Dominique Strauss-Kahn and maid who accused him of attempted rape reportedly settle lawsuit

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NEW YORK — Former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn and a hotel maid who accused him of trying to rape her have reached an agreement to settle her lawsuit against him, a person familiar with the case said Thursday.
The person spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private negotiation. The details of the deal were unknown.
Strauss-Kahn lawyer William Taylor wouldn't comment Thursday. Lawyers for the housekeeper didn't immediately respond to phone and email messages.
The person said Bronx Supreme Court Judge Douglas McKeon facilitated the agreement, which hasn't been signed.
The deal would end a legal saga that forced Strauss-Kahn's resignation as head of the IMF and ended his French presidential ambitions last year. Prosecutors dropped related criminal charges.
The housekeeper, Nafissatou Diallo, said Strauss-Kahn attacked her when she arrived to clean his upscale Manhattan hotel suite in May 2011. He said their encounter was consensual and called the lawsuit defamatory.
Strauss-Kahn, 63, initially argued that he had diplomatic immunity from the lawsuit. A judge turned down that claim in May.

Strauss-Kahn said Diallo, who's from Guinea, had sullied his reputation with a "malicious and wanton false accusation." And when prosecutors dropped criminal charges against him, they said they had developed concerns about her credibility. But she said she told the truth about their encounter.
The charges against Strauss-Kahn seemed to open a floodgate of further sex-crime accusations in France, some going back years, against a man who had been seen as a randy charmer. He has acknowledged some "libertine" behavior but denied doing anything criminal or violent.

In August, a separate case against Strauss-Kahn that centered on allegations of rape in a Washington, D.C., hotel was dropped after prosecutors said the accuser, an escort, changed her account to say no rape was involved in the encounter when Strauss-Kahn headed the IMF.
Diallo's lawyers had long emphasized that a grand jury found there was enough evidence to indict Strauss-Kahn, and they said prosecutors cravenly discredited Diallo to extricate themselves from a daunting, high-profile case. The attorneys portrayed the lawsuit as her way of getting justice in another court.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said he dropped the case in August 2011 because he ultimately wasn't sure what transpired between Strauss-Kahn and Diallo.
The Associated Press generally does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Diallo has done.
The New York Times first reported the agreement.

Stevie Wonder won't perform for IDF

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Legendary singer Stevie Wonder, recipient of 25 Grammy Awards and an Academy Award, has canceled his performance at the annual Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) Western Region Gala on Thursday, December 6.
Representatives of the performer cited a recommendation from the United Nations to withdraw his participation given Wonder’s involvement with the organization.   FIDF National Director and CEO, Major-General (Res.) Yitzhak (Jerry) Gershon, said in response: “We regret the fact that Stevie Wonder has decided to cancel his performance at an important community event of the FIDF, an American organization supporting the educational, cultural, and wellbeing needs of Israel’s soldiers, their families, and the families of fallen soldiers.
"FIDF is a non-political organization that provides much-needed humanitarian support regardless of religion, political affiliation, or military activity.”
The gala, chaired by FIDF National Board member and major supporter, Haim Saban, and his wife Cheryl, will be attended by over 1,200 FIDF supporters and dignitaries from the United States and Israel, who will gather to promote FIDF wellbeing and educational programs benefiting Israel’s soldiers.

Panel defers probe of congressman’s links to rabbi

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WASHINGTON  — The House Ethics Committee announced Monday that Rep. Michael Grimm, a former FBI agent, is under investigation for possible campaign finance violations, but said it is deferring the inquiry because of a separate Justice Department probe.

The New York Republican may have violated campaign finance laws by soliciting and accepting prohibited contributions, actions that may have caused false information to be included in campaign finance reports, the committee said.

One focus of the investigation is whether the congressman improperly sought assistance from a foreign national — an Israeli rabbi — by soliciting contributions in exchange for offering to use his official position to assist the person in obtaining a green card, according to a committee statement.

William McGinley, Grimm’s lawyer, said, “Today’s announcement by the House Ethics Committee comes as no surprise. We appreciate the committee’s decision to defer consideration of this matter while we continue to work with the Department of Justice to favorably resolve the false allegations against Congressman Grimm.

“Any fair and objective review of all of the facts in this matter will conclude that Congressman Grimm engaged in no wrongdoing. We are confident that the Department of Justice and the Ethics Committee will reach that result.”

The independent House Office of Congressional Ethics had recommended dismissal of the case because it could not establish with sufficient certainty that a violation occurred after Grimm became a congressman.
However, ethics committee Chairman Jo Bonner, R-Ala., and ranking Democrat Linda Sanchez of California said the panel previously has investigated conduct that occurred during an initial campaign for the House. The Office of Congressional Ethics is run by a board that does not include members of Congress, and can only make recommendations to the ethics committee — which has five members from each party.

“Based on this precedent, notwithstanding OCE’s view . . . the committee unanimously voted to continue to assert jurisdiction over matters relating to a successful campaign for election to the House of Representatives,” the Bonner-Sanchez statement said.

