Yeshiva World News

A judge in a tentative ruling denied an $18 million claim that the president of Chabad of California Inc. maintained was verbally promised him by a philanthropist before the man’s death.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mary Ann Murphy stated in a 69-page proposed statement of decision issued Tuesday that she found insufficient evidence after a non-jury trial that Roland Arnall made the pledge to Rabbi Boruch Shlomo Cunin for the construction of a Chabad educational center before dying in March 2008 at the age of 68. Cunin maintained the pledge later became the obligation of Arnall’s widow, Dawn Arnall.

“It is not for the court to decide whether Mr. Arnall actually promised $18 million to Chabad,” Murphy wrote. “It is for the court to determine, based on the testimony of the witnesses and the exhibits admitted in evidence, whether Chabad proved by a preponderance of evidence that Mr. Anrall promised Chabad $18 million.”

Chabad attorney Marshall Grossman told Murphy that Chabad spent more than $800,000 in planning costs for the project in reliance upon Roland Arnall’s pledge.

He also said the organization’s leaders would have sold the Pico Boulevard property on which the center was to be built if they knew the money was not forthcoming. The real estate market since went sour, the attorney said.

According to Dawn Arnall, her husband never mentioned making such a pledge among the many they made as a couple to both Jewish and non-Jewish organizations.

READ MORE: CONTRA COSTA TIMES

Moammar Gadhafi’s regime controls $32 billion in liquid assets around the world, including hundreds of millions of dollars invested in US banks, according to a confidential cable written by the U.S. Ambassador to Libya last year. The leaked diplomatic message was distributed through WikiLeaks.

The same cable reported that Libya had been approached by two men accused of running huge Ponzi schemes, Bernard Madoff and Allen Stanford, but had resisted offers from them to invest Libyan funds with them. Madoff is serving time in a U.S. prison; Stanford has not been convicted of a crime and is awaiting trial.

The cable is entitled “Technology of Tourism: Head of Libyan Investment Authority Discusses Opportunities for US Business in Libya,” and was written Jan. 28, 2010, by US ambassador Gene A. Cretz, after a meeting with Mohamed Layas, the head of the LIA, Libya’s sovereign wealth fund. Sovereign wealth funds are the vehicles used by Middle East and other governments to invest oil wealth. The LIA, according to U.S. intelligence, is controlled by Gadhafi’s regime.

(Source: NBC)

President Obama has determined that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional, and that the Department of Justice should no longer defend the measure, which severely limits the potential of states to honor or carry out same-gender marriages, the administration announced Wednesday.

“The President believes that DOMA is unconstitutional. They are no longer going to be defending the cases in the 1st and 2nd circuits,” a person briefed on the decision said, according to the National Journal.

Here’s the press release from the Department of Justice to Speaker Boehner.

(Source: Huffington Post)

The number of stop and frisks of potential suspects conducted by the New York City Police Department topped the 600,000 mark for the first time last year.

That is according to department statistics made public Tuesday.

Civil rights advocates say the practice unfairly targets blacks and other minorities, and that many stops are made without proper cause.

Police say it is an essential crime-fighting tool. They also say the number is actually smaller compared to the 23 million contacts officers have with the public.

“The situations drive the use of that tactic. It depends on what conditions police officers find in the street,” said Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.

The NYPD says that about 10 percent of the stops resulted in arrests and that last year those stops helped police officers take 8,000 weapons off the streets.

The previous high for stop and frisks was set in 2009 with more than 575,000. However, the department points out that statistics were not even kept until the 1990s — when the crime rate was much higher — meaning the number of stops might have been higher as well.

(Source: NY1)

The family of the top lawyer at the Securities and Exchange Commission invested with Bernie Madoff and earned more than $1.5 million in ill-gained profits, according to trustee Irving Picard, who has named the lawyer, David M. Becker, as a defendant in a clawback lawsuit, a Daily News investigation has found.

