AOC says answer to violent crime is to stop building more jails

 

Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez argued Thursday that authorities should stop building prisons and instead focus on underlying public health issues as New York City seeks to address a recent surge in violent crime.

New York Democrats, including Ocasio-Cortez, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Rep. Jamaal Bowman, called on Congress to earmark $400,000 toward a program called "Stand Up To Violence," which seeks to address gun violence through counseling and community outreach. Ocasio-Cortez said it was "not acceptable" to use jails as "garbage bins."

"If we want to reduce violent crime, if we want to reduce the number of people in our jails, the answer is to stop building more of them," Ocasio-Cortez said. "The answer is to make sure that we actually build more hospitals, we pay organizers, we get people mental health care and overall health care, employment, etc. It’s to support communities, not throw them away."

Ocasio-Cortez and fellow Democrats are seeking congressional funding through a process called "earmarking," a newly reintroduced method that allows lawmakers to request financial support for causes within their districts. The "Stand Up To Violence" program is based at a hospital located in Ocasio-Cortez’s home district.

The request from Democrats came as New York City contends with a spike in gun violence during the coronavirus pandemic. Shooting incidents were up 86% as of May, according to the New York Police Department.

At least 13 people were shot across the city’s five boroughs over Memorial Day weekend, including a 15-year-old boy who was killed in the Bronx.

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Mark Levin slams NY Times columnist for Israeli war crimes claim

 

Conservative radio show host Mark Levin went after comments made by New York

Times columnist Nicholas Kristof on Real Time with Bill Maher.

During a segment on Maher’s show, Kristof claimed that Israel was guilty of “possible war crimes” during the recent fighting with Hamas.

“That is unbelievable,” Levin said during a LevinTV episode, according to the Washington Examiner.

Levin reiterated that Israel had a right to defend itself. He pointed out that Hamas was the evil-doer in the conflict, not Israel.

“I don’t have to give you chapter and verse about how Hamas slaughters and tortures its own people if they don’t fall in line. They had one election about 15 or so years ago, and they haven’t had one since,” he said.

He added, “This whole thing is so sickening, and (Kristof) knows this. He absolutely knows this. Israel with ‘war crimes,’ seriously? If Israel wanted to wipe Gaza off the face of the earth, it would take them about two and a half days.”

Levin then cut to a clip of Maher responding to Kristof’s accusation of “possible war crimes.”

"Well, Gaza fired 4,000 rockets into Israel. What would you say Israel should have done instead of what they did?" Maher asked Kristof.

Kristof replied, ”I mean, international lawyers are pretty clear that they have a right to defend themselves. They have a right to respond at military targets, but there is a sense that their response was probably a war crime because they did not sufficiently avoid civilian casualties.”

Levin responded to the clip. “The war crime would probably be Hamas firing missiles at population centers and hiding their missiles in population centers — in hospitals and in elementary schools, in the AP office complex, and so forth and so on.”

Kristof later in the Real Time segment claimed that Israel having its defence ministry in a civilian area was akin to Hamas hiding missiles inside civilian infrastructure, alleging “both sides do this.”

“No, no, no, it’s not likewise. Israel’s munitions and military hardware, they're not in population centers. The only hardware that’s in population centers are the missiles from Iron Dome that shoot up into the sky and try to stop the other missiles from hitting their area,” Levin said.

Levin called the type of thinking espoused by Kristof “sickening and dangerous.”

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Facebook bans Trump for two years

 

Facebook’s Oversight Board on Friday upheld its suspension of former US President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts for two years, citing his "praise for people who engaged in violence" during the January 6 Capitol attack.

"Given the gravity of the circumstances that led to Mr. Trump’s suspension, we believe his actions constituted a severe violation of our rules which merit the highest penalty available under the new enforcement protocols. We are suspending his accounts for two years, effective from the date of the initial suspension on January 7 this year," Facebook announced, according to Fox News.