The committee said the Justice Department sought the delay in the House effort — as it often does — when conducting a parallel investigation. Following precedent, the ethics panel voted to place its investigation on hold.

Grimm, whose district covers Brooklyn and Staten Island, was first elected in 2010 with 51 percent of the vote. He was re-elected this year with 53 percent.

It has been previously reported that the FBI was probing money donated to Grimm’s 2010 campaign by followers of an Israeli rabbi. Agents last summer arrested an Israeli businessman with links to the adult entertainment industry who had helped Grimm raise hundreds of thousands of dollars from the rabbi’s followers in New York.

Some donors have said they broke campaign finance law by donating more money than allowed, or by funneling donations from foreigners who aren’t legally allowed to give to US candidates.

Grimm repeatedly has denied knowledge of any improper donations or any other illegal activity.

BDE: Yisrael Monk Body Found

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Searches for renowned cantor Yisrael Monk ended Friday with the discovery of his body near the upper Galilee town of Tzfat.
Monk, of the Makor Baruch neighborhood in Jerusalem, had been missing since Sunday night. Hundreds of volunteers looked for him in Jerusalem and in northern Israel.
His body was found under a bridge in the Tzfat area. Police believe that he slipped and fell while walking along the road.
Last Saturday Monk took part in a Sabbath event in Beit El, in the Binyamin region, where he was awarded for his skills.
His funeral will be held at 2 p.m. and will go from the Shamgar funeral home to the Har Hamenuchot cemetery.   Boruch Dayan Emmes.....

Four Orthodox Jewish men arrested for court pix of sex accuser

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These alleged intimidators must think they’re judge and jury.
Four Orthodox Jewish men were hauled out of a Brooklyn courtroom and arrested yesterday after they allegedly used gangland tactics to intimidate a teen as she bravely testified about her alleged sexual abuse at the hands of a prominent Hasidic leader.

The sex-abuse trial of Nechemya Weberman was thrown into an uproar when the accused child molester’s supporters surreptitiously snapped iPhone pictures of the 17-year-old on the stand.

The four were nabbed after one of the images of the girl was posted to a Twitter account.   Weberman, 54, is accused of sexually abusing the girl over three years — starting when she was 12 — after her parents sent her to him for counseling.

A day earlier, the alleged victim was left trembling after Weberman allegedly glared at her through a glass door to the courthouse conference room where she sat during a break in her testimony.

Yesterday, the judge lashed into the four men — all members of the insular Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism in Williamsburg, of which Weberman is a leader — for outing the young woman as she testified about alleged sex abuse that prosecutors say Weberman made her endure during what were supposed to be counseling sessions.

“You know about the Torah, you know about rabbinical courts. This is a civil court!” Supreme Court Justice John Ingram thundered to the four men after they were caught.

“Your phones will be held for possible criminal prosecution. You may wish to avail yourself of counsel.”

Lemon Juice, 30, Joseph Fried, 23, Yona Weisman, 23, and Abraham Zupnick, 23, were walked in handcuffs from Brooklyn Supreme Court to the Brooklyn DA’s Office for questioning.

They were facing criminal contempt charges that could carry up to a year in prison, a source said.

“I didn’t take a picture,” Weisman protested weakly.

“They’re on Weberman’s side. All they want to do is give her hell,” fumed Sori Schlafrig, 18, a friend of the girl. “I think they should rot in jail.”

After the men were removed, Ingram ordered all spectators to surrender their phones at the courtroom door, adding that photos were also taken of Weberman and a defense attorney.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with you people! Turn off your phones!” Ingram railed.

“Now we have to take all their phones, just like in a gang trial,” said a law-enforcement source. “It’s the same thing you have with the Bloods or the Crips.”

Earlier in the trial, the girl testified that her father lost his business and her nieces were forced to leave their school after she came forward.

Yesterday, white paper was taped over the glass partition through which Weberman glared.

In June, four ultra-Orthodox men also were charged with trying to force the teen to drop the case.       




NY POST

Fu's Garden - Family Style

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1 meal into my TruMeals diet, I cheated and grabbed dinner w/ the fam over at Fu's Garden across the street from our house.  We ordered the combination lo mein, kung pao shrimp, Mongolian beef and sweet and sour pork.  All of it was extremely delicious, although definitely not very authentic.  I think of Fu's Garden as a better attempt at authentic Chinese food (than PF Changs), also catered toward the non-Chinese.  It was nice to have a meal here since we used to venture to the one in Rice Village when it was still open back in the day...but I would still prefer to either go into Chinatown or hit a buffet, which is far more economical.  A good way to cap a long day of AC repair...

TruMeals - Chicken Alfredo

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The TruMeals chicken alfredo was not too bad.  The sauce didn't have much flavor, but I did enjoy the chunks of chicken atop a bed of pasta (I was feeling pretty carb drained at this point).  The veggies were nothing special, but I do admit that these meals gave me a bit of extra energy, until I became starving about 2.5 hours after each of these meals.  The verdict on this bad boy is that I would probably get it again (if I do TruMeals again..).

