Shaked's new sanctions on quarantine violators

 

Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked intends to promote a new initiative this week to deter quarantine violators.

According to her proposal, an Israeli who returns from abroad and violates his or her obligation to quarantine - will not only pay a fine of NIS 5,000 - but will also not be allowed to leave the country for an entire year.

Yediot Aharonot reported that the sanction proposed by Shaked will also apply to children and passengers who leave for 'red' countries without the approval of an exceptions committee.

"It is a very simple enforcement tool," Shaked said. "The name of a person caught violating quarantine will be reported immediately to the Population Authority and he will join a list that will be banned from leaving the country for a year."

"I think it is proportionate, if you travel abroad and do not follow the guidelines then you will bear the consequences," she said. "During summer vacation there are families who go on vacation with children and they are not vaccinated - they will return to Israel and go to their friends. It is a tool that I am using for deterrence."

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Scientific American retracts anti-Israel opinion piece after criticism

 

They’re in hot H2O.

Scientific American found itself taking heat this month after the scholarly, 176-year-old magazine published an opinion piece titled “Health Care Workers Call for Support of Palestinians.” 

The screechy diatribe accused Israel of “vaccine apartheid” and “war crimes” among other alleged abuses. The piece blasted “Israeli settler colonial rule” and called on US healthcare and academic institutions to condemn “long-standing oppression” against the Palestinians and adopt the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign against the country. 

The piece was written by Harvard University research fellows Osaid H. K. Alser and Asmaa Rimawi; Seattle Children’s Hospital Dr. Sabreen Akhter; Mayo Clinic Dr. Nusheen Ameenuddin, Harvard med students Anand Chukka and Qaali Hussein; Arizona trauma surgeon Ariän El-Taher; and Bryan Leyva, an “AfroLatinx Scholar-Activist from the “Dakota Territory.”

The opinionated screed was swiftly retracted after the magazine received a letter from three Nobel Prize winners and 100 other scientists calling out the article.

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Benny & Makie Weiss From Lakewood and Her Father Harry Rosenberg and Two Cohen Brothers, Doctors Missing

Benny & Malky Weiss

Harry Rosenberg 

Dr Gary Cohen 

Dr Brad Cohen 

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Florida yet to answer Israeli offer to send rescue team to collapsed building

(L-R) Israeli Consul General in Miami Maor Elbaz-Starinsky, Tallahassee Chabad Rabbi Schneur Oirechman and Florida Senator Rick Scott at the scene of a condo building collapse in Surfside, Florida on June 25, 2021. (Consulate of Israel in Miami)

Florida officials have yet to respond to an Israeli offer to send in a search and rescue team to aid efforts to locate survivors following the collapse of an oceanfront apartment building near Miami Beach.

But it appeared unlikely that the US would take up Israel’s offer to send the Israeli military’s search and rescue team, which has assisted in major disasters around the world in recent years, including in Mexico and Brazil.

“We do not have a resource problem, we have a luck problem,” said Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett on attempts to find survivors under the rubble.

Four people were confirmed dead and 159 unaccounted for Friday following the collapse, as rescue teams scoured a mountain of rubble in a desperate search for survivors.

As shock set in among the local community in Surfside, the state’s governor called for full light to be shed without delay on the causes of the freak disaster — which reduced one wing of a 12-story tower to a gigantic pile of debris.

Miami-Dade County’s first Jewish mayor Daniella Levine Cava said authorities were still without news of 159 people who may have been asleep in Champlain Tower South at the time of the collapse, fueling fears of a much higher death toll.

“We will continue search and rescue because we still have hope that we will find people alive,” she told a news conference — describing the dedication of dozens of rescuers on site.

“They are totally, totally motivated to find people. They have to be pulled off the shift.”

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Palestinians in Ramallah to Abbas, "take your 'dogs' and leave"

 

The alleged murder on Thursday of an outspoken critic of the Palestinian Authority, who was a candidate in parliamentary elections called off earlier this year, has sparked popular unrest in Judea and Samaria against PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his governing body.

Nizar Banat died after Palestinian security forces arrested him and beat him with batons on Thursday, his family said.

Following an autopsy, a Palestinian rights group said his wounds indicated "an unnatural death."

Banat had called on Western nations to cut off aid to the PA because of its authoritarianism and human rights violations. Earlier this week, another prominent activist was detained by the PA and held overnight after criticizing it on Facebook.

Hundreds took to the streets in Ramallah, where the PA parliament is located, in protest after word spread of Banat's death.

