What We Know So Far About the New Zealand Mosque Shootings

://time.com/5552219/new-zealand-shooting-what-to-know/

Israel launches airstrikes on 'terror sites in Gaza' after attack on Tel Aviv, military says

PRO-HEZBOLLAH AND IRAN MEDIA CELEBRATE ROCKETS OVER TEL AVIV

jpost

Pro-Hezbollah and pro-Iran regime media and social media accounts lit up on Thursday night, after two rockets were fred at Tel Aviv from Gaza. It indicates the close attention paid to tensions in Israel between Israel and terrorist groups in Gaza.

Lebanon’s satellite TV station Al-Mayadeen, which is generally supportive of the Syrian regime and Hezbollah, wrote a story within minutes of the reports of Iron Dome being activated. “Occupation admits that Palestinians bomb ‘Tel Aviv,’” the headline read. Relying on Israel’s Channel 12, the article noted that booms were heard in central Israel and that bomb shelters might be opened.

foxnews

The Israeli military early Friday announced it had launched airstrikes on “terror sites in Gaza,” a retaliatory move after rockets blamed on the militant group Hamas were fired on Tel Aviv.

"We have just started striking terror sites in Gaza. Details to follow," the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tweeted.

Physicists Just Reversed Time on The Smallest Scale by Using a Quantum Computer

https://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-successfully-put-time-into-reverse-on-the-smallest-scale

It's easy to take time's arrow for granted - but the gears of physics actually work just as smoothly in reverse. Maybe that time machine is possible after all?

A recent experiment shows just how much wiggle room we can expect when it comes to distinguishing the past from the future, at least on a quantum scale. It might not allow us to relive the 1960s, but it could help us better understand why not.

Researchers from Russia and the US teamed up to find a way to break, or at least bend, one of physics' most fundamental laws on energy.

The second law of thermodynamics is less a hard rule and more of a guiding principle for the Universe. It says hot things get colder over time as energy transforms and spreads out from areas where it's most intense.

Cardinal George Pell sentenced to 6 years in prison

Cardinal George Pell, once a top adviser to Pope Francis, was sentenced Wednesday to six years in prison. Pell had been found guilty of five counts related to sexually abusing two boys. Pell is the highest-ranking member of the Catholic Church to be found guilty of abuse. Network 10's Emma O'Sullivan joins CBSN with the latest.

Jewish Press (Mar. 15) Dispatch column re Rinat bas Chedva, Prohibition of military service for women

B"H Adar II, 5779 / March 11,'19

 Unlike the vast majority of modern nations, Israel not only has women serve in its military, it forces it's own 18 year-old girls to enlist in IDF military service. This, in clear violation of Halacha, Jewish Law, as articulated since the earliest days of State. Rabbis from across the spectrum, including leading Rabbis of the National Religious camp, have consistently declared women serving in the military as absolutely prohibited. Many leading Rabbis have signed public statements emphasizing that this prohibition extends to the obligation to give up one's life rather than submit to military service. Many Rabbis have declared that merely entering the IDF draft offices to try to avoid conscription as similarly yai'horeig v'al ya'avor, because of the specter (increasingly confirmed in recent years) of IDF officials convincing, intimidating, or deceiving girls to relinquish their legal rights and enlist. In theory, by Israeli law, "religious" girls are, until recently, to be automatically exempt from military service. Again, Jewish Law makes no such distinction, and requires us to that ensure no girls or women serve in the military, religious or otherwise. The Brisker Rov ZT"L is quoted by Rav Aharon Soloveichik ZT"L as being opposing the drafting of non-religious girls even more vociferously than he opposed the drafting of religious girls. An Oct.'15 Supreme Court pronouncement shifted the burden of proof of religiosity onto the girls, allowing the government to challenge her claim, and try to discredit her. Thus, many reported cases of religious girls being forced into the pervasively immoral environment of military service just because they were intentionally tripped up by trick questions, thrown at them by (often antireligious) IDF officials, or otherwise denied the religious exemption to which they were entitled, even according to Israel's own laws. Another alarming development is that, increasingly, Israeli girls are even being forced into combat units, and even mixed-units with men. Predictably, immoral misconduct and assault is a major problem (e.g. see Jerusalem Post, Nov.20,'18) a phenomenon highlighted by the ongoing plight of an Orthodox Jewish girl of Sefardi background, Rinat bat Chedva, 19 years old. Rinat had enlisted in the IDF in Dec. '17, after being persuaded by an official IDF headhunter, operating under the impression that doing so would not prevent her from Torah observance. Reportedly, while in the IDF, in mid-2018, she experienced repeated incidents of immoral assault, including assault perpetrated by at least one superior. She reporting it to IDF authorities. Allegedly, they ignored her complaints, and even covered it up. Traumatized, she had no recourse, and, on Aug. 29, '19, Rinat heeded her parents' pleas to flee the abusive IDF environment. She hid at home for almost five months. Then, on Jan. 22, '19, at 2:30AM, Rinat was arrested, and cruelly punished with abusive incarceration. She was sentenced to 41 days in military prison for "abandoning" the IDF. Additionally, in an earlier military court proceeding, her attorney's attempt to obtain a religious exemption was rebuffed. The Israeli court proceeded as if being repeatedly abused in the IDF had as little impact on her religious rights as it did on her human rights (which she apparently "ceeded" to the Israeli government on her enlistment). Worse, in the wake of her refusal to return to the IDF under ANY circumstances, starting Feb.11, the military justice system escalated their re-victimizing of their own abuse victim, subjecting Rinat to ongoing solitary confinement. This persecution all resulted from her refusal to buckle to all of the pressure and manipulation employed by the government, to compel Rinat to return to the very military system that abused her. Her appeal for an exemption based on her very obvious inability to serve for reasons of emotional incompatibility with IDF service, under the circumstances, was inexplicably denied on Feb. 21. Although freed from prison on Friday March 1, she has not yet been given the exemption to which she is clearly entitled. Therefore, Rinat now lives in constant trepidation of arrest and further abuse at the hands of the military courts. Various people in the Orthodox Jewish community internationally have been working to help Rinat, to assist her in obtaining the full exemption she's entitled to, and to save others in the IDF from Rinat's plight. Although the increasing IDF persecution of religious girls seeking religious exemptions brought this issue to the fore initially, it's important to emphasize that as Jews, as per our timeless Torah principles, we absolutely oppose any girls or women being drafted or mistreated, regardless of color, race, ethnicity, national origin, level of religious observance, or faith, and are obligated to do whatever we can to help them avoid military service. We ought keep Rinat bat Chedva in our tefillos daily until she's freed from all service demands. And we must raise the alarm, and oppose the drafting and mistreatment of all girls and women in the IDF, again, regardless of religious observance. ###

