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.”

Quantum Monism Could Save the Soul of Physics

scientific american

“The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible, ”Albert Einstein famously once said. These days, however, it is far from being a matter of consensus that the universe is comprehensible, or even that it is unique. Fundamental physics is facing a crisis, related to two popular concepts that are frequently invoked, summarized tellingly by the buzzwords “multiverse” and “uglyverse.”

Multiverse proponents advocate the idea that there may exist innumerable other universes, some of them with totally different physics and numbers of spatial dimensions; and that you, I and everything else may exist in countless copies. “The multiverse may be the most dangerous idea in physics” argues the South African cosmologist George Ellis.

Ever since the early days of science, finding an unlikely coincidence prompted an urge to explain, a motivation to search for the hidden reason behind it. One modern example: the laws of physics appear to be finely tuned to permit the existence of intelligent beings who can discover those laws—a coincidence that demands explanation.

With the advent of the multiverse, this has changed: As unlikely as a coincidence may appear, in the zillions of universes that compose the multiverse, it will exist somewhere. And if the coincidence seems to favor the emergence of complex structures, life or consciousness, we shouldn’t even be surprised to find ourselves in a universe that allows us to exist in the first place. But this “anthropic reasoning” in turn implies that we can't predict anything anymore. There is no obvious guiding principle for the CERN physicists searching for new particles. And there is no fundamental law to be discovered behind the accidental properties of the universe.

Quite different but not less dangerous is the other challenge—the “uglyverse”: According to theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, modern physics has been led astray by its bias for “beauty,” giving rise to mathematically elegant, speculative fantasies without any contact to experiment. Physics has been “lost in math,” she argues. But then, what physicists call “beauty” are structures and symmetries. If we can’t rely on such concepts anymore, the difference between comprehension and a mere fit to experimental data will be blurred. 

Both challenges have some justification. “Why should the laws of nature care what I find beautiful?” Hossenfelder righteously asks, and the answer is: They shouldn’t. Of course, nature could be complicated, messy and incomprehensible—if it were classical. But nature isn’t. Nature is quantum mechanical. And while classical physics is the science of our daily life where objects are separable, individual things, quantum mechanics is different. The condition of your car for example is not related to the color of your wife’s dress. In quantum mechanics though, things that were in causal contact once remain correlated, described by Einstein as “spooky action at a distance.” Such correlations constitute structure, and structure is beauty. 

'Democrats cave to Omar’s strategy of anti-Semitism'

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/260031

Pro-Israel American Jewish group The National Conference of Jewish Affairs (NCJA) released a statement condemning "the unwillingness of Democratic leadership to immediately denounce" anti-Semitism, as a Democratic resolution triggered by comments made by Rep. Ilhan Omar appeared to have been obstructed.

"Rep. Omar, and Rep. Tlaib, are employing the time-tested drip-by-drip method used successfully by Islamists in Europe against Jews and Israel. Week after week, poisonous remarks against Israel or Jews are made by Islamists with the goal being a continuous seepage of anti-Jewish caricatures into the political discourse and into the minds of a country's population. The apologies are insincere, an expedient; a breather until the next time. It's death by a thousand cuts to Israel and her supporters," said Rabbi Aryeh Spero, spokesman for the group.

“The unwillingness by the Democrat leadership to immediately denounce, specifically, the perpetrators and to stop this anti-Jewishness dead-in-its tracks is a worrisome sign that, as with their Labor Party counterpart in England, Corbyn-ism is far heavier in the Democrat Party than we thought. The Democrat leadership seems to be making a choice, preferring the inter-sectionality voting blocks in whom it envisions its future.

NCJA was also critical of Jewish organizations supportive of the Democratic party for failing to pressure Democratic leadership.

“The Jewish organizational community, almost entirely liberal and Democrat, has not pressured the Democrat leadership in anyway near the degree they would have if the victim of hate were black, Muslim, Latino, or LGBTQ. Furthermore, there has been no unified call by the 36 Jewish Democrat members of Congress against Omar. Most liberal Jews seem unconcerned when anti-Semitism comes from the political Left, their home base.