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Building inspector was on roof of Florida condo hours before collapse

 

The Surfside town building official was on the roof of the beachfront condo 14 hours before half of the building collapsed.

Jim McGuinness said during an emergency meeting that he was on the roof to inspect work of replacing roof anchors, used by window cleaners to attach their equipment, the Palm Beach Post reported.

Hours after his inspection of the roof at Champlain Towers South, at around 1:30 a.m. Thursday, one leg of the L-shaped 12-story tower pancaked, killing at least four people and leaving at least 159 unaccounted for. Rescuers have had little luck combing through the pile for survivors, and no one has been found alive since Thursday morning.

“There was no inordinate amount of equipment or materials or anything on that roof that caught my building official’s eye that would make it alarming as to this place collapsing,” McGunniess said during the meeting Friday afternoon.

“I have two words for the cause of this: under investigation.”

The town commission also said during the meeting that it is looking into what may be done to ensure other high-rise buildings are safe. That likely means inspecting buildings, including the sister tower of the one that collapsed, which was also built in 1981.

“It would be imprudent not to take some types of steps to address that issue with the sister building,” Mayor Charles Burkett said during the meeting.

Some residents of the other building, Champlain Towers North, have asked officials if their building is safe, and the town is considering moving them out, even if it’s not convenient.

“But given we have no idea what caused this collapse — and listen, the chances of that happening again are like lightning striking — but I don’t know that there’s anybody in this room that would be willing to roll the dice with all those lives and say, let’s not worry about it for a while,” he said.

One commissioner at the meeting said the town needs to increase the requirements for its recertification process, which now includes a series of inspections every building must complete every 40 years. The collapsed tower was in the midst of that process.

McGuinness agreed. “Hurricane Andrew changed the Florida building codes forever,” he said, ABC News reported. “So this terrible tragedy, which is a national tragedy, is going to change the building codes as they relate to certification.”

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Chabad Couple Missing in Florida Building Collapse

 

Tzvi Doniel Ben Yehudis (far left) and Itta Bas Miriam (far right)

R' Tzvi and his wife Itty Ainswirth

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Zera Shimshon Parshas Balak

 

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Bennett-Lapid Gov’t Approve Construction In Yehuda, Shomron

Israel’s Civil Administration’s High Planning Subcommittee on Wednesday approved new construction in Yehuda and Shomron, a first for the Bennett-Lapid government.

A total of 31 building projects were approved, including a mall in Mishor Adumim, a school in Elkanah, shuls and schools in Karnei Shomron and Kfar Adumim, and housing units in Yitzhar.

Following the decision, the Yesha Council told the Defense Ministry that more approvals are needed in the near future.

“We’ve been waiting for half a year for the approval of homes and it still hasn’t happened,” the committee stated. “The building committee must immediately convene to approve the building of housing units throughout the region. We’ve waited long enough.”

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Collapsed Florida condo was sinking for decades, researcher says

 

Before and After 

The Florida apartment building that partially collapsed on Thursday had been reportedly sinking for decades — and was undergoing a structural inspection, according to officials and a research study.

The 12-story beachfront condo in Miami-Dade County was built in 1981 — and had been sinking into the ground since the 1990s, according to a 2020 study conducted by Shimon Wdowinski, a professor at Florida International University.

“I looked at it this morning and said, ‘Oh my god.’ We did detect that,” Wdowinski told USA Today on Thursday.

Wdowinski’s research focused on which parts of Miami were sinking, in an effort to determine what areas could be most impacted by sea-level rise and coastal flooding.

His team found that the Champlain Towers South in Surfside had been sinking at a rate of about 2 millimeters a year in the 1990s, the report said.

We saw this building had some kind of unusual movement,” Wdowinski told the outlet.However, the study focused on flooding hazards, not engineering concerns — and mention of the “12-story condominium” appeared in only one line, USA Today reported.

“We didn’t give it too much importance,” Wdowinski said, adding that he didn’t believe anybody in the city or state government would have been aware of the study.

Surfside town officials on Thursday said the high-rise had been undergoing a county-mandated 40-year recertification process, which involves electrical and structural inspections.

City Commissioner Eliana Salzhauer told Miami TV station WPLG that the process was believed to be proceeding without issues — and that a building inspector may have been on-site as recently as Wednesday.

“I want to know why this happened,” Salzhauer said. “That’s really the only question. … And can it happen again? Are any other of our buildings in town in jeopardy?”

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