Israel news:
Winter Rains Come Back To Israel: After a few scattered showers on Friday the winter rains are back with G-d’s help. The rains are from Northern Israel to the Northern Negev. These are accompanied by a drop in temperature and winds. Bathing is considered dangerous on Israeli beaches with waves up to a meter. However it will get hotter and dryer in the next few days.
17 people killed in October from car crashes in Israel, 10 of them on the Sukkot holiday. Two 18 year olds from Bet Shemesh were killed in a car crash near Kiryat Malachi and 3 more were seriously injured. There were fewer accidents in central Israel though there was more traffic. This is because highways in central Israel have medians dividing the traffic from both directions whereas out of the center many 2 way roads don’t have medians. Unfortunately a major contributing factor to collisions is the use of cell phones when driving.
MK Uri Maklev proposes new kidney donation law to help receive funding for kidney donations. The ongoing fear is that people will donate a kidney in lieu of financial payment and the organizations dealing with kidney donations are under heavy scrutiny for this reason and the red tape can often be the difference between life and death. Maklev’s law proposal is that people can give donations to these organizations up to 36,000 NIS (approx. $10,000) and it must be earmarked for advertising. This hopefully will raise public awareness and increase the number of kidney donations in Israel and will prevent the suspicion of thinking the donations are payments to donors.
Son saves father with CPR in Kiryat Chaim near Haifa: 37 year old Ivan Nazhinsky collapsed in the kitchen while making coffee. His son Ilya immediately called the Magen David Adom hotline to get an ambulance. Meanwhile the hotline responders instructed him on resuscitation and CPR to administer to his father until the ambulance would come. Ivan was taken to Rambam hospital where he made a miraculous recovery from a situation where he experienced clinical death a few times. The CPR made all the difference and Ilya gave his father a new lease on life.
World news:
Radical right wins in Austria: The 2 leading parties in Austrian elections are from the extreme right. The new Chancellor will be 31 year old Sebastian Kurtz who will be one of the youngest rulers ever in Europe and the world. He leads the “nations’ party and was foreign minister prior to elections. The freedom party, also extreme right was the runner up party. Kurtz galvanized his party and rebranded it the “New Nations Party” and succeeded in growing it to getting 30% of the popular vote. One of the main policies on his platform is strict immigration rules and not allowing new immigrants into the country.
Winds die down in California allowing firefighters to take control of the widespread fires. About 11,000 firefighters are still waging a battle against 22 fires burning across a wide part of California and they are now more successful than before in containing them. In many counties people were allowed to return to their homes.
Kirkuk may be ISIS free but Iraq wants to clean the Kurds out too: Kurdish forces known as Peshmerga were supplied and trained by the US alongside the Iraqi forces in order to rout ISIS from Iraq. Now Iraq launched an offensive against the Kurds to take the oil producing city back and help prevent Kurdish independence. The Peshmerga destroyed at least five U.S.-supplied Humvees the Iraqis were using against them in what they called an “unprovoked attack” south of the city. The Kurds should be strengthened and encouraged instead of put down again as they have been these past decades. Their independence will be a stabilizing factor against Syria, Iran and Turkey who all traditionally suppress the Kurds.