayalim, visited Sderot and saw the physical damage left behind from October 7, stood at the site of the Nova Festival and met families mourning their children, helped prepare food for soldiers near the Gaza border, and picked oranges on a kibbutz whose workforce had been devastated by the attack. I also visited injured soldiers at Tel HaShomer Hospital, danced with soldiers heading to new fronts, spent time with displaced families and children from Sderot, and visited Hostage Square, where I walked through a model tunnel meant to give people even the smallest sense of what the hostages were experiencing.

Everywhere I went, I met people who had every reason to stop, shut down, or give up. Instead, they were thinking about someone else. That trip taught me the real meaning of מי כעמך ישראל. There truly is no nation like the Jewish people.

One image from that trip has stayed with me especially strongly. The South of Israel is famous for its red kalanit flowers. Many of those flowers had been crushed and destroyed on October 7, but only a few months later, they were blooming again. To me, those flowers looked like Israel itself: hurt, changed, and carrying the scars of what had happened, but still growing.

I remember hearing a line during that trip that captured exactly what I was seeing: “Hamas tried to bury us, but they did not realize that we were seeds”. That was Israel in January 2024. In Sderot, at army bases, inside volunteer warehouses, in hospitals, at Hostage Square, at the Kotel, and inside people’s homes, I saw a country in pain that had decided it would keep going. I saw people spending their entire days packing supplies for strangers, Israelis feeding and housing soldiers, families baking challah for the front lines, and Jews from completely different backgrounds coming together to sing, pray, and give one another strength.

At one event for displaced families, a young child was asked what she was thankful to Hashem for. Her answer was simple: “Thank you Hashem for my life.” That answer has stayed with me for nearly three years. After everything she had experienced, that child still chose gratitude. That is the Israel I saw after October 7.

Over the past three years, I have also experienced October 7 from another perspective I never could have imagined on that first morning: through my work with JBN. Working behind one of the largest Jewish social media platforms has shown me a side of the story that most people never see. Behind every breaking-news post is a real family waiting for information. Behind every photo of a fallen soldier is a mother, father, sibling, friend, school, and community whose world has changed forever. Behind every hostage poster is a family refusing to let the world forget the person they love.

There were days when our feeds seemed filled with terrible news: soldiers killed, hostage updates, funerals, attacks in Israel, and antisemitic incidents around the world. Sometimes one heartbreaking story would be followed almost immediately by another. Working with JBN has made me understand the responsibility that comes with Jewish media. A person may see a post for a few seconds before scrolling on, but for the family in that post, it is not content. It is their entire life.

That has changed the way I look at news. It has taught me that we cannot allow people to become numbers. October 7 was not simply a death toll. Every person had a name, a family, a life, and a story. The same is true of every soldier who gave his or her life protecting Israel, and every hostage whose face we shared again and again so the world would not forget. Social media moves incredibly quickly. One story replaces another within minutes, and yesterday’s headline disappears under today’s news. But some stories demand that we stop scrolling. October 7 is one of them.

Three years later, I often think back to something I spoke about just one month after the attacks: the privilege we have to stand tall, stand proud, and stand strong as Jews. At the time, those words were about finding strength during one of the darkest moments our people had experienced in generations. Today, they mean even more.

Standing proud does not mean ignoring the pain of the past three years. It means carrying it with us. It means remembering Ilan Fiorentino and the communities of the Gaza border, remembering the people dancing at the Nova Festival who never came home, remembering the soldiers who ran toward danger to protect others, and remembering the hostages and their families who made sure the world learned their names and saw their faces. It also means remembering what I saw when I returned to Israel just a few months later: a people who refused to let tragedy be the end of their story.

October 7 changed Israel. It changed the Jewish people, and it changed me. When I look back at the sunset photo I took in Be’eri on October 5, 2023, I think about how little I knew in that moment. I had no idea that 36 hours later, everything around me would change. I had no idea that people I had just met would be murdered, or that places I had just visited would become names known around the world for the worst possible reasons.

But three years later, my story with Israel does not end with that sunset.

I just returned from Israel this week after spending Sukkot there, and the country I saw was alive. The streets were full, tourists were everywhere, families were traveling, restaurants were busy, and people were celebrating Sukkot. After everything Israel has gone through over the past three years, there was something incredibly powerful about simply seeing the country full of life again.

One morning, I stood on the Western Wall Heritage Foundation rooftop overlooking the Kotel during Birkat Kohanim. From above, I watched tens of thousands of Jews packed into the plaza below, listening to the Kohanim bless the crowd and then singing Hallel together. Standing there, I could not stop thinking about how far we had come. Three years earlier, we were waking up to sirens, terror, and unimaginable loss. Now I was looking down at tens of thousands of Jews standing together in Jerusalem, singing to Hashem.

That week, I also attended two concerts that captured that same feeling in a different way. At United Hatzalah’s 2026 concert, former hostage Bar Kuperstein walked onto the stage and sang. I immediately thought about the same concert one year earlier. In 2025, Bar was still being held hostage in Gaza. He would come home just one day later. This year, he was standing on a stage in Jerusalem, alive and free.

It is hard to describe what a moment like that feels like after following these stories for years, especially while working at JBN. For so long, these were faces on hostage posters and names in headlines. Then suddenly, you are watching one of them standing on a stage in front of you.

The next night, I went to the Yeshiva University concert. At one point, the entire crowd began singing “Abba Todah,” thanking G-d for everything He has done for us. This year, those words felt different. We were thanking Hashem for the miracles of the past three years, for people who came home, for soldiers who returned to their families, for a country that continued to stand, and for a Jewish people that continued to sing. We were also thanking Him for the miracles of just this past week, including the Flydubai plane incident that could have ended very differently.

Standing there and listening to thousands of people sing “Abba Todah,” I thought back to the sunset in Be’eri. Three years ago, I took a picture of a peaceful sunset 36 hours before everything changed. Three years later, I stood in Jerusalem surrounded by thousands of Jews singing Hallel, singing “Abba Todah,” and thanking Hashem for allowing us to still be here.

There has been so much pain between those two moments. There are names and faces we can never forget, and families whose lives will never be the same. October 7 will always be part of who we are. But it is not the end of the story.

Israel is alive. The Jewish people are alive. And three years later, after everything we have been through, we are still standing together, still singing, and still saying thank you.

Am Yisrael Chai.

The Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday proposed a $70,000 fee for international students seeking to work in the United States, the latest effort from the Trump administration to crack down on foreign enrollment.

A proposed rule would require schools to pay the fee for every student who participates in the optional practice training program, known as OPT, which allows students to work in jobs related to their major during or after their time in school. Students are generally eligible for one year of work post-graduation, though certain science, technology, engineering and math majors are eligible for an additional two years.

Schools would be required to pay the $70,000 for each new student’s initial application to the program, and a $30,000 fee for each renewal.

Change would be a blow to higher education and some businesses

American colleges and universities heavily recruit students from overseas as a source of tuition revenue. Tech companies and other industries also hire many international students for technical roles.

The OPT program allows international students to gain hands-on experience and fill labor shortages in high-demand STEM fields, said Fanta Aw, CEO of NAFSA, an association that represents international education.

“Driving away the talents, perspectives, and aspirations of international students will only hurt American innovation, economic growth, workforce development, and global leadership,” Aw said in a written statement.

In a statement, DHS described the fee as a response to fraud and abuse of the visa program, which it called a “pipeline for cheap foreign labor.”

The public has 60 days to comment on the proposal before DHS can finalize it and put it into effect. The proposal also could face legal challenges from higher education groups or business associations that could delay it.

Trump administration puts pressure on international students

The proposed rule is part of its wider efforts to crack down on immigration and reshape higher education. Last year, the Republican administration began suddenly terminating the legal status of thousands of international students, detaining and deporting many of them.

This summer, the administration finalized a rule that sought to prevent international students from staying in the U.S. for more than four years without approval from the federal government. The move drew swift backlash from higher education leaders who said it would increase the burden on schools and noted that many programs are longer than four years by design. A federal court prevented the rule from taking effect in September.

Doug Rand, a former senior adviser at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services during the Biden administration, predicted that the fee would be struck down in the courts, as was a $100,000 fee for the H-1B work visas that many tech companies and universities rely on to fill openings for skilled jobs.

