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Friday | April 30 12:30-3:30 PM

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mask mandate had become the most ubiquitous symbol of the COVID-19 period. But in recent weeks, enforcement of the mandate had essentially ended as police turned a blind eye to flagrant mask-violators.

The decision to end the mask mandate came amid plunging infection rates and rapidly-dropping daily COVID-19 cases resulting from Israel’s world-leading vaccination campaign. As of Monday, 54% of Israelis received both jabs of the Pfizer vaccine while the daily infection count dropped to 100, down from 10,000 in January.

On Sunday, Israel’s entire education system also returned to in-class learning for the first time in more than a year. Since the onset of the pandemic, grades 5-9 had studied either on Zoom or in alternating “pods.”

Maxine Waters Stokes Violence in MN

Last weekend, Congresswoman Maxine Waters openly urged protesters in Minneapolis to continue their rampant street violence should ex-cop Derek Chauvin go free.

Chauvin is currently on trial for manslaughter charges relating to last summer’s death of George Floyd. Upon meeting with protesters in nearby Brooklyn Center on Saturday, Waters urged the crowd to get “confrontational” in the event that Chauvin was found innocent.

“We’ve got to stay on the street, and we’ve got to get more active, we’ve got to get more confrontational. We’ve got to make sure that they know that we mean business,” Waters told a reporter.

Urging demonstrators “to remain on the street” and defy the 11 PM curfew, Waters brushed off calls to quiet down the week-long rioting in Brooklyn Center.

“I’m going to fight with all of the people who stand for justice,” Waters said. “We’ve got to get justice in this country, and we cannot allow these killings to continue.”

Brooklyn Center has been the scene of spiraling violence ever since a policewoman mistakenly shot and killed Daunte Smith during a traffic stop last week. The rioting had already destroyed dozens of stores and came as Chauvin’s attorneys made their closing arguments on Monday.

The congresswoman was lambasted by GOP lawmakers, who accused her of “fanning the flames” with her “violent rhetoric.”

“Telling rioters who have burned buildings, looted stores, and assaulted journalists to get ‘more confrontational’ is incredibly irresponsible. Every House Democrat should condemn Maxine Waters’ call for violence,” said National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Mike Berg.

“Why is Maxine Waters traveling to a different state trying to incite a riot? What good can come from this?” tweeted Rep. Lauren Boebert. Waters hails from California.

In an unsigned editorial, the New York Post called on Congress to “impeach and remove Maxine Waters” for “pouring fuel on the fire in Minnesota.”

The veteran Democrat has a long history of inflammatory statements during her three decades in Congress. In 2018, Waters famously called on her supporters to harass Trump administration officials spotted during everyday activities such as shopping and stopping for gas.

“Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere,” she said at the time.

Derek Chauvin Found Guilty

On Tuesday, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all three charges against in connection to George

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Floyd’s death.

Chauvin, 45, was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. The jurors deliberated for more than 10 hours over two days before coming to their decision.

He had knelt on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds on May 25, 2020. Floyd’s death sparked nationwide riots led by the Black Lives Matter movement.

Chauvin’s bail was revoked after the verdict. His sentencing will take place eight weeks from now. He can be sentenced to up to 40 years behind bars.

Chauvin was on trial for around three weeks. Throughout the testimony, prosecutors told jurors to “believe your eyes” and remember what they saw in the video of the incident. The defense called seven witnesses who were there to bolster the claim that Chauvin’s use of force was reasonable, that he was distracted by hostile bystanders and that Floyd died of other causes. Chauvin himself did not testify.

The Twin Cities region braced itself for the verdict. More than 3,000 Minnesota National Guard members were activated in the Twin Cities, while businesses in Minneapolis boarded up their windows.

After the verdict, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris spoke on the phone with the Floyd family and their attorneys.

“Nothing is going to make it all better,” Biden told them, but “at least now there’s some justice.”

Biden, in addressing the nation later, said, “Nothing can ever bring their brother or their father back. But this can be a giant step forward in the march towards justice in America.”