The apparent conflict of interest raises significant questions about the watchdog commission’s failure to stop Madoff and his $65 billion Ponzi scheme, despite repeated red flags and investigations into his operations.

Becker, 63, who is leaving his post as general counsel and senior policy director of the SEC in five days to return to the private sector, has never publicly disclosed his family’s ties to Madoff. He and his two brothers, who are also defendants in the suit, were named executors of their mother’s estate, which included a Madoff account, after her death in 2004. They liquidated the account in 2005, withdrawing $2,042,845, and are being sued as co-executors of the estate and individually.

David Becker was the SEC’s general counsel from 2000-2002 and again from 2009 until this month. He joined the agency in 1998 as deputy general counsel.

A spokesman for the SEC, John Nester, confirmed Tuesday that Becker received the complaint several days ago.

“He had no involvement with his parents’ financial affairs, and no recollection of his parents’ account with Madoff prior to his mother’s death and subsequent liquidation of the account,” Nester said on behalf of Becker.

The lawsuit, filed on Nov. 12 of last year against Becker and William P. and Daniel I. Becker, is one of up to 200 that Picard has filed in an effort to recover money from people who gained from Madoff’s scheme and redistribute it among the far greater number of those who lost their savings.

A spokesperson for Picard’s law firm, Baker & Hostetler LLP, declined to comment on the Becker lawsuit, citing the ongoing litigation.

For Mets owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, the stunning assertion that an SEC heavyweight profited from Madoff’s chicanery and is being sued by Picard could bolster their own claims that they were unaware of Madoff’s scheme, financial and legal experts said.

The crux of the 373-page complaint Picard recently filed against the Mets owners claims they “knew or should’ve known” about Madoff. No such claim is made in the straightforward, 24-page complaint against David Becker and his brothers.

Helen Davis Chaitman is a nationally renowned litigator who represents a number of Madoff victims and is a Madoff victim herself, and has been sharply critical of Picard’s methods in trying to recover funds.

READ MORE: NY DAILY NEWS

The crew chief aboard an NYPD chopper that rescued two West Point cadets from a mountain ledge described for the first time yesterday the potential catastrophe he faced while painstakingly maneuvering the rope.

“My concern was injuring the [NYPD] paramedic [Christopher Condon, who was being lowered] by smashing him on the side of the rock — or possibly when I attempted to put him on the ledge, I could’ve swept the two cadets off,” said Detective Fernando Almeida.

Almeida, Condon and the other crewmembers, Steven Browning, Michael Sileo and William Stevens, were honored yesterday by Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.

“I had them dangling 90 feet below the aircraft with the winds the way they were [and] the helicopter was being rocked up and down and sideways, and I had the ledge, which was the size of [a] desk,” Almeida said.

The astonishing rescue mission took only 27 minutes, said pilot Browning.

But it was hell on the crew’s nerves the entire time.

“The turbulence was unbelievable . . . crashing down on a helicopter like a giant wave,” said Kelly, referring to the 50-mph winds whipping Storm King Mountain by the time the NYPD chopper reached the cadets there at around 2:10 a.m. Sunday.

(Source: NY Post)

Authorities in Florida arrested a 16-year-old boy and intend to charge him with first degree murder in the shooting death of St. Petersburg police Officer David Crawford.

The killing was the third death of a law enforcement officer in the city in less than a month.

The boy, who was in custody Tuesday night, is a student in the Pinellas County School system. He has prior arrests, mostly for property crimes, said St. Petersburg Police Chief Chuck Harmon.

Prosecutors have not announced if the suspect will be tried as an adult.

Police are still trying to recover the gun that the suspect allegedly used.

“His parents, I will note, have been cooperative throughout this investigation,” Harmon said.

Officials said three tips led them to the suspect.

The teen offered several different accounts of events but after several rounds of interrogation, he admitted information that conformed with evidence that police had already gathered, Harmon said.

