Location: Sciences Library Library- TC824.M9P4 no.6

Location: Jerusalem
URL: http://www.hasadvantage.com

Description:

— Dec 31, 2010: new positions available

The first ever Support Israel Visa Card Company, is hiring for Full-time night shift Outbound Sales/Account Management positions at its Jerusalem office. Be a part of a growing American company here in Israel.

Your primary responsibilities include placing outbound calls to sign up new cardholders, as well as Account Management in the form of activating new customers’ cards and account retention.

This position is ideal for outgoing, energetic and charismatic people who are interested in working in a fulfilling and well paying job in a fun environment with great incentives.

Requirements
• Native English speaker.
• Strong communication skills.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office.
• Previous sales experience a plus.
• Personable individuals with a flair for sales, and who are responsible, motivated, organized.

Hours: Sunday-Thursday, 10:45 p.m. – 5:45 a.m.
Location: Har Chozvim, Jerusalem.

Compensation: Competitive Salary + Commission, and benefits. Paid training is provided by the company.

Attn: Sarah

We regularly send out meeting invitations to large groups.

To help us with planning the meeting, we keep track of how many people have accepted or declined already. We do this by looking at the counter provided at the top of the meeting item.

Unfortunately, these numbers often seem to be way off when compared to the actual responses given.

Why does this happen and how can we make the meeting response tracking more reliable?

(The Center Square) – Pennsylvania has a generational divide in poverty. While its child poverty rate has dropped in almost two dozen counties in recent years, its elderly poverty rate has risen in almost a dozen counties.

(The Center Square) – The number of people who used to live in Los Angeles County and Cook County in Illinois continues to plummet.

DoorDash and Wing have announced the launch of their drone delivery partnership in the U.S., starting in Christiansburg, VA.

Hospitals must promptly report to the Los Angeles County public health department each time they try to collect medical debt from patients, under an ordinance backed Tuesday by county supervisors.

L.A. County jurors decided largely in favor of a man with silicosis who had to undergo a double lung transplant after years of cutting engineered stone countertops.

A San Fernando Valley resident is the first person in L.A. County to die this year from West Nile virus, a mosquito-transmitted illness that can cause lethal inflammation in the brain.

Public health officials maintain the risk of H5N1 bird flu infection remains low. They are searching for the source.

The U.S. Open is being hosted at the exclusive Los Angeles Country Club for the first time in the club's history, with the world getting an up-close look at one of the most mysterious golf courses in the country.

The personal information of more than 200,000 people in Los Angeles County was potentially exposed after a hacker used a phishing email to steal login credentials.

Worried about a TikTok ban? Here's how one country dealt with it

Former President Trump returned to X, formerly Twitter, posting multiple videos as he seeks to rebuild momentum for his flagging campaign.

A judge ordered Cowboys for Trump co-founder Couy Griffin to leave his Otero County commissioner post effective immediately.

(The Center Square) - How should researchers measure the populations of migratory birds? Researchers developed an idea around a campfire that was put to the test for the first time in Bosque Del Apache earlier this month, according to the University of New Mexico.

In an email sent to all Seattle Police Department (SPD) officers on Tuesday, SPD Deputy Chief Eric Barden celebrated the end of King County Jail’s misdemeanor booking restrictions and told officers to immediately begin increasing arrests. Barden called the decision “another great step forward for the City and, particularly, for Seattle PD.” by Ashley Nerbovig

In an email sent to all Seattle Police Department (SPD) officers on Tuesday, SPD Deputy Chief Eric Barden celebrated the end of King County Jail’s misdemeanor booking restrictions and told officers to immediately begin increasing arrests. Barden called the decision “another great step forward for the City and, particularly, for Seattle PD.” Not so great for Seattle’s poorest and most vulnerable residents, who will comprise the “overwhelming majority of people” jailed under this change, said King County Department of Public Defense Interim Director Matt Sanders in a statement to The Stranger Thursday.

