Uber lost a billion dollars in its first quarterly report as a public company, a sign that the ride-hailing giant still has a steep climb to attaining profitability.

The company’s loss of $1.01 billion in the first three months of the year contrasted with a one-time profit of $3.75 billion in the same quarter a year ago after the sale of overseas investments. The company lost about $478 million on operations in the first quarter a year ago.

Still, Uber reported that both bookings and the number of people using its platform climbed by more than 30%, positive signs of growth.

Uber’s steep loss shows the hurdles the ride hailing giant faces in achieving executives’ goal of eventually becoming a global one-stop shop for transportation and logistics. The company has outlined a vision for itself as a competitor with tech giant Amazon, applying its vast data trove and routing software to rewrite how goods and people move from one place to another, using computer algorithms to remove what tech sees as inefficiencies in the world.

“Earlier this month we took the important step of becoming a public company, and we are now focused on executing our strategy to become a one-stop shop for local transportation and commerce,” said Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber’s CEO, in a statement accompanying the quarterly earnings.

But Uber has had a rocky start since going public, an embarrassing debut for what was supposed to be one of the biggest initial public offerings in U.S. history. Its shares started trading on the New York Stock Exchange priced at $45, which valued the company at roughly $82 billion, the low end of the company’s price range. But Wall Street showed its doubts, and stocks opened lower and haven’t hit that price since.

The stock’s poor performance has raised questions about whether gig-economy companies losing billions of dollars a year will be sustainable – and whether the public pressure to make profits will put an even greater squeeze on the millions of drivers who work for them. And despite a massive overhaul of leadership at the Uber, investors still consider the company a risky bet.

(c) 2019, The Washington Post · Faiz Siddiqui 

{Matzav.com}

Rav Saadyah ben Yosef Gaon (882-942). Born in Fayum (the former name of Cairo), Egypt, he led an all-out war against the Karaites when he was just 23, criticizing their theories with articulately advanced arguments. In 915, he moved from Egypt to Teveria to further his studies. However, the yeshiva of Sura in Babylonia invited him there. Six years later, in 928, he was appointed Gaon of the yeshiva. Two years later, a rift between him and the Reish Galusa – Dovid ben Zakai – over a beis din decision prompted Rav Saadyah’s move to Baghdad. He returned 7 years thereafter, having mended the relationship. His most famous written work is Ha’Emunos veHaDeyos, the first Jewish philosophy book, originally written in Arabic and translated into Hebrew by Rav Yehuda ibn Tibbon. His translation of the Chumash into Arabic is used by Yemenite Jews to this day.

-Rav Aharon Lapapa (1590-1667). Born in Magnesia (Manisa), Turkey, he was a disciple of Rav Avraham Motal and Rav Yosef Trani in the yeshivos of Salonika and Constantinople. Late in life, on Rosh Chodesh Iyar in 1665, he was appointed dayan of Smyrna (Izmir), effectively splitting rabbinical functions with Rav Rav Chaim Benveniste. On the 6th of Teves of that year, Shabsai Tzvi proclaimed Rav Benveniste “supreme rabbi” of Smyrna, no doubt having learned of Rav Aharon’s disbelief of Messianic claims. As such, he was forced to stay home-bound. Some of his response and chidushim to Tur Choshen Mishpat were published in Bnei Aharon.

-Rav Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, the Ramchal (1707-1747), author of Mesilas Yesharim, Derech Hashem, Pis’chey Chochmah (138 chapters on the entire scope of the Kabbalah in what many authorities consider the most systematic manner ever achieved), and Daas Tevunos. Born in Padua, Italy, the Ramchal was a student of Rabbi Yitzchak Lampronti, author of the Pachad Yitzchak, the first major Talmudic encyclopedia ever assembled. The novelty of his approach drew opposition from a number of his contemporaries. Partially as a result of this opposition, Luzzatto left his native Italy in 1735 and settled in Amsterdam. In 1743, he traveled to Eretz Israel and settled in Acco. He died in a plague only four years later, along with his wife and his son. The Vilna Gaon declared that the Ramchal had the most profound understanding of Yiddishkeit that any mortal human could attain. He furthermore stated that if Luzzatto were alive in his generation, he would go by foot from Vilna to Italy to sit at his feet and learn from him. According to a mesorah, the Gaon was going to Eretz Yisrael to be a talmid of the Ramchal but then found out that the Ramchal was niftar so he returned to Vilna. There is an interesting mesorah that the Ramchal was a gilgul of Rebbe Akiva. The two are buried right next to each other and the Ramchal was niftar when he was 40; it is said to make up for the first 40 years of Rebbe Akiva’s life, prior to his doing teshuva.

