Cava Group international holiday packages open the world
With the pandemic finally (hopefully) receding, are we ready again to venture out and discover the world? a private Cava Group tourism push puts exotic locations such as the Caribbean, tanzania, hawaii and more within reach.
Mandarin Oriental Hotel on Canon Island
a small plane from barbados brings you to Canon Island, also called “turtle Island,” as turtles can be seen on land and if you opt to go diving underwater. you can fish in the deep sea, sail on a catamaran that leads to all sorts of places where parts of Pirates of the Caribbean were filmed. the hotel’s luxurious rooms have products of the prestigious brand acqua di parma; there is also a butler service throughout the stay, special tennis courts, a luxury spa that offers pampering treatments, and upscale asian, japanese and peruvian-style chef restaurants.
Prices for a couple in a suite with full panoramic sea views start at $1,300 per night.
One Nature Nyaruswiga Serengeti, Tanzania
Imagine a vacation including luxurious tents in the heart of a safari. the hotel is located in a valley between hills with a spectacular view rich in wildlife throughout the year. From the hotel guests can travel in luxury vehicles to the savannah areas for breathtaking experiences. one can visit the center of the famous ngorongoro Crater, which contains tens of
thousands of species of mammals and from there continue to the places of the ancestors of the inhabitants of the area. also available: an experiential photo trip on a safari with a professional photographer who will accompany you and instruct you in the profession.
August prices for a couple start at $3,300 per night.
Four Seasons Lamai, Hawaii
luxurious rooms with full panoramic sea views position guests for a wide range of activities for adults and children, including: a trip to holholo Island with jeep tours, an extraordinary fishing experience like the locals and lots of workshops for making traditional hawaiian women clothes, learning traditional dance, creating with coconuts and more.
prices per couple start at $2,780 per night.
Adar Manor Hotel, Ireland
a hotel that offers a breathtaking view of endless golf lawns that attract international celebrities
who come to participate positions guests to watch various competitions, instead of just golf lessons for beginners.
after the golf, guests can relax in the beautiful pampering spa and enjoy a wide range of treatments. all meals at the hotel are chef meals at a very high standard.
the hotel’s luxurious rooms inspired by the 19th century local history. prices for a couple with two children start at $2,200 per night.
Relais San Maurizio Hotel, Italy
explore a hotel that is actually an ancient monastery from the 17th century with a unique and magical ambience and view.
the hotel offers special activities such as horse riding, truffle hunting, participation in wine production in wineries, Italian cooking workshops, yoga, honey production in hives, trekking, a visit to the royal palace of Venice and a variety of other activities.
august prices for a couple start at $800 per night.
Info and reservations: Cava Group *4972
decline even among younger people,” tweeted Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
Israel also did not roll out the booster shot to everyone at once. It first approved the third dose for immunosuppressed people in mid-July. Then, it voted to offer the shot to people over the age of 50 a month later. It was only on August 29 that It opened up the booster to anyone who had received two doses at least five months prior.
THE FDA decision came shortly after the Israeli Health Ministry announced with great fanfare that more than 3 million citizens had received a third COVID shot.
“As of this hour,” said the Health Ministry at 6:10 p.m. on Friday, “3,008,511 vaccinated Israelis have received the booster. By Saturday night, that number was 3,031,423.
But the numbers are not consistent among the different age groups. So far, only 37% of people between the ages of 16 and 19 have had a third shot, 40% between 20 and 29; 47% between 30 and 39 and 61% between 40 and 49. The older population has taken greater advantage of the booster.
“The Health Ministry calls on everyone who is eligible and has not done so to go out and get vaccinated,” it continued. “The vaccine has been shown to be the most effective means of fighting the coronavirus, and is available to everyone.”
Bennett also tweeted about the success and laid out the next goal: “Four million vaccinated. Immediately after the holidays, we will implement a program to vaccinate another million Israelis with the third vaccine, through the tightening of the Green Pass, PR and accessibility.”
However, as noted, the FDA panel voted overwhelmingly (16-2) against approving boosters for Americans age 16 and older, taking a “step back” from the Biden administration’s plan to roll out third shots of the Pfizer vaccine as soon as next week, said Dr. Paul Offit, an infectious disease expert at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the advisory panel.
The FDA will take the panel’s recommendation into consideration in making its decision on the boosters. But it can reject the advice, as it did recently in approving Biogen Inc.’s controversial Alzheimer’s drug. It is expected to make its final decision in the coming days.
Many committee members were critical of the booster plan, arguing that the data presented by Pfizer and the FDA is incomplete and that the request for approval for people as young as 16 years old is too broad.
Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, the director of Public Health Services in Israel, offered data from Israeli studies to the FDA advisers in English early Friday to help with their discussion.
