A man charged with murder who was mistakenly released from a New York City jail more than a month ago was taken back into custody Friday. Christopher Buggs, 26, was arrested by members of a U.S. marshals fugitive task force and the New York City Department of Correction, said Peter Thorne, a spokesman for the city Correction Department. Details of the arrest and how authorities found Buggs were not released. He was captured in the Bronx, according to media reports. Buggs is awaiting trial for the 2018 fatal shooting of Ernest Brownlee, 55, at a Brooklyn bodega. He was mistakenly released from Rikers Island in early March when a 30-day sentence for criminal contempt he was serving ended while he was detained on the murder charge.

New York City prosecutors will seek to overturn scores of additional drug convictions that relied on the work of an indicted former NYPD detective who has been accused of framing innocent people in some cases. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.’s office said Thursday that, in the coming weeks, it will move to vacate and dismiss about 100 cases in which ex-Detective Joseph Franco served as an key witness. Vance’s office previously dismissed about 40 open cases involving Franco, Vance spokesperson Danny Frost said. Brooklyn prosecutors l ast week tossed out 90 convictions because of concerns about Franco’s integrity.

The leader of Neturei Karta in the United States, Moshe Dov Ber Beck, died on Thursday night. He was 87. Beck was a fixture at every anti-Israel event in the Tri-State area for years, easily recognizable as he wore a Yerushalmi bekesha every day. There was no statement released by the terrorist regime in Iran where Beck was a welcomed figure among the highest levels of Government. Beck was born in Budapest, Hungary. His early childhood was spent hiding with his brother from Nazi persecution until 1945, when Soviet troops took Budapest. In 1948, he migrated to Bnei Brak, Israel, where he began yeshiva studies. In 1959, he married, and at that time joined Neturei Karta, leaving Vizhnitz of which he had formerly been a part.

Legal marijuana is coming to New York and hemp farmer Samir Mahadin sees it as a potential lifeline. Farmers dealing with depressed prices for plants that produce CBD are eager to take part in a statewide marijuana market expected to generate billions of dollars a year once retail sales start. They already know how to grow and process cannabis plants, since hemp is essentially the same plant with lower levels of THC, marijuana’s active ingredient. Now they’re waiting on rules that will allow them to switch seeds. “I would love to get a license to grow cannabis. My wife and I love working with this plant, I believe in its ability and power as a medicine,” said Mahadin, who runs Breathing Web Farms in the Finger Lakes with his wife.

Four men were arrested Wednesday after a woman’s body was found in the trunk of a car, New York City police said. Officers on patrol just before 2 a.m. saw four men carrying something out of a building in the Far Rockaway section of Queens, police said. The men put the object in the trunk of a car and drove away, police said. The officers followed the car to the Long Island town of Lawrence, where they pulled it over and found an unconscious and unresponsive woman wrapped in a blanket in the trunk, police said. She was pronounced dead at the scene. The four men were taken into custody, police said. Charges against them were pending. (AP)

In Albany, as the state budget is being finalized, Met Council is celebrating successfully securing an additional $50 million for the Nourish New York Initiative, a vital tool in the fight against food insecurity and an important lifeline for the state’s local farmers. After initially being slated to only receive $25 million in initial budget proposals, Nourish NY received $50 million in the budget’s final form thanks to a coalition of legislators led by Assembly Members Dan Rosenthal and Catalina Cruz and State Senators Joseph Addabbo and Andrew Gounardes. Nourish New York is an emergency food program that was created last year thanks to early pandemic advocacy by Met Council on Jewish Poverty.

YWN regrets to inform you of the Petira of HaRav Yisroel Pinchas Halevi Gornish ZATZAL. He was 79. The Niftar was the long time Mora D’asra of the Shul he founded around 40 years ago, Khal Chizuk Hadas, located on Avenue O and East 15th Street in Flatbush. He was also a well-known Rav HaMachshir in Flatbush. He is survived by his Choshuva wife and children. His wife, Rebbitzen Gornish, is the principal of Yeshiva of Brooklyn Girls School. Rabbi Gornish was sick with a Machla for some time, and the past few weeks, his condition turned worse. He was Niftar on Wednesday morning. The Levaya is scheduled for 12:00PM today (Wednesday) at his Shul on Avenue O and East 15th Street in Flatbush. Boruch Dayan HaEmmes… (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

New York City police, fire and corrections unions on Tuesday dropped their challenge to the public release of disciplinary records. The request to dismiss the litigation was praised by Communities United for Police Reform, which, in a release, called on Mayor Bill de Blasio and the New York City Police Department to expand the release of police misconduct and discipline records. “This is a big win against police unions’ baseless fearmongering, definitively closing the door on their attempt to use the courts to overturn the will of New Yorkers after last summer’s repeal of New York’s infamous police secrecy law,” said Joo-Hyun Kang, the group’s director.

In an article highlighting NY Governor Cuomo’s rise to power and his political career, NY Times Journalist Maggie Haberman writes that Cuomo reportedly voiced his frustration with a campaign appearance during his run for Attorney General in 2006. Haberman says Cuomo was attending an event on Sukkos, and said “These people and their (expletive removed) tree houses,” Cuomo said to his team, according to The Times. A spokesman for the Governor denied the comment. “His two sisters married Jewish men, and he has the highest respect for Jewish traditions,” the spokesman said. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Some 51,000 more New York City students will return to in-person schooling later this month, bringing the total number of students in school buildings to 365,000 out of 960,000 non-charter public school students, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Monday. “We have just over 50,000 students who have opted in for in-person learning again across all grade levels,” the Democratic mayor said at a virtual news briefing. “They are all welcome back.” Parents whose children were attending school remotely were given a two-week window ending last Friday for opting back in to classroom learning. De Blasio said he was not surprised that the majority of families choose to stick with remote schooling. “My view is, a lot of parents were really focused on the scheduling question,” the mayor said.