The Trump administration is now trying a different way to raise the fee for the visas to more than $100,000.

Rand said fees are not the answer.

“When we educate international students at our universities, and they want to work and apply their talents here after graduating, of course we should embrace them — not use an exorbitant fee as a pretext to send them packing,” Rand said in an email.

Enrollment concerns mount among education groups

Sarah Spreitzer, vice president at the American Council on Education, which represents college and university presidents, said international enrollment has suffered.

Last fall, the number of new students entering the United States for the first time fell by 17%, the sharpest decrease since the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall numbers for this fall are not yet available, but Spreitzer said some individual colleges are reporting drops of 30% to 40%.

She said the new Trump plan will not help.

“We know that OPT is one of the reasons that international students choose to study in the United States because they’re able to have that post-graduation work experience,” she added.

A similar program that allowed international students to participate in internships and practicums also has faced scrutiny from the Trump administration. New guidance from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that the program, Curricular Practical Training, should only be authorized when the work experience is a degree requirement led to a lawsuit Monday.

Education groups, including the Association of American Universities and NAFSA, said that in the past that program was allowed if it was “directly related to the student’s major area of study.” The groups also said ICE was threatening college university officials with criminal prosecution if they did not comply.

“We know the administration has been trying to hinder legal employment-based immigration through numerous means,” said Steven Brown, a Houston-based immigration lawyer. “I think this is the next level of attack, and I think it’s a design to kill the program without killing the program. I don’t see too many schools wanting to pay $70,000 for a student to get OPT.”

___

Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kan.

___

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Following an uproar, the IDF reversed its decision Wednesday and will allow Hesder soldiers in the Golani Brigade to leave a memorial ceremony before women begin singing, hours after they were initially told they could not skip any portion of the event for religious reasons, Arutz Sheva reported.

Under the revised arrangements, Hesder soldiers will be seated at the edge of the stands and permitted to leave in an orderly manner before the women’s singing begins. The Hesder platoon will also be exempt from participating in the honor guard, and a planned female solo performance has been canceled.

Women will appear on stage alongside men only during the singing of “Hatikvah” at the conclusion of the ceremony, as part of a general performance involving all participants.

The changes were approved by the commander of the Golani Training Base following efforts by the base’s rabbi, Capt. Rabbi Uri Levy.

The reversal came just hours after Rabbi Levy informed soldiers that the IDF’s Joint Service regulations did not allow them to skip an official state ceremony because of women singing or their religious observance.

Following the reversal, the “Wives of Soldiers for the Kedushas HaMachaneh” organization welcomed the change but called for the accommodation to be extended to all religious soldiers.

“This is the beginning of a tikkun,” the organization said. “It is important to allow every soldier to maintain his way of life, not only Hesder soldiers.”

“The IDF is a Jewish army, and the kedushas hamachaneh is a fundamental value that is the responsibility of the Military Rabbinate and commanders.”

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

Two new Israeli election polls released Wednesday evening paint sharply different pictures of the race, but both show Prime Minister Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc in a stronger position. A Channel 13 poll gives Netanyahu’s bloc 55 seats, its highest showing in the network’s polling during the current election campaign, while a simultaneous Channel 14 poll gives the right-wing bloc 63 seats, enough to form a government.

In the Channel 13 poll, Likud and Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar are tied for first place with 20 seats each. Naftali Bennett’s Beyachad follows with 12 seats, while the Democrats receive 10. The Joint List receives 9 seats, Yisrael Beiteinu, Otzma Yehudit and United Torah Judaism each receive 8, Religious Zionism-Zehut and Shas each receive 7, Ra’am receives 6, and Amcha Yisrael receives 5.

The Channel 13 bloc breakdown puts Netanyahu’s bloc at 55 seats, the opposition bloc at 50, and the Arab parties at 15. While the result marks a new high for Netanyahu’s bloc in Channel 13’s polling during the current campaign, it would still leave the bloc six seats short of the 61-seat majority required to control the 120-seat Knesset and form a government.

Channel 14’s poll shows a dramatically different electoral map. Likud leads with 31 seats, followed by Yashar with 23. Shas receives 10, the Democrats 9, Otzma Yehudit and United Torah Judaism 8 each, the Joint List 7, Religious Zionism-Zehut 6, Yisrael Beiteinu 5, and Ra’am 5.

Under Channel 14’s bloc breakdown, the right-wing bloc receives 63 seats, giving it a two-seat majority above the 61-seat threshold. The left-wing bloc receives 45 seats, while the Arab parties receive a combined 12 seats.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Lt. Col. Aryeh Amidror, the Gaza Division’s intelligence officer at the time of the Oct. 7 massacre, is denying that he bears professional or command responsibility for the failure to warn of Hamas’s impending invasion, arguing in newly released court documents that providing strategic warning of war was not the responsibility of divisional intelligence.

Amidror’s defense comes amid a bitter battle over the IDF’s decision to end his military career following investigations into the catastrophic intelligence and command failures preceding Oct. 7. His identity was kept from the public for nearly three years before Israel’s Supreme Court ruled last week that his name could be published.

The newly disclosed documents stem from a petition Amidror filed in March 2026 challenging the process to terminate his career service. The proceedings initially remained confidential, and even after his arguments were rejected, the filings continued to be covered by a gag order. Their release now provides the fullest picture yet of Amidror’s effort to contest the conclusions reached by the military about his conduct.

Amidror, the son of Maj. Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror, a former Israeli national security adviser, served as the Gaza Division intelligence officer during the period leading up to the Hamas invasion and on the morning of Oct. 7 itself. He had also previously served as head of the division’s targets branch, giving him years of experience with Gaza and its intelligence picture.

One of the central issues in the case concerns the warnings of a female noncommissioned officer in the IDF’s elite Unit 8200, identified publicly only as “Vav,” who studied Hamas training exercises in the months before the massacre and warned that they could reflect preparations for an actual invasion.

Amidror argues that far from ignoring the issue, it was he who directed that Hamas’s exercises be studied in the first place.

“Upon assuming my position as Gaza Division intelligence officer, I instructed a certain body within Unit 8200 to find Hamas training exercises in order to assess the enemy’s tactical capabilities,” the documents state. According to Amidror, “following an instruction given by the petitioner and at the direction of her commanders, the NCO found the exercise.”

The court papers include correspondence between Amidror and the NCO as their disagreement over the meaning of the Hamas exercises developed.

“To be clear, the purpose of my email was not to bring the assessment down but to raise it. In any event, I don’t think this is a point of ‘absolute and unequivocal disagreement,’ because clearly, as more material is distributed, the area of agreement will grow. We are at the beginning of the process.”

Amidror points to that correspondence as evidence that he did not simply dismiss the NCO’s work. He also says he initiated a discussion “with the aim of challenging the prevailing concept and examining the division’s underlying assumptions regarding the possibility that Hamas had the capability and intention to carry out a single or large-scale raid.”

According to Amidror, a summary of that discussion was circulated as high as the office of the IDF chief of staff, showing that he was actively attempting “to undermine and challenge the underlying assumptions.” He contends that those efforts were not properly considered when military leaders decided to remove him from service.

Other evidence presented in the investigations, however, has painted a sharply different picture of his handling of the warnings. Amidror has previously been reported to have dismissed the Hamas mass-invasion scenario contained in the so-called “Jericho Wall” plan as a “completely imaginary scenario,” despite warnings from Unit 8200 and Gaza border observers.

The Jericho Wall document described with remarkable detail a Hamas assault involving rocket fire, drones, the breaching of Israel’s border defenses and large numbers of terrorists pouring into Israeli communities and military bases — elements that would ultimately materialize on the morning of Oct. 7.

The newly released court material also exposes what the IDF views as significant weaknesses in Amidror’s argument that he meaningfully challenged the prevailing conception. The Unit 8200 NCO whose work was at the center of the issue was not invited to the discussion and was not given the opportunity to personally present her assessment.

The Gaza Division commander was also not immediately briefed about the intelligence developments, while the discussion on the issue was scheduled for after the holidays. Amidror himself acknowledges the timing in his petition, and the delay has become a key point in the dispute over whether his actions amounted to a meaningful real-time challenge to the prevailing assessment of Hamas’s intentions.

