Atlantic City, NJ - Atlantic City's 11 casinos experienced their biggest monthly drop in revenue ever in September. Data out today from the state Casino Control Commission shows the amount of money the gaming halls won from gamblers plunged 15.1 percent from the same month a year ago. That made it the biggest one-month decline in the 30-year history of legalized gambling here. The...

London - A man has pleaded not guilty to assaulting a 12-year-old boy in a synagogue lavatory. M. R., 24, from Golders Green, North-West London, appeared at Snaresbrook Crown Court and will face trial in January 2009, accused of four offences. He has been charged with raping a child under the age of 13, sexual activity with a child, and two charges of causing or inciting a child to engage...

Seattle, WA - Six current and former employees at the University of Washington Police Department, have filed a civil-rights lawsuit against the university alleging a hostile work environment rife with racial discrimination, against female coms, blacks and Jews. Among other things, the suit alleges a Jewish officer was told he couldn't really be Jewish because he had no number tattooed on his...

Mechanicsburg, PA, - Upper Allen Twp. police are investigating criminal mischief that occurred in the area of Temple Beth Shalom on Allendale Road. Police said that a fire was set to a temporary religious structure known as a succot in the yard of the temple. Police say that a witness reported seeing three or four young males running from the area at 3:15 a.m. Anyone with any information...

New York, NY - One of the most reliable indicators of tough times is how many people have their electricity turned off because they did not pay the bill. According to the latest figures from Con Edison, times seem to be tough - predating the recent stock market turmoil. The utility said that in the month of September, 9,639 residential customers had their electricity turned off for...

Monticello, NY - Investigators said foul play likely caused the fire that destroyed a single-family, unoccupied home in Sackett Lake. The fire, which was reported just after 4 a.m. on Friday, had completely engulfed the home at 541 Sackett Lake Road by the time Monticello firefighters arrived. Nobody was at the seasonal home, which is registered to an owner in Brooklyn, according to...

Monsey, NY - Organizers of a religious ceremony involving chickens face up to $10,000 in fines for failing to properly clean up after the ritual, the Rockland County Health Department said today. The group running the kapparot ceremony was cited for two violations of the Rockland sanitary code each of the five days that thousands of chickens were kept on the grounds of the former Monsey Jewish...

Thompson, NY - Those two men, who allegedly stole a $3,000 compactor from the Sunshine Estates bungalow colony in the Town of Thompson, (as was reported here on VIN News), were caught as a result of the group’s surveillance cameras. Randall Brown, 39, and Daniel Popet, 25, both of Woodridge, were arrested by the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office after they allegedly took the machine to a...

New York - Noted conservative columnist Ben Shapiro produced a video noting who advises Barack Obama on foreign policy and Israel and in an effort to know who is the real Barack Obama. The youthful and Harvard-trained Ben Shapiro, a nationally-known columnist and author of numerous books, has released a video that makes the “Jewish Case against Barack Obama.” A 24-year-old conservative...

Jerusalem - Itzhak Rachmo had one word to describe a threatened Lebanese lawsuit against Israeli hummus sellers. "Bull". As a long queue of hungry clients formed at the counter for their staple Friday lunch, he clutched his forearm and declared: "There is hummus flowing through these veins." This week the Association of Lebanese Industrialists said it was planning international court action to...

Chicago, IL - There was a different sort of battle in a Chicago courtroom Friday. A Cook County judge threatened to lock up a Jewish attorney who didn't come to court on Yom Kippur. When attorney Moria Bernstein came to court Friday, she was facing possible arrest. She had notified Cook County Judge Veronica Mathein that she could not be on hand for an emergency hearing on a divorce property...

Klagenfurt, Austria - Austrian politician Joerg Haider, whose far-right rhetoric at times sounded sympathetic to the Nazis and contemptuous of Jews — and at one point led to months of international isolation for the Alpine republic — died early Saturday in a car accident. He was 58. Haider was pronounced dead in a hospital shortly after his Volkswagen Phaeton veered off the road in southern...

Washington - President Bush and foreign financial officials staged repeated displays of joint resolve Saturday to combat an unfolding financial crisis, hoping to calm investors whose panic has spread despite bold and accelerating government action. Yet there was no concrete offer of new moves when Bush spoke on a Rose Garden stage just after daybreak, flanked by representatives from nearly a...