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In an unusually overt step into politics by a religious leader, the Roman Catholic bishop of Brooklyn is urging voters, via robocalls, to support Vito J. Lopez, an assemblyman and the Brooklyn Democratic boss, whose hand-picked candidate is in a tough race for a City Council seat. The bishop, Nicholas A. DiMarzio, in a recorded phone call sent to every registered voter in City Council District 34, praised Mr. Lopez’s legislative service to the Catholic Church this summer. Mr. Lopez played a key role in defeating a bill that would have let adults file suit over childhood sexual abuse that...

School nurses mistakenly gave the swine flu vaccine to two students who didn't sign up for it - including a Brooklyn girl with epilepsy who wound up in the hospital. "I was outraged," Naomi Troy, 26, told the Daily News after her 6-year-old daughter, Nikiyah Torres-Pierre, had a possible allergic reaction to the shot. Officials at Public School 335 in Crown Heights called an ambulance to take Nikiyah to SUNY Downstate Medical Center when she fell ill following the arm jab. "My stomach was hurting, and I was itching," Nikiyah said after she was released from the hospital. The snafu...

The cellphone would not stop ringing. “Ronny, you’re 10 minutes late,” one caller whined. But Ronny Beberman had a good reason. Having tumbled eight feet off his own seltzer truck, Mr. Beberman, 62, was answering the phone while laid out on West Seventh Street in Brooklyn, bleeding from a head gash and having broken a foot and several vertebrae. The news was also bad for his customers: Ronny the Seltzer Man would be out of service for a while.

A wannabe terrorist from Brooklyn was indicted yesterday for allegedly seeking training and weapons from Islamic militants to fight US troops overseas. The FBI said Betim Kaziu, a US citizen, traveled to Cairo in February and later to Kosovo, where he was arrested in August. Along the way, Kaziu allegedly sought to join Al-Shabbab, an armed movement listed as a terrorist group by the State Department, and train in Pakistan to fight American troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Balkans.

Iranians Blanket Brooklyn Bridge in GreenBy Robert Mackey September 24, 2009, 12:11 pm Update | 10:07 p.m. Here is a video report produced by my colleagues Jeffrey DelViscio and Nazila Fathi on the protest that stretched across the Brooklyn Bridge on Thursday. The report features an interview with Hadi Ghaemi, the director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Mr. Ghaemi said: “The focus today will be to turn Brooklyn Bridge green, and to provide solidarity and let the Iranian people know everyone is standing up with them, hearing them, watching what is happening to them — and...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 24, 2009 PRESS RELEASE BROOKLYN RESIDENT INDICTED FOR CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT MURDER OVERSEAS AND CONSPIRACY TO PROVIDE MATERIAL SUPPORT TO TERRORISTS An indictment was unsealed in federal court this morning charging Betim Kaziu, a U.S. citizen and resident of Brooklyn, with conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country and conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists.1 Kaziu is scheduled to be arraigned later today before United States Magistrate Judge Joan M. Azrack, at the U.S. Courthouse, 225 Cadman Plaza East, Brooklyn, New York. The charges were announced by Benton J. Campbell, United States Attorney for...

While Uncle Sam Slept BROOKLYN BECOMES ISLAMABAD ByPaul L. Williams, Ph.D.thelastcrusade.org The enormity of the rise of Islam in America is crystallized by developments that have occurred within the New York borough of Brooklyn, once labelled the city of churches. Hundreds of churches have been closed in recent years, and dozens of synagogues have locked their doors. In their place, the following mosques that have cropped up within the past three decades: Masjid At-Taqwa Al-Farooq Mosque Makki Masjid Brooklyn NY(Muslim Community Center of Brooklyn NY)Islamic Center Of BrooklynMasjid Musab Bin OmayerAnsar Of Islam IncMasjid Ibadul-RahmanMasjid Nur Al-IslamMasjid An NurMasjid...

