Israeli tech entrepreneur Avigdor Willenz is looking for entrepreneurs to do battle against tech giants such as Apple, Amazon, and Google. “Despite assisting and strengthening those companies myself, I think too much power breeds evil,” he said Wednesday in an event held in northern Israeli business hub OpenValley.
“In the past, it seemed impossible to fight such huge corporations, but every organization is set to eventually fade and disappear, and the question is whether there’s some initiative that can overcome these companies,” he said.
“It is my favorite mission,” he added. “I’m already invested in a company I want to see make Amazon’s commerce redundant.”

Attorney General William Barr appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee, will not return for hearing with the House.
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A defiant Julian Assange told a London court Thursday he will fight extradition to the United States to face charges of conspiring to hack into a Pentagon computer, arguing that his work as WikiLeaks founder has benefited the public.
Speaking by video link from Belmarsh Prison in southeast London, Assange said: “I do not wish to surrender myself for extradition for doing journalism that has won many awards and protected many people.”
His formal refusal to be extradited marks the start of what is expected to be a bruising legal battle over whether he will be brought to trial in the United States.
Read more at ABC News.
{Matzav.com}

Democrats intensified their pressure on President Donald Trump’s administration on Thursday as U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused Attorney General William Barr of committing a crime by lying to lawmakers and a key committee chairman threatened to hold Barr in contempt of Congress.
Shortly after Barr refused to appear before House Judiciary Committee, Pelosi accused him of lying to lawmakers about interactions with Mueller after the special counsel ended a 22-month investigation into Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election to boost Trump’s candidacy.
“That’s a crime,” Pelosi, the top Democrat in Congress, told reporters, referring to Barr’s congressional testimony.

The head of Gaza-based Islamic Jihad (PIJ) on Thursday threatened rocket attacks on the Israeli homefront if the IDF conducted targeted killings of Palestinian terror operatives.
In an interview with the Arabic-language news outlet Dar al-Hayat, PIJ Secretary-General Ziyad al-Nakhaleh said, “I clearly state that we will respond with force and attack major cities, if any harm is done to [members of] the resistance or premeditated assassinations are carried out against them, regardless of their organizational roles.”
The comment came after the IDF blamed Iran-backed Islamic Jihad for the firing of a rocket on Monday that landed in the Mediterranean Sea off the southern Israeli coast. The IDF specifically named a senior Islamic Jihad commander, Bahaa Abu-Ala’ta.

The repeal of ObamaCare’s individual mandate will result in 7 million more people without health insurance by 2021, according to new estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
That number is far lower than the agency’s 2017 estimate that 13 million people would be uninsured by 2027, which came as Congress was debating the GOP tax bill.
The legislation, which was signed into law in December 2017, eliminated the financial penalty for Americans who don’t purchase insurance.
Read more at The Hill.
{Matzav.com}

Rep. Ilhan Omar blamed the US for the political turmoil in Venezuela, saying we “helped lead the devastation” through the use of sanctions.
“A lot of the policies that we have put in place has kind of helped lead the devastation in Venezuela and we have sort of set the stage for where we are arriving today,” the Minnesota congresswoman said during an interview Wednesday with Democracy Now!. “This particular bullying and the use of sanctions to eventually intervene and make regime change really does not help the people of countries like Venezuela and it certainly does not help and is not in the interest of the United States.”

President Trump sits down with Fox News chief intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge for a wide-ranging interview in the White House.
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Facebook said on Thursday it has permanently banned several far-right and anti-Semitic figures and organizations, including Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, Infowars host Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos and Laura Loomer, for being “dangerous,” a sign that the social network is more aggressively enforcing its hate speech policies under pressure from civil rights groups.
Facebook had removed the accounts, fan pages, and groups affiliated with these individuals after it reevaluated the content that they had posted previously, or had reexamined their activities outside of Facebook, the company said. The removal also pertains to at least one of the organizations run by these people, Jones’ Infowars.

A kallah is in need of Klal Yisroel’s tefillos the day after her wedding.
The kallah, Nechama, got married last night at N’eemas Hachaim Hall in Lakewood, NJ. Overnight, she fell into a coma and is in need of rachamei Shomayim.
All are asked to please daven for Nechama Danya Chaya bas Malka.
May we only hear besuros tovos.
{Matzav.com}