New York, NY - The state is looking to renovate the section of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway major near Brooklyn Heights over the next 10 years, but locals are concerned about the construction's impact. The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway was state of the art some 50 years ago. Yet while there have been capital improvements over the years the structure is starting to feel its age. "The...

ew York City - Federal prosecutors Friday night said swindler Bernard Madoff scammed an estimated $13 billion from investors, much less than the original estimates of $50 billion to $65 billion - but still ranking the scheme as the largest Ponzi scam in Wall Street history. Prosecutors said in a memorandum filed in Manhattan Federal Court in anticipation of Madoff's June 29 fraud sentencing...

New York - David Rohde, a New York Times reporter who was kidnapped by the Taliban, escaped Friday night and made his way to freedom after more than seven months of captivity in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mr. Rohde, along with a local reporter, Tahir Ludin, and their driver, Asadullah Mangal, was abducted outside Kabul, Afghanistan, on Nov. 10 while he was researching a...

Albany, NY - Governor David Paterson is appointing two statesmen to mediate the two-week-long power struggle that has gridlocked New York's Senate. Paterson also announced that the state's top judge may preside over a special session of the Senate he will call if senators can't settle the dispute. Paterson says former Democratic Lieutenant Gov. Stan Lundine and former Republican state Sen...

Brooklyn, NY - Williamsburg Community activist and NYC council candidate Isaac Abraham will appear tonight on the Zev Brenner radio show. Topic: The resignation of Rabbi Leib Glanz from the NYC Dept. of Corrections amid the Bar Mitzvah scandal. Listen: At 12:00 AM, WMCA 570 AM on your radio dial, or online at http://talklinecommunications.com/ **UPDATE** below is the full audio replay of...

Israel - An Israeli biotechnology company is working with the army to turn soldiers' blood into a freeze dried powder. Blood samples from newly enlisted soldiers into a freeze-dried powder - like coffee - and send it with them to the battlefield. If those soldiers are ever wounded, water could be added to produce their own blood instantly and create a lifesaving infusion. Leading the...

New York City - Just what does Imam Umar Abdul-Jalil have to do before Mayor Bloomberg will even criticize him -- let alone bounce him from the city payroll? On Thursday, the mayor actually went out of his way to praise Abdul-Jalil -- who, after initially denying any knowledge of it, later admitted he'd approved a lavish bar mitzvah party last December that a scam artist was allowed to throw...

Tehran - Police officers used sticks and tear gas to force back thousands of demonstrators under plumes of black smoke in the capital on Saturday, a day after Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said there would be “bloodshed” if street protests continued over the disputed presidential election. Separately, state-run media reported that three people were wounded when a suicide...