Sushipop - Egg Rolls & Texas Roll

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 Last Friday, it was another night of rolls courtesy of our Sushipop Groupon.  Leaney and I made the trek out to the west side of town and grubbed out on some Vietnamese style egg rolls and a few sushi rolls over at Sushipop, which is like a fast food sushi joint (hurray for no tipping!).  The Viet egg rolls were very freshly prepared (straight out of the deep fryer), but I felt awkward asking for peanut sauce (I usually eat Viet egg rolls w/ peanut sauce, not the fish sauce). 

After having our rolls, we moved on to a bunch of rolls, with the most expensive one being the Texas roll...a crab roll topped off with fried soft shell crab and topped off with a weird and sweet red sauce. The rolls were all pretty good, and dinner was only $1.40 out of pocket since we had already paid for the Groupon.  The best part is that dessert is free as well!  There's a serve yourself soft serve ice cream machine in the back. 

Bombay Brasserie - Lunch Buffet (Rice Village)

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Last Saturday, a group of us hit up the Bombay Brasserie in Rice Village for a lunch buffet.  For $14, I thought that this lunch buffet was extremely lacking...as in lacking SAMOSAS!  I mean, could it really be THAT expensive to put some fried samosas in the lunch buffet?  As if the chicken tikka masala and vegetarian paneer is so pricy, that you can't afford to do that?  I guess this isn't like a Chinese buffet with high traffic and such, but still, it's pretty depressing not to get any samosas.  Usually, the other foods on the buffet line are pretty good at the Bombay Brasserie...but on this day, I thought the food was a bit "watered down" and lacked flavor.  The consistency of the foods were off, except for the fried veggies and green beans which were delicious.  At least the meal was free, courtesy of one of the clubs @ school.

Frank's Chop House - Chicken Fried Steak

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So after many years of driving by a small green building on Westheimer and Weslayan, Leaney and I finally decided to try Frank's Chop House, after repeatedly hearing how good their chicken fried steak was.  I'm typically not the biggest fan of "gourmet" CFS, but I thought I might as well give this place a try (celebrating finally taking a job offer), especially since it was HALF PRICE WINE NIGHT (all wine bottles are half price on Sundays).  We started out with a BBQ shrimp appetizer, which was good but WAY overpriced at $15 for 5 whole shrimp, served with the heads.  For our main course, Leaney enjoyed the shrimp and grits while I went with the CFS.  To my surprise, this thing was pretty legit.  It was "full-sized" (many nicer places give you a smaller cut), and there wasn't an excessive amount of batter.  The batter was seasoned well with a very distinct taste, and I thought it was a damn good CFS (still not as good as Mason Jar or Luby's).  My only complaint is that they served it atop a bed of veggies.  Who eats veggies w/ their CFS?  More mashed potatoes please....

Dotter of Her Father's Eyes by Mary M. Talbot & Bryan Talbot

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Mary Talbot is a professor and scholar with a long list of academic publications; she's also the daughter of noted Joyce scholar (author of The Books at the Wake, still a standard reference to Finnegans Wake) and general unpleasant person James Atherton. Bryan Talbot is the noted graphic novelist and comics-maker behind the Grandville books, Luther Arkwright, Alice in Sunderland, and others.

With Dotter of Her Father's Eyes, they team up for the first time -- as will inevitably happen in the world of comics, those these don't don't, as far as I can tell, fight each other first -- to tell the intertwined story of young Mary Atherton (mostly before she met Talbot, though his long-haired hippie self does show up in the later parts of the book) and of Joyce's daughter Lucia, frustrated dancer and eventual mental patient. The clear connection is their cold, obsessive fathers -- "my cold mad feary father," to put it, as the Talbots do, in Joyce's own words -- and Mary Talbot makes use of that in this heavily narrated book (presented in a typewriter font, as if it were the manuscript the elder Atherton was banging away at for most of Mary's childhood), switching regularly from past to present, from Joyce to Atherton, and around again.

The Talbots don't deliberately try to aggrandize Mary's troubles with her father, and they can't help but seem trivial compared to what Joyce did to his daughter: stifled her career, and any chance at an independent life, and drove her into an asylum for the rest of her life. James Atherton might have been a cold British mid-20th century father, but he wasn't the self-obsessed monster Joyce was -- or, perhaps, Mary Atherton had opportunities in the '60s in England that weren't available in the same way to Lucia Joyce in the '30s. Either way, Mary Talbot makes Mary Atherton look like the lightweight side of the comparison, which isn't good for the book -- Dotter could have been stronger if it had focused entirely on Lucia, whose life provides more than enough drama for a story twice the length.