Measles, once eradicated from the US, reported in 12 states. Outbreak spreads among Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn and Queens

cnbc

Measles cases have cropped up across 12 states over the last ten weeks — nearly two decades since the highly contagious disease was said to be eradicated in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Some 228 measles cases were reported to the CDC in the U.S. between Jan. 1 and March 7, more than half of the 372 cases that were reported during all of 2018. Outbreaks, defined as three or more cases, have been reported in six areas: Washington, New York City, New York's Rockland County, Texas, Illinois and California.

There's been a resurgence in the disease in the U.S. and other developed countries amid increasing resistance from parents to vaccinate their children. Measles is highly contagious, infecting up to 90 percent of unvaccinated people who are exposed to an infected person, the CDC said.

Measles may be best known for the rash it produces.The virus spreads through coughing and sneezing and can live in the airspace where the infected person coughed and sneezed for up to two hours, according to the CDC. People can be infected for days before symptoms appear.

The CDC says the outbreaks in the U.S. are linked to people traveling internationally to countries like Israel and Ukraine that are experiencing large outbreaks. The New York City Health department has confirmed 133 cases of measles in Brooklyn and Queens since October, most of which have isolated to the Orthodox Jewish community and were traced back to recent visits to Israel.

A quantum experiment suggests there’s no such thing as objective reality

technology review

Back in 1961, the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Eugene Wigner outlined a thought experiment that demonstrated one of the lesser-known paradoxes of quantum mechanics. The experiment shows how the strange nature of the universe allows two observers—say, Wigner and Wigner’s friend—to experience different realities.

That’s provided some entertaining fodder for after-dinner conversation, but Wigner’s thought experiment has never been more than that—just a thought experiment.  Since then, physicists have used the “Wigner’s Friend” thought experiment to explore the nature of measurement and to argue over whether objective facts can exist. That’s important because scientists carry out experiments to establish objective facts. But if they experience different realities, the argument goes, how can they agree on what these facts might be?

Anti-Semitism and Orthodoxy in the Age of Trump

tabletmag

In response to the Pittsburgh massacre, in which Robert Gregory Bowers gunned down 11 Jews praying in the Tree of Life synagogue on Saturday, Oct. 27, 2018, all major Orthodox organizations condemned the attack in the clearest possible terms, but none was prepared to denounce the stated cause for the violence: white nationalism and the demonization of Jews as avatars for progressive and left-wing politics.

Why would the very group that was most noticeably targeted by white nationalism in the 20th century be the most reluctant to condemn it today? Some point to President Donald Trump and his allies’ support for Israel’s right-wing government, which itself has made common cause with some European anti-Semitic nationalist movements. Others such as the historian David Henkin claim that many of Trump’s Orthodox supporters “are the descendants (literally, in many cases) of Jews to whom the white nationalism of the post-1965 Republican Party was already resonating 30 or 40 years ago in debates about affirmative action, segregation, colonialism, and law enforcement.” Both theories, however, overlook Orthodoxy’s own position on anti-Semitism and the crucible in which it was formed.

