New York
A New York woman was arrested for allegedly plotting to bomb the state Capitol in Albany after pledging allegiance to ISIS, according to the FBI.
The 35-year-old woman from Albany began planning the attack in July and intended to place a bomb in a DoorDash delivery bag. She purchased materials at a Home Depot while wearing a burqa and conducted reconnaissance of the Capitol, telling informants she wanted to kill senators and destroy as much of the building as possible. Bowie was monitored for weeks and arrested after receiving an inert explosive device from undercover agents. Authorities said she celebrated 9/11 online and expressed a desire for further assaults, including in Times Square. She faces charges related to providing material support to a terrorist organization.
A 72-year-old man was injured after being shoved from behind onto the subway tracks in an apparently unprovoked attack at the Rockefeller Center station. The victim avoided the third rail and was not struck by a train, climbing back onto the platform using a ladder. He was hospitalized in stable condition, and police took a person of interest into custody as the investigation continues. The suspect was charged with assault and reckless endangerment. The incident occurred on the northbound platform of the F and D lines.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Parks Commissioner Tricia Shimamura announced the launch of a 24-member “Renew Crew” dedicated to making faster repairs and improvements at parks and playgrounds across New York City. The team includes painters, electricians, plumbers and other trade specialists who will handle projects such as repainting playground equipment and fences, repairing park amenities, replacing protective playground flooring and restoring play equipment. The crew is designed to complete projects in three weeks or less and will operate seasonally from April through October. City Hall allocated $2.3 million for the initiative this year. Work has already begun at sites in each borough, including Dry Harbor Playground in Queens.
Israir announced that it has received final Federal Aviation Administration approval for its New York flights this fall. Israel’s second-largest carrier said last week that it plans to start its New York flights by Oct. 19, but could bring the launch date forward to the busy High Holiday season, which begins in September. The approval completes the regulatory process after earlier clearances from U.S. and Israeli authorities. Tickets are expected to go on sale soon for the Tel Aviv to New York route.
For the first time, officials have identified a victim of the September 11 attacks using genetic genealogy. The breakthrough is providing hope for nearly 1,100 families of victims still unidentified. The New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner, working with the NYPD, used forensic investigative genetic genealogy to identify the remains of a woman whose family requested anonymity. This marks the 1,654th victim identified from the World Trade Center attacks. About 40 percent of those killed that day remain without identified remains. The technique combines advanced DNA analysis with genealogical research and could aid further identifications.
New York City has reportedly already received 8.04 inches of rain this August, making it the wettest August in at least five years. Powerful storms have repeatedly soaked the city, including Thursday’s downpour that dumped nearly 3 inches and flooded streets. August 2021 remains wetter, with 10.32 inches recorded, and more showers are possible before the month ends. Central Park data from the National Weather Service confirm the elevated totals, which stand well above the monthly normal. Recent storms have caused localized flooding on roadways and in neighborhoods across the boroughs.
U.S.
The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, lifted a lower-court injunction blocking key parts of President Donald Trump’s executive order tightening mail-in voting rules ahead of the November midterms. The order allows the administration to move forward with requirements involving state-submitted lists of eligible mail voters and new ballot-envelope standards, including unique tracking barcodes. Further legal challenges remain possible. The ruling enables the Postal Service and other agencies to begin implementing the measures while litigation continues in lower courts. The majority found that the administration would suffer irreparable harm without the ability to proceed. Three liberal justices dissented from the emergency order.
Key West, Fla., elected Samuel Kaufman as the city’s first Jewish mayor in its nearly 200-year history. A lawyer currently serving as a city commissioner, Kaufman said he is proud to continue the long tradition of Jewish contributions to the island community. He defeated the incumbent with about 58 percent of the vote in the nonpartisan race. Kaufman has lived and worked in Key West for three decades.
