Jerusalem- The Israeli military says it is taking the rare step of closing the Gaza Strip’s offshore waters to Palestinian fishermen until further notice in response to incendiaries launched into Israel in recent days. COGAT, the Israeli Defense Ministry body controlling the crossings with the coastal enclave, announced Wednesday that “due to the continuous launching [...]

Tel Aviv – Ford Motor Co on Wednesday opened a research center in Tel Aviv, joining a growing number of major automakers and suppliers setting up shop in the Israeli tech hub as they race to develop self-driving cars. With spiraling development costs for autonomous and connected cars in recent years, Ford and other carmakers [...]

Jerusalem – Israel is dealing with outside threats by striking back and also preemptively, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday hours after Israel apparently fired at an Iran-backed Hezbollah facility on the Syria border. Syrian state media reported that Israel fired several missiles at a town on the Golan Heights border and said its [...]

Columbus, Ohio – A federal judge awarded a Muslim-American radio host $4.1 million in monetary damages Wednesday after he successfully sued a neo-Nazi website operator who falsely accused him of terrorism. SiriusXM Radio show host Dean Obeidallah (oh-bee-DAHL’-ah) filed the civil complaint against The Daily Stormer founder Andrew Anglin, who hasn’t responded to Obeidallah’s libel [...]

Washington – Nursing facilities have failed to report thousands of serious cases of potential neglect and abuse of Medicare beneficiaries even though the federal government requires such reporting, says a watchdog report due out Wednesday that calls for a new focus on protecting frail patients. Auditors with the Health and Human Services inspector general’s office [...]

Amsterdam – For Jacqueline van Maarsen, attending Anne Frank’s 13th birthday party in 1942 was a welcome distraction from the grim reality of life in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam during World War II. Enjoying movies and cookies at Anne’s apartment meant “we didn’t think about it at that moment,” the 90-year-old Van Maarsen said Wednesday as she [...]

Albany, NY – New York’s governor says he will sign a deal that would strengthen rent stabilization rules covering more than 1 million tenants in and around New York City. The agreement would permanently extend the current rules governing rent increases for stabilized units. It also would restrict the ability of landlords to remove units [...]

Washington – Uber is testing restaurant food deliveries by drone. The company’s Uber Eats unit began the tests in San Diego with McDonald’s and plans to expand to other restaurants later this year. Uber says the service should decrease food delivery times. It works this way: Workers at a restaurant load the meal into a [...]

Washington – Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election bore some of the textbook tricks of the trade of Kremlin spycraft, including the volume and breadth of contacts with Trump associates, former FBI officials told lawmakers Wednesday in the latest congressional hearing dedicated to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia report . The [...]

Washington – With just over three weeks to go, exactly what’s going to happen in Washington on the Fourth of July remains a subject of intense confusion. Will the nation’s premier Independence Day celebration be centered around the Washington Monument or shift to the Lincoln Memorial, as the White House has reportedly requested? Will President [...]