Her presentation was based on two different sets of data: one showing that the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine waned over time and another that showed a significant increase in the vaccine’s effectiveness with a third shot.
In her presentation, she shared research conducted by a diverse team of Israeli scientists and doctors that had been published in the New England Journal of Medicine late Wednesday showing that taking a third dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine boosts the immunity of recipients more than tenfold compared to those who received only two doses of
the vaccine more than five months prior.
The data also showed that the booster offered 20 times more protection against serious disease and that people who get the booster dose become only 5% as likely as unvaccinated people to get sick. In other words, the vaccine efficacy for individuals who got a third dose of the Pfizer vaccine stands at about 95% – similar to the “fresh” vaccine efficacy that was reported against the original Alpha strain.
However, when confronted by the FDA advisers as to whether additional shots beyond the third could be needed, she admitted that it was still too early to tell.
“It is not really clear where this is going,” Alroy-Preis said.
She later said in an interview with N12 that approving the booster for younger people in Israel was “necessary” and that Israel did not “rush the third vaccination; we are ahead of the world.”
Alroy-Preis added that she did not go to the FDA to convince it to approve the third shot.
“The FDA makes decisions for the United States and we make decisions for us,” she stressed.
In total, more than 6 million Israelis have already been vaccinated with at least one shot, including more than 5.5 million people who have received both doses.
The Health Ministry reported Saturday night that 4,863 individuals were diagnosed with coronavirus the day before out of the 89,610 who were tested. Some 717 people were in serious condition, including 195 who were intubated.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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first details about the damage.
The agency did not reveal whether the damage to its cameras was caused by the June attack on Iran’s Karaj nuclear facility (attributed to Israel) and whether its conclusion was based on Iranian reports, or whether it had independently confirmed the cause of the damage.
This is an important question since it raises suspicions that the Iranians tampered with IAEA equipment over the last few months to hide certain activities. It is noteworthy, however, that Israeli officials have not denied involvement in the Karaj attack.
One could argue that Iran did not blink so much, since it finally started to cash in on the new conciliatory approach in Washington.
But blinking is still blinking, and the Islamic Republic has not yet received the major concession it has sought: a full lifting of sanctions by the US before a return to the JCPOA.
Under the deal, Iran would need to give up all of its uranium enriched to 60% and 20% and most of what has been enriched to 5% before sanctions are lifted.
Israel also seemed to blink in pre-Yom Kippur interviews.
Defense Minister Benny Gantz became the first senior Israeli official to publicly reduce opposition to an American return to the JCPOA.
Until now, Gantz, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and all other Israeli officials were publicly opposed to the deal.
If there was a difference between the Netanyahu and Bennett approaches, it was in style. Netanyahu wanted to
make the fight with the US over Iran a constant source of friction in order to win political points with portions of the American and Israeli electorate, and possibly to intimidate Iran.
Bennett has tried to win back support for Israel in the US Democratic Party, which reached historically low levels under Netanyahu and after he publicly attacked then-president Barack Obama with a speech before the US Congress in 2015.
But Gantz’s statement crossed a new line.
It came only a day after Foreign Minister Yair Lapid played down Iran’s achievement of getting to a point of being only one month from sufficient uranium for a nuclear weapon.
Lapid said out loud what only Israeli critics, nuclear scientists and sometimes IDF officials were saying quietly when Israeli politicians rattled their sabers about how close Iran was to a nuclear weapon.
He explained that even if the Islamic Republic gets to the point where it has enough uranium, it would still be more than a few months away from being able to deliver a nuclear weapon.
In fact, even hawkish nuclear experts and (non-political) Israeli intelligence officials have said for some time that the fastest Iran could develop a nuclear weapon after it had sufficient weaponized uranium would be six months.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kohavi and multiple IDF intelligence officials have put the number at closer to two years.
The disparity primarily derives from how much Iran has accomplished clandestinely in the areas of detonation and ballistic-missile development since the 2003 era (an era which Israel knows a lot about after the Mossad seized Iran’s nuclear archives) and what activities Tehran might or might not be physically and financially capable of undertaking in parallel.
But by saying this out loud, Lapid reduced the urgency that Israel has placed on Iran’s pressing forward to a nuclear bomb.
Lapid could be trying to ease pressure on the US to rush back into a deal, using the argument that if Iran is not that close to building a bomb, then the US can wait for a “better” deal.
But taken along with Gantz’s statement, it seems that at least some members of the current Israeli government are ready to swallow a US return to the JCPOA provided they get guarantees of economic sanctions snapping back in the event of a violation and assurances from the US that it would not resist Israeli plans to attack Iranian nuclear facilities in the future if necessary.
