Dear YWN, This letter is in response to the outrageous letter by NY State Senator Jen Metzger (Metzger@nysenate.gov) published by YWN a few days ago. Let me start by saying that in no way shape or form am I saying or implying that you are a racist or an anti-Semite, or that you encourage hate, I am sure that you are a very decent person. Having said that, I will introduce myself, I live in Brooklyn NY, I am an Orthodox Jew, and I am one of the owners of a secondary home in the town of Thompson, that you referred to in your letter. While the majority of the people in Sullivan County are decent, hardworking, polite, neighborly etc.

An armed Frum homeowner took down a burglar on his property in Queens, and the dramatic incident was all captured on security cameras. Sources tell YWN that the homeowner was first alerted to trouble when his dog started barking at 1:00AM at his home at 73rd ave 147th street in the Kew Gardens Hills section of Queens. The man, who is a licensed gun-owner and well-trained in the use of firearms, ran out of his home and found three men on his property. As can be seen in the footage below, two men are seen running off the property and jumping a fence with the homeowner in hot pursuit. The man keeps searching the yard when suddenly a third man is seen. The homeowner immediately orders the suspect onto the floor at gunpoint, telling him not to move.

A Lakewood Rabbi has joined with a Priest in a lawsuit against NJ Gov Murphy for the ban on religious gatherings. According to court documents, Rabbi Yisrael A. Knopfler of Lakewood has joined Rev. Kevin Robinson, a Catholic priest, of St. Anthony of Padua church in North Caldwell is suing Gov. Phil Murphy over the governor’s stay-at-home directive. The lawsuit alleges that the state’s prohibition of religious services during the coronavirus outbreak violates the U.S. Constitution. The four-count complaint claims that churches and synagogues can easily accommodate the kind of social distancing that keeps some commercial businesses open.

An ambulance overturned while responding to an emergency in Flatbush, Tuesday morning. It happened at around 6:30AM on Ocean Parkway and Avenue I. The ambulance belongs to “RCA”, a private ambulance company located in New York City. Thankfully, there were only minor injuries reported, and there were no patients in the ambulance at the time. It is unknown if the ambulance was responding to an emergency at the time, but photos and video below show the light of the ambulance flashing the entire time. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Southern Brooklyn elected officials Councilman Chaim Deutsch, Councilman Kalman Yeger, State Senator Simcha Felder, and Assemblyman Simcha Eichenstein sent a joint letter to Governor Cuomo today, calling for ‘decisive action’ to resolve the backlog in incomplete unemployment filings. Since the COVID outbreak began, more than 1.5 million New Yorkers have filed for unemployment. Low and middle-income residents have been disproportionately affected, particularly those in the service and retail industry. Since the influx of unemployment filings began in March, Governor Cuomo has made great strides towards resolving the issues with the system by hiring a tremendous number of new Department of Labor employees, as well as upgrading the filing system itself.

Thousands of tenants in New York City are organizing for the city’s largest rent strike in decades, according to multiple reports online. The strikers are demanding that Gov. Andrew Cuomo cancel rent and mortgage payments for four months or for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic, whichever is longer. The strikers recently got a high-profile supporter. “People can’t pay,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive Socilist Democrat from the Bronx, who is co-sponsoring a national bill to cancel rent, said on a call with strikers Monday. “You cannot coerce someone into doing something that they cannot do. There is no money in the bank.” “It’s not that it’s impossible to do and it’s not that we can’t do it,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said in a live video on her Facebook page on Monday.

Doctors in New York City are now sounding the alarm on a mysterious illness being seen in children. The syndrome was first reported in Europe and is believed to be linked to COVID-19. Doctors say 15 children have been hospitalized with symptoms similar to toxic shock syndrome or Kawasaki Disease. The symptoms include inflammation of the blood vessels, including coronary arteries. At least four of the children had diagnosed coronavirus. Patients with this syndrome who have been admitted to pediatric intensive care units (PICUs) have required cardiac and/or respiratory support. Officials say only severe cases may have been recognized at this time. All patients, ages 2-15, had a subjective or measured fever and more than half reported rash, abdominal pain, vomiting, or diarrhea.

Lawyers for supporters of withdrawn presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang on Monday urged a judge to overrule New York state’s decision to cancel its 2020 Democratic presidential primary. The lawyers for would-be delegates including Yang argued that the state acted unconstitutionally when it made the cancellation on April 27. The Democratic members of the State’s Board of Elections voted to cancel the presidential primary even though New York still plans to hold its congressional and state-level primaries June 23. Attorney Jeffrey Kurzon, representing Yang and others, said the case was about protecting the rights of citizens to vote. Kurzon said those who brought the lawsuits “must be protected for our democracy to survive” and asked that U.S.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the state will reopen on a regional basis, and he outlined four metrics that will help decide if a region is ready to reopen: Number of new infections The capacity of health care systems Diagnostic testing capacity Have a contact tracing system in place Cuomo said New York regions will follow US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines for when to begin reopening. They are: There must be a 14 days of decline in total hospitalizations and deaths on a 3-day rolling average. A region can’t have more than 15 new cases or 5 deaths on a 3-day rolling average. A region must have fewer than 2 new Covid-19 patients for every 100,000 residents.

Apparently many families have started spending Shabbosim in upstate New York as the weather has improved. Several of those families contacted me today after witnessing the following in a variety of circumstances. In just one example, families went to a particular development where there was clearly minimal social distancing going on. This included an indoor minyan where at least one high-risk gentleman attended. He was well over the age of 70 years old. When confronted about the issue, those organizing the minyan expressed that the rules established in downstate (i.e Brooklyn or other communities) do not apply to upstate.