Goodnight, America A Jihad Grows in Brooklyn byPaul L. Williams, Ph.D.thelastcrusade.org Bam! Bam! Bam!It’s 3:30 a.m. in Brooklyn and Mohammad Boota, a Pakistani immigrant, is beating his barrel drum along Coney Island Avenue and Foster AvenueBoota, who immigrated to the U.S. in 1992 from Pakistan, is joined by other drummers, other Pakistani immigrants, as the cries of muezzins ring out from loud speakers throughout the borough.The racket goes on every morning during Ramadan.The pounding of the drums, Boota explains, is necessary to wake believers so they can eat a meal before the day’s fasting must begin.“Everywhere they complain,” Boota...

It's a lesson he should have learned from Plaxico Burress -- but this was worse. A 15-year-old Brooklyn boy shot himself in the penis Sunday after fumbling with a gun that had slid from his waistband, authorities said yesterday. Khamir Grant was then arrested for reckless endangerment and criminal possession of a weapon -- the same charges levied against Burress, who shot himself at a Manhattan nightclub in 2008, law-enforcement sources said.

Brooklyn Democrat Congresswoman Yvette Clarke 1st Townhall Monday 8/31

Note: The following text is a quote: Ten Alleged Mexican Drug Cartel Leaders Among 43 Defendants Indicted in Brooklyn and Chicago as Part of Coordinated Strike Against Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations WASHINGTON – Forty-three defendants in the United States and Mexico, including 10 alleged Mexican drug cartel leaders, have been charged in 12 indictments unsealed yesterday and today in U.S. federal courts in Brooklyn and Chicago, the Department of Justice, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced. The alleged leaders and other high-ranking members of several of Mexico’s most powerful drug cartels are charged...

Like America's first soldiers at the Battle of Brooklyn, Michael Littlejohn is fighting for his right to bear arms. The Revolutionary War buff charges the Bloomberg administration with tyranny for trying to seize his handmade flintlock rifle - a dead ringer for the weapon once used against the redcoats. "This is the last legal gun that you can have without registration in New York," Littlejohn said. "And yet Mayor Bloomberg is driven crazy by my flintlock gun - the one that won the American Revolution." Littlejohn fired the first shot when he hired a Tennessee blacksmith to recreate the vintage...

Levy Izhak Rosenbaum claimed to be in the business of buying and selling real estate, but he really bought and sold human kidneys for transplant, according to a federal complaint filed Thursday. The 58-year-old Brooklyn man was accused of trafficking in human organs, after a sting by an undercover FBI agent who agreed to pay $160,000 for a kidney from a live Israeli donor for her sick New Jersey "uncle." Investigators said Rosenbaum bragged about doing "quite a lot" of transplants over the last 10 years. "I am what you call a matchmaker," the complaint said the man, also known...

It Appears Transients From All Over The Globe Converging On Bohemian Williamsburg -- And Residents Are FuriousPanhandling, Drugs Taking Over Parts Of Hip Brooklyn Neighborhood BROOKLYN, N.Y. (CBS) -- There's a neighborhood in Brooklyn that's known for being trendy and hip, but some residents say the Bohemian reputation is drawing a group of transient people from around the world known as "gutter punks" and it's now turning into a squatter invasion. And as CBS station WCBS-TV found out some are fighting to get them out of the neighborhood. Some call Northside Williamsburg along Bedford Avenue the new Greenwich Village, with...

Creeps who swiped a Statue of Liberty replica from a Brooklyn coffee shop last month have posted a sick Web video showing them sawing off the statue's blindfolded head. The YouTube video, which reportedly is being investigated by the FBI, ends with the slogan "Death to America" appearing on the screen. It evokes the terrorist-produced videos of the decapitations of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and American entrepreneur Nicholas Berg.

The relentlessly sanctimonious Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now may not deserve its carefully cultivated image as a defender of the poor. That's because the group has become the leading cheerleader for a controversial real estate development that is slated to use eminent domain to remove the poor people it claims to represent. ACORN, which has long prided itself on fighting the so-called gentrification of neighborhoods as rising property values force the poor to move, has also taken money from the project's developer and signed a binding agreement forcing it to stand behind the project no matter what. In...

