Israeli Police make dramatic arrest of two Mexican jewelery thieves on Highway 1 en route to Ben Gurion Airport

Police arrested two Mexican nationals in possession of a stolen briefcase packed with thousands of dollars worth of jewelery on Tuesday, hours before the suspects were scheduled to board a flight out of the country.

The dramatic arrest was made by undercover officers on Highway 1. Police pounced on the suspects who were en route to Ben Gurion Airport.

According to police, the suspects followed an Israeli jewelery dealer in Jerusalem for several hours earlier on Tuesday, tracking his movements around the capital.

“The dealer sat down at a restaurant in the center of town, and the thieves made away with his suitcase without him noticing,” Israel Police Spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told The Jerusalem Post.

The thieves were unaware that they were themselves being monitored by a team of undercover police officers, in an operation jointly overseen by the Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Border Police units.

The suspects’ vehicle was pulled over as soon as it left Jerusalem. “They have admitted a connection to the suspicions against them,” Rosenfeld said. “They arrived in Israel three days ago, and were supposed to fly out on Tuesday evening.”

Rosenfeld said he could not comment on the intelligence gathering aspect of the operating, adding that police were attempting to understand why the thieves had targeted a jewelery dealer in Israel specifically for a heist.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1251804473269

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Honolulu considers fine of $500 fine, 6 months jail on stinky bus riders

HONOLULU – Stinky city bus riders soon could get soaked.

The Honolulu City Council is considering a bill that would impose up to a $500 fine and/or up to six months in jail for public transit passengers convicted of being too smelly.

The bill will be heard Thursday in committee. It would make it illegal to have “odors that unreasonably disturb others or interfere with their use of the transit system.”

It doesn’t matter if it’s body odor or offensive fumes that emanates from clothes, personal belongings or animals.

Councilmen Rod Tam and Nestor Garcia co-sponsored the anti-odor bill.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii says it is concerned with laws that are inherently vague, which opens the door to discriminatory enforcement based on an officer’s individual prejudices.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32649198/ns/us_news-weird_news/

 

 

 

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Study: Jerusalem Post clear leader in Jewish news web sites in USA followed by Chabad.org

A recent study – not commissioned by The Jerusalem Post – has revealed that of all Jewish news Web sites, Jpost.com is the clear leader in the United States, garnering more than twice as many readers as its closest competitor, and almost twice as many readers as all American Jewish news Web sites combined.

Although the Post was unaware of the study until after it was published, the newspaper welcomed the data as a sign that it was maintaining a critical lead in the cutthroat world of Internet news.

In mid-August, 4Wall, which operates the JInsider site, conducted what it called “the Jewish Internet Metric Study,” borrowing from the practices of McKinsey & Company to analyze Internet use and its business implications and applications.

The study found that Jpost.com hosted 1,454,649 unique visitors per month, while competitor Haaretz.com lagged far behind, with 691,467.

All of the American Jewish news sources combined – including the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, The Jewish Journal, New York’s The Jewish Week, the Forward, Philadelphia’s The Jewish Exponent and The Jewish Press – received barely half of Jpost.com’s traffic figures, with 808,516 unique visitors.

Not only did Jpost.com leave other sites far behind, but the study also found visitors spent “significantly more time per visit” on the two Israel-based sites, and that “many more of those visitors are ‘regulars’ [people who visit more than once per month] and addicts [people who visit more than 30 times per month.]”

“I think that our success can be attributed to a combination of great original content, a never-ending pace of news flow, the power of the brand name and the fact that every day at 3:30 p.m. Jerusalem time, as far as we’re concerned, we enter US time,” explained Jpost.com Managing Editor Shani Rosenfelder. “We look at our North American audience in terms of what stories should be highlighted and what issues take center stage in those readers’ eyes.”

Rosenfelder said the site would not rest on its laurels, but would continue to develop. In the past three to four years, he said, traffic has grown by 120 percent as the site has added more and different types of content, with an increased eye to multimedia. In recent months, the site has begun to independently produce video clips, and has employed a fulltime film crew to produce news and feature clips.

