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Daybreak: The Territories Get Very Slightly Bigger

Plus mumps, Salvadoran sex trafficking, and more in the news

by
Marc Tracy
February 12, 2010

• Per court order, the IDF is rerouting a portion of the West Bank security barrier, placing 170 additional acres in the Territories. The nearby Palestinian village, Bilin, has been a lodestar of anti-barrier protest. [LAT]

• Mideast envoy Tony Blair will take a more active role alongside envoy George Mitchell in helping facilitate peace talks. [Ynet]

• More on the mumps outbreak among Orthodox Jews in the Tristate Area. The 1500-plus cases are mostly religious males in Brooklyn, particularly boys and adolescents; the outbreak originated at a religious camp upstate and has spread to New Jersey and also Quebec; most of those who got it did receive the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine. [NYT]

• The suspended deputy mayor of Jersey City, New Jersey, became the first person to be convicted in the corruption scandal broken by informant Solomon Dwek. [AP/Vos Iz Neias?]

• A bizarre story: the Yonkers, New York-born “president” of the Dominican Republic’s Sephardic community is giving legal advice to ten Americans who allegedly tried to unlawfully ferry almost three dozen children out of Haiti; but El Salvador police now accuse him of trafficking in Central American women. He denies the charge. [NYT]

• Israeli officials are reportedly banking on U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s believing their internal inquiry into IDF conduct during the Gaza War is adequate, in order that efforts to establish an independent probe will peter out. [JPost]

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.