Kendel Felix, the man charged in the murder five years ago of Williamsburg businessman Reb Menachem Stark z”l, appeared this afternoon before Judge Danny Chun, acting justice of the Kings County Supreme Court, and was sentenced to 15 years to life behind bars.
Kendel’s shortened sentence was attributed to his having cooperated with prosecutor Howard Jackson in the trial of his co-defendant, his cousin, Erskin Felix, who won’t be sentenced until June and could face up to 25 years in prison.
Kendel, who has already been in jail for five years and will thus be released in ten years, could have received a max of 25 years to life, but got the reduced number because of what Jackson called “oustanding” cooperation. Kendel was 26 years old at the time of the murder.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hosted a ceremony on Tuesday commemorating the 40th anniversary of the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.
Pompeo commended the two nations for the diplomatic milestone, and that the “negotiations leading up to the treaty ushered in a new level of dialogue and cooperation, and laid the groundwork for a safer and more stable region,” according to a readout from the U.S. State Department about Tuesday’s occasion, which was closed to the press.
Also in attendance were Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer and Egyptian Ambassador to the United States Yasser Reda.

A human-rights non-governmental organization that has a special consultative status in the United Nations released a report last week that documented the fact that several hundred people were summoned, arrested and detained over the course of a year by the terrorist group Hamas solely because of their political beliefs.
Between March 1, 2018, and March 1 of this year, the Hamas security service summoned, arrested and detained 742 people, including five women, for exercising their beliefs, according to a report by the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, which mentioned bans on press coverage, in addition to restrictions on the media and censorship of entertainment deemed to be against Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.

An Australian court on Wednesday found a man guilty of plotting to blow up an Etihad Airways flight out of Sydney at the behest of the Islamic State militant group, by hiding a bomb in the luggage of his brother.
Police had accused the man, Khaled Khayat, and another brother, Mahmoud Khayat, of planning two terrorist attacks that also included a chemical gas attack on the flight to Abu Dhabi in July 2017, police said.
The third brother was unaware that he was carrying a bomb, disguised as a meat mincer, in his luggage, as he tried to check in at the airport, police said.
But the device was taken out of his luggage when it was deemed too heavy and the bomb never made it past airport security.

The family of a man killed in a fiery wreck last year while driving his Tesla along U.S. route 101 in California is suing the electric vehicle maker, alleging wrongful death and negligence stemming from failures and false promises of its Autopilot driver-assistance system.
Walter Huang, a 38-year-old Apple engineer, was driving his Tesla Model X SUV in Mountain View, Calif. on Autopilot mode in March 2018 when it sped up to 71 mph and crashed into a safety barrier, killing Huang and leaving behind a heap of charred wreckage.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was sentenced Wednesday to 50 weeks in a British prison for jumping bail in 2012.
He apologized to the court, but the judge said he had used his “privileged position” to show disdain for British law.
Assange next faces an extradition hearing on Thursday related to a separate and potentially more consequential charge in the United States of conspiring to hack a government password. Legal experts anticipate the extradition fight could take years.

The White House sent Congress a $4.5 billion emergency spending request for the border on Wednesday, citing an unfolding “humanitarian and security crisis” as record numbers of Central American families seek entrance into the United States.
The request includes $3.3 billion for humanitarian assistance and $1.1 billion for border operations, and represents a dramatic escalation of the administration’s efforts to address the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The money is on top of more than $8 billion that President Donald Trump sought in his budget request, as well as some $6 billion more in funding he sought through his declaration of a national emergency at the border.

William Barr’s first of two hearings on the Mueller report have him facing the Senate Judiciary, chaired by Republican Lindsey Graham. Barr’s interactions with Senate Democrats will likely set the stage for his grilling in front of the Democrat-led House Judiciary on Thursday.
WATCH:

The Yerushalayim District Court ordered Israel’s Menorah insurance company to pay a highly-paid tech worker $1.3 million for the loss of work caused by a bug that flew into the man’s vehicle and distracted him, leading him to smash into a concrete pillar.
Moving objects in vehicles such as pets, insects or cargo accounted for one percent of 65,000 accidents caused by distracted drivers from 2011 to 2012.
{Matzav.com Israel}

Palestinians are the third angriest people in the world and are ranked as the fourth least rested people in the world, according to the 2019 Gallup Global Emotions Report.
The Gallup poll asked more than 151,000 people in over 140 countries five questions concerning positive and negative experiences respectively, to determine their overall Positive and Negative Experience Indexes. 43% of Palestinian respondents reported feeling angry, while 50% reported that they did not feel well-rested.
The countries with the highest Negative Experiences Indexes were Chad, Niger and Sierra Leone. The Palestinian Territories ranked in with the 9th highest Negative Experience Index.