Jerusalem - Rabbis have not done enough to contain ultra-Orthodox riots in Jerusalem over the arrest of a mother who allegedly starved her son, a senior police official said Thursday. "I have not heard an outcry by rabbis or dignitaries calling for an end to the riots," Jerusalem District Police Commander Major General Aharon Franco said. "There is no sane element in the ultra-Orthodox...

Jerusalem - The Israel Electric Corporation said Thursday morning that if any of its workers encountered violence in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods in Jerusalem where riots broke out recently, they would stop providing service to the residents. Company officials told Ynet that they had received an instruction from the Jerusalem Police not to send their crews into neighborhoods in the capital...

Ridgwood, Queens, NY - Thousands are participating in prayer visits, reciting Tehillim, at the gravesite of Rabbi Yaakov Joseph, in Union Field Cemetery, 82-11 Cypress Avenue in Ridgewood, Queens, not far from Williamsburg, today Thursday, 24 Tammuz, July 16. on the 107 Yahrzeit. Last Year Last year, on the yahrzeit, buses came from Williamsburg and elsewhere, bringing...

Tulsa, OK - A suspect has been arrested in connection with a bomb threat at a Tulsa Jewish center. According to Tulsa Co. Jail booking reports, Christopher Jacob Stefanalli, 22, has been arrested on a complaint of a bomb threat by phone. Tulsa Co. Sheriff's Office Cpt. John Bowman confirmed that this was in connection with a called-in threat made to a Tulsa Jewish center earlier this...

Syracuse, NY - The man suspected of carjacking a van in Virginia Beach with a child inside has been captured and is being held in Syracuse. N.Y. Matthew R. Nash, a 24-year-old Virginia Beach resident, was arrested around 4:30 a.m. This morning in Syracuse and is being held without bail at the Onondoga County Justice Center. The search for Nash involved a vehicle pursuit and a helicopter...

Albany, NY - New York state senators approved new rules that limit terms for the chamber’s most powerful people. The session, which began Wednesday evening and lasted until about 3 a.m. Thursday, was the first one held since Democrats and Republicans appeared to resolve an unprecedented battle for power in the chamber. After a month of historic stalemate and gridlock, Democrats ended up...

Meah She'arim - A neighbor of a Jerusalem woman accused of withholding food from her child denounces the media attacks against “such a dedicated mother.” In an interview with Voice of Israel government radio, Rabbanit Yocheved Grossman said that the child’s low weight is due to his suffering from cancer for several years and subsequent chemotherapy treatment. She also claimed that it is...

Ulster County, NY - Ulster County officials say they're still not sure how many restaurants, camps and other regulated businesses are operating without permits, but they've called in help from the state Department of Health to sort through the mess. Nereida Veytia, Ulster's interim health director, said that state health workers have been coming two or three times a week to scour volumes of...

Washington - Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson says he was justified last year in suggesting that Bank of America Corp.'s chief executive could lose his job if the bank backed out on plans to buy troubled Merrill Lynch. His admission, included in written testimony for a House hearing Thursday, comes as Congress debates the government's role in managing financial firms that accept...

New York, NY - A common method used in heart bypass surgery spares patients pain and problems upfront but seems to raise their risk of dying or suffering a heart attack over the next three years, a worrisome new study finds. The results could have a big impact - about 450,000 bypass operations are done each year in the United States and 70 percent of them use the method at issue. It...

Jerusalem - Haredi rioting in Jerusalem over the arrest of a woman suspected of nearly starving her three-year-old son to death showed no sign of abating on Thursday afternoon, with police being forced to evacuate welfare workers from their office in the Geula neighborhood as haredim pelted the building with stones. No one was wounded and no damage was reported in the latest...

Washington - Congressional plans to fund a massive health-care overhaul could have a job-killing effect on New York, creating a tax rate of nearly 60 percent for the state's top earners and possibly pressuring small-business owners to shed workers. New York's top income bracket could reach as high as 57 percent -- rates not seen in three decades -- to pay for the massive health coverage...

Gaza - Deposed Hamas Premier Ismail Haneya on Thursday met anti-Zionism Jews in the Gaza Strip. The meeting between the Islamic movement's leader and the four rabbis, members of Neturei Karta movement, lasted for nearly two hours at his office in Gaza city. The rabbis, whose small movement calls for dismantling the state of Israel, arrived in Gaza last night as part of a Viva Palestine...

Brooklyn, NY - Finally, a glimmer of hope in Brooklyn's reeling real-estate market. Although sale prices across the borough remain down compared to the prior year much like the rest of the city, Brooklyn co-ops and condos saw modest increases from the first to second quarters of 2009, a new study shows. Median prices of condos sold improved by 2.6 percent to $475,283 while co-op sale prices...

Israel - Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar overturned a decision by a regional rabbinical court to annul a conversion, and approved the man's conversion – and Jewishness - on the eve of his wedding. Amar recently announced that from now on he will oversee personally, as president of the Great Rabbinical Court of Appeals, every case related to the validity of a conversion. The chief rabbi's decision...