Another symbol of hate — the sixth in five months — was found in the public schools in Summit, NJ, officials said. The swastika was located in a sixth-floor girls bathroom at the district’s middle school, and immediately removed.
Reports of swastikas have skyrocketed throughout the New York and New Jersey region, as WNYC reported in January, and are the most common hate crime. But Summit, a well-to-do town in Union County with about 4,000 students in the public schools, seems to be getting hit harder than elsewhere. About two-thirds of the students are white, and there is a notable Jewish population.
The six swastikas were all found in the middle and high schools, and some of the graffiti may have predated this school year.

Redacted Mueller report released and reveals no evidence of collusion or obstruction.
WATCH:

The heist began with a thief backing a large, white box truck up behind a Virginia mall around 3:30 a.m. one day in early April, according to a search warrant. The man wasn’t looking for cash or electronics, but something stranger: used cooking grease.
He siphoned about 150 gallons of the stinking, viscous liquid from a dumpster behind a Burger King, before a police officer patrolling Annandale Shopping Center busted him, according to the search warrant, filed in Fairfax County.

The plans to charge New Yorkers a nickel for every paper bag they get at stores passed its first hurdle Wednesday.
City Council’s Sanitation Committee moved a bill, drafted by council members Margaret Chin and Brad Lander and backed by the De Blasio administration, to the full council for approval. The council members and environmental advocates said the fee, coupled with the state’s ban on plastic bags that goes into effect next year, will help push people to use reusable bags when they shop.
City Councilman Chaim Deutsch, who cast the committee’s lone vote against the bill, said that the proposed regulation would cause serious financial and logistical problems for some New Yorkers who can’t carry nondisposable bags all of the time.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said Thursday that she would sign on to a resolution calling for an investigation into whether President Trump should be impeached, citing special counsel Robert Mueller’s report in her decision-making.
“Mueller’s report is clear in pointing to Congress’ responsibility in investigating obstruction of justice by the President,” she tweeted.
“It is our job as outlined in Article 1, Sec 2, Clause 5 of the US Constitution,” the progressive lawmaker added. “As such, I’ll be signing onto @RashidaTlaib’s impeachment resolution.”

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.