Brooklyn, NY - As was reported here by VIN News, police were looking for strangers responsible for molesting two Jewish girls in two separate incidents in Brooklyn in less than a week. The first incident occurred at 5:15 PM. last Friday in the vicinity of East Third Street, in Kensington, in the vicinity of the 66th Precinct. A second fondling incident occurred on Monday at around 8:35 a.m...

Long Island, NY - Anti-Semitic graffiti was discovered at a park in Dix Hills and is being investigated by detectives from the Suffolk County Police Hate Crime Unit, police said. Police said they were called by a Huntington Town security officer who found graffiti spray-painted on the handball court and adjoining roadway at Arboretum Park, at Threepence Drive in Dix Hills. The graffiti...

Manhattan, NY - Firefighters kicked in the door of a smoke-filled upper Manhattan apartment early Wednesday and pulled an unconscious woman to safety, officials said. A mattress fire sparked just before 3:30 a.m., sending choking smoke through the apartment and preventing the woman from escaping on her own, firefighters said. Overcome by fumes, the woman passed out and was on the verge of going...

Washington - After retiring from a 27-year career as a D.C. police officer, Harry Weeks thought working security at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum would provide a quieter way to make a living. A typical day involved greeting visitors and analyzing images of handbags as they passed through a magnetometer. The new job turned violent, though, when 50-year-old Weeks and another guard were...

Columbus OH - A state lawmaker panel OK’d about $134,000 to provide religious programming for prison inmates. The State Controlling Board, without comment today, approved contracts renewals for the next two fiscal years with Native Sun Positive Human Development in Columbus and Chabad House of Cincinnati. Prison inmates retain their rights to practice their religious beliefs while...

Israel - A report published today by the Ministry of Transport's chief investigator of accidents Adv Raz Yitzhak determines that El Al pilots did not act according to procedures and were responsible for a "near-accident" incident between an El Al plane and Uzbekistan Airways plane. An Uzbekistan Airways plane was landing at Ben Gurion International Airport when an El Al jumbo stood on the runway...

Brooklyn, NY - A popular New York daily newspaper has written a number of articles about the work of a New York City chaplain for the Department of Corrections (DOC). The newspaper misunderstood and misrepresented the efforts of the observant rabbi in providing for the religious needs of inmates, such as describing leftover or rejected institutional kosher meals as gourmet, when in reality they...

Klagenfurt - An Austrian court has convicted a man of glorifying Nazi ideology and sentenced him to two years in prison. The court in the southern city of Klagenfurt found the 85-year-old man, who was not identified, guilty Wednesday of "re-engaging" in Nazi-era beliefs. The prosecution had accused him, among other things, of glorifying Adolf Hitler and Nazi beliefs in two books. The...

Brooklyn, NY - It's a cold case no more. Nassau County law enforcement officials believe they've solved a 23-year-old robbery and murder of a Woodmere man. Samuel Quentzel, 54, was shot to death after pulling into his driveway on Sept. 4, 1986 at around 7:10 p.m. Two men jumped out of a tan van and immediately came up the side of Quentzel's white Oldsmobile and shot him in the left...

New York, NY - Ed Koch is many things - a former mayor, a feisty political commentator - and a real fatalist. "Whatever God wants, God will have," Koch, 84, told the Daily News Wednesday by phone from his room at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Columbia, where he is set to undergo a heart valve replacement in the coming days. "If He wants me to hang around, I'll hang around. If He wants to...

Tehran - The Jerusalem Post has recently been accused of being behind the Iranian 'Twitter Revolution' as part of an Israeli conspiracy to stoke unrest in the Islamic republic. In an online article entitled Proof: Israeli Effort to Destabilize Iran Via Twitter published on the Charting Stocks Web site, the writer charges: "right-wing Israeli interests are engaged in an all-out Twitter attack...

Brazil - Autopsies on some victims of the Air France Flight 447 disaster show the bodies have multiple fractures but are not severely fragmented, suggesting the plane broke up in the air, a report said Wednesday. A spokesman for Brazilian medical examiners carrying out autopsies on the 50 bodies that have been recovered told The Associated Press they had multiple fractures of legs, hips and...

Rabun County, GA - Just days into the first summer session of the Jewish camp Ramah Darom dozens of kids have come down with the flu. It is unknown if it is the H1N1 virus, better known as swine flu. State test results are due today. "Right now, several of the campers have tested positive for type-A influenza and we can tell you it is communicable and it is spreading quickly," said Fred...

New York, NY - With little fanfare and no prior warning, the Assembly last night passed a bill that would require a public referendum to change term limits - a measure that was originally proposed in an attempt to block Mayor Bloomberg from seeking re-election this fall. The bill, which is sponsored by Brooklyn Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, was quietly amended in recent weeks to be, as he put...

Jerusalem - The ashes of a Polish man who saved 12 Jews during the Holocaust were buried in the Kiryat Shaul cemetery in Tel Aviv Tuesday, along with those of his wife. Warsaw native Jerzy Wunsche hid the Jews, who had escaped the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, in an apartment he rented especially for that purpose. Two of the people he saved in 1943, Yosef Atlasowicz and Miriam Sherman...