A spoken word by Moshe Friedman:

Yahrtzeits – 14 Nissan
-Rav Asher Yeshaya of Ropshitz (1845), the main rebbi of Rav Yechezkel Shraga Halberstam, the Shinover Rav.
-Rav Avraham Yaffen, Rosh Yeshivas Novardok (1897-1970). Educated as a youth in the Pinsk Talmud Torah, he then learned under Rav Isser Zalman Melter in Slutzk. In 1913, he was apppinted rosh yeshiva of the main Novardok yeshiva by Rav Yosef Yoizel Horowitz and became his son-in-law. From then on, he assisted his father-in-law with all aspects of Novardok’s yeshivas. By 1939, there were over 80 Novardok yeshivas throughout Poland, serving over 4000 students. He moved to Eretz Yisrael in 1964.

President Trump on Thursday pushed back against questions about whether he may have obstructed the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, asserting that he could have “fired everyone,” including special counsel Robert Mueller, if he had so chosen.
“I had the right to end the whole Witch Hunt if I wanted,” the president tweeted. “I could have fired everyone, including Mueller, if I wanted. I chose not to. I had the RIGHT to use Executive Privilege. I didn’t!”
A redacted version of Mueller’s full report was released Thursday morning. In it, the special counsel detailed 10 areas where investigators looked at whether Trump may have obstructed justice.

Health officials on Thursday were sounding the alarm on the sprawling outbreak of measles that has seen thousands of cases nationwide in the past year, after a flight attendant and a 10-year-old boy were believed to have suffered irreversible brain damage from the highly contagious disease, and as some 45,000 Israeli children reportedly remained unvaccinated.
The condition of the El Al worker who was hospitalized earlier this month with the measles has deteriorated, Hebrew media reported on Thursday. She is suffering from meningoencephalitis — a complication of the measles virus – and is in a coma, having been moved to an isolated intensive care unit, and has suffered suspected brain damage.

Officials in the Prime Minister’s Office on Thursday denied reports that Russia had found the body of legendary Israeli spy Eli Cohen in Syria, a day after Moscow strongly rejected the claim of its involvement.
Cohen’s body has not been returned from Syria, despite decades of appeals by his family. News of the whereabouts of Cohen’s remains are closely followed in Israel, where recovering the bodies of fallen soldiers carries special resonance.
Over the years, Cohen’s widow Nadia had unsuccessfully made several appeals to the Syrian government to release her late husband’s remains. In 2008, a former bureau chief of late Syrian leader Hafez Assad claimed that no one knew where Cohen was buried.

Security forces arrive with bulldozers at home of terrorist who murdered Ori Ansbacher after the Supreme Court approved the demolition.
The terrorist, Arafat Irfaya, murdered 19-year-old Ansbacher in February. Irafya attacked Ansbacher and stabbed her to death in the Ein Yael forest near Jerusalem.
The decision to demolish the terrorists’ apartments was made by a majority of two judges against one. The terrorist lived with his parents in one apartment, while the second one only served him.
Read more at Arutz Sheva.
{Matzav.com}

Facebook revealed Thursday that millions of Instagram user passwords had been stored in unprotected text accessible by the company’s employees.
The company disclosed the information as an update to a March blog post in which it admitted that hundreds of millions of users’ Facebook passwords had been left unprotected within the company’s servers.
While the original post said tens of thousands of Instagram user passwords had been exposed, Facebook said it has since discovered many more Instagram passwords exposed in the same way.
“Since this post was published, we discovered additional logs of Instagram passwords being stored in a readable format,” Facebook wrote in the update. “We now estimate that this issue impacted millions of Instagram users.”

At the end of Rabbi YY Jacobson’s morning Chassidus class on Tuesday, 11 Nissan, 5779, April 17, 2019, one of the students asked if it is correct to tell your children that Eliyahu HaNavi comes and physically drinks the wine in Kos Shel Eliyahu.” Rabbi Jacobson’s response is presented in this video.
WATCH:

The New York City Department of Health closed four yeshivas and issued summonses to three Brooklyn parents whose children were exposed to measles but still not vaccinated as of an April 12 deadline imposed in certain Williamsburg and Bedford-Stuyvesant zip codes, officials said Thursday.
United Talmudical Academy of Williamsburg-Yeshiva Torah V’Yirah, UTA Beth Rachel School for Girls, United Talmudical Academy, UTA Beth Rachel School for Girls were all forced to close for not fully complying with orders to provide immunization records regularly so as to assure unvaccinated children were being excluded from classes, according to city health officials.

Leading halachic authorities have ruled that online authorizations are acceptable for the purpose of selling chametz. The traditional and preferred practice, however, is for the authorization transaction to be done in person with the local rabbi.
Chabad.org makes this service available online at no charge, to provide every Jew with the opportunity to have their chametz sold for Passover.
Sell your chametz here.