Results tagged “andmayorbloomberg”

Around 3:45 a.m., a device exploded outside the military recruiting center in Times Square. No one was injured, but a glass entryway was shattered.

With the MTA's vote whether to raise subway and bus fares coming in less than three weeks, speculation is running high about what will happen. Even though Governor Spitzer said that the base subway and bus fare will remain $2, unlimited Metrocard fares - which 85% of riders use - will rise. The MTA has insisted the fare hikes are necessary, given projected deficits and upcoming capital construction, but many elected officials believe that the...

Twenty-three-year-old police officer Russel Timoshenko died yesterday at King County Hospital, five days after being shot twice in the face during a Monday traffic stop in Prospect Lefferts Gardens. Doctors took him off life support after finding he had no brain activity yesterday afternoon. KCH director of trauma service and surgical critical care, Dr. Robert Kurtz, was visibly upset as he reported Timoshenko's death. From Newsday:

Kurtz, who choked up, said the case "affected us emotionally as well as professionally."

Continue reading "Cop Shot During Brooklyn Traffic Stop Dies,
Suspects Now Face Murder Charges"

Yesterday, the Post revealed that Mamadou Soumare had filed a notice of claim, giving him the right to file a lawsuit in the future, related to the Bronx fire that claimed the lives of his wife and four children. But now Somare tells the Daily News that he's not so sure about the lawsuit anymore.

Mayors from around are in the middle of the three-day Climate Summit being held at the Essex House. And Mayor Bloomberg took the time to explain why mayors must lead the effort to address environmental issues. The NY Times reports that Bloomberg strayed from his prepared remarks and said:

The world really is looking to these cities for leadership. You’re not going to get this from other government bodies. You’re going to get it from the mayors of the world and the cities of the world, where they have to make decisions, and the consequences of their decisions are visible within hours or days. We are the ones that can take this world ahead.

Mayor Bloomberg and former Vice President Al Gore were on hand for the kick-off of this year's Tribeca Film Festival. Gore and Bloomberg traded compliments: Gore said that the mayor's congesting pricing initiative was "gutsy" and when asked if presidential candidates were talking about environmental issues, Gore said, "Well, I think Mike is." And the AP reported, "The mayor, standing to Gore's right, turned red and laughed."

We've stolen this post's title from the best email subject line we've gotten this year. According to Rogers Cadenhead's Workbench blog, us that the governor is working to gain control of the eliotspitzer.com and eliotspitzer.org domain names. Who had them? A NJ businessman named Eric Keller, who seemed to use the domains to direct traffic to one of his candy businesses. Keller has a history of cybersquatting, complaints about his business practices and defrauding the UPS. We bet Spitzer will have a grand time tangling with him!

One of Mayor Bloomberg's biggest initiatives is to stop gun dealers from illegally selling guns that make their way to New York City. Last May, the city filed its first federal lawsuit against out-of-state gun dealers, after conducting sting purchases where one individual would purchase a gun for someone else. Yesterday, the Department of Justice announced that the gun dealers would not face criminal prosecution because the investigators conducting the stings may have acted illegally.

A federal jury found Ronnell Wilson guilty of shooting two undercover detective in Staten Island three years ago. Detectives James Nemorin and Rodney Andrews were trying to buy illegal guns in a sting operation. Here is a description of the crime from the Post:

Wilson and another man, Jessie Jacobus, had decided that they would rob Nemorin - although they realized he might be a cop - instead of selling him a gun. The two thugs climbed into the back seat of Nemorin's car. A few moments later, Wilson shot both officers, then patted down their bodies for cash.

Continue reading "Guilty Verdict For Cop Killer; Death Penalty Looms"

Yesterday's 80th Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade went off smoothly, if very wet. The big balloons were kept low to the ground, due to concerns about the high winds, and basically stayed out of trouble, though, according to the NY Times, a Humpty Dumpty balloon "somersaulted" as one point and a Garfield balloon handler slipped during a gust.

Con Ed has pretty crappy luck. No sooner than a few hours after announcing that most of the Queens neighborhoods plagued by a week and a half power outage had electricity did three feeder cables in Staten Island fail. Luckily, this power outage that hit 16,000 customers (about one in every 10 Con Ed customers on SI, according to the Advance) only lasted six hours, ending around 10PM. Which meant Mayor Bloomberg had to cancel a trip to Queens and visit Staten Island instead. Gothamist totally gets why he did that - he's already hated in Queens, so he might as well preserve his rep on the Island. Con Ed described the power outage on Staten Island as being a "different animal" than the one in Queens, but SI does have more blackouts than any other borough (perhaps as revenge for wanting to secede to NJ?). At this rate, the Bronx, followed by Brooklyn, and then Manhattan should be getting blackouts in the coming weeks.

Yesterday's July 4th celebrations went off without a hitch. The rain managed to stay away during the display and New Yorkers got to enjoy the biggest fireworks show in the world. Smiley face and rolling dice fireworks were in display, but in our book, the coolest fireworks were the ones that looked like jellyfish swimming around. This year's display was themed "It's About U.S." and the New York Pops played state-and-city themed songs, as well as songs that mentioned the 300 million U.S. citizens and the usual songs you hear during July 4th (Stars and Stripes Forever, etc.). And if you watched the NBC Fireworks show, you would have had musical performances from Bo Bice, Nick Lachey, Lionel Richie, and Liza Minnelli to make up for not really being there. Yeah, waiting out with thousands of other New Yorkers might well be the better option.

