One of every New Yorker’s worst nightmares played out Thursday morning when a Kips Bay man was crushed to death by an elevator in his luxury high-rise as his horrified neighbors looked on, authorities said.
Sam Waisbren, 30, clawed desperately to escape the packed lift as it plunged from the lobby into the darkness of the shaft below, but he was crushed between the elevator car and the shaft wall, according to officials.
“The guy literally was trying to climb out onto the floor while the elevator was still [moving down],” said a building worker, who witnessed the death and asked not to be identified. “It’s awful.”

David Koch, a billionaire industrialist and philanthropist whose fortune and hard-edge libertarianism had a profound effect on American politics while making him an uncommonly polarizing figure, has died. He was 79.
Koch, who had suffered from prostate cancer for many years, announced in 2018 that he was stepping down from his positions at Koch Industries and the Koch political and philanthropic networks. His death was announced in a statement from Koch Industries. Information about the date and place of death was not immediately available.

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A man who refused to give his wife a get for over 15 years has released a statement where he accused the Chief Rabbi of Israel of fabricating a story.
Rabbi Dovid Lau made headlines earlier this week when he refused to permit the burial of the get refuser’s mother in an attempt to pressure the man to give the get.

New York State will receive more than $178 million in anti-terror funding from the federal government to protect synagogues and other houses of worship, Senators Chuck Schumer  and Kirsten Gillibrand announced on Thursday.
The funding will come from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), through the Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI).
UASI, which funds “high-threat, high-density urban areas,” includes the Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP). This funding is administered by the DHS’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to assist institutions in preventing, responding to, or recovering from terror attacks.

Amid the controversy over US President Donald Trump supposedly questioning the “loyalty” or “lack of knowledge” of Jews who vote for Democrats, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin told US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that the alliance between the United States and Israel is “not dependent on the relationship with one particular party.”
“The relationship between the State of Israel and the United States is a link between peoples, which relies on historical ties, deep and strong friendships, and shared values that are not dependent on the relationship with one particular party,” Rivlin said to Pelosi in a phone call on Wednesday, according to a readout from the Israeli government press office.

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Lancaster.

Israel bombed Iranian weapons warehouses in Iraq three times in recent weeks after reaching an understanding with the United States and Russia, the London-based pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat reported on Wednesday.
Western diplomatic sources told the newspaper the understanding stresses that Jerusalem not publicly take responsibility for the attacks in order to control regional blow-back.
Iraqi media reported that a weapons depot of the Popular Mobilization Forces was hit on Tuesday night. Israel has reportedly been behind bombings against Iranian targets in Iraq and Syria.

A Palestinian man was shot by Israeli Defense Forces late Thursday night after he hurled several grenades at Israeli soldiers on duty near the Israeli-Gaza border fence.
The IDF said no soldiers were injured. The attacker was wounded, but IDF did not comment on his condition.
The incident follows a flare up of rocket fire from the Strip into Israel overnight, marking the sixth in just a week as tensions between Israel and the Gaza Strip continue to escalate.
Read more at i24NEWS.
{Matzav.com}

Three people were severely injured when an explosive device detonated Friday morning near the Ein Bubin spring next to town of Dolev.
The victims include a 46-year-old father and his 18-year-old daughter and 20-year-old son.
The daughter, identified as Rina Shnerb, who was declared to be in critical condition, died of her wounds a short time later.
Read more at Arutz Sheva.
{Matzav.com}

Sen. Bernie Sanders , I-Vt., proposed a $16.3 trillion climate plan Thursday, an expansive blueprint meant to enlarge American ambitions when it comes to combating planetary warming in a campaign season already marked by aggressive Democratic approaches.
The Sanders proposal, like his plan to replace private health insurance with a federal system, envisions a significant expansion of the government’s role in the economy. He would offer billions in subsidies to replace gas-guzzling vehicles with electric ones by 2030, a new public system of clean electricity generation that could sideline private utilities, and an infrastructure program that would remake much of the economy and employ an estimated 20 million more Americans.