The most consequential argument in Amidror’s filing goes considerably further. He rejects the IDF’s contention that the failure to provide adequate warning falls within his professional responsibility at all.

“The petitioner denies the claim that he failed professionally or bears command or professional responsibility for the failure to provide a warning of war,” the filing states.

It then declares: “The mission of providing a warning of war is not the responsibility of division intelligence.”

The IDF emphatically rejects that interpretation of the job Amidror held.

In its response to his petition, the military describes the Gaza Division intelligence officer’s responsibilities in broad terms: “The Gaza Division intelligence officer leads all intelligence collection, analysis and dissemination efforts in the sector – management of the intelligence picture, warning, collection and research, and command advisory.”

The IDF’s assessment of Amidror’s performance is severe. Military investigators concluded that the failures were not limited to a single judgment made in the hours immediately before the massacre, but included his handling of intelligence during the period leading up to the attack.

The military states that it identified “a series of professional errors and failures in the petitioner’s conduct on the night preceding October 7, as well as beforehand, in assessing the security risk posed by the Hamas terrorist organization.”

The IDF further rejected Amidror’s attempt to separate his personal conduct from his command responsibility for the intelligence apparatus operating beneath him.

“The petitioner bears personal responsibility for the failures identified in his conduct – in the manner in which he exercised his judgment, the degree of oversight he maintained, and the level of professionalism he demonstrated in his position. Command responsibility means the commander’s responsibility for what occurs in the unit under his authority.”

The disciplinary process against Amidror followed a broader examination of the IDF’s internal Oct. 7 investigations by an expert team headed by Maj. Gen. (res.) Sami Turgeman. The review concluded, among other things, that the Gaza Division had failed to sufficiently engage with the Jericho Wall invasion plan from both an intelligence and operational standpoint.

On Nov. 23, 2025, the IDF chief of staff determined that a series of senior commanders bore command responsibility for failures connected to Oct. 7 and ordered command measures against several officers, including Amidror. A subsequent recommendation from the deputy chief of staff called for ending Amidror’s career-service commitment.

Amidror challenged that process in court, describing his treatment as discriminatory, selective and arbitrary. The administrative court ultimately rejected his petition and allowed the IDF process to proceed. In September, the military formally announced that his career service would be terminated.

The IDF also argued that Amidror’s legal theory could have ramifications far beyond his individual case. Military commanders, it said, must retain the ability to impose command consequences even when an officer’s actions do not necessarily amount to individual legal wrongdoing.

If courts were to restrict command sanctions solely to questions of individual legal liability, the IDF warned, it could severely constrain the chief of staff’s authority to hold commanders accountable for failures occurring under their leadership.

“This result must not be permitted,” the military wrote.

Amidror, meanwhile, maintains that he has been singled out to bear consequences for a failure that extended throughout Israel’s intelligence and military leadership.

“The petitioner is the only commander in the IDF who is paying a real price, in the form of the loss of his rights, for the failures of the military and the state concerning intelligence and warnings about the intentions of the Hamas terrorist organization,” he argued.

His filing points to senior figures who held key positions on Oct. 7, including commanders in Southern Command, the Operations Directorate, the Gaza Division and Unit 8200. Amidror argues that those officers were able to complete their service and leave the IDF while preserving their pension and other benefits, while the termination of his career service leaves him facing a different financial and professional outcome.

Amidror also fought to keep his identity from being made public, but that battle ended last week when the Supreme Court lifted the publication restriction. The court cited the absence of a security reason to continue concealing his name, the fact that his identity had already circulated publicly and the strong public interest in identifying a senior intelligence officer whom the IDF had held responsible for failures connected to Oct. 7.

With the gag order lifted, Amidror’s defense is now playing out publicly for the first time, exposing a fundamental clash over one of the central questions left by the Oct. 7 catastrophe: where responsibility for recognizing Hamas’s intentions and providing a warning ultimately rested — and who should personally pay the price for failing to do so.

{Matzav.com}

By many measures, China is fast catching up with the U.S. in AI development. Moonshot’s Kimi K3—the world’s largest open-weight model—has approached the performance of America’s frontier systems. Analysts estimate the best Chinese models are now just four months behind the most sophisticated releases from OpenAI and Anthropic, compared to seven months at the start of the year.

Chinese models have gone from 1.2% of token traffic (a common way to calculate AI usage) in 2024 to more than half of the total by the summer of 2026.

 But the biggest threat to that next wave is not technology. It’s money. Between 2023 and 2026, venture funding into U.S. AI companies topped $380 billion; China’s start-ups received barely a tenth of that figure, according to Boston Consulting Group.

Funding the future

In the past, Chinese entrepreneurs looked to state guidance funds and venture capital backing, but policy-driven funds are known to prioritize later-stage startups while early-stage venture capital is only just recovering from a three-year fundraising drought.

There are three reasons why broader funding channels should be a priority for entrepreneurs in the AI economy.

First, inflation is taking hold inside the AI economy. CXMT, for example, has been raising memory prices for months and held firm even when Huawei, one of its largest customers, demanded relief.  

The war for AI talent is just as fierce: postings for AI-related roles surged roughly twelvefold year-on-year in early 2026. Algorithm engineers specializing in large language models command some of the highest pay packages of any technical role in China.

Founders must also outcompete deep-pocketed former employers and U.S. rivals. More than half of studies presented at the world’s top AI conference had lead authors based in China. China’s AI talent is known to be in demand worldwide.

Second, external funding is scarce. Venture investment in China totaled just $20 billion in the first quarter of 2026, against $267 billion in the U.S. China has raised impressive sums this year—assets under management for newly registered VC funds hit 154 billion yuan ($22.8 billion) in the first five monthes, already exceeding last year’s total—but that is still far below what US venture capital regularly deploys.

Meanwhile, China’s state banks, although directed to prioritize technology lending, are absorbing rising non-performing loans elsewhere on their books, which could lead to weaker overall credit supply.

Third, profitability will take a while to achieve. Chinese enterprise software firms primarily sell into the domestic market, which limits their revenue base. U.S. rivals have a head start: a global customer base, stronger brand recognition, and R&D budgets deep enough to fund everything from enterprise-grade cybersecurity to polished customer experience design.

To be sure, the next generation of AI ventures may not need vast amounts of capital to build applications on top of existing models or fill the gaps in the tech value chain.  Enterprise customers can also provide essential development funding.

Entrepreneurs must nevertheless cope without the kind of financial support that is available for the AI sector in the U.S. Closing the performance gap increasingly depends on bulking up in-house computing capacity—yet China’s AI infrastructure spending remains a fraction of what is being spent in the U.S.

Private market alternatives

This is where access to Hong Kong’s finance industry will play a growing role. Its capital markets remain one of the few channels still capable of moving global capital toward Chinese enterprise at scale. More than 430 applicants are in the IPO pipeline in the second half of 2026.

The IPO pipeline, however, tells its own story. Many Chinese technology startups are choosing to list earlier than the previous generation of companies did because they lack an alternative.

Compare that with the U.S., where the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic have grown to an enormous scale by raising private capital. OpenAI closed a round of more than $100 billion earlier this year, while Anthropic raised $65 billion in May. China’s leading model developers, Zhipu AI and MiniMax, beat OpenAI and Anthropic to the public markets—but their Hong Kong IPOs in January raised just $558 million and $620 million respectively, despite heavy over-subscription.

Private credit is another route. Asia-Pacific private credit assets are projected to grow from $59 billion in 2024 to $92 billion by 2027, with China accounting for a fifth of the region’s activity. However, these loan providers tend to prioritize bigger or established companies.

It is already clear that the AI sector, unlike the software sector, will not be dominated by U.S. firms alone. China’s startups have learned the lessons of the previous decade, commanding global respect and winning a growing customer base. The country’s open-weight strategy has given its leading AI companies a cost advantage – even Silicon Valley leaders acknowledge it.

For China’s latest generation of AI entrepreneurs, venture capital and bank loans—the two main sources of start-up funding – may not be enough in the coming years. Keeping pace in the AI race will require using every asset and every channel available. It may mean a public listing earlier than they would have preferred, exploring the growing private credit ecosystem, revenue sharing with customers or leveraging the equity they hold as collateral.

