Israeli startups raised $5.9 billion so far in 2019 and are on track to pass last year’s record-breaking figure of $6.4 billion, the Israeli business daily Globes reported on Wednesday.
Based on press releases from Israeli companies that have completed financing rounds, more than $1 billion was raised in September alone.
However, the true figure is likely even higher, as some companies do not reveal investment data, according to the report.
Israeli tech companies raised $650 million in July and $350 million in August, according to the IVC Research Center.

What’s the world’s most widely used cryptocurrency? If you think it’s Bitcoin, which accounts for about 70% of all the digital-asset world’s market value, you’re probably wrong.
While concrete figures on trading volumes are hard to come by in this often murky corner of finance, data from CoinMarketCap.com show that the token with the highest daily and monthly trading volume is Tether, whose market capitalization is more than 30 times smaller. Tether’s volume surpassed that of Bitcoin’s for the first time in April and has consistently exceeded it since early August at about $21 billion per day, the data provider says.

A shul was vandalized in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn during the second day of Rosh Hashanah this week, with the perpetrators being caught on camera.
According to local outlet News12, the incident occurred on Tuesday afternoon while Rosh Hashanah tefillos were underway.

Rav Yoel Baal Shem (1713)

President Donald Trump repeatedly involved Vice President Mike Pence in efforts to exert pressure on the leader of Ukraine at a time when the president was using other channels to solicit information that he hoped would be damaging to a Democratic rival, current and former U.S. officials said.
Trump instructed Pence not to attend the inauguration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in May – an event White House officials had pushed to put on the vice president’s calendar – at a time when Ukraine’s new leader was seeking recognition and support from Washington, the officials said.

Justice Department attorneys promised a federal judge Wednesday that the White House will not destroy records of President Donald Trump’s calls and meetings with foreign leaders while the court weighs a lawsuit brought by historians and watchdog groups.
In a two-page filing, Justice Department lawyer Kathryn Wyer told a federal judge in Washington that the Trump administration and executive office of the president “voluntarily agree . . . to preserve the material at issue pending” litigation.