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New York – Cars have been torched, anti-Semitic graffiti scrawled on sidewalks and "KKK" tagged on a van in an attack on a heavily Jewish neighborhood in New York, on the anniversary of an infamous Nazi attack on Europe's Jews. The rampage took place in the early hours of Friday morning in the Midwood section of Brooklyn, a neighborhood which is home to a significant-sized group of Holocaust survivors, myFOXny.com reported. The NYPD Hate Crimes unit has joined investigations into the attacks, which coincides with a brutal Nazi anniversary. Kristallnacht -- or "The Night of Broken Glass" -- refers to...

WASHINGTON — After a mass killing of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Taliban prisoners of war by the forces of an American-backed warlord during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, Bush administration officials repeatedly discouraged efforts to investigate the episode, according to government officials and human rights organizations. American officials had been reluctant to pursue an investigation — sought by officials from the F.B.I., the State Department, the Red Cross and human rights groups — because the warlord, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, was on the payroll of the C.I.A. and his militia worked closely with United States Special Forces in 2001, several...

WASHINGTON — The stimulus bill working its way through Congress is not just a package of spending increases and tax cuts intended to jolt the nation out of recession. For Democrats, it is also a tool for rewriting the social contract with the poor, the uninsured and the unemployed, in ways they have long yearned to do. With little notice and no public hearings, House Democrats would create a temporary new entitlement allowing workers getting unemployment checks to qualify for Medicaid, the health program for low-income people. Spouses and children could also receive benefits, no matter how much money the...

WASHINGTON — The economic stimulus plan that Congress has scheduled for a vote on Wednesday would shower the nation’s school districts, child care centers and university campuses with $150 billion in new federal spending, a vast two-year investment that would more than double the Department of Education’s current budget. The proposed emergency expenditures on nearly every realm of education, including school renovation, special education, Head Start and grants to needy college students, would amount to the largest increase in federal aid since Washington began to spend significantly on education after World War II. Critics and supporters alike said that by...

Senior Bush administration officials are completing a plan that could help up to three million homeowners struggling to pay their mortgages to stay in their homes, three people briefed on the proposal said Wednesday. The initiative could be the most sweeping government effort directed at mortgage borrowers since the financial crisis began last year. Under the plan, the government would agree to shoulder half of the losses on home loans if mortgage companies agreed to lower borrowers’ monthly payments for at least five years, according to the people briefed on the plan who asked not to be named because details...

Next stop....THE WORLD SERIES....

ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — Jason Bay hit a two-out, two-run homer off John Lackey in the sixth inning, giving the Boston Red Sox a 2-1 lead over the Los Angeles Angels in their AL playoff opener on Wednesday night.

The verdict in the first war crimes trial at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, is in: One poorly educated Yemeni, with an impish sense of humor and two little girls, is guilty of supporting terrorism by driving Osama bin Laden. With credit for time served, the sentence is no more than five months. The verdict and the five-and-a-half-year sentence may not have been as severe as the government had hoped for, but it was a green light for a tribunal that the Pentagon plans to use to prosecute as many as 80 detainees, including five men charged as the plotters and coordinators...

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Sen. Charles Schumer said Sunday the Bush administration is trying to "blame the fire on the person who calls 911" by suggesting he had a role in one of the costliest U.S. bank failures. Federal regulators with the Office of Thrift Supervision were "asleep at the switch" when it came to IndyMac's "reckless" behavior, the New York Democrat complained. Schumer, a member of the Senate Banking Committee, chairman of Congress' Joint Economic Committee and the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, rejected any suggestions of responsibility for IndyMac's collapse "OTS ought to stop pointing false fingers of...

LOS ANGELES – After 72 hours of having the game’s showcase event consumed by talk of conspiracy, the Lakers brought another ugly word to the NBA Finals. Collapse. As Kobe Bryant and his LA teammates watched helplessly, the Celtics came from 20 points down in the third quarter to take an improbable, amazing 97-91 win in Game 4 of the NBA Finals on Thursday night at the Staples Center. Boston leads 3-1 in the best-of-seven series. Game 5 is Sunday night as the Celtics will have a chance to win the 17th championship in franchise history. For the Lakers, the...

