The White House reluctantly dropped its bid to cut Social Security payroll taxes Thursday as Republicans unveil a $1 trillion COVID-19 rescue package, yielding to opposition to the idea among top Senate allies. “It won’t be in the base bill,” said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, speaking on CNBC about the payroll tax cut, killing the idea for now. The cut in the tax that finances Social Security and Medicare has been a major demand of President Donald Trump. “The president is very focused on getting money quickly to workers right now, and the payroll tax takes time,” Mnuchin said at the Capitol.

According to reports in Iranian media, an Israeli aircraft made an “aggressive” close pass near an Iranian airliner that was flying through Syrian airspace on Thursday. According to Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), Mahan Air Flight 1152 on its way to Beirut, Lebanon, from Tehran, Iran, was approached closely on Thursday by an aircraft purported to be Israeli. However, PressTV has reported it may have been American. “After this dangerous action by the Israeli fighter, the pilot of the passenger plane quickly reduced the altitude of the flight to avoid colliding with the Israeli fighter, which caused a number of passengers on the flight to be injured,” IRIB reported.

The Health Ministry reported a new record number of 2,085 new coronavirus cases on Thursday in the previous 24 hours, a “red line” sign that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had stated would call for a return to a lockdown – over 2,000 new cases in one day. The number of active cases has risen to 32,755 active cases, with 295 seriously ill patients – a number that is also above the “red line” that the prime minister previously announced – that if the number of seriously ill patients reaches 250, strict measures will have to be taken. There are 79 patients on ventilators and the death toll has risen to 433. Prof.

Dr. Zev ben Leah Zelenko has been in the news since March. You saw his picture, watched his videos and read about his relentless war on the Covid-19 virus. It was a relentless war but not one easily fought. Dr. Zelenko faced a lot of opposition in his fight to save lives. But he never second-guessed his decision to move forward, forging on with much courage and bravery. After all, saving lives and helping people has always been his priority. Dr. Zelenko left his comfort zone to help you, to help us and to help the wider community. In fact, he wanted to help an entire world taken hostage by a mystery pandemic. There are many people who survived Covid-19 due to Dr. Zelenko’s protocol which became world renowned, despite political opposition. It is time for payback.

A man was taken into Secret Service custody Thursday morning outside of Ivanka Trump’s Washington, D.C. home. The young man was seen in a black Mercedes parked outside of the home. Uniformed Secret Service agents were seen pulling the man out of his car, cuffing him and putting him in a van. Ivanka was nowhere near the confrontation as she is currently in Denver, Colorado, for a two-day tour. Her husband Jared Kushner was seen emerging from the home about 10 minutes after the confrontation. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) called Wednesday for the impeachment of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) over his handling of the state’s coronavirus outbreak. “The people we are lauding are actually making catastrophic decisions,” he said. “I think Gov. Cuomo should be impeached … for the disastrous decision he made to send patients with coronavirus back to nursing homes. … Virtually half his people who died were in nursing homes,” Paul said on Fox News’s “Rundown” morning podcast. (Source: The Hill)

A judge ordered the release from prison of President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer on Thursday, saying he believes the government retaliated against him for writing a book about Trump. Michael Cohen’s First Amendment rights were violated when he was ordered back to prison on July 9 after probation authorities said he refused to sign a form banning him from publishing the book or communicating publicly in other manners, U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein said. Hellerstein ordered Michael Cohen released from prison by 2 p.m. on Friday. Cohen, 53, sued federal prison officials and Attorney General William Barr on Monday, saying he was ordered back to prison because he was writing a book to be released before the November presidential election.

The Crown Heights community was host to an historic plasma drive on Wednesday, the first ever held in a location other than an official blood center. The drive was organized New York Blood Center in conjunction with the COVID Plasma Initiative, an organization dedicated to coordinating plasma drives in frum communities throughout the Tri States. During the recent months, the COVID Plasma Initiative, founded by Mordechai Serle, ran tens of drives which saw thousands from the frum community line up to donate plasma in an effort to save the lives of those suffering from COVID-19. Previous drives only tested the volunteers for antibodies and then had then travel to various locations to donate plasma.

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by Rabbi Yair Hoffman for 5tjt.com Because of the proliferation of back yard minyanim, numerous shailos come up about the kashrus of different letters in the private sifrei Torah that are used.  There is almost nothing available online for someone to check in an emergency. I have written a sefer called Mezuzah a Comprehensive Guide with a section in the back about each letter.  It is available on Amazon.  It has haskamos from Moreinu Rav Yisroel Belsky zt”l, Rav Aryeh Schechter a leading Sofer, Rav Dovid Kviat zt”l, Dayan Roth, and Rav Scheinberg zt”l.  Apologies for not including the pictures. The following is what to look for when checking each of the letters of a sefer Torah.