-Rav Yitzchak ben Chaim of Volozhin (1779-1849 or 1851), the son of, and successor to, Rav Chaim of Volozhin. Rav Yitzchak’s works include Mili D’Avos on Pirkei Avos and a Torah commentary entitled Peh Kadosh. Father-in-law of Rav Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin (the “Netziv”).

-Rav Shmuel Eliyahu of Zhvill (1888).

-Rav Shlomo (“Shlomke”) Goldman, the Zhviller Rebbe (1870-1945). The younger of the two sons of Rav Mordechai of Zhvil, and a descendant of Rav Yechiel Michel of Zlotchov. When a pogrom in Zvhil targeted the his brother’s compound and killed the Rebbetzin along with many of the Jews of the area, his brother, Rav Yaakov Yisrael, moved to Boston, and Rav Shlomo moved to Yerushalayim in 1926. He was succeeded by his son, Rav Gedaliah Moshe.

Today in History – 26 Iyar

· Crusaders massacred the Jews of Mayence (Mainz) , 1096.
· Hundreds of Jews were massacred in Brussels, Belgium, 1370.
· Jews of Frankfurt on Main, Germany, were permitted for the first time to appear in public at the coronation of Joseph II, 1764.
· War broke out between Israel and the Arab nations, 1967. The strategic Egyptian base at El-Arish, in the Sinai Peninsula, was captured by the Israeli army on the same day. Israeli air force preempts by carrying attacks on Egyptian, Jordanian, Syrian and Iraqi air force bases; Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian air forces neutralized. IDF ground forces attack Egyptian forces in Sinai and the Gaza Strip. After Jordan launches attack on Israel, IDF forces commence operations against Jordanian military positions in Judea, Samaria, and Yerushalayim.
· The trial of suspected al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla opened in Miami. He was ultimately sentenced to 17 years in prison.

{Manny Saltiel-Anshe.org/Matzav.com Newscenter/Chinuch.org}

A stabbing attack took place in Israel this morning, where two men walking neat Shaar Shchem were attacked by an Arab terrorist.

One of the victims was 17-year-old Yisroel Meir Nachumberg, who was near the Churva shul when the attack took place and was only lightly injured.

After seven years holed up in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is showing symptoms of “psychological torture” as he serves a British prison sentence and battles extradition to the United States, according to a United Nations official.

Extraditing Assange to the U.S., following the announcement last week of 17 new charges under the Espionage Act, would represent a grave threat to his human rights, including a scenario in which the anti-secrecy activist could receive “a life sentence without parole, or possibly even the death penalty, if further charges were to be added in the future,” said Nils Melzer the U.N. special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

“In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution, I have never seen a group of democratic states ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law,” read a statement released Friday by Melzer.

On Thursday, Assange, 47, missed a scheduled court appearance via videolink because he was “not very well,” according to his lawyer, and had been transferred from his cell to the health ward of Belmarsh Prison. WikiLeaks claimed Assange had “dramatically lost weight” and quoted a defense lawyer saying “it was not possible to conduct a normal conversation with him.”

“In the atmosphere and the conditions, he has gone from one prison to another prison,” WikiLeaks editor Kristinn Hrafnsson said.

Assange regularly complained about how Ecuador treated him while he took refuge in a corner room of its red brick embassy. He unsuccessfully sued the Foreign Ministry last year over demands that he pay for his medical bills and clean up after his cat – among other conditions that he said were intended to force him from the embassy. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights also dismissed his complaints.

Melzer said in an interview with The Washington Post that he at first declined to weigh in on conditions at the embassy when contacted by Assange’s lawyers in December. The special rapporteur said he can only pursue a couple of the 10 to 15 requests he receives each day. Additionally, Melzer admitted he was no fan of WikiLeaks and considered its founder a bad actor.

Reports that Assange kept an untidy bathroom and left divots in the floor from his skateboard didn’t help.

But after Assange was expelled from the embassy and arrested by British police, Melzer agreed to look into his detention, spending four hours with Assange at Belmarsh Prison on the outskirts of London this month.

In his public statement, Melzer said the WikiLeaks founder “showed all symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture, including extreme stress, chronic anxiety and intense psychological trauma.”

