The NYPD has released additional footage in an anti-Semitic attack on Chanukah i9n Boro Park. As YWN had reported, on Wednesday, December 25, at approximately 1:00AM, a 40-year-old Hasidic man was walking in front of 4723 13th Avenue, when an unknown individual approached him and blocked his path. The victim attempted to let the suspect pass and proceeded to walk around the suspect, when the suspect punched him in the face before fleeing on foot, eastbound towards the intersection of 13 Avenue and 48 Street. The victim sustained a laceration to his lip but refused medical attention. The suspect met up with two of his friends who were waiting and who were watching the attack.

New York state says it’s seeing more reported cases of influenza so far this season than in recent years. The state’s online flu tracker shows the state has seen over 10,000 laboratory-confirmed cases of influenza as of Jan. 4. That’s up from roughly 3,000 in 2017. The state’s data do not represent all influenza illnesses, but officials consider it a useful indicator of influenza trends. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, ordered state health officials this month to work with hospitals to make sure they’re equipped to meet a rising number of hospitalizations. Nearly 2,000 New Yorkers were hospitalized with lab-confirmed influenza in the first week of January, up 34% from the previous week.

Three police officers who have been credited with preventing further bloodshed during last month’s fatal attack on a kosher market in Jersey City were promoted Wednesday. Mayor Steven Fulop appointed Officers Kendric Jackson, Mariela Fernandez and Raymond Sanchez to the rank of detective at a ceremony at City Hall on Wednesday. “That day was an example in action of the law enforcement heroes we have serving the city,” Fulop tweeted Tuesday. “We are starting w/these 3 promotions tomorrow but truthfully there are many more heroes we intend on recognizing in the coming weeks – #JerseyCity.” Sanchez and Fernandez were among the first to respond after David Anderson and Francine Graham stormed the market and killed three people in an anti-Semitic attack.

Faced with a threat to the very foundation of Torah chinuch, rabbanim representing every kehillah in London convened last night for a conference on how to proceed. Nearly 80 Rabbanim, Mechanchim, and Askanim, headed by the elderly rosh yeshiva Rav Elyakim Schlesinger, attended the first-of-its-kind convention to discuss the compulsory education laws enacted by the education department called Ofsted. In Britain, all schools receive government funding and are subject to the government’s mandates. The new laws require schools to teach about subjects that are antithetical to the Torah, such as evolution and tolerance for alternative lifestyles. It also mandates a curriculum about celebrities and famous personalities from fields that contradict the frum lifestyle.

The mekubal Harav Dov Kook said birchas H’Tov U’Meitiv with shem and malchus after hearing that Ron Kobi was removed from his position as mayor of Tiveria due to failing to pass a city budget. Harav Kook, who together with his wife, the daughter of Hagaon Harav Chaim Kanievsky, spend hours of time drawing Tiveria residents closer to Yiddishkeit, suffered personally from Kobi to the point where he said that he was afraid his health would suffer. Kobi instigated against Harav Kook, a prominent religious figure in the community as he did to so many others. Likud Jerusalem Affairs Minister Ze’ev Elkin decided on Monday afternoon to remove Tiveria mayor Ron Kobi from office.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi named House prosecutors for President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial on Wednesday ahead of votes to send the charges to the Senate, even as new information about the president’s Ukraine efforts intensified pressure for more witnesses. The seven-member prosecution team will be led by the chairmen of the House impeachment proceedings, Reps. Adam Schiff of the Intelligence Committee and Jerry Nadler of the Judiciary Committee, two of Pelosi’s top lieutenants for only the third presidential impeachment in the nation’s history. “Today is an important day,” said Pelosi, flanked by the team.

Utah lawmakers want to know how a license plate with the phrase “DEPORTM” got approved despite state rules against expressing contempt for any race, religion or political opinion on vanity plates. While people have the right to freedom of speech, the messages that appear on license plates are different because they must be approved by the state, said Republican Sen. Daniel Thatcher. “If someone put a bumper sticker on a car, I would shake my head and keep walking,” he said. “The state has approved this, so it’s a state-approved message and that’s wildly inappropriate.” Lawmakers are expected to question the director of the Division of Motor Vehicles and his boss, the state tax commission director, at a hearing on Wednesday.

The man accused of raping and murdering a 92-year-old woman is believed to be in the country illegally. Reeaz Khan, a 21-year-old Guyanese national, is believed to be behind the brutal slaying of Maria Fuertes in Richmond Hill. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said the NYPD released Khan in November after he attacked his father with a broken coffee cup, ignoring a federal request to turn him over for deportation. The officials blamed New York’s sanctuary city policies for Fuertes’ rape and murder. Under the policy, the city only hands over undocumented people convicted of a violent crime.

That’s the only possible takeaway from the ongoing back and forth between Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts over whether the former told the latter that he did not believe a woman could be elected president in 2020. And the feud got worse, not better, during — and after — Tuesday night’s Iowa debate. Asked directly about Warren’s statement that Sanders had told her in a December 2018 meeting that he didn’t believe a woman could win, the Vermont senator said this: “Well, as a matter of fact, I didn’t say it. And I don’t want to waste a whole lot of time on this, because this is what Donald Trump and maybe some of the media want.

s President Donald Trump rallied supporters Tuesday night by defending his decision to kill a top Iranian general, the Democrats vying to replace him used their final debate before primary voting begins to argue that doing so made the country less safe. With Trump firing up thousands in the battleground state of Wisconsin and the Democratic candidates squaring off in Iowa ahead of its Feb. 3 caucuses, the political events were expected to offer very different visions for the country’s future. But the contrast on Iran in nearly real time was especially stark. Trump spent much of his speech defending his decision to order the strike that killed top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, whom he labeled the “world’s No.