Get your E-Z Pass ready. The New York State Thruway is going completely cashless this weekend, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Thursday. The highway’s 450-mile, ticketed toll system will be converted to electronic collection during the overnight hours Friday into Saturday, Cuomo said. The switch will happen simultaneously at 58 tolling locations, he said. The rest of the Thruway system already stopped accepting cash payments. Cuomo said the Thruway is moving to full cashless tolling more than a month ahead of schedule. He made the conversion a goal in his 2018 State of the State address. Motorists who have E-ZPass device will have tolls charged to them automatically. If they don’t, they will get a bill in the mail.

As COVID cases continue to rise in New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio says there is still time to prevent a second wave of coronavirus but warns restrictions could be coming. Se Blasio said Tuesday that if the city’s seven-day average positive test rate exceeds 3%, schools will return to remote learning. The seven-day average Wednesday stood at 2.52%, according to de Blasio. De Blasio said that there are no current plans for new restrictions but cautioned that they could be coming in the days or weeks ahead and include businesses and schools. He said that people need to avoid indoor gatherings and to wear masks at all times in public. “This is our LAST chance to stop a second wave,” de Blasio wrote on Twitter Wednesday afternoon.

Mental health workers will replace police officers in responding to some 911 calls under a pilot program announced Tuesday by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. The program, to be rolled out next year in two neighborhoods, will give mental health professionals the lead role when someone calls 911 because a family member is in crisis, officials said. The pilot program is modeled on existing programs in cities including Eugene, Oregon, where teams of paramedics and crisis workers have been responding to mental health 911 calls for more than 30 years. A main goal of such programs is to avoid bad outcomes from interactions between police officers and people suffering from mental illness or addiction such as the March 30 death of Daniel Prude in Rochester, New York.

 Bars, restaurants, liquor-licensed businesses like bowling alleys and gyms in New York state will have to close at 10 p.m. each night amid a spike in COVID-19 cases, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday. Establishments with State Liquor Authority-issued licenses will still be able to offer curbside pickup after 10 p.m., but will only be able to sell food, Cuomo said in a teleconference. The state will also limit private indoor gatherings to 10 people, the governor said. The new rules will take effect on Friday, Nov. 13 at 10 p.m., he said. DEVELOPING STORY – REFRESH FOR UPDATES

(By: Sandy Eller) The financial impact of the pandemic has left its devastating mark on small businesses everywhere, with countless people seeing their life’s work decimated by lingering lockdowns. That impact has been profoundly greater in New York’s red zones, where small businesses deemed non-essential by Governor Andrew Cuomo were gasping for breath after being closed for months last spring, only to find themselves at the center of a second shutdown this fall that lasted an additional four and a half weeks. Enter the Rise Up Red Zone initiative launched by activist Chaskel Bennett in tandem with the Flatbush Jewish Community Coalition and the WhoWeAre Network as a grassroots movement to support local businesses in areas that had been designated as red zones.

Agudath Israel is disappointed that the U.S. Court of Appeals did not grant a preliminary injunction preventing aspects of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s lockdown restrictions against shuls. By 2-1 vote the majority decided, with little explanation, that the very “high bar” calling for “the extraordinary remedy” of an injunction of an executive order during a pandemic simply could not be met. In a scathing dissent, Judge Michael H. Park wrote that “in the same zones, pet shops, liquor stores, and other businesses the Governor considers “essential” remain open, free from any capacity limits.

The New York Police Department will stop making people who have been arrested remove their religious headwear for mug shots as part of a settlement in a federal lawsuit. The initial plaintiffs, two Muslim women and an advocacy group, had filed the federal lawsuit in 2018, with another two Muslim women filing later that year. They all said they had been forced to remove their hijabs, religious head coverings, by officers as part of being photographed after being arrested. Under the settlement, the NYPD’s practice will now have those arrested keep wearing their religious head coverings, like hijabs or yarmulkes. There are very limited exceptions, such as if the head covering obscures being able to see the person’s full facial features.

Federal authorities arrested a New York City police officer Monday on charges he served as a lookout for drug traffickers who smuggled hundreds of kilograms of cocaine into the United States. Officer Amaury Abreu, 34, of Hauppauge, is accused of explaining law enforcement methods to the drug ring and performing warrant checks on its members. Federal prosecutors said he also distributed cocaine and traveled to the Dominican Republic in January and February to meet with leaders of the trafficking group. “Today I’m going to find out the thing I couldn’t yesterday because there were too many people at the office,” Abreu said in one message to the traffickers, according to court records.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Monday announced that Brooklyn’s hot spot has shown progress and will be moving to an Orange zone from the Red zone amid a rise in coronavirus cases across the city. “Brooklyn was quite a fuss when we made it a red zone,” he said. “People didn’t like the restrictions, but it worked,” Cuomo noted. NYC Councilman Chaim Deutsch tells YWN that he spoke with the Governor’s office this morning and non-essential businesses can reopen, aside from “high-risk” businesses, such as gyms. Houses of worship: 33% capacity/25 max Mass gatherings: 10 people max Businesses: open, aside from high-risk (e.g.

The NY Post once again revealed their glaring animus and double standard in reporting about the Orthodox Jewish community of NYC. As YWN reported, the funeral of Hagaon HaRav David Feinstein was held today in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Approximately 5,000 people attended, while well over 25,000 watched on live streams and thousands more on phone hookups. Without a doubt, tens of thousands of mourners honored the family’s request not to attend personally and stayed away. That the family requested that all attendees wear masks, and as photos show – nearly every single attendee wore masks, was of course completely ignored in the NY Post article. Rest assured, we would have heard about the ‘sacred’ masks if it would have been an issue. It wasn’t.