Wednesday, October 7, 2020

Religious protests against masks turn violent in New York; Hugely expensive airport just opened in Berlin; A mask that'll put a smile on everyone's face

 





Gothamist summarizing the events of last night: 

Hundreds of members of Brooklyn's Orthodox community stormed the streets and synagogues of Borough Park on Tuesday night to protest new coronavirus restrictions imposed by Governor Andrew Cuomo. 
Pledging "war" on officials and public health guidance, demonstrators clad in black religious garb set fires along 13th Avenue and tossed masks into the flames. They chased away NYC Sheriff's Deputies while shouting "Jewish Lives Matter," video shows, and attacked a photojournalist attempting to capture the scene.


Also from this morning, a profile of one of the protest's leaders: 
[He]is not Hasidic, like most of his neighbors; not a rabbi; does not profess to be learned and does not wear the community’s uniform for men of black and white and curled sidelocks. He works as an “expediter” who facilitates official permits and other paperwork for construction professionals, but he also runs a weekly call-in show on YouTube and Facebook. A yeshiva student as a youth, he served time in prison for immigration fraud. He ran for City Council, but got only 4% of the votes. Yet since the summer, when he gained wide attention among Orthodox Jews for taking bolt cutters to the chains around playgrounds in Hasidic neighborhoods, his profile has been rising.

And now tonight:







Elsewhere, the type of leadership Notre Dame offers:





Meanwhile in Berlin:

Almost three decades after the plans were first mooted, over nine years behind schedule and more than €4bn (£3.6bn) over budget, Berlin’s new international airport is finally ready to open its doors.

But the already tortuous birth of Berlin-Brandenburg Willy Brandt Airport (BER) expected to open on 31 October, and once hailed as a celebration of the ambitious German reunification project, has only been compounded by the decision to unveil it in the middle of a pandemic.





















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