A straphanger who witnessed the fatal subway confrontation between Daniel Penny and Jordan Neely earlier this month called Penny a “hero” for restraining the homeless man before his death.

The 66-year-old woman, who asked not to be identified, also said she’d testify on behalf of Penny, 24, who was charged last week with second-degree manslaughter over the deadly encounter.

The witness told The Post that Neely, 30, went on an explosive tirade just before his caught-on-camera death, telling people he was willing to “kill a motherf—er” and “[take] a bullet” and go to jail.

Neely’s erratic behavior put commuters on the F train subway car on edge as they hurtled between stations in Manhattan, the witness said.

“The rhetoric from Mr. Neely was very frightening, it was very harsh,” the witness told The Post.

The Big Apple hospital worker accused in a viral video of hijacking a Citi Bike from a young black man has been identified by her lawyer as Sarah Comrie — who is raising money to pay for legal bills tied to the ordeal.

Lawyer Justin Marino confirmed Thursday that it was Comrie, a Bellevue Hospital employee, who appeared in the controversial video that was posted online Saturday and has since been seen by tens of millions of social media users.

The video shows her in a heated encounter with a group of men who claimed in the footage that they paid for the bike she was on at the docking station.

Marino on Wednesday provided receipts to The Post that he says prove his client actually paid for the two-wheeler, and said in a statement that Comrie got on the available bike, “which no individuals were on or touching.”

The lawyer said the group of five young men then approached her and claimed the bike was theirs, and the situation quickly went sideways.

Comrie, who is six months pregnant, was placed on leave from her job as a physician assistant by NYC Health + Hospitals this week.

A 14-year-old boy was busted this week for kicking a man in the head during a hate-fueled attack in which his pals called the victim a “cracker,” cops said. 

The teen, who was not identified because of his age, was arrested Tuesday and charged with hate crime assault in connection to the April 14 attack on Roosevelt Island, police said. 

The trio came up to the 35-year-old victim around 7 p.m. in the back of an apartment complex on Main Street, police said. 

The FBI had at least four open criminal investigations into Hillary and Bill Clinton that were suddenly dropped in the months before the 2016 presidential election, special counsel John Durham’s recently released report shows.

The bombshell report released by Durham — which concluded that the bureau’s probe into former President Donald Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia was “seriously flawed” — also shed light on the quashed probes.

The feds had been looking into claims that foreign countries and other individuals were trying to influence the Clintons through donations to their namesake non-profit and Hillary’s presidential campaign.

Three of the FBI’s four investigations that were launched in early 2016 were looking into allegations that the Clinton Foundation has a hub of “criminal activity.”

Israeli lawmakers are pushing a new bill that would see flying the Palestinian flag punishable by up to one year in prison.

The bill is backed by members of the far-right Jewish Power party and states that three or more people waving the flag of a "hostile entity" will be considered a prohibited gathering and therefore punishable.

The Israeli Knesset has already voted its approval at a preliminary reading of the bill and it will need three additional votes to pass.

"As a democracy, Israel enables its citizens to protest decisions they don’t agree with the authorities on," reads the explanation of the bill, according to Haaretz.

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Following a major strike on the Ukrainian capital Kiev in May 16, which involved use of multiple missile classes including deployment of Kinzhal ballistic missiles against Ukraine’s Patriot air defence systems, new information regarding the strike has continued to emerge. With Western sources having confirmed that a Patriot system was taken out of action, the Russian Defence Ministry on May 18 reported: "According to verified information, as a result of a strike by the Kinzhal hypersonic missile system in the city of Kiev a multifunctional radar station, as well as five launchers of the Patriot anti-aircraft missile system manufactured by the United States were hit and completely destroyed on May 16, 2023.” It was previously only confirmed that the radar station, which provides command and control for each Patriot unit, was destroyed. Ukraine received two units of Patriots from mid April, with the first delivered less than a month before the recent strike. The United States repeatedly proved reluctant to provide the assets or to allow its European allies to do so, not only because this would deplete the relatively limited arsenals available to the U.S. Military and its allies, but also because of their extreme cost and the significant reputational damage which their destruction in combat could cause. The system’s failure was widely predicted in light of its highly modest combat record against much simpler missiles than those in Russia’s arsenal.