Anderson Cooper: Here's where Sanders left the factual world

The Making of the Fox News White House

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newyorker.com/magazine

In January, during the longest government shutdown in America’s history, President Donald Trump rode in a motorcade through Hidalgo County, Texas, eventually stopping on a grassy bluff overlooking the Rio Grande. The White House wanted to dramatize what Trump was portraying as a national emergency: the need to build a wall along the Mexican border. The presence of armored vehicles, bales of confiscated marijuana, and federal agents in flak jackets underscored the message.

But the photo op dramatized something else about the Administration. After members of the press pool got out of vans and headed over to where the President was about to speak, they noticed that Sean Hannity, the Fox News host, was already on location. Unlike them, he hadn’t been confined by the Secret Service, and was mingling with Administration officials, at one point hugging Kirstjen Nielsen, the Secretary of Homeland Security. The pool report noted that Hannity was seen “huddling” with the White House communications director, Bill Shine. After the photo op, Hannity had anexclusive on-air interview with Trump. Politico later reported that it was Hannity’s seventh interview with the President, and Fox’s forty-second. Since then, Trump has given Fox two more. He has granted only ten to the three other main television networks combined, and none to CNN, which he denounces as “fake news.”

Hannity was treated in Texas like a member of the Administration because he virtually is one. The same can be said of Fox’s chairman, Rupert Murdoch. Fox has long been a bane of liberals, but in the past two years many people who watch the network closely, including some Fox alumni, say that it has evolved into something that hasn’t existed before in the United States. Nicole Hemmer, an assistant professor of Presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center and the author of “Messengers of the Right,” a history of the conservative media’s impact on American politics, says of Fox, “It’s the closest we’ve come to having state TV.”

Will the Masses Finally

See Fox News for What It Is?

The unholy union between 

the president and

 Rupert Murdoch’s 

propaganda network 

is under fresh scrutiny

rollingstone

Less than one week after New Yorker
staff writer
 Jane Mayer publishe
President Trump’s communications chief
and his deputy chief of staff,;

top viewer elected to a second term. One wonders, then, why he isn’t just going back to his old job. They certainly could use the help. With ratings reportedly suffering since the Democrats housed the GOP in the midterms last November, Mayer’s report broke three key pieces of bad news for fans of Fox:

Trump questions in August of 2015 before his infamous debate

exchange with Megyn Kelly; FoxNews.com allegedly buried the

Stormy Daniels story before the 2016 presidential election because

the network’s chairman, Rupert Murdoch, wanted Trump to win

and during his presidency, Trump reportedly pressured the Department of Justice to block the AT&T acquisition of Time Warner as a slight to CNN (and a boon to Fox)The first two incidents describe blatant hypocrisies an

journalistic improprieties. The third item sounds like an

impeachable offense on the part of the president.

Ilhan Omar claims her Obama comments were distorted, then posts audio confirming controversial remarks

foxnews

Rep. Ilhan Omar’s attempt to shame a news outlet for misquoting her blistering attack on former President Barack Obama backfired after she released audio of the interview that only served to confirm her remarks.

The Minnesota Democrat, who’s faced controversy over comments perceived as anti-Semitic, got into hot water yet again after saying Obama’s “hope and change” message was a “mirage” and slammed the administration’s drone and border-detention policies.

politicoFirst, Omar tweeted that Lindsey Graham had been “compromised,” suggesting that his support for Trump—whom he’d verbally mauled throughout the 2016 campaign—owed to blackmail collected on the South Carolina senator. (Conservatives accused Omar of playing on the long-running, unsubstantiated insinuation that Graham is gay; she denied this, but apologized.) Then, after being seated on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Omar was lampooned for a 2012 tweet in which she wrote during an Israeli military campaign in the Gaza Strip, “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.” (Omar later apologized and deleted the tweet; she claimed ignorance of the anti-Semitic trope that conceives of Jewish hypnosis.)

politico

Finally, in early February, after just over a month on the job, Omar made the jump from occasional agitator to permanent lightning rod. Arguing that U.S. lawmakers back Israel because of campaign donations from Jewish donors, the congresswoman tweeted, “It’s all about the Benjamins baby,” a reference to $100 bills. The fallout was fierce: The entire House Democratic leadership denounced Omar, forcing yet another apology, and both the president and vice president piled on, skewering the congresswoman for her remarks, with Trump even suggesting that she should resign from Congress. (Notably, neither Trump nor Mike Pence has ever criticized Congressman Steve King despite his well-documented record of openly racist rhetoric.)

politico

All of this proved agonizing for Omar’s constituents, particularly those in the Somali community. Her arrival in Congress was meant to bring them legitimacy and representation. Instead, almost immediately, it invited controversy and humiliation. “I was shocked. I don’t like her on Twitter,” Aden tells me. “She’s very smart, and I didn’t think she would talk that way. It was an embarrassment for me as a Somali-American, because we do not like extreme left or extreme right. But she will do better. This is new to her—she will learn how to handle it.”

