New York
A Long Island man was arrested after running onto the field at Yankee Stadium with a Palestinian flag at 9:11 p.m. on Sept. 11 during the Yankees-Mets Subway Series game commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Police identified him as Kelly Marcucci, 38, of Bay Shore. Wearing a “No Kings” jersey, he entered from the left-field seats in the seventh inning and was tackled by security and NYPD officers in the outfield. The crowd chanted “USA” as he was escorted out; some fans threw beer cans. The NYPD charged him with a misdemeanor for interfering with a professional sporting event and a trespass violation, then issued a desk appearance ticket. Police said he had no known prior arrests.
A drone tribute titled “2,977 Lights Over New York Harbor” rose over the harbor ahead of the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, using one light for each of the 2,977 people killed at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and aboard the four hijacked planes. Reviewed with victims’ families, survivors, and first responders, the drones formed a helix before assembling a full-scale outline of the Twin Towers. Organizers said the work was designed in dialogue with the annual Tribute in Light beams from Lower Manhattan.
New York will begin mailing electricity rebate checks on Sept. 21 under a $1 billion Protecting Our Wallets Energy Rebate program included in the state budget. Gov. Kathy Hochul said payments will continue through December to about 8.2 million eligible households, with no application required. Joint filers earning under $150,000 will receive $200; those earning $150,000 to $300,000 will get $150; single filers under $150,000 will get $100. Eligibility is based on 2024 New York tax returns: Residents must have filed on time, lived in the state full-time that year, met the income limits, and not been claimed as a dependent.
The New York Board of Regents authorized the Education Department to drop the requirement that students pass a set of Regents exams to graduate, beginning with the Class of 2028. Current seniors remain under existing rules. The tests will continue as statewide measures of achievement and as one option for seals or advanced designation, but diplomas will no longer hinge on a prescribed battery of exams. Under the NY Inspires plan, the state will move to a single high school diploma and let students show readiness through classroom assessments, coursework, projects, performance tasks, teacher observations, and state tests. Officials expect draft regulations in February and a final vote in June, with the new framework taking effect for the 2027-28 school year.
Nassau County Police demonstrated new drones that can drop inflatable flotation devices to swimmers or boaters in distress while Marine Bureau crews are en route. County Executive Bruce Blakeman and Commissioner Patrick Ryder showed off the gear in Island Park, with a drone launched from Long Beach City Hall releasing a preserver that inflated and lit up on contact with the water. Police respond to about 150 water rescues a year. The aircraft are part of a $1 million Drone as First Responder program paid for with asset-forfeiture funds. The department now has eight such drones and plans to expand to 24 by spring, flown by FAA-certified pilots.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Attorney General Letitia James filed parallel lawsuits in Manhattan federal court seeking to block a Department of Homeland Security public-charge rule set to take effect Sept. 18. The regulation would let immigration officers deny certain visa and green-card applications based on an immigrant’s use, or likely use, of public benefits, including programs used by U.S.-citizen relatives. James is leading 21 other states and the District of Columbia; Mamdani is leading cities including Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle.
U.S.
The Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s emergency request to enforce new U.S. Postal Service rules on mail ballots before the November midterms. The proposed rule would have required election officials to use agency-approved envelopes with unique barcodes and to upload voter information to a federal Postal Service portal, or risk ballots not being mailed.
Sen. Mitch McConnell returned to the Senate floor for his first vote in more than three months after a June fall at his Capitol Hill home that left him briefly unconscious and was followed by pneumonia and weeks of rehabilitation. The 84-year-old Kentucky Republican, last recorded voting June 11, arrived in a wheelchair and told colleagues he was glad to be back. McConnell contracted polio as a child and has had mobility problems for years. He said it was “time to get back to work,” citing the farm bill and support for NATO. His current term ends in January.
The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve held about 285 million barrels in the week ended Sept. 4, the lowest weekly level since November 1982. That is roughly 40 percent of the reserve’s 714-million-barrel design capacity and down about 1.2 million barrels from the prior week. The stockpile has fallen nearly 120 million barrels over the past year. Two large emergency programs account for much of the draw: a 180-million-barrel release authorized by President Joe Biden in 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a 172-million-barrel emergency exchange authorized by President Donald Trump in March after the Iran war disrupted global oil flows.
