A mentally disturbed gentleman was really on the hot seat Friday morning. He sat down on a protective board covering the electrified third rail at the Utica Ave. subway station station on the C line in Brooklyn Friday morning — and refused to get up, authorities said.
Transit workers had to shut off electricity to the third rail in the area for nearly an hour and C trains skipped several stations. The C locals went express between Broadway Junction and Hoyt/Schermerhorn St.
Power was cut at about 9:30 a.m. and restored at approximately 10:25 a.m. when the man either was removed or agreed to leave his perch. He was taken to Kings County Hospital, authorities said.
The third rail 600 volts of electricity to propel trains.
OMG! Adobe has just disclosed that one of their servers has been hacked.
Although investigations are still ongoing, the company is sharing details on what they believe could have been accessed. It’s pretty huge!
Seems like the hackers have obtained encrypted data for as many as 2.9 million customers, and while Adobe stresses that the data is encrypted and that they “do not believe the attackers removed decrypted credit or debit card numbers”, that data — encrypted or not — is definitely not something they want to be floating around in the matrix. Neither do Adobe’s 2.9 million customers.
Adobe has yet to disclose how that data was encrypted, so it’s currently unclear just how secure anything really is at this point.
New York City councilwoman Letitia James, from Brooklyn and with strong ties to labor unions, has won a Democratic primary runoff for public advocate on Tuesday. This victory makes her all but certain to become the first African-American woman to hold citywide office.
Since there is no Republican candidate, Ms. James will almost definitely be elected to succeed Bill de Blasio, the public advocate and Democratic nominee for mayor.
With 99% of precincts reporting, Ms. James, 54, defeated Daniel L. Squadron, 33, a state senator from Brooklyn and Manhattan, by winning 59.4% of the vote. Squadron won 40.6% of the vote.
Tuesday at her campaign headquarters, councilwoman’s James gave her acceptance speech, stating:
“I am humbled to join you tonight and announce that we have won this campaign and we are on to the Office of New York City Public Advocate. I ran for Public Advocate because all my life I have seen New Yorkers persevere and I’ve seen the role that government can play in helping uplift working people. As someone who comes from humble beginnings, I’ve experienced it myself. My father was a janitor and my mother cleaned offices. The opportunities I was given and the family, faith, and community that stood behind me, helped me make it. And today, you elected me the first woman of color to hold city-wide office in OUR city.”
LITTLE KNOWN FACTOID: The public advocate is first in line to succeed the mayor if that office suddenly becomes vacant. One of three citywide positions, the office serves as a watchdog on municipal government and has the power to review city agencies and issue reports. Ms. James would be the fourth Democrat to serve in the office since it was created in the early 1990s.
Despite the best efforts of the House Republicans to defund ObamaCare by any means necessary, the Healthcare Reform Act is in full effect today. The online comedy troupe Funny or Die put out a humourous public service announcement starring singer Jennifer Hudson, parodying the Olivia Pope character from the popular tv drama ‘Scandal’, to help persuade young Americans to sign up for coverage this year. This is just one of many Hollywood-Obama joint initiatives that will be rolling out to assist the public in navigating around the new healthcare laws.
There should be no compromise over the Affordable Care Act. It is a duly passed law of the land that will make positive changes in the lives of millions of Americans. It will give them financial and wellness security. It will change, for the better, the way in which health care is delivered in this country. It’s already led to far-reaching changes in the way that hospitals, health care organizations, doctors and pharmaceutical companies operate.
Checkups and physicals are now free.
Children can stay on thei parents’ policies until age 26.
You cannot be denied insurance if you have a preexisting condition.
And for all of this, a minority in the government and in states where the greatest number of uninsured citizens live, who have convinced themselves that this law will lead to the untimely, government-sponsored deaths of grandmothers throughout the country, want to tie it to a devastating shutdown of the federal government.
No.
The answer has to be no.
They tried to kill the bill altogether last week, using parliamentary shenanigans that went nowhere and incurred the wrath of Republicans who normally would go along with whatever the party wanted. Now all they want is to delay the Medical Devices tax, which supposedly Democrats fear will lead to higher costs and more backlash.
No.