The President said that in order for their to be real change, lawmakers must help ensure a tragedy like this cannot happen and that people of color no longer fear being stopped by police.

He said he told the Floyd family “we’re going to continue to fight for the passage of George Floyd Justice in Policing Act so I can sign it into law as quickly as possible. There is more to do. Finally, it is the work we do every day to change hearts and minds as well as laws and policies. That’s the work we have to do.”

The three other former officers on scene – Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao – are charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder and aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter. They have pleaded not guilty; their trials are set to commence in August.

Death Row Sentence Tossed

Texas’ longest-serving death row inmate had his sentence tossed after an appeals court ruled that he was mentally unfit for capital punishment.

In the decision ruling on April 14, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that Raymond Riles’ “death sentence can no longer stand” because his long battle with mental illness had not been properly looked at.

The 70-year-old inmate will now be resent to a Houston court for resentencing. As per Texas law, Riles can receive the death penalty again.

On death row since 1976, Riles is the Lone Star State’s longest-serving inmate. Arrested in 1974 for shooting and killing a used car salesman in Houston, Riles was handed the death penalty two years later. His conviction was overturned two years later. During his retrial, Riles attempted to plead the insanity defense, calling up to the stand psychologists who testified that he “was often psychotic and had suffered for some time from some type of schizophrenia.”

The judge rejected his arguments and found Riles guilty of capital murder charges in 1978. His execution was blocked in 1989 after the Texas Supreme Court ruled that jurors needed to take into account mitigating factors such as mental illness when giving a verdict.

Since then, Riles has remained in limbo as lawyers argued over his fate in a series of lower courts. His many trials have affected him, with Riles going on extreme and often violent outbursts, including once during a hearing.

Oldest Living American Dies

oldest living person has died.

Hester Ford was either 115 or 116 at the time of her death on Saturday. While her family maintains she was born in 1905, U.S Census Bureau listings record her birthday in 1904.

According to the Gerontology Research Group, which follows the lives of the oldest Americans, Ford’s age was 115 years and 245 days old. Ford had been the oldest living person in the U.S. since June 30 of last year.

Born in South Carolina’s Lancaster Country, Ford was married off at the age of 14 to her husband John in order to help support her poor parents. A year later, she gave birth to the first of her 12 children.

In 1960, the couple moved to Charlotte, where Ford would live for the rest of her life. After her husband passed away in 1963 at the age of 57, Hester took over raising the family and lived alone in her home without help until badly injuring herself in 2014.

In addition to her 12 children, Ford had 48 grandchildren and 108 great-grandchildren.

“She was a pillar and stalwart to our family and provided much needed love, support and understanding to us all,” said great-granddaughter Tanisha Patterson-Powe.

“She not only represented the advancement of our family but of the Black African American race and culture in our country,” Patterson-Powe continued. “She was a reminder of how far we have come as people on this Earth. She has been celebrated all over the world by local governments, community leaders, social media, foreign dignities and presidents as a cherished jewel of society for holding the honor of being the oldest living person in America.”

U.S. Charges for Lev Tahor Members

U.S. federal authorities filed child exploitation and child abduction charges against leaders of the Lev Tahor sect that has been accused of forcing girls as young as 12 years old into marriages with much older men within their community.

Five leaders of the Lev Tahor group were charged by the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and FBI on Monday with crimes related to an alleged forced marriage in 2017 and a 2018 kidnapping.

The charges include conspiring to transport a minor with intent to engage in certain inappropriate activity and conspiring to travel with intent to engage in inappropriate conduct. The first charge carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison and maximum of lifetime in prison; the second carries a maximum of 30 years in prison.

Nachman Helbrans, one of the men charged on Monday, arranged a marriage in 2017 between his 12-yearold niece and an 18-year-old man, according to the filing. They were married in 2018.

According to the Justice Department press release, young brides in the community were expected “to tell people outside Lev Tahor that they were not married, to pretend to be older, and to deliver babies inside their homes instead of at a hospital, partially to conceal from the public the mothers’ young ages.”

