Yeshiva World News

Maybe this is why Mayor Michael Bloomberg doesn’t take a salary.

The billionaire mayor has only two pairs of work shoes, which he has been wearing for 10 years, the New York Post reported Monday.

“The mayor owns only two pairs of work shoes,” Bloomberg spokesman, Stu Loeser, told the Post. “One day he’ll wear one, the next the other — and when they get worn down, he has them resoled.”

One shoe salesman told the Post they both look like a Cole Haan “Dennehy” — a classic Italian leather loafer. The footwear expert said the style retails for around $330.

“A pair of shoes like that could go eighteen to twenty years if you put cream on them, shine them up, resole them every eight to nine months, and depending on how much you perspire, use cedar trees on the inside,” cobbler Jim Rocco, 80, told the Post.

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(Source: DNA Info)

Chacham Hagon Ovadia Yosef Shlita, turned 90 on Sunday, continuing his busy schedule of meeting people, delivering Shiurim, and writing Seforim.

Rav Ovadia Yosef was born in Baghdad on September 23, 1920, and came to Eretz Yisroel with his parents at the age of four and settled in Yerushalayim.

By the age of 20 he recieved Semicha, and for two years in the late he served as the deputy Chief Rabbi of Egypt.

In 1973 he became Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Israel, and remained in the position until 1983.

Click HERE for a large photo album in honor of the Posek Hador’s 90th birthday.

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(Dov Gordon – YWN)

Over the past few months, the Chevra Kadisha in Eretz Yisroel has invested significant resources in upgrading its technological services, in hopes of helping those looking for a loved-one’s final resting place to find it more easily.

“In the last couple of months we have developed an SMS grave-locator system,” Yossi Zrock, head of Chevra Kadisha IT Services, told Yedioth Ahronoth.

“If, for example, you’ve arrived at a cemetery and you don’t where the gravestone is, text the name of the deceased to *4664 and directions will be sent to you within seconds.”

Chevra Kadisha, he added, is currently developing a GPS grave-locater system for mobile phones. “Such technologies are required for the bigger cemeteries, like the one in Holon, which has ever 220,000 graves. People can get lost.”

Soon, Zrock promised, cemetery goers would be able to rent a PDA upon arrival, for only NIS 20 (about $5.3). The device will lead them directly to the desired gravesite, and will allow them, en route, to view photos of the descend, read about his life and access the required prayers.

Later on, the company will make auxiliary services, such as subscribing to grave maintenance services or booking a cantor, available through the PDA as well.

The burial society’s Tel Aviv district launched a new website not too long ago, with a substantial investment of NIS 500,000 ($133,000). The website allows families to host individual commemoration pages, including a special reminder system, which alerts them to coming anniversaries a week in advance.

“The details found in the commemoration pages will also be available through the information stations in the cemeteries,’ said Rabbi Avraham Manlah, director of Chevra Kadisha Tel Aviv.

The website also provides the free option of lighting a virtual candle for the dead, or placing a virtual stone or wreath on the grave. The virtual tokens are collected in the commemoration page.

Chevra Kadisha Tel Aviv also offers a live internet feed of funeral services. Many of the cemeteries across Israel already sport cameras, which allow friends and family unable to attend the service to see it online. Broadcasts fees run between NIS 200-300 ($53-$80). A CD of the service is available for an additional NIS 50 ($13).

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(Read More: Ynet)

World leaders are descending on the city this week for the United Nations General Assembly, bringing major traffic tie-ups and gridlock on the east side of Manhattan.

 An increased police presence is already visible in the area.

All this week, First Avenue will be closed from 42nd Street to 48th Street, though the tunnel underpass will be open to passenger cars.

Lexington and Park Avenues will be closed between 48th and 52nd Streets.

East 44th, 45th and 46th Streets will be closed between First and Second Avenues.

East 49th and 50th Streets will be closed between Lexington and Park Avenues.

Also, 42nd Street will be closed from the FDR Drive to Second Avenue and the 42nd Street entrance and exit ramps of the FDR Drive will also be closed.

President Barack Obama will be speaking at a UN anti-poverty summit on Wednesday.

On Thursday he will address the opening session of the UN General Assembly, where he is expected to discuss concerns about North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, security in the Middle East and the global economy.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in the city for the Assembly, and he’s already being met by protestors.

Rallies against his regime are expected throughout the week.

Ahmadinejad is scheduled to speak to the General Assembly on Thursday.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Ahmadinejad challenged the United States to accept that his country has a major role in the world.

He insisted his country does not want nuclear weapons.

Ahmadinejad said he hopes that the two remaining American hikers being held in Iran will soon be able to prove they had no ill intentions when crossing the border so they can be released.

