Jerusalem - Out with rubber bullets, tear gas, shock grenades; in with new, stinky means to scatter violent rioters. After using new tool during Naalin riot, officers report Palestinians ran to shower, changed clothes The Border Guard has begun using a new means of contending with riots coined "Skunk”. The police developed this new method for scattering violent demonstrations and tested its...

Mexico - A 700-pound man once considered the world's most obese person left his home for the first time in five months Sunday with the aid of a forklift and a platform truck. Manuel Uribe traveled to the shore of a lake in northern Mexico without ever leaving his specially designed bed. A forklift hoisted the bed onto the truck, which then hauled him to the lake, where he snacked on fish and...

Kiryat Shmona - A man bludgeoned his 70-year-old wife to death with a rock yesterday morning. Binyamin Avraham, 72, confessed to police that he had killed his wife Yocheved, but gave no motive. However, neighbors suggested he had a history of assaulting her, and family members said she had complained to police two weeks ago. The Acre Magistrate's Court remanded Avraham for nine days, and...

South Fallsburg, NY - Hatzolah EMS are requesting all units to respond to Whitiger Road at the Ger'a Camp for the search of three missing children ages 6, 7 and 9. U/D: 07:54pm Search has been canceled, all missing children have been found. ...

New York - The nation's largest mass transit system can boast a new distinction: A survey shows New York has cooler buses in summer than many U.S. cities. NYC Transit workers recently took buses' temperature 2,200 times, in the agency's largest such effort to date. Less than 5 percent were considered unacceptably hot _ more than 78 degrees. Less than 4 percent don't have working air...

Brooklyn, NY - Itsik Zeitouni, a young man with big ambitions, was living in the Homecrest section of southern Brooklyn early last year, but his thoughts were elsewhere — just a little to the west, in fact, in the adjacent neighborhood of Gravesend. There, the Sephardic Jewish population was in the midst of a population boom that was ratcheting up prices for houses — and empty lots. Mr...

Portland, ME - An ultra-Orthodox Jewish leader has been ordered by the city to stop conducting religious services in his Craigie Street home, prompting the Maine Civil Liberties Union to question whether officials are trying to quash religious freedom. The issue is set to go before the city’s Zoning Board of Appeals on Aug. 21. Rabbi Moshe Wilansky is the leader of Chabad Lubavitch of...

Jerusalem - To the people of Gush Katif, I'm sorry that I evacuated you. I took families out of their homes forever, I put them on buses that took them to nowhere. I sinned against them. I remember every picture that I took down from the walls of their homes in Gush Katif. I remember every girl, every young woman and mother who I instructed to leave her home forever. Now, three years later...

As already reported that Israel's President Shimon Peres who is in Beijing for the opening of the Lympics attended Kinos and Megilas Eicha at the minyan organized by Chabad led by the shliach there, Rabbi Shimon Freundlich. Also attending were staff of the embassy, representatives of the Jewish community and members of the Israeli delegation. ...

Ashdod, Israel - An announcement was made by ‪Ultra-orthodox Ashdod rabbis to the entire Shabbat-keeping public, to ban all stores owned by businessman Dudi Weissman for not sanctifying Shabbat. Last March, the ultra-Orthodox community launched a campaign against Weissman's AM:PM chain of 24/7 convenient stores which are open on Shabbat. Today the Committee for the Sanctity of Shabbat...

Denver, CO - For the first time at a Democratic National Convention, a public interfaith service of Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists will help kick off the event at 2 p.m. Aug. 24 at the Wells Fargo Theater inside the Colorado Convention Center. Included in the service is Rabbi Tzvi Weinreb, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union. ...

Los Angeles, CA - The sound of laughter can be heard from outside a Los Angeles home as seven matchmakers sit around the dining room table taking notes, shuffling through papers and pitching match ideas over water and fruit salad. Attractive young single women donning ankle-length skirts and long-sleeved shirts sit in the living room, waiting for their turn to field questions from women who want...

Tel Aviv - The Transportation Ministry is investigating whether an Israir plane that flew from Eilat to Ben-Gurion International Airport took off with a small hole in its frame, a flaw which could have caused the plane to explode on its next scheduled flight to Rome. Ministry official Yitzhak Raz has been charged with checking whether Israir knowingly refrained from reporting the existence of...

New York, NY - With his congestion pricing plan dead for now, Mayor Bloomberg said he'd support putting tolls on the bridges into Manhattan. "Tolling the bridges actually makes a lot of sense," the mayor said. "It's easier to do. It is bigger. It includes upper Manhattan." A commission last year said $4 tolls on every free crossing into Manhattan could raise $859 million. It is one option...

Winnipeg, Canada - The family of a Winnipeg man at the centre of an end-of-life medical dispute is dropping its lawsuit against the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority. The move ends any possibility that the continuation of the case would set a legal precedent in how to deal with dying patients on life support. Samuel Golubchuk, 85, died June 24 after seven months on life support at Grace...