The possible collapse of a financial services company heavily frequented by English-speaking immigrants has many scrambling to recoup money entrusted with the firm, in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Branches of Cheerfully Changed in Jerusalem and surrounding cities have been closed since last week and many customers say they have been unable to reach a representative to inquire about their accounts.
In addition, a statement posted online and comments by former employees who said the company's entire staff was let go this week have spurred concerns the company is bankrupt. According to some estimates, the losses could amount to millions of dollars.
The company and its owner, Jonathan Abeles, have not responded to numerous Anglo File queries for clarification.
The New York City hotel maid who accused former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique-Strauss Kahn of sexual assault has allegedly worked as a prostitute, the New York Post reports. A source close to the defense investigation told the Post that the Sofitel Hotel housekeeper would have sex with male guests at the hotel for money.
"There is information... of her getting extraordinary tips," the source told the Post.
The source also said that the maid had "a lot of her expenses -- hair braiding, salon expenses -- paid for by men not related to her."
On Friday, Strauss-Kahn walked out of court free on bail after prosecutors said an extensive background investigation of the hotel housekeeper accusing him of sexual assault gave them pause.
The New York Times is reporting that the criminal case against ex-IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, accused of sexually assaulting a New York hotel maid, is on the verge of collapsing.
Citing two unnamed law enforcement officials close to the case, the Times said prosecutors did not believe much of the story told by the French politician's accuser -- a Guinea-born hotel maid -- and that she had repeatedly lied to them since the May 14 alleged attack.
A Brooklyn girl was robbed of her teenage years by a gang of creeps who repeatedly raped her, beat her and pimped her out, prosecutors said Wednesday.
But the brave teen - who was brutalized for eight years starting at 13 - still managed to finish school, enroll in college and gather the strength to report the horrific abuse.
"It's hard to imagine something more terrible than this," said her college professor, a former prosecutor and the first person the victim confided with.
The demise of a trusted adviser could bring down Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iran's President has survived mass uprisings, but a corruption row engulfing his inner circle may soon be his undoing. Robert Fisk reports from Tehran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's irascible, unpredictable but devout president, may be forced to resign in the coming weeks as a political crisis far greater than the massive street violence which followed his re-election in 2009 threatens to overwhelm him and his court favourites in the government. Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/how-the-demise-of-a-trusted-adviser-could-bring-down-mahmoud-ahmadinejad-2303671.html
A Brooklyn teen, accompanied by his rabbi and a lawyer, surrendered today in the molestation of a youngster in the basement of a Borough Park synagogue.
Menachem Deutsch, 19, was charged with unlawful imprisonment and child endangerment in the June 22 attack, authorities said.
Deutsch, dressed in traditional Hasidic attire, allegedly lured a 12-year-old boy walking home from school into Simcha Hall, a basement event space located inside a synagogue at 15th Avenue and 50th Street, authorities said.
Once inside, Deutsch brought the boy into a bathroom and allegedly groped and molested the child over the course of an hour.
Brooklyn, NY - Police are searching for a man who has lured children into a Brooklyn synagogue, molesting at least one of them. Police say the sex attack happened during the afternoon on Wednesday, June 22.
Police say the man lured a 12-year-old into Simcha Hall, a Borough Park synagogue located at 50th Street and 15th Avenue.
Once in the basement, police say the man, dressed in tradition Hasidic attire, sexually assaulted the boy.
About an hour later, a second boy, 11, was confronted by the same man in front of the synagogue.
Police say that boy was not sexually assaulted but was lured into the synagogue. The Special Victims Crime Unit is now handling the case as they search for the suspect.
According to the NY Post, The incidents came to light after one of the victims told his father what had happened. The dad in turn contacted Rabi Nochem Rosenberg, an advocate who works to expose incidents of child sexual molestation in the Hasidic Orthodox Jewish community. Rosenberg gave the father the number of an NYPD detective.
"I said go down to the detective, and report it," Rosenberg said.
David Orlander, whose son Nafatali Orlander manages the shul, said he had hear about the alleged attacks, but did not know who committed them. "We won’t sweep it under the rug. Nobody is denying it [happened] but, for some reason, nobody knowns anything either," Orlander said. "Our shul is open 20 hours a day, and there’s not necessarily someone in the building," Orlander said. "It’s open, in case anyone wants to come in an study. Even the mailman and the sanitation workers know it’s open and they can use the bathrooms. Anyone can walk in there."
