Atlantic City, NJ - A number of local political figures, along with several Holocaust survivors, were present at a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, at a pavilion on the Atlantic City boardwalk, between New York & Kentucky Av.-- the site of a future Holocaust Memorial. The brainchild of Rabbi Gordan Geller, the memorial, which has yet to be designed, will be built on the city donated...

Brooklyn, NY - A Union Avenue gas station might become the coolest place to spend a night in Williamsburg. Developers filed with the city to raze a Getty gas station on a tiny triangular lot at the corner of Keap Street and replace it with a six-story, 54-room hotel, the real-estate blog Curbed reported earlier this week. Brooklyn Bridge Realty Details about the plan, which call for a...

Somalia - Pirates are expected to a record ransom of more than $10million for the release of the Saudi oil supertanker hijacked off the Kenyan coast, as the spate of hijackings gathered pace with two more ships seized today. Negotiations over the Sirius Star, packed with two million barrels of crude oil worth $100million (£67m) - enough to supply the whole of France for a day - were said...

Brooklyn, NY - The state Department of Health has turned down Long Island College Hospital’s request to close its maternity, pediatrics and dentistry divisions in what the hospital’s management company portrayed as a last-ditch effort to stave off financial ruin at the 150-year-old medical center, The Brooklyn Paper has learned. “[The] plan is not acceptable at this time,” James Clyne...

New York - On a Shalom TV program airing this week, Conference of Presidents Executive Vice Chair Malcolm Hoenlein calls out the Jewish Forward for insinuating that the national organization favored Senator John McCain in the presidential election. "There's only one place that wrote this--the Forward--which never has anything to say and usually gets it backwards," charges Hoenlein. "They have...

Willacy County, TX - A South Texas grand jury has indicted Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on charges related to the alleged abuse of prisoners in Willacy County's federal detention centers. The indictment criticizes Cheney's investment in the Vanguard Group, which holds interests in the private prison companies running the federal detention centers. It...

New York - Simeon Darwick, licensed health counselor and expert in Jewish nutrition, sees the 12th-century Jewish philosopher and the doyenne of Chez Panisse as sharing a reverence for good nutrition and a locavore approach to food. Mr. Darwick, who is 27, wore an earth-toned suit and brown and white knit yarmulke as he led a seminar on Tuesday morning on “eating and healthy living based on...

Washington - "President-elect Obama has decided to tap Eric Holder as his attorney general, putting the veteran Washington lawyer in place to become the first African-American to head the Justice Department, according to two legal sources close to the presidential transition," Newsweek's Michael Isikoff reports. Holder, 57 was born in 1951 in The Bronx, New York, to parents who had emigrated...

Brooklyn, NY - A rare, 97-year-old bottle of bourbon hidden away since before Prohibition and stashed inside a Bensonhurst bank vault for the last 50 years is going up for auction. The sealed bottle of American Pride bourbon was bought by Brooklyn philanthropist Isser Reznik in 1915 for a wedding. When it wasn't opened, Reznik decided to keep in as a memento. The corked bottle has been passed...

New York - It's a license not to drive. A prototype Volkswagen designed with the help of a team of Stanford University computer scientists may have the usual steering wheel, gas pedal and brake, but all three are mostly for show - since the car drives itself. The "autonomous" Passat uses a combination of laser sensors, GPS and an internal road map to steer clear of jaywalkers, weaving...

New York - Former New York City Mayor and 2008 Republican presidential hopeful Rudolph W. Giuliani, is gaining ground for a 2010 gubernatorial bid against incumbent Democratic Governor David A. Paterson, according to a new poll. Paterson would defeat Giuliani by a margin of 49 percent to 43 percent, the Siena College poll found in a head-to-head matchup. The six-point deficit for Giuliani...

Goerlitz, Germany - Several attackers have defaced a former synagogue in Germany, which was recently re-opened as a memorial to the Holocaust. Yellow paint was daubed on a door of the building and an anti- Semitic slogan and a Nazi symbol were written near the entrance, the police said in Goerlitz on the Polish border. The former synagogue was inaugurated as a cultural centre on November 9, the...

Washington, DC - Sen. Joe Lieberman will keep his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security Committee despite hard feelings over his support for GOP nominee John McCain during the presidential campaign. The Connecticut independent will lose a minor panel post as punishment for criticizing Obama this fall. Lieberman's colleagues in the Democratic caucus voted 42-13 today on a resolution...

London - A leading consultant speech and language therapist and a professional adviser to the Department of Health has expressed concern that Charedi children are at risk of developing delayed language skills. Salford-based Michelle Morris, said that due to the large numbers of children in Charedi families, they might not be getting the attention needed for adequate language...

New York, NY- It turns out Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg does not have the power to halt the $400 homeowners’ rebate checks, the city’s top budget official grudgingly admitted under questioning from the City Council. Any elimination of the popular rebates requires City Council approval, the budget director, Mark Page, acknowledged. And council members, who have been flooded with calls from...