Got time over the next week? Here's an interesting way to spend some of it: On June 30 Sothebys is going to be auctioning off reams of the personal documents of Martin Luther King, Jr. from between 1946 and 1968. Everything from report cards - he didn't get straight A's - to drafts of his "I Have a Dream" speech are on the block (as a collection only) and for the next week it is available to be seen by the public for free.

Treehugger has been doing a series of posts on different cities, and today, the attention is turned on New York City:

We want to know what are the good, and what are the bad things going on there. What is the general level of eco-consciousness in population? How is it for cyclists? How's public transportation? Suburban sprawl? Air quality? Recycling/composting? As time passes, are things getting better or worse? How are the policymakers

- The DHS tried not to be political about things!Okay, many of these points are fair, but we do think that when the city pays about $10.9 billion more in federal taxes than we get back from federal spending, our agencies needs more resources. And Gothamist thinks it's totally fair for our politicians and newspapers to make a big deal about the cut in funding, as getting 40% less than last year (yes, yes, other cities are getting less) is news. If anything, Chertoff's duty as the Secretary of Homeland Security is to really convince the President of how important the funding is, and then have the President push his Republican-led Congress to help out Homeland Security initiatives more.

- And Mayor Bloomberg is giving the convocation speech at the University of Chicago on June 10; we point this out because while Mayor Bloomberg claims he doesn't want to run for president, it's unusual for UChicago to have a non-faculty speaker (there was Bill Clinton, but he was President, and Kay Graham, but she was the publisher of the Washington Post and a big donor)... maybe Mayor Bling is donating some money or looking to take advantage of midwest media affiliates

Mayor Bloomberg was in Baltimore yesterday to pick up an honorary doctorate from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (Dr. Bloomberg!) and give a speech. And what a speech: He criticized political efforts to belittle science and medicine. The NY Times's headline says he "diverges from GOP line" but it's just reminder that's he's only a Republican because he wanted to be elected Mayor (okay, he's donated to Republicans and made NYC host the RNC). And the speech was good - here's an excerpt:

Today, we are seeing hundreds of years of scientific discovery being challenged by people who simply disregard facts that don't happen to agree with their agendas. Some call it "pseudo-science," others call it "faith-based science," but when you notice where this negligence tends to take place, you might as well call it "political science."

Continue reading "Bloomberg Thinks Science is Good!"

A funeral was held for 8 year old Amber Sadiq, who died on Monday when a school bus crushed her. Amber's parents were Muslim and Catholic, so the funeral had rituals from both religions; the Daily News pointed out both the reverand and imran recited, "From dust she came and as dust she will return."

Columbia University excitedly announced that the Jerome L. Greene Foundation was donating $200 million for a brand new neuroscience center, The Jerome L. Greene Science Center, to study the mind, brain and behavior. This is the largest private gift ever to a university to create one facility. We say, hoorah for the alma mater, and while more research for the human mind is wonderful, we do wish more could be done to lower tuition. At any rate, Columbia President Lee Bollinger continues to love the life sciences. (On a Bollinger tangent, Gothamist doesn't think he'd ever open up his house to a thousand happy Columbia students after a big football win the way he did in Michigan because we doubt that many students even go to the games and the NYPD would probably have a heart attack.) And we're interested in knowing how the Greene Foundation is so loaded - sure, he was a real estate lawyer, but those must have been some sweet investments.

- The NY Times reports the problems with the MTA's wish for cell phone service carriers bid on wiring stations

- Transportation Alternatives will be handing out "commuter packs" (a water bottle, NYC bike map, their Guide to Taking Back the Streets, TA membership info, and information on winning a new Fuji bicycle) at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge this evening. And have you checked out their Bike the Strike action?

Are we just 46 minutes away from a transit strike? NY1 says a strike is imminent, as the union president Roger Toussaint has left the Grand Hyatt where the TWU and the MTA had been negotiating to go the union headquarters (the NY Times.com's headline without a story as yet "Union Officials Confer After Rejecting Latest M.T.A. Offer"). Basically, we won't know anything until Toussaint speaks at headquarters.

Democratic front runner and former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer will start his advertising campaign tomorrow, according to the NY Times. This would make Ferrer the first of the Democratic hopefuls to compete with TV and radio, with what his campaign calls a "substantial" ad buy while his rivals' campaigns say the ad buy is "modest" (tens of thousands of dollars). Well, everything is modest compared to what Mayor Bloomberg is spending! But the Daily News points out that City Council Speaker Gifford Miller has purchased $1 million of advertising in the week before the September 13 primary; Miller has also raised the most money of the Democratic contenders. It sounds like Ferrer is attempting to develop name recognition with a steady media presence for a longer period whereas Miller may simply try to blanket the area with his message in the final moments, though Ferrer is probably going to increase his media by the primary. Gothamist gives the edge to Ferrer with this decision, because we suspect Bloomberg has helped his approval ratings with his seemingly constant advertising in the past few months. And we doubt C. Virginia Fields and Anthony Weiner will advertise much to make a blip.

Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg officially unveiled plans for the new Moynihan Station yesterday. Pataki heralded it as a "magnificent gateway for New York," and Bloomberg proclaimed, "The Daniel Patrick Moynihan station is another example of the spirit to build big and build grand, redressing one of the most tragic architectural crimes in the city's history." You can read more about the crime of razing the old Penn Station here at Wikipedia.

Our coverage of the ALCS win and the baseball season. And Mayor Bloomberg, it's time to send the goods.