Brooklyn, NY - Six jewelry stores in Brooklyn were busted for offering cash discounts to customers in order to avoid paying state sales tax, officials said Tuesday. Store clerks were nabbed after offering undercover officers posing as customers discounts on certain items if they paid with cash, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes said. "For over three years, the stores had...

Saint Louis, MO - The body of a 102-year-old builder and philanthropist and leader of the region's Jewish community was found in the Missouri River more than two weeks after a witness saw an elderly man jump from a bridge. The body was that of I.E. Millstone, State Water Patrol Sgt. Jerry Callahan confirmed. A barge worker discovered the body near the St. Charles riverfront. On Shabbos...

Jerusalem - A tourist from New York who took an ancient stone fragment from an excavation near Jerusalem's Temple Mount as a religious souvenir during a visit to Israel 12 years ago has returned the artifact to the State of Israel after suffering from a guilty conscience, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced today. The 21-kilogram fragment of a marble column which disappeared from an...

New York - A Canada-U.S. border station on Indian territory that straddles Canada and upstate New York was closed today by protesting Mohawks. Canadian border guards abandoned their posts at the Seaway International Bridge near Cornwall, Ontario, Monday night after some 400 Mohawks camped out near their buildings. The Indians who live on the Akwesasne First Nation reservation are opposed to...

New York - Stop taking your vitamins. Lay out in the sun. Don't eat so much fruit. This may run counter to just about everything you've heard from your mother -- and everyone else -- your entire life. But that's what a doctor suggests in a new book, "Evolution Rx: A Practical Guide to Harnessing Our Innate Capacity for Health and Healing." Dr. William Meller isn't looking at modern science...

Paris - VIN News has confirmed that a passenger on missing Air France flight #447, had at least one Jewish passenger on board. Mr. Serge (Shlomo) Anidjar, 40, was a resident of Boulogne-Billancourt, France. He was on his way back home after spending three days in Brazil on a business trip. Mr. Anidjar, an active member in the Jewish community, has a wife and 3 children, the oldest only 12...

New Jersey - New Jersey had more anti-Semitic hate crimes reported than any other state in 2008. However, the Anti-Defamation League said the number of incidents reported in the U.S. declined for the fourth straight year. The ADL said there were 238 incidents reported in the Garden State compared to 247 in 2007. However, other states saw fewer anti-Semitic incidents reported last...

New York, NY - Get ready to pay more for everything from toilet paper to cars starting July 1. The City Council approved Mayor Bloomberg's proposal to raise the sales tax here from 8.375 to 8.875 percent -- a .5 percentage-point increase -- as part of a broader plan to raise $887 million. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Council Speaker Christine Quinn agreed on a plan to raise $887 million by...

St. Petersburg, Russia - The St. Petersburg police academy is sending its students and staff to the city synagogue for obligatory training after a scandal erupted around an anti-Semitic manual written by one of the academy’s professors. Mass media quoted the nationalistic textbook of Russia's the soviet history, written by Professor Drozhin, and widely used at the St. Petersburg Interior...

London - Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is to leave the Cabinet in the wake of a scandal over allegations against over her parliamentary expenses. Mrs. Smith has been in the news in past few weeks over her decision to add U.S. radio shock jock Michael Savage on a list of terrorists to be banned from entering the UK. But her resignation is not related to the Savage fiasco...

New York, NY - Say goodbye to exasperating hunts for parking spots. A popular Web site that lets motorists plug in addresses to find local parking regulations - with photos of streets and signs to help plan trips - is expanding east from Manhattan into Queens. Launched in 2007, PrimoSpot.com - which covers the city's most trafficked areas - recently added Astoria, Elmhurst, Long Island City...

Washington - President Obama, just days before traveling to the Middle East to deliver a key speech on U.S.-Muslim relations, on Monday reasserted U.S. support for Israel. But in an interview with NPR, the president also said he will continue to push for a Palestinian state and for a freeze on Israeli settlements in the West Bank. "I don't think we have to change strong support for Israel,"...

Kiryas Joel, NY - Anthony Martin of Highland Mills says he lost his job because he blew the whistle on tax cheats in the government of New York's fastest-growing village. In a suit filed May 22 in U.S. District Court, Martin says the village's public works boss fired him last year because he notified the state Department of Labor and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service that Kiryas Joel failed to...

Jerusalem - A Jewish man gunned down an Arab man and moderately wounded a Jewish man in two separate shooting attacks in central Jerusalem early today. The shooter was arrested following a police pursuit. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said investigators thought the gunman had "psychological problems" and did not think his attacks were politically motivated. Rosenfeld said he did not know if...

Atlantic Ocean - The Government of Senegal informed the Brazilian Air Force (FAB) they have located in their territorial sea which could be the wreckage of Air France plane that disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean with 228 people on board, on Sunday night. The Senegalese authorities, however, say that is not possible to confirm that the material found in the sea is the same flight that departed...