Airmont, NY - The village's bid to dismiss a federal lawsuit charging it with discrimination against Orthodox Jews has been rejected. U.S. District Judge Stephen Robinson denied a request to dismiss the lawsuit brought three years ago by the Department of Justice in a 1991 case, that the impetus of the village's formation "was an animosity toward Orthodox Jews as a group." The federal...

Germany - The head of Germany's Jewish community revealed that she received death threats which made her fear for her life in an interview given to mark the 70th anniversary of the infamous Nazi "Kristallnacht" pogrom that paved the way for the Holocaust. Charlotte Knobloch, the president of Germany's Central Council of Jews, issued a dire warning against the rise of neo-Nazi parties and said...

New York - Motorists planning to travel the state Thruway over the Thanksgiving holiday are being advised that gasoline won't be available at three travel plazas in upstate New York. The Thruway Authority says the gas station at the Port Byron travel plaza on the eastbound side of the highway, between Exits 41 and 40, will undergo renovations starting today. The work at the plaza 25 miles west...

Seattle, WA - A federal judge has rejected an attempt by an alleged Nazi war criminal living in Bellevue to kill a Department of Justice lawsuit seeking to strip him of citizenship. Peter Egner, 86, is accused of working with a Nazi mobile killing unit that murdered thousands of Jews, Gypsies and political dissidents during World War II. Egner, who lived in a Bellevue retirement home when...

Washington - Hillary Clinton plans to accept the job of secretary of state offered by Barack Obama, who is reaching out to former rivals to build a broad coalition administration, the Guardian has learned. Obama's advisers have begun looking into Bill Clinton's foundation, which distributes millions of dollars to Africa to help with development, to ensure that there is no conflict of interest...

Keene, NY - The Adirondack Park Agency has approved Verizon's plan to build a new 79-foot cell phone tower in the Adirondack town of Keene, filling a cell service hole along the busy two-lane highway through the mountains that connects Lake Placid to the Adirondack Northway. The site near Route 73 is next to the town's water tank and will have a 10-foot lightning rod on top. Verizon plans to...

New York - On the surface, the crisis besetting America’s largest kosher meatpacker looks a lot like the larger infection that is crippling the nation’s economy and undoing so many iconic brands, from Lehman Brothers to AIG to Circuit City. Like other firms, Agriprocessors fell victim to the arrogance of its owners and the dereliction of outside regulators. Like others, the crippling of...

Postville, IA - The Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Postville has halted production, and its leaders are awaiting the outcome of a bankruptcy hearing before deciding what to do next. The plant has struggled to survive in the wake of an immigration raid last May. It stopped slaughtering cattle a few weeks ago, but it had continued processing chickens until last week. Among its many...

New York - U.S. stocks slid, extending a two- week drop, as a record contraction in New York manufacturing and Citigroup Inc.'s plan to cut 50,000 jobs spurred concern the recession will deepen. You're going to continue to get barraged with bad economic data,'' Bill Stone, who oversees $56 billion as chief investment strategist at PNC Wealth Management in Philadelphia, told Bloomberg...

Montreal - A man accused of firebombing Jewish institutions in Montreal has been sentenced to 48 months in prison. Azim Ibragimov, 25, was firebombing the Snowdon Y in April of last year, and an Outremont Jewish boys' school a few months before that. Judge Gilles Cadieux said that Ibragimov should spend four years in prison arguing these were hate crimes targetting and terrorizing the...

New York City - He calls himself "Jimmy Justice," a self-styled "cop-arazzi," armed only with a video camera as he prowls the streets of New York looking for law enforcement officers who are breaking the law. His targets are illegally parked city government vehicles -- particularly cars of traffic cops blocking bus stops, sitting in "no parking" zones or double-parked. Cop cars blocking fire...

New York, NY - Mayor Michael Bloomberg's budget director told a City Council finance hearing today that he and the mayor are eager to lobby again for the tax in Albany, particularly in tough economic times for both the state and city. Republican state lawmakers recently said they oppose any attempt to revive the tax, but a newly Democratic-controlled state Senate might mean the proposal gets...

Yorba Linda, CA - As residents throughout Southern California faced the unenviable task of returning to charred homes after a series of wildfires swept across bone-dry municipalities, religious communities sprung into action to offer help and words of hope. Rabbi Dovid Eliezrie, co-director of the North County Chabad-Lubavitch Center in Yorba Linda, said that the worst of the flames struck his...

Thuringia, Germany - Police say two Jewish cemeteries in eastern Germany have been desecrated in an anti-Semitic attack. Police say a pig's head and an anti-Semitic banner were left at the gate of a cemetery in the city of Gotha. They said that several glasses containing a red blood-like liquid were thrown over the cemetery's gate. In Erfurt, a memorial plaque at the entrance gate to a...

Mountain View, CA - Google is going to release software that will let users enter search terms on a smartphone by just saying them aloud. What is slightly controversial about this upcoming application is that it's for the Apple iPhone, not the T-Mobile G1, which runs Google's own Android OS. Google Voice Recognition ApplicationThis new service will be part of an update to the free Google...