A Kansas man has been charged in Florida with making antisemitic death threats against Boca Raton resident and commentator Ben Shapiro, including an online countdown investigators tied to Yom Kippur. Korby Strube, 29, faces 23 counts of written or electronic threats to kill, enhanced under Florida’s hate-crime law, and is being held without bail in Palm Beach County. An affidavit says posts on X between July 31 and Aug. 2 threatened to kill Shapiro because he is Jewish and referred to “51 days” or “52 days left,” dates pointing to Sept. 21–22. Shapiro told investigators he believed his religion motivated the threats. Secret Service agents and Kansas deputies interviewed Strube at home on Aug. 4; the affidavit says he admitted posting the messages.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) presented its Champion of Justice Award to Ben Cohen, the Jewish co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, at its 32nd annual gala in Washington on the second night of Rosh HaShanah. CAIR described Cohen, 75, as an entrepreneur and activist who has spent decades working for peace and human dignity, citing his leadership of the Pentagon-spending campaign Up in Arms and what it called advocacy for Palestinians. Cohen has backed Ben & Jerry’s 2021 halt of sales in West Bank settlements and was arrested last year during a Senate protest over Gaza. CAIR calls itself the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights group. Cohen founded the ice-cream company with Jerry Greenfield in 1978.
Rapper Macklemore has been dropped from the remaining dates of Ed Sheeran’s U.S. Loop Tour after venues said they would not host shows with him on the bill. The move followed his Sept. 4–5 sets at MetLife Stadium, where he led “Free Palestine” chants, wore a keffiyeh, and performed “Hind’s Hall.” Macklemore said he and Sheeran had “difficult conversations” that ended in “fundamental disagreement,” and that Patriots owner Robert Kraft barred him from Gillette Stadium and pressed other owners. Kraft said he had a duty to stand up against what he called antisemitic rhetoric.
Israel
Israeli troops arrested a Palestinian man in the Hebron area who had been planning a shooting attack against Israeli civilians “in the immediate timeframe” during Rosh HaShanah. The statement gave no age, organizational affiliation, or specific target beyond civilians. Forces transferred him for further questioning. The IDF said soldiers “continue to operate to thwart terrorism throughout Judea and Samaria.” Ahead of the High Holidays, Central Command had raised readiness across the region, conducting drills and additional arrests.
Israel’s Ministry for Religious Services has canceled a state-sponsored memorial for Rabbi Ovadia Yosef planned for Oct. 6–8 at Jerusalem’s International Convention Center, citing legal advice tied to the Oct. 27 elections. The commemoration is required by law; Yosef’s yahrtzeit falls on Oct. 14. Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara argued a large publicly funded event so close to the vote could appear to benefit Shas, the party he founded. Officials had proposed holding it earlier without Shas representatives; the AG’s office rejected that. The ministry said a later or differently formatted tribute remains possible. Shas has petitioned the High Court of Justice. Past events cost about 4 million shekels.
