Bedford-Stuyvesant, NY - The building at 652 Park Ave. in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn, is now a homeless shelter, but was built to be school dormitories. Residents in Crown Heights aren't the only ones fuming over a new condo project that was quietly turned into a homeless shelter. In Bedford-Stuyvesant, neighbors feel twice burned by a developer who used a loophole to build a tower twice as big as...

New York - For far too long, Albany has ignored any calls for reform, preferring to take orders from one special interest after another. In fact, five years ago, the Brennan Center at NYU called New York's Legislature the "most dysfunctional" legislature in America. Business leaders read it. Labor leaders read it. Voters and politicians read it. Statewide elections came and went. And nothing...

New York, NY - The FBI sent a warning to cops about the city jail system's head chaplain, Umar Abdul-Jalil, after he blasted President George W. Bush and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly in a fiery 2007 sermon to upstate inmates. The controversial imam was wrist-slapped for approving a bar mitzvah for an inmate's family at the Tombs -- a scandal that has rocked the city Department of...

Tehran - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday dismissed violent protests against his election victory by comparing voters' anger to a "football match." "Some people are sentimental and become excited," he added. "As I said, I compared it to a soccer match. Their team has not won in the match." "In the end, I don't think we'll have any serious challenges," he said. "Sentiments are...

Warsaw - An 84-year-old Polish woman was wrongly declared dead by emergency medical services, and the error was caught when someone saw her body bag in the morgue moving, police said. The woman fell unconscious and her husband called an ambulance. A doctor from emergency medical services pronounced her dead, police spokesman January Majewski said. "A funeral company took the body to the...

New York - Motorists ticketed for traffic violations could end up spending at least one extra day in court because of a change in state law. City, town and village courts were notified that the state Legislature amended New York's Vehicle and Traffic Law to require courts to schedule an extra appearance date for motorists to talk over a plea-bargain with a police officer or prosecutor. Before...

Ramallah, West Bank - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter was honored by the Palestinian government and pledged to support the Palestinians' campaign for independence to the end of his days. In his acceptance speech, Carter urged the Palestinians to end their internal divisions and stop persecuting their rivals. He was referring to the growing rift between the Islamic militant Hamas group...

Sydney, Australia - The man accused of one of the biggest frauds in history - the suspected fleecing of up to $1.5 billion from wealthy South African investors - stood in the doorway of his humble St Ives office suite and denied the allegations last night. Asked if he had perpetrated the scam, Barry Tannenbaum pointed to the two men in rumpled casual clothes in his office and said: "That's...