Los Angeles, CA - The widow of a North Hollywood rabbi who has fought for years to regain four Torahs that once belonged to her late husband won another battle when a civil court ruled in her favor. A Los Angeles Superior Court judge confirmed an earlier ruling by a rabbinic court that Rita Pauker should get back four Torahs that had been in her husband's family for decades, but are now being...

Washington - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says he will work hard to try to strike a long-lasting peace deal with Israel, but that Israel must agree to a full freeze on all its settlement activity in Palestinian territories. Abbas also is calling for the release of all Palestinian prisoners. Appearing at the White House on Wednesday evening, Abbas said he recognized the "the...

Istanbul, Turkey - The body of one of Russia's top spies has washed up on the Turkish coast after he disappeared close to a sensitive Russian naval facility in neighbouring Syria. Major-General Yuri Ivanov, 52, was the deputy head of Russia's foreign military intelligence arm, known as the GRU and thought to operate the biggest network of foreign spies among all of Russia's clandestine...

Burbank, CA - Rabbi Mark Sobel was awakened Wednesday morning by calls from friends and relatives all over the country. He was the latest victim of a scam. All of his e-mail contacts received the following message: I'm writing this with tears in my eyes,my family and I came down here to London, United Kingdom for a short vacation. unfortunately,we were mugged at the park of the hotel where...

New York - Lawrence Meinwald's voice starts shaking when he recalls the first time he saw the Statue of Liberty. It was 1920, and the young Polish boy was on a ship with his family, headed to Ellis Island and a new life in America. "It was a great sight. I didn't know what it meant. But we stayed on deck, and everybody was anxious, and everybody was happy, and everybody was sad," Meinwald...

Monsey, NY - Hatzolah paramedics transporting a child that was hit by a vehicle. The child was struck and pinned under the vehicle in front of 38 Monsey Heights and is being transported with CPR in progress to Good Smarten Hospital. Helicopter landing at Good Sam Hospital to transport the 14-month-old to Westchester Medical Center. Child in critical condition but got back pulse and blood...

New York, NY - Mayor Michael Bloomberg says there are only two ways he will leave office before his third term ends in 2013. Death or "total incapacitation," as he puts it. The billionaire mayor has long been rumored to have his eye on other opportunities. He tested the waters for an independent presidential campaign in 2008 but decided to change term-limits law and seek a third term as...

New Jersey - Ned Gladstein believes that if the Jewish community can’t come to the kosher butcher, the kosher butcher should come to them. The president of Sunrise ShopRite, Inc., recently opened “Nathan’s Glatt,” a dedicated, fully staffed kosher meat department at his ShopRite supermarket on Route 46 in Parsippany. (That store and other ShopRites also carry a full array of packaged...

Israel - Shots were reportedly fired at a vehicle traveling in the area between the settlement Kochav Yaakov and Rimonim Junction in the West Bank on Wednesday night. Police who arrived in the area found one person critically injured and one person slightly injured. The event is being treated as a terror attack. Security forces were on the scene searching for the terrorist's vehicle. The...

Vienna - Tensions between Israel and Islamic nations have scuttled plans by the U.N. atomic watchdog agency to convene talks this year on a Mideast free of nuclear weapons, according to a document shared with The Associated Press. The latest failure to bring the opposing sides to the table casts further doubt on plans to hold more substantive talks in two years on such a zone, as proposed by...

Gaza City - The top Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip rejected compromise with Israel in a fiery speech Wednesday, a day after gunmen killed four Israelis in a strong reminder that the Islamic militant group cannot be ignored in any Mideast deal. President Barack Obama denounced the West Bank ambush as he launched a two-day summit marking the first Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in nearly two...

West Hollywood, CA - Officials say a man has confessed to fatally shooting three men in a West Hollywood apartment after a drug deal went bad. Los Angeles County Sheriff's Lt. Pat Nelson said Wednesday that Harold Yong Park was cooperative with investigators after his arrest Monday and told them he shot the men after a failed marijuana deal. The three victims, brothers Pirooz and Shahriar...

Poughkeepsie, NY - Got speed? IBM unveiled details Wednesday about its new advanced chips, which the company says can process information at record-breaking speeds far faster than those in ordinary desktop computers. The technology giant said it spent more than $1.5 billion on research and development of the new chip tech, which debuts in the form of the 5.2-GHz z196 CPU. The z196...

New York - The State Education Department has sent school districts a memorandum strongly recommending that they not ask for information that might reveal the immigration status of enrolling students, after a civil liberties group complained that scores of districts were requesting such information in possible violation of federal law. The memo explained that a 1982 Supreme Court decision had...

Hebron, Israel - It’s been a while since I photographed dead bodies. The last time I remember clearly was the murder of Yossi Shok from Beit Haggai who was shot and killed similarly on a Friday afternoon a few years ago. That attack entailed a few miracles. I recall that there were others in the car, teenage girls, who miraculously weren’t hurt. But tonight, no miracles. This morning...