With the Republican campaign for the White House taking shape, hundreds of Tea Party activists kicked off a national bus tour on Saturday, aiming to rally their base and new recruits to the conservative political cause.

As supporters waved American flags and carried signs that read, “I’ll keep my money, guns and freedom, you keep the change,” organizers said the “Reclaiming America” bus tour was about restoring good governance. Read more

Plans to build a mosque near the site of the September 11 attacks have touched off a firestorm among New Yorkers nearly a decade after Muslim extremists linked to al Qaeda slammed planes into the World Trade Center.

The Cordoba House mosque, part of a Muslim center to be built two blocks from what is now known as Ground Zero proposed as a conciliatory move, was overwhelmingly approved by a local community board in May.

But the plans are being resisted by some New Yorkers who say a mosque would be inappropriate so close to the place where nearly 3,000 people were killed. Read more.

Many of the companies getting attention from venture capitalists and on tech blogs are social media sites, which rely on networks of friends to do everything from picking out gifts to sharing photos.

“New York is a hotbed of innovative startups and always has been,” said Nate Westheimer, co-founder of AnyClip, a company that aggregates clips of movies. Read the full story.

NEW YORK  – Lara Lewis used to be a stressed-out single mother whose teaching job left her little time for her young daughter. Now she works from home, selling an estimated $60,000 a year worth of jewelry online.

The 37-year-old from State College, Pennsylvania, is one of an estimated 5.1 million stay-at-home U.S. mothers, many of whom juggle child-rearing and generating an income, and a growing number of whom are starting their own businesses.

The web is redefining “women’s work” and giving stay-at-home mothers the flexibility that eluded them in the corporate world. The Small Business Administration says the number of self-employed women around the country jumped by 10 percent from 2000 to 2006, to 5.3 million.

For Lewis, an online marketplace called Etsy provided a place to sell her estate-style and faux vintage pieces. The website, www.etsy.com, lets craft makers set up their own virtual shops and has more than 4.2 million users. Read the full story.

Reuters

NEW YORK  - Fed up with the tough job market, some young American Jews are choosing to wait out the recession in Israel, where the government heavily subsidizes their stay while they intern, learn Hebrew or volunteer.

According to Masa, a group that organizes programs to Israel and is partially funded by the Israeli government, participation is up 50 percent since the fall of 2008. Today, Masa has more than 1,500 Americans working in Israel.

Masa’s Aaron Goldberg said interest has been rising since the financial crisis, which gave them the idea for their “Israel: A Better Stimulus Plan” marketing campaign.

“Before the economic crisis, there wasn’t that impetus to look beyond the traditional career path,” said Goldberg, Masa’s director of recruitment. “Now there are less jobs and less internships, so this becomes a great way to add something to your portfolio.” Read the full story.

Benitez reads at a third-grade level, one of 1.5 million New Yorkers considered functionally illiterate, meaning they have trouble reading a job description or filling out an application.

“I’ve been looking for work ever since I was 16 and I’ve become very frustrated,” said Benitez, who’s now enrolled in a high school equivalency class through Highbridge Community Life Center in the Bronx. She said she hopes to go to college and one day become a secretary for the U.S. Marshals Service.

An increasingly large number of city residents don’t have the skills to compete for today’s jobs, which require more education and training than ever before, according to a new report by the Center for an Urban Future, a New York research organization.
Read the full story.

Prompted by growing numbers and a spate of attacks against African immigrants, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. will announce today he is forming an African Advisory Council.

Over the past decade, the borough’s West African population has grown to an estimated 70,000, evidenced by new businesses lining Webster Ave. that sell everything from canned okra to live chickens and head scarves.

Many of these immigrants – from countries such as Guinea, Mali and Senegal – have done well, but their presence, as well as a reluctance to complain to police, have sometimes made them easy targets for petty criminals.
Read the full story.

Old computers, iPods, cell phones – Brian Boyd’s got ‘em all. But when Boyd, who runs a social media company, TrakVu, wanted to get rid of some of his electronics, he didn’t know what to do with the stuff.

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“I usually try to sell it on eBay, but who has the time?” Boyd said, adding that he had no idea where there might be a recycling center that would accept old electronics.

As our lives become filled with more gadgets, New Yorkers are being confronted with a growing problem: What to do with old electronics that, at least in the view of their owners, are garbage? 
Read the full story.

And that’s what Hector Martinez did after being convicted of second-degree murder, robbery and arson in 1984. He thought about the day when he made his way to a drug house in Sunset Park to buy some heroin, the blaze that he was accused of starting and the chaos that ensued.

It was not supposed to be like this. Martinez, now 55, grew up in a loving family of Puerto Rican descent, imbued by values of family, God and community. He went to church, got a job at a pharmacy and married a nice girl who spoke Spanish. But he had a double life no one knew about and it eventually caught up with him.

“The way I see it, if I would have continued, I would have ended up with AIDS or killed,” says Hector. “Even after all these years in prison, I’m not angry because this what part of God’s plan.”

Listen to the story.

YASNOGORSK, Russia – Three decades ago, the Yasnogorsk Machine-Building Factory stamped out thousands of pounds of steel and iron into parts for wagons, pumps and locomotives for Russia’s mining industry.

Now two-thirds of its stamping and welding machines have been shut down. The old Soviet-era equipment is rusting, and fewer than 280 employees clock in every day — from a peak of 7,000. The factory that kept this town alive since the days of the czar is on its last breath, the victim of a global recession that has shaken Russia to the core. Read the story.