Governor Andrew Cuomo is now reporting there are 89 confirmed cases of coronavirus in New York State. The governor declared a state of emergency in New York because of the increasingly rapid spread of COVID-19. The declaration will assist the state in hiring and purchasing during the crisis. “This is labor-intensive. We need the staffing, we need the purchasing,” Cuomo said. Speaking at a Saturday afternoon news conference in Albany, Cuomo gave the following updated breakdown of the total number of cases: 11 in New York City; 70 in Westchester County; 2 in Rockland County; 4 in Nassau County; and 2 in Saratoga County. Of the total 89 cases, ten of those patients are currently hospitalized, Cuomo said.

Celebrating and Perpetuating the Ahavas Hatorah of The Siyum The Siyum. The name alone evokes the feelings of our passion and our pride as we all joined together at the greatest expression of k’vod Shamayim in modern times.  Although the event of The Siyum has passed – The Siyum still lives on. As Rav Shmuel Kamenetzky emotionally said as he made the hadran, a Siyum is not about completing, but starting anew. Beginning the next step of learning is an integral part of a Siyum celebration.  Indeed, The Siyum has inspired unprecedented Torah learning, with hundreds of thousands around the world now learning Daf Yomi. And now we join to celebrate this explosion of Torah learning – and the continuation of The Siyum’s power.

Facebook on Thursday began taking down ads for the reelection campaign of President Donald Trump that direct people to a survey labeled a “census,” hours after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said people would confuse it with the once-a-decade head count. Facebook said in a statement that it was enforcing its policies to prevent confusion over the 2020 census, which begins next week for most people. “There are policies in place to prevent confusion around the official U.S. Census and this is an example of those being enforced,” the Facebook statement said. Earlier in the day, Pelosi had called the survey sponsored by the Trump reelection campaign, “an absolute lie.” “A lie that is consistent with the misrepresentation policy of Facebook,” Pelosi said.

March 6, 2020 Dear Parents, All of our schools met today to discuss the ongoing outbreak of COVID-19 (Coronavirus). After taking into consideration nationally published information by the CDC, state and local health departments, Johns Hopkins University’s recent precautionary measures to cancel public events, the precautions of other communities and institutions, and Torah Umesorah’s recent recommendations for schools provided by their medical consultants and Daas Torah, we have decided that it is unfortunately necessary to cancel all upcoming extra curricular Purim events for our schools. Regular classroom-based learning and activities will continue as normal, unless otherwise guided.

A federal judge on Thursday sharply rebuked Attorney General William Barr’s handling of the special counsel’s Russia report, saying Barr had made “misleading public statements” to spin the investigation’s findings in favor of President Donald Trump and had shown a “lack of candor.” U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton delivered the criticism in a 23-page order in which he directed the Justice Department to provide him with an unredacted version of the report so that he could decide if any additional information from the document could be publicly disclosed. The scolding was unusually blunt, with Walton saying Barr had appeared to make a “calculated attempt” to influence public opinion about the report in ways favorable to Trump.

A hotel in a Baltimore suburb on Thursday canceled the reservation of the Yeshiva University men’s basketball team over fears of novel coronavirus, the coach of the Maccabees told The Associated Press. Later Thursday, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore said the games on campus involving Yeshiva and other teams in the NCAA Division III basketball tournament would be played without fans in the stands because of three confirmed cases of coronavirus in Maryland. Yeshiva coach Elliot Steinmetz said the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel in Pikesville canceled the reservation, forcing the team to book rooms at a different hotel. A student at the Orthodox Jewish university has tested positive for the virus. “I made it very clear to the hotel that it’s discrimination,” Steinmetz said.

Crossing more borders, the new coronavirus hit a milestone Friday, infecting more than 100,000 people worldwide as it wove itself deeper into the daily lives of millions, infecting the powerful, the unprotected poor and the vast masses in between. The virus, which has killed nearly 3,400 people, edged into more and more U.S. states, popped up in at least four new countries and even breached the halls of the Vatican. It forced mosques in Iran and beyond to halt weekly Muslim prayers. It brought Israeli and Palestinian authorities together to block pilgrims from Jesus’ birthplace in Bethlehem. And it upended Japan’s plans for the Olympic torch parade.

Video showing New York City police officers arresting a young black man sparked outrage and elicited questions about the amount of force used to make the arrest in a city where mistrust of police remains high more than five years after Eric Garner’s death from an officer’s chokehold. Fitzroy Gayle, 20, pleads for help in the video, recorded by a woman who then tweeted it, as several officers wrestle him into submission Wednesday evening on a Brooklyn sidewalk. When Gayle asked a lone plainclothes officer why he was being stopped, the officer did not appear to answer before uniformed backup rushed in. Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said Thursday he was ordering an internal investigation. “This was painful to watch,” Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted.

The global march of the new virus triggered a vigorous appeal from the World Health Organization for governments to pull out “all the stops” to slow the epidemic, as it drained color from India’s spring festivals, closed Bethlehem’s Nativity Church and blocked Italians from visiting elderly relatives in nursing homes. As China, after arduous weeks, appeared to be winning its epic, costly battle against the coronavirus, the fight was revving up in newly affected areas of the globe, unleashing disruptions that profoundly impacted billions of people. The U.N. health agency urged all countries to “push this virus back,” a call to action reinforced by dramatic surges in new cases. The virus has infected 98,000 people and killed over 3,300. “This is not a drill.

On March 5, 2020, members of the Jersey City Police Department working in collaboration with the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office, arrested and charged Taylor Stackhouse, age 38, of Jersey City with terroristic threats and related bias crimes for threatening the property manager of the building where the kosher deli is located on MLK Drive on Tuesday. Stackhouse was arrested Thursday afternoon without incident on Dwight Street and Bergen Avenue in Jersey City. Stackhouse has been charged with two counts of second-degree Bias Intimidation and one count of fourth-degree Bias Intimidation, as well as two counts of Terroristic Threats and a Petty Disorderly Persons Harassment charge.