How a public feud over anti-Semitism dealt House Democrats their first real setback

cnn

Democrats have had the majority in the House of Representatives for just two months, but they've already been sidetracked by an ugly divide over anti-Semitism and other bigotry.

For weeks, tensions on Capitol Hill have been rising over remarks from freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota questioning the allegiance of Israel supporters in Congress. Her comments drew condemnation from many of her fellow Democrats and prompted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California to push for a vote on a resolution condemning anti-Semitism. Rather than putting the issue behind them, however, the move has prolonged the controversy and put a spotlight on divisions inside the party around a highly sensitive issue.

The resolution came after Omar criticized politicians by using anti-Semitic tropes, prompting condemnation from several Jewish Democratic lawmakers and an apology from Omar last month. But Omar later dug in when she suggested pro-Israel interests pushed members of Congress to pledge allegiance to a "foreign country," drawing further outrage from her colleagues.

Pelosi had a choice: She could issue piecemeal condemnations and hope the issue disappeared, or nip it in the bud with a strong resolution staking out the House's stance on anti-Semitism. She chose the latter but didn't count on the resistance from allies of Omar. After an ugly scrum broke out on Wednesday behind closed doors, the vote was tabled. Leadership is now rewriting the resolution to condemn all hate, not just anti-Semitism.

Anger from the left

Members from both the Congressional Black Caucus and the younger, far-left wing of the party were furious about the leadership's gambit. They questioned singling out Omar for condemnation. What about bigotry from Republicans, including President Donald Trump? And why were Democrats so focused on a woman of color, one of just two Muslims in Congress? Could the added scrutiny even put Omar in danger?

"Like some of my colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus, I am concerned that the spotlight being put on Congresswoman Omar may put her at risk," California Sen. Kamala Harris told reporters Wednesday. Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts -- who like Harris are running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination -- also voiced their support for Omar.

Others on the left asked why Democrats were condemning only bigotry against Jews. "We think that hate and racism in our country is growing. American Jewish, LGBTQ, Latino, immigrant, Muslim -- it is something that needs to be looked at as a whole instead of just trying to come up with a hierarchy of hurt and pain," Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, another freshman Democrat and the other Muslim in Congress, told CNN on Wednesday.

Frustrated moderates

On the other side of the debate, moderate Democrats were frustrated that Omar's comments have derailed the agenda in the House and exposed divisions in an otherwise unified caucus. There are also concerns that a watered-down statement might end up looking like tolerance of anti-Semitic views within the caucus.

"One would think it would be a lot simpler than it appears to be to pass a resolution condemning anti-Semitism," Mark Mellman, a veteran Democratic pollster and founder of the Democratic Majority for Israel, told CNN. Mellman founded his group in January to shore up support in the party for the US-Israel relationship and to counterbalance what he sees as a rise in anti-Israel views among some Democrats.

The dispute is a leadership test for Pelosi and her ability to manage a majority built both from energized young progressives from the heart of the anti-Trump resistance and moderates elected on pocketbook issues in Trump country. But this isn't a debate about policy; it's about bigotry and whether the caucus will tolerate it or not. That's not a conversation the Democrats wanted to be having in public as they ramp up investigations into Trump and push forward their policy agenda.

"This is not a productive use of our time," a senior aide to a moderate House Democrat told CNN. "We need to change the subject and get back to the things we promised to do, which is infrastructure, health care, jobs."

The issue is the first real setback for a Democratic caucus that has largely remained a united front against Trump. From holding the line on the government shutdown to voting to rescind Trump's national emergency declaration, House Democrats have so far hung together. "Those were enormous wins, and now this makes it look like we are in disarray," said the senior aide.