The Brooklyn Cyclones unveil their summer stimulus package next week: free President Obama bobbleheads. The first 2,500 fans at Tuesday's game in Coney Island will receive the collectible giveaway as the team - renamed the "Baracklyn Cyclones" for one night - honors the new commander in chief. The minor league club will also offer universal health care, in the form of free Band-Aids to the first 500 fans. Plumbers named Joe can collect two free tickets to the game against the Hudson Valley Renegades. Fans also will receive discount coupons and American flags when leaving KeySpan Park on Surf Ave....

BENSONHURST — History came alive on Liberty Weekend this past Saturday and Sunday with the annual celebration of early Brooklyn history at the 17th century New Utrecht Reformed Church. This year’s events also celebrated the church’s designation as part of the American Revolution Heritage Trail. The new trail placards are posted just behind an iron fence on 18th Avenue at the entrance to the church at 84th Street. One shows an 1890s photo of the church. The other is a map of Brooklyn at the time of the Revolutionary War showcasing historic sites. With the raising of a 13-star “Betsy...

Rachel's Take I was a little concerned tonight about the Popeye’s story. Not because I don’t think it was a legitimate story. Customers called our newsroom wanting us to do the story about the chain running out of chicken after promoting a big special. They said the Lake Ave. location had long lines of cars. When we went to the Lake Ave. Popeye’s, there were indeed long lines of cars. Some people took it in stride. Other people were downright angry. A few people made jokes. The idea of people up in arms over chicken was pretty funny. I think...

Note: The following text is a quote: Staten Island Man Sentenced To 69 Months In Prison For Providing Material Support And Resources To Hizballah LEV L. DASSIN, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that JAVED IQBAL, a/k/a "John Iqbal," 45, of Staten Island, New York was sentenced today to 69 months in prison for providing material support to Hizballah, a Foreign Terrorist Organization. The sentence was imposed by United States District Judge RICHARD M. BERMAN in Manhattan federal court. According to the criminal Complaint, Count Two of the Superseding Indictment, to which IQBAL...

Obama Fried Chicken' Under Fire Posted 1 week ago, 0 replies A well established Brooklyn restaurant has changed its name to "Obama Fried Chicken," offending many and even catching the attention of New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg. The mayor encouraged the owners to find a "more appropriate" name for the eatery.   Along the blocks of Brooklyn's Brownsville neighborhood, hundreds of storefront restaurants compete for the commerce of the city's pedestrians. When the restaurant Royal Fried Chicken on Rutland Road switched its name to Obama Fried Chicken last week, the local reaction was immediate. According to the Associated Press,...

Located in the heart of Brooklyn, near Prospect Park, the Park Slope Food Coop is at the nexus of the borough's many diverse Jewish populations. From the liberal Jews of Park Slope to the Hasidic Jews of Crown Heights, the coop is one of the few places in Brooklyn where Jews of all denominations converge in a shared mission: to buy natural foods at reasonable prices. But the co-op's unusual Jewish character is being tested by a proposal to ban products bought from Israel, such as the persimmons and red peppers that are currently in the produce aisle. Since the...

  'The mayor is like Noah, he is throwing out a life preserver and I'm going to grab it,' Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of the Brooklyn Diocese said at City Hall Saturday. In attempt to keep cash-starved Catholic schools in Brooklyn and Queens from closing, the city may convert them into charter schools, Mayor Bloomberg announced Saturday. "We are in a flood," Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of the Brooklyn Diocese said at a City Hall press conference. "The mayor is like Noah, he is throwing out a life preserver and I'm going to grab it." The diocese has identified four schools in...

Meet the most honest little kid in New York City: Brooklyn's own Kemoy Gourzang. The fifth-grader was walking through East Flatbush on the way to school Friday morning when he found a brown leather wallet on the sidewalk. It was stuffed. There was at least $500 cash in there. Kemoy knew what to do. He made a beeline for the school principal's office and turned in his newfound treasure. "Five kids told me, 'You should have kept it,'" said Kemoy, who is 10. "I said, 'No, because if it was yours, you would have wanted it back.'" Joy-Ann Morgan, principal...

