Senator Chuck Schumer is asking the federal government to investigate whether a Chinese state-owned company’s proposal to design new subway cars for the MTA could be a national security risk.

As reported by the NY Post, on Sunday, Schumer asked for a “bottom to top review” as he pointed to the tariff war ongoing between the U.S. and China, and to the criminal charges filed last week by the Trump administration against Chinese firm, Huawei, for stealing US technology. The NY Democrat said due diligence will be necessary before allowing the Chinese company to do work for the MTA. The company is pursuing a $4 billion contract with the MTA.

In March 2018, China Railway Rolling Stock Corp. (CRRC), the largest train car producer in the world, won the MTA Genius Transit Challenge and proposed investing $50 million of its own money to design a new subway car using lighter materials and “modern train control technology.” Now, as part of its plan, CRRC wants to move forward installing new technology in our subway system.

“Given what we know about how cyberwarfare works, and recent attacks that have hit transportation and infrastructure hubs across the country, the Department of Commerce must give the green light and thoroughly check any proposals or work China’s CRRC does on behalf of the New York subway system, including our signals, Wi-Fi and more,” said Schumer said in a statement.

MTA Chief External Affairs Office Max Young voiced his approval in a statement. “The MTA has robust, multilayered and vigorously enforced safety and security standards, but we support efforts of government agencies to bolster that work,” said Young.

While CRRC does not yet have a contract with the MTA and has not started any work, the company already has won contracts with transportation systems in Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston. The rail tech company tends to underbid other competitors, thanks to the heavy subsidies it gets from the Chinese government. CRRC is now also in talks with Washington’s Metro system, seeking a $500 million contract for train cars.

“This kind of national security responsibility is just so big, and so complex, that the MTA and other big-city transit systems should not have to foot the burden of going it alone to assess whether or not CRRC’s low bids for work, and current contracts across the country, are part of some larger strategy,” Schumer said. “We just cannot be too careful here, especially now, amidst these tensions.”

John Jay College, a public college with the City University of New York, will still be footing a hefty bill while in the process of axing three professors for a sex and drugs scandal. The senior college for criminal justice located in midtown Manhattan decided last week to move forward with the firing of three professors accused of sexual harassment and selling and using drugs on campus. The cost to taxpayers is close to half a million dollars and growing.

As reported by the NY Post, in September two former female students alleged that professor Ric Curtis, who once chaired the anthropology and sociology departments, was the ringleader of a lewd, drug-abusing culture in an area of offices called “The Swamp.” Though Curtis denied all allegations, he along with professors Anthony Marcus and Barry Spunt were put on paid leave before the beginning of the school year. A fourth adjunct lecturer also implicated in the scandal, Leonardo Dominguez, did not have his contract with the school renewed.

Law firm Riley Safer Holmes & Cancila was hired in September to investigate the accusations. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office also investigated but “decided not to bring any criminal charges”. “The safety and well-being of our community is nonnegotiable,” wrote College president Karol Mason. “There is absolutely no place for sexual harassment or misconduct at John Jay. That’s why our community needs to know that I am taking actions to hold individuals accountable who have failed to live up to our standards of conduct.”

John Jay College signed an “engagement letter” with the law firm for $100,000. “But we have not received an invoice for the work and expect the final cost to be higher given the scope of the investigation,” said Richard Relkin, a John Jay spokesman. Further, the three teachers continue to receive their six-figure salaries, while the investigation is ongoing. They will likely continue to be paid till the termination process is complete, which may take another five months. As per the post, the salary in 2018 for Curtis was $156,685, Marcus made $126,301 and Spunt got $106,407.

Mason said earlier this week that the investigation is growing, with over 60 witnesses interviewed, along with the review of “an extensive number of documents and emails.”

Curtis’ lawyer, Robert Herbst, accused John Jay of denying him due process and vowed to “fight these unjust efforts” to fire him. Spunt’s lawyer, Carmen Jack Giordano, said the school was “bowing to political pressure and expedience, rather than being guided by fairness and truth.” He said Spunt was “looking forward to finally having a full hearing on [the] allegations made against him.”

Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani joined the voices of ridicule following Mayor Bill de Blasio’s announcement to run for Presidency in 2020.