The U.S. Justice Department has unsealed a superseding indictment charging 17 members of Iran’s Mabna Institute with allegedly conducting a years-long hacking campaign on behalf of the IRGC and other Iranian entities. Since at least 2013, the group allegedly targeted 144 U.S. universities, 178 foreign universities, dozens of companies and government agencies, stealing more than 31 terabytes of research and intellectual property. The defendants are accused of compromising thousands of academic email accounts worldwide. Nine of those charged were previously indicted in 2018.
A Florida police commander who performed CPR on a 1-year-old Jewish girl after she was pulled unconscious from a pool was honored for helping save her life. Bay Harbor Islands Police Commander Tomas Rego received several awards during a town council meeting for his actions on July 3, 2025, when he was off duty and conducting an additional patrol in the Indian Creek canal. Rego said he heard a woman screaming and saw her jump into a pool at a waterfront home. He rushed to the scene and found the girl, Noa, unconscious and not breathing. Rego immediately began performing CPR. After two rounds, the child began responding and has since fully recovered.
A man is accused of firing about 20 rounds from a semi-automatic rifle near Camp Modin, a Jewish summer camp in Belgrade, Maine, on Aug. 7 after confronting security over a damaged tractor. A deputy watched him fire from neighboring property while at least 400 campers and staff went into lockdown; casings suggested some shots may have been aimed toward basketball courts. No one was injured. He faces charges of reckless conduct, criminal threatening, terrorizing, and discharging a firearm near a dwelling. Released on bail with a condition keeping him 1,000 feet from the camp, he faces a protection-order request after a guard wrote that the man “harasses us by coming to the property line and screaming at us.”
Surfside Mayor Shlomo Danzinger said the man accused of beating a visibly Jewish visitor on Aug. 16 had previously harassed Jews near The Shul of Bal Harbour, including chasing and threatening people days earlier. Police say the man rode up to a New York couple on an electric scooter, directed slurs at them and the Jewish community, punched the husband in the head, and said, “Now you’re going to die” and “Walk away before I kill you.” He was charged with battery with prejudice and harassment or intimidation based on religious or ethnic heritage, then released on $6,000 bond with a stay-away order. said the suspect’s employer “did the right thing” by firing him and said he hopes the Florida attorney general’s office will pursue the case as a hate crime.
Israel
Knesset Education Committee Chairman MK Tzvi Sukkot of the Religious Zionist Party entered two Palestinian villages and used a sledgehammer on monuments he said honored terrorists who murdered Jews. Sukkot said he acted after the defense establishment did not carry out his request to dismantle the sites. One memorial named Yamen Taieb Ali Faraj, identified in Israeli court records as involved in dispatching the bomber in the 2003 Geha Junction attack that killed four people. The IDF said it had approved a guarded “tour of monuments,” not demolition, and accused Sukkot of acting “deceitfully and manipulatively”; troops then stopped the group and removed them. Officials added that a legal demolition of the monument had already been scheduled for the coming weeks.
Israeli prosecutors charged a Bedouin man with planning an ISIS-inspired car-bomb attack at Be’er-Sheva’s Forum nightclub. Authorities say he was radicalized online beginning in 2022, communicated with someone presenting himself as a Palestinian terrorist, and contacted Islamic State supporters about joining the group in Syria. The indictment alleges that around February 2026 he planned to drive an explosives-laden vehicle to the club and detonate it remotely while hundreds of people were inside.
The IDF said military prosecutors ordered criminal investigations into two Gaza incidents after reviews by the General Staff’s fact-finding mechanism, which has examined about 150 cases since Oct. 7, 2023. One probe covers the January 2024 deaths of 6-year-old Hind Rajab, members of her family, and two Palestinian Red Crescent paramedics sent to reach them. The military acknowledged for the first time that troops fired on the family’s vehicle and cited “alleged failures in the coordination of the movement of the Palestine Red Crescent ambulance.” A second investigation concerns the March 2025 killing of 15 Palestinians in Tel al-Sultan, Rafah, including medical workers and a U.N. employee, after prosecutors found “reasonable suspicion of a criminal offense.” Prosecutors declined criminal probes in three other cases involving aid groups, including the April 2024 strike that killed seven World Central Kitchen employees.