NEW YORK – In 1973, a young terrorist named Khalid Duhham Al-Jawary entered the United States and quickly began plotting an audacious attack in New York City. He built three powerful bombs — bombs powerful enough to kill, maim and destroy — and put them in rental cars scattered around town, near Israeli targets.

A doctor on her way to work at Brooklyn Hospital was dragged under a Fort Greene stoop and raped after stepping out of the subway, cops said yesterday. The horrific attack happened at the corner of Felix and Fulton streets, only steps from the medical center, shortly after 6 a.m. Thursday. The thug, who covered his face with a scarf and was wearing a hat, grabbed his victim from behind and said he had a gun. He pulled her beneath the stairwell of a brownstone and raped her, cops said, then snatched her bag before escaping. Cops said the woman...

Et, tu baseball?Since Election Day, 2008, there have been streets and schools renamed for our new President, flags redesigned and desecrated with his image, holidays created for him, and a plethora of blabbering television newscasters gushing like bobby soxers over him. Rumor has it we could even see an Executive Order signed by President Obama – with White House counsel Gregory Craig by his side ready to wind him up for the Q&A – renaming a state or two after him (one of those forgettable fly-over states where the corn is).The borough of Brooklyn, here in New York City –...

Every normal civilized person is still shuddering at the horror in Mumbaiat the end of November past. The senseless murders of innocents, the savagery, the barbarism, the hatred exhibited by IslamoFascist terrorists was appalling as the world was glued to the news reports about the events and especially what was taking place at the Chabad Center in Mumbai. The Chabad Lubavitch movement posted this information on their website.Threats Made Against 770Tuesday, there was a huge police presence following threats that were made against the community on a Muslim blog • This morning, NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly made a phone call...

On the cold, clear Sunday morning, Jan. 11, a little more than 160 parishioners and school alumni came to one of the last Masses to be celebrated at St. Malachy’s, East New York. Many gave thanks for its 154-year presence in the neighborhood, by far the oldest, and many said goodbye, knowing that it would soon close and be torn down. Built in 1854, it sits right in the center of Van Siclen Ave., next to a sturdy school building that now houses a Catholic Charities day care and early childhood center. This Mass was a bit different than the...

Sad news from the pages of this morning's New York Times: Behind the red-brick walls encircling the Convent of Mercy in Brooklyn, generations of nuns have taught the illiterate, sheltered the homeless and raised orphans. They are known as the Walking Sisters, ministering in the community as well as inside their convent. Now, after 146 years, it is time for the small band of sisters, most of them retired, to walk away from the convent. The leadership of their order, the Sisters of Mercy, decided to shutter the place and scatter the sisters to other homes and nursing facilities after...

  Jessica Mazzone is recovering from operation by Dr. John Boockvar.   Writhing in pain inside a dilapidated hospital in the Dominican Republic, Brooklyn native Jessica Mazzone didn't think she'd ever walk again.  The 28-year-old flight attendant had fallen three stories from a hotel balcony on the eastern tip of the island, snapping her spine and shattering her left leg.  Local doctors insisted they had to operate on her at the hospital. A journey to the U.S. would almost certainly leave her paralyzed, Mazzone was told. Her family feared the worst until a relative suggested they contact a famed surgeon who...

She went to a Brooklyn emergency room suffering from what she thought was just a kidney stone, but a medical nightmare left her partly blind and a quadruple amputee. Tabitha Mullings claims doctors at Brooklyn Hospital Center failed to diagnose an infection that has literally eaten her alive. RELATED: BOY WITH GIANT LIMB GIVEN $200G FIXUP "Sometimes I can't believe it's me laying here," the mother of three told the Daily News Wednesday from her bed in the very hospital she blames for her ravaged body.  Wiping tears with a bandaged stump, Mullings struggled to explain how in a...

The brutal murders of Brooklyn-raised Marine Sgt. Jan Pawel Pietrzak and his wife had nothing to do with the fact that he was white and she was black, a top cop said Thursday."There's nothing to suggest what happened was a racial crime," Investigator Josh Button of the Riverside County Sheriff's Central Homicide unit said. "I've seen that reported, but it's just people looking at the case from the outside and making up their own minds."RELATED: MURDERED MARINE'S MOM WRITES OBAMA Button addressed the sensitive question of race after four Marines - all of them black - were charged last week...