"At the end of this period, we will look to experts to assess whether the risk to public safety has receded," it added.

In response, Trump said, “Facebook’s ruling is an insult to the record-setting 75M people, plus many others, who voted for us in the 2020 Rigged Presidential Election. They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this censoring and silencing, and ultimately, we will win. Our Country can’t take this abuse anymore!”

Last month, Facebook Oversight Board — an independent group which reviews Facebook’s thorniest content rulings — affirmed the decision to suspend Trump.

Facebook banned Trump from the platform in the wake of the January 6 riots on the US Capitol, claiming Trump had encouraged the riots.

Twitter also shut down Trump’s account and later approved a permanent ban on Trump.

Twitter and Facebook were the first of many companies to take action against Trump, and were followed by Google which suspended Trump's YouTube channel, Reddit which banned some pro-Trump forums, and Snapchat, which permanently banned Trump on the day he left office.

Conservatives on Capitol Hill and beyond have contended that moves by Facebook and Twitter to "deplatform" Trump demonstrate political bias and inhibit free speech.

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Bridge for Jews entering Temple Mount in immediate danger of collapse

 

A bridge that serves as the sole entry point for Jews and tourists to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount is in immediate danger of collapse, a structural engineer has warned, according to a Thursday television report.

The Mughrabi Bridge leading from the Western Wall compound to the Mughrabi Gate was hastily constructed 15 years ago as a temporary replacement for an earthern access ramp that was in danger of collapsing at the time.

According to Channel 13 news, engineer Ofer Cohen has written in an official letter to the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, after examining the bridge, that the wood is “in a state of extreme dryness and has many longitudinal cracks.”

He wrote that efforts to extend the wood’s life have failed and its current state “doesn’t enable safe use of the bridge over time,” adding that his “unequivocal” recommendation is to replace the bridge with a metal one that would be more durable and fireproof.

However, that would likely inflame tensions with the Palestinians and with Jordan, who view any building activity in the area as a provocation against Muslims.

The Temple Mount plaza is considered the holiest place in Judaism as it is the site where the first and second Jewish Temples once stood. It also houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam.

Israel captured the Temple Mount, and the rest of the Old City and East Jerusalem, from Jordan in the 1967 war, and annexed it, but it allowed Jordan’s Waqf (Muslim trust) to continue to oversee the compound and other Islamic sites in Jerusalem. Israel allows Jews to visit the Temple Mount but not to pray there.

Jordan and the Palestinian leadership do not recognize the site as being holy to Jews. Anything that is viewed as changing the status quo in or around the compound is highly sensitive and often triggers strong responses from Jordan.

In 2014, Israel dismantled a partially built wooden access ramp that had been under construction and would have replaced the bridge.

Under heavy Jordanian pressure, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered that the structure be removed, saying its construction was “illegal” and had never received the proper authorization, a government source said at the time.

Negotiations began in 2007 between Israel, Jordan, Washington and other players over a permanent replacement for the bridge, which ascends to the mount from alongside the main section of the Western Wall, a remnant of the retaining wall that supported the Second Temple complex and the holiest site at which Jews are allowed to pray. The talks apparently never progressed.

In 2011, the UN cultural agency UNESCO decided that all parties should be involved in the ramp’s design process and that neither side should take any unilateral actions that could affect the character of the site.

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AOC Lives in Luxury While Letting Her Grandma Suffer in Poverty...Conservatives Raise $100,00 to Help Granma

 

AOC Shows Granma's the damage of her grandmother’s home.

Conservative commentator Matt Walsh has raised more than $100,000 for US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s grandmother — after the pol was slammed on Twitter for not helping her “abuela” enough.

Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) had tweeted a thread Thursday depicting the conditions of her grandmother’s home, which was damaged during Hurricane Maria in 2017 — taking aim at the Trump administration for blocking aid to Puerto Rico. 

Walsh was among those quick to fire back at the progressive lawmaker, alleging she was allowing her grandmother to “suffer” in “squalid conditions” while she herself lived in posh comfort.  

