About 30 Beer Sheba eighth grade students who were in contact with South Korean tourists in Israel were instructed to self-quarantine after the South Koreans tested positive for the coronavirus on their return to South Korea, Israel’s Health Ministry stated on Motzei Shabbos. Nine South Koreans who were on a week-long trip in Israel from February 8 -15 and were in contact with hundreds of Israelis tested positive for the coronavirus when they returned home, the ministry said. Two of the students’ teachers were also instructed to self-quarantine as well as the cleaning staff of the Jerusalem hotel where the tourists stayed.

The eleven Israelis that were quarantined on the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan have landed at Ben-Gurion Airport early Friday morning. The Israelis flew on a private jet chartered from Thailand through arrangements made by the Health and Foreign ministries. The foreign crew manning the jet will not be permitted to enter Israel while the jet is being prepared for its immediate flight back to Asia. The Israelis are being transferred in MDA ambulances to a special wing in the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer where they will be quarantined for another two weeks.

Eliezer Berland, who was arrested last week on charges of exploitation, money laundering and tax evasion, is heard telling his assistant, who was also arrested, to ask for $20,000 from someone who requested a bracha from him for wealth, on a new recording revealed on Thursday on Chareidim10. “Yechezkel Shraga ben Chaya wants great wealth,” the assistant is heard saying. “Yechezkel Shraga ben Chaya should donate $20,000,” Berland responds. “You’ll be zohech to enormous wealth. You’ll be zocheh to be wealthier than Rothschild, than Lev Leviev, than Gutnick. You’ll be zocheh to wealth that was never seen in the world. Hashem will bring down all the wealth through you.

Videos were released today by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office of the hours-long Jersey City shootout that left one police officer and three civilians dead late last year. Four innocent people, including a veteran Jersey City police detective and father of five, died in the hail of gunfire that place on Dec. 10. Most of the victims were found inside the JC Kosher Supermarket on Martin Luther King Boulevard during what officials have described as a hate-fueled terror spree. The U.S. attorney in New Jersey and the head of the local FBI have said that the bomb found in the van of alleged domestic terrorists Francine Graham and David Anderson could have killed or maimed people up to five football fields away.

Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Wednesday said it was possible the crowded Democratic primary race was headed toward a contentious convention fight and downplayed the political dangers of a scenario many party leaders are dreading. “I don’t think we’ll have one, but we could have one,” Reid told The Associated Press in an interview days before the Democratic caucuses in his home state of Nevada. “We’ve had brokered conventions before, and we’ve always come up with good candidates. It’s not the end of the world.

From the opening bell, Democrats unleashed an aggressive verbal assault on New York billionaire Mike Bloomberg and raised new questions about Bernie Sanders’ take-no-prisoners politics in a contentious debate Wednesday night that threatened to scramble even further the party’s urgent quest to defeat President Donald Trump. The former New York City mayor was forced to defend his divisive record on race, gender and Wall Street in his debate-stage debut, while Sanders, appearing in his ninth of the 2020 primary season, tried to beat back pointed questions about his health and his embrace of democratic socialism.

Former Illinois Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich gushed about Donald Trump Wednesday, a day after the Republican president commuted his sentence for political corruption. Blagojevich spoke to reporters outside his family home in Chicago during his first scheduled press event since his release. A large sign hanging on the home read, “Thanks Mr. President”. One man wore a rubber Blagojevich mask and hoisted the former governor’s 2006 campaign sign. “We want to express our most profound and everlasting gratitude to President Trump,” Blagojevich said. “He didn’t have to do this ….

Israel’s government is racist and does not have to be backed by those who support the Israelis and want peace, Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders said Tuesday during a CNN town hall event in Las Vegas. The independent Vermont senator took questions from the audience along with fellow contenders for the Democratic nomination Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar. “To be for the Israeli people and to be for peace in the Middle East does not mean that we have to support right wing racist governments that currently exist in Israel,” the veteran Vermont senator replied, much to the satisfaction of an applauding audience. Sanders also spoke about the Gaza Strip: “Take a look at what’s going on in Gaza right now.

Construction crews working in the Kew Gardens Hills section of Queens struck a high-pressure gas main on Wednesday afternoon. It happened in the area of Main Street & 68th Drive. There were evacuations as a precaution. Jewish stores and business as well as Jewish schools were being evacuated. In one video provided to YWN, the Sifrei Torah were being removed from the “Jewish Heritage Center of Queens”, and placed into the vehicle of a Queens Hatzalah volunteer. Con Edison crews are on scene attempting to shut off the natural gas main. FDNY EMS staging area is located at the intersection of Jewel Avenue and Main Street. Expect traffic delays, road closures and a heavy presence of emergency personnel on Main Street between Jewel Avenue and Melbourne Avenue in Queens.

Sanad al-Turman, who carried out the ramming attack in Jerusalem about two weeks ago, recorded a video of himself reading a poem about murdering Israelis and uploaded it to the Internet prior to the attack. Following his arrest by Israeli security forces, al-Turman and his relatives claimed that the incident was an accident. Israeli media watchdog group, Palestinian Media Watch, discovered the video on Fatah’s official Facebook page, which was recorded on the same day of the attack. Fatah, which is the party of Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas, also uploaded the video to their Twitter account.