In September, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell and King County Executive Dow Constantine announced an agreement to lift booking restrictions, which had previously prevented SPD officers from jailing people pre-trial for low-level and non-violent crimes such as low-value theft, criminal trespass, and public drug use. The restrictions went into place because of COVID-19 and remained active due to low staffing at the jail, which is a predicament still plaguing the King County Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention (DAJD). Department spokesperson Noah Haglund said that the jail has 60 staffing vacancies as compared to the start of 2024 when it was closer to 100. But with those 40 additional guards, Constantine believes the new agreement balances booking needs with the wellbeing of jail staff, Haglund said.  

The agreement, which took effect November 1, increased the number of jail beds the City could use for misdemeanors to 135. Barden explained in his email Tuesday that in the six months prior, SPD held on average about 90 people a day on misdemeanors at the jail, so the increase would mean an additional 45 beds available to officers per day. The jail held well over 200 people on misdemeanor charges per day in 2019, according to Barden.

“So, while we are moving in the right direction, we are nowhere near pre-pandemic capacity,” Barden said.

With booking restrictions lifted, Barden told officers to book people into jail “whenever there is a public safety interest.” The only time officers should not consider booking someone, Barden counseled, was when the City reached or neared its 135-bed capacity. “Otherwise, booking decisions consistent with pre-pandemic assessments should be utilized.” The email made no mention of considering diversion options.

In a call with the Stranger, Barden explained that "public safety interest" meant officers should arrest if they believe a person could continue to be a problem for a business, the community, or residents in the area, and said officers should not arrest if those factors aren't present. Barden argued that arresting people can both remove them from a cycle of crime, prevent further decompensation for people in a mental health crisis, and set them on a path toward recovery.

Sanders disagreed with that perspective and pointed to studies that show jailing people pre-trial undermines public safety in many cases, and increases the chances that someone commits another crime. Even one to two days in jail can disrupt a person’s life, making it difficult to maintain stable housing, secure medical care for behavioral health conditions, or hold down a job. Lifting the booking restrictions means people presumed innocent might spend time in jail for the lowest level of crimes that might not even end up charged, and still have their entire lives disrupted, Sanders said.

Barden said he understood that perspective, but as he drives around Seattle he sees more disorder than he did before the booking restrictions went into place. As a result, even while the restrictions remained in place in 2023, property and violent crime in Seattle fell compared to 2022, and homicides fell in 2024, which speaks to an empirical improvement in public safety, if not a subjective cosmetic change to downtown Seattle.

The City has made it clear in the past two years that it plans to use cops to address substance abuse, poverty, and people with mental illness, all issues many argue would be better addressed through social services and unarmed alternative response teams. The City has tried to establish new diversion paths, and when it created its drug law earlier this year it came with a policy requiring SPD to consider diversion before booking someone in jail for drug use. Barden said that lifting booking restrictions would not change that. 

Returning to a pre pandemic booking mindset means potentially returning to the days when officers threw people in jail for stealing $30 sleeping bags and souvenir pennies. We reached out to City Attorney Ann Davison to ask her perspective on whether she also planned to crack down on prosecuting low-level, misdemeanor crimes, as she’s advocated for in the past, but she declined to comment. 

Update: The Mayor's Office told the Stranger that it believes the City needs an adequate number of jail beds and the ability to book people into jail and people who cause harm in the City should be held accountable. But, "jail is not always the first or most appropriate option," and Harrell has strongly advocated "for diversion and treatment options to help nonviolent offenders get the services they need."

