New York’s comptroller is reporting a big increase in the number of questionable or fraudulent state tax refunds this year.
State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office says Friday that it had blocked more than 12,000 bogus refunds worth $43.7 million as of the start of the week.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has signed an executive order immediately ending the city’s purchase of unnecessary single use plastic food ware.
The order, announced Thursday, targets plastic straws, plates, bowls and utensil ware.
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An MTA bus driver allegedly made anti-Semitic remarks towards a Hasidic man, regarding the measles outbreak in the community.
The United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg said the incident happened last week on a B57 bus.

An off-duty police officer has been killed in a motorcycle crash in Queens.
It happened on the westbound Belt Parkway near the Queens-Nassau border at about 5:30 a.m.

NYC Councilman Kalman Yeger got fed up with ConEd blocking a street in his district and tossed their barricades aside. Then he got into it with ConEd on Twitter.
The incident occurred Wednesday at 44th street and 15th Avenue in Borough Park.
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The Der Yid Newspaper (affiliated with the Satmar community of Williamsburg) printed a strong editorial against the anti-vaxxers. The newspaper also took the rare step of printing it in English.

Three of New York’s biggest hospital systems have reached a tentative agreement with nurses.
The New York Times says the four-year contract agreement reached on Tuesday would affect the Mount Sinai, NewYork-Presbyterian and Montefiore hospital systems.
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New York City’s effort to halt a measles outbreak by ordering mandatory vaccinations in one Brooklyn neighborhood is facing opposition, with lawyers for parents opposed to vaccinations promising to file a lawsuit challenging the order by Friday.
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Isaac Abraham, a Williamsburg “community activist”, who has been giving media interviews for years and years, called Mayor DeBlasio some choice words in this interview.
For reasons unknown, the media has been going to Abraham for statements for decades, as if he was appointed by the community, when in fact, he is speaking for himself.

Agudath Israel of America is deeply concerned about the recent outbreak of measles and the threat it poses to communities around the country.
For that reason, countless rabbinical figures and leaders, including leading rabbis in the Agudath Israel movement and doctors serving these communities, have repeatedly encouraged vaccination in the strongest possible terms.