“Weekend Update – Here Are the Headlines You Missed” is a weekly feature that offers brief overviews of important news that might have been overlooked during the weekend lull.
Israel Rescues 4 Hostages
A surprise Saturday rescue operation that freed four Israeli hostages from their terrorist captors was one of the most dramatic episodes of the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas since Palestinian terrorists attacked Israel on October 7, seizing 250 hostages and killing approximately 1,200 others, including many young people who were at a desert dance festival.
One of these hostages was Noa Argamani, who was last seen being transported to Gaza on the back of a motorcycle screaming, “Don’t kill me.”
Argamani and three other Israeli hostages were extracted from Nuseirat in central Gaza and reunited with family in a complex daylight operation involving thousands of troops, technicians and analysts.
Minutes after the news of the operation broke, it seemed as if all of Israel was celebrating. Cheers erupted on sidewalks and synagogues, lifeguards used public-address systems to deliver the news at beaches, and crowds formed outside the hospitals to which the former hostages were being taken.
Chief Inspector Arnon Zamora, a tactical operator in the Yamam, the National Police Counter-Terrorism Unit who was critically wounded during the successful operation Saturday, was mourned, and the families of the remaining 120 hostages continued their tortuous wait.
Real Estate Developer Tibor Hollo, a Holocaust Survivor Who Transformed Miami’s Skyline, Dies at 96
The death of Tibor Hollo, a Holocaust survivor who transformed Miami’s skyline, was made public. Hollo was born into a Jewish family in Budapest in 1927. His family fled the Hungarian capital in 1933 shortly after Adolf Hitler’s appointment as Reichskanzler and moved to Paris. After Germany occupied much of France, he and his family were sent to the Drancy internment camp and later to Auschwitz.
Hollo, who died on May 1 of this year, arrived in New York in 1948 and took a job at a curtain factory for $0.45 per hour, letting a small flat for $2 per week. He soon became a building contractor and, later on, a major real-estate developer who went on to transform the Miami skyline with luxury hotels and apartment buildings.
Over the course of his career, he built numerous notable buildings including the 85-story Panorama residential tower and the Eden Roc hotel in the Miami area. His work encompassed a wide swath of the United States, including other parts of Florida, New York State, Nevada, North Carolina, and Michigan.
In 1984, the New York Times, in a feature story about Hollo, said that “[building] a condominium, according to Tibor Hollo, is like flying an airplane: ‘Check your instruments, check your gas and check the weather before you take off,’” before Hollo added that, at the time, he was “roaring down the runway” with what was the largest condominium ever built in Miami, the Venetia.
World Cup Cricket in a Surprising Venue
India beat Pakistan by six runs in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup cricket match. The match was held at the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium in Westbury, New York.
The sellout crowd was 34,028, a record crowd for cricket in the United States.
Pakistan, which had looked to be in complete control during the first half of the innings, began to lose its way in the second.
Unintended Consequence: Sudden Reduction in Shipping Pollution Stoking Global Warming
New research suggests that a major shift in global shipping regulations intended to improve air quality may have temporarily – and inadvertently – set off a geoengineering reaction that is warming the planet.
Before the start of the coronavirus pandemic, in January 2020, the International Maritime Organization issued regulations that substantially reduced the amount of harmful sulfur dioxide content allowed in shipping fuel as part of a number of strategies it was taking to improve public health.
The change was expected to help reduce the incidence of asthma lung cancer, strokes, and other diseases in people who live in and around port cities.
What was overlooked at the time was that ships’ emissions help create bright clouds over the ocean that reflect some of the sun’s light and energy back into space. The change in rules caused a reduced amount of sulfur dioxide to be emitted, and this in turn resulted in fewer bright clouds. As a result, more of the sun’s light and energy was able to penetrate the earth’s surface, be it land or sea, contributing to a warming of the planet.
U.S. to Mandate Nutritional Labels on Front of Packaged Foods
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is expected to mandate new nutritional labels on the front of food packages that will be required to include key nutrient details. The labels will be designed to quickly convey health ramifications to busy shoppers about the food and beverages they are about to put into the shopping carts (or buggies, if they are in the South). [Editor’s note: In the United Kingdom, these contraptions are referred to as shopping trolleys.”]
The concept, which is expected to be opposed by the companies that produce the food that will carry the labels, is not without precedent, however. In Chile, the government mandates that foodstuffs carry a stop-sign symbol if a product has high sugar, saturated fat, sodium or calories, while Singapore issues letter grades to foods based on how nutritious they are or aren’t.
The FDA previously set a deadline of the end of June to issue the new requirements as well as the label design.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
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