Rabbi Nachum Rosenberg said he has received death threats from the Jewish community for opening a help line for victims of sexual abuser. He said the cut on his forehead is from being hit on Oct. 17th on Berry street in Williamsburg .   A Brooklyn Rabbi who has been outspoken about child molestation in the city's ultra-Orthodox Jewish community said yesterday he's been targeted with death threats.  Nuchem (Nathan) Rosenberg, 58, complained outside the 90th Precinct in Williamsburg that cops have ignored his pleas for help since the summer. The threats were so frightening, Rosenberg said, that he closed...

Rent control, anyone? A resident of Brooklyn, New York is facing eviction. It’s a fairly common, nondescript occurrence in a city of eight million residents. This particular resident, however - sixty-six year old Ella Taliercio - has been attracting some attention. She has been living in her place of residence - in a neighborhood called Park Slope - for half-a-century. She currently pays $147.08 a month – a rate that has remained steady for two decades or better – in a neighborhood where $2000-a-month rents for two-bedroom apartments are not unusual. (The rent was $33 a month when she first...

Authorities busting a suspected ID thief in Brooklyn stumbled upon a possible terrorist nest full of al Qaeda news clippings, chemical manuals and weapons literature, sources told The Post yesterday. Cops made the disturbing find Thursday evening after a landlord found the photocopied IDs inside the apartment of a former tenant on Classon Avenue in Prospect Heights and dialed 311.

Welcome to your Monday morning blood-boiler. The NY Post reports that a jihadi group in NYC planning on running a series of subway ads is led by a Muslim imam tied to the terror plot to bomb the city’s landmarks. Submission: Allah board!An Islamic group plans to blitz 1,000 subway cars with advertisements this September in a campaign being promoted by a Brooklyn imam whom federal officials have linked to a plot to blow up city landmarks.The group says its mission is to explain the true nature of Islam to non-Muslims who believe the religion is bent on acts of...

MUSLIM SUBWAY ADS LINKED TO TERROR PLOTS - New York Post Jul 21, 2008 ... An Islamic group plans to blitz 1000 subway cars with advertisements this September in a campaign being promoted by a Brooklyn imam whom ...

The Brooklyn district attorney says a minister has been convicted of repeatedly sexually abusing an 11-year-old girl. DA Charles Hynes on Thursday announced the conviction of Dieuvais Surin, a pastor in the Original Church of God of Prophesy. Surin could face up to 56 years in prison when he is sentenced on July 9. The child, who attended Surin's church, was abused in 1998 and 1999. Sometimes, he waited outside her school and then abused her in his van. Surin, who is 72, was convicted on 13 counts of criminal sex act and nine counts of sexual abuse.

I was Brooklyn bound - or so I thought. I took the subway to see a fellow alumna of New York's High School of Music and Art (as today's LaGuardia High School for the Arts was then called). I looked forward to the nostalgic reunion. I hadn't been in NYC for ages, and catching up with an old classmate seemed an indispensable component of walking down memory lane. What's more, Kathy still lives at the same address in the cozy middle-class neighborhood where I sometimes visited her way back then. It was common for the house-proud Irish to keep property...

Brooklyn Conservatives have wasted no time, picking retired banker and former Marine Corps captain Paul Atanasio, 59, as their candidate for Congress. "He is my congressional candidate," said Brooklyn Conservative chairman Jerry Kassar. "I'm going forward with that." Atanasio, an attorney, will replace the late Frank Powers as the Brooklyn Conservative pick in the race. A formal party candidate has yet to be chosen because Brooklyn Conservatives and those on Staten Island disagree over the choice. Brooklyn wanted Powers, who was the GOP designee, while Island Conservatives prefer City Councilman Michael McMahon (D-North Shore). If the two sides can't come...