Because it’s clear that the Republican extremists will not stop there. They tried a full kill. Now they want a delay? Does anybody think that they’ll stop at the Medical Devices tax? Is that the endgame? Will John Boehner, Ted Cruz and Eric Cantor stand side-by-side on a podium in triumphal mode because the Medical Device tax will be delayed? Oh, that’s in addition to approving the XL Pipeline and defunding the Consumer Protection Board and lowering taxes on the wealthy and everything else the Republican Party ran on and LOST in 2012? Will this make the GOP happy and go away?
No.
They want to whole thing gone, and if the Democrats fold on this they will rue that day because the rest of the bill will get flushed away later in October when the GOP decides to throw it in as a condition for raising the debt ceiling. That’s the danger.
So my message to the president and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Dick Durban is to borrow another Republican idea from the halcyon days of bipartisanship of the 1980s:
Just say no.
If you don’t, you will have lost me and millions of others who feel the same way that I do.
McDonald's chief financial officer, Peter Bensen, said last year that Obamacare will cost the company $140 million to $420 million per year.
David Overton, CEO of the Cheesecake Factory, says that Obamacare "will be very costly" and "most people will have to raise prices or cheapen their product" in response.
CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey, said that Obamacare is "like fascism." He then retracted, saying he regretted making that comparison.
John Schnatter, CEO of Papa John's, says Obamacare will cost the company $0.11 to $0.14 per pizza. He maintained that Papa John's will continue to offer health insurance to all its employees.
Andrew Puzder, CEO of CKE, says that he plans to respond to Obamacare by selling cheaper meats and hiring more part-time workers. He also plans to build fewer restaurants in response.
McDonald's chief financial officer, Peter Bensen, said last year that Obamacare will cost the company $140 million to $420 million per year.
Boeing spokesman Joseph Tedino says Boeing lobbied unsuccessfully against a new Obamacare fee, and is generally concerned about Obamacare's costs.
Jimmy John's CEO, Jimmy John Liautaud says he plans to cut workers' hours to avoid having to offer them health insurance under Obamacare.
“The country wants Congress to focus on jobs and the economy, not on pushing an extreme agenda against birth control,” – Dawn Laguens, EVP, Planned Parenthood Federation of America
House Republicans have included a so-called “conscience clause” in the government funding bill in a plan they approved early Sunday.
The House voted 231-192 on a bill that would delay much of the 2010 health care reform package for a year. The bill also would try to repeal a tax on medical devices that helps finance the health care law.
The stated purpose of the measure is to allow employers and insurers the opportunity to opt out of providing health care services that they find morally or religiously objectionable, reigniting the debate over a portion of the health care reform law that requires most insurers to cover women’s preventative health care, including contraception. The provision would allow them to opt out of coverage for the next year.
House Republican leaders confirmed that the provision was added into the one-year delay of Obamacare during a House Rules Committee meeting on Saturday evening.
Planned Parenthood Federation of America Executive Vice President Dawn Laguens called the move “desperate, misguided, and extreme”.
Marissa Alexander, the African-American woman who was sentenced to 20 years for discharging a firearm in Florida despite pleading Stand Your Ground against her husband, will get a new trial. Alexander, 32, said she fired a bullet at the ceiling because she was afraid of her husband. No one was injured. It took 12 minutes for the jury to convict her.
“We reject her contention that the trial court erred in declining to grant her immunity from prosecution under Florida’s Stand Your Ground law,” wrote Judge James H. Daniel, “but we remand for a new trial because the jury instructions on self-defense were erroneous.”
Alexander, who had given birth the week before, testified that after an altercation regarding texts from her ex-husband, she locked herself in the bathroom. Her husband Rico Gray broke through the door, grabbed her by the neck, and shoved her into the door. She ran to the garage, found she couldn’t get the door open, and returned with a gun. When Gray saw the gun, he said, “Bitch, I’ll kill you.” Alexander testified that firing the gun into the air as a warning shot was “the lesser of two evils.”
The jury rejected her self-defense argument, and instead Alexander was sentenced under the “10-20-Life” law, which carries a series of mandatory minimum sentences related to gun crimes. The prosecutor in her case was Angela Corey, who also prosecuted George Zimmerman who was acquitted in the death of Trayvon Martin. After an outcry at the apparent racial double standard in the application of Stand Your Ground, Corey told the Washington Post, “I think social media is going to be the destruction of this country.”