Just over a year ago, Sara Nelson was flying high, practically waving from cloud nine on election night. She'd pulled off a conservative coup of Seattle's City Council. After two years as a conservative outcast, she now had a majority of fellow business-friendly colleagues who were set to remake local politics in their image —the city’s progressive constituency be damned. Down with police defunding, social housing, and new business taxes. Hello, drug ordinances, SODA zones, and rollbacks to gig worker pay. But her rise might be shorter than a Seattle summer. by Hannah Krieg

Just over a year ago, Sara Nelson was flying high, practically waving from cloud nine on election night. She'd pulled off a conservative coup of Seattle's City Council. After two years as a conservative outcast, she now had a majority of fellow business-friendly colleagues who were set to remake local politics in their image —the city’s progressive constituency be damned. Down with police defunding, social housing, and new business taxes. Hello, drug ordinances, SODA zones, and rollbacks to gig worker pay. But her rise might be shorter than a Seattle summer.

The Seattle Times officially called the City Council Position 8 race for progressive newcomer Alexis Mercedes Rinck last Thursday night. Unofficially, politicos are calling next year’s race for City Council Position 9 for anyone who challenges current Council President Nelson. Rinck’s decisive defeat of the council’s nepo baby Tanya Woo marks not only a second rejection of Woo, but a sign of voters’ dissatisfaction with the conservative council they only recently elected.

“People are fed up with Nelson’s bullshit,” said Carrie Barnes, a major contributor to the Progressive People Power PAC that supported Rinck. “And we aren’t going to let corporate interests sneak her back into office in 2025 when less people vote. [Rinck] is just the beginning.”

The “It's So Over” to “We Are So Back” Pendulum 

The 2023 elections left Seattle progressives devastated. Big business and real estate interest poured more than $1 million into the seven council races. Without organized labor —the city’s other monied interest — counterbalancing them, the corporate PACs bought all but one of the seven seats up for grabs. Those PACs lobbied the council they bought to appoint Woo, their only failed candidate, to the citywide council seat ditched by former Council Member Teresa Mosqueda at the beginning of 2024. Five council members voted to install Woo and she quickly announced her intention to run that year to retain the seat. 

Enter Rinck. 

“I’m of the belief that big business shouldn't be deciding who represents this City,” Rinck told The Stranger when she announced her candidacy in March. “You know, Woo was appointed by five people. I'm looking to be elected by 100,000 people.”

And as of Friday afternoon, 197,000 people voted for Rinck. She won 57.9% of the vote to Woo’s 41.6%. Her vote count trumps the combined totals of the 2023 city council victors and she scored 58,000 more votes than Nelson in her citywide race in 2021. The math is clear — Rinck represents more of the electorate than any other member and it's not particularly close. 

Rinck benefited from higher turnout driven by the presidential race at the top of the ticket. People of color and voters under 40 made up a slightly higher proportion of the electorate in the 2024 general than in 2023, according to Washington Community Alliance (WCA) data analyst Andrew Hong.

Nelson and, more recently, the Seattle Times Editorial Board, have argued against a popular democracy reform to combine even and odd year elections. They agree with proponents that this would increase turnout, but they don’t trust voters are smart enough to decide on so many elections at once. So while a higher quantity of voters cast a ballot in even years, Nelson reasons the votes are lower quality. It all sounds pretty damn racist, classist, and paternalistic when considering that more people of color, renters, and young people vote in odd years. 

While the even-year boost helped Rinck, Hong says she didn’t need it to win. Her success in the primary actually reflects a turnabout in the electorate. A nearly identical voting bloc came out in the 2023 election as in the 2024 primary. So Hong deduces that Rinck somehow “convinced people who voted for moderates in 2023 to vote for her in 2024.” 

Girl Bossed To Close To The Sun

That shift spells trouble for Seattle’s conservative-majority council as Rinck ran as a clear referendum to the newly elected council. Advocates warned that this council would attack renters’ protections, workers’ rights, gut funding for affordable housing, and bend over backwards to give the cops whatever they ask for. And as the year went on, the City Council proved those advocates right. 

Nelson put herself in a position to shoulder unique blame for any perceived failures of the council. She played kingmaker, recruiting and supporting many of the 2023 winners. Then her stooges elected her president after spending two years as the body’s conservative outcast. And she immediately started making power moves, including firing the head of central staff Esther Handy.  This is the precise shit that new, insecure leadership does when they want to ensure total loyalty. But Nelson may have power tripped flat on her face.