“It is quite apparent he was remorseful in his action. He cried,” he said.

Police do not think anyone else was involved in the shooting.

“You don’t expect this type of confrontation between a 16-year-old and a police officer like this,” Harmon said. “I feel for the juvenile’s family but at the same time he’s got to be accountable for his actions.”

The arrest comes after hundreds of police officers scoured neighborhoods in St. Petersburg for the killer of Crawford, a veteran police officer.

The shooting occurred Monday night when Crawford had been summoned to the scene to investigate a suspicious person who was reportedly toting a brick in a resident’s backyard, according to police.

A gunfight erupted moments after Crawford stepped out of his cruiser. When it was over Crawford, 46, had been fatally shot multiple times at close range.

Crawford was not wearing a bulletproof vest at the time, police said.

“He was an honorable man,” Harmon said of Crawford, who had a wife and a 24-year-old daughter.

His shooting marked the third death of a law enforcement officer in St. Petersburg this year.

Two St. Petersburg officers died and a U.S. marshal was wounded January 24 in a gunfight with a suspect who was hiding in an attic.

(Source: CNN)

9:09PM EST: Rahm Emanuel is out to an early lead in the Chicago mayor’s race tonight. With 84 percent of precincts counted, Emanuel had 54.9 percent to 24.3 percent for Gery Chico.

Emanuel is trying to score more than 50 percent to avoid a runoff election on April 5.

 Major contenders Rahm Emanuel, Gery Chico, Carol Moseley Braun and Miguel del Valle fanned out across the city on Election Day looking for last-minute votes.

Emanuel is at a Near West Side union hall, Chico at a downtown hotel, Braun at a South Side ballroom and del Valle at a microbrewery.

Despite a tremendous amount of attention on the mayor’s race and a slew of hotly-contested aldermanic races, election officials say turnout could be as low as 40 percent. That’s far less than the 50 percent turnout officials were hoping for on Monday.

If no candidate scores a majority tonight, the top two finishers will square off for six more weeks of campaigning. A runoff election will be held to determine Chicago’s next mayor.

Mayor Richard Daley, who is out of town today, isn’t on the ballot for the first time since 1989. He’ll leave office on May 16 when his successor is sworn in.

(Source: Chicago Tribune)

The following is a WCBSTV report:

There was an ugly war of words Tuesday between Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the fire unions over the impact budget cuts had on fighting a deadly fire in Brooklyn.

CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer has obtained dispatch tapes that reveal the difficulty firefighters had battling the inferno.

Bloomberg weighed in for the first time about Saturday’s deadly Flatbush apartment that raged out of control, the fire unions have said, because of his budget cuts.

“It has nothing to do with the number of people on an engine, which is what they’re talking about,” Bloomberg said, adding when told that firefighters had to run eight lengths of hose to the fifth floor, “Miss, I’m sure they’re going to say that. That’s part of what they have to say when were in the middle of trying to find ways to do more with less.”

Dispatch tapes and records obtained by Kramer show that there was a problem getting water on the fire and that after battling the fire for an hour and 23 minutes firefighters knew that there was little hope of saving the building.

“All members have been removed from the roof of the building. All interior members have been moved to the floor below the fire … The fire is still doubtful,” an official is heard saying on the tape.

Union officials said that’s FDNY lingo for “We’ve given up. The building can’t be saved.” They said that staff cuts ordered by Mayor Bloomberg three weeks ago delayed them from getting water on the fire for at least five critical minutes.

“They could have contained this fire, kept it to a one-alarm fire. Instead, the windows failed. The fire blew them down the stairs and the woman died on the top floor,” said James Slevin, the vice president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association.

The fire grew to five alarms, left one person dead, 60 firefighters injured and 100 residents homeless. Union officials said it took them longer to run 450 feet of hose to the fire because Bloomberg removed a fifth man from the engine companies.

Was the fifth man critical?