On Thursday, on “Good Morning America” Mayor de Blasio cast himself as the 24th Democrat to officially challenge President Trump for the presidency next term. “When we put working families first in New York City, the city got stronger. That can happen for our country, too,” de Blasio said in a 3-minute long video unveiling his candidacy, and lauding himself as the most accomplished progressive pick. De Blasio lost no time taking shots at the president, with whom he has been at odds since day one. He said “every New Yorker knows he’s a con artist”, dubbing the president “con don”. “I’m a New Yorker, I’ve known Trump’s a bully for a long time, this is not news to me or anyone else here, and I know how to take him on,” de Blasio said. “Donald Trump must be stopped. I’ve beaten him before, and I will do it again.”

Bright and early Thursday Morning, President Trump ripped de Blasio’s upcoming announcement. “ The Dems are getting another beauty to join their group. Bill de Blasio of NYC, considered the worst mayor in the U.S., will supposedly be making an announcement for president today. He is a JOKE, but if you like high taxes & crime, he’s your man. NYC HATES HIM!” the President tweeted.

On Sunday, Giuliani joined John Catsimatidis on his AM-970 radio show, ‘The Cats Roundtable’. “It’s hilarious that our friend de Blasio is running,” said the former mayor, who served from 1994 to 2001. “America will find out what New Yorkers know. When you call him Big Bird, it’s a compliment,” said Giuliani, comparing the 6-foot-5 Democrat to the Sesame Street canary.

“I took being mayor very seriously. Thought I left the city in pretty good shape to Mike Bloomberg,” said Giuliani, admitting that despite their differences his replacement was “a good mayor”. He continued on to say he was “heartbroken” by what the current mayor is doing to the office. “I can’t believe what [de Blasio] is doing,” he criticized. “I mean, first of all, he doesn’t work. He doesn’t go to work!”

“Oh well. Not worth getting aggravated about. The Democrats know how bad he is. Not just us,” he added. Giuliani went on to tell the host, who previously had an unsuccessful mayoral campaign against de Blasio, “I’d like to tell the people of New York that if you had been the mayor the city would be in a lot better shape, John.”

Multiple Jewish students attending New York University’s study abroad program in Tel Aviv, Israel were disheartened that it was boycotted by a department at the school. Hundreds of the school’s faculty members as well as members of NYU’s general administration joined in expressing their disapproval.

On May 2nd, the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis (SCA) at NYU announced that it passed a resolution of non-cooperation with the school’s study abroad program in Tel Aviv. The SCA accused the Tel Aviv program of operating “in the shadow of racial, religious, and political profiling.” The SCA’s statement said that it passed the resolution “by a majority vote,” in response to Israel’s “longstanding practice of barring entry to persons of Palestinian descent, and its recent amendments to the Law of Entry prohibit entry to members of groups that are critical of government policies.” The SCA resolution’s five identified authors are known to be supporters of the BDS campaign.

As reported by The Algemeiner, while Israel’s entry law does bar access to foreigners who are identified as key proponents of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign, NYU’s spokesman confirmed that “no NYU student has been prevented from going to Israel.” NYU’s administration also pushed back against the SCA decision by stating that no SCA faculty were even involved with the Tel Aviv program, implicating that there was no “practical effect to the vote.”

The timing of the SCA’s announcement was also offensive. The measure was passed on Yom HaShoah, Israel’s national Holocaust remembrance day. “How am I as a Jewish student supposed to feel when an academic boycott of the Jewish state is declared … on the day in which we are meant to reflect on the tragedy and crimes committed against our people by the Nazis,” said Javier Cohen, a sophomore who attended NYU-Tel Aviv this past fall semester. “Anti-Zionist groups on campus love to criticize the ease with which pro-Israel students ‘pull the antisemitism card,’ but the obsession that we see on campus in targeting the one and only Jewish state while defending just about any other can’t be explained otherwise,” he added.

“Jews, non-Jews, pro-Palestinian students — we were all able to go to Tel Aviv for a semester,” said Ilan Bassali, a senior at the University, who attended NYU-Tel Aviv in spring 2017. He said his program included roughly 20-30 students who held extended discussion where “we both opened each others eyes to the other side, which is very valuable and doesn’t happen enough.” That a department at “the university I go to, pay tuition to, and spent four years of my life at is doing something like this” and is pursuing non-cooperation with the Tel Aviv program is “offensive and sad,” he said.

“The rising anti-Israel sentiment on campus has made Jewish students the targets of discrimination, and even harassment, regardless of their political affiliations,” said another undergraduate student, who wished to be identified only by her first name, Shai. “This is a problem that the administration needs to tackle with more than just an ‘institutional statement.’”

