The parole board of Israel’s Prison Service has granted former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert early release from prison. Prison Service spokesman Assaf Librati says the board on Thursday granted Olmert’s request to reduce a third of his 27-month incarceration sentence. Barring unforeseen developments, he will be freed on Sunday, July 2. Olmert was convicted in Read More…
UNITED NATIONS — North Korea’s U.N. ambassador warned the United States and the rest of the world Wednesday that his country will keep building up its nuclear arsenal regardless of sanctions, pressure or military attack. Kim In Ryong told the U.N. Security Council that the more than 50-year confrontation between North Korea and the United Read More…
RIO DE JANEIRO — Security forces in Brazil’s capital have detained a minor who allegedly rammed a car through a gate in an apparent attempt to reach the presidential palace. A statement from the president’s office says that around 7 p.m. Wednesday a vehicle drove at a high speed toward the Alvorada Palace. Guards first Read More…
LAS VEGAS — Police created a “human decoy,” posing a mannequin like a sleeping homeless person, to catch a man they believe bludgeoned two men to death and injured a third in downtown Las Vegas. They caught Shane Allen Schindler, who admitted Tuesday he attacked the mannequin with a hammer, thinking it was a real Read More…
PONTIAC, Mich. — Well, it was a nice try. The Michigan appeals court says in a ruling released Wednesday that a man who was mistakenly told that he would receive a $2.7 million severance can’t collect the windfall. Francois El-Hayek was laid off from Trico Products in suburban Detroit in 2014. He was told that Read More…
RANCHO CORDOVA, Calif. — Authorities say they are investigating the death of a toddler found under some blankets in the back of an SUV parked the wrong way on a Northern California street. Sacramento County Sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Tony Turnbull says the child was found unresponsive Wednesday in the backseat by Rancho Cordova police officers Read More…
If the Russian military, despite its boasts, failed to kill Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a May 28 airstrike, one American officer can certainly sympathize. As he outlines in his new book, “Drone Warrior: An Elite Soldier’s Inside Account of the Hunt for America’s Most Dangerous Enemies” (Dey Street), Brett Velicovich was part Read More…
Marissa Mayer said she is “friends” with Travis Kalanick, defending Uber’s ex-chief executive against critics who say he presided over a toxic frat-boy scene at the ride-hailing giant. Kalanick has been accused of encouraging a “bro culture” at the company, stealing trade secrets, fostering an environment of sexual harassment and permitting the use of illegal Read More…
American elections are more vulnerable to future cyberattacks by Russia because both Presdient Trump and former President Barack Obama failed to properly respond to Moscow’s meddling in 2016, says a former US ambassador to NATO. In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Nicholas Burns, a retired career diplomat and State Department official under the George Read More…
A New York judge has dismissed a claim in a civil suit that alleged Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had committed fraud while serving on the board of Relativity Media, a Hollywood studio. Justice Charles Ramos said the claim by a Relativity lender failed to tie Mnuchin to “a specific factual misrepresentation.” Lender RKA Financing sued Read More…
Walmart is escalating its war of words with Amazon by sending veiled messages to the trucking companies that haul its merchandise from its distribution centers and stores, telling them if they do business with the Web giant it may not want to work with them, according to an industry expert. “I know that Walmart has Read More…
A former Catholic elementary school teacher in Canada was sentenced Tuesday to one year in prison after pleading guilty to having a sexual relationship with a teenage student. Christina Albini, who worked at the King Catholic Elementary School in Windsor, Ontario, located across the border from Detroit, was arrested last July in connection with the Read More…
On the eve of a key House vote on immigration enforcement legislation, President Trump Wednesday invited grieving families to the White House and pledged an immigration crackdown on their behalf. “You lost the people that you love because our government refused to enforce our nation’s immigration laws,” Trump told families whose loved ones were killed Read More…