A large swath of American consumers are facing financial hardship as they grapple with elevated living costs, record-high credit card use, and two years of negative real wage growth. This perfect storm could decimate financially fragile households in the next downturn. 

As many as 89.1 million American adults (or about 38.5%) were found to experience some form of difficulty in covering expenses between April 26 and May 8, according to Bloomberg, citing new data from the Household Pulse Survey. This is up from 34.4% in 2022 and 26.7% during the same period in 2021. 

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) has suggested that the FBI should be defunded and its agents criminally indicted after special counsel John Durham concluded this week that the federal agency should have never launched an investigation into whether former President Donald Trump colluded with Russia during the 2016 election.

Durham’s 300-plus page report (pdf) asserted that the FBI rushed into the probe without having any evidence that officials from the Trump campaign had contacted any Russian intelligence officer.

During an interview with Newsmax on Monday, Gaetz accused the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) of being politically biased in the probe, alleging the agency has become “the enforcement wing of the Democratic Party to play offense against Trump,” describing its actions as “very ugly for the future of a democracy where the people make the choices.”

“The report takes great lengths to point out the number of times where Trump was targeted in a way no other American would be,” Gaetz said. “In essence, the FBI has now become a disinformation and election interference enterprise here in our country. It’s very damning for them, the Steele Dossier was nonsense, the probable cause standard even to originate an investigation … was never met, and you had a secret court that was lied to.”

“I think we have to deauthorize, defang, and defund many of these authorities and entities and different task forces that actually converted the just and righteous act of protecting our country with the desire to have a particular political candidate win or lose,” he added.

Major stores continue to back out of crime-ridden San Francisco, with a disturbing report showing 95 retailers downtown - more than half the total - have closed since the start of the COVID pandemic. 

At least one more is set to, with Williams-Sonoma announcing they'll shut down in 2024.

Out of 203 retailers open in 2019 in the city's Union Square area, just 107 are still operating, a drop of 47 percent in just a few pandemic-ravaged years.

Among the heavy hitters, Brooks Brothers, Ray Ban, Christian Louboutin, Lululemon and Marmot have all packed it in. 

A top central banker has warned of the damage the rush to ‘Net-Zero’ risks doing to Europe’s economy, and illustrates the point by noting erasing Europe’s built heritage would be necessary to meet extreme green demands.

Among comments by Paolo Angelini, deputy governor at the Bank of Italy about European Net Zero targets which, in his opinion, risk doing more harm than good, the central banker articulated what level of change would actually be needed from Europeans to meet those demands.

Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk is “absolutely entitled” to censure left-wing billionaire George Soros “without being labeled an antisemite,” according to former New York state assemblyman Dov Hikind, who accused Soros himself of “legitimiz[ing] antisemites.”

In a post from Wednesday, Hikind, who serves as chairman of Americans Against Antisemitism (AAA), highlighted the error of automatically attributing any criticism of the Democrat megadonor to antisemitism. 

Anti-gun zealots say a lot of dumb things about the Second Amendment.

That’s one reason why Mark W. Smith’s Second Amendment YouTube channel The Four Boxes Diner™ has become so popular.

With over 15 million views, his videos provide YOU with the information needed to debunk the left’s myths about our fundamental right to bear arms.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman will attend the secretive Bilderberg Meeting, an annual gathering of over 100 political and corporate leaders from Europe and North America, which has announced AI as a key item on its agenda this year.

Altman isn’t the only Big Tech figure in attendance. Other participants include Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and Google DeepMind head Demis Hassabis.

Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), will also attend. As noted in a congressional hearing last week, CISA played a key role as a source of government pressure in the Big Tech censorship regime that harmed President Trump’s chances in the 2020 election.

President Joe Biden left for overseas, leaving Vice President Kamala Harris to be briefed about the continuing debt ceiling talks.

Biden left for Japan on Wednesday as Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and the White House continue negotiating a potential debt ceiling deal.

