A Dallas man who tried to fly overseas to join the Russian military and fight against Ukraine was sentenced on Friday to six months in prison for violating the terms of his probation for storming the U.S. Capitol four years ago. Kevin Loftus, a 56-year-old veteran of the U.S. Army, was stopped from boarding an Oct. 28 flight from Dallas to Tbilisi, Georgia, by way of Istanbul, Turkey, when Turkish Airlines identified a “security flag” associated with him, according to federal prosecutors. Loftus didn’t have the court’s permission to travel internationally or to drive from Texas to Iowa, where the FBI arrested him three days after his flight plans fell apart, prosecutors said.

A federal appeals court on Friday left in place a mid-January deadline in a federal law requiring TikTok to be sold or face a ban in the United States, rejecting a request made by the company to halt enforcement until the Supreme Court reviews its challenge of the statute. Attorneys for TikTok and its China-based parent company, ByteDance, are expected to appeal to the Supreme Court. It’s unclear if the nation’s highest court will take up the case, though some legal experts have said they expect the justices to weigh in due to the types of novel questions it raises about social media, national security and the First Amendment.

Despite two weeks of U.N.-sponsored talks in Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh, the participating 197 nations failed to agree early Saturday on a plan to deal with global droughts, made longer and more severe by a warming climate. The biennial talks, known as COP 16 and organized by a UN body that deals with combating desertification and droughts, attempted to create strong global mandates to legally bind and require nations to fund early warning systems and build resilient infrastructure in poorer countries, particularly Africa, which is worst affected by the changes.

Donald Trump hosted Apple CEO Tim Cook for a Friday evening dinner at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment publicly. Cook is the latest in a string of big tech leaders — including OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos — who have sought to improve their standing with the incoming president after choppy relations with Trump during his first term. Trump has said he has spoken with Cook about the company’s long-running tax battles with the European Union. The meeting comes less than two months after Trump said he spoke to Cook by phone, and soon after Apple lost its last appeal in a dispute with the EU over 13 billion euros ($14.34 billion) in back taxes to Ireland.

A Massachusetts man trying to escape from police shimmied down the chimney. And got stuck. The man fled onto a rooftop, but he ended up needing to be rescued by the detectives who were pursuing him after getting wedged inside a chimney Tuesday evening. Body cam video from the Fall River Police Department shows a detective shouting, “Hey he’s on the roof. Get down here!” Detectives were alerted moments later by a bystander that a man was “screaming” inside a nearby chimney. Incredulous detectives climbed up the roof and peered down into the shaft with a flashlight to see the man stuck. “You’re an idiot,” one of them said. Detectives called in firefighters who had to carefully knock out bricks to free the man.

by Rabbi Yair Hoffman for the Sefas Tamim Foundation QUESTION:  There is a story that just went viral because it was on Rabbi Eli Stefansky’s Daf Yomi shiur on Bava Basra daf 166 which was featured on (the newly popular) CBN. It has to do with lying and although Rabbi Stefansky related the story, he did not state whether it was halachically permitted for the man to do what he did. *** WHY NOT SUBSCRIBE TO A WEEKLY PARSHA SHEET ON EMES?  JUST SEND THE WORD “SUBSCRIBE” TO Yairhoffman2@gmail.com*** Apparently, someone was travelling on an erev Shabbos from Chicago to New York.  He knows that he should not be travelling on Erev Shabbos but he made a calculation that it is only an hour and a half flight to New York.  What could go wrong?

YWN regrets to inform you of the petirah of Rav Shlomo Zalman Singer zt”l, the beloved rosh yeshiva and founder Yeshiva Ner Boruch – Passaic Torah Institute (PTI). The rosh yeshiva, who impacted thousands throughout his half-century in chinuch and harbotzas torah, was 90 years old. Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 1933, Rabbi Singer’s journey reflected the growth of Jewish America. Raised on New York’s Lower East Side, he was a neighbor and talmid of Rav Moshe Feinstein zt”l, later continuing his learning under Rav Aharon Kotler zt”l in Lakewood. In 1966, he moved to Passaic, where he became a chazzan and rebbi, eventually founding PTI in 1996.

New Jersey and Minnesota sued Glock on Thursday, calling on the gunmaker to stop selling firearms that can be adapted with dime-sized switches to fire up to 1,200 rounds a minute. New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison also announced that top law enforcement officials in 14 states and the District of Columbia are forming a coalition to reduce gun violence by coordinating enforcement of the states’ consumer protection laws.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte warned on Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to “wipe Ukraine off the map” and could come after other parts of Europe next, as he urged Europeans to press their governments to ramp up defense spending. “It is time to shift to a wartime mindset,” Rutte told security experts and analysts at the Carnegie Europe think-tank in Brussels. He said people should gird themselves for the prospect that Russia might try to use “swarms of drones” in Europe as it has to deadly effect in Ukraine. Putin “is trying to crush our freedom and way of life,” Rutte said. The former Dutch prime minister listed Russia’s attacks on Georgia in 2008, the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, and the all-out invasion launched almost three years ago.

President-elect Donald Trump was huddling with allies and a Republican cause célèbre at Saturday’s Army-Navy football game, taking in one of the most storied rivalries in college sports while spotlighting his emerging national security team. Trump was joined by Vice President-elect JD Vance, embattled Pentagon pick Pete Hegseth, potential backup defense secretary option Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and others for the 125th matchup between service academies. Also attending was Daniel Penny, a military veteran who was acquitted of criminally negligent homicide this week in the chokehold death of an agitated subway rider in New York. Penny was invited by Vance, who accused prosecutors of trying to “ruin” Penny’s life by charging the Marine veteran in the death of Jordan Neely in 2023.