The entrepreneurs involved in the next wave of China’s AI development will need to be creative with funding to maintain their competitive edge at a time when overseas rivals are spending 10 times as much.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune_._

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

HaGaon HaTzaddik HaRav Tzemach Mazuz addressed the FlyDubai plane neis at the beginning of his weekly shiur Monday night, speaking about the extraordinary Hashgachah Pratis surrounding the incident and the obligation to thank Hakadosh Baruch Hu.

“First of all, we need to say a big ‘thank you’ to Hashem for the immense neis,” HaRav Mazuz said. “During Chol Hamoed, we were in danger from that terrorist who thought of bringing down the plane and wanted to fulfill upon himself the ‘mitzvah’ written in the pasuk, ‘Let me die with the P’lishtim’ (Shoftim 16:30) — he was prepared to die as long as, chas v’shalom, he could kill Jews.”

The Rosh Yeshivah spoke about the kavanos of those seeking to harm the Jewish people and contrasted them with the rachamim of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. “What did this terrorist and those behind him expect? They were watching the clock and waiting for the moment when, chas v’shalom, the plane would fall, with dozens injured and dozens of levayos in Israel, chas v’shalom. But what happened? HaKadosh Baruch Hu, our Father in Shamayim, loves us! He looks at the good things, at the many mitzvos performed during the Yamim Tovim — on Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkos. He had mercy on us and saved us. He brought us from slavery to freedom, from subjugation to redemption, from mourning to Yom Tov.”

“Sukkos is called ‘Zman Simchaseinu.’ And our enemies wanted, chas v’shalom, to turn it into a great national mourning — but HaKadosh Baruch Hu granted us the merit and protected us. ‘Give thanks to Hashem, for He is good, for His kindness endures forever.’”

HaRav Mazuz then addressed the identity of the person through whom the rescue came, saying there was a powerful message of emunah in the fact that an ordinary Jew was the one who saved the passengers.

“HaKadosh Baruch Hu sent the rescue through a simple Jew. Not a military man, not a man of war, not some kind of hero — but through a simple Jewish plumber. It is not difficult for Hashem to save us, even through ordinary Jews. Certainly this Jew had zechuyos beforehand, and therefore Hashem chose him to be the one who would save them. He saved almost 200 people! Hashem always finds a way to save Am Yisrael through an unknown person. Only HaKadosh Baruch Hu knows how to choose the right person.”

“From time immemorial until today, HaKadosh Baruch Hu has saved us, and it is all in the merit of emunah. That is how it was with Dovid HaMelech and Goliath the P’lishti — Dovid’s koach was his emunah in Hashem! That is how it was with Gideon and the P’lishtim — HaKadosh Baruch Hu told Gideon: You have many soldiers, too many. That is not good! Reduce their number. Am Yisrael could, chas v’shalom, make a mistake and say after the victory that the salvation came because there was a large army.”

“It is all in the merit of emunah in Hashem! Is there anything that can thwart HaKadosh Baruch Hu? Whether there are many soldiers or few soldiers, it is always HaKadosh Baruch Hu Who grants us salvation! When we believe in the true power of Hashem, He is with us. There is no wonder in how such great nissim happen. HaKadosh Baruch Hu can both save us and shatter an enemy in an instant. That is the power of HaKadosh Baruch Hu!”

“Therefore, Rabosai,” HaRav Mazuz concluded, “let us recite ‘Mizmor L’Todah’ together and thank HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Let us not forget to give thanks for the nissim and niflaos He performed for us. Chazal say in Maseches Sanhedrin (94a) that Chizkiyahu HaMelech was supposed to be Moshiach, but he did not give thanks to HaKadosh Baruch Hu for the great neis that was performed for him.”

The Rosh Yeshivah concluded by reciting “Mizmor L’Todah” with great emotion.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is casting Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign for U.S. Senate in Michigan as far more than a single election, telling supporters that a victory by the progressive Democrat could demonstrate that candidates from the party’s left wing can win well beyond their traditional political strongholds and potentially reshape the landscape heading into 2028.

Speaking Monday at a private fundraiser in New York for El-Sayed, Ocasio-Cortez described his campaign as part of a “generational project” and argued that winning a statewide contest in battleground Michigan could upend assumptions about where candidates aligned with the progressive movement can succeed.

“What we do is that we break open the entire political calculus in America — period,” Ocasio-Cortez said, according to a recording of her remarks. “Because if you can win, if Abdul can win in Michigan, anybody can win anywhere.”

“Anywhere,” she added.

Ocasio-Cortez has become one of El-Sayed’s most prominent supporters. She endorsed him during the Democratic primary and traveled to Michigan to campaign alongside him and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Her support for El-Sayed stretches back even further: She also endorsed his unsuccessful campaign for governor of Michigan in 2018.

El-Sayed, a physician and former Detroit health director, won the Democratic Senate nomination in August after defeating Rep. Haley Stevens in a closely watched primary that became a major battle between the party’s progressive and establishment wings. He is now facing Republican Mike Rogers for the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Gary Peters.

“We are in a long-term — I’m being very open right now, right? — about our generational project that we have ahead of us,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Generational. We are here to break the map.”

The New York congresswoman pointed not only to Michigan but also to Florida, where state Rep. Angie Nixon, a democratic socialist, is challenging Republican Sen. Ashley Moody. Ocasio-Cortez suggested that campaigns in states traditionally regarded as difficult terrain for the progressive left could change perceptions about the movement’s electoral limits.

“We are up against not just an ascendant and fascist right wing in this country,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “But we are also up against people with extremely small imaginations about what is possible in America.”

El-Sayed similarly told the New York gathering that the significance of his campaign extends beyond who occupies Michigan’s Senate seat next year. He portrayed a victory as a potential demonstration that the political assumptions of national strategists and pundits are wrong.

“What does it say about what America really wants, needs, and deserves if our state bucks all of the pundits and all of the pontificators who think that this is not possible?” El-Sayed said. “What does it tell them?

“It tells them just how big America is and exactly what we want.”

El-Sayed later said that “this one is for all the marbles” while emphasizing “the ripple effect that this race will have.”

The Michigan contest has emerged as one of the most closely watched Senate races of the 2026 midterms. El-Sayed entered the general election after a bitter Democratic primary in which outside groups spent tens of millions of dollars attempting to defeat him, with his positions on Israel and the Gaza war among the major flashpoints.

El-Sayed has been a sharp critic of U.S. military assistance to Israel and backed Michigan’s “uncommitted” effort during the 2024 Democratic presidential primary as a protest against the Biden administration’s handling of the Gaza war. Those positions have generated significant concern among pro-Israel Democrats and some Jewish voters in Michigan.

Since securing the nomination, however, El-Sayed has also consolidated support from major Democratic figures who were not originally aligned with his campaign. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who had supported Stevens during the primary, are now backing El-Sayed in the general election.

Barack Obama is also scheduled to campaign with El-Sayed at an Oct. 24 rally in Detroit alongside Democratic gubernatorial nominee Jocelyn Benson, timed to coincide with the beginning of early in-person voting in Michigan. Ocasio-Cortez and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani are also among the prominent Democrats appearing with El-Sayed during the campaign’s closing stretch.

The broader political implications of the race are particularly significant for Ocasio-Cortez as she considers her own future. The 36-year-old congresswoman, who turns 37 this month, has left open the possibility of seeking higher office in 2028, including either a presidential campaign or a run for U.S. Senate in New York.

Ocasio-Cortez acknowledged recently that one consideration is whether a particular political moment offers an opportunity that may not come again.

“There’s an argument that some make that this is a very unique political window and, oftentimes in politics, you do only get one shot,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

She has also recently traveled through upstate New York, making stops in Buffalo, Syracuse and Ithaca, appearances that have drawn additional attention because Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s seat will be on the ballot in 2028.

Schumer, who would be 77 at the time of that election, has not announced whether he intends to seek another term. Ocasio-Cortez has likewise made no announcement about whether she would challenge him, seek the presidency or remain in the House.

Against that backdrop, the Michigan contest has become something of a real-world test for the political movement Ocasio-Cortez has helped build. A victory by El-Sayed in a presidential battleground state would provide progressives with evidence for their argument that their candidates can compete outside heavily Democratic districts, while a defeat would provide fresh ammunition to Democrats who argue that the party risks losing winnable races by nominating candidates too far to the left.