“Shameful that you live in luxury while allowing your own grandmother to suffer in these squalid conditions,” the Daily Wire host tweeted. 

Ocasio-Cortez shot back at Walsh that he doesn’t “even have a concept for the role that 1st-gen, first-born daughters play in their families.

“My abuela is okay. But instead of only caring for mine & letting others suffer, I’m calling attention to the systemic injustices you seem totally fine w/ in having a US colony,” she wrote. 

Shortly after, Walsh facetiously launched the GoFundMe, stating that “One cannot be certain of the cost to repair grandma’s house, but surely most of the work could be completed for the price of AOC’s shiny Tesla Model 3.”

As of Saturday morning, the fundraiser had received $104,153 in donations.

Walsh’s GoFundMe raised over $100K so far.

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Zera Shimshon Parshas Shelach

 

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Charedi factions invited to join new government

 

Israel’s incoming prime minister and alternate prime minister have decided to leave the door open to the Knesset’s two haredi factions to join the new government, Yediot Aharanot reported Friday morning.

Naftali Bennett, who is set to serve as prime minister for the first two years of the incoming government’s term, and Yair Lapid, who will serve as alternate prime minister before switching roles with Bennett, have decided that the Shas and United Torah Judaism parties will be invited to join the incoming government, and that no formal joint agreement by full government will be necessary for either Shas’ or UTJ’s inclusion in the coalition.

Under the agreement reached by Bennett and Lapid, the prime minister and alternate prime minister will be empowered to expand the coalition at their own discretion.

“The government, based on the decision of the prime minister and alternate prime minister, will back the addition of other parties to the coalition,” the agreement reads.

Sources in the change bloc said the agreement is intended to enable the haredi factions to join the government at some point in its term, without the approval of other coalition members.

Yamina and Yesh Atid responded to the report, saying: “We won’t discuss details of the coalition agreements before they are put on the Knesset agenda.”

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Faced with a tsunami of anti-Semitism, Jews in Chutz Le'aartz still cling to their bubble

 

The tsunami of anti-Semitism over the past few weeks is the work of an axis of anti-Jewish evil that spans continents and has the whole Jewish world in its cross-hairs in both Israel and the Diaspora.

It’s the product of an alliance between the Islamic world and the Western left, making common cause against the Jewish people ostensibly over the Palestinian Arab issue.

In both Britain and America, anti-Semitic attacks have been going through the roof. Jews have been singled out for assault in the street and in restaurants, baited on social media or from passing cars, their synagogues attacked and their children harassed in school.

These attacks were triggered by the 11-day Israeli bombardment of Hamas in Gaza aimed at stopping the thousands of rocket attacks against Israeli towns.

Despite Hamas’s war crimes against both Israeli and Gazan civilians—and despite the incitement to mass murder of Jews by the Palestinian Authority and the consequent terrorist attacks on Israelis in Jerusalem that preceded the hostilities in Gaza—the Western media added to this incitement by recycling Hamas propaganda and falsely depicting the Israelis as wanton killers of Palestinian children.

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Fauci emails: Here’s what we learned

 

As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded last year, Dr. Anthony Fauci was fielding dozens of daily requests from government officials, health experts and the media. 

Now, thousands of Fauci’s emails have been released, offering a glimpse into how the nation’s leading infectious-diseases specialist dealt with the crisis.

As the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Fauci became a prominent face of the nation’s response to the pandemic, appearing at White House COVID-19 briefings and doing a slew of interviews.

Here’s some of what we learned from Fauci’s correspondence:

Were Fauci’s emails leaked?

No. The trove of emails was obtained by The Washington Post and BuzzFeed News through the Freedom of Information Act, which allows journalists to request internal government correspondence.

Buzzfeed posted its entire batch of more than 3,200 pages for the public to peruse. The Washington Post received more than 800 pages and published a story about them Monday.