Of course, that would be a sadder and drearier Dotter, which clearly wasn't the Talbots' intention -- comparing Mary with Lucia allows Mary's life to be a positive example and a potential escape. Still, it does feel unbalanced: Lucia's is clearly the deeper, more dramatic story, and Mary's life, in this context, is interesting mostly due to the parallels, which isn't entirely fair to the writer telling the story of her own life.

Food Stamps Cuts Could Hit Jews Hard

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For Shabbat dinner last week, Daniel Sayani planned to eat rice and beans. He consulted Jewish law to determine the minimum amounts of bread and grape juice needed to bless the Friday night meal. Since his budget was just $1.50, saying the prayer over wine was out of the question.
Sayani chose to live on the average food stamp benefit of $31.50 for a week, joining activists around the country as part of the Jewish Community Food Stamp Challenge. He felt sick and cranky after cutting costly fresh fruits and vegetables – not to mention Starbucks coffee – out of his diet.
“It’s extremely humbling,” said Sayani, a cantor at Shore Parkway Jewish Center in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn and an intern at the Orthodox Jewish social justice organization Uri L’Tzedek.
Sayani’s experience was temporary, but it’s a daily reality for nearly 47 million Americans who benefit from what is formally called the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP). And with Congress working to pass a new version of the Farm Bill, which expired Sept. 30 and funds SNAP, their reality could very well change.
The Senate has proposed a $4.5 billion cut to SNAP over 10 years, while the House has proposed a $16 billion reduction over the same period. The deeper House cut would restrict states’ ability to expand SNAP eligibility to low-income people who don’t meet a federal asset test. The Congressional Budget Office estimates this change would reduce the number of SNAP recipients by about 1.8 million each year.
House Republicans also have proposed giving block grants to the states for SNAP, a move the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says could reduce enrollment and benefit levels.

Changes to SNAP could significantly impact New York’s Jewish communities. About one in five Jewish households in the New York area is poor, according to a 2011 UJA-Federation study. Poverty is particularly concentrated among the fast-growing Hasidic population.

“If there are cuts, I really think people are going to feel it,” said Huvi Schmerler, a nutrition program coordinator at the non-profit Nachas Health and Family Network.

In Borough Park, Brooklyn, where Nachas is located, more than a third of families with children received SNAP benefits, according to American Community Survey estimates for 2008-2010, and large households are common.

Many of Schmerler’s clients already find it hard to live on the benefits they receive, she said. New Yorkers also deal with higher food costs than much of the country: A New York household of six can receive up to $952 in SNAP benefits per month, while the minimum bill for nutritious food is $1,181, a recent study by the Institute for Children, Poverty and Homelessness found.

Charities like Masbia, a network of kosher soup kitchens, help fill the gap between hunger and food stamps for some people. Masbia, which serves about 150 meals a day to people of any faith at its Borough Park site, does not collect benefit data from its clients, but executive director Alexander Rapaport said he believes most are SNAP recipients.

“Obviously they need more than what they get, because they end up here when the food stamps are used up,” he said.
Nationally, 90% of SNAP benefits are used by the third week of the month, a 2011 USDA study found.
In the current political climate, food stamps have come under fire. Critics say programs like SNAP encourage a culture of dependency on government aid. Some also question lifestyle choices, such as family size, that they say constitute voluntary poverty.
But activists like Sayani see nutrition as a human rights issue.

“It’s a disgrace that in the United States of America that we can’t adequately feed our populace, which includes many people who have contributed to the workforce,” he said. “Should we expect people who have fallen through the cracks to go hungry?”

By Susan Armitage -  Forward

Boy dead after bus crashes into home on Long Island

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A 6-year-old boy was killed and at least 12 people were injured when a Nassau County bus careened off the road and crashed into a house in Hempstead, L.I., Tuesday night, police and witnesses said.
The N70 Nassau Inter-County Express bus was heading west on Fulton Ave. when the driver swerved near Nassau Place to avoid mowing down a pedestrian in the roadway around 9:30 p.m., Hempstead police said.
The bus carrying 20 passengers struck the pedestrian, hopped a curb and slammed into a white two-story house, where two brothers were getting ready for bed, police and witnesses said.
"It came out of nowhere," said Alida Gutierrez, a family friend who was inside the home. "It was loud and horrifying and tore down the front of the house."

"The boys' mom and I were in the kitchen, preparing the kids' lunch just like we always do," Gutierrez continued in between sobs. "We were just talking. Then… I can't describe it."
Rescuers found one of the boys, identified by Gutierrez as David Santana, 6, pinned between the bus and a portion of the house.
He had been walking from his bedroom when the bus smashed through the wall, Gutierrez said.
He died at a local hospital
Edgar Laso, 35, who also lives in the house, said David's brother, Josue, 7, was in bed.
"Some of the glass cut Josue's legs and body. There was blood everywhere," he said. Laso said the family moved from El Salvador nine years ago.
At least nine other people, including the pedestrian, suffered non-life threatening injuries, first responders at the scene said.