For Ocasio-Cortez, however, her message to supporters Monday was that the ambitions behind El-Sayed’s campaign extend well beyond Election Day in Michigan: “Generational. We are here to break the map.”

{Matzav.com}

A seemingly ordinary photograph of an Israeli boy posing with Flydubai Captain Smit Machchhar has taken on extraordinary significance after the veteran pilot was critically wounded while battling to save Flight FZ1073 from an attempted takeover.

The photograph was shared by Mor Levy Aharoni, a Dubai-based real estate attorney, who said her son Ariel had insisted on taking a picture with Machchhar approximately one month before the terrifying incident aboard the Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv.

At the time, it was simply a photograph with a pilot. After what happened aboard FZ1073, Aharoni said she sees the picture very differently.

“Apparently he felt that he was taking a picture with a hero, and we didn’t even know it. If not for this hero, only God knows where we would be today,” she wrote.

Aharoni said the remarkable coincidence generated an emotional response online, as people reacted to the image of the young Israeli standing beside the man who, just weeks later, would play a critical role in preventing a potentially catastrophic attack involving a plane filled with Israeli passengers.

Machchhar was critically wounded during the attack inside the cockpit when the Omani co-pilot allegedly assaulted him and attempted to seize control of the Boeing 737.

During the struggle, the aircraft plunged nearly 14,000 feet in less than 30 seconds before control was restored, as passengers and crew members fought to restrain the alleged attacker.

Speaking from his hospital bed with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Machchhar later described how, despite his serious wounds, he understood that he had to act immediately.

The captain managed to open the cockpit door, allowing passengers and other crew members to intervene and overpower the attacker. Two additional pilots who happened to be traveling aboard the flight subsequently helped stabilize the aircraft and safely divert it to Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.

Machchhar brought extensive experience to the cockpit that day. He has accumulated approximately 9,750 flight hours aboard Boeing 737 aircraft and joined Flydubai as a captain in 2022 following many years with Indian carrier SpiceJet.

For Aharoni and her son, however, the story now has an intensely personal dimension: a photograph taken on an ordinary day in Dubai, weeks before anyone knew the captain’s name, captured Ariel smiling alongside the pilot who would soon be hailed for helping save the lives of those aboard Flight FZ1073.

{Matzav.com}

Six people aboard a medical transport jet traveling from Bermuda to Boston are presumed dead after the aircraft reported electrical problems, plunged thousands of feet and disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean south of Nantucket, with the U.S. Coast Guard later locating wreckage from the plane.

The Gulfstream G100, operated by Ontario-based Latitude Air Ambulance and flying as Heartbeat 104, was carrying a Bermudian patient and her son, along with two Canadian pilots and two Canadian medical crew members, when it went down early Saturday, Oct. 3.

What began as an enormous search-and-rescue operation ended after approximately 66 hours, with the Coast Guard suspending its active search after covering thousands of square miles of ocean. No survivors were located.

The six people aboard have since been identified as 66-year-old Marilyn Lavonne Bean of Bermuda, who was being transported to Boston for medical treatment; her 41-year-old son, Sergio Wayne Lottimore; Captain Philip Gregory Childerhose; First Officer Thomas Henry Farquhar; flight nurse Sarah Jane Paton; and respiratory therapist Jolene Beth Weir.

The Canadian-registered aircraft, tail number C-GRJP, departed Bermuda’s L.F. Wade International Airport shortly after midnight and was heading to Boston Logan International Airport when the crew encountered trouble while approaching the northeastern United States.

The plane was scheduled to arrive in Boston at approximately 1:25 a.m., but air traffic controllers began having difficulty communicating with the crew as the aircraft flew north over the Atlantic.

Chilling air traffic control recordings captured a controller struggling to understand transmissions from the jet as its apparent emergency developed.

“You’re coming in blind? Is that what you said?” the air traffic controller asked around 12:46 a.m. “Are you declaring an emergency or no?

“You’re coming in a little weak so I didn’t hear what your response was,” the controller added.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada has since confirmed that the crew reported electrical difficulties as the aircraft approached the Boston area. The jet subsequently entered a rapid descent before air traffic controllers lost contact with it south of Nantucket.

Flight-tracking information showed the aircraft falling from approximately 24,000 feet to around 11,000 feet in roughly three minutes beginning at about 1:04 a.m. The jet appeared to stabilize following the dramatic descent, but communications problems continued.

At Boston Logan, emergency personnel were already preparing for the aircraft’s arrival. At approximately 1:12 a.m., a Massport Fire Rescue dispatcher alerted crews that a plane experiencing an “electrical issue” was expected to land in Boston in about 15 minutes.

“The aircraft has lost radio and radar,” the dispatcher said of the plane.

Those preparations would prove futile. The jet never reached Boston, and an official search-and-rescue alert was triggered at approximately 1:20 a.m.

“The FAA is coordinating with the Rescue Coordination Center and the U.S. Coast Guard to locate the aircraft,” the agency said as the search began.

The Coast Guard deployed an extensive array of resources into the waters south of Nantucket, including an HC-144 Ocean Sentry aircraft and MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter from Air Station Cape Cod, a 47-foot motor lifeboat from Station Brant Point and the Coast Guard cutter William Sparling.

The William Sparling continued searching through the night as aircraft and vessels combed the ocean for any indication of the missing plane or its six occupants.

Crews eventually spotted a debris field in the Atlantic south of Nantucket. The Coast Guard subsequently confirmed that the wreckage was associated with the missing Gulfstream, extinguishing hopes that the aircraft might somehow have remained airborne or made an emergency landing elsewhere.

During the first 27 hours alone, Coast Guard crews searched approximately 1,644 square miles. The massive effort ultimately continued for about 66 hours and covered thousands of square miles before officials concluded that the chances of finding survivors no longer justified continuing the active search.

Latitude Air Ambulance subsequently said that the six people aboard Heartbeat 104 were presumed dead. The company described the loss as a devastating event and said it would cooperate with investigators while supporting the families of those aboard.

The flight was a medical mission carrying Bean from Bermuda to Boston for treatment. Her son Lottimore, a Bermuda-based reinsurance executive and former Warwick Academy student, accompanied her on the flight.

The four Canadian crew members were experienced aviation and medical professionals tasked with carrying patients requiring specialized care between countries. Latitude Air Ambulance is based in Hamilton, Ontario, and specializes in long-distance medical transportation.

Attention has now shifted from rescue operations to determining exactly what caused the aircraft to go down.

Canada’s Transportation Safety Board announced that it will lead the investigation because the Gulfstream was registered in Canada. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board will participate as an accredited representative, and Canadian investigators are expected to assist with efforts to locate and recover the aircraft and other evidence.

The investigation will focus in part on the electrical difficulties reported by the crew, the deterioration in radio communications and the jet’s sudden loss of altitude. Investigators will also examine weather conditions along the aircraft’s route.

No official determination has been made about what caused the crash, and investigators have cautioned against drawing conclusions before the wreckage, flight data and other evidence can be examined.

Former Transportation Department Inspector General Mary Schiavo said the combination of the aircraft’s steep descent, poor weather and possible instrument problems would be particularly dangerous for a pilot.

“Something bad happened with this big drop, and they flew into this big storm. It’s a terrible place to have a loss of your instruments and be flying blind,” said Schiavo.

“It’s very easy to get disoriented and not know if you’re turning, climbing, descending, etc. Spatial orientation hits pretty quickly.”

The aircraft was manufactured in 1996 and had been registered to Latitude Air Ambulance since 2018. The Gulfstream G100 is a twin-engine business jet that can be configured for long-range medical transportation.

Because the accident occurred in international waters off the Massachusetts coast, the investigation involves authorities from multiple countries. Under international aviation agreements, however, Canada, as the aircraft’s country of registration, will take the lead, with U.S. investigators assisting.

Investigators are expected to seek the recovery of as much wreckage as possible as they attempt to reconstruct the aircraft’s final minutes and determine why a medical flight bound for Boston suddenly lost communications, descended sharply and disappeared into the Atlantic.

{Matzav.com}

Update, 10/7/26: We reached out to United about an Israeli media report that Mr. Mossallam is flying again. United wrote back in a statement to Dansdeals,

“Hi Dan – that report is not correct.”