NYU spokesperson John Beckman responded, pointing out that the general administration does not agree with the position of the SCA. He said the administration “has unwaveringly supported NYU Tel Aviv and publicly criticized its opponents.” “The University will not allow the SCA vote to have any impact on NYU Tel Aviv, to prevent any students from studying there, or to disadvantage any student who chooses to study there,” Beckman asserted. “NYU has a firm, established track record of opposing BDS, of opposing ostracism based on support of Israel, of rejecting calls to close NYU Tel Aviv, and of supporting its Jewish community; it’s unfortunate that there are those who choose to ignore that,” he added.

For four years the LIRR, managed by the MTA, together with local and state officials planned the ambitious South Fork Commuter Connection. Beginning in March, a single train car heads to and from eight towns in the Hamptons, staffed with up to three employees. State-financed shuttle buses await at each stop at the posh Hampton towns, as part of the endeavor geared towards attracting commuters out of their cars, thereby easing traffic on the congested East End.

As reported by the NY Post, residents are saying the trains are a striking example of waste, with only several riders per train, at $4.25 per ride. “It’s not working,” said Jay Fitzpatrick, an architect and longtime resident of Southampton. “Nobody’s taking it.” Last Thursday, he said he counted a total of six passengers get off an early-morning train in Southampton. Four of them then boarded one of two shuttle buses.

The Hampton Hopper buses are provided by the state Department of Transportation to the towns at a cost of $1 million a year. The routes are designed to transport passengers to local hospitals and schools. Thomas Neely, the transportation and traffic director for Southampton Town, confirmed that “very few people are taking the shuttle buses”. He said local Hamptons officials have already reduced the buses at each station down from four to two.

As though to ratify the low usage of the trains, the LIRR has decided to cut the five-day-a-week shuttle-train service, to four days, eliminating service on Fridays. The LIRR said it will make better use of the train, adding the trains to Penn Station to accommodate summer crowds arriving from the city. The few commuters who rely on the South Fork Connection will be forced back onto the congested roads on Fridays. Ironically, the Hamptons train, if needed at all, would be most necessary on Fridays, when merchants, and employees usually commute in time to serve the weekend crowds during the summer.

“This just wasn’t thought through well enough,” said Lin Restivo, a Hampton Bays resident who in March began commuting with the train, but will now go back to driving on the jammed County Road 39.

Neely expressed sympathy for the commuters of the South Fork Connection , but said there is little that can be done, as the LIRR lacks the infrastructure to run both the shuttle service and add summer trains at Penn Station. A Spokeswoman for the LIRR said, “We’re open to amending the schedules depending on customer demand, whenever and wherever we have the cars and track capacity to do so.”

Another weekend goes by, another anti-Semitic incident to report.

Over the weekend, a car filled with hooligans hurled anti-Semitic insults at two Jewish teenagers who were walking through Brooklyn’s Borough Park neighborhood. As reported by the NY Post, the 13-year-old and 16-year-old boys, dressed in traditional Orthodox Jewish clothing, were walking by 51st Street and 12th Avenue sometime between 1 and 1:30 a.m. on Saturday. According to the police, the boys heard people from a car shouting, “Allahu Akbar!” and, “Do you know Hitler? We love him, he did a good job!” The car then drove away. The boys informed the police, saying they saw four people in the car. The police have yet to confirm the number of people in the car. The NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force is looking into the incident.

The news no longer invokes shock. A little over a week ago, an Orthodox Jewish man was punched in the head by a stranger on the streets of the same Williamsburg neighborhood, near Rodney Street and Marcy Avenue. Three days prior to that attack, there was a different occurrence in Williamsburg, in which a group of men punched a 42-year-old wearing religious attire in the face while screaming anti-Semitic profanity.

In the beginning of May, the NY police department reported an 82 percent increase in anti-Semitic hate crimes in the Big Apple this year. There were 82 incidents reported to police from January 2019 till the end of April, versus 45 incidents during the same time frame last year. Overall index crime in NYC is lower by 6.7 percent this year compared to last year. Anti-Semitic incidents now account for over half of the overall hate crimes reported this year. “When you drill down on the anti-Semitic hate crimes we are seeing approximately 80 percent are drawing of swastikas in some way, shape or fashion throughout New York City,” said NYPD Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea.

The data “should serve as an important reminder to all of us that we must continue to be vigilant in the face of hate,” said Evan Bernstein, the NY/NJ Regional Director for the Anti-Defamation League. “No one should ever have to live in fear that they will be attacked, harassed or targeted because of their faith. New York is no place for hate.”