Was Fauci silenced by then-President Trump?

According to his emails, Fauci had little patience for claims that his statements in the early days of the pandemic were being restricted by the Trump administration.

In a March 2020 email, Fauci denied being silenced by Trump, writing: “Please stay silent since I have not been muzzled. I will be on multiple TV shows tomorrow and was on FOX this AM. No one is censoring me.”

“I am not being muzzled or censored,” he wrote in another email that same month.

Was Fauci fired over the emails?

No. But several GOP lawmakers have called for Fauci to be fired.

Republicans lashed out at Fauci after the email dump, focusing their ire on the fact that Fauci received warnings that the virus may have been “engineered.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who has clashed with Fauci on a number of pandemic-related issues this year, tweeted the hashtag #FireFauci on Wednesday. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) also wrote that Fauci “needs to be fired.”

However, White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Thursday called Fauci “an undeniable asset” and said that President Biden has full confidence in his health adviser.

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Oregon woman died homeless while she had $884K in unclaimed funds

 An Oregon woman died homeless last year while $884,000 in inheritance money sat unclaimed in a state bank account, a news report said.

Cathy Boone died in January 2020 in a warming shelter after living on the streets of the city of Astoria, contending with drug and mental health issues, KGW News reported.

“It just didn’t make any sense to me,” her dad Jack Spithall said in a TV interview.

“That money just sitting there – and she needed help in the worst way.”

Boone grew up in the Portland area and later moved to Astoria, where her mother lived after her parents had separated. When Boone’s mother died in 2016, representatives of the estate tried to locate the daughter to no avail.

Newspaper ads went unanswered and a private investigator couldn’t locate her – so her unclaimed money was transferred to the Department of State Lands, KGW stated. In total, she was owed $884,407, according to the report.

“Given a year and a half of effort taken by the personal representative and the attorney for this particular estate, there really isn’t much more that the state could do,” Claudia Ciobanu, a spokesperson for the department, said.

 “This is a unique case and we sympathize with the family.”

What happens to Boone’s money now is unknown, with her two biological children and others potentially having claims to her cash, the station said.

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Bride dies of heart attack at her wedding in India, so groom reportedly marries sister

 

Bride in center and Sister in circle 

A bride collapsed and died at the beginning of her wedding in India — so the groom married her younger sister instead after the body was moved to another room, according to reports.

The bride — only identified as Surbhi — collapsed of a heart attack while exchanging traditional garlands with husband-to-be Mangesh Kumar at the start of their ceremony Thursday, according to News18, citing the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS).

She was pronounced dead by a doctor who raced to the festivities in Samspura village in Uttar Pradesh, the report said.

“We did not know what to do in the situation. Both the families sat together and someone suggested that my younger sister Nisha should be married to the groom,” the women’s brother, Saurabh, told IANS.

“The families discussed the matter and both agreed,” he said.

“It was a bizarre situation as the wedding of my younger sister took place while the dead body of my other sister was lying in another room,” he said, according to the Times of India.

After the joy of the wedding, the family immediately held last rites for the dead bride-to-be, the report said.

“It was a tough decision for our family,” one of the women’s uncles, Ajab Singh, told IANS.

“One daughter was lying dead in one room and the wedding of another was going on in another room. We have never experienced such mixed emotions,” he said.

“The grief over her death and the happiness of the wedding has yet to sink in.”

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Lapid informs president he can form government removing Netanyahu from power

 

Lapid, Bennett and the Arab 

Thirty-five minutes before a midnight deadline, Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid on Wednesday night informed President Reuven Rivlin he is able to form a government in which he and Yamina chief Naftali Bennett will switch off as prime minister, positioning themselves to replace Israel’s longest-serving leader Benjamin Netanyahu as premier.

Under the terms of the new coalition, Bennett is to serve as prime minister until September 2023, when Lapid will take over from him until the end of the Knesset term in November 2025. The agreement came together after Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas threw his support behind the would-be government late on Wednesday night, setting up his Islamist party to be the first majority Arab party to be part of a ruling coalition in Israel’s history.