He added that while he could not disclose specifics, Nielsen data that had been commissioned for Jpost.com showed a much higher traffic figure than the one cited by the JInsider study.

Mark Pearlman of JInsider and 4Wall said the survey’s findings should serve as a heads-up for North American Jewish media.

“The takeaway point is this: The American Jewish media need to coordinate and combine their assets online,” Pearlman wrote in an op-ed piece published on the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s leading American-Jewish news site .

He suggested that sites take steps such as increasing updates to encourage more frequent return traffic – but Pearlman’s main conclusion is one step bigger.

He said that all of the American Jewish news sites should “launch a Huffington Post-style (no politics implied) central Jewish news site. The site would house local brands and local coverage, as well as serve as a focal point for national and international Jewish news.”

Other commentators on the study noted that American Jewish news tended to be “hyper-local,” limiting potential interest in each individual site.

The other big winner on the Jewish Net, according to the study, was Chabad.org, which Pearlman described as “an example of what a successful educational/informational Web presence can look like” and “a brand leader.” Over the past year, Pearlman said, Chabad’s traffic “rose by 37% and is now significantly above the other sites studied,” including those of the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox movements

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1251804468656

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Lakewood Yungerman comes across alligator near his office in Trenton, NJ

PHOTO VIDEO (click on image to enlarge) taken approximately 30 minutes ago from a cell phone by a local Yungerman who came across an alligator near his office in Trenton. The alligator which has just been captured, has been eluding wildlife officials since Monday. Officials believe the nearly 5 foot alligator may have been dumped in the Stacey Park pond by someone who may have kept is as a pet but decided to get rid of it after growing too large. (Mobile users click here to view video on youtube).

The Lakewood Scoop

http://thelakewoodscoop.blogspot.com/2009/09/lakewood-yungerman-comes-across.html

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Spring Valley, Ramapo – New Square Slaughterhouse hot Topic in Democratic primary debate

SPRING VALLEY – Pointed remarks on key issues marked the Democratic primary debates for Ramapo town supervisor and Spring Valley village mayor at the Louis Kurtz Civic Center last night.

In the first debate, challenger Bruce Levine and town Supervisor Christopher St. Lawrence answered written questions on affordable housing, the growth of nonprofit organizations and a controversial chicken processing plant in New Square.

“I am very concerned about the proposed slaughterhouse,” Levine said, saying the town should have asked for a fuller environmental review.

But St. Lawrence said the project was in New Square’s jurisdiction. The town commented on the project during a Rockland County review by asking that all environmental requirements be met, he said.

Levine questioned St. Lawrence’s record on affordable housing, called the town’s adult student housing zoning “a fraud on the public,” and said St. Lawrence didn’t have the will to “say no” to developers.

St. Lawrence challenged Levine’s claims. In his current role as Spring Valley village attorney, Levine was, according to St. Lawrence, “a befuddled paper pusher” in an administration that hadn’t been able to get much done.

The mayoral candidates also took written questions, including on rising property taxes and how their administration would differ from that of Mayor George Darden, if at all.

Moderators repeatedly asked for quiet, as some members of the audience of more than 200 would cheer or clap repeatedly at candidates’ comments.

Darden’s subsequent appeal for calm – with a hint that action would be taken if noise continued – was met with a burst of loud boos.

Bernard Charles Jr., a former Spring Valley employee; Demeza Delhomme and Noramie Jasmin, Spring Valley village trustees; Vilair Fonvil, who has sought public office on several occasions; Margareth Jourdan, a former Spring Valley trustee; and Jacques Michel, a county legislator, said they believed they were the right candidates for the job.

Most of them said they would run the village very differently. Delhomme, Charles, Fonvil and Jourdan stressed that they would be respectful and said the present leadership lacked the most basic courtesy for the public.

