Congress is taking a first step toward addressing errors made by the FBI during its investigation of the Trump campaign and Russia, setting a House vote Wednesday on legislation that would impose new restrictions on the federal government’s surveillance tools. The measure is a compromise that reflects angst in both parties about the way the surveillance powers have been used but also a reluctance to strip those powers entirely from the government’s arsenal. The bill would renew several provisions the FBI sees as vital to fighting terrorism even as it aims to ensure stricter oversight of how the bureau conducts surveillance.

While Nefesh B’Nefesh has been excitedly preparing for the annual Mega Aliyah Event, ongoing health concerns surrounding the coronavirus have unfortunately led the organization to make the difficult decision to cancel this year’s expo which was planned to take place on March 15, 2020 in Teaneck, New Jersey. As an alternative, Nefesh B’Nefesh will be offering broadcast sessions and presentations on an all-encompassing slate of Aliyah resources for retirees, medical and young professionals, families and singles looking to make Aliyah.

A Republican-led Senate committee has postponed a subpoena vote as part of its investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, though the chairman of the panel says the probe related to the Democratic presidential front-runner will move forward. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee scrapped a vote Wednesday on a subpoena to interview and obtain documents from a witness in the panel’s probe of Burisma, a gas company in Ukraine that paid Hunter Biden to serve as a board member. The subject of the subpoena, Andrii Telizhenko, was a consultant to a lobbying firm that worked with Burisma.

Federal investigators took the unusual step of wiretapping a retired supervisor in the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s Miami office as part of an inquiry into whether sensitive case information was leaked to attorneys for suspected drug traffickers in Colombia, current and former law enforcement officials told The Associated Press. The inquiry comes amid a string of DEA scandals and has sent a chill through South Florida’s close-knit, fiercely competitive narco-defense circles because of former supervisor Manny Recio’s strong ties to federal law enforcement and private-sector lawyers.

Israel is limiting public events in closed areas to 100 people as part of increasingly strict measures to curb the spread of the new coronavirus in the country, PM Netanyahu announced Wednesday evening. The ban includes Shuls, Batei Midrashim, and weddings, the Health Ministry director-general Moshe Bar Siman-Tov elaborated. On Tuesday, Israel limited the gatherings to a maximum of 2,000 people, a substantial decrease from the previously allowed number of 5,000 people. The new instructions means that studies in universities might be postponed Netanyahu also said that younger people are not in danger from the virus, but older people are, and thus its spread must be prevented. “If you get sick and you’re in your 20s or 30s,” he said, “you’ll get better.

A biotech meeting at a hotel in downtown Boston appears to be the source of a cluster of the coronavirus in the U.S. — and a warning for employers who are still holding big gatherings as the outbreak spreads. Seventy of Massachusetts’ 92 confirmed cases have been linked to a meeting of executives with Biogen, a company based in Cambridge, next to Boston, that develops therapies for neurological diseases, state officials said. At least 11 people who have tested positive for the virus outside Massachusetts have been linked to the Feb. 26-27 meeting, including five in North Carolina, two in Indiana, and one each in New Jersey and Tennessee, officials said. Two tested positive in Europe, Biogen spokesman David Caouette said Wednesday.

The high school and beis medrash bachurim of Yeshiva Darchei Torah were out in force across the tristate area at 3:30 on Purim afternoon, raising funds for indigent families, when a fire broke out in a building that houses a beis medrash on the Yeshiva’s Far Rockaway campus. The blaze caused significant damage to the Yeshiva’s legendary ‘Waterview’ building, a 1956 structure that is currently home to the ‘New Mesivta beis medrash,’ a study- and prayer-hall that serves some 200 students in grades 9, 10, and 11.

Stocks are closing sharply lower on Wall Street, erasing more than 1,400 points from the Dow industrials, as investors wait for a more aggressive response from the U.S. government to economic fallout from the coronavirus. The Dow has now fallen 20% from its recent high, and the broader S&P 500 nearly as much. The losses accelerated after health authorities declared the outbreak a pandemic. The World Health Organization cited “alarming levels of inaction” by governments in corralling the virus. The market was also weighed down by a continued decline in oil prices, which fell another 4%. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below: Stocks are falling sharply on Wall Street Wednesday as fears of economic fallout from the coronavirus outbreak grip markets again.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday said it would allow the Trump administration to continue enforcing a policy that makes asylum-seekers wait in Mexico for U.S. court hearings, despite lower court rulings that the policy probably is illegal. The justices’ order, over a dissenting vote by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, overturns a lower court order that would have blocked the policy, at least for people arriving at the border crossings in Arizona and California. The lower court order was to have taken effect on Thursday. Instead, the “Remain in Mexico” policy will remain in force while a lawsuit challenging it plays out in the courts, probably at least through the end of President Donald Trump’s term in January.

Federal regulators waived a rule Wednesday that was causing airlines to fly nearly empty planes just to avoid losing takeoff and landing rights at major airports. The Federal Aviation Administration said it would suspend the rule through May 31 to help airlines that are canceling flights because of the new virus outbreak. The FAA assigns takeoff and landing rights, or “slots,” at a few big, congested airports. Airlines must use 80% of their highly coveted slots or risk forfeiting them. That FAA requirement — and especially a similar rule in Europe — led airlines to operate flights using those slots even if there were very few passengers. The FAA’s decision affects flights at John F.

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