Later that year, the girl’s mother escaped from the group and fled to the United States with the girl and the girl’s younger brother, arriving in New York in November 2018. According to the Justice Department, in December 2018, the five men charged this week kidnapped the girl – then 14 years old – and her brother in the middle of the night and brought them back to her husband, then 20 years old, in Mexico. The children were returned to New York several weeks later by law enforcement, but the group tried to kidnap them again two more times.

Nachman Helbrans is the son of Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans, who founded Lev Tahor in the 1980s, and became the group’s leader in 2017 after the death of his father. The other men charged are Mayer Rosner, Yakov Weingarten, Shmiel Weingarten and Yoel Weingarten.

Yakov Weingarten was arrested last month in Guatemala on the first day of Passover. The group had fled Canada to Guatemala in 2014 after coming under intense scrutiny by Canadian authorities for alleged child abuse and marrying off children.

William F. Sweeney Jr., the FBI’s assistant director, thanked Guatemalan law enforcement for their assistance in the Lev Tahor case.

“International borders will not stop the FBI from pursuing justice and enforcing violations of our laws, especially when you target children. The behavior alleged today is outrageous, and there is no justification for it whatsoever,” Sweeney said.

The group has been described as a cult and as the “Jewish Taliban,” as women and girls older than 3 are required to dress in long black robes covering their entire body, leaving only their faces exposed. The men spend most of their days in prayer and studying only specific Torah portions.

According to the Justice Department’s announcement of the charges, Nachman Helbrans and his team “embraced several extreme practices, including strict, invasive monitoring of members, frequent beatings, and forced marriages of minors to adult members. Children in Lev Tahor are often subject to physical…and emotional abuse.”

Lev Tahor have their own version of kosher laws. For example, members believe that genetic engineering has rendered modern-day chickens non-kosher. Marriages between teenagers or minors and older members are common.

Leaders of the group have been charged with kidnapping before, including in the case authorities charged Helbrans and the others for Monday. In 2019, four group leaders were indicted for the 2018 kidnapping.

Guatemalan authorities have been monitoring leaders of Lev Tahor, which is now based in the country, in recent years. Members of the group, which is anti-Zionist, have applied for political asylum in Iran.

1,118 Days in a Church

Chavez emerged outside to a throng of television cameras and well-wishers this week.

An illegal immigrant from Honduras, Chavez and her two daughters entered the First Unitarian Church in 2018 to avoid being sent back to her home country. On Monday, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) notified her that she had been cleared for a stay of removal delaying the threat of deportation until at least 2022.

Greeting Chavez were hundreds of well-wishers, church members, and immigration advocates, many of whom chanted support and waved homemade signs.

“We have been waiting for this day for more than 39 months, and I’m here sharing with everybody that I’m free right now and I can’t believe it,” Chavez exulted.

“I have no words to thank them for giving me a safe home for over three years,” Chavez added. “Today I can say that I’m full of love and happy to have arrived here.”

Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson congratulated Chavez and church members for the “compassion” they had demonstrated over the past three years.

First arriving in the U.S. in 2014 to escape what she said was an abusive relationship, Chavez was arrested and slated to be deported. After exhausting all of her appeals, Chavez had already purchased a plane ticket for the journey home when the First Unitary Church offered sanctuary.

Living in a converted Sunday school classroom with a TV and games, Chavez and her two daughters spent the days studying English and reading. What was meant to be a short-term arrangement ended up becoming the family’s home for the next three years until Monday’s tidings allowed Chavez to finally emerge outside after 1,118 days.

“Vicky’s life is no longer on hold,” said head minister Rev. Tom Goldsmith. “She leaves this church with a full grasp of the English language, a couple of hundred friends, and the confidence to pursue her dreams.”

Rwandan Murderer Deported

A woman sentenced to a decade in prison for lying about her role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide while immigrating to the United States has been deported to Rwanda.

