National

“Dead or alive,” said Peretz. “Such a video can never repeat itself.”

Already characterized by what is arguably the most stringent rules of engagement of any Western military, the IDF automatically opens a criminal investigation into any soldier who uses deadly force. The frequent probes of soldiers who used their weapons to defend themselves has long been controversial among Israelis, who allege that the policies make troops fearful of protecting themselves.

COVID-19 Fatalities & Preexisting Conditions

A new analysis has found that the vast majority of Israelis who died after being infected with COVID-19 were suffering from other existing diseases.

The data was published by the Haaretz daily and came following a Health Ministry analysis of the 3,004 victims. The overall death toll has since risen to 3,111 as of Monday amid rising infection levels and fears that Israel is entering a third wave.

According to the figures, 92% of all fatalities – or 2,778 people –had been suffering from existing chronic conditions. Overall, 1,019 people (34%) suffered from high blood pressure, 750 people (25%) had diabetes, 633 (21%) had heart disease, and 246 (8%) battled chronic lung disorders.

Another 99 victims (3%) had a compromised immune system, including 31 (1%) with liver problems.

Like in most countries, the main victims were primarily the elderly, with the average age of death 79 and the median 81. 1,022 deaths – 33% of the total – had been between the ages of 80-89, while 759 deaths were between 70 and 79. ers at its Iowa pork plant after finding that they wagered on how many of their employees would become infected with COVID-19.

“We value our people and expect everyone on the team, especially our leaders, to operate with integrity and care in everything we do,” Tyson Foods President and CEO Dean Banks said in a statement. “The behavior exhibited by these individuals does not represent the Tyson core values, which is why we took immediate and appropriate action to get to the truth.

“Now that the investigation has concluded, we are taking action based on the findings.”

The wave of firings comes after a probe led by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder found that senior managers had placed cash bets on how many of their workers would get infected by the deadly virus. The claims originally surfaced as part of a wrongful death lawsuit against the meatpacking giant, which alleges that Tyson failed to take the necessary precautions to protect employees from contracting COVID-19.

According to court filings, more than 1,000 of the Iowa plant’s 2,800 employees had contracted the disease after managers refused to implement basic safety measures. Despite being fully aware of the coronavirus’s lethality, management forced meatpackers to work in crowded conditions without gloves and face masks.

In addition, the site’s foreman “organized a cash buy-in, winner-takeall betting pool for supervisors and managers to wager how many employees would test positive for COVID-19.” Despite being warned by local law enforcement that the plant was a death trap, Tyson executives refused to shutter the factory, telling workers that they had “a responsibility to keep

life is not perfect, but it is beautiful.

Firings for Corona Betting

working in order to ensure Americans don’t go hungry.”

“On one occasion, (plant manager) Casey intercepted a sick supervisor en-route to get back to work, adding, ‘We all have symptoms. You have a job to do,’” the suit said.

Moderna Vaccine

Tyson Foods fired seven manag-

Approved

Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine became the second to receive U.S. approval after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized it for emergency use on Friday.

After hours of deliberations, FDA’s experts committee voted unanimously to allow Moderna’s vaccine to be distributed throughout the United States. The authorization came a week after the FDA gave the go-ahead to a competing vaccine made by Pfizer and occurred as the U.S. tops 300,000 deaths from the deadly disease.

FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said that the approval constituted “another crucial step in the fight against this global pandemic that is causing vast numbers of hospitalizations and deaths in the United States each day.”

“Congratulations, the Moderna vaccine is now available!” tweeted President Donald Trump.

The U.S. will now begin a complex logistical operation to ship almost 6 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine to 64 states, territories, and urban centers. The pharmaceutical giant predicts that it will send out 20 million doses by January and another 125 million by April.

Apart from Moderna’s vaccine, the federal government plans to distribute an additional 2 million doses of Pfizer’s vaccine.

“With the availability of two vaccines now for the prevention of COVID-19, the FDA has taken another crucial step in the fight against this global pandemic that is causing vast numbers of hospitalizations and deaths in the United States each day,” said Hahn.

Moderna’s vaccine was unveiled in early November, a week after Pfiz-

er announced its own breakthrough. Moderna claims a 94.1% efficacy rate, lower than Pfizer’s 95%. Both vaccines require two doses and need to be kept in subzero temperatures until injection.

A Third Vaccine?

A senior U.S. health official has suggested that a third COVID-19 vaccine may be imminent.

Speaking with ABC’s “This Week,” Admiral Brett Giroir from the Department of Health and Human Services estimated that the vaccine being developed by Johnson & Johnson and Janssen would soon show success. Giroir added that he expected the vaccine to be approved sometime in January.

However, Giroir was contradicted by Surgeon-General elect Vivek Murthy, who said later on Sunday that such an accelerated timeline was unlikely.

“It may be closer to mid-summer or early fall when this vaccine makes its way to the general public,” Murthy told “Meet the Press.”

The U.S. has already approved two vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna for emergency use. While health officials originally had high hopes for Johnson & Johnson, its vaccine has lagged behind the other two and remains in clinical trials.