Melzer said he had two medical experts who accompanied him to document the symptoms. “He perceives his whole environment to be hostile,” he said. “He was starting to become completely hopeless.”

He added that Assange is being prevented from taking sufficient part in his own legal defense. Last week, the special rapporteur said, Assange was brought an hour and 40 minutes late to a meeting with his attorneys, leaving just 20 minutes for discussions – too little time even to translate a document pertaining to Sweden’s decision to reopen a rape investigation against him.

“This adds to his anxiety, because he’s someone who’s always been at the center of organizing things and that’s the way he copes,” said Melzer, who is also an international law professor at Glasgow University and holds the human rights chair at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.

Britain’s Ministry of Justice declined to comment on the terms of Assange’s imprisonment.

The U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention earlier called for Assange’s release, saying his 50-week sentence is disproportionate to his jumping bail in 2012, when he was wanted by Swedish authorities for questioning about allegations of rape and sexual assault, which he denies. The U.N. group further asserted that Assange’s detention at high-security Belmarsh “appears to contravene the principles of necessity and proportionality.”

Assange was sent to Belmarsh because, in addition to its high-security function, it is a local prison serving the Westminster Magistrates’ Court, where his extradition case is being heard. Assange has been charged in the United States with conspiring to hack a government computer and violating the Espionage Act by seeking out and disseminating classified information.

Assange is not in the block of Belmarsh reserved for the highest-risk inmates, its “Category A” wing once criticized as “Britain’s Guantanamo Bay.” Instead, he is classified as “Category B” and, at least before going to the health ward, had been held in an individual unit on a cell block with about 70 detainees, according to Melzer.

In his cell, which is about 6 feet by 10 feet, he has a bed, a cupboard, a blackboard, a plastic chair and a toilet. Three hours of “association time” each day allow him to interact with other inmates, complete chores and manage his personal hygiene. He has no access to a computer, Melzer said.

Journalist Charles Glass, a friend of Assange’s, said Belmarsh was an improvement over the embassy, in that Assange would get time outside and have access to free medical care provided by the National Health Service.

Built in 1991, Belmarsh is modern by the standards of British prisons. The facility is typical in suffering from budgetary pressures and staffing shortages, said Mark Day, head of policy for the London-based Prison Reform Trust.

These problems have spawned violence and enabled the spread of drugs. Some disciplinary staff were “dismissive and disrespectful toward prisoners,” according to a 2018 review. Sixty percent of men had as little as one to three hours a day unlocked from their cells. There had been three “self-inflicted deaths” since the previous report in 2015. About 10 incidents of self-harm occurred each month.

“You wouldn’t want to be there if you had a choice, but the difficulties will be accidental or unthinking rather than deliberate,” said Nicholas Hardwick, who led a review of the prison in 2015.

Britain’s longest-serving prisoner, John Massey, was sent to Belmarsh after he escaped in 2012 from a prison in north London. He was roughed up, he recounted to the Guardian after being released last year, and told that he had “upset a lot of people.”

As much as Melzer is concerned about Assange’s treatment at Belmarsh, he worries extradition to the U.S. would constitute a human rights violation. Britain has said it will not send the WikiLeaks founder to a country where he would face the death penalty.

The U.S. criminal complaint against Assange announced last week, which has alarmed advocates of press freedom, claims his disclosures “created a grave and imminent risk to human life.”

“There’s no chance he’ll get a fair trial in the U.S.,” Melzer said. “That’s where I draw the line.”

(c) 2019, The Washington Post · Isaac Stanley-Becker, William Booth  

{Matzav.com}

United States Chargé d’Affaires in Iraq Joey Hood and Consul General Steve Fagin visited a traditional tomb of the novi Nochum and his sister located inside an ancient shul in Alqosh, 30 miles north of Mosul.

The city was abandoned by its Jewish population after 1948. Until then, the kever was a major pilgrimage site, particularly on Shavuos.

Hood announced an additional $500,000 in funding to preserve the historic tomb, which was in danger of collapse until the completion of initial stabilization work in January last year by the Alliance for the Restoration of Cultural Heritage.

{Matzav.com Israel}

It is with great sadness that Matzav.com reports the passing of Reb Yeshaya Fuchs z”l, father of Mrs. Geet Katz and Mrs. Yaffe Saalkind.

The levaya will take place at 11:30 a.m. at Khal Ateres Yeshaya, located at 908 East County Line Road in Lakewood, NJ.