Commuters coming into New York City from the north, south, east and west are irate. The Long Island Railroad, New Jersey Transit, Amtrak and Metro North — not to mention the New York City subway, which moves 5.7 million people every weekday — have all been plagued by dramatic breakdowns and crashes over the past Read More…
President Trump seems to be confirming something I wrote a couple weeks ago — the White House may be bugged. When Trump finally admitted recently that he doesn’t have tapes of his conversations with former FBI Director James Comey, the president also hinted that the US intelligence and law enforcement officials might have his office Read More…
The Federal Reserve doesn’t have a nifty phrase for skyrocketing stock prices — like when former Fed chief Alan Greenspan said back in the 1990s that people were “irrationally exuberant” — but it’s clear that central bank brass are getting worried enough about the marts that they are starting to express their concern out loud. Read More…
Big banks passed the Federal Reserve’s annual stress test of their financial health — and responded with a giveaway to investors worth billions of dollars in the form of dividends and share buybacks. The passing grades mark the first time since the Wall Street crisis of 2008 that all 34 tested firms were deemed healthy Read More…
DENVER — A man on a private rafting trip in central Colorado has died after falling into the Arkansas River. The Chaffee County sheriff’s office says the man fell into the water Tuesday afternoon in the Browns Canyon area while traveling over Class III, or intermediate, rapids. Members of the rafting party said the victim Read More…
A Canadian mother who was devastated to learn she had stage 4 cancer days after suffering the stillbirth of her son, has surpassed her fundraising goal to donate cuddle cots, workshops and money toward cancer research in his name. In January, Loan Woll, who was 34 weeks pregnant, was rushed to the hospital after she Read More…
A North Carolina teen who was kidnapped and held prisoner for more than a year was fed in exchange for sexual favors, according to authorities. Michael Ren WysolovskiGwinnett County Hailey Burns, 17, had been missing since May 2016 until the FBI rescued her Saturday from her alleged captor Michael Ren Wysolovski’s home in Duluth, Georgia. Read More…
The Trump administration has set new criteria for visa applicants from six mainly Muslim nations and all refugees that require a “close” family or business tie to the United States. The move comes after the Supreme Court partially restored President Donald Trump’s executive order that was widely criticized as a ban on Muslims. The new Read More…
Teachers across the country are moving to the head of the class when it comes to learning how to use a gun. With mass shootings seemingly becoming common place in classrooms across the country, teachers are learning how fire grade-A shots and starting to carry weapons in class. It’s an attempt to better protect their Read More…
PORTLAND, Ore. — A 6-year-old Oregon boy was hospitalized Wednesday in critical condition with severe heat exhaustion after he was found locked inside his family’s car trunk on a hot day, police said. Police hope to review surveillance video from a camera attached to a neighbor’s house to figure out how the boy got into Read More…
License and registration, please! A tiny tot cruising in his light-blue Ford vehicle was pulled over by Colorado cops for “reckless adorability,” Fort Collins Police posted to Facebook. The local police department received a report of the young motorist and sent the fuzz to the scene. “Officer Ryan located the young subject, gave him a Read More…
SYDNEY — Australian police charged a top Vatican cardinal on Thursday with multiple counts of historical sexual assault offenses, a stunning decision certain to rock the highest levels of the Holy See. Cardinal George Pell, Pope Francis’ chief financial adviser and Australia’s most senior Catholic, is the highest-ranking Vatican official to ever be charged in Read More…
KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. — Police in southern Oregon arrested a man accused of breaking into a woman’s home, kidnapping her baby and taking the child onto a roof. Klamath County District Attorney Eve Costello says the mother of the 13-month-old boy called 9-1-1 early Wednesday, saying she was stabbed while trying to protect the child Read More…
BOSTON — A man suspected of using a rock to shatter a glass panel on the New England Holocaust Memorial is mentally ill, his lawyer said Wednesday, as elected officials and religious groups came together to condemn the vandalism. “As a city we stand with the Jewish community,” Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said at the Read More…