“While the scourge of anti-Semitism is growing at an alarming rate across the country and around the world, we must face the reality that here at home in New York City we have a serious problem of anti-Semitic attacks on identifiably Jewish members of our community,” said Rabbi David Niederman, President of the UJO of Williamsburg. “People merely walking on the streets here feel like sitting ducks, worrying that they must look over their shoulder in fear of being hurt because of their faith.”

The New York State Attorney General has apparently begun an inquiry into the lending practices – spanning than 10 years – involving immigrant taxi drivers.

Beyond that, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has himself put into motion his own investigation into the brokers behind those loans.

Both moves, reported the New York Times, “marked the government’s first steps toward addressing a crisis that has engulfed the city’s yellow cab industry. They came a day after The New York Times published a two-part investigation revealing that a handful of taxi industry leaders artificially inflated the price of a medallion — the coveted permit that allows a driver to own and operate a cab — and made hundreds of millions of dollars by issuing reckless loans to low-income buyers.”

The investigation also found, the Times continued, that “regulators at every level of government ignored warning signs, and the city fed the frenzy by selling medallions and promoting them in ads as being “better than the stock market.”

“Today I ordered a joint investigation by the Taxi and Limousine Commission, Department of Finance and Department of Consumer Affairs into predatory practices by brokers in the taxi industry,” said de Blasio on Monday. “The 45-day review will identify and penalize brokers who have taken advantage of buyers and misled City authorities. The review will set down strict new rules that prevent broker practices that hurt drivers. It’s unacceptable to prey on hardworking New Yorkers trying to support their families and we’ll do all that we can to put an end to it.”

The investigations are “the government’s first steps toward addressing a crisis that has engulfed the city’s yellow cab industry,” noted governing.com. “They came a day after The New York Times published a two-part investigation revealing that a handful of taxi industry leaders artificially inflated the price of a medallion — the coveted permit that allows a driver to own and operate a cab — and made hundreds of millions of dollars by issuing reckless loans to low-income buyers.”

The investigation also found that regulators at every level of government ignored warning signs, and the city fed the frenzy by selling medallions and promoting them in ads as being “better than the stock market,” Governing magazine also reported. “The price of a medallion rose to more than $1 million before crashing in late 2014, which left borrowers with debt they had little hope of repaying. More than 950 medallion owners have filed for bankruptcy, and thousands more are struggling to stay afloat.”

“They bled, he fled” is how the New York Post began its story about Dr. Amnon Eric Sadeh, a Manhattan plastic surgeon some are saying has left the United States while – as the newspaper put it – “leaving a trail of patients upset about botched tummy tucks and liposuctions and unable to get their medical records.”

Sadeh’s license to practice medicine was reportedly revoked early in May for allegedly failing to supply requested patient medical records and no-showing a hearing.

Authorities have been looking for Sadeh since 2016. Last August, according to state Health Department documents, his mother reportedly told officials her son was in Israel.

“Ana Kardashian said she never got records for her daughter’s 2015 nose job despite complaining to the state. She said her daughter landed in the hospital after Sadeh overprescribed pain medication after surgery,” the Post reported. “The New York Department of Health — that’s the most upsetting,” the mom said. “I would assume they would do something more efficiently, but they made us wait for a very long time and then … they said the guy cannot be located.”

The doctor’s web site, http://sadehsurgery.com/, describes Sadeh as a board certified plastic surgeon specializing in aesthetic plastic surgery of the face, breasts and body. “His primary focus and areas of expertise are breast enlargement and reduction surgery, body contouring procedures, nasal surgery and facial rejuvenation including face/neck lifts combined with eyelid surgery.”

Sadeh graduated with a BS Magna Cum Laude from Tufts University School of Engineering, and received his M.D. from Mount Sinai School of Medicine with honors in surgery and psychiatry, the site relates. He did a year of neurosurgical training before completing his general surgical training at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. He then completed his plastic surgery residency at the State University of New York with additional fellowship training in reconstructive surgery at the prestigious University of Pittsburgh.

“In private practice since 1996, Dr. Sadeh’s primary office is in Manhattan and he maintains attending privileges at several New York Hospitals,” the description continues. “He is involved in training the new generation of plastic surgeons at Lenox Hill Hospital and the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital. Dr. Sadeh has lectured and presented on topics ranging from reconstructive breast surgery and innovative new techniques for breast reduction surgery to endoscopic craniofacial surgery for facial rejuvenation. He has been featured in numerous publications including Cosmopolitan, Allure, Gotham, Hamptons, New York Post, New York Observer, OK Magazine and US Weekly and continues to be a sought after expert on various topics in plastic surgery.”