“The issues that this City Council has taken up under the leadership of Council President Sara Nelson are not popular amongst Seattleites,” says MLK Labor Council Executive Treasurer Katie Garrow. “In the 2025 campaign, we don’t need to persuade voters on our ideas. We just need to make it clear that Nelson was the leader of the council while these already unpopular positions have been pursued. It seems clear from Rinck’s success that they're with us, not the council majority.” 

Most notably, she’s burned any possible bridge with workers. SEIU 775 Secretary-Treasurer Adam Glickman said there’s nothing Nelson can do to win back support from labor, one of two major players in local political PACs. 

Nelson wasted months on a controversial crusade against a newly passed minimum wage for gig delivery drivers. And as president, she oversaw Council Member Joy Hollingsworth's “political suicide,” a short-lived attempt to permanently enshrine a tip punishment system for workers.

“It was sort of unbelievable that our leaders thought that was a position that Seattleites agreed with,” says Garrow from MLK Labor.

Even for voters who may not have workers' rights top of mind, Rinck’s consultant, Erin Schultz of NWP Consulting, says voters might be frustrated by the fights Nelson and her majority picked. 

The council did not explicitly campaign on wasting half their first year engaged in career-ruining battles against workers' rights. They ran as a backlash to the collective hallucination that the previous council defunded the Seattle Police Department (SPD) — the City allocated $398 million to SPD in 2019 before the protests and have proposed $457 million in 2025. Voters may have expected to see more change to public safety. 

At the same time, the City Council has not done much for the corporate donors who bankrolled their last campaigns – if only by virtue of not accomplishing much in general. Still, 

Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce CEO Rachel Smith told The Stranger earlier this year that the business community felt satisfied with the council they bought. They may even gladly reward Nelson and the rest of the majority for stalling efforts to increase corporate taxes to address the budget shortfall in the ongoing negotiations

On The Flip Side

Not everyone forecasted Rinck’s win as a death knell for Nelson. 

“Seattle City Council never really stopped being unpopular,” says Nelson’s consultant, Ben Anderstone of Progressive Strategies Northwest. 

Anderstone echoed Hong’s analysis. Many of the same voters who went center in 2023 picked Rinck in 2024 and for “not-especially-ideological reasons,” according to Anderstone. 

Rather, the data points to an anti-incumbent bias, rather than the electorate’s true progressive nature, says Hong. 

“Seattle voters are uniquely reactionary,” says Hong. “They want change, and they're impatient for change, so they're not going to wait that long to vote out whatever the majority is.”

The 2023 council represented a backlash to the 2019 council, which rode into office on the backlash against Amazon’s attempt to buy the election. Hong says this trend indicates that centrists and progressives have both failed to solve the issues that voters care about most, particularly the housing and homelessness crisis. 

Anderstone says that incumbents are not destined to lose, “but any incumbents need to effectively message around [voter’s] frustrations.”

Choose Your Fighter

Over the next few months, the chattering class will vet and prop up candidates to take on Nelson. It’s critical that consultants and endorsing bodies back the right candidate. If a progressive beats Nelson – and if Rinck resists the council’s conservative gravitational pull — the balance of power shifts. Right now, the council has enough conservatives to pass whatever legislation they want. But three progressives in Council Members Tammy Morales, Rinck, and the Nelson challenger could sway more moderate council members to join them in passing more progressive policies or blocking the most egregious legislation. 

So far, it seems they are on the hunt for someone like Rinck. 

Rinck’s consultant Schultz tells The Stranger Rinck is a “unicorn” of a candidate.

“It's very rare that you have someone that brings real policy experience, is rooted in their values, and is connected with community,” says Schultz.

