The Senate overwhelmingly approved a new North American trade agreement Thursday that rewrites the rules of trade with Canada and Mexico and gives President Donald Trump a major policy win before senators turn their full attention to his impeachment trial. The vote was 89-10. The measure goes to Trump for his signature. It would replace the 25-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement, known as NAFTA, which tore down most trade barriers and triggered a surge in trade. But Trump and other critics blamed that pact for encouraging U.S. companies to move their manufacturing plants south of the border to take advantage of low-wage Mexican laborers.

The FBI, in a change of policy, is committing to inform state officials if local election systems have been breached, federal officials told The Associated Press. In the past, the FBI would alert local governments about attacks on their electoral systems without automatically sharing that information with the state. That meant state officials, left in the dark, might be in a position of certifying the accuracy of election results without realizing there had been problems in individual counties. Alerting local governments about breaches, but not the states, was in keeping with FBI policy of protecting the privacy and identities of the actual hacking victim.

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Rep. Liz Cheney, a junior but rising GOP leader in the House, is opting to stay on that chamber’s leadership track rather than run for a Senate seat in her home state of Wyoming. The move keeps the combative second-term lawmaker positioned to advance in the House GOP hierarchy. Cheney told her colleagues at a closed-door meeting Thursday that she’s staying put. Cheney was a senior State Department official during the administration of President George W. Bush and is the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who once occupied the statewide House seat that she now holds. “I believe I can have the biggest impact for the people of Wyoming by remaining in leadership in the House of Representatives and working (to) take our Republican majority back,” Liz Cheney said in a statement.

The man charged in an attack at a suburban New York Hanukkah celebration that left five people wounded, one critically, pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and other charges on Thursday. Grafton Thomas appeared in Rockland County Court. On Monday, he also pleaded not guilty to federal hate crime charges. Thomas was arrested hours after five people were stabbed at an attack at a rabbi’s home in Monsey, an Orthodox Jewish community north of New York City. His lawyer, Michael Sussman, has said Thomas suffers from mental illness and is not responsible for his actions. Prosecutor Dominic Crispino said in court on Thursday that Sussman should resign from the case because he videotaped evidence being taken out of Thomas’ cabin and therefore became a witness, the Journal News reported.

Chief Justice John Roberts is likely to play a modest role when he presides over the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, in keeping with his frequently repeated insistence that judges are not politicians. Roberts made the short trip from the Supreme Court to the Capitol on Thursday to be sworn in as the trial’s presiding officer, a duty that is mandated by the Constitution. Wearing an unadorned black judicial robe, Roberts took an oath in which he promised to do “impartial justice” in the third presidential impeachment trial in U.S. history, then asked senators to do the same.

FBI agents on Thursday arrested a former Canadian Armed Forces reservist and two other men who are linked to a violent white supremacist group and were believed to be heading to a pro-gun rally next week in Virginia’s capital. The three men are members of The Base and were arrested on federal charges in a criminal complaint unsealed in Maryland, according to a Justice Department news release. Tuesday’s complaint charges Canadian national Patrik Jordan Mathews, 27, and Brian Mark Lemley Jr., 33, of Elkton, Maryland, with transporting a firearm and ammunition with intent to commit a felony.

The attached video has gone viral on Thursday. The video was taken from a security camera footage in New Square, and has Wednesday’s date and time stamp on it. Watch as a woman is crossing the street (in the crosswalk), when a Rockland County Sheriff slowly drives right into the woman. Thankfully, the woman was not injured.   (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
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Metivta Tiferet Torah of Monsey is hosting their Open House on Sunday January 19 in Brooklyn featuring an address by Rabbi David Ozeirey. For over a decade the kol torah of Yeshivat Tiferet Torah’s top-notch overwhelmingly successful and active bet midrash and kollel programs has permeating its walls forming a new generation of talmidei chachamim all under the leadership of Rosh HaYeshiva Rabbi Nissan Hakakian. Metivta Tiferet Torah seemed the next logical step for an already bustling beacon of torah thought in Monsey. Established at the behest of many gedolei yisrael the high school was developed to enrich the Sephardic mesorah in each talmid that passes through its doors.

In a dramatic procession across the U.S. Capitol, House Democrats carried the formal articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump to the Senate, setting the stage for only the third trial to remove a president in American history. Trump complained anew Wednesday that it was all a “hoax,” even as fresh details emerged about his efforts in Ukraine. The ceremonial pomp and protocol by the lawmakers prosecuting the case against Trump moved the impeachment out of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Democratic-run House to the Republican-majority Senate, where the president’s team is mounting a defense aiming for swift acquittal. “Today we will make history,″ Pelosi said as she signed the documents, using multiple pens to hand out and mark the moment.