Manhattan, NY - One wouldn't look twice at the brownstones on West 86th Street if they weren't in the middle of a neighborhood controversy. The tenants who live inside will likely have to leave because the buildings' new owner, a prominent Jewish organization, doesn't want to use them for apartments anymore. Chabad of the Upper West Side plans to put its preschool and synagogue there...

Israel - The Great Rabbinical Court has ordered the Israel Prison Service to deny a jailed long-time recalcitrant husband glatt kosher meals, as means to pressure him into granting his wife a divorce. In response the man declared a hunger strike and is currently being fed intravenously. The couple got married 10 years ago, and two years later, after they already had two children together...

Seattle, WA - - Recession-hit Starbucks is going from being a coffee bar to a real bar under a new plan to add beer and wine to its menu of coffee and tea. People will soon be able to order a venti beer as the struggling Seattle-based coffeehouse chain hopes to add new drinkers to its ranks, USA Today reported today. The chain will add wine and beer to the menu at one of its Seattle stores...

New York, NY - New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg says the governor should dispatch state troopers to haul state lawmakers back into session. He wants them to approve the bill giving him authority over city schools. The 2002 law giving Bloomberg control of the nation's largest school system expired last month. The mayor and the five borough presidents hastily appointed a school board to...

New York, NY - Police stepped up security at major New York hotels on Friday after bombs ripped through two luxury hotels in Jakarta, killing eight people in the Indonesian capital, authorities said. "There's no information of a similar threat to New York, but it's our standard practice now to take such precautions," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said in a statement. New York -- home to...

Jerusalem - The number of tourists visiting Israel in the first half of this year dropped by 20 percent, a report released by the Ministry of Tourism said. The report said 1.2 million tourists visited Israel between January and June, a 20 percent drop compared to the same period last year. The Central Bureau of Statistics said 208,000 tourists visited Israel in June, a 16 percent decrease...

Seattle, WA - Microsoft Genius Bill Gates has already accomplished plenty in his life -- but now he's involved in an ambitious new venture -- a plan to tame hurricanes. He and several other scientists and engineers have a patent-pending project that plans to release barge-like contraptions into brewing offshore hurricanes, which would pump cold water up from the bottom of the ocean, thus calming...

Paris, France - Five people found guilty of kidnapping and torturing to death a young Jewish man will be re-tried by an appeal court alongside 14 other gang members, the Paris public prosecutor's office said Friday. Youssouf Fofana, the leader of the self-proclaimed "gang of babarians" had appealed against his life sentence and will face a new trial in about a year with his fellow defendants...

New City, NY - A federal judge has granted prosecutors more time to negotiate a possible plea bargain with Bernard Madoff's longtime auditor. Accountant David Friehling pleaded not guilty Friday to charges including securities fraud and filing false reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Prosecutors said Friehling rubber-stamped Madoff's books for 17 years without confirming...

Jerusalem - Israel has sent envoys to Ethiopia to examine the applications of 3,000 Ethiopians who claim to be descended from Jews and are waiting in transit camps to emigrate to Israel, an official said on Thursday. Some 100,000 Jews from Ethiopia already live in Israel. Many arrived in airlifts in the 1980s and 1990s in times of hunger and political strife in Ethiopia. Thousands more Falash...

Canada - The popular social networking site Facebook is not doing enough to protect the personal information it gets from subscribers, and it gives users confusing and incomplete information about privacy matters, Canada's privacy commissioner said "We found serious privacy gaps in the way [Facebook] operates," Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said in a report on an investigation into...

Jerusalem - Rabbi Daniel Eidensohn of Israel who runs the blog Daas Torah posted a letter written by Rabbi Moishe Sternbuch, Shlita in regards to the recent riots. In an email exclusive to VIN News, Rabbi Eidensohn confirmed that the letter is authentic, and that he personally met with Rav Sternbuch who issued the letter to him. For those who are not aware, Rav Sternbuch speaks and writes...

New York - The Charedi riots of the last several weeks in Jerusalem have caused and will continue to cause irreversible damage to the Charedi community on a massive scale, according to Charedi public relations consultant Ezra Friedlander. The founder of Brooklyn’s Friedlander Group, Friedlander has extensive contacts in both the Charedi and non-Charedi community—and says that non-Charedi...

White Lake, NY - The Town of Bethel has ordered a Hasidic bungalow colony to stop using a partially finished community center — but the colony has been brushing off the town’s warnings. Residents of the colony on Schultz Road this month started using the large center without a certificate of occupancy, Town Supervisor Daniel Sturm said. On Wednesday, the town issued a stop work order and...

Port Jefferson, NY - A witness has told police that a Long Island Rail Road engineer let a passenger operate a train bound for New York City. MTA Police Chief Michael Coan says the train ran smoothly and no one was injured. The witness told police that he saw a passenger in the cab without the engineer during part of the run. The double-decker train left Port Jefferson at 6:45 a.m. It normally...