Schultz also commends Rinck for running a “badass” campaign. She earned early support from a broad coalition, which Schultz says helped legitimize her as a relatively unknown candidate. 

Glickman says Rinck threaded the needle of appealing to progressives without losing moderates to Woo’s conservative campaign. When asked how she pulled that off, Glickman said, “If I had a total answer to that, I'd be the richest political consultant in the country.”

It won’t be hard to have a broader coalition than Nelson. As Upper Left consultant Michael Charles says, “Nelson has done no favors for herself by making allies that lead me to believe that she'll run a strong campaign next year.”

But Nelson won’t rely on her merit to win anyway. Outside spending plays a huge role in who wins the election. Nelson had almost five times as much money behind her as her opponent Nikkita Oliver in 2021 and she won by about seven percentage points. Business way outspent labor in 2023, buying their corporate takeover. In 2024, business and labor spent roughly the same amount on their candidates, and labor won Rinck’s seat. 

SIEU 775 will certainly play ball this go round. Glickman concedes that labor may have been a little “naive” for investing so little in the left-lane candidates in 2023, giving rise to the new corporate council. Now with more energy around fundraising with the launch of P3 PAC, designed explicitly to never let a corporate takeover like the one in 2023 happen again, progressives seem better positioned to compete with big business. But Glickman says Seattle can expect a “big, bitter, expensive” race.

We have opened an new bank account at DBS bank. This it to facility local shoppers since POSB/DBS ATM machines POSB banks is available at most public places.

Stryper is back with “When We Were Kings,” a solid album with big riffs and an even bigger message…

CounterSpin is FAIR’s weekly radio show, produced and hosted by Janine Jackson. The program provides a critical examination of the major stories every week, and exposes what corporate media might have missed in their own coverage.

Though a sign on Washington State Route 129 points you in the right direction, driving the nearly 12 miles along Cloverland Road to arrive at the Cloverland Garage in Asotin County can make you feel like you're, well, chasing ghosts…

I've driven past many dilapidated buildings in my life…

Earlier this week, Spokane County Commissioner Chris Jordan presented a draft ordinance that could allow the county to sell surplus land at a discount so it can be used for affordable housing…

Pawprint ID technology employed as Hound Pound set to be new purchasing power.

Get creative this Easter and design a new logo for swimming campaign.

PP Electrical Systems worker is Young Engineer of the Year.

Councils shine at awards for Small Business Friendliness.

Stan’s Cafe's The Commentators enter landmark event, reporting live from the ICC.

Fundraising physio conquers Europe’s toughest cycling challenge for hospice appeal.

The search to discover hidden tickets to The Hundred returns.

Only a week until Moseley Folk & Arts Festival returns to Birmingham's picturesque Moseley Park.

Funded training launched to help people at risk of or recently made redundant.

Careers fair aims to provide opportunities for young people.

Holly Heywood gets away to the Red Lion in Hellidon.

Black Country Industrial Cluster provides energy efficiency support for local businesses.

Birmingham Forum to host the finest in local young musical talent.

Helen Annetts enjoys a day out in the past.

Eleven days of unique events discovering the city's history.

Aftermath, the tech and gaming blog founded by webugees from Kotaku, is one year old! In a lengthy post on their site, founders Luke Plunkett, Gita Jackson, Riley McLeod, Nathan Grayson and Chris Person discuss what running their little co-op business is like, and the issues they face in keeping it afloat.

Label/Publisher is seeking songs for release, publishing, sync placement opportunities, and promotion. We have a proven record of placing songs with major networks and brands such as FOX, ABC, Roxy, Forever 21, Specialized, etc.

We are specifically seeking music from artists that have a timeless sound. The overall vibe of the label is one of honest music with warm vintage emotion. We are looking for Singer-Songwriter, Folk, Americana, Indie, and Alternative Country that evokes emotion. We lean toward a more melancholy sound so please no “fun” or overly “happy” songs. At the moment we are only seeking single unreleased songs by active artists or bands. By focusing on singles we can target specific markets when promoting and seeking sync placements. This also allows us to craft the labels’ “sound” while acting as a discovery vehicle for new and emerging artists.

