Jews demanding that kosher plants treat employees well

NEW YORK -- Very little goes unexamined in the kosher world.

From meat and poultry to the coating on vegetables and the ingredients in mouthwash, rabbis who determine whether a product meets Jewish dietary laws scrutinize the most minute details about all things consumed.

For religiously observant Jews, that concern has rarely extended beyond the product itself.

But now, allegations of worker abuse at the nation's biggest kosher slaughterhouse have some Jews demanding that food companies be judged not just by the purity of their products but by the way their treat their employees.

"How can you sit at your table and eat a product packaged by a pregnant woman who has been standing on her feet all day?" asked Rabbi Morris Allen of Minnesota. He is developing a certification program that aims to protect workers and the environment in the kosher industry.

Interest in Allen's "hekhsher tzedek," or "certificate of righteousness," has ballooned since a May 12 immigration raid at Agriprocessors in Postville, Iowa.

Nearly 400 illegal immigrants were arrested at the plant in the biggest such raid on a single work site in U.S. history. State officials say dozens of underage workers were employed there in violation of child labor laws. Agriprocessors has denied any wrongdoing.

L.A. police: 'Rockefeller' is wanted German

LOS ANGELES -- A man charged with kidnapping his daughter in Boston is a German who lived in the guesthouse of a Los Angeles-area couple who disappeared in 1985, a sheriff's spokesman said Monday.

Los Angeles County sheriff's investigators have identified Christian Gerhartsreiter as the same man who used the aliases Clark Rockefeller and Christopher Chichester, spokesman Steve Whitmore told The Associated Press.

Homicide detectives "are confident that Rockefeller is Christian Gerhartsreiter and the person named Christopher Chichester who was living in the Los Angeles area in 1985," Whitmore said.

Gerhartsreiter has been identified as a "person of interest" in the 1985 disappearances of Jonathan and Linda Sohus. Under the Chichester name, Gerhartsreiter rented a guesthouse at the couple's home in San Marino, a wealthy Los Angeles suburb.

Investigators were able to confirm Gerhartsreiter's identity after interviews with people who knew him in California in the 1980s, Whitmore said.

At the time of his Aug. 2 arrest in Baltimore, Gerhartsreiter had been living under the Rockefeller name. Police have said he snatched his daughter from a Boston street on July 27 in an elaborately planned kidnapping in which he hired two people to drive them to New York.

The district attorney's office and FBI in Boston said Monday they were not ready to declare that Rockefeller and Gerhartsreiter are the same person.

Ohio church: No kissing, tickling allowed

CINCINNATI -- The Archdiocese of Cincinnati has issued a detailed list of inappropriate behaviors for priests, saying they should not kiss, tickle or wrestle children.

The newest version of the archdiocese's Decree on Child Protection also prohibits bear hugs, lap-sitting and piggyback rides.

But it says priests may still shake children's hands, pat them on the back and give high-fives.

Victim advocates who have criticized the Roman Catholic archdiocese for its handling of abuse cases say they support the new measures as a step toward better protection of children.

The Cincinnati archdiocese says it updates the rules every five years. The latest version, issued last week, also mandates background checks for contractors working with children.

NASA safety panel worries about design

WASHINGTON -- NASA is not properly emphasizing safety in its design of a new spaceship and its return-to-the-moon program faces money, morale and leadership problems, an agency safety panel found Monday.

The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel cited "surprising anxiety among NASA employees" about the Constellation moon program and said the project "lacks clear direction." Its 143-page annual report specifically faulted the agency's design of the Orion crew capsule for not putting safety features first.

Officials in charge of the program, defending the design safety at a news conference, wouldn't say whether astronauts are among the worried employees. Astronauts would have to fly in the Orion crew capsule, with a first launch planned by 2015.

Past NASA spaceships were built with enough backup safety systems "to ensure safety and reliability," from the start, the report said. But it said that because of weight problems with the Orion design, NASA has used a different approach, one "without all safeguards included" from the beginning. In the Orion project, any added safety feature would have to "earn its way in" to the design by justifying that the increased safety was worth the extra cost and weight.

That's not right, said the safety advisory panel, which includes two former space shuttle astronauts and was created after the deadly 1967 Apollo 1 fire.

The panel said it is "concerned that this process may not be capable of providing adequate protection against hazards that will only come to light once the spacecraft is in operation."

NASA's Constellation program officials defended the safety of the still-evolving spaceship design, but acknowledged that some NASA employees are unhappy with it.

Groom charged with being too near bride

BATAVIA, N.Y. -- A New York state man has been arrested for getting too close to his bride on their wedding day.

Police say Timothy Cole quarreled with a wedding guest at a party Friday after wedding his ex-wife in Batavia (buh-TAY'-vee-uh).

Officers knew the 45-year-old Cole from previous arrests and realized his bride had an order of protection against him. Cole was charged with first-degree criminal contempt, a felony, and ordered jailed without bail.

The Daily News in Batavia says Cole was convicted of criminal contempt on July 1.

The Genesee County public defender's office says Cole hasn't been assigned an attorney.