The company announced last week that it had recruited 45,000 participants for its first round of clinical trials and expects to unveil the results in January. An earlier trial for the drug was halted in October after patients began showing unexplained symptoms.

U.S. Charges for Lockerbie Bomber

This week, the U.S. Justice Department announced new charges against a Libyan bombmaker in the 1988 explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, an attack that killed 259 people in the air and 11 on the ground.

The charges were announced on the 32nd anniversary of the bombing and in the final news conference of Attorney General William Barr’s tenure, underscoring his personal attachment to a case that unfolded during his first stint at the Justice Department. He had announced an earlier set of charges against two other Libyan intelligence officials in his capacity as acting attorney general nearly 30 years ago, vowing that the investigation would continue.

The case against the alleged bombmaker, Abu Agela Masud Kheir AlMarimi, is for now more theoretical than practical since Masud is not in U.S. custody. Even so, it is one of the more consequential counterterrorism prosecutions brought by the Trump administration Justice Department.

“At long last, this man responsible for killing Americans and many others will be subject to justice for his crimes,” Barr said.

A breakthrough in the investigation came when U.S. officials in 2017 received a copy of an interview that Masud, an explosives expert for Libya’s intelligence service, had given to Libyan law enforcement several years earlier after being taken into custody following the collapse of the regime of the country’s leader, Col. Muammar Gaddafi.

In that interview, U.S. officials said, Masud admitted building the bomb in the Pan Am attack and working with the two other defendants to carry it out. He also revealed that he had been summoned by a Libyan intelligence official to a meeting in Tripoli and asked whether the “suitcases” were finished.

While Masud is now the third Libyan intelligence official charged in the U.S. in connection with the Lockerbie bombing, he would be the first to stand trial in an American courtroom.

After Barr in 1991 announced charges against the two other men, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, the Libyan government balked at turning them over. In 1992, under pressure from the UN Security Council, Libya handed over the two men to a panel of Scottish judges sitting in a Netherlands court as part of a special arrangement.

Al-Megrahi was convicted, while Fhimah was acquitted of all charges. Al-Megrahi was given a life sentence, but Scottish authorities released him on humanitarian grounds in 2009, when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He later died in Tripoli.

It has long been claimed that Iran used a Syria-based Palestinian proxy to build the bomb that downed the Boeing 747, as it traveled from London to New York.

Documents obtained for the film, titled “Lockerbie: What Really Happened?” suggest that the bombers themselves belonged to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.

A similar conclusion was relayed to The Times of Israel in December 2013, when a former senior member of the Israeli security establishment said he was certain that the bombing was carried out by Ahmad Jibril’s PFLPGC.

Jibril has always denied any part in the Lockerbie bombing.

The Pan Am flight exploded over Lockerbie less than an hour after takeoff from London on December 21, 1988, en route to New York City and then Detroit. Among the 190 Americans on board were 35 Syracuse University students flying home for the holidays after a semester abroad.

Google Sued for Antitrust

A group of 38 states filed a massive antitrust suit against Google, alleging that the tech giant used unfair business practices to eliminate competition to its popular search engine.

The lawsuit was filed in a Washington, D.C., federal court by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser who was joined by dozens of attorney generals from both political parties.

“Consumers are denied the ben-

efits of competition, including the possibility of higher quality services and better privacy protections. Advertisers are harmed through lower quality and higher prices that are, in turn, passed along to consumers,” Weiser said.

The coalition of states include Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wyoming, the District of Columbia, and the territories of Guam and Puerto Rico.

The lawsuit alleges that parent company Alphabet Inc. illegally colluded with phone giants such as Apple and Samsung to make Google the default search engine on their handsets. Google is also accused of using its market dominance to force the aforementioned companies to preload their devices with the Android operating system and other Google products.

Currently, Google’s search engine enjoys unprecedented market share, controlling 92% of all search queries worldwide as of October. Yet, according to the lawsuit, the tech behemoth’s success comes as a result of using illegal practices to squeeze out competitors that run afoul of the Antitrust Act of 1890.

“As the gateway to the internet, Google has systematically degraded the ability of other companies to access consumers,” the states said in a joint statement. The litigation is the third government antitrust proceedings to be filed against Google over the past two months, joining similar proceedings by the Department of Justice over what it alleges is the company’s pattern of using its market dominance to hobble rivals.

In a separate case filed last Wednesday, 10 Republican attorney generals accused Google of brokering an illicit deal with Facebook to create a digital-advertising monopoly. The complaint alleges that Google granted Facebook special treatment in ad auctions run by the company in return for refraining from threatening Google’s dominance in the ad business.

“Google repeatedly used its monopolistic power to control pricing (and) engage in market collusions to rig auctions in a tremendous violation of justice,” said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The company “eliminated its competition and crowned itself the king of online advertising.”

Russian Hack Penetrates U.S. Secret Network

U.S. officials fear that Russian hackers succeeded in penetrating a top-secret network used to control America’s nuclear arsenal.