The aron will then be flown to Eretz Yisroel for kevurah there.

Shivah will begin Tuesday at the Saalkind home, located at 48 Cabinfield Circle in Village Park in Lakewood.

Yehi zichro boruch.

{Matzav.com}

In the months since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., assumed her role, there’s one subject she can never seem to avoid being asked about: President Donald Trump. But on Thursday night, she said she’s over it.

“I’m done with him, in terms of talking about him,” Pelosi told late-night host Jimmy Kimmel on his ABC show. “What we want to talk about is, let’s build the infrastructure of America and not have him stomp out of the room.”

Pelosi and the president have been engaged in an ongoing feud that reached a boiling point last week after the speaker publicly accused Trump of engaging in a “coverup.” In response, Trump stormed out of a planned meeting intended to discuss a $2 trillion infrastructure package after only three minutes, choosing instead to rail against Democrats and their “phony investigations” at an impromptu news conference in the Rose Garden.

Kimmel, however, appeared to be much more interested in keeping the focus of his sit-down with Pelosi on Trump. The host and vocal critic of the president kicked off the 14-minute segment pressing Pelosi on impeachment in the wake of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s recent suggestion that only Congress could “formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing.” Despite facing intensifying calls for impeachment from members of her own party, Pelosi has repeatedly made efforts to tamp down the talk and resisted making decisive moves toward that step.

“We need you to get in there and to take care of this,” a passionate Kimmel said at one point during the interview.

“Let me just say this immodestly, I probably have a better idea as to what the president has to be held accountable for than anyone,” Pelosi responded. She later added, “The only person who knows better than I why this president is not above the law, why this president must be held accountable, the only person who knows better than I do is the president of the United States. He knows. He knows what his violations have been.”

The challenge, Pelosi said, would be convincing the Republicans in Senate, who are “completely in the pocket of Donald Trump.”

She again asserted her belief that this may be the reason Trump wants to be impeached.

“He knows it’s not a good idea to be impeached, but the silver lining for him is then he believes he would be exonerated by the United States Senate, and there’s a school of thought that says if the Senate acquits you, why bring charges against him in the private sector when he’s no longer president?”

She continued: “When we go there with our case, it’s gotta be ironclad.”

As Pelosi repeatedly stressed the necessity of being “as ready as you can possibly be” before taking on impeachment, Kimmel only had one question.

“Will we be ready before the year 2020?” he asked.

“Yeah, we will,” Pelosi responded with a laugh.

(c) 2019, The Washington Post · Allyson Chiu

{Matzav.com}

Gavriel Lavi, who was seriously injured in the stabbing attack that took place earlier this morning in the Old City, underwent surgery at Shaare Tzedek Hospital and was hospitalized in the intensive care unit.

His wife, Nilli, told reporters that their family will not cower in the face of terrorism.

“We will continue to walk through Shaar Shchem. We won’t let them restrict us. I’m sure Gavriel will overcome this and stand on his feet again,” Nilli, said.

Read more at Arutz Sheva.

{Matzav.com}

Hundreds of thousands of Muslims took part in the final Friday prayers of Ramadan at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Old City, as Israel heightened security following a Palestinian stabbing attack.

The Jerusalem Islamic Waqf organization which administers the site, the third holiest site in Islam, said in total 260,000 worshipers gathered for the lunchtime prayers.

The prayers came only hours after a Palestinian teenager stabbed two Israelis inside the Old City before being shot dead by Israeli police.

Read more at Times of Israel.

{Matzav.com}

A Palestinian teenager was shot dead by Israeli forces in the West Bank on Friday, the Palestinian health ministry said.

In a statement, the ministry said Abdullah Ghaith, 16, “died after he was shot by Israeli occupation soldiers close to Bethlehem and his heart and lungs were penetrated.” Another man, 21, was shot in the stomach at the same location and was being treated in hospital, the ministry said.

Israeli police said that the Palestinian teenager was shot while attempting to climb over the heavily guarded security barrier from Bethlehem into Yerushalayim. The police added that they were launching a probe into the incident.

Read more at Times of Israel.

{Matzav.com}

[1606]באר_הפרשה_בחקתי

The United States has reported 971 cases of measles in the first five months of 2019, the greatest number since 1992, when 963 cases were reported for the entire year, federal health officials said Thursday.

The agency has typically been updating its measles cases weekly, on Mondays, but announced the case count Thursday because it had reached this new milestone.

