Washington - Unreported Seizures, Heart Attacks Cause Severe Accidents, It's so easy to fabricate the medical certificates required to operate commercial trucks on the nation's highways that there's almost no incentive for truckers to obtain a legitimate document, according to a congressional study. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's study -- expected to be released at a...

New York City - Fifteen City Council members are calling for taxi fares to be increased, saying they are ready to risk constituents' ire to prevent cabbies from leaving the streets. Members of a union representing 11,000 taxi drivers, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, joined the council members yesterday outside City Hall to ask the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission to reconsider...

Cuba - Ailing Fidel Castro said Wednesday that Cuba's president was right to adopt a "dignified silence" over a Moscow newspaper report that Russia may send nuclear bombers to the island, and said Cuba doesn't owe any explanation to Washington about the story. In a brief, cryptic essay posted on a government Web site Wednesday night, the 81-year-old former president neither confirmed nor...

Israel - The Knesset has approved a bill underlining the independence of the ultra-Orthodox yeshivas and supplying them with funds without subjugating them to the Education Ministry and its teaching curriculum. The bill was passed by a majority of 39 MKs, and was opposed by just six. According to the new law, the ultra-Orthodox community, as a "unique cultural group", will be permitted to...

New York City - Drivers who assault traffic enforcement agents will face felony charges because of a change in state law that went into effect on Tuesday, putting the agents in the same category as police officers, firefighters and other emergency workers. The change in the penal law, signed by Gov. David A. Paterson in April, makes an attack on a traffic agent second-degree assault, a Class D...

Washington - Numerous cartoons have appeared recently in the Arab press that portray presumptive U.S. presidential candidates senators Barack Obama and John McCain as lackeys controlled by Israel and by American Jews. The allegations are in a report released Wednesday in New York by the Anti-Defamation League. ADL director Abe Foxman said leading media outlets "from Gaza to Ramallah, from...

Calgary, Canada - Attacking a Jewish girl and the friends who came to her rescue has landed a Muslim man a one-year jail sentence. Mustafa Taj must also serve a year of probation following his release for what provincial court Judge Bill Cummings ruled was a racially motivated assault. "In this case, I'm satisfied that imprisonment is necessary," Cummings said in accepting the Crown's bid...

Jerusalem, Israel - Dozens of ads for the Telma breakfast cereal featuring Israeli actress Orna Banai have been ripped down in Jerusalem over recent days, likely by ultra-Orthodox protesters angry over the prolific imagery of a woman on billboards across the city. The head of Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox council, Shmuel Popenheim, said that the city should take into account the sentiments of its...

Manhattan, NY - Harlem community leaders say two white police officers drove through the traditionally black neighborhood with the head of a black doll on their car's antenna. State Sen. Bill Perkins calls the incident "another display of racism" by police. Perkins says he was at a restaurant when neighborhood residents noticed the head on the unmarked police car. He says one resident tried to...