The appeals court judge ruled that the lower court judge improperly put a burden on Alexander to prove that the firing was in self-defense. “The defendant’s burden is only to raise a reasonable doubt concerning self-defense,” Daniel wrote. “The defendant does not have the burden to prove the victim guilty of the aggression defended against beyond a reasonable doubt.” He ordered a retrial. A separate proceeding would determine whether Alexander could be released on bail pending that trial.
It’s not enough for Ted Cruz to be wrong, because he is. It’s not enough that he’s offensive, because he is. And it’s not enough that he’s a hypocrite, because he is. The worst part is that he has the whole package, and he’s terribly difficult to listen to. But Ted Cruz represents much more in our era of divided, extremist, conservative government: It’s the end of the line. When people like Ted Cruz make speeches that reference Nazi Germany and compare the present administration to it, you know that the GOP has gone gonzo overboard. This is not a governing party anymore–it’s a collection of conspiracy theorists who happened to win votes in gerrymandered districts and in states where the majority of uninsured people in the United States live, but who have convinced themselves that getting health insurance amounts to treason.
The conservative movement has reached its apogee and is now in its slow, painful, destructive decline. It will bring a good part of the country down with it, but the good news is that at its worst, it only controls the House of Representatives. If it shuts down the government next week, it will lose that in 2014 and if it runs an ultra-conservative in 2016, it will lose that election too.
I’ve heard many pundits and political science professors say that we live in a center-right leaning country, and at this time I’m inclined to believe it. The problem for the Republicans is that they are not center-right: They are far right and represent a minority of the country. Most people don’t want radical change of the sort that the far right is promoting. Many people oppose the health care law for good reason, but to say that it will drag down the economy and that it’s the death knell of our way of life is irresponsible and hyperbolic.
But I guess Ted Cruz had to happen. Even members of his own party are abandoning him. If the shutdown is to be avoided, Democrats in the House will need a bill to support. This is not good for John Boehner or any of the farther rightists.
But it’s the best thing to happen to the country in a while. Perhaps things are finally looking up.
“I no longer have the luxury of being a dove when it comes to my financial security. I have to become a hawk and protect my nest egg – my future – with everything I’ve got.”
I’d been waiting for the last 8 to 10 years for the repercussions, but up until now I’d been practically unaffected by the whole matter.
I’ve never owned a home, I’ve always rented.
Never owned a car and I don’t drive.
I’m single, with no children, so no worries there.
I’ve been at, what one would call a good job, for the last 18 years and have a fair amount of indispensability.
I pay my taxes and receive average returns each year.
I’ve had no major hospital visits for the last 18 years and I’m rarely sick (knock-on-wood), with most of my doctor visits slotted for yearly physical exams and dental check-ups.
And then it happened.
THE RECESSION suddenly got up close and personal.
On Monday the HR department at my company sent out an all-staff email stating, among other things, that due to the increased cost of the 401(k) pension plan by 25%, the company will no longer be able to contribute matching funds towards its employee’s deductions. This, no doubt is happening across the country:
“The proposed agreement would suspend the employer match on the 401(k) plan for all participating institutions for the next two years, and use the funds that would normally pay for the match to pay for the increase in the pension cost. This does not affect the match of July 2013. That was paid in its entirety, but the matches for July 2014 and 2015 would not be made under this tentative agreement. The match for July 2016 is not yet determined and would be subject to the same or a similar multi-party process to reach agreement about two years from now. Under the tentative agreement employee contributions to the 401k during the two years would continue to be made on a pre-tax basis up to the IRS limits.”
Suddenly I saw my beautiful but modest dream home nestled alongside the red clay mountains in Sedona, Arizona, going up in smoke!