No jail time for Elliott Broidy, Israeli investor guilty of giving $1 million in bribes to officials

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Elliott Broidy
ALBANY — The high-powered Israeli investor who pleaded guilty to giving $1 million in bribes to four top state pension fund officials — including disgraced ex-controller Alan Hevesi — got off with a slap on the wrist.
Nearly three years after pleading guilty to his role in a massive state pension fund pay-to-play scandal, Elliott Broidy received no prison time at his sentencing this week.
Broidy in late 2009 admitted to bribing four senior controller officials, including covering $75,000 in expenses for “luxury travel" to Israel and Italy for Hevesi and his relatives, to get $250 million in pension fund business for his firm, Markstone Capital.
In exchange for cooperation that helped land Hevesi behind bars, Broidy this week was able to withdraw his felony plea and instead admit to a misdemeanor.
He had been facing up to four years behind bars. The lighter sentence was recommended by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office at the request of Ellen Biben, who headed the four-year pension fund probe under then AG Andrew Cuomo.
Broidy’s sentencing was long-delayed until he could repay the state the $18 million in fees he received as part of the scam.
Once the money was paid in full, he was given a conditional discharge late Monday afternoon by Manhattan State Supreme Court Judge Bart Stone, meaning he’ll avoid jail time if he stays out of legal trouble.
Broidy received a letter of support from former Gov. George Pataki, who described the investor as a “generous, caring and compassionate person.”
In addition to paying Hevesi’s extra travel costs, Broidy is said to have shelled out $90,000 in living expenses and hospital bills to the girlfriend of a top Hevesi aide and another $44,000 to the girlfriend’s family.
Sources previously told the News the girlfriend was “Mod Squad” actress Peggy Lipton and the official was Hevesi’s chief of staff, Jack Chartier, an unindicted coconspirator in the case.

Since his arrest, Broidy has resigned as the head of Markstone, which separately repaid the state $18 million.

Broidy and Hevesi, who recently won parole from prison, were among the eight people criminally charged in the probe.

In addition, two dozen companies agreed to civil settlements totaling $170 million.
 

By Kenneth Lovett / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Genevieve Sabourin, Alec Baldwin stalker’s shock at sudden bust in court

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Genevieve Sabourin, who claims she spent a night of passion with Alec Baldwin, crossed her fingers in court yesterday for a little good luck — but moments later found herself slapped with handcuffs for allegedly harassing the actor’s wife on Twitter.
“Why am I being arrested? Tell me why!” Sabourin shouted as two of NYPD cops led her from Manhattan Criminal Court. The answer, sources said, is that Sabourin violated an order of protection barring contact with Baldwin and his wife, Hilaria, by repeatedly sending tweets that directed her followers to the couple’s accounts.
 
Sabourin, 40, maintained her innocence as she was booked at the 20th Precinct on the Upper West Side.

“She believed that she’s done nothing wrong and that she’s the victim,” a law-enforcement source said.
She was briefly treated by medics at the station house for an asthma attack — and then brought back to a Manhattan court last night for arraignment on the new charges.
Sabourin’s morning court appearance was supposed to be a routine hearing in her aggravated-harassment case. She held up the crossed fingers during a sidebar talk between the lawyers and judge to discuss her attorney’s request to be replaced. Lawyer Maurice Sercarz got his wish, and was relieved by public defender Rick Pasacreta.
“Miss Sabourin feels it is a good idea to tweet, to appear on television and discuss the case in the media contrary to my advice,” Sercarz told Judge Marc Whiten.
Sabourin was first arrested in April for sending Baldwin e-mails and text messages that proclaimed her love and a desire to have his baby.
She also demanded money from the “30 Rock” star, who has admitted to having dinner with her. Baldwin’s spokesman won’t say whether sex was involved.
Since her first bust, Sabourin has repeatedly tweeted about the case and has asked Baldwin to drop the charges — which she claims have left her broke after spending more than $100,000 in legal and travel expenses.

Some of those tweets led to her arrest yesterday, including a Nov. 8 message that was signed “@hilariabaldwin” — which violates the protection order because Hilaria would have been notified of her mention via her own Twitter account and possibly also her e-mail.

On Nov. 15, Sabourin wrote “@hilariabaldwin” in four tweets, including one saying, “wasted 7months on injustice cause ‘Hilaria’lies. Destroyed my life.”

Sabourin also used Twitter to communicate with Baldwin’s brother, Daniel. In a Nov. 17 tweet, he mentioned Sabourin while quoting Marlon Brando’s line from the movie “Apocalypse Now” about a snail crawling along the edge of a straight razor.
Sabourin wrote Daniel: “Thank you! Please tell your Bother Alec Baldwin, that I’m that snail! Txs, you have a compassionate heart.” She also wrote, “@DanielBaldwin Daniel, can u please follow me so I can transmit u a private message?”