The more essential question, it seems, is whether the Democratic Party—its base bursting with energy, riding high off the House takeover of 2018—will learn to handle Omar.

Omar bails out Trump

Politico

She snidely refers to him as “Individual 1.” She has denounced him for “sabotaging the economy.” And she has accused him of engaging in “dehumanizing rhetoric.”

But this week, freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) has been President Donald Trump’s dream come true.

Amid a punishing run of bad news for Trump — ranging from his failed North Korea summit to the scathing testimony of his former lawyer Michael Cohen to an imminent political rebuke by the Republican Senate — Omar has instead consumed the political headlines, giving Democratic lawmakers a taste of the scandal and controversy that has dogged Republicans for the past two years.

Omar’s blunt anti-Israel statements, which even many Democrats call anti-Semitic, have not only fractured her party but have created a rival political narrative to Trump’s mounting setbacks. Where a few weeks ago, cable television networks cut to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s live commentary about Trump and Russia, this week they carried her uncomfortable words about seething fellow Democrats.

“It’s a gift,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), asked about the chaos in the House Democratic Caucus

Australian Sisters in Haredi Sex Offenses Case: 'What God Are They Praying to That Protects Abusers?'

haaretz

Dassi Erlich woke up at 3:30 A.M. at her home in Melbourne on February 15 to what she says were hundreds of text messages alerting her to the news that had broken nearly 14,000 kilometers (8,500 miles) away in Israel: That an Israeli deputy health minister was under investigation for allegedly trying to prevent the extradition of the Australian school principal suspected of sexually abusing her and other girls when they were students at her all-girls ultra-Orthodox school.

It took six days for the media storm to die down, but when it did the rage set in for Erlich and two of her sisters, Nicole Meyer and Ellie Sapper. They are all fellow accusers of Malka Leifer, a dual Israeli-Australian citizen who faces 74 counts of child sex abuse in Australia.

Leifer fled to Israel in 2008 after accusations against her surfaced, and is fighting extradition on the grounds that she is mentally unfit.

>> Australian sisters accusing ultra-Orthodox principal of sexual assault bring extradition fight to Israel

Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman has been questioned by the police, who suspect he pressured Jerusalem's district psychiatrist into writing a false assessment describing Leifer as mentally unfit, which, according to Israeli law, would mean she could not be extradited.

Inside the Kushner Clearance Probe

time


It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing Jared Kushner would forget. On Dec. 13, 2016, Donald Trump’s son-in-law met with Sergey Gorkov, the head of a multibillion-dollar state-run Russian development bank, who was in the U.S., the bank later said, as part of a new investment strategy. To memorialize the event, Gorkov even gave Kushner a piece of art and a bag of dirt from the village where Kushner’s grandparents had grown up. But just one month later, Kushner failed to report the meeting when he applied for permission to view the U.S. government’s most closely held secrets.

The episode is emerging as a key moment in what Democrats allege was a much larger Russian effort to exert influence over Trump’s inner circle as the President-elect’s team prepared to take office in late 2016. As part of a wide-ranging probe into security clearances, House Oversight chair Elijah Cummings is expected to issue the Democrats’ first subpoena of the Trump White House for information about the meeting and other contacts, committee member Gerald Connolly tells TIME. Cummings already has demanded all the documents Kushner provided in his security-clearance application as well as those he gave the White House after the request was rejected. In response, Trump’s White House lawyer said Congress was overstepping its authority by casting such a wide net, and Trump called the security-clearance investigation “presidential harassment.”

But the Gorkov meeting and Kushner’s failure to report it helped accelerate the FBI’s investigations of Russia’s 2016 influence operations, including the inquiry that special counsel Robert Mueller took over five months later, two sources familiar with the probes tell TIME. The Gorkov meeting, and others held by Trump transition figures with then Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, these sources say, helped make what had been a relatively slow-moving counterintelligence investigation a top priority.

At issue, these and four other intelligence and law-enforcement officials say, is whether Russia used the business interests of Trump, Kushner and others in an attempt to influence U.S. foreign- and national-security policy, like trying to ease sanctions, soften U.S. opposition to Moscow’s expansionist aims and limit American military aid to Ukraine. “It’s at the heart of the question about whether Russia has any financial leverage over any members of the Administration,” one of the sources tells TIME. “If Jared was an adviser to the incoming President of the United States and trying to profit from that by doing private business with the Russians or anybody else, then he’d have a problem, and his clearance might be the least of it.”