The Times of Israel liveblogged Saturday’s events as they happened.
NEW YORK — Collapsed cryptocurrency trading firm FTX confirms there has been “unauthorized access” to its accounts, hours after the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
The embattled company’s new CEO John Ray III says FTX is switching off the ability to trade or withdraw funds and taking steps to secure customers’ assets, according to a tweet by FTX’s general counsel Ryne Miller. FTX is also coordinating with law enforcement and regulators, the company said.
Exactly how much money is involved is unclear, but analytics firm Elliptic estimated Saturday that $477 million was missing from the exchange. Another $186 million was moved out of FTX’s accounts, but that may have been FTX moving assets to storage, said Elliptic’s co-founder and chief scientist Tom Robinson.
A debate formed on social media about whether the exchange was hacked or a company insider had stolen funds, a possibility that cryptocurrency analysts couldn’t rule out.
Until recently, FTX was one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. It was already short billions of dollars when it sought bankruptcy protection Friday and its former CEO and founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, resigned.
The company had valued its assets between $10 billion to $50 billion, and listed more than 130 affiliated companies around the world, according to its bankruptcy filing.
United Torah Judaism MK Moshe Gafni says that without a bill allowing the Knesset to override High Court of Justice rulings, Benjamin Netanyahu’s prospective government won’t be formed.
Speaking at a party event, Gafni says the government will work to cancel the “decrees” issued by outgoing Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman and former prime minister Naftali Bennett over the past year.
In Haredi circles, the word “decree” has the connotation of a draconian measure imposed on religious Jews by a hostile leadership.
Gafni adds: “The salary of ultra-Orthodox teachers will be equal to that of the government education system, and without the override clause, a government will not be formed.”
The Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel says Benjamin Netanyahu’s prospective incoming government must pass a bill allowing the Knesset to override High Court of Justice rulings.
In a weekly lesson, Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef says the so-called override bill is “an opportunity to amend the law on who is a Jew.”
“There was never such government with 32 religious and ultra-orthodox Knesset members. Maybe there is an opportunity to amend the law on who is a Jew? Don’t know if it’s possible. To fix things. Now is the opportunity to make amends,” he says.
Yosef accuses the High Court of stopping the appointment of local rabbis after demanding that rabbis from the Reform community be appointed as well.
“You have to [pass] the override clause to overcome these High Court rulings,” he says.
Ultra-Orthodox leaders do not view the Reform movement as an authentic form of Judaism and do not recognize Reform rabbis.
Yosef has a history of making provocative comments, including against Reform Judaism, women, the High Court of Justice and Black people.
A man in his 20s has been stabbed and seriously wounded at a shopping center near the northern city of Zichron Yaakov, police and medics say.
The Magen David Adom ambulance service says it treated the man while he was in a store, and took him to a hospital.
Police say officers are scanning the scene for the alleged stabber.
According to the Walla news site, the background of the incident is an apparent argument between two residents of the nearby Arab town of Jisr az-Zarqa.
סכסוך בין שני תושבי ג׳סר א-זרקא הסתיים בדקירה ופציעה חמורה בפתח חנות רמי לוי בקניון מול זכרון בזכרון יעקב. צוות נט״ן מד״א מגיש עזרה ראשונה לצעיר בן 22 פצוע ברגל ויעביר אותו לבית החולים הלל יפה בחדרה במצב קשה. pic.twitter.com/B0Fdq1BkCH
— יואב איתיאל מדווח כי (@yoavetiel) November 12, 2022
Three people are wounded, including a 14-year-old boy, in a shooting at a cafe in the Negev Bedouin town of Tel Sheva, police say.
According to police, gunmen opened fire from a passing vehicle at people sitting in the cafe.
The victims, including the teenager, are brought to the Soroka hospital in Beersheba.
Their conditions are not immediately clear.
DALLAS — Two planes have collided and crashed at an air show in Dallas, Texas, the Federal Aviation Administration says.
Emergency crews are responding to the scene at the Commemorative Air Force Wings Over Dallas show at the Dallas Executive Airport.
The Federal Aviation Administration says a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress and a Bell P-63 Kingcobra collided and crashed.
Officials say it was unclear how many people were on board both aircraft.
Several videos posted on Twitter showed two aircraft appearing to collide in the air before they both rapidly descended, causing a large fire and plumes of black smoke to billow into the sky.
The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board are launching investigations.
— Giancarlo (@GianKaizen) November 12, 2022
Benjamin Netanyahu’s prospective government may not be sworn in during the coming week due to difficulties in the ongoing coalition negotiations, the Kan public broadcaster reports.
According to Kan, the Religious Zionism party is angered by the Likud’s handling of the negotiations, saying they are dragging their feet with regard to signing agreements.
