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The new draft also allows for the extension of foreigners’ visas from 90 days to 180 days. In addition, COGAT removed quotas on visiting lecturers and students at Palestinian universities, originally set at 100 teachers and 150 students.

Despite the changes, and the release of the revised guidelines, U.S. Ambassador Tom Nides says the U.S. continues to “have concerns with the published protocols.”

“It is important to ensure all of these regulations are developed in coordination with key stakeholders, including the Palestinian Authority,” he said. “I fully expect the Government of Israel to make necessary adjustments during the pilot period to ensure transparency as well as the fair and equal treatment of all US citizens and other foreign nationals traveling to the West Bank.”

More Findings in Journalist’s Death

On Monday, the Israel military said there was a “high probability” an Israeli soldier accidentally killed veteran Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh during an operation in Jenin nearly four months ago, based on its investigation into the incident.

The 51-year-old Palestinian-American journalist, who was wearing a vest marked “Press” and a helmet, was killed during clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen while covering an Israeli military operation in the refugee camp in the northern West Bank on May 11.

Initially the IDF thought that Palestinian gunmen were responsible for the shooting. Later, it acknowledged that a stray bullet coming from an Israeli soldier may have killed her.

On Monday, a military official told reporters that a soldier had been identified who had “with very high likelihood” shot the journalist by mistake.

“He misidentified her. His reports in real-time point to a misidentification,” the officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Based on the final findings of its probe, the IDF said it was still “not possible to unequivocally determine the source of the gunfire” that killed Abu Akleh, but that “there is a high probability that Abu Akleh was accidentally hit by IDF gunfire fired toward suspects identified as armed Palestinian gunmen during an exchange of fire in which life-threatening, widespread and indiscriminate shots were fired toward IDF soldiers.”

Abu Akleh was highly respected in the Arab world for her decades covering Palestinians and other Arab communities.

Her family criticized the investigation, saying on Monday that the army “tried to obscure the truth and avoid responsibility” for the killing.

“Our family is not surprised by this outcome since it’s obvious to anyone that Israeli war criminals cannot investigate their own crimes. However, we remain deeply hurt, frustrated and disappointed,” the family said in a statement. It also reiterated its call for an independent U.S. investigation and a probe by the International Criminal Court.

BLM Exec Stole Millions

On Friday, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation was sued by Black Lives Matter Grassroots, which accused a foundation executive of stealing $10 million worth of donations from the organization.

The lawsuit says BLM Global Network Foundation board member Shalomyah Bowers siphoned off the money into his own “personal piggy bank.”

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The complaint characterizes Bowers as a “rouge administrator, a middleman, turned usurper” after having been entrusted to collect donations on behalf of the BLM movement.

Bowers’ actions have forced the foundation to undergo “multiple investigations by the Internal Revenue Service and various state attorneys general, blazing a path of irreparable harm to BLM in less than eighteen months,” the lawsuit reads.

“When more than 300 movement leaders, as well as BLM Founders, insisted that he resign from GNF,” the complaint says, “he continued to betray the public trust by self-dealing and breaching his fiduciary duties.”

The Global Network Foundation, founded in 2013, is a nonprofit dedicated to advancing BLM ideology after three organizers came together to create a Black-centered political movement. Black Lives Matter Grassroots is an organization affiliated with the foundation that represents all BLM chapters nationwide.

According to the complaint, Bowers “managed to steal control of” the Global Network Foundation and became its sole board member and officer. He made more than $2.1 million from the Global Network Foundation within the span of less than eight months, the lawsuit says.

The legal battle is the latest financial controversy within the BLM organization.

Earlier this year, a court filing said that Patrisse Cullors, once the executive director the Global Network Foundation, sent her brother $840,000 from funds received through donations to the movement.

Cullors had given her brother Paul money earmarked for “professional security services.”

Paul is a graffiti artist. He was also BLM’s head of security, according to a New York Magazine article from April.

NYC: Worst Commute

It’s always been hard to commute to and from work if you work or live in New York City. Now, it seems like the Big Apple is home to the nation’s worst commute.

In a study from resume.io, an online resume-building site, New York City has the most stressful commute in the nation, with negativity in a whopping 45% of Twitter posts from people heading to and from work in the city.

According to the report, more than one million commuters come in and out of the city each day for work, with census data estimating that around 600,000 of those people are so-called “super-commuters,” people who spend 90 minutes or more each day traveling to work.

New York City also accounts for a huge percentage of the nation’s public transit commuters, with 38.5% living in the NYC/metro area.

Jersey City is just behind the Big Apple in the terrible commute category with 43% of tweets about commuting featuring negativity.

Exercise Staves Off Dementia

Want to think clearly throughout your older years? Make sure to start moving.

A recent study conducted by scientists at UC San Francisco has found that the brains of the elderly of those who were physically active contain more of a specific type of protein known to enhance the connections between neurons and help maintain healthy cognition.

“Our work is the first that uses human data to show that synaptic protein regulation is related to physical activity and may drive the beneficial cognitive outcomes we see,” says lead study author Kaitlin Casaletto, PhD, an assistant professor of neurology.

While several studies have documented the benefits of exercise on brain performance among mice, consistent results among humans have been harder to attain. To research this topic, Dr. Casaletto collaborated with William Honer, MD, a professor of

psychiatry at the University of British Columbia. The research team used data provided by the Memory and Aging Project at Rush University in Chicago during their study. That project tracked the physical activity habits among a group of elderly adults – all of whom also agreed to donate their brains for analysis after death.

