YWN regrets to inform you of the petirah of R’ Tzaddik haLevi “Charlie Buttons” Nassofer Z”L, a beloved personality and cherished fixture in the Crown Heights community. He was 81 years old. Known to generations simply as “Charlie Buttons,” R’ Tzaddik Halevi brought joy and warmth to countless simchos throughout Crown Heights over the decades. With his signature smile, colorful attire adorned with pins and buttons – many of them promoting the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s mivtzoim and other Yiddishe messages – Charlie stood out in both appearance and in heart. He was often seen at the Rebbe’s farbrengens and in 770, always wearing his signature overalls and button-covered headgear.

A remarkable story has been making waves across the chareidi world centering around a mysterious note received by a young yungerman from the Yenuka, the renowned gaon Rav Shlomo Yehuda Be’eri. The note, now revealed, is prompting widespread discussion and awe.

Senator Bernie Sanders sidestepped a direct answer Wednesday when pressed on whether Joe Biden should have stepped aside earlier in the 2024 election cycle, saying that the challenges facing the Democratic Party go far deeper than Biden’s timing.
“Bret, I’m not going back a year,” Sanders told Fox News anchor Bret Baier during a segment of “Special Report,” after Baier asked if Biden made a mistake by staying in the race for too long.
Sanders made it clear he had no interest in revisiting that particular debate.
“But isn’t that a big part of where the Democratic Party is?” Baier pushed.
“No, no, it’s not,” Sanders replied. “It’s nothing to do with Biden right now or Kamala Harris.”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency faced fresh upheaval Thursday just weeks before the start of hurricane season when the acting administrator was pushed out and replaced by another official from the Department of Homeland Security. The abrupt change came the day after Cameron Hamilton, a former Navy SEAL who held the job for the last few months, testified on Capitol Hill that he did not agree with proposals to dismantle an organization that helps plan for natural disasters and distributes financial assistance. “I do not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency,” he said Wednesday.

Judge Menachem Mizrachi, the President of the Rishon L’Tzion Magistrate’s court, slammed the police on Thursday for their conduct in the Qatargate affair, including their overnight arrest of Yonatan Urich, a former advisor to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu who is a suspect in the affair. The police re-arrested Urich only minutes before he was due to be released from house arrest. The police summoned him for questioning on Wednesday evening and his wife was told to pick him up at 8:00 p.m. However, after she arrived, along with her baby, she was forced to wait outside the building until 12:30 a.m., when she was informed that the interrogation was over and her husband had been re-arrested. Mizrachi rapped the police, saying that Urich’s arrest was unlawful.

Bill Gates has strongly criticized Elon Musk, accusing him of endangering vulnerable populations by drastically slashing America’s international aid commitments.
“The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” Gates told the Financial Times during an extensive interview that touched on global health and philanthropy.
He went even further, stating, “I’d love for him to go in and meet the children that have now been infected with HIV because he cut that money.”

A sweeping new survey by the Pew Research Center, which polled over 50,000 people in 36 countries, found that 83% of Israeli adults believe in Hashem, a figure that places Israel in the upper-middle tier globally. But beneath that surface lies a telling divide: among Israelis with only a high school education or less, belief in Hashem stands at 83%. Among the more educated, it drops sharply to 64%—one of the steepest education-related gaps observed anywhere in the world. Perhaps the most striking revelation is that Israel is the only country surveyed where men pray more than women—40% of men report davening daily, compared to just 28% of women. In nearly every other country, the pattern is reversed.

A Manhattan man with alleged ties to anti-Israel terror groups has been indicted on federal hate crime charges after authorities say he violently assaulted three visibly Jewish victims at pro-Israel demonstrations over a nine-month span. Tarek Bazrouk, 20, was arrested Wednesday morning and now faces three counts of hate crimes, each carrying a potential 10-year prison sentence. The indictment was unsealed in the Southern District of New York, with Bazrouk set to appear before U.S. Magistrate Judge Stewart D. Aaron later today. According to prosecutors, Bazrouk carried out a campaign of targeted violence between April 2024 and January 2025, repeatedly attacking Jewish individuals at public protests related to the Israel-Gaza war.