Blame the potato chip. It's the biggest demon behind that pound-a-year weight creep that plagues many of us, a major diet study found. Bigger than soda, candy and ice cream. And the reason is partly that old advertising cliche: You can't eat just one.
"They're very tasty and they have a very good texture. People generally don't take one or two chips. They have a whole bag," said obesity expert Dr. F. Xavier Pi-Sunyer of the St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York.
What we eat and how much of it we consume has far more impact than exercise and most other habits do on long-term weight gain, according to the study by Harvard University scientists. It's the most comprehensive look yet at the effect of individual foods and lifestyle choices like sleep time and quitting smoking.
The results are in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.
Delta Air Lines' plan to add Saudi Arabian Airlines to its SkyTeam Alliance of partnering companies would require the American carrier to ban Jews and holders of Israeli passports from boarding flights from New York or Washington bound for Jeddah, prompting outraged accusations of illegal religious discrimination.
The issue, which has caught the attention of the American Center for Law and Justice already, was raised when Washington attorney Jeffrey Lovitky was perusing airline procedures for travel.
"As we learn more about the issue and facts, we are determined to ensure that American citizens do not face discrimination by airlines like Delta that are passenger code-sharing with Saudi Arabian Airlines," said Colby M. May, director and senior counsel of the ACLJ.
Read more! http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=314309
A woman was arrested for videotaping police from her front yard in Rochester, New York.
The woman, who is unidentified at this point, was recording a traffic stop where police had a man handcuffed on May 12th. The video was uploaded to Blip TV today.
The cops noticed her recording and started hassling her with absurd notions.
“I don’t feel safe with you standing behind me, so I’m going to ask you to go into your house,” the cop said.
“You seem very anti-police … due to what you said to me before you started taping me.”
It is not clear what she said before she started recording, but if she said anything threatening, they would have arrested her at that moment.
She ended up getting handcuffed and taken away after she refused to walk into her house, even though she was clearly on her own property.
A friend or relative ended up taking the camera and we see her being led away.
Neighbors who witnessed the interaction confirmed she had done nothing wrong.
Meanwhile, the man they had originally handcuffed was released.
UPDATE: The woman's name is Emily Good. She was charged with obstructing government administration. I'm looking forward to her lawsuit.
Is climate change raising sea levels, as Al Gore has argued -- or are climate scientists doctoring the data?
The University of Colorado’s Sea Level Research Group decided in May to add 0.3 millimeters -- or about the thickness of a fingernail -- every year to its actual measurements of sea levels, sparking criticism from experts who called it an attempt to exaggerate the effects of global warming.
The irony is that Rottenberg's innocent children, they threw out, but a guy who all agree attempted to burn down Rottenberg's house and kill all who were inside, goes back to the community as if nothing happened with impunity!
Waving goodbye to her grandchildren, Gudrun Burwitz has the look of a woman ready to live the rest of her days in peace and quiet.
Instead, the 81-year-old daughter of Heinrich Himmler still works at a ruthless pace to keep the Nazi flame alive.
Mrs Burwitz has always nurtured the memory of her father, believing the man who ran the Gestapo, the SS and the extermination programme which murdered six million Jews, to be good and worthy.
And despite her advanced years, she continues to help the ageing remnants of the Nazi regime to evade justice.
As the leading figure in the shadowy and sinister support group Stille Hilfe –Silent Help – she helps bring succour and financial help to those still at large.
Said to have been formed in 1951 by a clique of high-ranking SS officers and right-wing clergy in Germany, it exists ‘to provide quiet but active assistance to those who lost their freedom during or after the war by capture, internment or similar circumstance and who need help to this day’.
Now it is in the hands of Mrs Burwitz. And her work has taken an even more sinister turn. She has become ‘grandmother’ to a new breed of female Nazis on the radical right.
