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WASHINGTON - President Obama's Oval Office has had a face-lift with a New York accent. The office has undergone a top-to-bottom makeover, highlighted by handmade striped wallpaper from Amagansett in the Hamptons. The President's brown leather desk chair, coffee table made of American walnut and mica, custom-made couches and two new table lamps with blue ceramic bases were all crafted by New York manufacturers. The White House treated the identities of the Empire State companies who produced the furnishings like state secrets, declining to further identify them. The price tag for the redo also was not disclosed, but interior design...

Have you noticed bagel shops tacking on a few more cents to your beloved pumpernickel and cream cheese? Blame Albany. Bagels – however you slice them – most likely haven't been subject to tax at your favorite neighborhood shop. But, desperate for cash, Albany began enforcing a little known clause in its sales tax code that calls for a tax on sliced bagels or whole bagels consumed at the place of purchase, according to The Wall Street Journal.

1,000 olim (new immigrants) from France, Britain, South Africa, and various countries in South America will arrive in Israel this week to build their lives in the Jewish state. The new arrivals will come in on 23 flights. Of the 1,000 arrivals, 550 will come from France, 170 from various countries in South America, 100 from Britain, and 60 from South Africa. Jewish Agency head Natan Sharansky said, “At a time when Israel is dealing with de-legitimization around the world, it is important to see that our brothers throughout the Jewish world not only support us, but even choose to...

New Black Panther Party Chairman Malik Shabazz told a Russian TV reporter that Fox News should be ashamed of themselves and that the charges of voter intimidation leveled against them by the Justice Department had no merit. Shabazz also said the Fox News audience was made up of mostly white right wingers, some independents, confederates and racist organizations and that their base are mostly dissatisfied whites who want to take back America. If anything one could accuse Shabazz of fomenting violence as he talked about a potential confrontation with the Tea Party Movement in September saying that “We’re ready to...

The top Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee plans to release a report Thursday that he alleged would blow holes in White House claims about its command of the oil spill response and the amount of assets deployed. Rep. Darrell Issa’s (R-Calif.) report on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is titled “How the White House Public Relations Campaign on the Oil Spill is Harming the Actual Clean-up.” “The evidence on the ground suggests that the White House has been more focused on the public relations of this crisis than with providing local officials the resources they...

New Black Panthers meet, demonstrate Crowds chanted and marched, but the crowd was well behaved as the New Black Panthers demonstrated at Wise Street Park Monday night. Between 200 and 300 residents, mostly women and children from the Wise Street area, gathered at the town meeting along with Newberry police, Sheriff’s deputies, S.C. Highway Patrol troopers and S.C. Law Enforcement Division agents. Sheriff Lee Foster says law enforcement did not know about the planned meeting until they were forwarded an e-mail by The Newberry Observer Monday morning. “Anytime someone is dragged, it is a hate crime and the Sheriff needs...

Los Angeles - Dozens of people who were blinded or otherwise suffered severe eye damage when they were splashed with caustic chemicals had their sight restored with transplants of their own stem cells--a stunning success for the burgeoning cell-therapy field, Italian researchers reported Wednesday. The treatment worked completely in 82 of 107 eyes and partially in 14 others, with benefits lasting up to a decade so far. One man whose eyes were severely damaged more than 60 years ago now has near-normal vision.

There was a particularly disturbing segment during Howard Kurtz’ Reliable Sources program on CNN this weekend. Host Howard Kurtz was interviewing David Remnick, Editor-in-Chief of the New Yorker, who was “pimping” his new book “The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama.” Kurtz asked Remnick a question about the love affair between the mainstream press and Obama during the campaign to which he answered the media was in love with the narrative of having an African-American win the presidency and that was a legitimate approach for a journalist to have.