They pledged to stop patronage jobs and unnecessary spending, while Michel stressed crime reduction and improved opportunities for youth. Jasmin emphasized her role in the economic development of the village, particularly in luring new business to the Spring Valley Marketplace.

Because of time constraints, there couldn’t be debates for every race in the village and town, but other candidates were given time to introduce themselves to the audience. The Spring Valley chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Haitian American Voters and Entrepreneurs National, and the Jamaican Civic and Cultural Association of Rockland sponsored the forum.

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Arab European League (AEL) is being prosecuted for publishing a cartoon suggesting Jews invented Holocaust

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) The Arab European League (AEL) is being prosecuted for insulting Jews by publishing a cartoon suggesting they invented the Holocaust, the Dutch public prosecution office said on Wednesday.

The office said it told the AEL, a lobby group for Muslim and Arab rights in Europe, two weeks ago that publishing the cartoon was illegal, but that it would drop the case if the group removed the cartoon from its website within two weeks and agreed not to republish it.

The AEL had already taken the cartoon off its website www.arabeuropean.org, but republished it, prompting the prosecution to proceed with the case. The group said it would remove the cartoon again but would defend the case in court.

The cartoon shows two men, beneath a sign reading Auschwitz and beside several bodies, saying the victims might not have been Jewish but they still had to get to six million — the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust.

‘This cartoon can be … considered to be discriminatory,’ the prosecution said in a statement, adding that it was offensive to the entire Jewish population.

The AEL said it had used the Holocaust cartoon when it began a campaign in February 2006 to ‘illustrate with cartoons the double morals of the West during the Danish cartoon affair.’

Abdoulmouthalib Bouzerda, chairman of the Dutch AEL, said the group had published a disclaimer at the time saying it did not support the views of the cartoons it used.

As a supporter of the freedom of speech, the AEL did not complain about the republication of the Mohammad cartoons in the Netherlands and was trying to show that not only Muslims could be insulted by cartoons, he said.

He was referring to a cartoon in a Danish newspaper in 2005 showing the Prophet Mohammad, founder of Islam, with a bomb in his turban.

Its later republication in several newspapers sparked violent protests in Muslim countries in 2006, prompting the newspaper to apologize, though the Danish government defended the papers right to freedom of expression.

The Dutch public prosecution office said it had decided not to take action against the republication of the Mohammad cartoon in the Netherlands because it was not considered offensive to Muslims in general.

‘It is not up to the public prosecution to decide who is insulted and who is not insulted,’ Bouzerda said.

(Reporting by Aaron Gray-Block, editing by Tim Pearce)

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Rhode Island man who was seen taunting a Hasidic Jew with racial slurs later charged officers was tased and arrested

WAREHAM A Rhode Island man who was seen taunting a Hasidic Jew with racial slurs later charged officers and was subsequently tased and arrested Tuesday night, according to a report by the Wareham Police Department.

Michael Watkins, 37, of 726 Post Road in Warwick, R.I., was reported to be taunting the man at a Stop and Shop, and the responding officer observed the suspect’s vehicle traveling west on Cranberry Highway, according to police. The report notes that the vehicle at first failed to stop, and Watkins, the passenger, was seen throwing a shotgun out the window.

The vehicle eventually stopped, and when the officer stepped out of his cruiser, Watkins charged police yelling and screaming, according to the report. After Watkins refused to come to the ground, he was tased and brought into custody with the aid of other officers, police said. The shotgun that had been thrown out the window was later found to be loaded.

The driver, Emily R. Putney, 19, of 185 North Fitzwilliam Road, Royalston, was also arrested. Putney has been charged with failing to stop for a police officer, carrying a dangerous weapon, and possession of a large capacity firearm. Watkins has been charged with disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, possessing a large capacity firearm, carrying a dangerous weapon, carrying a firearm without a license, possession of ammunition without a firearms identification card, a firearms violation with two prior violent crimes, and a violation of civil rights.