Israel’s Chief Rabbinate Council approved a binding range for the sum written into a kesubah, the Jewish marriage contract that records a husband’s financial obligation to his wife. The amount may not fall below 36,000 shekels or exceed 360,000 shekels, about $11,000 to $110,000. The Aug. 16 decision followed a committee led by Sephardi Chief Rabbi David Yosef after years of rabbinical-court disputes over “imaginary” pledges some grooms could not pay. Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Kalman Meir Ber said grooms had committed to sums “they have neither the intention nor the ability to pay, thereby undermining the very halachic meaning of the document.” He added that a minimum was still required “because the kesubah is intended to provide the woman with real financial security.” Marriage-registration procedures are to be amended so new contracts fall within the range.
Israel’s Defense Ministry is advancing a multiyear space program to expand round-the-clock, all-weather satellite intelligence and build more resilient military communications. Reporting on the plan says it also sets aside funding for offensive space systems, including weapons to protect Israeli satellites from hostile spacecraft and systems able to strike targets on Earth from orbit. Defense Minister Israel Katz has said space gives the IDF an edge beyond Military Intelligence and the Air Force. “The space dimension allows us to photograph both day and night, penetrate clouds, and create additional high-resolution imaging capabilities,” he said of the Ofek 19 satellite. Katz has separately argued Israel should become a leading space power, saying no country yet has a proven attack-from-space capability.
Jerusalem opened the first stretch of its Green Line light rail on Aug. 21, linking HaTurim station near Mahane Yehuda Market with Malha and creating Israel’s first interconnected light-rail network through a transfer to the existing Red Line. The roughly 7-kilometer section has 12 new stations plus HaTurim and serves the International Convention Center, the government complex, Hebrew University’s Givat Ram campus, Teddy Stadium, Pais Arena, and Malha Mall. Trains are expected every eight minutes at peak hours. The opening followed years of delays, including wartime setbacks, and is the first of several Green Line phases; service toward Gilo is planned later this year and toward Mount Scopus in 2027.
World
Ontario Premier Doug Ford said that Canada should be ready to cut electricity exports and critical minerals to the United States if the trade fight worsens, saying “everything is on the table.” He said Ontario power supplies about 1.5 million U.S. homes and businesses in New York, Michigan and Minnesota and added, “I’ll do whatever it takes.” Of minerals, Ford said, “I’ll cut them off,” asking what American industry would do without high-grade nickel and uranium refined in Ontario. The warning followed collapsed talks and new U.S. tariff threats on Canadian autos and steel. Prime Minister Mark Carney has pledged targeted retaliation. Alberta’s government rejected cutting off oil and gas as “not a viable option.” Ford previously imposed a brief 25 percent surcharge on electricity exports to those three states before both sides pulled back.
A Jewish visitor to Warsaw said a taxi ride turned hostile after the driver saw her Star of David necklace, asked if she was Jewish and began shouting religious slogans. The woman said the trip was uneventful until the driver, who said he was from the Caucasus and had lived in Turkey, noticed the pendant. “He suddenly saw the Star of David and started asking where I was from and whether I was Jewish,” she said. She said he grew angry, pulled out a Quran, shouted “Allahu Akbar,” accused her of murder and threatened to put her out of the car. She recorded parts of the encounter and posted the video. “I was afraid at first, and then I became extremely angry,” she said. “I’m tired of being afraid.” She said the driver ultimately took her to her hotel; Warsaw’s Jewish community contacted authorities, and the company told her she would not be paired with him again.
Iranian state-linked Channel 3 aired a roughly three-minute segment threatening President Donald Trump’s 20-year-old son, Barron. The clip, circulated by media tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was titled in translations as “Where to kill Barron Trump?” and claimed his movements were “fully monitored.” A voiceover said a $10 million bounty had been offered and that “many would be willing” to act. The broadcast followed similar IRGC-linked videos targeting Melania Trump and the president. Secret Service spokesman Nate Herring said the agency “is aware of the video and investigates anything that can be perceived as a threat toward our protectees,” adding that it does not discuss protective intelligence.