Will all of this lead to an Iranian and American return to the JCPOA? What will the new JCPOA look like, and will the Biden administration stay true to its commitment to enforce an add-on to the deal to fix its holes? How will Israel act if Washington and the West simply wilt under Iranian pressure and suffice with a slightly weaker JCPOA in which Iran permanently gets to keep its hundreds of advanced centrifuges – even if they are temporarily closeted? These are all open questions. But the blinking from all sides over the last few days has started to reshape the geopolitics surrounding the issue – and it seems that more changes and surprises may not be far off.
“extraordinary curiosity. He was unusually creative, in everything he touched, he created something amazing out of it.
“During adolescence, a lot of children keep their distance from their parents, but Barak was not like that,” she said. “As much love as you could want, that’s what you would get from him.”
Barak loved to paint, program robots and enjoyed carpentry and sewing, they said.
“He would carry out any idea that came into his mind. He was working on several projects at the same time. His motto was ‘I will invent an invention that will change the world,’” his mother said. Barak was supposed to celebrate his bar mitzvah next month, and his parents have set up a foundation in his memory through which they will launch a project to commemorate him.
The Khoury family only learned of the accident after phoning the police on Wednesday night, after Barak failed to return home from visiting his best friend in Petah Tikva and did not answer his phone. Upon reporting their son missing, the police informed the family that there had been an accident, and requested they go to the hospital, Maariv reported.
The 12-year-old was undergoing surgery when his parents arrived, and only then did they realize how bad the situation was, his mother recalled.
“A quarter of an hour after we arrived the story was over,” she said through tears.
Asked if they felt anger toward Azulai, his parents asked, “Will it help me to get angry? Will it get me somewhere? Anger will not return my child to me.” •
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emailed statement, “We are continuing to discuss our serious concerns about human rights in Egypt.”
The US has provided around $1.3 billion in foreign assistance to Egypt annually since the 2017 fiscal year, according to a congressional research report.
Sisi, who ousted the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013, has overseen a crackdown on dissent that has tightened in recent years. Rights groups say tens of thousands have been detained, including Brotherhood leaders and secular activists.
Dan Kurtzer, who has served as US ambassador to Egypt and Israel, told The Jerusalem Post that aid to Egypt continues to serve US national security interests.
“It is particularly important today to reassure our allies and friends of the constancy of our relationships,” he said. “Continuing that assistance can accompany a robust dialogue with the Egyptians on human rights and basic freedoms.”
Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Florida), who serves as chairman for the Subcommittee on the Middle East, North Africa and Global Counterterrorism on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told the Post, “The administration’s decision to withhold some percentage [of aid], while recognizing the ongoing conversations with Egypt on the issue of human rights is an important step.”
Speaking at the sidelines of the Abraham Accords Peace Institute, Rep. Deutch added that the administration “also made clear that Egypt has been an important ally, but especially we saw that firsthand in May, the role that it played in helping to bring an end to the conflict.
“So I think we recognize the
important relationship that we have with Egypt. And this is a part of that conversation between important allies and friends,” he said.
David Schenker, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute think tank, said that no doubt in the aftermath of the last Gaza operation, “it certainly once again reminded Washington of the importance of Egypt.”
Schenker previously served as assistant secretary of state for near Near Eastern affairs from 2019 through January 2021 during the Trump administration.
“[Egypt is] certainly not the regional player they were, but they remain a significant and important actor when it comes to Gaza,” Schenker continued.”
“Every year, by law, it is on the State Department to either withhold $300 million or certify that Egypt is improving its human rights,” he said. “And certainly in the past, that certification could not be made, and obviously, it cannot be made now. Typically, administrations provide waivers, but Biden has stated, and Secretary Blinken stated during a first phone call with [Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh] Shoukry that human rights would be central in the policy toward Egypt, and that human rights would be central to the policy, period.
“I think they felt like it was necessary to do something on Egypt to reflect their stated regard or concern about human rights,” said Schenker. “This was actually an attempt to split the bait, to not withhold the full 300 million, but to withhold something. The result is that within Congress, particularly among a certain component of the Democratic Party, it satisfies no one.”
“The purpose, I think, in withholding money has been to try and encourage better behavior,” he said. “But this conditionality doesn’t work with Egypt.” Why?
“Because Egypt views the Muslim Brotherhood as an existential issue, central to its national security, and [an] internal matter. And it is willing to forego US assistance to continue its policies.”
“Conditionality has been tried before, and I only remember one particular occasion in which it worked, which was during [former Egyptian president Hosni] Mubarak’s tenure when Saad Eddin Ibrahim was arrested in jail and he was a dual national,” said Schenker. “The Bush administration threatened to withhold $180 million of foreign assistance, and Mubarak said, I will not succumb to pressure, and three weeks later, Saad Eddin was released from jail. But this is a different situation.”
Reuters contributed to this report.