A spike in shootings and murders in July fueled a 31% increase in the city’s crime rate over the same month last year, the NYPD said Friday, continuing to fuel a hot-button political issue that has the mayor and governor at odds. The news comes two days after Mayor Eric Adams and the NYPD, in their strongest pushback yet against bail reform, highlighted at a news conference what it called the “worst of the worst” — 10 repeat offenders with nearly 500 arrests among them. Adams and the police blame the elimination of bail for misdemeanors and certain felonies that went into effect with the criminal justice reform laws in 2020. The department also pointed out that 716 people have been linked to 30% of the 2,400 shootings in the city since the start of last year, suggesting that far too many have been released without bail in those and other incidents. At the Wednesday news conference, Adams pushed for more amendments to the reforms, namely allowing judges to consider whether a suspect is likely to reoffend if released with no bail. But the same day, Gov. Kathy Hochul took a different route, calling out judges and prosecutors for not following the law while Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, a Bronx Democrat — who has said repeatedly that judges are not setting bail in cases where they have the ability to do so — indicated Adams has not shared with lawmakers the data he claims prove that too many criminals are getting rearrested once freed. “I’m scratching my head regarding the mayor’s recollection of conversations we’ve had,” Heastie tweeted. “To date, we’ve received no data from the mayor or his team. My most recent exchange with him was about my dismay that he claims to have data that vastly differs from

EU Members Back Zelensky’s Call To Ban All Russians From Traveling The Ukrainian government is lobbying European Union nations as well as the United States to shut their borders to any and all Russian travelers for a period of at least one year. “The most important sanctions are to close the borders — because the Russians are taking away someone else’s land,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in Monday comments to The Washington Post. Zelensky went so far as to say there should be a world-wide ban in place by the international community on Russians going anywhere. EU visa, file: Dreamstime.com This call to further isolate Russia and its citizens came the same day the Pentagon and Biden administration unveiled another massive Ukraine defense aid package, this time time ramping up the dollar amount to $1 billion in military equipment, for which Zelensky formally thanked Biden in a message. Zelensky in the statements said Russian citizens should “live in their own world until they change their philosophy” – before being allowed to travel in the West. “They’ll understand then,” he said. He argued that barring all Russians from traveling would send a powerful deterrent message, while also urging Europe to pull the trigger on a total Russian energy ban. At the same time Zelensky called existing Western sanctions “weak”.  Surprisingly, Zelensky’s remarks were backed out of the gate by a couple of EU member nations: The leaders of Estonia and Finland want fellow European countries to stop issuing tourist visas to Russian citizens, saying they should not be able to take vacations in Europe while the Russian government carries out a war in Ukraine. Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas wrote Tuesday on Twitter that “visiting Europe is a privilege, not a human right” and that it is “time to end tourism from

The 10 living members of an often-unsung unit in the U.S. Army have been awarded with Congress’ highest recognition for their role on Europe’s battlefields during World War II, roles that relied on deception to save lives. About 50 people gathered at Morselife Home Care in West Palm Beach Saturday to recognize one of them — veteran Manny Frockt, 98, who was a member of the sonic deception unit of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, known as the Ghost Army. President Joe Biden signed the Ghost Army Congressional Gold Medal Act into law in February to recognize the soldiers for “their unique and highly distinguished service in conducting deception operations” during the war in Europe, the law says. The tactics of the Ghost Army included hundreds of inflatable tanks, “advanced engineered soundtracks” and radio tricks to deceive German units, according to the new law. Many of the soldiers were recruited from art schools and other creative or technical backgrounds. “‘Rarely, if ever, has there been a group of such a few men which had so great an influence on the outcome of a major military campaign,’” an Army analysis after the war said, according to the law. Through its cunning and ingenuity, the unit of about 1,100 men was able to make it seem as if there were as many as 30,000 troops in its operations, according to the nonprofit Ghost Army Legacy Project, whose president, Rick Beyer, spoke at Saturday’s event. Beyer said the Ghost Army carried out 22 different battlefield deceptions. “He was one of those guys who played sounds from giant loud speakers mounted on half-tracks to fool the enemy about American forces and where they were,” Beyer said. Frockt participated in Operation Viersen in March 1945, their final mission, to trick Germans about where Americans would cross the Rhine River. It was “the biggest and most successful operation,” Beyer said, that likely saved