Please DO NOT Submit more than one song. If I like what I hear I will dig around and find more of your material or contact you for additional music.

IMPORTANT: Artists must be willing to sign the master & publishing rights to the selected song over to the label and publisher. The songwriter/writers will retain 100% of the writing credit and will receive all royalties for their share. In addition, an advance will be paid to the writer/performer for the song in an amount to be determined. The advance then becomes a recoupable expense. After the advance is recouped, all income generated by the song will be split 50/50.

Our label is distributed by our digital aggregator, The Orchard, and releases will be available on every major retailer and streaming service including iTunes, Spotify, IHeartRadio, Amazon, YouTube, Google Music, rDio, Shazam, Flipagram, etc.

- Jason Currie / Dog Bites Wolf

Deal Type: Catalog Inclusion
Decision Maker: We are the final decision maker
Deal Structure: Exclusive
Compensation: $251 - $500
Song Quality: Rough Mixes, Fully mastered, Broadcast ready
Similar Sounding Artists: First Aid Kit, William Fitzsimmons, Gregory Alan Isakov, Nikki Lane, Molly Tuttle, Father John Misty

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST: California's two largest school districts, Los Angeles and San Diego, both said yesterday that students will not be headed back to school campuses this fall. Instead, classes will be online. But school board leaders in Orange County, which sits between LA and San Diego, have decided the opposite. Last night, the Orange County Board of Education voted to approve recommendations that school campuses reopen in the fall without masks or social distancing. Lisa Sparks is one of the board members who voted in favor of those guidelines, and she joins me now. Welcome, Lisa. LISA SPARKS: Thank you. MCCAMMON: And we should note that your recommendations are not binding recommendations, but they are what your board is advising. They say that masks may be harmful to students and that social distancing causes, quote, "child harm." How so? SPARKS: I think that the data is not completely conclusive. And that is the main point of all of this

Washtenaw County put three ballot issues before voters in Tuesday's primary elections. All three touch on components of our environment. All three passed by a wide margin. WEMU's David Fair discusses the results and future impacts with Washtenaw County Commissioner Yousef Rabhi.

America sure loves its electronics! The technologies continue to improve and there can be no question; it has made life more convenient. However, these items contain a number of contaminants and are an environmental hazard. WEMU's David Fair talked with Washtenaw County’s Director of Public Works, Theo Eggermont about increased efforts to recycle used electronics.

The first frost of the season probably isn’t too far away. Properly preparing the agricultural soil for next spring and summer is a matter of timing. Getting the cover crops in place is essential before a hard freeze occurs. The Washtenaw County Conservation District is working to make it convenient and effective for local farmers. Conservation technician Matt Dejonge explained it all in his conversation with WEMU's David Fair.

It's time to talk some trash! The 3rd annual Trash Talk Tour in Washtenaw County is right around the corner. Trash Talk Tour co-organizer and zerowaste.org executive director Samuel McMullen joined WEMU's David Fair with a special brand of "trash talk."

The world population is going up, and human-wildlife overlap is increasing. That can lead to negative outcomes, including spread of disease and species extinction. There can be benefits, too, but it will require some planning. That's the focus of a new study out of the University of Michigan. WEMU's David Fair spoke with Associate Professor in Conservation Science Dr. Neil Carter about the study and what can be done right here in Washtenaw County.

Washtenaw County has elected its next Water Resources Commissioner. Evan Pratt decided against running for re-election after serving four terms. Former Saline Mayor and State Representative Gretchen Driskell won the race. She joined WEMU's David Fair to discuss the priorities and challenges of the new job.

Today, we hear why Alameda County's DA, Pamela Price, is facing a recall election next week and get her response. Then, SF's Prop G will expand affordable housing opportunities in the city.