US court orders Iran to pay $1.4B to family of ex-FBI agent Robert Levinson

A US judge has ordered Iran to pay $1.45 billion to the family of a former FBI agent believed to have been kidnapped by the Islamic Republic while on an unauthorized CIA mission to an Iranian island in 2007.

The judgment this month comes after Robert Levinson’s family and the US government now believe he died in the Iranian government’s custody, something long denied by Tehran, though officials over time have offered contradictory accounts about what happened to him on Kish Island.

Tensions remain high between the US and Iran amid US President Donald Trump’s maximalist pressure campaign over Tehran’s nuclear program. And though the US and Iran haven’t had diplomatic relations since the aftermath of the 1979 US Embassy hostage crisis in Tehran, America stills holds billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets that could be used to pay Levinson’s family.

In a ruling dated Thursday, the US District Court in Washington found Iran owed Levinson’s family $1.35 billion in punitive damages and $107 million in compensatory damages for his kidnapping. The court cited the case of Otto Warmbier, an American college student who died in 2017 shortly after being freed from captivity in North Korea, in deciding to award the massive amount of punitive damages to Levinson’s family.

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Why are President Trump and haredi Jews blamed for their coronavirus infections, while BLM and anti-government protesters are not?

 

This past weekend, a lot of us received a test in our commitment to our values about how to behave towards those who are ill and who might be our political opponents. Some of us did better than others.

I refer, of course, to the news that President Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, tested positive for COVID-19 with the president being hospitalized. After three nights at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, the president has returned to the White House, and it appears that the nation has been spared a possible crisis in which the commander-in-chief was incapacitated. Reactions to the announcement, however, have been something like a national ethics test where we were asked to put aside our political opinions and exhibit what in the Jewish world we commonly call menschlichkeit or a sense of humanity.

The good news is that most people in public life passed the test. That was true of former Vice President Joe Biden, who, along with his wife, issued a gracious statement saying that they were “praying for the health and safety of the president and his family.” Just as important, he reminded his followers that “this is not about politics.”

The Bidens weren’t alone in saying that. Many people in public life—left, right and in the middle—did the same, giving us a heartening lesson that disagreeing with someone, even vehement disagreement, shouldn’t cause us to lose our own humanity in wishing them ill, especially in the middle of a pandemic.

Not everyone, however, met that same high standard. While Trump was in the hospital, social media was a cesspool of vile invective and hateful rhetoric illustrating the anger of many of the president’s detractors in language that was inappropriate and gave the lie to their claim to the moral high ground.

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Bobover Rebbe 45 Tests Positive for COVID-19

 

Just last week, a photo of a Hasidic rabbi from Borough Park wearing a mask outdoors went viral, even prompting one of New York City’s top health officials to cite him as a model of responsible community leadership during a press conference about the recent uptick in COVID-19 cases in New York City’s Orthodox Jewish communities.

But now the rabbi, Rabbi Mordechai David Unger, head of a faction of the Bobov Hasidic sect, has tested positive himself.

According to an Instagram post by BoroPark24, a local news site in the Brooklyn neighborhood where the Hasidic group is based, Unger tested positive for COVID-19 and is experiencing mild symptoms.

The photograph of Unger wearing a mask was taken just before Yom Kippur started, days after New York City threatened Borough Park and several other heavily Orthodox neighborhoods with consequences if they did not bring down their infection rates. But during the holiday last Monday, two attendees at Unger’s synagogue said there were no masks in sight at the services.

Unger is not the first major rabbi to test positive for COVID-19 recently. Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, a major haredi leader in Israel who is also seen as a leader for communities in the United States, tested positive for COVID-19 last week. Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum, head of a faction of the Satmar Hasidic group, recovered from COVID earlier this year. And Rabbi Mordechai Leifer, known as the Pittsburgher rebbe, died of the disease this week in Israel at age 65.

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How the Kretchniver Rebbe in Kiryat Gat Spoke to the Cop That Was Sent to Break Up The "Tish" in the Sukkah

This video is in Hebrew but the bottom line is that the Rebbe spoke with the utmost respect and love towards the officer who came to break up the "Tish gathering" of hundreds of Chassidim in the Sukkah...

The Rebbe told him that he understands that he has a job to do and that the Rebbe is "envious of  how the officer does his job with such loyalty" and that he should understand that the gathering was not an act of defiance but was a way to thank Hashem for giving us such a great Yom Tov that is all about Simcha...

At the end, they came to an understanding and the Rebbe ended the Tish quickly and violence was avoided...

Isn't this a better way or do we want to be like the protestors?

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The "Na'nuim" of the London Sadigere Rebbe

Biden Claims We Are Able to Stay Out of Quarantine Because "Some Black Ladies Stack the Grocery Shelves"

 

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CDC acknowledges COVID-19 is airborne, can travel beyond six feet

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged Monday that coronavirus can spread through particles in the air and sometimes travel beyond distances of six feet — after walking back similar guidance last month.

The update on the agency’s site said that “COVID-19 can sometimes be spread by airborne transmission” due to small droplets that linger in the air for anywhere from minutes to hours.

“There is evidence that under certain conditions, people with COVID-19 seem to have infected others who were more than six feet away,” the agency said.

“These transmissions occurred within enclosed spaces that had inadequate ventilation. Sometimes the infected person was breathing heavily, for example while singing or exercising.”

The agency added that “under these circumstances, scientists believe that the amount of infectious smaller droplet and particles produced by the people with COVID-19 became concentrated enough to spread the virus to other people.”

“The people who were infected were in the same space during the same time or shortly after the person with COVID-19 had left,” the page said.

The admission comes after similar guidance was posted last month and then taken down.

“A draft version of proposed changes to these recommendations was posted in error to the agency’s official website,” a CDC spokesman told the Wall Street Journal at the time.

The CDC said Monday it “continues to believe, based on current science, that people are more likely to become infected the longer and closer they are to a person with COVID-19.”

“Today’s update acknowledges the existence of some published reports showing limited, uncommon circumstances where people with COVID-19 infected others who were more than 6 feet away or shortly after the COVID-19-positive person left an area,” the agency said in a statement.

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Trump releases video after White House return, says ‘don’t be afraid’ of COVID-19

pic.twitter.com/OxmRcZ5nUZ

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2020

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When the Lubavitcher Rebbe Met Public School Children in His Sukkah in 1976

 

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Masses at funeral of Pittsburgh Rebbe in Ashdod

 

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