President Donald Trump’s brother died in a hospital in New York City. The President released the following statement: “It is with heavy heart I share that my wonderful brother, Robert, peacefully passed away tonight. He was not just my brother, he was my best friend. He will be greatly missed, but we will meet again. His memory will live on in my heart forever. Robert, I love you. Rest in peace.” Robert Trump, 72, the president’s youngest brother, was admitted to the hospital on Friday and was described as “very ill,” according to sources. Further details were not known, but he was said to be in critical condition at New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center on the Upper East Side. “I have a wonderful brother,” President Trump said at a press briefing Friday.

Two Brooklyn residents arrested Thursday could face a mandatory minimum of five years in prison if they are convicted of federal charges that say they torched a police van in Manhattan used to help the homeless, authorities announced. Corey Smith, 24, and Elaine Carberry, 36, were arrested in the July 15 arson in Greenwich Village near Union Square, after an undercover law enforcement officer recognized them on video images from “previous interactions,” authorities said in a criminal complaint. The complaint did not say if the undercover officer was among law enforcement operatives who have sometimes gathered information during widespread protests that followed the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio held firm Thursday to plans to reopen the nation’s largest public school system within a month, despite pleas from teachers and principals to delay the return of students to classrooms. The city is aiming for a hybrid reopening Sept. 10, with most of the 1.1 million students spending two or three days a week in physical classrooms and learning remotely the rest of the time. Parents were given the option of requesting full-time remote learning for their children. The Democratic mayor conceded there were challenges with the plan as the city recovers from a pandemic. But he said the city has managed to lower the rate of positive cases to around 1% and that it owes it to children and their families to reopen promptly.

New York’s labor commissioner says the state is ready to rapidly ramp up its unemployment system again in case the pandemic surges and the economy must shutter once again. The coronavirus pandemic has taken the lives of tens of thousands of New Yorkers and efforts to reduce its spread by closing businesses in New York City and state forced millions out of work. The state had an unemployment rate of 15.7% in June, up from 3.9% in June 2019. “We are ready,” state Labor Commissioner Roberta Reardon said during a Thursday legislative hearing. “We know that should the second wave come, we know where the pain points are.” New York has doled out $40 billion in unemployment benefits to 3.3 million New Yorkers in over five months, up from $2.1 billion in benefits processed in all of 2019.

The Ezras Nashim, (aka Chasdei Devorah Inc.) Organization has been granted an ambulance permit by New York State EMS Council on Thursday. The vote at SEMSCO passed by 23 votes, with two members voting against it. A third person abstained. The organization will now be permitted to serve female clientele within a 2.7 square-mile area in the Boro Park neighborhood. [MAILBAG: Thoughts of a Longtime Hatzolah Member On The Ezras Nashim Fiasco] (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

NEW YORK — A teenager was hospitalized after being stabbed, doused with gasoline and set on fire in a Bronx apartment building Wednesday afternoon, police said. The 18-year-old was reportedly in an argument with his assailant before the assault shortly after 3 p.m. in a fifth-floor hallway. Police found him barely conscious with extensive burns on his body and stab wounds to his chest. Police say the youth, whose name wasn’t released, was in critical condition at Harlem Hospital. There were no immediate arrests. (AP)

Following Eli Rozenberg’s bid to purchase El Al, another frum businessman, Meir Gurvitz, the son-in-law of Mordechai Ben David, joined the race and submitted an application to El Al on Tuesday for a holding permit, a precondition for the purchase of shares in El Al, Globes reported. El Al transferred Gurvitz’s request to the Government Companies Authority. Gurvitz is a businessman and philanthropist who was born in Israel, spent much of his life in England, and now lives in the US. He is the controlling shareholder in Arazim Investment Ltd. which owns real estate in the UK, and has business dealing in Israel, throughout Europe, and the US. Gurvitz was born to a Chareidi family in Kiryat Ata near Haifa. His father died when he was nine and two years later, his family moved to Bnei Brak.

Tribune Publishing Company, which owns some of the most storied newspapers in American journalism, said Wednesday that it is closing the newsrooms at five of them, including New York’s Daily News and The Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland. The company said the newspapers — including the Orlando Sentinel in Florida, The Morning Call in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and the Carroll County Times in Maryland — will continue to be published with employees working from home as they have been during the coronavirus pandemic.

A massive fire has broken out at “The Zone Camp” (Oorah’s Girls Division Camp) in Upstate NY. Video footage shows one building fully engulfed in flames at the camp located on Gilboa Road in Gilboah, NY (Schoharie County). Eye-witnesses tell YWN that the building housing the kitchen and dining-room is totally destroyed, and fire fighters are battling the blaze. The Sifrei Torah that were inside a nearby building were removed as a precaution. Stay with YWN as we update this story. STAY WITH YWN WHATSAPP FOR BREAKING UPDATES IN LIVE TIME!  YWN WHATSAPP STATUS UPDATES: CLICK HERE to join the YWN WhatsApp Status. YWN WHATSAPP GROUPS: CLICK HERE to be dded to an official YWN WhatsApp Group. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

A state Assembly member is calling for a hate crimes investigation after her Manhattan district office was splashed with white paint and a vulgar, anti-Semitic note was left under the door. “We will never be intimidated by this criminal act,” Assembly Member Rebecca Seawright, a Democrat first elected in 2014, said in a message Tuesday. She said police are investigating the Monday night vandalism. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie condemned the incident. “The Assembly majority has always been very clear that we have a zero tolerance policy for any form of hate, including anti-Semitism,” Heastie said in a statement Tuesday. Seawright hosted a virtual town hall on fighting anti-Semitism last month and held a similar forum last year after swastikas were found on a nearby fitness complex.