Yehuda Aharon Widawski, Israel’s oldest Holocaust survivor and a longtime restorer of Jewish cemeteries in Poland, has died at 107. Born in Turek in 1919 and raised in Lodz, he was confined in the Lodz Ghetto, then deported to Auschwitz in 1944, where his parents and eldest brother were murdered. He and a younger brother survived selection and forced labor at Friedland before liberation in 1945. He immigrated to Israel in 1950. Returning to Poland in 1978 to find his grandmother’s grave, he spent decades identifying more than 3,000 burial sites and restoring cemeteries, including work in Lodz and Sochaczew. Yad Vashem chose him to light a torch at the 2012 state Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony. “My revenge on the Nazis is that they lost, and we have the State of Israel,” he once said. He is survived by children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
Rachel Rabin-Yaakov, the younger sister of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and a founder of Kibbutz Manara on the Lebanese border, has died at 101. Born in Tel Aviv in 1925 to Nehemiah Rabin and Rosa Cohen—known as “Red Rosa,” a Labor activist, Haganah member, and Tel Aviv councilwoman—she was three years younger than her brother. At 17, she joined the group that established Manara in 1943, taught its first children, and later helped lead a regional school in the Upper Galilee. She took up arms to defend the kibbutz in the 1948 war and lived there for 80 years until she was evacuated after Hezbollah fire following Oct. 7, 2023. She received Hebrew University’s Rothberg Prize in 2009. Her husband, Rafi Yaakov, died in 2012. She is survived by children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
A gold ring set with a red gemstone, dated to the late third or early second century BCE, has been uncovered in Jerusalem’s City of David during excavations by the Israel Antiquities Authority and Tel Aviv University. The small band, found beneath the floor of a large Hellenistic-period building at the Givati Parking Lot in the Jerusalem Walls National Park, is the second gold ring of its kind recovered from the same layer in less than a year. Archaeologists said the structure’s scale points to a wealthy household, and the ring’s diameter suggests it was worn by a child. Other jewelry from the same deposit includes bronze earrings, a gold earring with a horned-animal motif, and a decorated gold bead. Researchers said combining gold with colored stones such as garnet was fashionable after Alexander the Great opened trade with the East. Some suggested the pieces may have been placed under the foundations on purpose, a known Hellenistic coming-of-age custom, rather than lost by accident.
Israel’s population has reached an estimated 10.305 million ahead of Rosh HaShanah, the Central Bureau of Statistics reported. The figure is up about 124,000 from a year earlier, an annual increase of 1.2 percent. Jews and others number 7.828 million, or 78.3 percent of residents; Arabs number 2.173 million, or 21.7 percent; and 304,000 foreign nationals live in the country. About 182,000 babies were born over the past year and about 50,000 people died, for a natural increase of roughly 132,000. International migration subtracted about 8,000: Some 24,000 new immigrants arrived, about 4,000 came through family reunification, and 21,000 Israelis returned from abroad, while about 57,000 were classified as having left. Average life expectancy stood at 81.4 years for men and 85.9 for women.
World
The International Atomic Energy Agency has carried out almost no inspections inside Iran for more than six months. The exception was a visit to the Bushehr nuclear power plant in early June. The agency withdrew inspectors after renewed attacks on Iran in late February, sharply cutting oversight of the nuclear program. The IAEA has also been unable for more than a year to keep continuous knowledge of previously declared enriched-uranium stockpiles at sites hit in the June 2025 strikes, including material enriched to 60 percent purity, well above civilian-power levels.
A British Jewish man identified as Yitzchak “Alex” Elmkies, a father of seven from the London area, was found dead in a wooded area near Rabbi Nachman of Breslov’s grave in Uman on Rosh HaShanah. Hasidim who had gone into the forest for hisbodedus discovered the body and summoned help; responders pronounced him dead at the scene. Ukrainian police opened an investigation and registered the case under the statute for intentional homicide while ordering forensic exams to determine the cause of death. Regional police said an initial examination found no external signs of violent death. Members of the local Jewish community have said they suspect murder; authorities have not confirmed a homicide. Elmkies entered Ukraine on Aug. 10. United Hatzalah’s Aharon Ben Harush said the circumstances remain under review and that volunteers are working with officials to release the body for burial.
Satellite images show fire and structural damage at pumping stations on Saudi Arabia’s East-West crude pipeline after drones launched from Iraq struck facilities in the Riyadh and Medina regions. The Energy Ministry shut the roughly 1,200-kilometer Petroline as a precaution. The line had been moving about 4 million barrels a day—roughly 4 percent of global supply—from eastern fields to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, bypassing the disrupted Strait of Hormuz. Industry sources said that export-ready stocks could last five to seven days if the pipeline stays closed; additional barrels are stored in Egypt.
Tens of thousands of people sat down in Bucharest at a 5,055-meter (3.1-mile) “Uniting Table.” Guinness World Records certified the gathering as the longest table made from recycled materials. About 20,000 people took part, organizers said. Funds are intended for a 3,900-square-meter pediatric psychiatry building at a local hospital, which will cost 16.5 million euros and serve more than 5,700 children a year.