Houston, TX - Exxon Mobil Corp. said today it's getting out of the retail gasoline business, following other major oil companies who've been selling their low-margin stations to gasoline distributors. Motorists, however, will continue to see Exxon's Tiger-themed stations and Mobil outlets in their neighborhoods. Already, about 75 percent of Exxon Mobil's roughly 12,000 stations in the U.S...

Monsey, NY - The Covenant Foundation, a very well respected national Jewish organization that honors outstanding Jewish educators around the U.S. for their creative approaches to Jewish education in North America, has announced its 18th annual list of Covenant Award recipients—among them Rabbi Yakov Horowitz, Dean of Monsey's Yeshiva Darchei Noam and an outstanding educator who touches issue...

Borough Park, Brooklyn, NY - An alleged perpetrator driving a car-service, who is being accused of attmped sexual assault in the Boro Park section of Brooklyn, has just been stopped on 18th Avenue and Ocean Parkway by Borough Park Shomrim Patrol after a vehicle pursuit. NYPD of the 66th Pct are responding to the above location. ...

Williamsburgh, NY - Just weeks after the nation’s largest kosher slaughterhouse made national news for problems with its workers, a kosher food distributor in Brooklyn has become caught up in an escalating dispute with its employees. Flaum Appetizing fired nearly half its 45 employees May 28. According to Alvin Blyer, the Brooklyn regional director of the National Labor Relations Board, the...

Milwaukee - Is meat produced at Agriprocessor’s plant in Postville, Iowa, really kosher? In spite of it bearing the Orthodox Union’s kosher symbol, that question has been on many of our minds since U.S. immigration authorities raided the plant May 12 and arrested 390 illegal immigrant workers. The raid also raised allegations that workers were paid less than the minimum wage and...

Brooklyn, NY - New York City police have arrested four men suspected of setting up a fake Craiglist advertisement hawking iPhones, then robbing people at gunpoint when they answered the posting. Police say at least 12 different victims answered the ad, which had been posted on the Internet site since at least March. Victims would bring cash and meet suspects at a Brooklyn street corner in...

Hudson Valley, NY - Nearly 10,000 Hudson Valley electric customers are still without service today, as crews continue to make repairs following violent, tree-toppling thunderstorms of Tuesday. New York State Electric & Gas still has 3,700 without power, most of them in the Sullivan County communities of White Lake, Smallwood, Swan Lake and Jeffersonville. Utility spokeswoman Brenda Patton...

Los Angeles, CA - When attorney Donald Etra was invited to join President Bush at Camp David for a spring weekend in 2005, the invitation put him in a quandary. It was already Friday afternoon, and Etra, an Orthodox Jew, feared that if he traveled by car from the White House as planned, he’d never make it to the presidential retreat by sundown. The solution: Bush stepped in and offered to...

New York, NY - Administrative charges have been filed against Robert M. Scarano Jr., an architect who built his career during Brooklyn’s construction boom, alleging that he made false or misleading statements on applications submitted to the Buildings Department in connection with two projects in Greenpoint. The administrative charges — which could result in the suspension or revocation of...

Two big drug store chains are selling expired food, medicine and baby formula, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said. The items were found at 142 CVS and 112 Rite Aid Pharmacies in New York. Many stores sold milk and eggs that had expired, and some sold medications that were more than a year past their expiration dates, Cuomo said. Investigators for the Attorney General's office were...

Winnipeg, Canada - A Manitoba judge has moved up the date for a trial to determine whether an elderly man should be kept on life support. The case surrounding the care of Samuel Golubchuk was set to start in December, but Justice Michel Monnin has sided with an application from the Grace Hospital to move the trial up to mid-September. The hospital says the task of caring for Golubchuk is...

New York City - United Airlines will follow rival American Airlines in charging $15 for a first checked bag. The new fee was announced today, three weeks after American set the precedent. United says the fee affects customers who buy tickets beginning Friday for domestic flights from Aug. 18 or later. Also, the Chicago-based carrier is increasing the fee to check three or more bags...

New York - The technology news site CNET has compiled two interesting lists showing which cellphones give off the most and the least radiation. In publishing the information, CNET editors note the data aren’t meant to imply that cellphone radiation poses a risk, nor is it meant to say that the phones are safe. the data on cellphone safety is mixed, although a few recent international studies...

Israel -Fifty-five years after she was abducted from her family's home in Baghdad by her Muslim neighbor and forced to renounce her Judaism, Hannah Menashe managed to flee Iraq and find her way to one of Israel’s European embassies. Her long, exhausting journey is finally coming to an end these days, as she will soon be reunited with he family in Israel, who thought her murdered all these...

Kiryas Joel, NY - Last week, former County Court Judge Stewart Rosenwasser, who returned to private law practice in 2006, confirmed an incident that he wasn't able to discuss while he was a sitting judge. In 2005, someone apparently hacked into his cell phone while he was in the midst of deciding a ferocious dispute between Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum, leader of a Kiryas Joel faction of Satmars, and...