and await trumps determination on when is easter sunday
Who is Andrew Brunson?
Mr Brunson is a long-term resident in Turkey. He lived with his wife and three children while working as the pastor of the small Izmir Resurrection Church, which had a congregation of about two dozen.
The authorities accuse him of having links with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Gulenist movement, which Turkey blames for a 2016 failed coup.
Mr Brunson has denied charges of espionage, but faces up to 35 years in jail if found guilty.
He was moved into house arrest last month for health reasons, but US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said this was not enough.
"We have seen no credible evidence against Mr Brunson," Mr Pompeo tweeted at the time.
Turkey's foreign ministry said it had shared "necessary information" with the US, but insisted the case should be left with its judiciary.
Claude Solnik
Long Island Business News
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Ronkonkoma, NY 11779-7348
Home > LI Confidential > Stop scratching on holidays
Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
They’re ‘Blood Brothers’ With Israel’s Jews. But Druse Call New Law a Betrayal.
DALIYAT EL-KARMEL, Israel — On the edge of this Druse village, perched on a quiet green ridge above the Mediterranean, is a national monument to more than 420 Druse soldiers and security force members who have fallen in battle for Israel.
The tiny, Arabic-speaking Druse minority threw its lot in with Jews even before the state was established. In the 70 years since, both groups have called their strategic alliance a “covenant of blood” and described each other as “blood brothers.”
Then, in mid-July, Parliament enacted a basic law, with the weight of a constitutional amendment, declaring Israel “the nation-state of the Jewish people,” built on national self-determination “unique to the Jewish people.” It prioritizes Jewish building and downgrades Arabic from an “official” language alongside Hebrew to one with a “special status.”
Most divisively for Israel’s Arab minority, which makes up 21 percent of the population of nearly nine million, it also omits any mention of democracy or equality for all citizens.
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The Druse, a generally quiescent religious group of about 145,000 citizens for whom loyalty to the state is an article of faith, have denounced the legislation as a stinging insult and a betrayal. And now they are spearheading a swelling backlash against the law that is roiling the country and posing a stiff challenge for the right-wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“It’s enough of patting us on the shoulder and saying, ‘You are our brothers, we love you,’” said Shadi Nasraldeen, 45, a native of Daliyat el-Karmel whose brother, Lutfi, an Israeli soldier, was killed during the last war in Gaza, in 2014.
“There has to be full equality in a democratic state,” said Mr. Nasraldeen, who ended a 26-year army career last year and now works at the memorial site, which holds lectures and educational activities. “We are the first to run into battle and the first to die on the flag.”
He added: “It’s as if the Israeli people simply abandoned us. They say they didn’t. But according to the clauses of this law, we don’t exist.”
After at least two Druse officers publicly announced that they were quitting the military, the chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, wrote a rare letter to his troops on Tuesday, calling on them to leave politics out of the army.
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Like Jewish 18-year-olds, Druse men are, by law, conscripted into military service. Though small in numbers, the Druse play an outsize role in Israel’s cherished security establishment, and engender deep sympathy in broader Israeli society.
The outcry from the Israeli Druse has exposed flaws in the law for many Jews who previously accepted it as a natural outgrowth of Zionism.
Dozens of former high-ranking police officers, including eight former police commissioners, signed a letter this week calling for the law to be amended, to give appropriate expression to the status of minorities who help defend the country.
“This law has nothing: It does not have equality, it does not mention ‘all its citizens,’ there is no promise of security for all citizens, no democracy,” Shlomo Aharonishki, one of the former commissioners, said on Army Radio on Tuesday. “It has nothing besides the Jewish people. They are the only ones, and there is nothing other than them.”
The Druse, a sect that split off from Islam 1,000 years ago, have members spread across Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and northern Israel. They do not generally claim common cause with Israeli Arabs or share their Palestinian national identity.
But they argue that equality within Israel must apply across the board, not only to certain groups.
Circassians, a mostly Muslim ethnic group, are also drafted into the Israeli military. Many Bedouin men volunteer, as do smaller numbers of Arab Muslims and Christians. Most ultra-Orthodox Jewish men obtain exemptions from service for Torah study.
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