By Rabbi Yair Hoffman THE CENTRAL QUESTION There is a question that a number of people ask: If staying up all night kills one’s Torah learning schedule, should one do it anyway?

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The U.S. economy shrank at a 0.2% annual pace from January through March, the first drop in three years, as President Donald Trump’s trade wars disrupted business, the government said Thursday in a slight upgrade of its initial estimate. First-quarter growth was brought down by a surge in imports as companies in the United States hurried to bring in foreign goods before the president imposed massive import taxes. The January-March drop in gross domestic product — the nation’s output of goods and services — reversed a 2.4% gain in the fourth quarter of 2024. Imports grew at a 42.6% pace, fastest since third-quarter 2020, and shaved more than 5 percentage points off GDP growth. Consumer spending also slowed sharply.

President Donald Trump lashed out Thursday against a recent court decision that nullified his aggressive tariff policy, condemning the verdict as a blow to executive authority and blasting the judges behind the move as political operatives working in secret.
In a lengthy statement posted on Truth Social, Trump criticized the ruling harshly, asking, “Where do these initial three Judges come from? How is it possible for them to have potentially done such damage to the United States of America? Is it purely a hatred of ‘TRUMP?’ What other reason could it be?”

The United States and 10 allies on Thursday said the military cooperation between Russia and North Korea flagrantly violates U.N. sanctions and has helped Moscow increase its missile strikes on Ukrainian cities. They made the accusations in their first report since joining forces to monitor sanctions against North Korea after Russia vetoed a resolution in March 2024 to continue the monitoring by a U.N. Security Council panel of experts. It had been issuing reports of Pyongyang’s sanctions violations since 2010.

President Donald Trump met with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Thursday and the two discussed the economy but not Powell’s outlook for interest rates, the Fed said. Powell told Trump that the central bank would make decisions about the short-term interest rate it controls “based solely on careful, objective, and non-political analysis.” The Fed’s rate typically influences borrowing costs across the economy, including for mortgages, car loans, and business borrowing. The meeting comes as Trump has assailed Powell for not reducing the Fed’s key interest rate, calling him “Too Late Powell.” The president initiated the meeting, the Fed said.

In one of the nation’s first wrongful-death claims seeking to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for its role in the changing climate, a Washington state woman is suing seven oil and gas companies, saying they contributed to an extraordinarily hot day that led to her mother’s fatal hyperthermia. The lawsuit filed in state court this week says the companies knew that their products have altered the climate, including contributing to a 2021 heat wave in the Pacific Northwest that killed 65-year-old Juliana Leon, and that they failed to warn the public of such risks. On June 28, 2021, an unusual heat wave culminated in a 108-degrees Fahrenheit (42.22 degrees Celsius) day — the hottest ever recorded in the state, according to the filing.

A driver who injured nearly 80 people when his car rammed into a crowd of Liverpool soccer fans celebrating their team’s Premier League championship was charged Thursday with intentionally causing grievous bodily harm and six other serious counts, a prosecutor said. Paul Doyle, 53, was also charged with dangerous driving and five other counts alleging different variations of causing or attempting to cause grievous bodily harm, Prosecutor Sarah Hammond said. The charges carry a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted. The charges involve six victims, including two children. The injured ranged in age from 9 to 78, with at least 50 people treated at hospitals. Seven people remained in the hospital Thursday in stable condition.