Los Angeles, CA - A racist writer who fled to the United States seeking asylum is to be deported. Stephen Whittle, 42, of Avenham Lane, Preston, was convicted last year of publishing inflammatory anti-Jewish material on a website. Whittle skipped bail and flew to Los Angeles with co-defendant Simon Sheppard, 51, who was found guilty of similar offences at Leeds Crown Court. The two sought...

Germany - Continuing his push for a two-state solution, to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, President Obama today told the Palestinians they have responsibilities to uphold in the ongoing efforts for a settlement. Obama said that while his statements telling the Israelis to stop settlement construction have received significant attention, there has been less focus on the pressure he is...

Washington - With companies in no mood to hire, the unemployment rate jumped to 9.4 percent in May, the highest in more than 25 years. But the pace of layoffs eased, with employers cutting 345,000 jobs, the fewest since September. The much smaller-than-expected reduction in payroll jobs, reported by the Labor Department on Friday, adds to evidence that the recession is loosening its hold on...

London - Rabbis will be soon able to snack on one of the best-loved chocolate products when Mars Bars go under kosher supervison. The London Beth Din's kashrut division has signed a contract with Mars to certify products made in its Slough factory. As well as the popular snack bar, the division has also certified Galaxy Block, Galaxy Ripple, Snickers, Minstrels and three flavours of Tracker...

Germany - U.S. President Barack Obama said today Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who again this week called the Holocaust a "great deception," should visit the site of the Buchenwald concentration camp. In an interview in Germany with NBC News shortly before making his own trip to Buchenwald to pay homage to victims of World War Two and the Holocaust, Obama was asked what he thought the...

Postville, IA - Attorneys for Agriprocessors Inc. and its former vice president argued in U.S. District Court that a 142-count indictment be split into two trials because all the allegations did not arise from the same act. F. Montgomery Brown, attorney for Sholom Rubashkin, the former vice president, said Rubashkin did not willfully employ illegal immigrants at the kosher meatpacking plant in...

Queens, NY - The daughter of a man whose badly decomposed body was found inside a minivan said traffic cops should have noticed her father over the several weeks they covered the vehicle in parking tickets. "He was my only family," said Jennifer Morales, 29, about her father, whom she believes died from a heart attack while sitting in the family's 2000 Chevrolet Ventura in Queens. "The...

Paris, France - France's transportation minister said Friday that French forces have found no signs of the Airbus A330 airplane that vanished over the Atlantic and urged "extreme prudence" about suspected debris taken from the ocean. Dominique Bussereau said he regretted that an announcement by Brazilian teams that they had recovered plane debris from Air France flight 447 turned out to be...