[COMMUNICATED]

Lancaster.

President Trump said Tuesday he spoke with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) about pressing forward on background checks in the wake of recent mass shootings.
“We had a very good conversation. We’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters while en route to a speech in Pennsylvania.
Murphy has been a leading advocate for more gun control laws since the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in his state in 2012. He tweeted Tuesday that he’d spoken with Trump and Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) about support for background checks legislation.
“We continue to work to find common ground, but as I told the President, we can’t get a bill if he and the GOP give the gun lobby veto power,” Murphy tweeted.

More than 70,000 people have signed onto a petition that seeks to rename the portion of Fifth Avenue in front of the Trump Tower in Manhattan after former President Obama.
Elizabeth Rowin, the organizer behind the petition, told Newsweek in an interview released on Monday that the campaign first began as a joke last year.
However, after the petition began to pick up traction online, Rowin said she decided to reach out to the New York City Council and received responses from some members who were interested in taking action on the cause.
If Rowin’s petition proves successful, the Manhattan Trump Tower would have a new address: 725 President Barack H. Obama Avenue, New York, NY 10022.

Freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) pointedly refused to apologize or express regret for her comparison of US border detention facilities to the Nazi concentration camps.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez made the comparison in a video posted online in June.
“I don’t regret it at all,” she told ABC News in an interview on Friday. “A group, in fact of, I think 200, at least 200, historians, rabbis, academics have come together in support of this term.”
She did not specify which group this referred to or who its members are.
Ocasio-Cortez also reiterated her comparison, saying, “I’ve seen it. I’ve sat on concrete floors with woman whose hair was falling out and they’re developing sores in their mouth.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders leads the Democratic presidential field in New Hampshire with 21 percent in a Gravis Marketing poll released Tuesday.
Sanders is followed by former Vice President Joe Biden with 15 percent and by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) at 12 percent.
The poll stands in contrast from the most recent polls in New Hampshire compiled by RealClearPolitics, which have showed Biden leading in the critical primary state, followed by Sanders.
Read more at The Hill.
{Matzav.com}

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced Tuesday it is banning certain MacBook Pro laptops from flights after Apple recently said that batteries in select units posed fire risks.
The FAA said in a statement to The Hill it was “aware of the recalled batteries that are used in some Apple MacBook Pro laptops” and that it had informed major U.S. airlines of the recall.
The agency went on to remind airlines to follow 2016 safety instructions for products containing recalled batteries, which would mean that the affected laptops should not be taken on airplanes as cargo or in carry-on baggage.

Stacey Abrams, the 2018 Democratic gubernatorial nominee in Georgia, will not run for president in 2020, instead focusing her efforts on combating voter suppression, according to a person familiar with her plans.
Speaking at the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades Convention in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Abrams did not explicitly address the possibility of a presidential run. But she made clear that her focus was on expanding Fair Fight, the advocacy group she founded, and fighting voter suppression in 2020.
“We’re going to win. We’re going to win because there are only two things stopping us in 2020: Making sure people have a reason to vote and that they have the right to vote,” Abrams said.

The Israel Innovation Authority has approved the establishment of a new consortium aimed at promoting the development of recycling technologies, and the use of recycled materials in Israel’s plastics industry.
Set to receive an investment of NIS 30 million (around $8,600,000), the CIRCLE consortium will enable companies in the recycling sector, plastic and polymer manufacturers as well as academic and research institutes in the field to develop innovative technologies to give Israeli industry an edge in international markets. The technologies developed by the consortium will allow for the expansion of the range of recycled materials and their applications.

Rav Mordechai Banet of Nikolsburg, Hungary, author of Parashas Mordechai (1753-1829)
Rav Nosson Nota Shapira, author of Megaleh Amukos and Ranav Ofanim (1585-1633). Eliyahu HaNavi is said to have visited with him regularly. Son of Rav Shlomo Shapira, and grandson of Rav Matisyahu ben Yosef Treves of Provence (1325-1382) who was appointed Chief Rabbi of Paris by Charles the Fifth. The Shapiro family comes from the German town of Speyer from where the founder of the family escaped at the time of the First Crusade in 1096.

By Rabbi Moshe Meir Weiss