gedaliyah

Eight years after the police started investigating him and four years after his trial began, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister was taking the stand for the first time to respond to accusations of corruption that have defined and disrupted Israeli public life for nearly a decade.

Several private banks opened on Tuesday and employees came to work signaling a resumption of economic activities that were deemed closed indefinitely

On Tuesday, an international team of researchers unveiled BadRAM, a proof-of-concept attack that completely undermines security assurances that chipmaker AMD makes to users of one of its most expensive and well-fortified microprocessor product lines. Starting with the AMD Epyc 7003 processor, a feature known as SEV-SNP—short for Secure Encrypted Virtualization and Secure Nested Paging—has provided the cryptographic means for certifying that a VM hasn’t been compromised by any sort of backdoor installed by someone with access to the physical machine running it.

Syria is home to multiple ethnic and religious communities, often pitted against each other by Assad’s state and years of war. Many of them fear the possibility that Sunni Islamist extremists will take over. The country is also fragmented among disparate armed factions, and foreign powers from Russia and Iran to the United States, Turkey and Israel all have their hands in the mix.

For years, al-Sharaa worked to consolidate power, while bottled up in the province of Idlib in Syria’s northwest corner as Assad’s Iranian- and Russian-backed rule over much of the country appeared solid.

As Syria’s civil war intensified in 2013, so did al-Golani’s ambitions. He defied al-Baghdadi’s calls to dissolve the Nusra Front and merge it with al-Qaida’s operation in Iraq, to form the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS.

In 2016, al-Golani revealed his face to the public for the first time in a video message that announced his group was renaming itself Jabhat Fateh al-Sham — the Syria Conquest Front — and cutting its ties to al-Qaida.

“This new organization has no affiliation to any external entity,” he said in the video, filmed wearing military garb and a turban.

With his power consolidated, al-Golani set in motion a transformation that few could have imagined. Replacing his military garb with shirt and trousers, he began calling for religious tolerance and pluralism.

Thousands who fled during the country’s civil war celebrated the toppling of the Assad government — and their long-awaited return home — at the Syria-Lebanon border crossing.

Songs written during the Syrian uprising to cheer on the fall of Mr. al-Assad blasted from car speakers, their lyrics no longer fantasy.

“I don’t have words for how I feel right now. Joy, joy, all joy,” said Khitam Chiha, 23, standing on the sidewalk as the parade of cars and people passed. Red, green and white eye shadow — the colors of the Syrian opposition’s flag — were painted across her eyelids and she held a large flag in her hand.

Antisemitic assaults have increased 491%, going from 11 in 2023 to 65 in 2024.

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) released a report on Dec. 1 tracking incidents from October 2023 through September 2024, which showed that in 2023 the total antisemitic incidents in the country reached 495. For 2024, that number rose to 2062, a 316% jump.

Broken down by types of incidents, physical assaults shot up even higher—going from 11 in 2023 to 65 in 2024, a 491% increase.

Note: I was asked by @[email protected] to repost this story after posting from another source.

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Firefighters were called to Melbourne's Adass Israel synagogue just after 04:00 local time on Friday (17:00 GMT Thursday) and arrived to find the building fully ablaze.

Community leaders told local media that "a few people" were inside at the time for morning prayers, and they had reported seeing firebombs thrown. One person was injured and the fire caused extensive damage.

In a statement, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the incident in Ripponlea, in the city's south-east, was "clearly aimed at creating fear in the community".

"This violence and intimidation and destruction at a place of worship is an outrage," he wrote.

"I have zero tolerance for antisemitism."

Note: I was asked by @[email protected] to repost this story after posting from another source.

Texas banned most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy in September 2021, and in summer 2022, expanded that ban to all abortions from the moment of conception, except to save the life of the pregnant patient.

There have since been countless stories of doctors delaying or denying pregnancy care due to fear and confusion about how the law would be applied. At least three women have died, ProPublica has reported, due to delayed or mismanaged miscarriage care. Doctors found to have violated the law face up to life in prison, fines of at least $100,000 and the loss of their medical license.

Texas’ maternal mortality committee, responsible for reviewing maternal deaths and near-misses, has come under increased scrutiny since these laws went into effect. Some of the criticisms lay at the feet of the Legislature, which created the committee in 2013. The original statute prohibits the review of abortion-related deaths, a caveat that even committee members were not aware of until a few months ago.

The committee’s last report, released in September, showed that maternal deaths surged in 2020 and 2021, even with COVID deaths excluded. Black women remain far more likely to die than anyone else, although every group except white women saw their odds of dying increase.

The true origin of candy canes is hazy, mixing recorded history with a good amount of legend. Hard candy has existed for thousands of years. The expense of sugar made it a rare treat, shared on special occasions and holidays or as a reward for children’s good behavior.

Church records show that in 1670, a choirmaster at Cologne Cathedral in Germany handed out white candy sticks to keep restless children quiet during Christmas services. The sweets took a long time to finish and kept little hands and mouths busy while they weren’t singing. Worried it might seem improper to give candy in church, he added the symbolic crook to recall the shepherds of the Nativity.

On Friday, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that it would begin a nationwide testing program for the presence of the H5N1 flu virus, also known as the bird flu. Testing will focus on pre-pasteurized milk at dairy processing facilities (pasteurization inactivates the virus), but the order that's launching the program will require anybody involved with milk production before then to provide samples to the USDA on request. That includes "any entity responsible for a dairy farm, bulk milk transporter, bulk milk transfer station, or dairy processing facility."

The ultimate goal is to identify individual herds where the virus is circulating and use the agency's existing powers to do contact tracing and restrict the movement of cattle, with the ultimate goal of eliminating the virus from US herds.