US Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) announced on Thursday that she won’t seek re-election next year, following a three-decade-long career in Congress as a staunch supporter of the US-Israel relationship.
“As the chairwoman of the appropriations subcommittee that writes the foreign-aid bill, I have advanced record funding for women’s health and basic education, especially for girls, around the world, a strong US-Israel relationship with bipartisan support and other investments that support American interests abroad,” she said in a statement.

Ousted WeWork CEO Adam Neumann is off of Forbes‘ list of the world’s wealthiest people. The financial media company has updated Neumann’s status on Thursday, from an estimated net worth of $4.1 billion earlier this year to just $600 million.
Forbes cited WeWork’s failure to complete an initial public offering in September and Neumann’s forced resignation from the company he co-founded as the causes of Neumann’s financial nosedive.
The Israeli coworking entrepreneur has been on the list since 2016, when he had amassed an estimated personal wealth of $1.5 billion.
 (CTech)
{Matzav.com}

At least one person is dead and one injured in connection to a fast-moving wildfire sweeping through Los Angeles County’s San Fernando Valley that fire officials anticipate could take days to contain.
The Saddleridge Fire has prompted mandatory evacuation orders for more than 100,000 people and has destroyed at least 25 homes. Meanwhile, dry, windy weather contributing to the fire’s spread may be worsening, officials said.
One man in his late 50s died overnight from cardiac arrest related to the Saddleridge Fire, and a firefighter suffered an eye injury but is recovering, Los Angeles Fire Chief Ralph Terrazas confirmed Friday morning.

Congress can seek eight years of President Donald Trump’s business records from his accounting firm, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., ruled Friday in one of several legal battles over access to the president’s financial data.
In a 2-1 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld Congress’ broad investigative powers and rejected the president’s bid to block lawmakers from subpoenaing the documents.
The case is one of several clashes between the Democrat-controlled House and the Republican president over Trump’s data that is expected to reach the Supreme Court. In this case, the judges ruled that Trump’s arguments – that the subpoenas were invalid because Congress lacked a “legitimate legislative purpose” for its subpoenas – were incorrect.

NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill recently sat down with CBS2’s Jessica Moore for one of his first interviews about officer suicides.
O’Neill said he knows his department is dealing with an epidemic.
“It is a mental health crisis in the NYPD,” he said. “We’ve had nine suicides so far this year. Prior to that, we average four to five per year for the last five years.”
A recent Department of Investigations report showed 44 of 174 retired NYPD officers said they considered getting help, but only two-thirds followed through.
Read more at NY POST.
{Matzav.com}

The Israeli Airports Authority estimates incoming and outgoing traffic at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel’s holiday season at 2.4 million passengers, including 1.1 million Israelis spending the upcoming holidays overseas. This amounts to a quarter of the 4.6 million tourists who visited Israel during the entire past year. The ministry says that the contribution to the Israeli economy of the tourists who visited over the past year is $6.4 billion.

A man has reportedly confessed to killing two people near a synagogue in Halle, Germany, this week and expressed anti-Semitic and extreme right-wing views.
The man, identified as Stephan B., appeared before a judge in Karlsruhe, Germany’s, Federal Court of Justice, CNN reported Friday.
Markus Schmitt, press officer of the prosecutor at the court, was quoted as saying “Stephan B. has admitted to the accusations and specifically to his anti-Semitic as well as right-wing extremist motives,” by the news network.
Read more at The Hill.
{Matzav.com}

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Yahadut Torah (UTJ) appealed the results of the 22nd Knesset election in which it lost out on an eighth Knesset seat by just a few dozen votes.
Attorneys Eitan Haberman, Michal Romano Bertholz and Uri Haberman today filed the petition on behalf of UTJ. The party contends that disruptions during the election caused it to lose the mandate to the Likud party.
If the appeal is accepted, former MK Yitzhak Pindrus would enter the Knesset in place of current Likud MK Kati Sheetrit.
Read more at Arutz Sheva.
{Matzav.com}

Following Wednesday’s deadly attack outside a German synagogue, Israel’s UN envoy has called on the international community to “declare war on antisemitism.”Ambassador Danny Danon urged the president of the Security Council and the UN to “condemn the terrorist attack in Germany and take action against anti-Semitic terrorism.”
“The scourge of anti-Semitism is spreading in Europe, but threatens the entire world,” Danon said. “The international community must declare war on anti-Semitism and act firmly to end hatred of the Jewish people around the world. Jews should not have to look over their shoulders in fear for their lives during prayer.”