Los Angeles, CA - An Israeli banker pleaded guilty Friday to taking part in an elaborate tax fraud and money-laundering scheme that prosecutors claim involved the leader of an Orthodox Jewish group and several Los Angeles businesses. Joseph Roth, 66, of Tel Aviv, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit tax fraud. U.S. District Judge George Schiavelli scheduled sentencing for Oct. 20, when Roth...

Crown Heights, NY - Police say four teenagers have been arrested on hate crime charges for throwing rocks at a school bus full of Jewish toddlers. Police say the three girls and one boy yelled epithets last month as they broke windows on the bus in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights. The children weren't hurt. The case is part of a string of incidents that have stirred tensions between...

Crown Heights, NY - VIN News has learned that NYPD captain at the 72 precinct Peter Simonetti, will take over to become the new Captain at the 71 precinct, to replace Deputy Inspector Frank Vega who has been promoted and transfered to another precinct...

New York City - Kosher Village had changed its name for the second time in three months (Chickpea to Kosher Village to Tahini). Turns out, owner Nissim Oron didn't realize that there weren't enough Orthodox Jewish people in the East Village to sustain a glatt kosher restaurant, a designation that requires closing on shabbat and for holidays, an expensive proposition. "After three months I...

New York City - Stocks tumbled Friday afternoon, with the Dow crossing into bear market territory, as record-high oil prices, a weak dollar and more financial market woes rattled investors. oil prices set record above $142. The Dow Jones closed down 93 points at 11,360...

Los Angeles, CA - The Simon Wiesenthal Center criticized German judicial authorities in Baden-Baden, accusing them of obstructing the hunt for former Nazi SS doctor Aribert Heim. Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi hunter at the Jewish human rights organization, said the judge in charge of the case had disallowed German police requests on several occasions for telephone taps of Heim's relatives and an...

London - Police are searching for two alleged Israeli conmen who are said have obtained thousands of pounds in “loans” from gullible synagogue members. The two, saying they were an uncle and nephew, are said to have asked for and received more than £8,000 in loans from members of one synagogue and smaller amounts from another. Although they returned some of the money, they have since...

Ukraine - A vandal who painted swastikas and neo-Nazi slogans on a small mausoleum over the grave of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, the famous Berdichev'r Rabbi who died in 1810, was sentenced to one and a half years in prison. The 20-year-old defendant was charged under Article 297 of the Criminal Code (desecrating graves), but not a hate crime...

Israel - From prison brothels to slave labor camps, 15 scholars concluded a two-week probe Thursday of an untapped repository of millions of Nazi records, and hailed it as a rich vein of raw material that will deepen the study of the Holocaust. Among the striking revelations was the identification of the man who rescued an eight-year-old in Buchenwald concentration camp, Yisrael Meir Lau, the...

Chicago, IL - About 150 Jewish voters gathered in June at a private home in Los Angeles for what marked a new phase in Senator Barack Obama’s outreach effort to the Jewish community. Some were longtime Obama supporters who came to hear what kind of help they can offer as the campaign moves to the general election from the primary. Some were backers of Senator Hillary Clinton hoping to learn...

WIlliamsburg, NY - For four Saturdays this summer, Bedford Avenue will become a place to lounge. The city will close Bedford Avenue to traffic as an experiment, turning the thoroughfare into a pedestrian-only plaza between Metropolitan Avenue and North Ninth Street. Cars will still be able to cross Bedford on all the side streets, but each Bedford block will be traffic-free (that includes...

Iraq - Some 300 rare and valuable books confiscated from Iraq's Jewish community by Saddam Hussein's regime have been secretly spirited into Israel, an Israeli newspaper reported on Friday. The books include a 1487 commentary on the biblical Book of Job and another volume of biblical prophets printed in Venice in 1617, the Haaretz daily said. The volumes are part of a massive collection of...

San Francisco, CA - Conservative talk show host Michael Savage caused a fire storm yesterday, when he said on his syndicated radio show, that if the Jews where armed to their teeth with guns Nazi Germany would have never happened. Mr. savage who’s radio show is broadcasted daily to more than 10 million listeners said “the historic U.S supreme court decision that Americans have the right...

New York City - Mayor Bloomberg is paying back New York Republicans for supporting his failed congestion pricing plan by promising to help the struggling party retain its majority in the state Senate. "I've said repeatedly, I'll help those who help this city. The Republicans in the state Senate were willing to vote for congestion pricing and the Democrats were not," Bloomberg said Thursday. In...

Brooklyn, NY - A Brooklyn real estate agency systematically denied service to black people — going so far as to ask on the phone whether one prospective renter was Jewish — according to a federal lawsuit filed Thursday. The pattern of blatant racial discrimination the suit alleges first came to light in April 2007, when Vanessa Lee, 43, called Bais Seller Real Estate in Midwood looking for...