Caroline Kennedy, whose Senate aspirations have only allowed for controlled moments with the press and submitting written answers to media outlets' questions so far, has submitting to actual interviews. First, an interview with the Associated Press was published, just after she spoke to reporter Larry Neumeister at Tribeca diner Gee Whiz (she ordered a grilled cheese and bacon sandwich).
Tomorrow, iconic photographs of American presidents over the years will be on display at Federal Hall. The exhibit, "The American President," is put together by the Associated Press, which is showcasing over 80 photographs of presidents "at war and at ease, in victory and in defeat, confronting national crises and facing personal scandals, running for office and leading the country on the world stage"--and photographs of this year's presidential candidates on the campaign trail.
A woman appears to have fallen or jumped from a very high floor of the U.N. Secretariat Building at 405 East 42nd St. early today. Per wcbstv.com, U.N. security personnel escorted detectives and NYPD officers to the rear of the building, where the woman's body was splayed out on the lawn. She was quickly covered with a sheet and the area was cordoned with yellow tape. It's believed that the dead woman was an employee at the United Nations, although her identity has not been revealed.
Early Saturday morning around 2 a.m., an undercover police officer shot and killed a 22-year-old Queens man after he pointed a gun at him and another officer. Earlier in the night, Ronnie Smalls had run from police when they approached him because they recognized him as a known criminal--he'd been arrested nine times before--and suspected he was carrying a gun. When they saw Smalls a second time, he ran again. According to the Associated Press account, with two undercover police chasing on foot and the third giving chase in a car, the officer in the car said he saw the suspect pull his gun and point it at the pursuing officers. At that point, Smalls either tripped or was tackled and the closest pursuing officer fired four shots at Smalls as they struggled on the ground.
The Associated Press and Ipsos asked Americans to pick which candidates would make the scariest Halloween costumes. Naturally, frontrunners Senator Hillary Clinton and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani won in their respective political parties (there were separate polls for the two parties). Clinton led Democrats with 37% while Giuliani had 14%, and no other candidates broke 6%, giving them resounding wins. And we found this interesting: "While a predictable two-thirds of Republicans picked [Clinton], she also was the choice of 18 percent of Democrats. Among members of her own party, that made her second only to Giuliani as the scariest costume."
An explosion occurred at building on West 119th Street, right off Fifth Avenue and just south of Marcus Garvey Park, around 4PM. Several people were injured - WCBS 2 says that the injured include two babies and a firefighter who was helping people out of the building. Also: "Firefighters on the scene removed pieces of debris from the building's first floor while residents were being treated on stretchers on the street."
A man was shot after he stabbed two people on a Midtown street. Either an off-duty police officer or plainclothes law enforcement officer is believed to have shot the man. Here's a tip we received:
I walked outside my building about an hour ago and saw tons of police activity. From what I hear a man went into Starbucks to obtain a knife unsuccessfully. Then went into another restaurant (not sure of the name) and obtained a knife. He proceeded to stab two people in between 34th & 35th St on 2nd ave. An off-duty police officer was present and shot the attacker.It's unclear if the attacker is dead - he and the two victims were taken to Bellevue, where they are in surgery.
A report being released tomorrow by the Industrial Assistance Corporation (IAC) titled "Buried Treasure: New York's Hidden Tech Sector" asserts that New York City rivals cities like Seattle and areas like Silicon Valley as the largest technology center in the country. The study counted the number of tech workers in the city, at branches of corporations like IBM, Microsoft, Google, and the research and development departments of medical centers in the city. The IAC report actually considered all of the "New York Metropolitan Statistical Area," which includes southern New York State and northern New Jersey. The Associated Press story says that IAC found 620,000 tech workers in that area, more than twice the number found in Silicon Valley.
New York City's Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) has added a section to its web site where residents can see how city hospitals stack up against each other and against state and national benchmarks. HHC operates 11 hospitals and four long-term care facilities in the city. The Associated Press reports that information available to healthcare consumers at the HHC site includes data like mortality rates, adherence to "best practices" treatments, rates of pneumonia and infections developed while under care, and the rate of pressure ulcers and falls while in long-term care.
Smoke is once again drifting across the skyline of downtown Manhattan near the World Trade Center site as the Deutsche Bank building on Liberty St. has caught fire. Initial reports said that scaffolding was falling from the building, which is under deconstruction. The fire was recently upgraded to 5 alarms 7 alarms and multiple firefighters have been injured. Two firefighters were triaged and designated in need of immediate care with a life-threatening condition and at least one reportedly was receiving CPR on the scene. Another five were designated as needing urgent care. We'll report more when additional information becomes available. Yesterday The New York Times featured a slide show about the deconstruction of the Deutsche Bank Building.
Only 2 weeks after his 89th birthday, Swedish film and theater director Ingmar Bergman passed away at his home on Fårö Island this morning, the Associated Press reports. "Astrid Soderbergh Widding, president of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, confirmed the death, and Swedish journalist Marie Nyreröd said the director died peacefully during his sleep. Bergman never fully recovered after a hip surgery in October last year, Nyreröd told Swedish broadcaster SVT."
EVENT: The New York Book Club at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum presents…"Breaking News: How the Associated Press Has Covered New York City". The panelists include "Hal Buell, longtime AP photo editor who put images of the Vietnam War in newspapers across America; Richard Drew, AP photographer who has covered New York events including 9/11; Edie Lederer, longtime UN correspondent and first woman to be the foreign chief of bureau; and Valerie Komor, corporate archives director of the AP."
