WASHINGTON – John Barnett wasn’t just a Boeing employ

The death toll in floods in one of South Africa’s poorest provinces rose to 57 on Thursday as a top official said rescue attempts had been “paralyzed” by a lack of resources. Rescue teams are still working through debris and floodwater to find missing people after heavy rain caused a river to burst its banks in the predawn hours of Tuesday. Floods hit the nearby town of Mthatha and surrounding areas, sweeping away victims along with parts of their houses and cars. Oscar Mabuyane, the premier of Eastern Cape province, said the floods struck while many people were asleep. The water was 3-4 meters (10-13 feet) high when it flowed out of a river and into nearby communities, he added. “It’s a terrible situation,” Mabuyane told state TV broadcaster SABC.

Everything ever said on the internet was just the start of teaching artificial intelligence about humanity. Tech companies are now tapping into an older repository of knowledge: the library stacks. Nearly one million books published as early as the 15th century — and in 254 languages — are part of a Harvard University collection being released to AI researchers Thursday. Also coming soon are troves of old newspapers and government documents held by Boston’s public library. Cracking open the vaults to centuries-old tomes could be a data bonanza for tech companies battling lawsuits from living novelists, visual artistsand others whose creative works have been scooped up without their consent to train AI chatbots.

U.S. wholesale prices rose modestly last month from a year earlier, another sign that inflationary pressures remain mild. The Labor Department reported Thursday that its producer price index — which measures inflation before it its consumers — rose 2.6% in May 2024. Producer prices rose 0.1% from April to May after dropping 0.2% the month before. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, wholesale costs were up 0.1% from April and 3% from May 2024. The readings were slightly lower than economists had forecast. Wholesale energy prices were unchanged, although gasoline prices rose 1.6% from April after falling the month before. Food prices at the wholesale level ticked up 0.1% after dropping 0.9% in April.

The number of Russian troops killed or wounded in Ukraine has topped 1 million, military officials in Kyiv said Thursday, describing the huge price that Moscow has paid for its 3-year-old invasion. The claim by the General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces is in line with Western intelligence estimates. The U.K. Defense Ministry also said in a statement posted Thursday on X that Russia has suffered over 1 million casualties, including roughly 250,000 killed since it launched the full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.

A dramatic development late Wednesday night temporarily halted the growing momentum toward dissolving the Knesset. Matzav.com learned that Rav Moshe Hillel Hirsch, rosh yeshiva of Slabdoka who is currently in the United States on behalf of the Olam HaTorah Fund, instructed that the vote on the proposed dissolution not be brought to the floor this week, giving his instruction via telephone from the U.S.
The directive followed a lengthy phone conversation between MK Moshe Gafni, head of Degel HaTorah, and Rav Hirsch. Gafni reported “significant progress” in discussions between chareidi representatives, Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, and Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman MK Yuli Edelstein.

For the first time in months, Israeli authorities allowed 56 humanitarian aid trucks to directly enter the northern Gaza Strip.

A cell of Hamas operatives that wounded two troops in an RPG attack in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis yesterday were eliminated, the military says.

Sources in Gaza told the IDF that most of the aid trucks that entered Gaza last night were looted and robbed before reaching their destination.

NYC MAYORAL ELECTION: Zohran Mamdani, the young democratic socialist who has been rising in the mayor’s race, is now ahead of Andrew Cuomo with just two weeks until the Democratic primary, a new poll reviewed in full by POLITICO found. The survey found Mamdani beating Cuomo 35 percent to 31 percent.

Speaker Mike Johnson: “We call it the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ for a reason. We are not only going to have historic tax savings for hardworking Americans… we’re going to save $1.6T, which is the most money that any legislative body has ever saved in the history of mankind.”

The IDF has exposed the four main methods how Hamas systematically exploited humanitarian aid in Gaza to fund its terror activities, based on extensive intelligence.

During a Wednesday appearance on CNN’s “News Central,” Representative Maxine Waters of California directed sharp criticism at President Donald Trump, asserting that he bears responsibility for the recent unrest in Los Angeles related to immigration enforcement.
Waters stated, “The backup plan is the President of the United States should do what he didn’t do when we were invaded in the Capitol. When they had the insurrection that he led, he should get on the phone and talk to the local police, he should talk to the people that he’s had deployed there. And he has a responsibility in all of this. He started this. There should be no violence. He should not continue to support violence.”

ABSOLUTE HORROR: Air India flight AI 171, a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner bound for London’s Gatwick Airport, crashed into a residential area called Meghani Nagar five minutes after taking off at 1:38 p.m. local time. There were 242 passengers and crew members onboard the flight. 169 are from India, 53 are from Britain, 7 are from Portugal, and 1 is from Canada.

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