That's even given Trump, who himself said there were "fine people" among the marchers in the 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, an opening to criticize Democrats. "It is shameful that House Democrats won't take a stronger stand against Anti-Semitism in their conference," he tweeted Wednesday. "Anti-Semitism has fueled atrocities throughout history and it's inconceivable they will not act to condemn it!"

The longer Democrats fight over the party's stance on anti-Semitism, the greater the potential damage to the caucus. There's a cautionary tale unfolding across the pond, where Britain's Labour Party is being pulled apart by its own anti-Semitism issues. Several disaffected Jewish members of Parliament have left the party over Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's perceived embrace of and tolerance for anti-Jewish sentiment.

"We can't be silent as Omar continues to say these things, because if we are silent, we're complicit in what is completely unacceptable," says Josh Block, a former Clinton administration official and head of the Israel Project, a nonpartisan pro-Israel group. "And the leadership needs to act before the virus of Corbynism infects the party."

A new paradigm

This isn't the first time House Democrats have grappled with internal divisions. For 40 years, the party held control of the House with a coalition of Southern segregationists, urban blacks and the white working class. During that time, it dealt with substantive issues including civil rights, the Cold War and tax revisions, to name a few.

What seems to be different this time is the way the party handles differences among its factions. In a way, that's a function of the rise of social media as a political tool, where communicating publicly to an online audience outweighs speaking privately to members of your coalition. It's worth noting that Omar set off this firestorm about Israel with a pair of tweets taking on members of her party for accepting money from Jewish-backed lobbying groups.

That disconnect between the new class and the old way of doing things was captured in the comments of 65-year-old Michigan Rep. Debbie Dingell. "What we need to do is not be out there Twittering," Dingell told reporters Wednesday. "We need to talk to each other."

The Trump Temple coins that changed the world – now in silve

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/259984


An Historic Declaration.

A little more than a year ago, President Donald Trump made an historic declaration that Jerusalem is the “One and Only Capital of the Jewish State of Israel.”

Soon after, Trump proved to the world that he not only makes declarations, but also acts upon his beliefs: He transferred the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. And following this historic event, the TRUMP TEMPLE COINS were minted.

The concept was conceived by Professor Hillel Weiss and the coins were produced by the Mikdash Educational Center in Jerusalem. In the past year, these unique coins have found their way to thousands of people worldwide- from North and South America, China, to Australia, all around Europe and even to Iran - all who support Israel, the Holy Temple, and Trump’s declaration. Now they can be obtained in solid silver too!!

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The Themes Displayed on the Coins.

The Trump Temple Coins are not just medallions or souvenirs. They are precious coins that have an entire story to tell. The main idea conveyed by these coins is that President Trump is initiating a prophetic process that will eventually facilitate, when the time comes, the rebuilding of the Third Temple. His actions mirror those of King Cyrus who declared to the Jewish people, in exile for 70 years, that "Hashem, The Lord of the World, charged me to build Him a house in Jerusalem."

On Monday, March 5, 2018, in Washington D.C., shortly after the Temple Coins were produced, Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed President Trump and also compared the President to King Cyrus.

"I want to tell you that the Jewish people have a long memory; so we remember the proclamation of the great king, Cyrus the Great, the Persian king, 2,500 years ago. He proclaimed that the Jewish exiles in Babylon could come back and rebuild our Temple in Jerusalem. We remember a hundred years ago, Lord Balfour, who issued the Balfour Proclamation that recognized the rights of the Jewish people in our ancestral homeland. We remember that seventy years ago, President Harry S. Truman was the first leader to recognize the Jewish state. And we remember how a few weeks ago, President Donald J. Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Mr. President, this will be remembered by our people through the ages"

The message on the coin is addressed to all the “Seventy Nations”: They are called upon to accompany the Jewish People on their journey to establish the Holy Temple as a place of peace.

The Menorah on the Coin. The Menorah was always the symbol of the Jewish Nation. It represents the light of the Temple spreading out to the world, as stated in Isaiah 60:3, "Nations shall walk at Your light, and kings at the brightness of Your rising".

Women in the IDF