The hack in question began last March and is already the worst in U.S. history. The cyberattack is believed to be the work of Russian intelligence and is the result of a mammoth espionage operation that likely took years to prepare. The attackers gained access to the most sensitive and highly guarded U.S. computer networks by inserting malicious code into Solarwinds, a popular computer software program used by federal agencies.

While national security officials still do not know the total fallout of the attack, at least six government agencies are said to be compromised, including the Departments of Commerce, Homeland Security, Agriculture, and State. The news that the Department of Energy may have been breached came as a particular concern, as it oversees the U.S.’s vast nuclear arsenal.

According to reports, preliminary findings show that servers belonging to both the Energy Department and National Nuclear Security Administration were accessed, potentially giving Moscow the U.S.’s most closely guarded secrets. A probe by cyber security officials found traces of suspicious activity in communication systems belonging to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories in New Mexico and Washington, and the Energy Department’s Richland Field Office.

While acknowledging that some networks were compromised, Energy Department Spokesperson Shaylyn Hynes maintained that those responsible failed to penetrate critical

infrastructure.

“At this point, the investigation has found that the malware has been isolated to business networks only, and has not impacted the mission essential national security functions of the department, including the National Nuclear Security Administration,” Hynes said in a statement. “When DOE identified vulnerable software, immediate action was taken to mitigate the risk, and all software identified as being vulnerable to this attack was disconnected from the DOE network.”

Officials are still scrambling to understand the extent of the damage and how the perpetrators managed to pull off such a sophisticated attack. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is tasked with guarding America’s cybersecurity and communications infrastructure, admitted in a report that the damage is likely “catastrophic” and will be hard to walk back.

“This threat actor has demonstrated sophistication and complex tradecraft in these intrusions,” the agency said. “CISA expects that removing the threat actor from compromised environments will be highly complex and challenging.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo fingered Russia as the perpetrator of the attack, telling conservative commentator Mark Levin that no other country possessed such advanced cyber capabilities. In doing so, Pompeo became the first U.S. official to openly accuse Russia of penetrating America’s most heavily guarded platforms.

President Trump, though, has said that China is the real culprit.

“The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality,” Trump tweeted. “I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control. Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because [U.S. media] is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!)”

Russia has an extensive history of engineering devastating cyber-attacks on sovereign countries, famously shutting off Estonia’s entire electricity grid in 2007. In March 2014, Russian malware succeeded in penetrating the Ukrainian military’s entire communications network during Moscow’s invasion of Crimea.

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More Stimulus on the Way Cheating at West Point

After months of dead-end negotiations, Congress reached a $900 billion deal on pandemic relief that will see Americans getting a second round of stimulus checks.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced on Sunday that lawmakers had reached a breakthrough following months of back and forth between both parties.

“At long last we have the bipartisan breakthrough the country has needed,” McConnell said. “Now we need to promptly finalize text, avoid any last-minute obstacles, and cooperate to move this legislation through both chambers.

“It is packed with targeted policies that help struggling Americans who have already waited entirely too long,” McConnell added.

The aid package aims to soften the economic blow Americans have suffered since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and comes after many unemployment benefits have already lapsed. The agreement will send $600 directly to Americans and another $600 per child, less than the $1,200 sent out in May. Households making less than $150,000 are entitled to another $1,200, which will start being sent out in late December.

The bill also extends all jobless benefits that were slated to expire in late December. These are primarily the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program that helped independent contractors and the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program that extended unemployment benefits by 13 weeks.

With both aforementioned programs scheduled to end imminently, lawmakers had feared that letting the benefits lapse would yank away the financial lifeline of more than 12 million Americans. Many who are jobless may still go almost a month without benefits despite the new agreement, as it is expected to take weeks for the funds to be sent out to all 50 states.

More than 70 cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point are being accused of cheating on a math exam, the worst academic scandal since the 1970s at the Army’s premier training ground for officers.

Fifty-eight cadets admitted cheating on the exam, which was administered remotely because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of them have been enrolled in a rehabilitation program and will be on probation for the remainder of their time at the academy. Others resigned, and some face hearings that could result in their expulsion.

The scandal strikes at the heart of the academy’s reputation for rectitude, espoused by its own moral code, which is literally etched in stone: “A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.”

Army Col. Mark Weathers, West Point’s chief of staff, said in an interview Monday that he was “disappointed” in the cadets for cheating, but he did not consider the incident a serious breach of the code. It would not have occurred if the cadets had taken the exam on campus, he noted.

Instructors initially determined that 72 plebes, or first-year cadets, and one yearling, or second-year cadet, had cheated on a calculus final exam in May. Those cadets all made the same error on a portion of the exam.

Recently concluded investigations and preliminary hearings for the cadets resulted in two cases being dismissed for lack of evidence and four dropped because the cadets resigned. Of the remaining 67 cases, 55 cadets were found in violation of the honor code and enrolled in a program for rehabilitation. Three more cadets admitted cheating but were not eligible to enroll in what is called the Willful Admission Program.

One of the biggest cheating scandals among the nation’s taxpayer-funded military colleges occurred in 1976 when 153 cadets at West Point resigned or were expelled for cheating on an electrical engineering exam.