Both will be arraigned in Wareham District Court Wednesday morning.

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New Push To Find Israeli Amichai Steinmetz, 24 Lost In India Since July 22

American relatives of an Israeli backpacker missing for more than a month in India have joined the campaign to finance the ongoing search effort. Amichai Steinmetz, 24, set out on a one-day trek to explore the Parvati Valley in northern India on July 22 and has not been heard from since. Professional trackers, army friends of Steinmetz and volunteers recruited by Chabad-Lubavitch representatives in India, have surveyed the territory by foot and by air, finding no sign of him.
Steinmetz U.S. relatives last week started contacting friends and Jewish organizations to raise funds for the search, and placed an ad in this weeks issue of The Jewish Week. Information about Steinmetz is available at 4amichai.org.
Steinmetz, who served in the Israeli Army in the elite Duvdevan undercover anti-terrorism unit, was to return to Israel before Rosh HaShanah and begin studying archaeology at Hebrew University.
India for years has served as a popular vacation site for discharged Israeli soldiers. Two Israelis have died hiking there in the past few years.

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[Pictures] Crown Heights – Satmar Guy Installs Hatzoloh Antenna in 770

With Tishrei around the corner Hatzoloh of Crown Heights, is working with the Gabboim of 770 to insure that this year will be a safe experience for the thousands of guests expected to visit 770. Yesterday, antennas and a sophisticated listening device were installed in the ceiling of the Shull. Due to the huge crowd, it is sometimes difficult to discern cries for help, and these devices are expected to resolve this problem by signaling the radio system of the Hatzoloh volunteers whenever there are shouts for medical assistance.

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Lakewood tax assessor announces abrupt retirement, facing mounting criticism from residents accusing her of anti-Semitism

LAKEWOOD The township’s tax assessor announced her abrupt retirement Monday, following a series of scathing rebukes from some members of the Orthodox Jewish community and increasing pressure from an overload of property-tax appeals.

Linda Solakian said she sent letters to the Township Committee, the township manager and the Ocean County Board of Taxation, saying she will retire Sept. 15 due to health reasons brought on by stress at work. She was planning to retire in February.

However, Mayor Robert Singer said he has seen only a copy of Solakian’s letter to the county and will not recognize the retirement until the township receives one of its own.

“Once I officially know this is the case, then she must give us two weeks’ notice, and we then can take proper action,” he said Tuesday.

Solakian said she will remain on sick leave until Sept. 15. The veteran assessor had been facing mounting criticism from resident complaints and Jewish press articles accusing her of anti-Semitism and improper tax adjustments.

In an Aug. 22 article that relied heavily on unnamed sources, The Lakewood Shopper, a local Jewish weekly, said, “Some observations on the assessor’s conduct in public meetings indicates an unfair bias in her approach to different members of the Lakewood community.”

Solakian said the article was a factor in her early retirement, calling it “disgusting.”

Yehuda Shain, a local government critic who at one time applied for Solakian’s job, has filed three complaints against the assessor in the past month. Shain said he applied for the position in 1996, the year Solakian started, but has since allowed his certified tax assessor license to lapse.

Recently, Township Committeeman Steven Langert and Solakian engaged in a shouting match in her office, according to witnesses. Solakian would only say the argument was about an appeal in Pine River Village, a mostly Orthodox senior neighborhood that was being reassessed in preparation for lifting its age restriction. Langert said he would not comment about an “open personnel matter.”

Solakian, who began as a clerk typist in the assessor’s office, said she has developed a number of stress-related health problems following a 2006 revaluation that brought some 4,500 tax appeals to her desk this year, comprising a third of all appeals in the county.

“It’s a very high volume,” said county tax board President P.G. Waxman.

Solakian said the complaints of prejudice came from “a handful of people who didn’t get what they want.” Of the 3,000 appeals she settled this year, she said, about half were with Orthodox residents.

“I have never been a biased person in my entire life and never intend to be,” Solakian said.

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