In his stead, Biden left Harris to participate in a “virtual briefing” on the debt limit negotiations.

Republican National Committee (RNC) Chair Ronna McDaniel released a statement excoriating the Biden administration’s lack of leadership in the negotiations.

“While Joe Biden has left the country, border czar Kamala Harris is now involved in debt ceiling negotiations despite presiding over the worst border crisis in history,” McDaniel said in a written statement. “The Biden-Harris administration’s lack of leadership creates crisis after crisis, leaving American families to suffer the consequences, but they don’t care.”

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace today warned the world is facing a wider conflict as a range of adversaries around the world - from Russia to China - pose a threat to our future safety.

Wallace said by the end of the decade, the world will be a 'more dangerous, unstable place' in his starkest warning yet that there could be a World War Three.

He warned that a 'conflict is coming', pointing to how there could be a wider conflict between NATO and Russia in the future as well as the threat posed by a 'rising China' and African extremists.

The atomic process that powers the sun has the means to alter how we harness energy to power our world, but conquering the physics of containing a fusion reaction has proven to be enormously difficult. Yet the nation that creates a genuine, sustained, fusion reaction will own the future.

Not to be confused with a fission hydrogen bomb (that splits the nuclei of atoms into smaller atoms), physicists explain that a controlled fusion reaction (that combines the nuclei of atoms) creates temperatures up to one hundred million degrees Celsius. It is difficult to conceive of mastering a reaction that is almost ten times the temperature at the Sun's center. However, researchers in multiple nations have created what is called a tokamak reactor that uses enormously powerful magnetic fields to contain the reaction for milliseconds of time. Part of the challenge is how to use less energy to create that reaction than the energy required to sustain it.

The short, "non-physicist" explanation of this process is that it allows nuclear fusion to heat hydrogen at extraordinary temperatures that, in turn, create a superheated plasma gas. The energy and heat produced by this reaction can ultimately be used to generate steam that turns turbines of any size for any purpose. The amount of fusion fuel needed to produce enormous amounts of energy is a mere fraction of what fossil fuels would require and creates no pollution in the atmosphere or radioactive waste. Nor, to create fusion, would we have to depend on hostile nations to ensure supplies of that ever-abundant element, hydrogen.

But the report is actually significant in delivering the nail in the coffin to the Russia Gate narrative that so many people bought into for so long.

The Durham report nevertheless is very limited in its focus on the FBI—and failure to investigate the role that the CIA and White House played in Russia Gate.

The CIA Director at the time, John Brennan, is known as the “godfather of Russia Gate.” Soon after the start of the FBI’s Operation Crossfire Hurricane, Brennan briefed Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) on alleged Russian election interference.

Reid then wrote to then-FBI Director James Comey, warning him not to ignore “the evidence of a direct connection between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.” Comey apparently responded by initiating Crossfire Hurricane.

The post-9/11 War on Terror may have caused at least 4.5 million deaths in around half a dozen countries, according to a report published Monday by the preeminent academic institution studying the costs, casualties, and consequences of a war in which U.S. bombs and bullets are still killing and wounding people in multiple nations.

The new report from the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs shows "how death outlives war" by examining people killed indirectly by the War on Terror in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen.

"In a place like Afghanistan, the pressing question is whether any death can today be considered unrelated to war," Stephanie Savell, Costs of War co-director and author of the report, said in a statement. "Wars often kill far more people indirectly than in direct combat, particularly young children."

Before becoming the worst thorn in the Russian bear’s paw, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was decidedly pro-Russian, during one recently resurfaced interview declaring Ukrainians and Russians “brothers” and insisting that Russian speakers in Ukraine be allowed to continue speaking their language.

One of two Israeli-manufactured Iron Dome batteries owned by the Pentagon is ready to be deployed to Ukraine, a US general told the Senate on Thursday. Tel Aviv has so far refused to supply the anti-missile system to Kiev, for fear of provoking Russia and risking its ability to freely bomb Moscow’s ally Syria.