“Maintaining the integrity of these connections between neurons may be vital to fending off dementia, since the synapse is really the site where cognition happens,” Dr. Casaletto adds. “Physical activity – a readily available tool – may help boost this synaptic functioning.”

Researchers admit it was surprising to see the beneficial effects extend beyond just the hippocampus – the mind’s memory center – to additional brain regions associated with cognitive function.

“It may be that physical activity exerts a global sustaining effect, supporting and stimulating healthy function of proteins that facilitate synaptic transmission throughout the brain,” Dr. Honer explains.

The study was published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.

A wind-whipped fire that erupted near a defunct lumber mill in Northern California exploded on Friday into a fast-moving inferno. The flames burned homes and forced thousands of people to evacuate in Siskiyou County.

The Mill fire — one of at least three sizable California wildfires to ignite in the last few days — came as a massive heat wave roasted the West, parching the landscape. Excessive heat warnings are in effect across much of the state.

Los Angeles County firefighters on Saturday were continuing to battle a fire near Castaic that had consumed more than 5,000 acres. Another fire, east of San Diego, led to evacuations and closed the Tecate Port of Entry at the border with Mexico.

Within two hours of the Mill fire igniting in Weed on Friday, the blaze had grown to more than 900 acres.

By Saturday, the blaze had grown to 3,921 acres and left multiple civilians injured, Cal Fire authorities said.

Weed was devastated in September 2014 by the Boles fire, a relatively small but intense blaze that consumed 165 homes and other buildings in the small community.

The town is roughly 30 miles southeast of where the McKinney fire raged this summer and became California’s largest blaze in 2022, killing four people and burning more than 60,000 acres.

MD County Will Have Youth Curfew

Officials in a Maryland county near Washington, D.C., that has had its deadliest month in decades say they will strictly enforce a curfew aimed at keeping teens off the streets at night.

Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks made the announcement during the Labor Day weekend in which at least four people were killed by gun violence in the county, including a 15-yearold from Washington, D.C., who was killed during a shooting at a convenience store Saturday night. Another 15-yearold who was wounded in the same shooting is in critical condition, and a baby girl who was shot in an apartment in Glenn Dale remains hospitalized.

County police investigated 24 killings in the month of August alone.

Strict enforcement of the curfew will take effect starting next weekend and will last for at least the next 30 days. The curfew requires teens under 17 to be off the streets between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. Sunday through Thursday, and between 11:59 p.m. and 5 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

During a news conference, Also-

brooks pointed to an “eye-popping” 430 arrests of juveniles this year — nearly double the number last year.

“At this point, these kids don’t just need a hug; they need to be held accountable,” Alsobrooks said. “I know it’s not a popular thing to say, but it’s a fair question: Where are their parents? Where are the aunties, where are the uncles and other family members who are responsible for them?”

Of the 84 juveniles arrested for carjacking offenses this year, 55 had prior arrests and 34 had prior arrests for a previous violent crime or a gun offense, according to Prince George’s County Police Chief Malik Aziz. He called the number of juveniles who are being repeatedly arrested “deeply troubling.”

UPS Workers May Strike?

What can brown do for you? It seems like it does a lot. An estimated 6% of the nation’s gross domestic product is moved in UPS trucks every year. Online shopping has made UPS workers almost ubiquitous to every street and doorstep. And even more than the individual consumer, UPS delivers many goods found in stores and offices.

Contract negotiations are set to begin in the spring between UPS and the Teamsters Union ahead of their current contract’s expiration at the end of July 2023. But before the talks have even started, labor experts are predicting that the drivers and package handlers will go on strike.

“The question is how long it will be,” said Todd Vachon, professor of Labor Relations at Rutgers. “The union’s president ran and won on taking a more militant approach. Even if they’re very close [to a deal], the rank and file will be hungry to take on the company.”

If that happens, a strike at UPS would affect nearly every household in the country, halting deliveries of what we see as essential items to running a household.

About 350,000 Teamsters work at UPS as drivers and package sorters out of a global workforce of 534,000 permanent employees. And that’s growing fast — the company has added some 72,000 Teamster-represented jobs since the start of the pandemic.

While there are competing services at FedEx, the US Postal Service and Amazon’s own delivery service, none of them have the capacity to handle more than a small fraction of the 21.5 million US packages that UPS moves daily.

The union has not gone on strike against UPS since a nearly two-week protest in 1997. If the union does go on strike, it would be the largest strike against a single business in nation’s history.

The Teamster union’s new president, Sean O’Brien, won his office earlier this year by making the UPS contract a central focus of his campaign. He has vowed to make UPS pay Teamster members far more this time and he often talks about a $300 million strike fund the union has accumulated to pay members in case they go on strike.

The average pay for UPS delivery drivers is $95,000 a year, with benefits such as a traditional pension plan, worth an additional $50,000 a year. UPS’ semi-tractor drivers are paid even more. That’s far higher than most wages at FedEx and Amazon, where many drivers work for small independent contractors.

The current contract expires next summer on August 1. O’Brien vows the union will not grant any kind of contract extension past that deadline.

And he added that on top of improved pay and benefits, the union will demand better working conditions, including adding air conditioning in the panel trucks used for UPS deliveries which the union says poses a health risk for drivers.

Green Crabs Come to Alaska

Alaska has steered clear of green crabs – until this summer.

In July, an intern found a shell of a European green crab on the shoreline of the Metlakatla Indian Community in Alaska. Since then, many more were discovered.

The discoveries are concerning for those in the maritime arena.