Phoenix – The Army Corps of Engineers has awarded contracts totaling nearly $1 billion to replace short barriers with tall fences along two sections of the U.S.-Mexico border. The Corps of Engineers said in a statement Wednesday that 46 miles (74 kilometers) of fencing will be installed near Columbus, New Mexico, and 11 miles (18 [...]

Jerusalem – With elections in the rearview mirror, Israelis are now focusing on the moon. The Israeli spacecraft Beresheet, or Genesis, is scheduled to touch down on the moon’s surface on Thursday night in Israel. And the country has Beresheet mania. Watch parties and celebrations are planned throughout Israel. The main event — in Hod [...]

Washington – The Trump administration on Wednesday appealed recent rulings in a closely watched case involving health care for the poor, after a federal judge blocked work requirements for some low-income people on Medicaid. The rulings last month by Judge James Boasberg in Washington D.C. blocked requirements for “able bodied” adults in Arkansas and Kentucky [...]

Salem, OR – Rose Marie Bentley was an avid swimmer, raised five kids, helped her husband run a feed store, and lived to the ripe age of 99. It was only after she died that medical students discovered that all her internal organs — except for her heart — were in the wrong place. The [...]

Jerusalem – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu secured a clear path to reelection on Wednesday, with religious-rightist parties set to hand him a parliamentary majority despite a close contest against his main centrist challenger, a vote tally showed. With more than 97 percent of votes counted, Netanyahu’s conservative Likud party looked likely to muster enough [...]

Washington – Twitter removed a campaign video posted by President Donald Trump after Warner’s Bros. Pictures complained about the use of the score from its 2012 movie “The Dark Knight Rises.” Trump on Tuesday tweeted the video, which featured images of Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton juxtaposed with images from Trump’s two years in [...]

Gaza – A senior Hamas leader is dismissing the outcome of Israel’s election as irrelevant, saying “all parties are faces of one coin, the coin of occupation.” Khalil al-Hayya said Wednesday that “there is no difference” between the Israeli parties, and pledged that Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers would continue seeking to “end the occupation and [...]

Jerusalem – Benny Gantz, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief rival, says “nothing is over, we are making our moves,” despite election results that appear to hand Netanyahu a clear mandate for a fifth term. Gantz told reporters Wednesday that the broad support for his centrist Blue and White party proves “the people want a different [...]

New York – In a rare order, New York City is requiring residents of a heavily Orthodox Jewish neighborhood to be vaccinated for measles. Now the question is how officials intend to enforce that demand. Authorities plan to start by asking people sickened in the city’s biggest measles outbreak since 1991 about where they’ve been [...]

New York – Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York said Tuesday that her relationship with Hillary Clinton is strong and that Clinton had given her advice about her 2020 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. Gillibrand, appearing at a town hall televised by CNN, fielded questions about her political record, including the policy shifts she [...]