The 1/4 acre backyard with the modest swimming pool (in which I personally install an original mosaic design); my brick enclosed BBQ pit; my little garden spot in the back of the yard where I try to grow a few tomatoes; the recreation center I hope to open and give art therapy classes in; my junkets to Africa, Japan, Egypt and England — still on my ‘bucket list’; my as-of-yet-to-be-born faithful companions, Lil Roddy and Piccachu, a pair of cute, sable French Bulldogs who I treat like the children I never had; my favorite gentlemen caller and I skinny-dipping in the pool under the stars in my cozy backyard, as we sip on our favorite wine while listening to an endless stream of jazz ballads from all the legends – Dexter, Coltrane, Miles, Mingus – playing in the background as we…well, you get the picture. All fading fast.
The memo says the break in coverage will continue up to 2016, when matters will then be renegotiated, but I and my fellow employees are severely skeptical on this turning out favorably anytime soon.
So this was my wakeup call. I no longer have the luxury of being a dove when it comes to my financial security. I have to become a hawk and protect my nest egg – my future – with everything I’ve got. My pension is still intact but I still have to boost my retirement-plan contributions if I want to make up for the loss of the employer match and keep my retirement dreams alive.
Some financial advisors recommend continued investment in your company’s 401(k) plan if there are good investment choices and low fees there. If you’re in your twenties, you’ll want to put the majority of your investment into a high-risk high growth fund. You’ll make money by leaving your money in these funds for the long haul even though they may go down at times. Move to more conservative investments as you get closer to your retirement.
Also consider contributing to a Roth IRA. A Roth IRA (named for its legislative sponsor, William V. Roth Jr., a Republican senator from Delaware) allows you to contribute and save after-tax money as opposed to the traditional 401(k) contributions made with pretax dollars. As long as you own the Roth IRA for at least five years, you can take tax-free distributions beginning at age 59.
Another way to supplement your overall retirement package may be an investment in an annuity of which there are two general kinds. The first is the annuity with period certain, which is an annuity that specifies a certain period for the payments. The second and most common kind of annuity for retirement savings is the life annuity. How this works is that you agree to pay some lump sum to a company and they promise to pay you a certain rate of return on that money each year for the rest of your life.
However there are certain risks associated with annuities. For instance, what happens if the organization you bought the annuity from goes under? Most likely, you’re out of luck. To put it simply, advisors again say never buy an annuity without the backing of a very reputable organization, especially if you’re putting a great deal of your savings into it.
There’s also the possibility that you buy a lifetime annuity and you pass away earlier than you expected to. The balance of that investment is gone, since it can’t be passed down as an inheritance. For this reason it may be preferable to buy an annuity associated with a charitable group you believe in, both for the tax advantages and for the support to that organization. Then at least if you die before you could cash in at your planned retirement age, the money would go to a worthy cause.
Afterall, you can’t take it with you (thank God!).
When terrorists attacked at a mall with guns in Nairobi today today, The Times’s Tyler Hicks, a staff photographer, happened to be next door. Here’s what he saw….
It was about 2:30 a.m. Saturday morning when Sarah McCartney heard a banging at her front door. The young mother, alone with her 1-year-old son, rushed to the door thinking that something might have happened to her husband. But the man standing there wasn’t her husband, but a young black man.
McCartney quickly shut the door and called 911 to report an attempted robbery.
“I need help. There’s a guy breaking into my front door, he’s trying to kick it down,” McCartney is heard pleading through tears on a recording of the 911 call released by WCNC.com, an NBC affiliate in Charlotte, N.C. on Tuesday. She told the dispatcher that her husband works nights and that he has guns at home but that she couldn’t find any.
“Oh my God,” McCartney says over and over. “He’s in the front yard yelling.”
“I need help,” she said, crying.
When McCartney saw the police outside of her home, she’s heard on the 911 tape saying, “Oh, please let them get him.”
They did.
Jonathan Ferrell, 24, was killed by police in a bizarre series of events that began with a car crash along a rural stretch of road near McCartney’s home, and ended not long after he dragged himself from the wreckage and found himself on her doorstep seeking help.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police say that three officers responding to
McCartney’s 911 call arrived at her home and found Ferrell nearby. When Ferrell saw the officers he advanced or ran toward them, police say, and one of the officers shot him with a Taser. When that didn’t stop him, Officer Randall Kerrick pulled out his gun and fired 12 shots at Ferrell, hitting him with 10.
Police say that Ferrell was unarmed at the time of the shooting and was no robber at all–just someone looking for help at the the first house he saw.
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