Robert M. Morgenthau, New York’s longest-serving district attorney, who fought crime in executive suites and violence on city streets for 35 years, has died at the age of 99.
Morgenthau’s wife, Lucinda Franks, said he died at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York on Sunday after a short illness, the New York Times reported.
First elected as Manhattan district attorney in 1974, Morgenthau won eight more four-year terms before retiring in 2009. He was known as a tireless prosecutor of white-collar crime, his targets ranging from L. Dennis Kozlowski, ex-chief executive of Tyco International Ltd., to money-laundering banks and mobsters in the garbage and garment industries.

Despite appearances, Iran is losing its struggle against the West and will eventually come back to the negotiating table, a top Israeli security analyst estimated on Sunday.
Tensions in the Gulf have skyrocketed in recent days over the downing of an American drone by Iranian forces and the seizure of a British cargo ship, following the British seizure of an Iranian vessel near Gibraltar.
In a column for Israeli news website Mako, veteran Israeli journalist Ehud Ya’ari said that “no one wants a war in the Persian Gulf,” including President Donald Trump, the Europeans, and the Arab states.
However, he added, “Iran also has left no room for doubt that it has no desire to absorb military blows — it threatens to respond with force but not to initiate a deterioration.”

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg warned on Saturday that white supremacy almost led to the downfall of the United States in the past and could potentially do so again in the future.
White supremacy “is the only issue that almost ended this country,” Buttigieg said during a weekend campaign event in Iowa, ABC News reported. “We’ve had a lot of challenges in this country, but the one that actually almost ended this country in the Civil War was white supremacy,” the South Bend, Indiana, mayor and Afghanistan veteran pointed out.
“It could be the lurking issue that ends this country in the future, if we don’t wrangle it down in our time,” he cautioned.

Police raided a house in Ramot on Monday night and seized a drug making laboratory hidden inside.
A yeshiva bachur affiliated with the apartment was arrested in connection with the lab. The detainee’s friends were surprised by the night’s arrest, telling Kikar Shabbos that he was a  chashuve bochur and the arrest must be a mistake.
One of the possibilities raised was that the drugs were in an apartment he owned but rented out to an unknown person that used it as a drug factory.
“We are talking about a yeshiva bochur who does not commit such criminal acts,” one neighbor told reporters. “I believe that he will be released today or tomorrow.”
{Matzav.com Israel News}

Iranian soldiers in training exercises used effigies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump for target practice, local media reports said.
The Islamic Republic’s semi-official state news agency Tasnim published a series of photos over the weekend showing the effigies, many of them riddled with bullets.
Tasnim said the exercise “was intended to assess the readiness and skills of the participants in shooting and in a number of different situations on the battlefield.”
The training in question was described as “advanced” and involved marksmanship at 100 and 200 meters, as well as sniper training, including for night shooting.

Consolidated Edison crews are responding to power outages affecting approximately 33,000 customers in Brooklyn as a heat wave drives higher electricity usage.
ConEd, which had forecast record demand this weekend, is facing scrutiny after an outage last weekend left 72,000 customers in Manhattan’s West Side without power. Regulators have opened investigations into the incident, which darkened Times Square, interrupted subway service and forced Madison Square Garden to evacuate. Gov. Andrew Cuomo called the incident “unacceptable.”

Since the turn of the century, more Americans have died in car crashes than did in both World Wars, and the overwhelming majority of the wrecks were caused by speeding, drunken or distracted drivers, according to government data.
“Where’s the social outrage? There should be social outrage,” said Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board.
By contrast, data shows that the opioid epidemic killed nearly 100,000 people between 2006 and 2012. During the same time frame, speeding, drunk and distracted driving caused 190,455 deaths.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency – the U.N. body monitoring Iran’s nuclear activities – has died at the age of 72, the agency said in a statement Monday.
Yukiya Amano, a Japanese diplomat, was planning to step down early for unspecified health reasons. The agency’s secretariat, which is based in Vienna, did not say when he died or give a cause of death.
The agency “regrets to inform with deepest sadness of the passing away of Director General Yukiya Amano,” the statement said, adding that the IAEA flag would be lowered to half-staff.
Amano held the post since 2009 and guided the agency through heated international negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. He oversaw the implementation of inspections of Tehran’s atomic energy activities.

Iran has reportedly arrested 17 citizens it alleges are working with the CIA, and said it is sentencing some of them to death.
Iran says that it discovered and broke up the CIA spying ring, arresting all the suspects that were involved during the 2019 Iranian calendar year, which ended in March.
“Defendants serving their sentences in prison mentioning tempting promises of CIA officers including emigration to USA, a proper job in America, and money,” reads a document from Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence obtained by CNN.
The news comes amid heightened tensions between Iran and the United States after stricter sanctions from the U.S. took effect on Tehran in May.

A Palestinian man was sentenced to life in prison by an Israeli military court for murdering an IDF soldier in the West Bank last year, the army said.
Abu Hamid was convicted in April of murdering Ronen Lubarsky, a special forces soldier who was struck in the head by a stone during an arrest operation in the West Bank on May 24, 2018.
The judge called Abu Hamid’s worldview a “murderous ideology” and ordered him to pay 258,000 shekels ($72,900) to the Lubarsky family, military court documents show.
Read more at i24NEWS.
{Matzav.com}