ROME — Silvio Berlusconi, the idiosyncratic billionaire who already dominates much of Italy’s public life, snatched back political power in elections that ended Monday, heading a center-right coalition certain to make him prime minister for a third term. But with a weak economy and frustration high that Italy has lost ground to the rest of Europe, it was unclear whether Italians voted for Mr. Berlusconi out of affection or, as many experts said, as the least bad choice after the nation weathered two years of inaction from the fractured center-left. Rejecting the sober responsibility of the departing prime minister, Romano...

The federal government is keeping Bear Stearns out of bankruptcy. Are you next? Momentum for federal assistance to struggling homeowners, a non-starter with the Republican administration and many members of Congress only a few months ago, has picked up steam in Washington. (snip) Valliere said that the idea gaining the most support is a plan from Senate Banking Chairman Chris Dodd and House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank. Both are Democrats. The proposal, likely to be introduced soon after Congress returns from the Easter recess next week, would have the Federal Housing Administration guarantee hundreds of billions of new, lower-cost...

There’s a certain poetic quality to this final act of Spitzer's. His extraordinary popularity with members of the press (now presumably extinguished) was rooted in his willingness to leak, sotto voce, allegations of misconduct in the personal lives of the subjects of his investigations. The press loved the juicy headlines. His motivation was apparently to embarrass and intimidate the subjects of his investigations so that they would be forced to comply. We admit to enjoying the spectacle of watching a man so given to the high moralistic tone brought low by such a misdeed. As one commenter on the New...

The mother of the man charged with killing Auburn University student Lauren Burk said her son was an Iraq war veteran who was changed after his service, and she offered an apology to the freshman's family. Burk, an 18-year-old from Marietta, was found shot on the side of an off-campus road Tuesday night outside Auburn, and her car was found burning in a campus parking lot. Williams told the television station that her son hasn't been the same after serving 16 months in Iraq. She says her son had been living with her in Smiths, Ala., since returning from the...

BEIJING — A huge state-owned Chinese pharmaceutical company that exports to dozens of countries, including the United States, is at the center of a nationwide drug scandal after nearly 200 Chinese cancer patients were paralyzed or otherwise harmed last summer by contaminated leukemia drugs. Chinese drug regulators have accused the manufacturer of the tainted drugs of a cover-up and have closed the factory that produced them. In December, China’s Food and Drug Administration said that the Shanghai police had begun a criminal investigation and that two officials, including the head of the plant, had been detained. The drug maker, Shanghai...

One major potential headache for Gov. Eliot Spitzer now seems as if it will go away. P. David Soares, the Albany County District Attorney, released a statement a few minutes ago that tomorrow he will be releasing his final report on whether aides to Mr. Spitzer violated state laws when they asked the state police to gather information about Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno’s travels on state aircraft. According to Mr. Soares, his report won’t merely clear Mr. Spitzer’s aides of criminal wrongdoing. It will clear them of any wrongdoing, period. The attorney general, the governor, and Mr. Soares...

CHARLESTON, W.Va., June 28 (AP) — Federal inspectors missed obvious problems before three accidents killed 19 men at underground coal mines in West Virginia and Kentucky last year, the Mine Safety and Health Administration said Thursday. An internal accountability office will be created to make sure such lapses are not repeated, the agency said.

Nicolas Sarkozy: Winning the Chance to Prove His Critics Wrong By CRAIG S. SMITH Published: May 6, 2007 PARIS, May 6 — Arrogant, brutal, an authoritarian demagogue, a “perfect Iago”; the president-elect of France has been called a lot of unpleasant things in recent months and now has five years to prove his critics wrong. (snip) He has always been nakedly ambitious, pragmatic and calculating and not beyond betrayal to reach his goals. (snip)

LIVERPOOL, N.Y. — The students at Liverpool High have used their school-issued laptops to exchange answers on tests, download pornography and hack into local businesses. When the school tightened its network security, a 10th grader not only found a way around it but also posted step-by-step instructions on the Web for others to follow (which they did). Scores of the leased laptops break down each month, and every other morning, when the entire school has study hall, the network inevitably freezes because of the sheer number of students roaming the Internet instead of getting help from teachers. So the Liverpool...

Amid continued signs of deterioration in the nation’s mortgage market, a Congressional panel Wednesday forecast a sharp rise in housing foreclosures, and several Democratic lawmakers called for a federal bailout for borrowers who are at risk of losing their home