The one hiker who has been released, Sarah Shourd, addressed reporters in New York yesterday.

Shourd, her fiance, and a friend were held for more than 13-months, accused of spying for the United States after crossing the border from Iraq into Iran.

Ahmadinejad has suggested the United States should respond to Shourd’s release by releasing eight Iranians held in custody in the United States.

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(Source: NY1)

The White House is pushing back hard against a New York Times report that the president’s political team is considering a national ad campaign that would cast the GOP as taken over by tea party extremists.

The story is “100 percent inaccurate,” a White House official told POLITICO.

Times Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet counters that the “piece is accurate.”

But White House complaints seem to have had some effect on The Times. The paper walked back the story over night, changing the headline and the lead sentence of the piece to de-emphasize the notion that the White House is weighing an anti-GOP ad campaign.

The initial headline read, “Obama Advisers Weigh Ad Assault Against the GOP,” and the first sentence reported that “President Obama’s political advisers, looking for ways to help Democrats and alter the course of the midterm elections in the final weeks, are considering a national advertising campaign that would cast the Republican Party as all but taken over by Tea Party extremists, people involved in the discussion said.”

The Times subsequently changed the headline to: “Obama Aides Weigh Bid to Tie the GOP to the Tea Party.”

And the opening sentence now says that the White House is considering a “range of ideas, including national advertisements.”

Those changes were not enough to satisfy the White House, according to sources.

“The Times is just flat-out, 100 percent wrong,” a White House official said. “The first time Obama’s advisers heard about a national ad campaign is when the story showed up on The Times’ website last night.”

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(Source: Politico)

The United States under President George W. Bush was prepared to take in 100,000 Palestinian refugees as part of a Middle East peace deal, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday.

“The United States was ready to take in 100,000 refugees as citizens of the United States,” Olmert said, in what may be his most revealing comments to date about negotiations with the U.S. and the Palestinians when he was prime minister.

Olmert, who led Israel from 2006 to 2009, spoke weeks after direct talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians resumed in Washington.

As prime minister, Olmert negotiated with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is currently doing.

Speaking in Tel Aviv, Israel, to a group called the Geneva Initiative, Olmert also said Sunday that he was prepared as prime minister to share Jerusalem’s holy sites, which include the Western Wall and the Temple Mount — known to Muslims as Haram-al-Sharif — with the Palestinians.

“It will not be ours nor the Palestinians… (it) will be managed by an international trustee which includes (other) countries,” Olmert said, describing his vision for the area known as the Holy Basin. “Israel is one of them, the Palestinians are there, the Saudi Arabians, according to my offer, the Jordanians and the Americans. This is a trust fund of five countries.”

“This trust is going to ensure the freedom of access to all the holy sites to any Jew, to any Muslim, to any Christian,” he said.

Also Sunday, Netanyahu said he does not plan to extend a moratorium on settlement-building in the West Bank, despite a Palestinian threat to walk away from peace talks if building resumes.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is also pushing for a new three-month moratorium on Israeli building on land which the Palestinians consider theirs, a diplomatic source said Thursday.

But Netanyahu told leaders of his Likud party that there has been no change in Israel’s position, sources familiar with the talks said.

The settlement freeze is due to expire September 26.

The Palestinians have said that if the moratorium ends and building resumes they will walk away from peace talks, which recently resumed after an 18-month hiatus.

The two sides appear to be at a stalemate, the source said.

But Olmert said Sunday that he is hopeful about the new round of talks.

“We have a peace proposal, and I believe that it may bring about a peace accord between us and the Palestinians in a short time,” he said.

“The mere fact that the government of Israel agreed to take direct talks even when it causes pain to the government this means that it is courageous,” he said. “Maybe it’s the beginning of an understanding that there is no other choice.”

(Source: CNN)

The longtime White House correspondent who resigned from Hearst newspapers in June in the wake of comments she made about Israel will receive a lifetime achievement award from the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

CAIR is honoring Helen Thomas, who is of Lebanese descent and now 90 years old, at its Leadership Conference and 16th Annual Fundraising Banquet on Oct. 9 in Arlington, Va.

Speakers will also include Oxford Islamic studies scholar Tariq Ramadan.

Thomas started at the White House as a reporter during the Kennedy administration. In a video interview captured at a White House Jewish heritage event for RabbiLIVE.com that spread quickly across the Internet, Thomas advised Israeli Jews to get the hell out of Palestine and go home to Poland, Germany, America and everywhere else.

The White House Correspondents Association and the White House rebuked Thomas, and President Obama said she made the right call in stepping down for the offensive remarks.

Thomas later apologized, saying: I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians. They do not reflect my heartfelt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon.”

