Poway Chabad Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein pleads guilty to tax fraud

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/poway-chabad-rabbi-yisroel-goldstein-pleads-guilty-to-tax-fraud-635092

 The rabbi who lost a finger in a shooting attack on a Chabad synagogue in Poway, California, in 2019 pleaded guilty to tax fraud.

 

Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein pleaded guilty Tuesday in a scheme in which donors contributed to his synagogue but then got most of the money back, enabling the donor to claim a tax deduction. A charging document detailing the scheme was unsealed in federal court in San Diego, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The scheme resulted in more than $6.2 million in fraudulent donations, resulting in a $1.5 million loss to the federal government. Goldstein could face up to five years in prison.

Understaffed and underpaid: Israeli nurses prepare to strike

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/understaffed-and-underpaid-israeli-nurses-prepare-to-strike-635084

 Israeli nurses are preparing to go on a nationwide strike amid a severe shortage of medical workers and an explosion in the number of COVID-19 patients after the country reopened and many people tossed aside their masks.

Israel is in the thick of its second wave of infections and is averaging more than 1,600 new cases daily this week.

 

Katyal: Trump Botched His Attempted Erasure Of The Mueller Investigation With Stone’s Commutation

Trump administration rescinds rule on foreign students amid pressure from colleges

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-administration-rule-foreign-students-online-classes

The Trump administration on Tuesday said it is withdrawing a proposed rule that would have forced foreign students to return home if the college courses they were enrolled in were to be held entirely online when colleges reopen in the fall.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced last week that those on F-1 and M-1 student visas would need to leave the U.S. or transfer to another college if their schools offer classes entirely online when they reopen in the fall. If they do not, they could face deportation proceedings.

In a statement to students, Harvard President Larry Bacow said that the policy “came down without notice -- its cruelty surpassed only by its recklessness.”

“It appears that it was designed purposefully to place pressure on colleges and universities to open their on-campus classrooms for in-person instruction this fall, without regard to concerns for the health and safety of students, instructors, and others,” he said.

Fox News McEnany: Coronavirus has little effect on kids, they're not driving transmission cycle

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany discusses push to reopen schools with Harris Faulkner on 'Outnumbered Overtime.'

http://a.msn.com/09/en-us/BB16JfeO?ocid=scu2

Israeli virus numbers

https://datadashboard.health.gov.il/COVID-19/?utm_source=go.gov.il&utm_medium=referral

this is the official page of the Israeli heath department

Israel peaks again: More than 1,600 new coronavirus patients in one day

https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/israel-breaks-daily-record-again-with-1681-new-coronavirus-cases-634987

 At the meeting, the National Security Council offered its recommendations: Summer camps should return to a capsule system or close entirely if they cannot manage to do so; synagogues, yeshivas, pools and workout centers – even at hotels – should be shut down; restaurants should revert to takeout only; and gatherings should be limited to 10 people.

 

Heckler shames Florida governor during Covid-19 press conference

The Pandemic Could Get Much, Much Worse. We Must Act Now.

 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/opinion/coronavirus-shutdown.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

By John M. Barry

Mr. Barry is the author of “The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History.”

To understand just how bad things are in the United States and, more important, what can be done about it requires comparison. At this writing, Italy, once the poster child of coronavirus devastation and with a population twice that of Texas, has recently averaged about 200 new cases a day when Texas has had over 9,000. Germany, with a population four times that of Florida, has had fewer than 400 new cases a day. On Sunday, Florida reported over 15,300, the highest single-day total of any state.

The White House says the country has to learn to live with the virus. That’s one thing if new cases occurred at the rates in Italy or Germany, not to mention South Korea or Australia or Vietnam (which so far has zero deaths). It’s another thing when the United States has the highest growth rate of new cases in the world, ahead even of Brazil.

To reopen schools in the safest way, which may be impossible in some instances, and to get the economy fully back on track, we must get the case counts down to manageable levels — down to the levels of European countries. The Trump administration’s threat to withhold federal funds from schools that don’t reopen won’t accomplish that goal. To do that, only decisive action will work in places experiencing explosive growth — at the very least, limits even on private gatherings and selective shutdowns that must include not just such obvious places as bars but churches, also a well-documented source of large-scale spread.

Existing drug may downgrade COVID threat to common cold level — Jerusalem study

https://www.timesofisrael.com/existing-drug-may-downgrade-covid-threat-to-common-cold-level-jerusalem-study/

 

An existing medicine can “downgrade” the danger-level of coronavirus to that of a common cold, a Jerusalem researcher is claiming, after testing it on infected human tissue.

Prof. Yaakov Nahmias says that his research shows that the novel coronavirus is so vicious because it causes lipids to be deposited in the lungs, and that there is a solution to undo the damage: a widely-used anti cholesterol drug called fenofibrate.

America shuts down again -- choosing reality over Trump's false claims

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/14/politics/donald-trump-states-economy-coronavirus/index.html

While President Donald Trump obsesses about his reelection hopes in his White House bubble, state and local leaders are frantically reversing state reopenings that he demanded, which turned America into the world's biggest coronavirus hotspot.

As emergency rooms filled and the virus quickened its relentless march across southern and Western states, Trump stuck to the fiction that the worst is already over: "We had to close it down; now we're opening it up," the President said of the economy at the White House, patting himself on the back for saving "millions of lives."

As new cases of the disease reach 60,000 a day nationwide, many leaders, including those who supported Trump's aggressive approach, now have little choice but to prioritize science over politics, leaving the President looking out of touch with reality.

 

You won't believe what Donald Trump just said about coronavirus testing

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/14/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-testing/index.html

On Monday afternoon, President Donald Trump was asked about his insistence that the only reason that coronavirus cases are spiking across the South and Southwest was an increase in testing. His answer was, uh, something else.

Here's the exchange:

Reporter: President Trump, you've said many times that the number of coronavirus cases is going up because testing is increasing.

Trump: That's right.

Reporter: Do you acknowledge that it's going up for other reasons too; for example, that it's actually spreading? And what are you going to do to stop the spread?

Trump: Well, you know that we have one of the lowest mortality rates anywhere. If you know, [former Vice President Joe] Biden and [former President Barack] Obama stopped their testing; they just stopped it. You probably know that. I'm sure you don't want to report it. But they stopped testing. Right in the middle, they just went, "No more testing," and on a much lesser problem than the problem that we have, obviously with respect to -- this is the worst thing that's happened since probably 1917. This is a very bad -- all over the world. It's 188 countries right now.

 

Ukraine to bar Israeli visitors to Uman this Rosh Hashannah

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/283539

Israeli visitors to be barred from flying to Ukraine for annual Uman pilgrimage, says Ukrainian government, citing coronavirus spike.

 

Commutation Of Roger Stone Is Unconstitutional, Says Law Scholar | Morning Joe | MSNBC