Manhattan, NY – Authorities were scrambling to restore electricity to Manhattan following a power outage that knocked out Times Square’s towering electronic screens and darkened marquees in the theater district and left businesses without electricity, elevators stuck and subway cars stalled. The New York City Fire Department said a transformer fire at West 64th Street [...]

The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly Friday to add billions of dollars to a dwindling compensation fund for 9/11 workers, in legislation honoring a former New York City police detective who had beseeched Congress to take care of those sick or dying after laboring in toxic debris sites.
The House voted 402 to 12 in favor of the legislation, which was amended days ago to honor Luis Alvarez, a New York Police Department first responder who told lawmakers on June 11: “You all said you would never forget. Well, I’m here to make sure that you don’t.”
He died less than three weeks later.

More than a dozen rabbis from the city of Elad near Tel Aviv issued an edict declaring all dogs bad and warning residents that keeping them will make them accursed.
The edict, dated to June 14, contains the signatures of all the Sephardic rabbis in Elad and the city’s chief rabbi, Mordechai Malka, the news site Bhol reported Friday. Most of Elad’s approximately 46,000 residents are charedi.
“We have heard and have seen that lately, a serious phenomenon has spread in our city Elad, in which young boys and children walk around publicly with dogs. This is strictly forbidden, as explained in the Gemara and by the Rambam, anyone raising a dog is accursed and especially in our city where many women and children are afraid of dogs,” the anti-canine edict states.

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This past Friday, the second of Tamuz, our dear brother and friend, Rabbi Tzemach Cunin A”H returned his holy soul to Hashem, when he was suddenly and unexpectedly taken from us, at the young age of 43. 
Tzemach loved his children dearly and all that were at the funeral still shudder at the excruciatingly difficult scene of his children saying their last goodbye. 
Tzemach was always there for anyone when they needed him, and his famous smile was sure to brighten up your day. Streaming into the shiva home by the hundreds, grief-stricken visitors tell of his warmth, genuine concern for every individual and humble lack of pretense.

At least 26 people were killed in an attack on a Somalian hotel by suspected al-Shabaab fighters, according to a senior state official.
The dead included two Americans, a Canadian and a Briton, as well as three each from Kenya and Tanzania, Ahmed Mohamed Islam, the president of the country’s Jubbaland state, said Saturday. At least 56 other people were injured, including two Chinese, in the attack on the Cas-casey hotel in the port town of Kismayo, he said at a news conference.
“Four attackers stormed the hotel,” Islam said. “One blew himself up in the first place. One was caught alive in the security operations, while the other two were killed.”

A widespread power outage in the heart of Manhattan today shut down some of the city’s subways as iconic parts of midtown, including Times Square and Rockefeller Center, went dark.
Con Edison said it was working to restore power to 42,000 customers, mostly on the west side of Manhattan. The utility did not immediately respond to phone messages, and it was unclear when they expected power to return.
Saturday’s outage took place on the anniversary of a 1977 New York City outage in which most of the city lost power. The city was also part of massive power outage in 2003.

Cars to be kept from Shazar Boulevard near Convention Center to make way for construction of tunnel and new Jerusalem Gateway commercial quarter

Activists, teachers, lawmakers and others urge firing of Rafi Peretz after he says he backs method that professionals say could endanger lives of vulnerable LGBTQ youths

Yiannis Lagos, on trial over murder of rapper, says he disagrees with party policy, in latest blow to ultra-nationalist faction that has seen political fortunes plummet