Those tweets may violate the protective order’s prohibitions on using third parties to communicate with Alec Baldwin, a source said.
The same may apply to Sabourin’s request to her followers to re-tweet the question, “Why do you pretend to be Hilaria Baldwin when your real name is Hilary Hayward?”
She told the judge yesterday the court has been unfair to her.
“I’m being treated like a guilty person,” she said. “This has destroyed my life.”
 
 
 
NY POST

Hungary anti-Semitism: MP condemned over 'list of Jews'

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MP Marton Gyongyosi, deputy group leader of Jobbik, spoke during a parliamentary session on Monday.
The government responded by saying it condemned "to the greatest possible degree" Mr Gyongyosi's statement.
Jobbik has 47 seats in the 386-seat parliament - the third-largest group.
Jobbik, an opposition party purporting to protect Hungarian values and interests, also has three MEPs in the European Parliament. The party has been linked to uniformed vigilantes who say they are safeguarding public order in areas with large Roma (Gypsy) communities.
During a debate on the conflict in the Gaza Strip, Mr Gyongyosi said it was time to "assess how many MPs and government members are of Jewish origin and who presents a national security risk to Hungary".
The statement from a government spokesman on Tuesday said the government took "the strictest possible action against every form of racism and anti-Semitic behaviour" and did "everything in order to ensure that malicious voices incompatible with European norms are driven back".
"The government also makes it clear that every citizen will be protected from such insults," the spokesman added.

Hasid leader in sex molest trial 'abused girl who questioned sect's teachings on hosiery,' and for 'reading forbidden magazines'

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The explosive sex abuse trial of prominent Orthodox leader Nechemya Weberman began Monday, and the insular Satmar Hasidic sect both he and the teen accuser belonged to became Exhibit 1.
“It’s pretty much an entirely different world that’s just a couple of minutes away from this courthouse," said Assistant District Attorney Kevin O'Donnell of the Williamsburg-based community.
Weberman, 53, is charged with touching the alleged victim’s genitals and forcing her to perform oral sex on him starting in 2007 when she was 12. He counseled her after the teenager was deemed heretic because she questioned religious teachings and "did not follow the modesty rules," such as the required thickness of hosiery, prosecutors said.
"A woman questioning authority is not allowed," said O'Donnell.
The defense agreed the teen was "a free spirit" who wrote poetry and read forbidden magazines like Cosmopolitan and People.
“Rather than relishing her differences, the community tried to kick them out of her," said defense attorney George Farkas.
But he contended that she found a trusted listener in Weberman, who was a friend and business partner of her parents.
The defense had argued that Weberman conspired with her father to secretly videotape her in bed with a boyfriend while she was still underage — which they took to the DA to file statutory rape charges against the man.
But the judge barred Farkas from disclosing any details of that case to the jury. The lawyer merely said in court that the teen felt betrayed after blaming her counselor for an arrest of “a boy she loved.”
He claimed the first time she brought up the allegations against Weberman was in February 2001, two weeks after the case against the boyfriend was dropped.
She wanted "to bring down the entire community," Farks said in his opening statement. "It was great vengeance and furious anger."



By Oren Yaniv / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Americans in Israel sue United States for funding Palestinian terrorism

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A group of 24 Americans living in Israel, some of them victims of terror, on Tuesday filed a civil action lawsuit against the United States government over what they claim is its funding of Palestinian terrorism in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The plaintiffs were being represented by the Tel Aviv-based Shurat HaDin – Israel Law Center, a legal advocacy group that combats terror organizations.
The lawsuit, which was filed in Washington, DC, contends that the State Department and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ignored Congressional safeguards and transparency requirements attached to US aid to the Palestinian Authority, thus allowing for the funneling of funds to Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and the Palestine Liberation Front. It also accuses the White House of not complying with the regulations and reporting obligations governing presidential waivers which facilitate emergency funding to the Palestinians.
“I just want justice,” said Stuart Hersh, one of the plaintiffs, an elderly Jerusalem resident and victim of a terror attack on Ben Yehuda Street in the same city in 1997, which caused him brain damage and left him partially disabled. “I am against the American government indirectly financing Hamas — the very people who try to kill me,” Hersh said by telephone, adding that he differentiates between “humanitarian aid for the Palestinian people and supporting political agendas.”
Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, the Tel Aviv-based director of Shurat HaDin told The Times of Israel that the State Department and USAID were particularly “lax” in requiring the Palestinians to “utilize bank accounts and other transfer methods that ensure transparency.” US funds have been flowing to the terror groups as a result of this noncompliance, Darshan-Leitner added.
“USAID’s funding of the PA, for example, is partially distributed to Gaza, where Hamas employees are paid, or Fatah, which still has anti-Israel elements in its charter,” Darshan-Leitner said. ”The American people are opposed to terror and do not want to fund it via their taxes.”
Karen Bell Eisenberg, an American-Israeli who lives outside Bethlehem in the West Bank, put it this way: “I don’t begrudge Palestinian aid money. But I’m tired of my tax money [she works for an American company and pays taxes in the US] being used to fund the very people who are trying to kill me.”
The State Department, under the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, is prohibited from providing “material support” to banned terrorist groups. Under that law, the State Department is required to certify that the Palestinian government is committed to peace and coexistence with Israel before distributing funds.
According to the advocacy group’s estimates, since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, the State Department, via USAID, has given over $4 billion to Palestinians, with portions of that funding illegally falling into the hands of terrorists. Over the last four fiscal years, the average aid package has been roughly $600 million per year, compounded by the $200 million or so given annually to the United Nations Refugee Worker’s Administration (UNRWA).
The suit asks the federal court to review the conduct of the State Department and the safeguards on funds being distributed by USAID, and seeks to suspend future American aid to the PA and UNRWA until all the Congressional regulations and reporting requirements are fully complied with.

