Covid-19 vaccines are readily available now and all New Yorkers age 16 and over are eligible. The vaccines offer the best protection against serious and life-threatening illness from the virus. Join the millions of New Yorkers who have already been vaccinated and take advantage of this opportunity to stay safe and healthy. Message from Assemblyman Simcha Eichenstein: “Chevra Hatzalah is taking the initiative to raise awareness in the community about the importance of vaccinating against Covid-19 and I join them in this most vital effort. Members of Hatzalah have been heroically fighting at the frontlines of the pandemic for over a year now. All along, we trusted them and followed their advice along with the guidance of the medical community.

56 branches of Hatzalah around the world have already confirmed their participation in Hatzalah-Week, a week of celebration and support of the Hatzalah organization and its devoted volunteers around the world. The week-long event will serve to raise millions of dollars for Hatzalah branches around the world, and will include a night of Music and Celebration as the second Unity Torah is completed in a grand worldwide event. The 2nd Hatzalah-Thon event will take place on Lag B’Omer, culminating the writing of the Unity Torah begun in an effort to end the COVID pandemic by uniting Jewish people around the world, due to the now-famous story of the Baal Shem Tov’s instructions in response to an epidemic in the town of Mezibush.

No charges will be filed against five New York City police officers who in 2019 opened fire while another officer and an armed man struggled on the grounds of a Bronx housing project, prosecutors said Friday. The barrage of gunfire from both NYPD Officer Brian Mulkeen and his fellow officers, unleashed within eight seconds, left both 27-year-old Antonio Williams and Mulkeen himself dead. Bronx District Attorney Darcel D. Clark said the officers had been justified in approaching Williams and firing more than a dozen rounds after the man reached for a loaded revolver. A 71-page report released Friday concluded Williams was shot several times and died from a round Mulkeen fired that entered his heart.

A man was arrested on hate crime charges in connection to multiple incidents in recent weeks where police said Asian people were shoved or grabbed while on Brooklyn streets. The New York Police Department said Joseph Russo, of Brooklyn, was arrested on Wednesday. He was charged with multiple counts of assault as a hate crime and harassment as a hate crime. The NYPD said the incidents took place on March 5, March 22, and April 5. Police said on March 5, a 64-year-old Asian woman was walking when someone pushed her, and she fell to the ground. On March 22, police said a 32-year-old Asian woman was grabbed by a man and her hair painfully pulled before he let go and walked away.

A New York man is facing hate crime charges after police said he made threats and anti-Asian American remarks — to an undercover officer assigned to a hate crimes task force. Juvian Rodriguez, 35, was arrested Friday afternoon after the alleged confrontation near Penn Station. A message was sent Saturday to the lawyer who represented Rodriguez at a court appearance Friday. No home phone number for Rodriguez could be found. According to news accounts, when reporters outside a police station asked Rodriguez for comment, he replied only, “Your mother!” Police say Rodriguez intentionally engaged with the undercover officer, told him to “go back to China” before he ended up in a “graveyard,” and threatened to slap and stab him in the face.

New York will spend billions of dollars of federal funds over the next year on schools and relief for struggling businesses, tenants and landlords under a spending plan that New York’s Legislature passed Wednesday. The state Senate passed the revenue bill early Wednesday morning with a 38-25 vote, while the 150-member Assembly passed the bill with a 88-61 vote following hours of debate Wednesday evening. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said he’ll sign the budget. LIBERALS CHEER WINS Democrats, who won a veto-proof supermajority last year, won passage of their top — and long politically contentious — priorities, i ncluding a tax hike on millionaires and a $2.1 billion fund for undocumented immigrants and other workers who have been excluded from COVID-19 assistance.

More than one in three New York state residents have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Thursday. As of Thursday afternoon, 35.1 percent of New Yorkers had gotten at least one vaccine shot, Cuomo said in a press release. A total of 22.3 percent of New Yorkers, meanwhile, were fully vaccinated, the governor said. The state has administered more than 11 million COVID-19 vaccine doses since the rollout began, including more than 1.4 million within the past week, the release said. (Source: 1010WINS)

NEW YORK- – Assemblymembers Daniel Rosenthal (D-Queens), Amy Paulin (D- Westchester), Simcha Eichenstein (D- Brooklyn), and Senator Simcha Felder (D-Brooklyn), wrote a letter to Rick Cotton, Executive Director of the Port Authority of NY & NJ and Steve Dickson, Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, urging them to conduct an investigation on recent allegations of antisemitic actions taken by airlines. The lawmakers referenced two recent incidents of forced deplaning by Spirit Airlines and Frontier Airlines on flights originating from the New York area. In both cases, visibly Jewish passengers were aggressively forced to deplane by airline staff for alleged non-compliance with the federal mask mandate.

In what is likely a first, the FBI has released ads in outreach to the Jewish community. The ads have been designed and written in English, Yiddish, and Hebrew, making sure they hit all segments of the Jewish community in the United States. The ad campaign calls on people who were victims of hate crimes to report them to the FBI. “Did you know many hate crimes are not reported?”, the ad reads. “The FBI wants to help, but we need to hear from you. If you believe you’re the victim of or a witness to a hate crime, contact your local police department, call 1-800-CALL-FBI, or go to tips.fbi.gov.” See the ads below: (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Republican U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin announced his candidacy for governor of New York on Thursday with an attack on incumbent Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the subject of investigations over harassment allegations and COVID-19 deaths among nursing home residents. “The bottom line is this; to save New York, Andrew Cuomo’s gotta go,” Zeldin, a fourth-term Congress member from Long Island, said in a news release.