Israel’s Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi David Lau on Thursday called for Shabbos to be extended by 20 minutes in response to the expected chillul Shabbos caused by the Eurovision song contest.
“Due to the great desecration that will take place on the upcoming Shabbos because of the Eurovision song contest, I ask each and every person to refrain from doing work 10 minutes before lighting candles [to mark the start of the Sabbath] and ten minutes after the end of the Shabbos,” Lau said in a lecture in the central city of Modiin.
“We will extend the kedusha of Shabbos and add from the regular to the holy,” he said. “This desecration is taking place before the eyes of the world.”

The committee in charge of the “Great March of Return” demonstrations in the Gaza Strip cancelled weekly protests set to be held Friday in light of hot temperatures outside and “to provide a break to citizens, who held a large protest two days ago.”
The cancellation of the Gaza protests come on the second Friday of Ramadan, during which time Muslims fast and abstain from drinking water during daylight hours.
It is only the second time that the weekly demonstrations, held with the backing of Gaza’s Islamist rulers Hamas, have been cancelled since they began in March 2018.
Read more at i24NEWS.

The man suspected of stabbing a Jewish woman in Sweden did not commit a hate crime, targeting her randomly amid a psychiatric crisis, his mother said.
The 29-year-old man, who has an extensive criminal record for assault, was released from 12 days at a psychiatric institution one day prior to the attack Tuesday in Helingborg, in which he delivered near-fatal blows to an older Jewish woman from the local community.
“This does not have anything to do with religion,” the suspect’s mother told Expressen. Though neither she, her son nor the victim have been named, initial reports indicated that the attacker was Muslim.
A local Muslim umbrella group condemned the condemned and called for a show of solidarity with the Jewish community of Sweden.

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U.S. Ambassador to Israel David M. Friedman fired back at The New York Times on Wednesday over an article castigating him for claiming that Israel was “on the side of God” while speaking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the upcoming U.S. peace proposal.
Speaking to a group of evangelical faith leaders at the Aish Hatorah World Center, overlooking the Western Wall plaza and the Temple Mount, Friedman said that, “apparently, there was nothing more offensive I could have said to The New York Times.”

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South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham discusses the growing number of investigations following the release of the Mueller report on ‘Hannity.’ Earlier Graham unveiled a plan to combat the southern border crisis.
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Boeing on Thursday said that it has completed development of a software update to address the issues that have been blamed for two crashes involving the company’s 737 Max jets that left more than 300 people dead.
In a statement obtained by CNBC, CEO Dennis Muilenburg said that the company was preparing for a final certification of the software update, after which it would begin rolling out the software to fleets of 737 Max jets that have been grounded worldwide since the crashes.
“With safety as our clear priority, we have completed all of the engineering test flights for the software update and are preparing for the final certification flight,” Muilenburg said, according to CNBC.

House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy on Thursday panned Joe Biden’s prospects in the 2020 Democratic presidential race, calling the former vice president the “Jeb Bush of this cycle.”
“I think Biden, no disrespect, is the Jeb Bush of this cycle,” the California Republican said at an Axios event. “I think he could have run at a different time and he would have been the nominee. I think he has too much to apologize for.”
McCarthy argued that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has trailed Biden in recent national polls, “has a much better chance” of winning the Democratic nomination. He noted that candidates need an energized base to sustain and fund their campaigns, saying Sanders “has a bigger base for a longer duration of the time.”