Mayor de Blasio and Congress are putting the lives of New Yorkers at risk. De Blasio by his stubborn refusal to comply with federal law and cooperate with immigration authorities; Congress by its overreaction in attempting to cut homeland-security funds that the NYPD and FDNY need to protect New York from terrorist attacks. On Thursday, Read More…
Keep your hand on your wallet: The Legislature is back in session, and lawmakers are addicted to doling out taxpayer cash to their pet causes — while wiping away their fingerprints. As the Empire Center for Public Policy noted last week, the state Senate and Assembly managed to funnel $52 million to “hand-picked recipients” — Read More…
Paul Massey’s surprise withdrawal from the mayoral race clears Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis’ way to the Republican nomination and a vigorous challenge to Mayor de Blasio’s re-election. A primary fight is usually a good thing, toughening up the eventual winner for the final faceoff. If Massey had done nothing else, his early entry got the beat-de Read More…
‘God save the United States and this honorable court.” Even with all the cynicism in our politics, that prayer is still the traditional announcement of the opening of a session of the highest court in our land. And it’s starting to look like one good deed begets another. The Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Read More…
City University is facing probes into its spending. Its operating funds are flat. Tuition’s headed up. Gov. Cuomo has demanded reforms. Yet on Monday, the CUNY board hiked salaries for top brass. No joke: As The Post’s Carl Campanile reported, presidents, veeps, deans and others at CUNY colleges will see pay bumps of up to Read More…
Democrats are angry — and this time it isn’t at President Trump. Instead, they’re fuming over revelations about the Obama administration’s decision not to go public last August with information about Russia’s attempts to intervene in the US presidential election. As one former Obama official told The Washington Post, “I feel like we sort of Read More…
After going two and a half days without seating a single juror, lawyers in Martin Shkreli’s Ponzi trial went into overdrive Wednesday afternoon and picked 12 people to weigh the fate of the reviled “Pharma bro.” The seven women and five men on the panel include a female pharmacist who works in a hospital and Read More…
The Trump Organization is getting paid millions of dollars by the owners of a Toronto hotel so they can remove Trump’s name from the building. In a deal announced late Tuesday, Trump was bought out of its management contract at the 65-story Trump International Hotel and Tower Toronto. The luxury property will likely be reflagged Read More…
From the right: Let Consumers Repeal ObamaCare Conservative critics are right that the Senate GOP replacement bill “doesn’t go nearly far enough to lower health insurance premiums,” says Robert L. Pollock at Real Clear Politics. So he suggests adding “simple language” to create “an Optional Federal Charter for health insurance regulation.” Health care remains so Read More…
Billionaire Leon Black’s private-equity firm Apollo Global Management has raised a record $23.5 billion for the world’s biggest-ever buyout fund, according to a report. The boffo raise eclipses the previous record set by billionaire Stephen Scharzman’s Blackstone Group, which cobbled together a $21.7 billion fund at the height of the buyout boom in 2007, the Read More…
Online meal-kit company Blue Apron Holdings slashed its valuation expectations by a third amid growing concerns about the potential impact from Amazon’s deal to buy Whole Foods. The company said on Wednesday it expects its IPO to be priced between $10 and $11 per share, down from its previous expectation of $15 to $17. The Read More…
Our public-transportation woes are the key marker that New York City has become a “catastrophic success” — something so popular, it outstrips its own capacity to serve the people flocking to it. The city’s quarter-century comeback from the muck of disorder into which it had descended — from its near-collapse in 1975 through the crime Read More…
The race to offer consumers a “quad play” — phone, TV, broadband and wireless — is making for M&A mayhem. Comcast and Charter Communications, the country’s two largest cable operators, have reset the deal agenda for cable and telecom companies by entering into exclusive negotiations with Sprint. Talks between the cable behemoths and Sprint, the Read More…