That’s good to hear, but Mr. Mossallam has been reinstated in the past, and this is an important safety issue that can’t be ignored. Someone who praises the October 7th attacks simply cannot be trusted to fly civilians on United flights.

Please take 2 minutes to contact United here (there are several sample letters in the comments below) and reply to United on X and like and retweet the post below to let United know how you feel about their continued employment of Ibrahim R Mossallam:

BREAKING: United removes Ibrahim R Mossallam from service again!

United writes to DansDeals regarding Ibrahim R Mossallam that, "We have withheld this pilot from service pending an ongoing review."

He was previously suspended and reinstated. He needs to be terminated this… pic.twitter.com/ADdBU0ndpk

— DansDeals (@DansDeals) October 6, 2026

Update, 10/6/26: United has now responded to our 9/30 inquiry about the continued employment of Ibrahim R Mossallam in the wake of the FlyDubai 1073 attack as follows,

“We have withheld this pilot from service pending an ongoing review.”

In November 2023, United wrote to DansDeals that Mr. Mossallam was removed from service with pay while they reviewed his statements praising the October 7th massacre of Israeli civilians. 

We reported in May 2025 that Mr. Mossallam continued to fly for United.

We reported again, 3 weeks ago, that he continued to fly for United. He operates 757 and 767 aircraft, which United notably does not use for Israel flights.

Gary Leff reported yesterday that Mr. Mossallam was suspended in November 2023 for “about a month,” but while United moved to fire him, United’s pilot union fought for him to return to service after just 1 month. 

After Mr. Mossallam returned to service, 2 deadheading United pilots reportedly gave up their first-class seats and spent the entire flight in the cockpit to keep an eye on him, as they didn’t trust him.

That’s logical enough, people who justify terror against civilians shouldn’t be flying planes!

That was true after 9/11 and is even more true after FlyDubai 1073.

Update, 10/5/26: In the wake of the FlyDubai flight 1073 attempted terror attack by co-pilot Hamam al-Hammami, it’s worth a reminder that Ibrahim R Mossallam continues to fly 757s and 767s for United.

On 9/30, we reached out to United for comment on his continued employment, but the airline did not respond.

Mossallam justified the October 7th attacks as resistance by brave people and continues to post hateful lies on his social media accounts.

You can read more about Ibrahim R Mossallam from Canary Mission. You can contact United here.

Would you trust him as the pilot on your flight?

Update, 5/28/25: We have confirmed that United continues to employ pilot Ibrahim R Mossallam.

He calls Israelis the present-day Nazis:

Update, 12/12/23: United has failed to respond to multiple requests from DansDeals over the past 3 weeks on whether Mr. Mossallam is currently flying United aircraft or employed by United.

That’s pretty unimpressive compared to Air Canada, which quickly fired a pilot expressing extreme anti-Israel views.

You can reach out to United here.

You can also quote retweet, retweet, and like this post to let United know your thoughts on Mr. Mossallam potentially being your pilot on a future flight:

Last month, @united immediately responded to @DansDeals to let us know that they suspended Ibrahim R Mossallam with pay, who among other anti-Semitic posts, wrote on his Facebook page that the horrific 10/7 Hamas attacks were "resistance by a brave people." Apparently, it's brave… https://t.co/GniI3y1DTx pic.twitter.com/M6cSJZdAKa

— DansDeals (@DansDeals) December 12, 2023

Would you feel safe with Mr. Mossallam as your pilot?

Update, 11/20/23 at 7:46pm: United has responded to DansDeals saying, “This pilot has been removed from service, with pay, while we look into this matter.”

Originally posted on 11/20/23 at 6:30pm:

Last month, Air Canada suspended and then fired a 787 pilot with extreme anti-Israel social media posts.

Today, @StopAntisemites shared that United pilot Ibrahim R Mossallam has even worse posts on his facebook account.

Mr. Mossallam flies Boeing 757s and 767s domestically and internationally for United.

On October 7th he justified Hamas’ massacre of Jews and kidnapping of babies and Holocaust survivors as “resistance by brave people.”

Ibrahim R Mossallam is a United Airlines pilot who stated on an October 7th Facebook post the massacre in Israel that left 1400 people dead, women raped, and babies burned alive was "resistance by brave people".

This is abhorernt @united – how can Jewish passengers feel safe… pic.twitter.com/lD76WcvwqZ

— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) November 20, 2023

Mr. Mossallam was appointed as CAIR-NY’s (The New York Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations) Board Chairman in 2021. The CAIR-NY website lists him as currently serving as board vice president.

In a January 2012 article, The Brooklyn Ink identifies him as being a 33 year old Palestinian American. It goes on to quote him as saying,

“But in the wake of relentless scrutiny after 9/11, he says, Muslims in America were forced to evaluate their faith and identity. “Muslims wanted to find out ‘Where in the Koran does it say you can attack civilians? What could they have possibly taken and twisted to fit their thinking?” he said. “The more I read about Islam the more I realized half the stuff I knew was false.”

The younger generation of Muslims, he continues, is much better educated and is more likely to practice the true version of the religion. His parent’s generation practices a more cultural version of the faith, depending on where they immigrated from. The result is a new generation of Muslims who are much more open about their beliefs, not particularly inclined to assimilate and more likely to react to perceived prejudice.”

His Facebook page confirms that he’s a pilot for United and is chock full of hateful and false information about the war.

Among hundreds of highly problematic posts, he posts this as the reason for US support for Israel. Apparently, government officials like Antony Blinken’s ethnic group is the Israeli flag?

He claims that Israel kills journalists who expose “Israel’s crimes” and bribes journalists that cover for them.

If Mr. Mossallam feels that the rape, torture, and kidnapping of Jews is justifiable and that all Jews are Israelis, how can he be trusted to fly any Jew safely?

DansDeals reached out to United for comment earlier today, but haven’t yet received a response. This post will be updated if United does comment on Mr. Mossallam.

Will you avoid flying United for as long as Mr. Mossallam could be your pilot? Be sure to Tweet to @United and contact United to let them know.

You can also like and Retweet this post:

How could such a person be trusted with your passenger's lives @United? https://t.co/GniI3y1DTx

— DansDeals (@DansDeals) November 20, 2023

The FBI has arrested an 18-year-old man who had been plotting to carry out a mass shooting at the Mall of America near Minneapolis in the name of ISIS, according to court filings.

He was arrested on Tuesday after an FBI undercover agent sold the Minnesota man, Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud, an AK-47, ammunition and magazines for $600, according to the complaint. Mohamud told the informant he planned to use the items to kill 30 to 60 people at an event at the mall in late October.

Mohamud was charged with one count of knowingly receiving a firearm and ammunition in order to commit an act of terrorism. His lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to the complaint, Mohamud told an FBI source on various messaging platforms that he intended to travel overseas to fight on behalf of al-Shabaab, a designated foreign terrorist organization. He said if he couldn’t travel, he planned to conduct a mass shooting. He later said he wanted to join ISIS.

He also allegedly expressed support for a man who rammed a truck into a crowd in New Orleans on January 1, 2025, killing 14, before being killed in a shootout with police.

Plan for attack at the Mall of America

In July, Mohamud allegedly said he wanted to kill 30 to 60 people at the Mall of America because he claimed its owners were Jewish, and he wanted to kill non-Muslims. He told the informant he planned an attack for October 24 because there was a “Hmong Arts Celebration” that day at the mall.

The Mall of America is the largest mall in the United States, with a theme park, an aquarium, and more than 500 stores.

On Tuesday, Mohamud allegedly bought the AK-47, four 30-round-capacity magazines and about 200 rounds of ammunition from an FBI undercover agent. Soon after, FBI agents arrested him.

Mohamud made his initial court appearance before US Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Cowan Wright on Wednesday.

This post was originally published on here.

Sen. Ted Cruz launched an extraordinary broadside against Tucker Carlson, accusing the conservative commentator of defending Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany after Carlson repeatedly questioned whether Britain benefited from defeating Hitler in World War II during a contentious interview with former British Cabinet minister Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Cruz devoted a significant portion of Monday’s “Verdict with Ted Cruz” podcast to Carlson’s interview, joining co-host Ben Ferguson in dissecting Carlson’s statements about Hitler, Britain, World War II and Russia. Cruz argued that the comments were part of what he sees as a broader shift in Carlson’s politics and worldview.

