Woburn, MA - A Framingham accountant has been indicted on charges of stealing nearly $780,000 from a Jewish organization at Harvard University. The Massachusetts Attorney General's office said that 58-year-old William O'Brien faces various charges, including 11 counts of larceny over $250. An investigation was launched in October after O'Brien's alleged schemes were discovered by the...

Williamsburg, NY - Talk about patriotic penmanship. Turnes out Williamsburg's Keap Street, which was named after a Declaration of Independence signatory, has been badly misspelled for the past 154 years. "Keap" should really be "McKean" - the street's actually named after signer Thomas McKean. It took one attentive Williamsburg resident to spot the mistake. "People say, 'it's been there so...

Berlin - Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has paid tribute to the millions of Jews killed during the Holocaust and Australian airmen killed in daring bombing raids over Berlin during World War II. Mr Rudd arrived in the German capital on Tuesday for the start of a five-day European tour, which will culminate at talks with world leaders in Italy about ways to push forward with a recovery plan for the...

Cairo - Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak said on Tuesday that Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, held captive and incommunicado by the Palestinian movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip since 2006, is safe. "Shalit is in good condition. I hope that in the coming period, not in a long time, the Shalit issue will be resolved," Mubarak said during a joint press conference with his Israeli counterpart Shimon...

Moscow - U.S President Barack Obama on Tuesday strongly denied that the United States had given Israel an approval to strike Iran's nuclear facilities. US President Barack Obama gestures during his speech at the New Economic School, in Moscow, Tuesday. Asked by CNN whether Washington had given Israel a green light for such an attack, Obama answered: "Absolutely not." In the interview...

New York City - One way to know whether you have become a true New Yorker: do you stand at just the right subway car door? If you get on at the perfect spot, you’ll get off at the spot nearest the exit you want. Exit Strategy NYC subway platform mapExit Strategy NYC A new iPhone application compiles exit diagrams for subway platforms, like the one above for the westbound L train at Union...

New York - The son of a retired British Army major who committed suicide after losing his life savings with Bernard Madoff is seeking to join a New York lawsuit against a Viennese banker reportedly under scrutiny in the scandal. Willard Foxton, 28, said in documents filed in federal court in Manhattan last month that he wants to be a key plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit. Foxton is seeking...

Israel - Former Sephardi chief rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu has called on religious IDF soldiers to choose imprisonment over hearing a woman singing during military events and ceremonies. The dominant national-religious rabbi said that he was asked by soldiers what they ought to do when their commanders order them to stay at an event in which a woman was singing. Orthodox Jewish law prohibits men...

London - Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone has apologised for praising Adolf Hitler's ability to "get things done", comments which prompted a German Jewish group to call for a boycott of the motor sport. Ecclestone, 78, made the comments in an interview published in the Times newspaper on Saturday. "I have no complaints about the quote -- it is what I said -- but it was not what I meant...

New Jersey - Officials are not sure why more pedestrians are dying on New Jersey roads. State Police say 86 pedestrians have been struck and killed this year through Sunday. That's an increase of more than 30 percent from the same period in 2008. Highway Traffic Safety Office chief Pam Fischer says people are on stretches of roadway where they shouldn't be. Officials say that may be...

Israel - 50 yeshiva students from Yeshiva Toldos Aahron Jerusalem who were hiking through the Og riverbed Tuesday were stuck without water and had to be rescued. The boys, aged 14, have all been rescued and they are safe and sound. The Megillot Rescue Team, a fire brigade from Maaleh Adumim and police were all called in to rescue the yeshiva students...

Kazakhstan - A Kazakh Jewish metals tycoon wants to invest in Iran, and to invest big. "I have already discussed a specific project worth many billions of dollars with a serious Iranian group and international investors," Alexander Mashkevich said last week at an event welcoming President Shimon Peres to the country held at a synagogue in Kazakhstan's capital, Astana. "The project is huge...