Despite Lapid’s declaration, it remained unclear that the prospective “change government” will make it past the finish line. It is set to include 61 of the 120 MKs — the narrowest possible majority. And an MK from Bennett’s Yamina, Nir Orbach, earlier on Wednesday night announced he could vote against the new coalition, a move that could potentially doom the prospective razor-thin government of right-wing, centrist, left-wing parties and the Islamist Ra’am.

“I am honored to inform you that I have succeeded in forming a government,” Lapid told Rivlin according to a Yesh Atid statement. “The government will be an alternate government in accordance with Clause 13(a) of the Basic Law: The Government, and MK Naftali Bennett will serve as prime minister first.”

“I congratulate you and the heads of the parties on your agreement to form a government. We expect the Knesset will convene as soon as possible to ratify the government, as required,” Rivlin told Lapid in the phone call between them on Wednesday night, according to the President’s Office.

“This government will work for all the citizens of Israel, those that voted for it and those that didn’t. It will do everything to unite Israeli society,” Lapid promised.

“Today, we succeeded. We made history,” said Merav Michaeli, the Labor leader.

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History made as Arab Israeli Ra’am party joins Bennett-Lapid coalition

 

Ringed by flashing cameras in a luxury hotel in Ramat Gan, conservative Islamist Ra’am chief Mansour Abbas made history on Wednesday night as the first Arab Israeli party leader in half a century to sign a deal to sit in a coalition government.

“This is the first time that an Arab party is part of the process of forming a government. We of course hope that it works and that a government will rise after four rounds of elections,” Abbas said.

Even before Ra’am announced it was signing on, the nascent coalition was widely regarded as the widest in the country’s history, uniting parties from the left to the pro-settlement right aimed at deposing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud faction.

To make it happen, Yamina chief Naftali Bennett and centrist Yesh Atid leader Yair Atid agreed to a rotation scheme, with Bennett becoming Prime Minister for the first two years.

Despite the wide spectrum of views in the so-called “change government,” Abbas said that he had agreed on numerous plans and budgets in Arab Israeli society with his counterparts in the constellation of parties seeking to topple Netanyahu.

“We have reached a critical mass of agreements in various fields that serves the interest of Arab society and that provide solutions for the burning issues in Arab society — planning, the housing crisis, and of course, fighting violence and organized crime,” Abbas said.

Abbas promised that many of the benefits would flow to the Negev region in southern Israel. Ra’am’s base is among the traditional Bedouin communities in the Negev desert.

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Italian artist sells invisible statue for 15,000 euros

 

Forgedabout the seller .....Can I meet the buyer? 

Genius or scammer? Social networks are divided before a news that, although it seems incredible, has happened in Italy: an artist has sold an invisible statue for 15,000 euros. His name is Salvatore Garau and he has managed to auction his “work” for an amount that many consider crazy. However, he defends his creation tooth and nail.

The artist explained that “the success of the auction confirms an irrefutable fact: the void is nothing more than a space full of energy, even if we empty it and there is nothing left, according to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle that nothing has a weight. It therefore has an energy that is condensed and transformed into particles, that is to say, into us “. The ‘Io sono’ certificate of authenticity. (Art-Rite Auctions)

The supposed sculpture is titled ‘Io sono’ (‘I am’) and its new owner will be able to demonstrate his new possession by means of a certificate of guarantee, which attests to its authenticity. Afterwards, you can place it where you deem appropriate, although the artist points out that it needs a space free of obstructions to house its dimensions: 150 x 150 centimeters.

alvatore Garau has previously exhibited other intangible works. In February 2021 he placed a piece entitled ‘Buddha in contemplation’ in the Plaza Della Scala, in Milan. As in this case, you couldn’t see anything, since it was another invisible statue, although a marked box appeared on the ground where, apparently, his work of art was placed.