“Come on, Tucker didn’t go full Nazi, did he?” Cruz said sarcastically before playing audio from Carlson’s interview. “I want you to give a listen to Tucker saying that he really wishes Hitler had won World War II.”

Carlson did not, however, explicitly state during the exchange that he wished Hitler had won the war. Rather, Carlson repeatedly pressed Rees-Mogg on whether Britain was ultimately better off because it fought and defeated Nazi Germany.

“We did the right thing,” Rees-Mogg said.

“Is it a better country than it was? To have defeated Hitler, yes. So the U.K. is a better country now? It’s a healthier country now?” Carlson responded.

“Otherwise, we’d be speaking German,” Rees-Mogg replied.

“Who cares?” Carlson said. “There are a lot of people in Britain who can’t speak English. So it would be nice to have at least a European language spoken in your country.”

Rees-Mogg immediately rejected that reasoning. “We want to speak English. Thanks so much.”

Ferguson said he was “truly shocked” by the exchange, while Cruz pointed to his own public response to Carlson’s remarks.

“Yes, Tucker. The U.K. is better off for winning World War II. America is better off for winning World War II. And the world would be much worse off if the Nazis had won World War II. This is not complicated.”

The Carlson-Rees-Mogg interview, released Friday, was originally framed largely around Britain’s approach to Russia and the war in Ukraine. But the discussion expanded into an extended debate about Britain’s role in World War II, including whether Hitler actually intended to wage war against Britain.

“Hitler did not want to go to war with the U.K.,” Carlson said, later stressing that Hitler had “repeatedly” said publicly and through diplomatic channels that he did not want war with Britain.

Rees-Mogg challenged Carlson’s reliance on Hitler’s stated intentions, pointing to the Nazi leader’s record of violating agreements and breaking promises as Germany expanded across Europe.

“You seem to be putting more trust in Hitler than I would,” he told Carlson, pointing to Hitler’s broken agreements and adding, “I’m very surprised you’re verging on defending Hitler.”

“Yeah, I guess I’m just a secret Nazi,” Carlson responded. “I’m actually not a secret Nazi.”

“I’m reassured,” Rees-Mogg dryly replied.

“And hardly a public Nazi,” Carlson added.

Cruz seized on that portion of the interview, describing Carlson as “blazingly naive and willfully naive” in his approach to dictators and authoritarian governments.

“We’re now less than a month away from Election Day, and Tucker Carlson decided, what do you want to do right before Election Day?” Cruz asked rhetorically.

Cruz then delivered his most blistering attack of the podcast, tying the World War II controversy to his longstanding disputes with Carlson over President Trump, Israel, antisemitism and foreign policy.

“I know, become a full-on Nazi. Embrace Adolf Hitler, defend the Nazis, argue America should have been standing with the Nazis. You know, poor Adolf was just misunderstood. We’re going to come with the receipts of even for Tucker, long after he’s gone down the road of hating Donald Trump, long after he’s gone down the road of hating Israel and Jews, long after he’s gone down the road of hating Christian Zionists, and becoming a full-on jihadist, long after he has embraced Abdul El-Sayed, Tucker decided, you know, I don’t have enough Nazi love on my show, and this past week he sought to correct that. You can hear and judge for yourself.”

The episode marked another escalation in an increasingly bitter feud between two highly influential figures on the American right. Cruz has become one of Carlson’s most vocal conservative critics, particularly over Carlson’s treatment of Israel, Jews and figures accused of promoting antisemitism.

The dispute intensified after Carlson interviewed Nick Fuentes last year. Cruz subsequently called Carlson “the single-most dangerous demagogue in this country” and warned about what he sees as the increasing acceptance of antisemitism within portions of the political right.

Cruz’s latest criticism was not limited to Carlson’s discussion of Hitler. He also targeted Carlson over another exchange with Rees-Mogg concerning the relative economic strength of Russia and Britain.

Carlson asserted that Russia has a “much larger economy” than Britain, pointing to the country’s natural resources, manufacturing capacity and size.

Rees-Mogg challenged him, noting that Russia’s nominal gross domestic product is smaller than that of the United Kingdom despite Russia possessing a substantially larger population and enormous natural resources. Carlson countered that GDP was not the only measure of a country’s economic strength and pointed instead to Russia’s underlying resources and industrial capacity.

“Tucker has an ideological mission,” Cruz charged. “It is a mission to tear down America, to tear down free enterprise, to tear down the Constitution.”

Cruz went further, accusing Carlson’s rhetoric of working to “build up the Nazis” as well as Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The two conservatives have also diverged sharply over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Carlson has repeatedly questioned Washington’s support for Kyiv and argued that U.S. leaders exaggerate the threat posed by Moscow, while Cruz has taken a far more hawkish approach toward Russia.

Another portion of Carlson’s interview focused on Britain’s treatment during World War II of Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists, who was detained by the British government along with hundreds of other suspected fascist sympathizers under wartime emergency regulations.

Cruz interpreted Carlson’s criticism of those actions as another example of the same pattern he saw throughout the interview.

“Tucker is all in on defending the Nazis against the West.”

The uproar over Carlson’s interview has extended beyond Cruz. Rees-Mogg subsequently said he could not understand Carlson’s increasingly extreme positions and suggested that the incentives of online media and the pursuit of audience engagement could be contributing to Carlson’s provocative rhetoric.

Poland’s government has also entered the controversy after Carlson discussed Hitler’s grievances against Poland and questioned the circumstances that led Britain to declare war on Germany following the Nazi invasion of Poland in September 1939. Bogdan Klich, Poland’s top diplomat in Washington, demanded that Carlson retract his remarks and apologize, accusing him of becoming “an apologist for Adolf Hitler.”

Cruz ended his discussion by describing Carlson’s rhetoric as “profoundly dangerous” and telling listeners that they did not need to rely on his characterization of Carlson’s views because the underlying interview was available for them to hear themselves.

“You don’t have to take my word for it,” Cruz said, “because you can listen in his own words as we played today.”

{Matzav.com}

Britain’s ultra-rich are increasingly voting with their feet as a wave of tax changes has left many reconsidering their U.K. residency.

It’s estimated that billionaire U.K. residents who have loosened their ties to the country in the past two years—or up and left completely—took around $160 billion with them collectively, according to a recent analysis from Bloomberg. It’s an eye-watering fortune that even surpasses the combined wealth of billionaires who have chosen to stick with their U.K. postcodes. 

It’s no secret that there’s been a wave of millionaires and billionaires quitting Britain. Wealthy U.K. residents had already been fleeing the country for years before the Labour party took office in July 2024, but the biggest shift happened upon the end of the non-dom regime—a policy first announced by the Conservative party in March of that year, months before handing over the reins. 

The government also raised capital gains tax rates in October 2024, with the higher rate jumping from 20% to 24%. 

It’s driving the perception that the U.K. has become less enterprise-friendly—so some business tycoons are taking their fortunes elsewhere. Now, British billionaires are flocking to low-tax destinations including Switzerland, Monaco, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). 

Switzerland, Monaco, and the UAE have become U.K. billionaire hotspots

For Britain’s wealthiest, moving abroad can offer more than a change of scenery—it can mean a dramatically lower tax bill.

Lakshmi Mittal, an Indian-born steel billionaire with a roughly $40.8 billion net worth, up and left the U.K. after three decades for Switzerland, where he is now a resident. Switzerland has become a hotspot for British billionaires thanks to its comparatively favorable tax environment and longstanding appeal to wealthy international residents, with hedge fund billionaire Alan Howard (worth $5 billion), Ipsen heiress Anne Beaufour (worth $4 billion), and private-equity billionaire Jeremy Coller (worth $3.8 billion) taking the leap to the Alpine country. Howard became a Swiss resident in 2025, while Beaufour also changed her residency to Switzerland that year. 

Others like shipping mogul John Fredriksen with a $19.2 billion fortune, as well as Egyptian billionaire Nassef Sawiris (worth $9.6 billion) who lived in the U.K. for a decade, have uprooted in recent years and hold ties or residency in the UAE. The Gulf state has no federal personal income tax, and has become an increasingly popular luxe destination for wealthy expatriates.

And another picturesque locale has been a bright spot for the uber-rich: Monaco. 