A rally and press conference followed by a billboard launch took place on Monday afternoon at Times Square in New York City demanding the removal of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, citing anti-Semitism and an anti-Israel, pro-Islamist agenda.

According to a report on the United With Israel web site, many Americans have been shocked by comments she has made over the years that attacked Israel, included anti-Semitic tropes and questioned her loyalty to the United States of America.

In demanding her removal, the rally organizers cite her “gross anti-Semitism” and “cavalier dismissal” of the victims of 9/11, as well as her “blaming the criminal socialist debacle and collapse of Venezuela on America,” her “specious accusations against dedicated US officials, and her disdain for America, which saved her from Islamist terror in Somalia.”

Indeed, in February, Ilhan called to completely defund the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, tweeting: “#Not1Dollar for DHS.”

Also that month, in an attack on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), she tweeted, “It’s all about the Benjamins baby,” a reference to the $100 bill featuring Benjamin Franklin.

In an interview in January with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, the Somali-American congresswoman, an active supporter of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, defended a 2012 tweet in which she said that “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.”

Omar blamed Israel for the round of airstrikes in which Hamas and Islamic Jihad shot some 700 rockets into the Jewish state earlier this month, killing four and wounding dozens, with Israel hitting over 350 Gazan targets in return.

Several hundred people gathered for the rally and billboard launch in Times Square, as one speaker after another cited the existential danger in the vitriolic Jew hating and Israel bashing rhetoric that is routinely spewed for by Rep Omar.

One of the speakers was Guardian Angels founder, Curtis Sliwa, who said that “if Jews do not learn from their past, they are doomed to repeat it” as he made an oblique reference to the years of anti-Semitism that preceded the Holocaust.

One of the organizers of the rally was the indefatigable Helen Freedman, the longtime chairwoman of Americans for a Safe Israel. AFSI brought powerful protest signs and urged demonstrators to spread the word about the danger of Omar to their family members, friends, co-workers and neighbors as a campaign is built to spotlight Jew hatred across the country.

Brooklyn residents are increasingly escaping – to the Rockaways and its inviting beaches.

“For decades, the Rockaways has been hyped to the hilt for its distinct summer scene, which has consistently appealed to throngs of sun-loving day trippers craving a bit of beachside revelry along the area’s 5½-mile boardwalk,” the New York Post recently reported. “Now the southwest Queens ’hood is seeing a surge in folks who call the Rockaways home year-round, thanks in part to a dedicated ferry, a robust surfing scene and a renaissance in food and the arts.”

It was what the Post referred to as “easy access to the sandy playgrounds and the bliss of surfing at daybreak ahead of a grueling workday in downtown Manhattan” that has people contemplating relocation. “Yet it was the palpable sense of another Rockaways resurgence not felt since before 2012’s Superstorm Sandy that sparked something more profound” in the case of at least one of the people interviewed.

Nor could the timing have been any better. Mayor Bill de Blasio and a phalanx of other elected officials held a press event at Beach 94th Street just last week to officially recognize the completion of the sand restoration operation carried out by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

“For New Yorkers, summer means Rockaway Beach. That’s why I could not be happier to announce we will have the entire beach open in time for the Memorial Day weekend,” de Blasio said. “I want to thank all the stakeholders who came together to make the hopes of so many New Yorkers a reality. We could not have done it without your partnership.”

“Getting tons of sand onto Rockaway Beach in time for summer, and avoid a repeat disaster of prime time beach closures, required every level of government to dig in deep,” Senator Charles Schumer said. “And using the sand from the East Rockaway dredge was a win-win plan because it keeps open a vital channel and all of Rockaway Beach.”

One of the things that transplanted Brooklynites are finding in the Rockaways is the arts. For example, the Rockaway Film Fest offer some artistic benefits. As its website the describes, “Rockaway is the biggest cinema desert in all of New York City with 150,000 people and no movie theater. Like the Rockaway Peninsula itself, this program of movies represents a broad spectrum of personality and culture. There are old films and new films, never seen before films and classics. Many filmmakers will be in attendance to present and discuss their work (some of whom are Rockaway residents!). More than anything else, this Festival is about bringing Cinema to the film lovers of Rockaway Beach.”

Among the films set to be shown is The Princess Bride (June 8); Spirited Away (July 13); and The Dark Crystal (August 10).