A Jewish deli was ransacked by vandals who spray-painted ugly
messages on the walls. It happened right during the High Holy days.
They papered over the windows Thursday to hide the damage inside Lansky’s Deli on Columbus Avenue.
“It was devastating. We put our heart into this restaurant,” owner David Ruggerio told CBS 2′s Tony Aiello.
Ruggerio found the mess Wednesday morning. Computers, televisions and
light fixtures were all smashed, and leather seats were slashed and a
trophy case was trashed.
Cell phone video shows broken dishes and the espresso machine thrown
to the ground. Chunks of the ceiling were torn down and littered the
floor.
“The vandalism was one thing, defamation was different. It was very,
very hideous things written on the wall. There was urination all over
the restaurant,” Ruggerio said....
The owner said the bill to clean up, fix equipment and repair damage will top $100,000.
From the Asssociated Press: --- PAKISTAN At least 19 people were killed and nearly 200 injured as protests by tens of thousands turned violent in the cities of Peshawar, Lahore, Karachi and the capital of Islamabad after the government encouraged peaceful demonstrations and declared a national holiday - "Day of Love for the Prophet." --- AFGHANISTAN About 900 people peacefully protested the film in the capital, Kabul, chanting, "Death to America" and burning an effigy of President Barack Obama and a U.S. flag. A few hundred demonstrators also protested inside a mosque in the eastern city of Ghazni. --- IRAN President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad lashed out at the West over the film. Speaking at a military parade in Tehran, he said: "In return for (allowing) the ugliest insults to the divine messenger, they - the West - raise the slogan of respect for freedom of speech." He called this explanation "clearly a deception." --- INDONESIA The United States closed its diplomatic missions across Indonesia due to continuing demonstrations over the film. Small and mostly orderly protests were held outside the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, in the cities of Surabaya and Medan, and in other smaller towns. No violence was reported. --- IRAQ About 3,000 people, mostly followers of Iranian-backed Shiite Muslim groups, protested the film and caricatures of the prophet in the southern city of Basra. Demonstrators carried Iraqi flags and posters of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, chanting, "Death to America" and "No to America." They burned Israeli and American flags. --- SRI LANKA About 2,000 Muslims burned effigies of Obama and American flags at a protest after Friday prayers in the capital, Colombo, demanding that the United States ban the film. --- BANGLADESH More than 2,000 people marched through the streets of the capital, Dhaka, to protest the film. They burned a makeshift coffin draped in an American flag, and an effigy of Obama. --- LEBANON Tens of thousands of supporters of the Shiite Hezbollah movement held a raucous protest in the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek. Later, a few thousand supporters of a hard-line Sunni cleric gathered in the capital, Beirut. Both demonstrations directed outrage at the U.S. and Israel over what they believed was a grave insult to Muhammad. --- KASHMIR Police enforced a daylong curfew in parts of Indian-controlled Kashmir's main city, Srinagar, and chased away protesters of the anti-Islam film. Authorities also temporarily blocked cellphone and Internet services to prevent viewing the film clips. --- GERMANY Several hundred people gathered in the city of Freiburg in southwestern Germany to protest the film, while a few hundred demonstrated in the western city of Muenster. The Interior Ministry postponed a poster campaign aimed at countering radical Islam among young people due to tensions caused by the online video insulting Islam. Germany is home to an estimated 4 million Muslims. --- NORWAY About 70 people gathered outside the U.S. Embassy in the capital Oslo to protest the film, shouting, "Obama, Obama, we're all Osama!"
Thousands of soldiers were summoned from their homes during the night after the Jewish new year holiday and flown to the territory, which Israel captured from Syria during the Six-Day War of 1967.
The unannounced manoeuvres come a week before Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, addresses the United Nations General Assembly in New York where he is expected to give warning that time is running out to prevent Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon.
Mr Netanyahu has engaged in increasingly bellicose rhetoric towards Iran in the past few weeks, raising fears that Israel could strike against its nuclear facilities unless the United States explicitly threatens military action of its own.
With many in the United States and Israel believing that military action cannot be delayed beyond next year, Israeli generals are visibly escalating efforts to ready the armed forces for conflict.
But speculation of an Israel attack over the next few weeks has faded in recent days and a military officials were quick to insist that the exercise was "part of a routine inspection" that "does not indicate any changes" in the country's alert levels.
The U.S. consulate in the country's third-largest city of Medan was shut for a second day as demonstrations continue. About 50 students from an Islamic university gathered in Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi province. They burned tires and forced a McDonald's restaurant to close. The door was later covered with a sign saying, "This must be closed as a symbol of our protest of the `Innocence of Muslims' made in the U.S.," referring to the title of the film.