Dotter of Her Father's Eyes by Mary M. Talbot & Bryan Talbot

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Mary Talbot is a professor and scholar with a long list of academic publications; she's also the daughter of noted Joyce scholar (author of The Books at the Wake, still a standard reference to Finnegans Wake) and general unpleasant person James Atherton. Bryan Talbot is the noted graphic novelist and comics-maker behind the Grandville books, Luther Arkwright, Alice in Sunderland, and others.

With Dotter of Her Father's Eyes, they team up for the first time -- as will inevitably happen in the world of comics, those these don't don't, as far as I can tell, fight each other first -- to tell the intertwined story of young Mary Atherton (mostly before she met Talbot, though his long-haired hippie self does show up in the later parts of the book) and of Joyce's daughter Lucia, frustrated dancer and eventual mental patient. The clear connection is their cold, obsessive fathers -- "my cold mad feary father," to put it, as the Talbots do, in Joyce's own words -- and Mary Talbot makes use of that in this heavily narrated book (presented in a typewriter font, as if it were the manuscript the elder Atherton was banging away at for most of Mary's childhood), switching regularly from past to present, from Joyce to Atherton, and around again.

The Talbots don't deliberately try to aggrandize Mary's troubles with her father, and they can't help but seem trivial compared to what Joyce did to his daughter: stifled her career, and any chance at an independent life, and drove her into an asylum for the rest of her life. James Atherton might have been a cold British mid-20th century father, but he wasn't the self-obsessed monster Joyce was -- or, perhaps, Mary Atherton had opportunities in the '60s in England that weren't available in the same way to Lucia Joyce in the '30s. Either way, Mary Talbot makes Mary Atherton look like the lightweight side of the comparison, which isn't good for the book -- Dotter could have been stronger if it had focused entirely on Lucia, whose life provides more than enough drama for a story twice the length.

Of course, that would be a sadder and drearier Dotter, which clearly wasn't the Talbots' intention -- comparing Mary with Lucia allows Mary's life to be a positive example and a potential escape. Still, it does feel unbalanced: Lucia's is clearly the deeper, more dramatic story, and Mary's life, in this context, is interesting mostly due to the parallels, which isn't entirely fair to the writer telling the story of her own life.

Bushman Lives! by Daniel Pinkwater

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For more than two generations now, weird, quirky kids have been peering out at the world, sure that there must be some hidden reason behind it all. They've looked around for those explanations, to religion and science and superstition and gut instinct, with varied levels of success. But the smartest and luckiest ones are the kids who found the novels of Daniel Pinkwater, and realized that the world is both unknowable and wonderful, that explanations are absurd but still worth chasing, and that the possibilities are even wider and more amazing than they have dreamed.

Pinkwater's books are all odd, all a lovely mixture of sweet and goofball, smart and nutty. They're all deeply pleasurable to sink into, especially if you are -- or were -- one of those weird, quirky kids. But some of them are more than that -- some books, like the sublimely Dada Young Adult Novel, or the two "Snarkout Boys" stories, or the pseudo-autobiographical The Education of Robert Nifkin, see Pinkwater integrate all of his themes and obsessions, from Yiddishkeit to '50s Chicago, from smart outsiders to his own kind of magical realism, and create great, moving novels even more impressive than his usual work. Pinkwater's usual books are a wonder and a lifeline, but his best books are world treasures. And Bushman Lives! is one of the strongest novels of Pinkwater's long career.

Pinkwater's deepest and most resonant novels usually draw from his own life, and Bushman  continues that tradition, following the story of teenager Harold Knishke, a smart, fat kid in the Chicago of the 1950s. But Bushman isn't a tightly focused book; it's as much about Harold's friend, the budding sailor Geets Hildebrand, as it is about Harold himself, and even more so, it's a book about being that kind of kid in that time and place, in a Pinkwaterian world full of wonders and oddities. Bushman also slots into the recent sequence of loosely linked Pinkwater novels, from The Neddiad to The Ygyssey to The Adventures of a Cat-Whiskered Girl, with Molly the Dwerg and her friend the Wolluf showing up here as important secondary characters.