BAGHDAD — Lebanon has extradited a man said to be a grandnephew of Saddam Hussein to Iraq, where he is accused of involvement in a massacre by the Islamic State group, a security source says.
Abdullah Sabawi, dubbed the “grandnephew” of the executed dictator by Iraqi media, was extradited on Wednesday, the security official tells AFP on condition of anonymity.
“He is accused of having been a member of IS and having participated in the Speicher massacre” of 2014, in which up to 1,700 air force cadets were executed by the jihadist group, the source adds.
A Lebanese judicial source said Sabawi, born in 1994, “was detained on June 11” following an Interpol notice calling for his arrest over his alleged involvement in the massacre.
“Iraq requested his extradition,” the Lebanese source adds.
Sabawi’s family has denied the accusations, telling AFP he had been in Yemen at the time of the killings.
The Camp Speicher massacre was considered one of IS’s worst crimes after it took over large parts of Iraq in 2014.
Video footage released by IS showed an assembly-line massacre in which gunmen herded their victims towards the banks of the Tigris, shot them in the back of the head and pushed them into the river one after the other.
Dozens have been sentenced to death by Iraqi courts over their involvement in the killings, many of them having already been executed.
Channel 12 news, citing sources in the ongoing coalition negotiations, says the defense portfolio will remain within Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, and won’t go to Religious Zionism chair Bezalel Smotrich.
Incoming prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly been weighing several candidates for the senior post, including Smotrich, Shas leader Aryeh Deri and Likud MK Yoav Gallant, the latter of which was a former head of the military’s Southern Command.
According to Channel 12, Smotrich will likely get the Finance Ministry and Deri the Interior Ministry.
Outgoing Defense Minister Benny Gantz says a United Nations resolution to request the International Court of Justice to weigh in on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is “disconnected from reality.”
“The Palestinians taking steps at the court in The Hague is an own goal that will distance them from any political achievement,” Gantz says on Twitter.
“The UN’s intention to allow this will only harm stability in the region and the ability to reach understandings in the future,” he says.
“This is a political step, which is disconnected from the reality on the ground,” Gantz adds.
The resolution, titled “Israeli practices and settlement activities affecting the rights of the Palestinian people and other Arabs of the occupied territories,” requests that the Hague-based ICJ “render urgently an advisory opinion” on Israel’s “prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of Palestinian territory,” and appears to ignore Jewish ties to the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism.
WARSAW — Opposition politicians in Poland criticize police for detaining anti-fascist activists but not reacting to the appearance of a Nazi-era symbol during a nationalist march.
The detention of the activists occurred during Friday’s yearly far-right-led Independence March in Warsaw.
Many liberal groups who oppose the march have accused the police for years of displaying favorable treatment toward the nationalists while treating protesters of the event unfairly.
The counter-protesters held white roses and a banner reading “Nationalism is not patriotism” before police removed them from a location near the march route.
An opposition lawmaker, Michal Szczerba of the centrist Civic Platform party, accuses the ruling Law and Justice party Saturday of creating “an oppressive state” with its treatment of peaceful protesters.
A Polish senator who also is a member of the political opposition, Krzysztof Brejza, tweeted a photo from the march of participants carrying a banner with the “Black Sun” symbol of Nazi Germany’s SS guards. Brejza noted that police did not intervene.
The promotion of totalitarian ideologies is illegal in Poland.
CAIRO — At least 19 people have been killed and six injured when a minibus they were traveling in overturned in northern Egypt’s Nile Delta, the local health ministry says.
The minibus tumbled into a canal in Dakahlia province, the ministry says.
It was badly damaged and its windows were shattered, according to an AFP photographer at the scene.
Police have cordoned off the site as a crowd gathered to watch the rescue efforts, the photographer says.
Egyptian media outlets report the accident was caused by a malfunctioning steering wheel, without elaborating.
Traffic accidents are common in Egypt where roads are often poorly maintained and driving rules flouted.
Outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid slams a United Nations resolution to request the International Court of Justice to weigh in on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Israeli “annexation.”
“Israel strongly rejects the Palestinian resolution at the United Nations,” Lapid says in a statement published by his office.
“This is another unilateral Palestinian move which undermines the basic principles for resolving the conflict and may harm any possibility for a future process. The Palestinians want to replace negotiations with unilateral steps. They are again using the United Nations to attack Israel,” Lapid says.
“This step will not change the reality on the ground, nor will it help the Palestinian people in any way; it may even result in an escalation. Supporting this move is a prize for terrorist organizations and the campaign against Israel,” he adds.
Lapid says he thanks the 16 other countries who voted against the resolution and 52 more that abstained.
“We call upon on all the countries that supported yesterday’s proposal to reconsider their position and oppose it when it’s voted upon in the General Assembly,” Lapid says.
