In the face of mounting evidence, Iran on Saturday acknowledged that it shot down the Ukrainian jetliner by accident, killing all 176 people aboard. The admission by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard undermined the credibility of information provided by senior officials, who for three days had adamantly dismissed allegations of a missile strike as Western propaganda. It also raised a host of new questions, such as why Iran did not shut down its international airport or airspace on Wednesday when it was bracing for the U.S. to retaliate for a ballistic missile attack on two military bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq. No one was hurt in that attack, carried out in retaliation for the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in an American airstrike in Baghdad.

The U.S. military tried, but failed, to take out another senior Iranian commander on the same day that an American airstrike killed the Revolutionary Guard’s top general, U.S. officials said Friday. The officials said a military airstrike by special operations forces targeted Abdul Reza Shahlai, a high-ranking commander in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps but the mission was not successful. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss a classified mission. Officials said both Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and Shahlai were on approved military targeting lists, which indicates a deliberate effort by the U.S. to cripple the leadership of Iran’s Quds force, which has been designated a terror organization by the U.S.

A group of about 30 Ukrainian thugs went on a rampage close to midnight on Friday night in Uman and mercilessly beat Jews outside the tzion of Rav Nachman. Witnesses say that the Ukrainians were running wildly through the street looking for Jews with knives and clubs in their hands. One Jew who spent Shabbos in Uman told Kikar Shabbos: “I returned from the kloiz and I see that they’re beating every Jew who ‘dared’ to look at them or say a word to them. It started with an insignificant dispute between one of the local Ukrainians and a Jew. The Ukrainian involved in the dispute called his anti-Semitic friends to come and beat up Jews.” “The police did show up at the scene but didn’t lift a finger to help the Jews.

In the pitch black, pre-dawn sky on the outskirts of the Iranian capital Tehran, a tiny fast-moving light can be seen racing up through the trees, as someone films from the ground. Then there is a flash of light as it seems to collide with something in the air. It is the ill-fated Ukrainian International airliner which had taken off Wednesday just hours after Iran had fired missiles at U.S. bases in Iraq in retaliation for the slaying of its top military man, Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Western leaders have said the plane seemed to have been unintentionally brought down by a surface-to-air missile near Tehran. Iran denies that a missile was to blame for the crash.

We are saddened to report the petira early this morning of Rebbetzin Leah Gertzulin, a”h. Rebbetzin Gertzulin was the wife of HaRav Nosson Eliyohu Gertzulin, zt”l, who served as Mashgiach Ruchani and Rosh Yeshiva of Mesifta Torah Vodaath for over half-a-century. She was 95 years old. Rebbetzin Gertzulin was born in Brooklyn in 1924, at a time when America was a spiritual wasteland. Her father, HaRav Moshe Dovid Zwerdling was a Rov in Crown Heights, and later in Brighton Beach, and a rebbe in Yeshiva HaRav Dovid Lebovits. Her mother, Rebbetzin Tziporah, was a direct descendant of HaRav Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld. Despite the great challenges of that time, they were determined to raise their daughter, and her two sisters al pi derecho haTorah.

The Trump administration on Friday announced a new wave of sanctions on Iran following this week’s missile strikes by the Islamic Republic on U.S. bases in Iraq. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the new sanctions will target eight senior Iranian officials involved in “destabilizing” activities in the Middle East as well as Tuesday’s missile strike, which came in retaliation for the U.S. killing of a senior Iranian general in a drone strike. Mnuchin said President Donald Trump will issue an executive order imposing sanctions on anyone involved in the Iranian textile, construction, manufacturing or mining sectors. They will also impose separate sanctions against the steel and iron sectors.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday the House will take steps next week to send articles of impeachment to the Senate ending Democrats’ blockade of President Donald Trump’s Senate trial. In a letter to her Democratic colleagues, Pelosi said she was proud of their ″courage and patriotism” and warned that senators now have a choice as they consider the charges of abuse and obstruction against the president. “In an impeachment trial, every Senator takes an oath to do ’impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws,″ Pelosi wrote.

Video footage of the area around Jeffrey Epstein’s jail cell on a day he survived an apparent suicide attempt “no longer exists,” federal prosecutors told a judge Thursday. Officials at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York believed they had preserved footage of guards finding Jeffrey Epstein after he appeared to have attempted suicide, but actually saved a video from a different part of the jail, prosecutors said. The FBI also has determined that the footage does not exist on the jail’s backup video system “as a result of technical errors,” Assistant U.S. Attorneys Maurene Comey and Jason Swergold wrote in a court filing.

A federal grand jury handed up hate crime charges Thursday against the man accused of stabbing five people with a machete during a Hanukkah celebration north of New York City. The indictment charges Grafton Thomas with five counts each of attempting to kill victims based on their religion and obstructing the free exercise of religious beliefs by attempting to kill with a dangerous weapon. Thomas, 37, also faces state charges in the Dec. 28 attack inside the home of a rabbi in Monsey, N.Y. He is being held without bail on the federal charges. “We now allege that he did this with the intention of targeting his victims because of their religion,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said in a news release.

El Al Airlines flight LY26 from Newark to Tel Aviv was forced to make an emergency landing in Halifax, Canada, late on Thursday night. The Boeing 777 was scheduled to depart Newark at 9:00PM Thursday night, and arrive in Israel just before 4:00AM, but the pilot declared a “Mayday” and a requested a diversion to Halifax Stanfield after reports of smoke in the cockpit. Spokesperson for the Halifax International Airport Authority, Tiffany Chase, said the pilot declared an emergency just after 11:00PM and landed safely. According to Channel 12 news, it was decided that the plane required a full technical inspection, leaving passengers stranded in Halifax as the airline does not fly on Shabbos.