Prime minister Nouri al-Maliki condemned the U.S.-produced film and the French weekly's cartoons as offensive to Muslims and called on Shiites and Sunnis to unite in defense of Islamic values. Speaking in the Shiite holy city of Najaf in southern Iraq, al-Maliki said "all Muslims should shoulder responsibility of defending Islam."
Hundreds of students and clerics gathered outside the French embassy in Tehran to protest the publication of the caricatures. Protesters chanted "Death to France" and "Down with the U.S." and burned the flags of the United States and Israel. The demonstration ended after two hours.
The US embassy in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, has become the latest target of protesters angry at an anti-Islam video that triggered protests in the Arab and Muslim world.
The total number of protesters reached around 5,000 later on Thursday with the arrival of protesters carrying the flags of hardline Islamist groups. At least 50 people were injured as police fired tear gas and live rounds towards the crowds.
Hundreds of students from various colleges and educational institutions in Islamabad had begun clashing with police as security forces tried to block them from reaching the embassy compoud, which also includes the British and French diplomatic missions.
The students responded by pelting the police with stones, and the police retaliated by firing tear gas shells.
Politico reports, "Obama pressed on failures at Univision forum":
President Barack Obama on Thursday faced some of the toughest questioning of his reelection campaign to date, pressed repeatedly on his failure to achieve comprehensive immigration reform and other unmet promises from his 2008 run.
The Univision presidential forum at the University of Miami here kicked off with grilling on another topic which brought mounting criticism from Republicans Thursday: The government’s decision to label as a terrorist attack the violence at the consulate in Benghazi which killed American Christopher Stevens.
A small package bomb exploded inside a kosher grocery store in a Paris suburb Wednesday, wounding at least one person, according to an agency that tracks anti-Semitic attacks in France.
The reason for the attack was unclear, but it rattled nerves amid global tensions surrounding a U.S.-produced film insulting to Islam. The French grocery store attack came a few hours after a satirical French weekly published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, prompting anger from French Muslim groups.
Jeffrey Toobin's latest book portrays Supreme Court Justice Antonin
Scalia as increasingly cranky and partisan — and infuriated with Chief
Justice John Roberts over the court's recent decisions on healthcare and
immigration.
Toobin, who writes for The New Yorker and
also covers the court for CNN, credits Scalia for a sea change in how
both sides of the political spectrum think about the law. But he says
the justice's bombast has become off-putting to more even-tempered
colleagues....
The
book confirms previous reports that Roberts changed his vote in the
landmark case over President Obama's healthcare law after initially
siding with the conservative justices. But Toobin reports — as others
have implied — that what pushed Roberts away was the conservative
justices' insistence on striking down the entire health law.
"Scalia's view of the justices as gladiators against the president unnerved Roberts," Toobin writes.
The
book describes Scalia as "furious" and "enraged" at Roberts —
contradicting Scalia's public statements brushing aside any tension.
"One [perspective] is the one which I’ve had for some time, which is that the Palestinians have no interest whatsoever in establishing peace, and that the pathway to peace is almost unthinkable to accomplish." - Mitt Romney, May 17, 2012
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said the Federal Reserve’s latest
policy shift amounts to a “bailout” of the economy under President
Obama.
Speaking at a campaign event in Oldsmar, Fla., Mitt Romney’s vice
presidential candidate lambasted the Fed’s recent decision to try and do
more to boost the economy as “sugar high economics.”
“We don’t need synthetic money creation. We need economic growth. We
want wealth creation,” he said. “We don’t want to print money. We want
opportunity and growth.”
Just after midnight Saturday morning, authorities descended on the Cerritos home of the man believed to be the filmmaker behind the anti-Muslim movie that has sparked protests and rioting in the Muslim world.
Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies escorted a man believed to be Nakoula Basseley Nakoula to an awaiting car. The man declined to answer questions on his way out and wore a hat and a scarf over his face. He kept his hands in the pockets of a winter coat.
Sheriff's officials could not be reached by The Times, but department spokesman Steve Whitmore told KNBC News that deputies assisting the federal probation department took Nakoula to the sheriff's substation in Cerritos for interviewing.
Three days before the deadly assault on the United States consulate in Libya, a local security official says he met with American diplomats in the city and warned them about deteriorating security.
The head of Libya's new national congress has blamed al Qaeda-linked militants for planning Tuesday's deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, raising further questions about the motive behind the mayhem that killed four Americans.
U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal on Friday that they are investigating indications that a local group of Libyan militants, Ansar al Sharia, held a series of conversations Tuesday with al Qaeda extremists about the assault that day on the consulate, in the first sign of possible coordination in the attack between local fighters and the global terrorist movement.