Supreme Court Denies Eminent Domain Petition From Owners & Tenants Facing Property Seizures for Atlantic Yards 11 Property Owners and Tenants Will Take Their Case to NY State Court To Challenge the Improper Use of Eminent Domain Under New York State Law BROOKLYN, NY--The United States Supreme Court denied the petition to grant a hearing (cert petition) to eleven property owners and tenants who asked the court to hear their appeal on the Second Circuit Court’s dismissal of their challenge to the use of eminent domain for Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards development proposal in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. The petition...

Brooklyn teen Quashon Burton thought bringing a laxative-laced cake to school would be "funny" - but he's not laughing now.   After two teachers were sickened and he was hit with an assault charge, the senior is worried his whole future is collapsing like a half-baked souffle. "I'm pretty scared," Burton told the Daily News Thursday outside his home in Brownsville.  "I didn't mean to have this whole thing blow out of proportion. I thought it would be a senior prank that everyone would think is funny." Burton, 17, and pals Tiara Peoples and Kenny Ramirez got the idea to...

Upswing In Recent Violence Has Communities At Odds Fears Of Riots Similar To 1991 Grip Residents NEW YORK (CBS) ― Police are mobilizing a massive presence in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn in the wake of increased tension between black and Jewish communities. Leaders from both communities have come together recently to preach cooperation among residents of the neighborhood where blacks and Hassidic Jews live side by side. But recent violence has showed that religion and race don't always mix. "I definitely feel [like there's unrest] because I see it everyday. I'm around here a lot and that's what...

Don’t snap a photo of the Masjid At-Taqwa in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn unless you want to be hauled away by a group of angry Muslims in Islamic attire to the basement of the facility where a group of twenty “security guards” in karate suits will interrogate you. This might sound preposterous. But it happened on Saturday, April 24, at 3:00 in the afternoon. Ali Kareem, the head of security for Siraj Wahaj’s mosque, conducted the grilling. A small, muscular man with a wispy black beard that has been dyed red with henna, Kareem demanded to know the reason...

Nearly 17 years after riots tore Crown Heights apart, the recent beating of a black college student by Jewish assailants has exposed rising tensions between blacks and Jews in my neighborhood. Cops and city officials have quietly gone on high alert, worried that another riot could be in the works. The troubles began on April 14, when Andrew Charles, a 20-year-old sophomore at Kingsborough Community College, says he and a friend encountered a pair of young Jewish men while walking down Albany Ave. about 6 p.m. "One was on bike, one was on foot. They were staring at us, staring...

A group of Brooklyn judges is preparing to sue the city to preserve its parking privileges in a park next to Borough Hall, claiming that the removal of 20 or so spaces will endanger the judges’ safety because the nearest garage is two blocks away. The parking lot, at the corner of Joralemon and Adams streets, is within Columbus Park. The judges also park their cars on a public walkway next to the lot, but the Parks Department now says that the judges will lose those spaces this spring. The 20 or so judges who park their vehicles in that...

It sounds like a throwback to the heights of political correctness of the early 1990s, but it's actually happening here in New York City in 2008: The Prospect Park Alliance has renamed its annual, much loved "Family Day" event as "Members Spring Fest." To rub salt in the wounds of family-loving Brooklynites, a "save the date" postcard notes in small print that the event is "formerly known as Family Day." So much for family values in Brooklyn, is the apparent decision of the Prospect Park Alliance board. That group of eminent New Yorkers includes Mayor Bloomberg's daughter Emma; Mr. Bloomberg's...

How the classified military documents from Iraq, which named the coordinates of where the Army suspected weapons of mass destruction to be hidden, ended up in an Arabic translator's apartment on Hoyt Street in Brooklyn, is clear. Not likely to be known anytime soon is what, if anything, the army contractor did with the documents.

Asian-American groups don't like the increased public scrutiny that Hillary Clinton's mysterious Chinese dishwasher donors are getting. To which I say, in words that should be universally understood: Boo-hoo. In the wake of eye-opening investigations by the New York Post and Los Angeles Times of more dubious foreign funny money flowing into Hillary's coffers, ethnic grievance organizations are stepping forward to condemn these stories as examples of "negligent journalism." Yep. The newspapers are guilty of "negligence" because they actually broke news instead of covering it up. Both papers uncovered dishwashers, cooks and other suspect Hillary campaign contributors in New York's...