“We know that if they would have got up there quicker they could have made an attack on the fire,” Uniformed Fire Officers Association Vice President and FDNY Battalion Chief George Belnavis said.

The unions are furious with the mayor.

“All I have to say is what is more important, okay, saving lives or saving money?” UFOA delegate Lt. James McGowan said.

While this fire may be out, the fight between the mayor and the fire unions looks like it will be blazing for weeks and months to come.

City Council Fire Committee Chairwoman Elizabeth Crowley said the mayor’s budget cuts are “forcing the FDNY to roll the dice on public safety.”

(Source: WCBSTV)

With state revenues beginning to thaw, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey nonetheless proposed a tightfisted $29.4 billion budget on Tuesday, calling for sharp cuts in benefits for public-sector workers that would pay for a modest increase in property-tax relief and even more in tax breaks for businesses and the wealthy.

The governor appeared to be framing his priorities to force lawmakers to think long and hard, in an election year, about protecting state and local government workers at the expense of taxpayers and job creation.

With the state’s education system still reeling from Mr. Christie’s cuts a year ago, when dozens of districts lost all their state aid, the governor offered to increase financing to every school district in New Jersey by an amount equal to 1 percent of its current-year budget.

Mr. Christie, a Republican, is also hoping to save hundreds of millions in Medicaid spending by requiring all patients, whether nursing home residents or disabled adults, to enter managed-care programs that have until now been mainly aimed at families on welfare.

Last year, Mr. Christie closed a budget deficit he pegged at $10.7 billion. This year, with nonpartisan estimates putting the deficit at about $10.5 billion, he dispensed with that calculation, which typically compares expected revenues with the total cost of all spending programs if they were continued at current levels. Instead, his aides used the governor’s first budget, and the “hard choices” he said he had to make last year, as the basis for comparison.

“This budget represents the new normal,” Mr. Christie’s chief of staff, Richard H. Bagger, said in a briefing for reporters early Tuesday afternoon.

Spending for transportation, higher education and charity care at hospitals would grow under Mr. Christie’s budget plan. Environmental protection, nursing homes and urban enterprise zones would see cuts. State aid to municipalities would hold steady at current levels.

Mr. Christie was scheduled to give his budget address here on Tuesday afternoon.

The budget basically holds spending flat at the current year’s level. Mr. Christie is offering to prepay a scheduled pension contribution of $506 million before the new fiscal year takes effect, if the Legislature enacts the changes he is seeking in the retirement system. Such an early payment, conveniently, would also allow the governor to boast that he has cut spending for a second year in a row. But if the pension payment is not made ahead of schedule, then spending would actually grow slightly, officials confirmed.

After a first year in which Mr. Christie got much of what he wanted from the Democratic-controlled Legislature — to the consternation of traditional Democratic allies in the public-sector unions — officials in Trenton are bracing for a far more contentious and partisan budget season.

Already, Democrats have held up scores of Mr. Christie’s nominations, and he has vetoed scores of bills, including a stack of 14 on Friday that Democrats said would cut taxes for small businesses and help create jobs at a time when the state is in dire need of them. And a frequent ally of the governor, Stephen M. Sweeney, the State Senate president, has taken to speculating that Mr. Christie is more focused on the idea of running for national office than on running the state.

Last year, Democrats departed from custom and refrained from offering their own spending plan, leaving Mr. Christie to enact his agenda essentially unchanged, by wrangling the support of a small number of Democratic lawmakers.

But all 120 members of the State Assembly and Senate are up for election this November, some of Mr. Christie’s swing votes are facing potential primaries, and Democrats are struggling to show some spine without being tagged as obstructionist.

The Legislature must enact a budget by July 1, the start of the state’s fiscal year, or risk a government shutdown. Further complicating matters is that 14 public-sector union contracts are up this year. And a lawsuit challenging Mr. Christie’s cuts to education is making its way through the courts and could result in an order to increase state financing.

(Source: NY Times)