About six months ago, Donald Trump was sitting in a courtroom in lower Manhattan listening to a jury make him the first former president convicted of a crime. On Thursday, he will ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange just blocks from that courthouse and as he was recognized by Time magazine as its person of the year. The honors for the businessman-turned-politician represent the latest chapter in his love-hate relationship with New York. They’re also a measure of Trump’s remarkable comeback from an ostracized former president who refused to accept his election loss four years ago to a president-elect who won the White House decisively in November.

Under fire from congressional Republicans about one of the darkest moments of Joe Biden’s presidency, Secretary of State Antony Blinken defended the administration’s handling of the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, saying Democrats struggled to make the best of a bad pullout deal struck by Donald Trump. Blinken testified Wednesday before the Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee, facing questions from lawmakers for the last time. He said much of the blame for the sudden collapse of Afghanistan’s U.S.-allied government and the chaotic August 2021 evacuation of Americans that followed rested with a withdrawal deal President Trump had reached with the Taliban in 2020 before leaving office.

A Jewish mother has shared her harrowing account of antisemitism at Broadway Barber Shop in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, where her 11-year-old son’s peyos were forcibly shaved off against explicit instructions. The mother, who initially selected the barber shop based on its stellar online reviews, described the incident in a heartfelt and deeply disturbing Facebook post that has since gone viral. According to the mother, she carefully explained to the barber how she wanted her son’s haircut, stressing that his peyos should not be trimmed or touched. She even provided a picture for clarity. However, moments after the haircut began, the barber reportedly ignored her instructions, cutting off one peyah entirely while her son began to cry.

Google on Wednesday unleashed another wave of artificial intelligence designed to tackle more of the work and thinking done by humans as it tries to stay on the technology’s cutting edge while also trying to fend off regulatory threats to its empire. The next generation of Google’s AI is being packaged under the Gemini umbrella, which was unveiled a year ago. Google is framing its release of Gemini 2.0 as a springboard for AI agents built to interpret images shown through a smartphone, perform a variety of tedious chores, remember the conversations consumers have with people, help video game players plot strategy and even tackle the task of doing online searches.

Antisemitic incidents linked to British universities have skyrocketed by 117% over the past two academic years, according to a report released by the Community Security Trust (CST) and cited by Jewish News. The CST, which monitors antisemitism in the UK, recorded 325 university-related incidents between 2022 and 2024 — a huge rise from the 150 incidents reported during the 2020-2022 period. The most dramatic increase occurred during the 2023/24 academic year, with 272 incidents documented — the highest annual figure ever recorded by the CST. This surge followed the Hamas terror attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and the subsequent conflict in the Middle East. The previous academic year, 2022/23, saw 53 incidents.

The mystery flu-like illness that has killed dozens of people in southwest Congo in recent weeks might be malaria, according to results from laboratory samples of infected people, authorities said Wednesday. “Of the 12 samples taken, nine were positive for malaria but these samples were not of very good quality, so we are continuing to research to find out if this is an epidemic,” Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe, director-general of the National Institute for Biomedical Research in Kinshasa, told The Associated Press. “But it is very likely that it is malaria because most of the victims are children,” he added.

The IDF on Thursday morning intercepted a drone launched by the Houthis in Yemen over the Red Sea, near Eilat. The drone was downed before it crossed into Israeli territory. Earlier on Thursday morning, drone infiltration alert sirens sounded in southern Israel, including in Netivot, Sderot, the Gaza border area and the western Negev. However, the IDf later announced that the sirens were false alerms due to a false identification. In a separate incident on Thursday morning, the IDF downed an attack drone launched from “the east,” [Iraq] over the Israeli-Egyptian border. There were no casaulties in the incident. (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)

The jihadi rebels who toppled Syrian President Bashar Assad say they want to build a unified, inclusive country. But after 14 years of civil war, putting that ideal into practice will not be easy. For Syria’s Kurdish minority, America’s closest ally in the country, the struggle for a new order is entering a potentially even more challenging phase. Over the course of Syria’s civil war, Kurdish fighters have fended off an array of armed factions, partnered with the U.S. to rout the Islamic State group and carved out a largely autonomous region in the country’s oil-rich east. But the gains of the non-Arab Kurds are now at risk.

The terrorist who opened fire on a bus on the way from Beitar Illit to Jerusalem late Thursday night, killing Yehoshua Aharon Tuvia Simcha, H’yd and wounding several others, turned himself into Israeli security forces on Thursday morning at about 10 a.m. The heinous terrorist, Az Al-Adin from the village of Beit Awwa, near Chevron, fled to Beit Lechem after he fired 23 bullets at the bus. He tried to turn himself in to the Palestinian Authority police overnight Wednesday but although they confiscated his gun, they refused to allow him to enter the police station.

The Supreme Court is allowing a class-action lawsuit that accuses Nvidia of misleading investors about its past dependence on selling computer chips for the mining of volatile cryptocurrency to proceed. The court’s decision Wednesday comes the same week that China said it is investigating the the microchip company over suspected violations of Chinese anti-monopoly laws. The justices heard arguments four weeks ago in Nvidia’s bid to shut down the lawsuit, then decided that they were wrong to take up the case in the first place. They dismissed the company’s appeal, leaving in place an appellate ruling allowing the case to go forward. At issue was a 2018 suit led by a Swedish investment management firm.