The tiny wealthy country on the French Riviera is not only known for luxury, yachts, and the Formula 1 Grand Prix—it’s also a long-standing tax haven for billionaires. Monaco has one of the lowest and most favorable tax systems in the world, charging no personal income tax for non-French residents. So it only follows that it’s become a billionaires’ playground.

Ian and Richard Livingstone, successful U.K. property developers with a $11.2 billion fortune, left their home country for Monaco in the spring of last year. Checkout.com founder Guillaume Pousaz, worth $6.8 billion, left the U.K. for Monaco in 2025 to settle down in the tax-friendly enclave. And John Reece, the British property billionaire with $4.1 billion in wealth, also set his sails for the Mediterranean principality back in 2019, before more recent changes in policy. 

While some of the ultra-rich are fleeing the U.K., others are asking to be taxed more 

Britain’s billionaires and millionaires are split over the country’s changing tax landscape. One camp of the ultra-rich cohort is actively exiting the country and slamming the tax policies as bad for business, while a whole other group is publicly demanding that they be taxed more.

Earlier this year, 88-year-old property magnate David Reuben and his brother Simon made headlines after leaving London for the sunny shores of Monaco. The businessmen, each worth an estimated $13.1 billion, were reported to have been non-dom, allowing them to pay U.K. taxes only on income earned or brought into the country. However, the status was scrapped in 2025, and under the new rules, long-term U.K. residents can also have their global assets subject to the country’s 40% inheritance tax. And telecoms entrepreneur Bassim Haidar, whose astronomical net worth is “close” to $1 billion, “urgently” left the U.K. after the non-dom policy was set to be abolished. 

“There’s no two questions about this; we have looked at it from every angle and it just doesn’t make sense to stay here,” Haidar told The Guardian in 2024. “This [the ending of the non-dom regime] is going to cost me millions and millions of dollars and pounds every year in taxes on money that I’ve actually made abroad and businesses that I’ve built abroad.”

However, not every wealthy Briton sees higher taxes as a reason to pack up and leave. Some argue that the country’s richest residents have a duty to alleviate economic inequality. 

In July of this year, 120 wealthy Britons signed an open letter to England’s prime minister Andy Burnham, asking for their taxes to be raised. 

The “Proud to Pay” campaign, organized by Patriotic Millionaires UK, garnered support from some of the country’s biggest stars, including the likes of former footballer Gary Lineker and legendary music producer Brian Eno. The group proposed a 2% tax on wealth over £10 million ($13.3 million)—which is supported by 80% of U.K. millionaires—that would generate around £24 billion ($32 billion) every year. 

By forking over more of their fortunes, the group argues that higher taxation would “disperse economic power” to those who need it most.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Israel hopes to begin filing indictments during the first half of 2027 against terrorists accused of participating in the October 7 massacre, but serious staffing and logistical problems could delay the unprecedented proceedings, officials told the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee on Wednesday, according to The Times of Israel.

Approximately 300 suspects believed to have participated in the massacre are thought to remain in Israeli custody, although authorities have not publicly disclosed an exact figure.

Committee chairman MK Simcha Rothman said the Israeli public is “waiting, demanding and entitled” to see those responsible for the atrocities prosecuted.

Officials told lawmakers that staffing shortages are affecting both the military prosecution and Israel Prison Service, while some suspects have still not been questioned by prosecutors.

A special facility intended to securely accommodate the trials is also facing delays, raising the possibility that some of the most significant criminal proceedings in Israel’s history will not begin until more than three years after the massacre.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Israel recently marked two years since Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Friday, September 27, 2024.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in New York for the UN General Assembly when he authorized the strike.

At 6:21 p.m., Israeli Air Force jets struck Hezbollah’s underground headquarters in Beirut’s Dahiyeh district with 83 bombs, according to the IDF. Israel announced Nasrallah’s death the following day, and Hezbollah confirmed it.

Belaaz can now reveal a previously unreported detail about the intelligence behind the operation: information about Nasrallah’s whereabouts also came through the Israel Prison Service, where Chareidim serve in key intelligence roles.

As part of reforms in recent years, the Prison Service has strengthened its intelligence wing, which gathers information from security prisoners and shares it with Israel’s defense establishment.

A number of Chareidim hold key positions in the unit, which works regularly with the Shin Bet and Mossad.

According to a senior Israel Prison Service official who spoke with Belaaz News, a prisoner affiliated with Hezbollah disclosed information about Nasrallah’s location. The information was passed to Israel’s political and military leadership while Netanyahu was abroad.

Israel seized the opportunity and carried out the strike that killed Nasrallah.

The IDF eliminated two Hamas terrorists overnight after troops identified them leaving Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, with one planting explosive devices near the Yellow Line to target Israeli forces, the military said.

According to the IDF, the explosives had been brought out of the hospital. Israeli forces struck the terrorists shortly after identifying the threat, killing both.

One of those eliminated was identified as Muhammad Tamous, a sniper in Hamas’s military wing who also worked for Gaza’s civil defense service, according to the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit.

The military said the terrorists had recently been advancing attacks from inside the hospital and working to rebuild Hamas’s capabilities, in what it described as systematic violations of the ceasefire agreement.

The IDF accused Hamas of continuing to exploit hospitals and medical infrastructure for terrorist activity in violation of international law.

According to the military, Hamas is turning facilities intended to provide civilian medical care into bases for planning attacks and restoring its military capabilities, endangering the civilian population.

The operation follows a series of strikes against Hamas commanders in recent months. At the end of September, Muhammad Hamad Muhammad Gabain, a commander in Hamas’s military wing who was involved in holding nine Israeli hostages, was eliminated.

The IDF said Southern Command forces remain deployed in accordance with the ceasefire agreement and will continue acting to remove immediate threats.

Israeli security assessments indicate that while Hamas has sustained severe blows during the fighting in Gaza, its military and organizational capabilities have not been eliminated.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Nicolas MaduroREUTERS

Federal prosecutors in New York are preparing additional charges against former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, connected to the alleged torture of Americans detained in Venezuela, CNN reported Wednesday, citing multiple people familiar with the investigation.

The new charges could be announced as early as Thursday, according to the report.

The case centers on more than a dozen US citizens whom the US government has said were wrongfully detained in Venezuelan prisons while Maduro headed what Washington described as a repressive regime.

Investigators have also considered bringing charges against several other individuals accused of involvement in the alleged torture of the detained Americans, a source familiar with the investigation told CNN.

Maduro and Flores were captured during a US military raid on the presidential palace in Caracas in January and subsequently brought to New York.

Both have pleaded not guilty to charges including narcoterrorism conspiracy and are currently being held without bail in New York.

A new congressional report lists 81 US military aircraft as lost or damaged in operations against Iran, nearly double the 42 identified in an earlier version this spring.

The Congressional Research Service report, updated October 5, covers fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters and drones since the US, in coordination with Israel, began Operation Epic Fury on February 28. It draws on military statements, news reports and findings from the Defense Department’s inspector general.

The figure combines aircraft that were destroyed with aircraft that were only damaged. CRS notes that it does not have access to classified military damage assessments.

On cost, the report cites a September estimate from the Congressional Budget Office that replacing equipment lost through August 1 would run between $1.9 billion and $3.3 billion, depending on the Pentagon’s replacement plans.

Drones account for a large share of the losses. The inspector general’s report, which covers April 1 through June 30, said as many as 30 MQ-9A Reaper drones were destroyed.

That same inspector general report put the cost of the war at about $33.4 billion, including $22.3 billion in expended munitions.

Photos: U.S. Air Force / U.S. Air National Guard via DVIDS (public domain).

The U.S.-backed Board of Peace said Wednesday that the war and devastation that transformed the Middle East over the past three years were “unleashed by Hamas” on October 7, 2023, while calling for renewed implementation of President Trump’s Gaza peace framework, according to a statement from the organization.

The body issued the statement on the third anniversary of the massacre, saying the attack left wounds extending far beyond the communities directly targeted by Hamas terrorists.

The Board of Peace was created as part of the Trump administration’s effort to oversee the transition in Gaza following the ceasefire and eventual return of the hostages.

Major elements of the plan remain unresolved, including Hamas’s disarmament, the future governance of Gaza and reconstruction of the devastated territory.

The board said moving the plan forward remains necessary to prevent the region from returning to another full-scale war.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)