Chief Justice John Roberts made it clear on Wednesday that stepping down from the Supreme Court isn’t something on his mind. Still, he revealed that he had once asked two close friends to keep an eye on his well-being and let him know if he was no longer fit for the bench.
“I’ve sat down with them and said, ‘I want at the appropriate time’ — because you don’t always notice that you’re slipping — ‘I want the two of you to tell me if it’s time to go,’” Roberts told a group of legal professionals at an event in Buffalo, New York.
He then shared the humorous way the conversation unfolded. “It was a long pause, and at once, the two of them said, ‘It’s time to go.’ So I said, ‘Alright, never mind,’” he continued.

As the Social Security Administration undergoes massive changes and staffing cuts ushered in by the Trump administration, an increasing share of older Americans — particularly Democrats — aren’t confident the benefit will be available to them, a poll shows. The share of older Americans who are “not very” or “not at all” confident has risen somewhat since 2023, according to the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in April. In the poll, about 3 in 10 U.S. adults age 60 or older are “not very” or “not at all” confident that Social Security benefits will be there for them when they need it, up from about 2 in 10 in an AP-NORC poll conducted in 2023. That shift looks very different depending on older Americans’ political party, though.

President Trump once again tapped into his pool of allies from Fox News on Thursday, selecting “The Five” co-host Jeanine Pirro to take on the role of interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.
“Jeanine is incredibly well qualified for this position, and is considered one of the Top District Attorneys in the History of the State of New York,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “She is in a class by herself.”
“Congratulations Jeanine!”
Earlier in the day, Trump withdrew the nomination of Ed Martin for the same role after key Republican senators raised concerns and declined to back his appointment.

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he is naming Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, a former county prosecutor and elected judge, to be the top federal prosecutor for the nation’s capital after abandoning his first pick for the job. Pirro, who joined Fox News in 2006, co-hosts the network’s show “The Five” on weekday evenings. She was elected as a judge in New York’s Westchester County Court in 1990 before serving three terms as the county’s elected district attorney. Trump tapped Pirro to at least temporarily lead the nation’s largest U.S. Attorney’s office after pulling his nomination of conservative activist Ed Martin Jr. for the position earlier on Thursday. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said he was naming Pirro as the interim U.S.

The Yesh Atid refused to support a bill submitted by National Unity MK Matan Kahana on Wednesday regarding pension payments to widows of fallen IDF soldiers. Why? The law was submitted jointly with Otzma Yehudit MK Limor Son Har Melech. The Yesh Atid party boycotted the vote because they refused to have anything to do with a bill submitted by a member of Itamar Ben Gvir’s party, and the bill failed to win a majority in a plenum vote. A furor broke out in the Knesset, with the members of Benny Gantz’s National Unity party hurling insults at Yesh Atid members. MK Pnina Tamano-Shata yelled: “You’re a garbage opposition.” Kahana wrote on X: “It turns out you actually can mobilize.

Watch this brief yet profoundly touching story shared by Shimmy J, illustrating how one Rebbi’s impact transformed a young child’s life forever.

The United States has decided to no longer insist that Saudi Arabia formally recognize Israel as a precondition for advancing discussions on civilian nuclear cooperation, according to two individuals familiar with the matter, speaking to Reuters just days before President Donald Trump is scheduled to travel to the region.
This marks a significant policy shift by Washington, signaling its willingness to ease a key demand that has long tied nuclear discussions to broader diplomatic recognition. Under Joe Biden’s administration, nuclear cooperation was closely linked to normalization with Israel and Saudi Arabia’s pursuit of a formal security alliance with the U.S.

U.S. President Donald J. Trump has said that negotiations between the U.S. and Russia/Ukraine continue. The president again called for a 30-day ceasefire, saying that if said ceasefire is refused, “the U.S. and its partners will impose further sanctions.”

BREAKING: President Trump names Jeanine Pirro as the acting U.S. attorney for D.C.

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