Nashville, TN - A federal judge in Nashville has dismissed a lawsuit by a Holocaust survivor and his family against the German government over an extensive art collection seized by the Nazis. Retired Vanderbilt University economics professor Fred Westfield sought unspecified damages for some 400 pieces of lost art including paintings by El Greco and Peter Paul Rubens. The 82-year-old...

New York, NY - The City Council has passed a bill requiring bicycle taxis to have licenses and registration. The taxis, known as pedicabs, have gone unregulated for years in New York City. The three-wheel vehicles with a carriage in the back are increasingly popular among tourists and New Yorkers. Officials have wanted to regulate them for years, but a judge struck down regulations...

Albany, NY - Governor David A. Paterson signed into law three Governor’s Program bills that will make health insurance more affordable and improve access to health care for New Yorkers. The first extends the period of time for COBRA coverage from 18 to 36 months; the second permits families to cover their young adult dependents through age 29 under their job-based insurance; and the third...

New York - Eicha yashva vadad – Alas; she sits in solitude (Eicha 1:1).” The haunting words of Megilas Eicha resonate in our hearts and minds as we prepare to sit on the ground this coming Tisha B’Av and commemorate the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash 1,940 years ago. Sadly, history is repeating itself once again. It was only two years ago that our brothers and sisters in Eretz...

White Lake, NY - Police in Sullivan County have taken away what they are describing as a suspicious device that was found this afternoon on an ATM in the lobby of the Bank of America in Bethel. The bank, located at the intersection of Schultz Road and Route 17B is open, but the ATM is closed. The Sullivan County Sheriff Department is handling the investigation...

Massachusetts - A Boston police officer was placed on administrative leave after he allegedly used a racial slur when referring to Henry Louis Gates Jr. In a mass e-mail, Officer Justin Barrett, 36, called Gates a "jungle monkey," according to Elaine Driscoll, a spokeswoman for the Boston Police Department. Gates, a black Harvard scholar, was arrested at his home earlier this month on a...

Sullivan County, NY - In the Catskills this summer, worries about children’s safety are extending beyond the swimming pool. Yehuda Kolko, the rebbe who pleaded guilty to two counts of child endangerment and who is suspected of abusing dozens of children in his teaching career, moved into a summer home at a development in South Fallsburg, N.Y., on June 12. Pines Estates, where he is renting...

Brooklyn, NY - Two citations issued to arrested pug owner Chrissie Brodigan were dismissed today in a hearing at the MTA's Transit Adjudication Bureau. Hearing Officer Alexander Fox ruled the citations—one for failure to provide identification and another for failure to have dog in a container—were invalid because they had been "materially altered" by Officer Joel Witriol, who was absent from...

New York - Fox News Channel executives are distancing themselves from controversial — and popular — host Glenn Beck, who Tuesday morning branded President Obama a "racist." The combustable Beck ignited a firestorm when, during a Tuesday morning appearance on FNC's freewheeling "Fox and Friends," he said the President's reaction to the Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrest situation in Cambridge...

Deal, NJ - In the aftermath of the coverage pertaining to the arrests of forty-four individuals last week, an unprecedented amount of media coverage was focused on four of those individuals who were prominent members of the Sephardic Jewish community. There is however an entire dimension of that community that the media has refused to cover and needs to be the subject of greater discussion. With...

White Lake, NY - The Town of Bethel Board has ordered a probe into the town’s building department in light of the opening of a controversial shul on Schultz Road. Supervisor Dan Sturm said Wednesday town engineers and attorneys will review the files of six to 10 projects. The town believes that Building Inspector Tim Dexter made mistakes in the handling of this one project, which led to a...

Washington - Larry Franklin, the former Pentagon analyst convicted of revealing classified information, says he worked undercover as an FBI double agent to gather information on the pro-Israel lobby in the United States before the bureau turned on him and pressured him to plead guilty to spying for Israel. Talking to a U.S. newspaper for the first time since his arrest five years ago, Franklin...

New York - In the past twelve months, RCCS has successfully recovered close to two million dollars for cancer patients who were originally denied medical benefits – unfairly – by several health insurance companies. Although the Rofeh Cholim Cancer Society (RCCS) is primarily known for subsidizing health insurance premiums for cancer-stricken members of our community, its newest service...

Washington - A federal grand jury has indicted an elderly white supremacist on charges that could earn him the death penalty in the fatal shooting of a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Hate crimes charges have been added to the case against James von Brunn, who has been in a hospital since the shooting last month. Officials say the 89-year-old shot and...

Miami, FL - Miami Beach appeared to have a disaster on its hands Wednesday, but it was just a drill: The city's police and fire departments, as well as Mount Sinai Medical Center, were testing their response to a mock terrorist attack. The drill was part of a regional exercise called Operation Cassandra, which tests other South Florida departments with similar scenarios. Miami Beach police...