During a Senate Strategic Forces subcommittee hearing on Thursday, Senator Angus King pressed a senior Pentagon official on why Ukraine has not yet received the Iron Dome, noting the US role in creating the air defense system.

“We sent something like $3 billion to Israel to develop it… Wouldn’t this be a very important resource for the Ukrainians since their principal problem right now is missile defense?” the lawmaker asked.

China’s special representative for Eurasian affairs, Li Hui, was in Ukraine on Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss the prospect of peace talks and met with senior Ukrainian officials, including Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and President Volodymyr Zelensky.

According to the Ukrainian side, Kuleba told Li that Ukraine won’t agree to any deal that cedes territory to Russia. Kuleba “emphasized that Ukraine does not accept any proposals that would involve the loss of its territories or the freezing of the conflict.”

Ukraine and Russia are extremely far apart in their demands for a settlement. Kyiv wants Russia to withdraw from all the territory it has captured since launching the invasion last year and Crimea before talks can even happen. For their part, Moscow wants any peace deal to recognize the oblasts it has annexed as Russian territory.

A neo-Nazi accused of murdering immigrants has filmed himself in possession of five anti-tank rockets that Britain supplied to Ukraine, an investigation by Declassified UK has found.

Sergei Korotkikh can be seen with UK-made missile launchers in three videos posted to his Telegram channel. Campaign Against Arms Trade said the discovery is “very troubling”.

It adds to evidence that some weapons sent by Britain to Ukraine have ended up in the hands of extremist forces. Declassified recently uncovered another case where a jihadist convicted of torture had received UK missiles.

NATO is drawing up plans on how to fight a war with Russia for the first time since the Cold War.

According to Reuters, at the upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius this July, alliance leaders will approve thousands of pages of secret military plans that will detail how to respond to a Russian attack.

The plans will be vastly different than anything drawn up during the Cold War as NATO has expanded from 16 members to 31 since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. The documents will also outline how NATO members should upgrade their forces and logistics.

“Allies will know exactly what forces and capabilities are needed, including where, what and how to deploy,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said of the war plans.

Another sign of a possible consumer downturn is unfolding in India, recognized as the world's top polishing gem hub. The country is bracing for a challenging year as diamond demand from key markets in North America and Asia is expected to soften. 

For the fiscal year ending in March, India reported a 10% drop in cut and polished diamond exports to $22 billion, driven primarily by inconsistent Russian rough-diamond supplies and waning demand in the US and China, according to Bloomberg, citing a new report from Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council.

US officials say the Biden administration has initiated an "unprecedented" effort bring the Pentagon and Israeli army into direct joint military planning.

"The Biden administration proposed to Israel a few weeks ago the idea of engaging in joint military planning concerning Iran, three U.S. and Israeli officials told Axios," according to the publication.

The Biden administration is preparing for the war in Ukraine to turn into a frozen conflict for years or possibly even decades, similar to the situation on the Korean peninsula, POLITICO reported on Thursday.

US officials have been discussing the possibility, including potential options for where to draw the lines for a frozen conflict that either side would agree not to cross. The report said the idea of freezing the fighting could be a “politically palatable long-term result.”

The administration is considering the possibility because they don’t expect Ukraine to regain much territory in its long-awaited counteroffensive. According to POLITICO, the US is expecting that the assault “won’t deal a mortal blow to Russia.”

Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) led 37 other House Democrats in a letter that calls on President Biden to support the diplomatic progress in Yemen by declaring the US will not provide military support to the Saudi-led coalition in the conflict.

In a major diplomatic breakthrough, the Saudis and the Houthis recently held talks in Sanaa, but a peace deal has yet to be reached. Amid the negotiations, US officials traveled to Saudi Arabia and, according to Axios, “underscored the US support for Saudi Arabia’s defense against threats from Yemen,” signaling the Biden administration is ready to support Riyadh if the war flares up again.

The House Democrats on Biden and his administration to “clearly and publicly state that the United States will not provide any further support in any form to any faction party to the conflict while diplomatic talks to end the war are ongoing and should they fail to reach a diplomatic settlement and return to armed hostilities.”