The biggest source of this year’s surging measles cases is New York, where Rockland County and New York City have been battling outbreaks for nearly eight months. The two jurisdictions account for the majority of the cases this year, with a total of 643. The outbreaks have been concentrated in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.

Officials have blamed anti-vaccine groups for spreading misinformation about vaccine safety and the danger of measles. If these outbreaks continue through the summer and fall, health officials said, the United States could lose a key public-health achievement: the elimination of measles.

A country is considered to have eliminated measles when there has been an absence of continuous spread of the disease for more than a year. The United States achieved that status in 2000 through a massive sustained effort to vaccinate children. If this year ends that accomplishment, it would be an enormous public-health loss, experts said.

“It means that a really very harmful infection had been eliminated, but we have now let it back into our country, and it is a threat to our babies and young children as they grow up,” said William Schaffner, an infectious-disease professor at Vanderbilt University who has taken care of measles patients.

Globally, the highly contagious disease continues to be one of the leading causes of death among young children, despite the fact that there is a safe and effective vaccine to prevent it. There is no specific antiviral treatment against the measles virus.

Before the introduction of measles vaccine in 1963, major epidemics occurred every two to three years and measles caused an estimated 2.6 million deaths each year. In the United States, before widespread use of the vaccine, an estimated 3 to 4 million people got measles each year, including 48,000 who were hospitalized and an estimated 400 to 500 who died, many of them children.

Measles had been eliminated throughout the entire Western Hemisphere, but now Venezuela and the United States are battling outbreaks, Schaffner said. In Venezuela, the public-health infrastructure has collapsed because of economic and political turmoil.

But in the United States, anti-vaccine groups and others who are skeptical about vaccines have played the dominant role in suppressing immunization rates, he said.

“We have the withholding of children from measles immunizations by parents in many parts of the country,” he said. “This is not an access issue. These are middle-class populations with access to medical care. They’re withholding children from standard, routine pediatric health care.”

The result, he said, “is we now have continuing sustained transmission of measles.”

CDC Director Robert Redfield said vaccination is the way to end the outbreak.

“Again, I want to reassure parents that vaccines are safe; they do not cause autism,” he said. “The greater danger is the disease that vaccination prevents. Your decision to vaccinate will protect your family’s health and your community’s well-being.”

Loss of the measles elimination status would be “a huge blow for the nation and erase the hard work done by all levels of public health,” the CDC said in a statement.

(c) 2019, The Washington Post · Lena H. Sun · 

{Matzav.com}

Yediot Ahronot’s military correspondent, Yossi Yehoshua, claims that the defense establishment doesn’t need more charedi soldiers, and therefore the discussion of the draft law is completely unnecessary.

“You ask if the IDF needs more charedim in service and the answer is no,” Yehoshua told Army Radio. “There are about 3,000 charedim who enlist in the army every year, the majority for combat units, and more charedi soldiers will cause another headache for the IDF.”

“It’s clear to everyone that the IDF doesn’t need charedi soldiers, not even in the combat units, and will soon release a large number of soldiers. They are very expensive – a charedi soldier costs more than double than a regular soldier and therefore this whole discussion is completely unnecessary,” Yehoshua concuded.

Read more at Arutz Sheva.

{Matzav.com}

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday voiced concern over a warning to Jews by a German official about the dangers of wearing a yarmulke in Germany in the face of rising anti-Semitic attacks.

Pompeo expressed his disquiet over the warning during a visit to Berlin on Friday.

“We were concerned to see Jews discouraged from wearing the yarmulke in public out of safety concerns. None of us should shrink in the face of prejudice,” he said at a press conference.

Earlier this week, the German government’s commissioner combating anti-Semitism warned that he cannot guarantee safety for Jews wearing traditional religious skullcaps in public ‘anywhere’ in the country.

Read more at i24NEWS.

{Matzav.com}

[1696]באר_הפרשה_בחקתי

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un reportedly ordered the execution of several top officials in March after they were unable to reach an agreement with President Trump at a second summit between the two leaders earlier this year.

Bloomberg News reported Thursday citing a South Korean newspaper that Kim Hyok Chol, North Korea’s special envoy to the U.S., was executed in March along with four other North Korean foreign ministry officials involved in the Hanoi, Vietnam, summit.

A fifth official, Kim Jong Un’s top deputy, Kim Yong Chol, has reportedly been sentenced to hard labor, according to the newspaper.

Read more at The Hill.

{Matzav.com}