As usual with Pinkwater, the plot isn't the point -- that plot, loosely, is "Harold wanders around Chicago, one hot summer, learning about people and starting to get serious about art." It's probably as close to an autobiographical novel as Pinkwater will ever come, but it's not that close; Harold's adventures could only take place in a Pinkwater book, not in the real world. Everything that happens in Bushman is one turn away from the real world, a click or two more heightened than actual reality, in that brighter, more vibrant world we all know from our imaginations.

And Bushman himself? He's a famous gorilla, who lived in Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo from 1930 to his death in 1951. In our world, his skin is stuffed and on display at the Field Museum. But Harold and Geets, in a Pinkwater world just a few years after his "death," insist that he never died, that he escaped from men and their zoos to a better place. And in the world of a Daniel Pinkwater novel, that's not just the answer we want to be true, it's the way to bet.

Bushman Lives! is a wonderful, kaleidoscopic, lovely, deep, thoughtful, silly novel about growing up and figuring out what to do with your life. It will be immeasurably helpful to uncountable young people, as earlier Pinkwater novels have been. And it's also a window into Pinkwater's world, one of the clearest and best-positioned windows yet, to give the rest of us a view of a world more interesting and purposeful and meaningful than our own. To put it more simply: it's one of the best books of one of our best writers.

Reviewing the Mail: Week of 11/24

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I hope my American readers had a pleasant and calorie-filled long Thanksgiving weekend (or, at worst, didn't have to work too many hours at retail this Black Friday), and that the rest of the world had a week not too much worse than normal. I say that because it's a social nicety, and because -- after doing these posts weekly for several years -- I've run out of on-topic, coherent things to say to begin them, and so have a tendency to just babble randomly for the first paragraph.

With that out of the way: this is a new week, with new books, all sent to me by the wonderful Publicists of Publishing. I haven't read any of these books yet, but I can tell you some things about them anyway, an those things (which are guaranteed to be as true as possible) are:

The Price of War is a handsome paperback repackaging of the back half of Daniel Abraham's acclaimed fantasy series "The Long Price Quartet" -- that would be the novels An Autumn War and The Price of Spring -- as a follow-up to the similar omnibus Shadow and Betrayal, which came out last year. Price was published by Tor earlier this month, and comes with encomiums from Jay Lake, George R.R. Martin, Patrick Rothfuss, Jo Walton, S.M. Stirling, Paul Di Filippo, and (unexpectedly) Junot Diaz. I haven't read the series myself, but who am I to quibble with such a line-up?

To see how much my manga-reading has deteriorated in the past year, I'll point to the next book: Is This a Zombie?, Vol. 3by Sacchi, the latest in the manga series based on the light-novel series by Shinichi Kimura (with art by Kobuichi and Muririn, who therefore designed all of the characters). I have the first two volumes sitting on my shelf to read, so I can't say a whole lot about this one -- I believe it's a shonen harem story (the M-rating tends to agree with me) with one shlubby boy and a bevy of busty supernatural girls (at least one vampire, I'm sure, though the Japanese don't go in for werewolves the way we do in North America) who fall all over him and/or beat him up for perceived bad behavior. This one, like the first two volumes, is from Yen Press.

Joanne Bertin -- author of The Last Dragonlord and Dragon and Phoenix, which I acquired for the SFBC way back in my prior life in the last century -- is back with a new novel in that series after more than ten years of silence. Bard's Oath is a hardcover from Tor on November 27th, continuing the high-fantasy story of shape-shifters and dragons than I vaguely remember liking at the time. (Hey, it's been thirteen years! I've read a lot of other things since then. If it weren't for the flood last year, I'd be able to pull out my old reports and see what I said about the old books at the time, but those were yet more things I lost last year.) Anyway, if you remember the old books, or just want a big fantasy in the McCaffrey mode, check this out.

Hannu Rajaniemi, the latest wide-screen-SF wunderkind and author of The Quantum Thief (see my review) is back with the second novel in the trilogy -- did you really think any mildly successful SFF book would avoid becoming at least a trilogy? you are so silly! -- The Fractal Prince, a Tor hardcover also coming on the 27th. Quantum Thief was big, bold, and almost too zippy for words -- so much so that less-experienced SF readers have reported having trouble comprehending it -- so I'm happy to see Rajaniemi back for another go, and not quite as happy to keep trying to teach my fingers how to spell his name correctly.

And last for this week is The Bones of the Old Ones by Howard Andrew Jones (also known as the managing editor of Black Gate), the sequel to The Desert of Souls and thus the second of "The Chronicles of Sword and Sand," a pseudo-Arabian fantasy series. I understand that this is an old-fashioned sword-and-sorcery style series, meaning that each novel and story stands alone (and, I dearly hope, that Jones's heroes at no time attempt to save the world), so a reader could easily begin with this volume, in which scholar Dabir and swordsman Captain Asim head out into the worst winter in history to battle an evil cabal and save a beautiful noblewoman. Bones is a hardcover from St. Martin's Press, coming December 11.