He plans to “place” seven invisible statues in as many cities around the world

The artist assures that “when I decide to ‘exhibit’ an immaterial sculpture in a given space, that place will concentrate a certain quantity and density of thoughts at a precise point, creating a sculpture that from my title will only take the most varied forms. After all, don’t we shape a God we’ve never seen? ”

Garau has more projects for the future, as he explained to the Art-Rite auction house who sold his work: 

“In May, the immaterial sculpture ‘Aphrodite cries’ will be ‘exhibited’ in the heart of New York, in front of Federal Hall (where G. Washington, the first president of the United States was elected) and a few steps from the Stock Exchange. It will be the third of the seven that I will place in as many cities of the world. Seven because it is the spiritual number par excellence and has a special value in all the great religions, Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Buddhist. Spirituality has always fascinated me, although in contemporary art it is a subject that does not seem to have great appeal, but to me, right now, it seems revolutionary “.

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Ohio football coach forces kosher player to eat pork as punishment

 

A member of an Ohio high school football team who keeps kosher was forced to eat pork as a punishment.

The father of a MicKinley Senior High School junior told News 5 Cleveland that his son, who is kosher, was forced by the team’s coach to eat a whole pepperoni pizza in front of the rest of the team as a punishment.

“The coach had a pork pizza as a penalty for this child not showing up for practice,” said the boy’s father’s attorney Edward Gilbert. “What’s interesting is everyone on the team knows this child will not eat pork.”

According to Gilbert the teen had missed the practice after a May 20 injury. When he returned to the team on May 24, the coach forced him to sit in the middle of the gym in a chair and eat a whole pepperoni pizza with the entire team watching. If he did not do so, his teammates would have to run extra drills and he would face the possibility of being kicked off the team.

According to CantonRep.com the player told the coach at least 10 times that he did not eat pork because his family keeps kosher.

The team should have realized that he didn’t eat pork because he participated in previous team meals.

The boy’s father said that the family has not consumed pork since they began to keep kosher in 2013.

News 5 was told by a Canton City School District that the team’s coach Marcus Wattley and seven assistant coaches have been placed on paid administrative leave.

Gilbert said that communications with the school and superintendent did not result in a satisfactory resolution. They plan to file a lawsuit against the district for violating the boy’s first amendment rights, reported CantonRep.com.

The Canton City School District released a statement on Facebook. 

“The incident calls into question whether appropriate team management, discipline, and player accountability infrastructures are in place,” they stated. 

They are nearing the completion of an investigation into the incident, at which point they will provide more information.

“Let us be clear, the Canton City School District holds all staff to the highest professional and ethical standards. Anything short of these standards is unacceptable,” they said. “As educators, we are united in the pursuit of creating an inclusive and safe learning environment for our students in the classroom and beyond.”

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Massive Fire at Iran's Oil Refinery

 

 A massive fire broke out Wednesday night at the oil refinery serving Iran’s capital, sending thick plumes of black smoke over Tehran. It wasn’t immediately clear if there were injuries.

The fire struck the state-owned Tondgooyan Petrochemical Co. to the south of Tehran, said Mansour Darajati, the director-general of the capital’s crisis management team.

Firefighters believe it struck a pipeline for liquefied petroleum gas at the facility, Darajati told Iranian state television. He did not elaborate.

Associated Press journalists in central Tehran, some 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) away, could see the black smoke rise in the distance. Another AP journalist saw flames shooting into the sky from the site.

Mojtaba Khaledi, the spokesman for Iran’s emergency department, told the semiofficial ISNA news agency that 10 ambulances and other equipment had been deployed at the scene of the fire. Hospitals in the area are on standby as well, he said.

It wasn’t immediately clear what started the blaze. Temperatures in Tehran reached nearly 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) on Wednesday. Hot summer weather in Iran has caused fires in the past.

The blaze came the same day a fire struck the largest warship in the Iranian navy, which later sank in the Gulf of Oman.

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