Beatrice Munyenyezi, who played a major role in the massacre of the Tutsis, was flown into the capital of Kigali this week and was escorted by U.S. federal agents. She was immediately arrested upon arrival and remains in custody.

Rwanda Bureau of Investigation spokesperson Thierry Murangira said that Munyenyezi faces numerous charges connected to her actions almost three decades ago, including murder, genocide, and complicity in assault of women.

“Her deportation means a lot in terms of justice delivery to genocide victims,” said Murangira.

Munyenyezi commanded a military roadblock that handpicked Tutsis for murder and is allegedly responsible for hundreds of deaths. She later fled Rwanda and received asylum in the United States.

Munyenyezi was charged in June 2010 and later convicted in 2013 by a New Hampshire federal jury. The jury determined she obtained her U.S. citizenship unlawfully, after fleeing her home country of Rwanda, by misrepresenting material facts to U.S. immigration authorities.

Testimony during the 12-day trial revealed that Munyenyezi concealed her role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, including her involvement in the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND), the political party in power before and during the genocide, and its youth wing, the Interahamwe. The Interahamwe ran a militia that played a key role in the genocide.

Evidence at trial demonstrated that Munyenyezi, as a member of the Interahamwe, participated, aided, and abetted in the persecution and murder of Tutsi people during the 1994 genocide.

Munyenyezi appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2017, arguing that a recent legal precedent limited the government’s ability to strip citizenship from perpetrators of immigration fraud. Munyenyezi’s long shot bid to prevent her deportation failed when the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an earlier ruling in March by a federal district judge rejecting her petition.

The Rwandan genocide was a campaign during the 1994 Civil War by the Hutu party that targeted members of the Tutsi minority. Most academic estimates place the death toll at between 500,000 and 800,000 people.

Former VP Walter Mondale Dies

Former Vice President Walter Mondale died on Monday at age 93. Mondale, who was the 1984 Democratic nominee for president and also served as a longtime senator from Minnesota, died “peacefully from natural causes,” his family said.

The son of a minister, Mondale, known as Fritz, became one of Minnesota’s most famous political figures. He was selected in 1964 to replace then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey, a mentor, in the Senate. In his 12 years in the U.S. Senate, Mondale followed in the footsteps of Humphrey, the lead author of the Civil Rights Act, in championing civil rights and other progressive causes.

Jimmy Carter, the governor from Georgia who had improbably won the Democratic nomination in 1976, turned to Mondale when he needed a “Northern presence” on the ticket and someone who had a liberal track record. Despite being relatively unknown, the pair narrowly prevailed over President Gerald Ford, who was severely weakened by Watergate and Vietnam. They carried the South along with a few crucial Northern states – New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio, among others – winning 297 Electoral College votes.

Mondale was the first vice president to have an office in the White House and served as a close adviser to Carter. Mondale traveled widely and was instrumental in the Camp David Accords.

But Carter’s presidency was plagued by what he himself referred to as the “crisis of confidence” during a speech that became known as the “malaise speech” that, according to The New York Times, Mondale advised him not to give. Republican challenger Ronald Reagan sailed to the White House in the 1980 election, winning all but four states and Washington, D.C.

Mondale was the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in 1984. He made history by choosing Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate, the first woman ever on a major party ticket.

Mondale’s campaign – even with a woman on the ticket – was no match for Reagan’s soaring popularity. At a presidential debate, Reagan smoothly handled questions about his advanced age, quipping, “I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Mondale would later say he thought that was when the campaign ended.

Mondale and Ferraro would lose every state but Minnesota and Washington, D.C., in the election.

DeSantis Signs “Riot Act” into Law

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law an “anti-riot” bill allowing citizens to take greater action to protect themselves and their property from damage.

The bill had passed the Senate by a margin of 23-17 along party lines last Thursday after sailing through the House 76-39 on March 26. The act dramatically expands the ability Floridians have to defend their property from rioters and looters and increases penalties for a slew of crimes, including assault, battery, burglary and theft, and battery against a law