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NEW YORK (JTA) — A new cultural center designed to draw in New York's unaffiliated young Jewish adults reportedly is having trouble getting along with its Upper West Side neighbors.

Residents near this venue for concerts, classes and movie screenings complain of loud music and people milling around outside, say officials with the local community board. An article in Sunday's New York Times quoted one neighbor as saying, "This isn't nice Jewish singles. It's club kids drinking, fighting and smoking pot on the street after midnight."

Representatives of the Makor center told JTA that security is being revamped to ensure that visitors leave the building quietly.

Reform women favor studies of marijuana

NEW YORK (JTA) — A group representing women from more than 600 U.S. Reform temples is calling for a study of whether marijuana can provide relief for certain medical conditions.

In a resolution passed last month at its 42nd biennial assembly in Orlando, Fla., Women of Reform Judaism also urged elected officials to support legislation to reclassify marijuana as a "prescribed controlled substance" so that it can be used for research and given to critically ill patients.

Report says Ford worked with Nazis

NEW YORK (JTA) — The German subsidiary of Ford Motor Co. collaborated more extensively with Nazi Germany than previously thought, according to the Nation.

Citing documents in the U.S. National Archives, the news magazine reported that Ford profited from making military trucks for Hitler's army and that its cooperation with the Third Reich continued eight months after the United States entered World War II.

Ford executives responded in a statement that the company's Michigan headquarters "lost all contact with and control over the plant during the war years."

U.S. court approves Bank Austria plan

NEW YORK (JTA) — A U.S. district court has approved a plan under which Bank Austria agreed to pay $40 million to settle Holocaust-era claims.

Jewish groups welcomed last week's settlement after the bank agreed to an amendment under which it acknowledges a moral obligation to compensate Holocaust victims. The amendment also declares that other Austrian firms facing similar claims will not be covered by the settlement.