New York - Time to fall back and shift an hour of light to the morning, as most of America switches to standard time. Clocks move back one hour at 2 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 1, 2009, local time. The shift to standard time also serves as a reminder to install new batteries in warning devices like smoke detectors and hazard warning radios. In areas that observe daylight time, it will return in...

New York City - An estimated 40,000 people from around the world are preparing to lace up for the New York City Marathon. Runners will begin pounding the pavement Sunday morning on the Staten Island side of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. The marathon also runs through Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Manhattan. When the race ends in Central Park, city sanitation workers, using trucks, brooms...

New Jersey - For the privilege of living in perhaps the nation's most-maligned state, New Jerseyans pay the highest property taxes in America. That overriding issue -- not President Barack Obama, health care or the economy -- could cost Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine his job on Election Day. The former Wall Street whiz is locked in a tight race with Republican Chris Christie, a...

Jerusalem - While recent rioting in and around Jerusalem's Old City has left religious tensions between the capital's Muslims and Jews simmering, a new dispute - this time concerning the volume of prayers, more than the prayers themselves - is resonating in outlying neighborhoods. Jewish residents of these areas, all of which are in close proximity to Arab neighborhoods in the capital's east...

New York City - Mayors have been grappling with inefficiency and corruption within the city’s Buildings Department for decades. John V. Lindsay’s buildings commissioner so tired of allegations of graft that he suggested the agency give its inspectors uniforms without pockets. But Michael R. Bloomberg took office with a reputation for managerial ingenuity and earned accolades for crime...

Lakewood, NJ - Hershel Herskowitz , owner of Toys For Thought, was called by the Inspection Dept to remove an obscure sign because it was put up without a permit. The sign which was posted on a Second Street house has spread fear and fury over one business owner's threat to start a volunteer immigration watchdog group in an effort to clean up the downtown commercial district. [Reported...

New York - What is the law when there is no one to inherit someone who has deceased? In New York State, according to chapter 17-B of the New York State Consolidated Laws specifies the order of inheritance for the different degrees of kinship to a deceased person, and the percentage distribution that each would be entitled to receive. 1. A surviving spouse is the first in line and will inherit...

New York, NY - New York City will receive a combined $4.9 billion in federal stimulus funds for operating expenses and capital spending through June 2012, enough to create or retain more than 28,000 jobs, Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler said. About $2.1 billion will go toward education, with more than $1 billion applied to the schools’ $18 billion operating budget and $707 million to be spent on...

Jerusalem - The government should force illegal aliens out of the country, as an influx of foreigners will bring drugs and disease into Israel, Interior Minister Eli Yishai told Channel 2 Saturday evening. "We will have, based on what the internal security minister said in the last discussion, hundreds of thousands of foreign workers coming in here with disease like hepatitis, tuberculosis...

Washington - Celebrities George Clooney and Oprah Winfrey and prominent lobbyists, corporate executives and Democratic fundraisers were among the first to score visits with President Barack Obama, his wife Michelle or top aides at the White House, newly released records show. The White House late Friday afternoon posted a list of roughly 480 records in response to questions about whether...

Staten Island, NY - New York City Transit officials say they have launched an investigation after a passenger photographed a bus driver typing on his cell phone as he steered through traffic. The photo was published in the Staten Island Advance newspaper. The paper says the picture was taken by a woman sitting in the first row of an express bus that travels between Manhattan and Staten...

Washington - President Barack Obama said Friday the U.S. will overturn a 22-year-old travel and immigration ban against people with HIV early next year. The order will be finalized on Monday, Obama said, completing a process begun during the Bush administration. The U.S. has been among a dozen countries that bar entry to travelers with visas or anyone seeking a green card based on their HIV...

Monsey, NY - In his new suburban American home, Shaker Yakub, a Yemeni Jew, folded a large scarf in half, wrapped it around his head and tucked in his spiraling side curls. "This is how I passed for a Muslim," said the 59-year-old father of seven, improvising a turban that hid his black skullcap. The ploy enabled Mr. Yakub and half a dozen members of his family to slip undetected out of their...

Dix Hills, NY - A Jewish woman from who says her condominium complex discriminated against her by stopping her from displaying a 4-inch mezuzah on her front door has won a case taken on by state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. His office ordered the homeowner's association at Stone Ridge Estates in Dix Hills to pay a $10,000 fine and rewrite its bylaws so they "do not discriminate against...

New York - U.S. stocks tumbled the most since July after declines in personal spending and consumer confidence and the threat of a CIT Group Inc. bankruptcy raised concern over the durability of the economic recovery. The dollar and Treasuries gained, while commodities retreated. CIT, the commercial lender, plunged 17 percent as investor Carl Icahn agreed to support its prepackaged bankruptcy...