The United States said it carried out a strike on Sunday against al Qaeda in northwest Syria, calling the area a “safe haven” for the group to plot attacks overseas.
The strike at a training facility targeted “operatives responsible for plotting external attacks threatening US citizens, our partners and innocent civilians,” US Central Command said in a statement.
The northwest is the last major territory in Syria still held by rebel groups fighting President Bashar al-Assad and is dominated by jihadist factions including Tahrir al-Sham, the latest iteration of al Qaeda’s former affiliate the Nusra Front.

Iran has reportedly exceeded the uranium enrichment limit under the 2015 nuclear deal, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency on Monday.
The maximum of low-enriched uranium, 660 pounds, is not enough to produce a nuclear bomb. But exceeding it is a sign of Iran appearing to disregard the 2015 accord, which the United States withdrew from in May 2018, in addition to reimposing sanctions lifted under it alongside enacting new penalties against Tehran.

Remains of 20 of 40 unknown Jewish soldiers who drowned in the Mediterranean during World War II are being identified by Israel’s “Giving a Face to the Fallen” organization.
“This is the largest number who fell on a single day, whose burial place is unknown,” Dorit Perry, director of the group, said.
Sailing on the Erinpura, 140 Jewish soldiers of the British Army’s 462 Transport Company sank within four minutes after the ship was attacked by German bombers on May 1, 1943. Most of them were remnants of families murdered in the Holocaust.
{Matzav.com Israel}

Israel has issued its first 50-year bonds in a deal worth 500 million euros ($568 million) with a single institutional investor in Europe, the Finance Ministry said on Thursday.
The bonds have a fixed 2 percent interest rate, which reflects a lower cost than previous offerings that were for periods of up to 30 years, the ministry said.
The investor in the issue was one of the largest pension funds in Europe, which has never invested in Israeli bonds in the past, it said.
The underwriters were Barclays and Deutsche Bank.
Israel has been seeing increased demand from institutional investors for its bonds, and in January carried out a record public offering of 2.5 billion euro.

Illinois is reportedly set to expunge nearly 800,000 marijuana convictions from criminal records.
The move will come in response to a landmark measure Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker (D) signed last week that will make recreational marijuana legal starting in 2020.
The Marijuana Policy Project said that the expansive legislation will allow 770,000 state residents to be eligible for expunging marijuana related offenses. The measure also creates a “social equity program” designed to help people with marijuana convictions get business licenses. The Marijuana Policy Project added that the bill also will provide $12 million to startup businesses focused on cannabis distribution.

It isn’t news that Sheldon and Miriam Adelson are big fans of President Donald Trump but Miriam Adelson took it one step further on Thursday when she compared the president to the nevi’im in an article discussing why the President has not enjoyed higher support among American Jews.
“That this has not been the case (so far, the 2020 election still beckons) is an oddity that will long be pondered by historians,” Adelson wrote in an an article for Israel Hayom, of which she is the publisher. “Scholars of the Bible will no doubt note the heroes, sages, and prophets of antiquity who were similarly spurned by the very people they came to raise up.”
She went on to say she wished there would be a biblical sefer named after Trump in the future.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed during the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday last week’s U.S.-sponsored peace summit in Bahrain, as well as recommendations from both the right and left regarding Israel’s policy towards the Gaza Strip.
The Bahrain conference was intended “first and foremost to bring economic growth to the Palestinians and the region as a whole,” Netanyahu said. The prime minister quoted Bahraini Foreign Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, who said last week that Israel was “part of the heritage of the region” and that “the Jewish people have a place among us.”

The world is facing a “climate apartheid” between the rich who can protect themselves and the poor who are left behind, the UN has warned.
A new report published on Tuesday estimated that more than 120 million people could slip into poverty within the next decade because of climate change.
As extreme weather events such as droughts, floods and hurricanes become more frequent, the world’s poorest people will be forced to “choose between starvation and migration,” the report warned.
“We risk a ‘climate apartheid’ scenario where the wealthy pay to escape overheating, hunger and conflict while the rest of the world is left to suffer,” said Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.

Israeli warplanes attacked multiple targets in Syria early Monday morning, killing at least nine Syrian and Iranian military personnel and at least six civilians, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Reports indicated tens of wounded.
Israeli jets and naval gunships targeted at least ten sites around Homs and Damascus, as well as the Syrian border with Lebanon, with Syrian air defense forces opening fire on Israeli missiles. Targets included the Jamraya research facility—considered one of the most important research facilities in the country—and Hezbollah and Iranian bases.

According to Syrian state news, children and one infant were among the casualties in Sahnaya, southwest of Damascus.

A California man arrested for threatening an antisemitic mass shooting attack is now fighting to get his gun back.
Ross Farca, 23, of Concord, California was arrested on June 10 and charged with illegally modifying a weapon and engaging in criminal threats.
According to The Jewish News of Northern California, he was released on June 14 after he posted a $125,000 bail, reduced from $225,000 by the judge, to the alarm of the local Jewish community.
An emergency order that barred Farca from obtaining firearms was issued after his arrest, but expires on July 1. On June 26, Farca appealed to the court not to renew the order for a further two weeks, as local police have requested.