As of this morning, Apple has pulled all vaping-related apps from the App Store, reports Axios. The move comes after a group of vaping-related illnesses known as EVALI has swept the country, resulting in over 40 deaths so far and one instance of a previously healthy teenager needing a double-lung transplant to survive.
Apple has never allowed the distribution of vaping apps on its App Store that enables people to buy vaping products. But in the past it did allow apps that served as hubs for news and information about vaping or even allowed users to control the lighting or temperature of their vaping devices.
But that’s all changed today. Axios says Apple will remove all 181 vaping-related apps from its App Store today.

The recent increase in anti-Semitic acts proves that Boro Park requires a permanent increase in police patrols in the heavily Orthodox neighborhood, state Sen. Simcha Felder said.
In a letter congratulating the New York police commissioner, Dermot Shea, on his position, Felder also asked that a program be reinstated that placed cop decoys on streets dressed as frum people.
“Given this increase in anti-Semitism across New York City, I am requesting that you reinstate the Hasidic Cop Decoy program,” Fedler wrote. “In the past, the NYPD ran this program and I believe at one point it was very successful at combating anti-Semitic hate crimes.”
According to NYPD statistics, anti-Semitic crimes are up 63 percent this year as compared to 2018.

With a tenuous ceasefire taking hold across southern Israel, politics has again returned to center stage.
With Israel and its legislators analyzing the fallout from two days of rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, and with Blue and White leader Benny Gantz having less than a week to form a government, the most significant development was a meeting between Gantz and Yisrael Beiteinu head Avigdor Lieberman.
The two party leaders met on Thursday—after their meeting earlier in the week was delayed due to rocket fire—to discuss forming a possible unity government. It did not, however, yield any tangible results.

Yerushalayim-based emergency room startup Diagnostic Robotics has raised $24 million in a series A funding round, the company announced Wednesday. The round was led by Israel-based medtech investment firm Accelmed Growth Partners and Tel Aviv-listed investment firm Mivtach Shamir Holdings, with participation from Maverick Ventures Israel, Alpha Capital, and additional private investors.
Diagnostic Robotics develops robots that use artificial intelligence to assess the urgency of each case before the people in line can be seen by a doctor.

Elazar Cohen, Israel’s new commissioner to Expo 2020, which will be held in Dubai, said this week that the world fair would give Israel an opportunity to build closer ties with the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf states, the AP reported.
Cohen said in a briefing at Israel’s Foreign Ministry that the Israeli pavilion at the world’s largest exhibition would present technological products, but also showcase the country itself.
“There is curiosity, mixed with concern, about this thing called Israel, and we want to alleviate that concern,” said Cohen. ”We want to project that Israel is an open country, that Israel is a democratic country, that Israel is a country that respects all its citizens, that everyone finds their place in it.”

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A southern Israeli woman wounded in a rocket attack on Wednesday celebrated her 88th birthday on Thursday with the help of the hospital social workers, who have essentially adopted her as a substitute grandmother.
The Israeli news site Mako reports that when the social workers at Barzilai Medical Center in Ashdod found out that Olga Luria was having a birthday while hospitalized, they got together and brought her cake, flower, and balloons while singing birthday songs in Hebrew and Russian.
Luria was struck in the hands and head by flying shrapnel after her home took a direct hit from a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip during the 48-hour conflict between Israel and Islamic Jihad that wound down with a shaky ceasefire on Thursday morning.

President Trump on Thursday moved to dismiss a lawsuit filed by an aide to former national security adviser John Bolton who was seeking a ruling on whether he must comply with a congressional subpoena to testify in the House impeachment inquiry.
The filing to the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., cited Trump’s official capacity as president. In it, he sought to have a judge dismiss White House official Dr. Charles Kupperman’s lawsuit seeking guidance on whether he should comply with the subpoena or the president’s directive not to cooperate.
A representative for Trump argued that the president’s direction should supersede any prospective court ruling.

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Readers around the world were moved this week by the story of father-of-10 Yosef Binder, and his journey to rehabilitation after a severe stroke: