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But in a dramatic emotional shift, Israelis have become increasingly disenchanted with Emanuel, and the disappointment is especially intense on the Israeli right, which supports Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his opposition to Obama’s call for ceasing settlement activity.
Israelis across the political spectrum were skeptical of Obama’s commitment to the Jewish homeland during the presidential campaign but many viewed Emanuel as a guarantor of their interests, the best hope for continuing the U.S. government’s favorable treatment of the Jewish state.
Today, however, widespread unhappiness with their treatment at the hands of the Obama administration has led to feelings of betrayal—and Emanuel is bearing the brunt of it.
In April, a hard-line Israeli Knesset member, Yaakov Katz, wrote Emanuel accusing him of “condescending” to Israelis and their leaders, and in May delivered a speech from the Knesset floor in which he blasted Obama’s demand that Israel cease settlement building. He also invited Emanuel — whom Katz has called “an Israel...
A Netanyahu spokesman denied the report, but an Israeli pollster interviewed by POLITICO said Netanyahu’s point of view is shared by many Israelis, and that resentment tends to focus more acutely on Emanuel — whose father is Israeli, and who friends and associates say maintains deep connections to the Jewish state — th...
The hostility is not limited to the Israeli right. Haaretz — which is regarded as a more liberal newspaper and thus more likely to give the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt — last month caricatured Emanuel as a stern-faced, whip-bearing lion-tamer prodding the United States — represented by a compliant lio...
Conservative Jerusalem-based blogger Ted Belman helped promote a protest of the administration’s Middle East policy two weeks ago in Chicago — the hometown of Obama, Emanuel and Axelrod — billing it as the “Rally for Israel against Rahm Emanuel and Obama's efforts to Divide Israel and Jerusalem,” with hardline Jerusale...
At the heart of the disillusionment with Emanuel is the notion that he is both pushing the administration — and providing cover for it — to demand more concessions from Israel than from its Arab neighbors.
The recent victory over Barrow Raiders carried some extra significance for Sheffield Eagles director of rugby Mark Aston after a difficult week for the family.
The Eagles came together prior to kick-off to hold a minute’s silence in memory of George Betts, Aston’s father-in-law, who passed away in the week prior to the game.
It was an emotional day for the Aston family, with Cory Aston bagging a brace of tries which ensured the Eagles made it back-to-back victories, and moved them six-points clear of the relegation trap-door.
After the game Aston Snr declared it was fitting that Aston Jnr played such a pivotal role in proceedings, whilst also taking time to acknowledge the role Betts played in his own career.
“We lost George this week, so to get the win was a nice way to send him off,” an emotional Aston told The Star.
“We lost him last Sunday, and it was as if he waited until we won the game last week before going to sleep.
"He's been a top man for me.
"Since I met Dawn in 1992 he has been through everything with the club.
"We have been through so much together. We moved into his house, and then he moved into ours when we had the floods.
"He has been an absolute champion for me, so it was a good way to send him off by winning again.
“Everyone talks about him being a gentleman, he had a lot of time for everybody.
"The people like Menzie Yere, Quentin Laulu-Togagae and Misi Taulapapa - the overseas lads - they all thought he was like a dad to them.
The victory has now moved Aston’s side into eighth place, with one round of the regular season remaining before the end of season split.
After a worrying start, the recent run of results have put the Eagles within touching distance of Championship survival, although they still have their off-field issues to address before they sit too comfortably.
Aston is now looking at next weekend’s game against Leigh before offering his side some downtime, knowing one last push will get them over the survival line.
“It is about scraping through, and firstly getting to 14 points," he added.
Community Action Northumberland (CAN) has received a grant to help vulnerable people with their energy needs.
It is one of the winners of National Energy Action’s Warm and Safe Homes Campaign (WASH) awards.
As part of the campaign, NEA has provided funding to 25 organisations across the UK to run community events to help people with their energy needs.
The CAN event will take place at the Seahouses Hub, Stone Close, Seahouses, on Friday, February 15, from 11.30am to 3pm.
It will cover energy support provided through switching, the Priority Services Register and information about renewables.
It will be buying slow cookers and working with the foodbank to showcase these and other energy saving equipment.
It will be working with organisations including Citizens Advice, Northumberland County Council and the NHS and will also engage with village halls, parish councils, warm hubs, the Rotary Club, youth groups, Polish groups and hubs for the unemployed.
CAN is planning to hold the event in Seahouses as it is a large off-gas settlement whose demographics include elderly people as well as families. It has a strong Polish and Latvian community.
Secret Soviet death rays. Yetis. Aliens. Just what did slaughter nine hikers on Siberia's Death Mountain in 1959?
Peering through the windswept snow on a dark February day, the rescue party finally came on the first sign of life — the flapping remains of a tent pitched on ski poles on an uppermost slope of Kholat Syakhl, ‘Mountain of the Dead’ in the native language of northern Siberia.
But where were the nine young Russian students who should have been sheltering beneath the canvas?
Curiosity turned to mystery as human tracks were seen in the snow heading downhill away from the tent in single file for a third of a mile... barefoot human tracks.
In temperatures of minus 24! And mystery became horror when an inspection of the tent showed its front flaps still buttoned tightly together but huge knife slashes down the sides — through which the occupants apparently fled.
Inside was like the Mary Celeste, with everything intact — warm clothes, waterproof jackets, blankets and sweaters that would have been essential to survive in the Siberian weather; plus cameras, diaries and cooking utensils, all apparently abandoned in a moment of madness.
So began the story of what became known as the Dyatlov Pass Incident, one that has baffled the world for more than half a century since whatever horrific tragedy overtook the nine in February 1959.
They had been missing for almost a month after trekking out into the bleak wildness of the Ural mountains — seven men and two women, all of them fit, hardy and experienced hikers on what was supposed to be a short and invigorating break from their graduate studies.
Haunting photographs from the film in their cameras show the happy and relaxed faces of good friends on an exhilarating adventure, capturing their journey by train, road and on foot to this desolate area.
They smile out fresh-faced and jolly from black-and-white snaps, rugged, healthy young people in the anoraks, plus-fours, waterproof galoshes and gaiters of the day, oblivious to what fate has in store for them.
When they failed to return, search parties went out, with every expectation of finding at least some survivors — hopes that were soon dashed.
The first bodies — frostbitten and frozen stiff — were discovered lying in the snow on flat land near a river, a mile from the tent, next to the remains of a long burnt-out fire.
Nearby, a search dog sniffed out the remains of Zina Kolmogorova, 22, under four inches of snow, and then that of Rustem Slobodin. The bodies were in a line 200 yards apart, as if they had been trying to crawl behind each other back up to the shelter of the tent, but never made it.
Another two months went by before the rest of the group were found, under 15ft of snow in a den they had desperately hollowed out for themselves before succumbing to the cold.
Some of this group had broken bones and terrible internal injuries but, strangely, no external wounds, not even scratches on the skin.
Stranger still, odd bits of their clothing contained higher than normal levels of radiation.
Indeed, post-mortem examinations of all nine bodies threw up a string of bewildering anomalies. Why were some fully clothed, but others nearly naked? Most disconcerting of all was Lyudmilla Dubinina’s body, which was missing her tongue and eyes.
What had gone on in those dark and dreadful hours on the Mountain of the Dead? What had caused nine highly educated, young adults to plunge panic-stricken into the sub-zero night to their deaths?
The official Soviet investigator into the tragedy, Lev Ivanov, could find no answers. He concluded in his hastily composed report that all nine deaths had been caused by what he described as ‘an unknown elemental force which they were unable to overcome’.
Privately, he told people he thought they’d been killed by aliens in a UFO.
And that was where official investigations ended. Case closed. Access to the entire area was sealed off from prying eyes for the next four years, by which time the authorities believed this incident would have disappeared off the radar, as many strange happenings did in the old Soviet empire.
But the mystery would not go away. The ingredients were too potent.
Now the riddle has been revisited in a new book by British writer and researcher Keith McCloskey. It is also the subject of a gripping new film — released this weekend — by Hollywood director Renny Harlin, a veteran of mystery, thriller and horror movies.
‘There is no theory that makes sense,’ says Harlin, ‘only guesses.’ And he’s right. The explanations put forward over the years for what made the Dyatlov Nine flee mindlessly from the relative haven of their tent to die in the snow range from the obvious to the bizarre and then to the insane, with large doses of conspi...
There is the sexual explanation, for example — did a massive drunken punch-up break out among the men, possibly over advances made to the alluring Zina Kolmogorova? But while human nature is always suspect in the claustrophobic conditions of a tent on a blizzard-swept mountainside, that doesn’t explain why they fled en...
Wild bears on the prowl for prey are another proposition — but no animal tracks were found.
An avalanche might have been enough for them to lose their nerve and run. Perhaps, in confusion, they raced away from the immediate danger but then could not find their way back in the pitch black of the night and against Arctic winds.
Yet there was no sign of snow pouring over the tent, which was still largely upright when found. And these were experienced adult hikers, not likely to be easily scared. At least one of them surely would have kept calm enough not to join the lemming rush to their doom?
Were they, perhaps, caught up in some bizarre military accident in the lonely (and top secret) vastness of the Russian interior — a missile misfiring or a low-flying jet sending out shock waves and noise that frightened them out of their wits?
This was the height of the Cold War with both sides of the East-West divide searching for the ultimate weapon to knock the other out. But there is no evidence of experimental weapons sites within hundreds of miles.
There has been speculation about the development of ultra-sonic weapons that destroy with sound alone, but no proof that such arms even exist.
What is known is that nearby the Mountain of the Dead were gulag camps for those unfortunates who crossed the Communist leadership in Moscow. Could a bunch of desperate escapees have pounced on the unsuspecting hikers and slaughtered them?
Or were the campers — as another unprovable theory suggests — collateral damage after a mass escape of criminal thugs from one camp in the area?
This was supposedly foiled by the KGB using missiles loaded with nerve gas or vacuum bombs that sucked the oxygen from the air — perhaps explaining the internal injuries some of the hikers suffered.
But there were no other footprints in the snow around the site suggesting more people were involved — which also rules out suggestions that the Nine stumbled on Soviet Spetznaz special forces testing secret weapons and were eliminated on the spot to shut them up.
Conspiracy theories are two-a-kopek. While sceptics might dismiss the Soviet investigator’s talk of aliens, believers are encouraged by reports of strange lights and ‘bright orbs’ hovering in the night sky at around this time.
The last photograph on the film in one of the cameras found in the tent appears to capture a giant flash against the night sky — but it could equally be the result of an accidental over-exposure.
Then we must consider (but quickly pass over) the possibility of wandering yetis or abominable snowmen pouncing on the hapless hikers and squeezing the life out of the victims with those massive internal injuries.
A centuries-old horror legend in the Urals speaks of a fearsome zolotaya baba — a ‘golden woman’ — lurking in the area.
But the simple fact is no theory holds up to scrutiny. As Keith McCloskey concludes, we will probably never know for sure what actually happened on that remote mountainside.
The one thing he feels sure about is that there was some sort of an official cover-up, which has served only to add to the mystery. But the Soviet Union was a place where concealing the truth was second nature to officials, high and low.
Accidents were routinely airbrushed from the record. Twenty years after the Dyatlov incident, a fatal release of anthrax from a germ warfare research establishment in the Urals was hushed up. The KGB seized all hospital records and, to this day, the site is off-limits.
McCloskey blames the deaths of the Dyatlov Nine on some unspecified accident caused by the Soviet military, but precisely what and where and how eludes him and us.
Harlin’s provocative film, on the other hand, provides an answer.
With impressive starring roles for young British actresses Holly Goss and Gemma Atkinson, it follows five modern-day American students as they trek to the Urals to make a documentary about the Dyatlov disaster, then succumb to . . .
To what? It would be wrong for me to spoil the surprise for those who want to see this taut film drama for themselves. Let’s just say they stumble on a secret that builds slowly and atmospherically to a climax of horror that’s great on screen — but a time warp or two away from reality.
The mystery of the Mountain of the Dead goes on, as intriguing and unresolved as ever.
The only certainty in the whole mind-bending story is the luck of the tenth member of the group, 21-year-old Yuri Yudin.
A fellow student, he set out on the expedition with the rest, but was in such pain from lumbago, exacerbated by the cold, that he reluctantly had to drop out three days before his friends reached the mountain and encountered whatever horror killed them.
That ‘unknown elemental force’ identified by the original Soviet investigator more than half a century ago still lacks a convincing name. There will undoubtedly be more theories in this story. Watch this space.
Adapted from Mountain Of The Dead by Keith McCloskey (History Press, £9.99). © Keith McCloskey 2013. To buy this book for £8.99 (p&p free), tel: 0844 472 4157.
Dyatlov Pass Indicent: what slaughtered nine hikers on Siberia's Death Mountain in 1959?
An advantage of hiring ex-felons is that the U.S. Department of Labor provides a Work Opportunity Tax Credit to organizations hiring them. Some states, such as Idaho, provide similar incentives.
Another advantage is that some individuals with criminal histories are eager to get their lives together with the help of some work stability.
Employers can receive help from corrections programs and the Federal Bonding Program, which provides bonds for empployers who hire at-risk job seekers.
With more than 600,000 individuals released from prison every year, there is a large market of potential employees available for work.
The federal government does not ask job applicants about criminal convictions during initial screenings. Twenty-four states have similar laws. Idaho is not one of them.
Many states also have “fair chance” laws that require employers to not automatically drop ex-prisoners from hiring considerations. Employers have to do research on the ex-prisoners case by case.
Most practices for handling such workers are the same as those for all employees: Provide clear expectations, timely performance reviews, fair discipline, and appropriate compensation and incentives.
The main differences involve the need for work-time flexibility. Unexpected drug tests, probation-officer visits and court appearances might occur.
Costs and benefits have to be weighed. But potential benefits to society and skills gained to the hiring organizations might encourage more employers to hire convicts.
Gundars Kaupins is a professor of management in the College of Business and Economics at Boise State University. gkaupins@boisestate.edu. This column appears in the Nov. 16-Dec. 20, 2016, edition of the Idaho Statesman’s Business Insider magazine. Click here for the e-edition (subscription required).
MONACO – Sebastian Vettel beat his Ferrari teammate Kimi Raikkonen to win the Monaco Grand Prix on Sunday and comfortably extend his lead at the top of the Formula One standings to 25 points.
It was the four-time F1 champion’s third win of the season and 45th of his career, as well as Ferrari’s first in Monaco since Michael Schumacher – Vettel’s childhood idol – in 2001. Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo finished third ahead of Mercedes driver Valtteri Bottas.
It was a bad weekend for Mercedes, with Lewis Hamilton finishing seventh after starting from 13th following a poor qualifying session.
Vettel let out a whoop of delight and thanked his team in Italian after crossing the finish line with bright sunshine gleaming off the famed red of Ferrari. As the German national anthem played, Vettel stood atop the podium with his eyes closed as he sang along.
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen was fifth ahead of Spanish driver Carlos Sainz Jr.
Raikkonen started from pole position for the first time in nine years, with Vettel joining him on the front row.

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