A group of South Korean tourists in Israel went to Yeshivas Ohr HaChaim this week to request a bracha from HaGaon HaRav Reuven Elbaz. Apparently, the power of HaRav Elbaz’s brachos has spread far and wide worldwide. Many Christian South Koreans have a cultural fascination with Israel and the Chumash and Gemara. There are numerous students from South Koreans enrolled in the Bible department at Bar-Ilan University. In 2019 (pre-COVID), the largest group of foreign students at the Bible department were from South Korea, according to a ISRAEL21c report. One student, Kim Kyoungsik, a 38-year-old Christian pastor from Seoul, told ISRAEL21c: “As a Christian, we know the Hebrew Bible; we call it the Old Testament.

President Joe Biden on Thursday tested positive for Covid-19, the first time the 79-year-old has been infected with the virus. The septuagenarian Biden is quadruple-vaxxed, having received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine shortly before taking office, and getting two booster shots since – one last September and another in late March. Ironically, Biden made a clear assertion about the vaccines during a CNN Town Hall event exactly one year ago today. “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations,” Biden said. In an incredible twist, his words came back to bite him Thursday after they were debunked by a Covid-19 test administered to him exactly one year later. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

A huge swarm of jellyfish was seen in the Bay of Haifa off of Israel’s northern coastline, Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority stated on Wednesday. The massive swarm was first spotted by Israel Nature and Parks Authority (INPA) Director-General Raya Shuraki and the agency’s Marine Enforcement Unit. According to the INPA, the jellyfish population is exploding due to human behavior. “Many things humans are doing contribute to the propagation of jellyfish, including the digging of the Suez Canal, pollution from sewage, climate change, and harming jellyfish predators, such as sunfish and sea turtles,” an INPA statement said. (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)

A storm of outrage arose over a Channel 13 News report published on Monday featuring an unprecedented visit to Mecca by an Israeli reporter, a violation of the strict ban on the entry of non-Muslims to Islam’s holiest city. Gil Tamari was one of the three Israeli reporters who gained entry to the kingdom to cover the GCC+3 summit, attended by US President Joe Biden over the weekend. While there, he decided to take advantage of his visit to venture into Mecca and document the annual Hajj pilgrimage. Tamari said on the video that he knew the chances of him entering Mecca were zero but he managed to find the right person who agreed to take the risk to sneak him in.

With hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants coming through the sieve-like U.S.-Mexico border each month, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas made a stunning declaration: the border is secure. “Look, the border is secure,” Mayorkas told the Aspen Security Forum. “We are working to make the border more secure. That has been a historic challenge.” According to official Customs and Border Protection statistics, more than 200,000 illegal migrants have crossed into the U.S. in each of the last 4 months.

In yet another of his innumerable gargantuan gaffes, President Joe Biden said Wednesday that he has cancer. Biden’s comments during an unrelated speech regarding climate change in which the president was talking about emissions from the oil industry near his childhood home in Delaware. “That’s why I and so damn many other people I grew up with have cancer and why for the longest time Delaware had the highest cancer rate in the nation,” Biden said. The White House quickly referred questions about Biden’s comment to a tweet by Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler, who wrote that the president was likely referring to “non-melanoma skin cancers” that Biden had removed before taking office.

Conservative media icon Ben Shapiro is being threatened by far right-wing activist Aidan Duncan, a member of the antisemitic “Groyper” movement. “Alright, Ben Shapiro, you’ve spun your last dreidel,” Duncan said in a video before firing off three shots from a revolver at a gun range. Duncan, who also goes by the name Smiley the Fren, posted the video on Instagram, but it has since been deleted. In addition to being one of the most popular names in conservative media, Shapiro is also a frum Jew – a fact which some of his haters use to attack him. “It’s not even Chanukah season, you idiot,” Shapiro said in response to the post. “People have been telling the Jewish people that we’ve spun our proverbial last dreidel for over 2000 years,” noted David Bashevkin. “But here we are.

Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah on Tuesday evening made a speech threatening to target all Israeli oil and gas platforms in the Mediterranean if Lebanon’s rights over the Karish gas field aren’t respected. “There won’t be any oil extraction by Israel if Lebanon doesn’t receive its rights,” he said, adding that war will ensue if Israel doesn’t submit to his demands. The US has been mediating indirect negotiations between Lebanon and Israel over the Karish gas field, with Israel saying it lies in internationally recognized economic waters and Lebanon claiming that it is located in disputed territory. A Forbes report on Tuesday quoted Nasrallah as saying: “Oil and gas are Lebanon’s only way out of the crisis it’s going through.

A transformer exploded Tuesday at Hoover Dam, producing a cloud of thick, black smoke and flames that were quickly extinguished. No one was hurt and electricity continued to flow from one of the nation’s largest hydroelectric facilities, authorities said. “There is no risk to the power grid,” according to Jacklynn L. Gould, the federal Bureau of Reclamation’s regional director for the Lower Colorado Region. The fire ignited around 10 a.m. and was out within a half-hour, she said. Hoover Dam, located on the Nevada-Arizona border about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of Las Vegas, is a popular tourist destination and some of the visitors captured the scene on video and quickly shared it on social media.

Several members of Congress, including anti-semite Rep. Ilhan Omar, were arrested Tuesday by Capitol Police as they protested against the overturning of Roe v. Wade outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. Another lightning rod, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, seemingly tried to get arrested but was instead escorted away from the area while looking very pleased with herself. The protesters were blocking traffic and had received ample warning from police that they would be arrested if they didn’t move. “It is against the law to block traffic, so officers are going to give our standard three warnings before they start making arrests,” Capitol Police tweeted.