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(Source: The Hill)

U.S. officials formally declared an end to the worst oil spill in U.S. history Sunday, a milestone that followed nearly five months of dashed hopes and blistering criticism of nearly everyone involved.

Well owner BP began final cementing operations to permanently plug the blowout on Friday. Pressure tests conducted early Sunday confirmed the cement was holding, and the Interior Department agency that regulates offshore drilling pronounced the well dead at 5:54 a.m. (6:54 a.m. ET), former Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said in a statement issued Sunday morning.

“With this development, which has been confirmed by the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, we can finally announce that the Macondo 252 well is effectively dead,” Allen, the federal government’s point man on the disaster, said in the statement.

The disaster saw oil patch jargon like “junk shot,” “static kill” and “blowout preventer” join the American lexicon, triggered shakeups in government and industry, and left residents of the Gulf Coast frustrated and worried for their livelihoods.

The disaster began with an April 20 explosion aboard the oil rig Deepwater Horizon, about 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana. The blast claimed the lives of 11 workers aboard the platform, which sank two days later in nearly a mile of water.

The rig’s blowout preventer, a massive fail-safe device at the seabed, failed to operate after the blast. Efforts to activate it using remote submarines failed. An effort to plug it with heavy drilling fluid and cement failed. A bid to jam it shut by pumping it full of debris also failed.

The well spewed an estimated 4.9 million barrels (206 million gallons) of crude into the Gulf of Mexico before it was temporarily capped July 15. It was permanently sealed only when BP drilled a separate relief well into the sea floor, intercepting the original well and allowing workers to fill it with cement from below.

The spill struck hard at some of the pillars of the Gulf Coast’s economy as oil washed up on beaches in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, federal and state authorities shut down Gulf fisheries, and a temporary federal ban on deepwater drilling idled oil workers. More than a third of the Gulf was closed to fishing at the height of the disaster, and tourists stayed away from the region’s white sands in droves.

At the White House, President Barack Obama hailed the “final termination” of the well but said the federal government will continue to do “everything possible to make sure the Gulf Coast recovers fully from this disaster.”

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(Source: CNN)

The travel period for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot is from September 19 through October 4, 2010.

Observant Jewish travelers may carry four plants – a palm branch, myrtle twigs, willow twigs, and a citron – in airports and through security checkpoints. These plants are religious articles and may be carried either separately or as a bundle. Jewish travelers may be observed in prayer, shaking the bundle of plants in six directions.

TSA’s screening procedures do not prohibit the carrying of such agricultural items through the airport or security checkpoints, or on airplanes. These plants are not on TSA’s Prohibited Items List. And, as always, TSA is committed to treating all passengers, including passengers who may be observing Sukkot, with respect and dignity during the screening process.

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(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

A summit of U.S. Muslim organizations is scheduled to begin Sunday in New York City to address a proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero and the anti-Muslim sentiment that has emerged in the nationwide debate about the project.

It has yet to be seen whether the groups will emerge with a firm stand on the proposed community center. The primary purpose of the meeting is to talk about ways to combat religious bigotry.

But Shaik Ubaid of the Islamic Leadership Council of Metropolitan New York, one of the groups organizing the gathering, said he has a growing sense that some American Muslims who initially had trepidation are now throwing their support behind the plan.

“Once it became a rallying cry for extremists, we had no choice but to stand with Feisal Rauf,” he said, referring to the New York City imam who has been leading the drive for the center.

Groups scheduled to participate in the summit include the Islamic Society of North America, the Islamic Circle of North America, the Muslim Alliance of North America and the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The private meetings were to take place at a hotel near Kennedy Airport, and the group was planning to hold a news conference Monday at the site of the proposed Islamic center.

Gauging support for the center among U.S. Muslims is difficult. As a group, they are diverse, ranging from blacks who found the faith during the civil rights movement to recent immigrants hailing from opposite ends of the globe. They rarely speak with one voice.

Yet after a pastor in Florida injected himself into the debate by threatening to burn copies of the Quran, the proposed Islamic center has been embraced by some Muslims who initially were indifferent about the plan, partly in response to a sense that their faith is under attack.

“I think most Muslims outside New York City are more concerned about the backlash than the actual center, which most of them will never directly benefit from,” said Shahed Amanullah, the editor-in-chief of a number of Islam-themed websites.

“Grass-roots support is indeed building,” he said, “but that is probably more due to the pushback against the general hostile climate.”

The center’s proposed location two blocks from the World Trade Center site has upset some relatives of Sept. 11 victims and led to demands that it be moved. Critics say the site of mass murder by Islamic extremists is no place for an Islamic institution.

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(Read More: WSJ)