Anthony Weiner resigned yesterday, unable to withstand the relentless pressure put on him for his sexting extravaganzas. Yet if an article written by former PLO terrorist-turned-Christian and Israel supporter Walid Shoebat (along with KTEM radio host Ben Barrack) is any indication, it may very well be that the wrong member of the family resigned. According to Arabic sources translated by Mr. Shoebat, Huma Abedin’s mother and brother are both associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Ms. Abedin’s mother, Saleha Mahmoud Abdeen, is reportedly part of a special woman’s unit known as the Muslim Sisterhood or the International Women’s Organization (IWO) which, according to a counter-terrorism report obtained by the Terrorism Committee of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, operates within the Brotherhood in Egypt and possibly other Arab nations as well. The Egyptian newspaper Al-Dostor confirms that the Sisterhood includes 63 international members in 16 different countries. Read More:http://frontpagemag.com/2011/06/17/why-is-weiners-muslim-brotherhood-wife-not-resigning/
A 64-year-old community rabbi from Netanya was charged on Monday at the Petah Tikva District Court with forcing a 13-year-old girl into having sex with him by exploiting his authority and using “mystical threats” to intimidate her.
The defendant, named as Rabbi David Ben-Haham Hafuta, was arrested on May 30, and is charged with carrying out sexual acts on three occasions withthe girl, after telling her that she had to “repair her sins” and that she would be “the mother of the messiah.” The girl had approached the rabbi for religious advice, and he in turn said he wanted to “reveal to her the role she would play in the world,” charge sheet said.
Between July and August 2010, the defendant picked up the girl at a Netanya intersection and drove her to a local beach.
In the car, “he told her she was destined to be the mother of the messiah and that she had to repair all of her sinful acts that she committed until now. The way to repairing these acts was to hold sexual relations,” the charge sheet said.
He then held a “marriage ceremony” with the girl, and swore her to secrecy. Read more Jerusalem Post
Shortly after the photo-op meeting and “working lunch” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the one that saw President Obama openly chastised by the Prime Minister for Obama’s earlier public comments regarding wanting to see Israel return to its 1967 borders, the president verbally “went off” on Richard Daley in the private study area that adjoins the Oval Office. President Obama’s verbal attack was clearly heard by numerous staff up and down the West Wing hallways.
The essence of the president’s rage and embarrassment can best be summed up with him yelling out very loudly, “What the f-ck was that!?” That phrase was apparently repeated a number of times in the span of about five minutes, a time period in which Obama’s voice became “louder and louder” and culminating in Obama exclaiming, “Never again! Do you understand me? Never again!” Any response by Bill Daley back to the president, if given, was not overheard.
Today, the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy nonprofit, released its latest "Dirty Dozen" list of the 12 fruits and vegetables that are most contaminated with pesticides, as an update to its 2010 rankings. And taking first place this year? Apples. The ubiquitous fruit beat out last year's top spot, which went to celery (now at number two).
The health benefits of fruits and vegetables are, without a doubt, a known fact -- reinstating the message was last month's release of the USDA's MyPlatefood pyramid replacement, which suggests filling half of your plate with fruits and vegetables.
But the potentially darker side of fruits and vegetables is centered around concerns about their pesticide loads, which some studies have linked to possible health problems, particularly among women who are pregnant and children. So when organic foods typically carry a higher price tag, what's a frugal shopper to do?
That's where the new shopper's guide comes into play (download it here).
"Picking five servings of fruits and vegetables from the 12 most contaminated would cause you to consume an average of 14 different pesticides a day," the group reports in its findings, which were based on data collected by the United States Departure of Agriculture of food samples that often were ready to be eaten (meaning that they had already been peeled or washed as necessary).
On the flip side, EWG writes that choosing foods from their counterpart "Clean 15" list will slash the pesticide volume by more than 90 percent. Topping the "Clean 15" were onions, sweet corn, pineapples and avocado (check out the full list here).
"We have very good data showing that if people eat organic that measurable pesticide levels in their tissues drop, and this has been shown with kids as well," HuffPost blogger Dr. Andrew Weil told EWGlast year when they released the 2010 Shopper's List. "I've always said that it would be wise to learn which crops are more likely to carry pesticide residues and in those instance to try to get organic versions or to reduce consumption or avoid the conventional varieties."
Of course, while the EWG encourages going organic when it comes to items on their Dirty Dozen List, they do clearly state that conventional produce is certainly better than none at all: "The health benefits of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables outweigh the risks of pesticide exposure."