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority board decided yesterday not to act on a ban of alcoholic beverages on Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road. Both railroads sell beer, wine, and liquor (along with soft drinks, water and snacks) from carts at Grand Central Terminal and Penn Station, as well as from bar cars on trains. Sales yielded a $1 million profit for the MTA, so the decision was probably more based on pure hard economics than anything else, although an MTA task force looking into the matter determined the sales did not pose a risk to the safety of commuters.
Save Veronica Mars Campaign Does Not Effect Local Mars Bar Availability
Louis Eppolito, who was accused of moonlighting as one half of a mafia hit squad, has expressed his displeasure with the bad press he's been getting. In a letter to the Associated Press, penned from prison, Eppolito said that the coverage surrounding his and his partner's case was a "media circus" and contributed to his continued imprisonment despite the fact that his conviction was overturned by a judge.
Internationally beloved Angelina Jolie and her less philanthropic beau, Brad Pitt, are in town. They're making headlines, too, with things like wearing inexpensive clothes and going to the doctor. Fine, we'll bite...
NJ Governor Corzine showed the Associated Press that he's doing pretty well, sitting up (in red track pants, which is rather Fidel-ish) and reading his many get well cards. These are the first photographs of Corzine since he was in a car accident that left him critically injured and with 15 broken bones. Earlier this week, Corzine was still stuck in bed, but now he's able to leave bed and sit up. The cards look like they are from NJ school children; we hope that if they're making the cards during the school day, then there better be seat belts also drawn on them somewhere!
April Fool's! When America's Mayor told Barbara Walters that his wife, Judith Nathan, would be attending Cabinet meetings if he's elected President, he was totally joking. Some confusion arose when Giuliani told Walters that Nathan would be welcome at Cabinet meetings if they were discussing something she might find interesting: "If she wanted to. If they were relevant to something that she was interested in. I mean that would be something that I'd be very, very comfortable with".
Governor Spitzer who once called the Freedom Tower a “white elephant” and questioned its economic viability announced his support of the project today in lower Manhattan alongside the Mayor and NJ Governor John Corzine. Spitzer said that after looking into alternatives, he decided that it was best to proceed as planned, citing the strong real estate market. Plus, it's a good photo op.
It has been almost a year since tabloid-it-boy Peter Braunstein allegedly dressed as a fireman in order to break into the apartment of, and sexually abuse for 13 hours, a former co-worker on Halloween. So it would seem to be about time for some new news on the perp, and the Associated Press delivers.
Pedro Martinez was thought to be out for only the playoffs when it was annoucned that he had a torn tendon in his left calf. Now it's being that the soon to be 35 year-old Mets righty will be out for 8 months because of rotator cuff surgery. Assuming Pedro has a speedy recovery, which is a big assumption, he would be back in June. The injury was detected the same day physicians discovered the injury in Martinez's left calf. A second opinion requested by Martinez confirmed the initial test. Omar Minaya told the Associated Press that Pedro was "absolutely not" considering retirement.
Matthew Colletta, the Queens man accused of shooting at cars and pedestrians, killing one and injuring four others last Friday, said he got his gun from Lucifer. Remember, Colletta had said that he shot at red cars because he thought the Bloods were after him. Yesterday, he was arraigned by the Queens DA's in the Bellevue prison ward, where he has been undergoing mental evaluations. When Colletta was questioned by the police, he apparently gave them rambling, conflicting accounts of what had happened. From the NY Times:
Prosecutors said Mr. Colletta described to police officers “red cars closing in” during the spree, said Marcus Franklin, a reporter for The Associated Press who was selected to represent fellow reporters at the arraignment. When arrested, Mr. Colletta gave police investigators several versions of the events that seemed contradictory and fantastical at times, prosecutors said yesterday.Continue reading "Queens Shooter Says Devil Helped Him"
It's the Wednesday and for theater lovers, that means it's matinee day. Of course, this will mean added traffic coming into the city for the 2 pm shows. So for those theater goers, we wish you luck in the traffic. If you live close to the Theater District, or are willing to walk, many shows have special holiday schedules and the Daily News is reporting that there's a "glut" of tickets available at TKTS including seats that are better than you can normally get.
A fire has shut down the Queensborough Bridge. The fire, on what looks like the Queens side of the bridge, has closed the bridge to traffic in both directions. Looking at WNBC's live video, you can see that a tarp is on fire and that there are cars still on the bridge. WABC reports that the tarp is covering construction scaffolding and that the FDNY had difficulty reaching the fire because of the traffic backups. The Associated Press reports that the first call on the fire was at 12:53 and there are over 100 firefighters on scene.
Hoping to get rid of some of the Bernard Kerik stink, Rudy Giuliani was on the Tonight Show last night. We didn't catch the whole segment (Gothamist is a sucker for Chappelle's Show repeats we've seen 41 times already!), but he vaguely said he'd be into running for office again. But, as noted in today's Observer article, Rudy has been making a pretty penny as a civilian, like making $80,000 during a tsunami benefit - when other celebrities donated their time. Gothamist thinks we can expect to see Rudy's combover-less head in the news A LOT, because he will be milking his status as 9/11 elder statesman and he'll be paying some firms to poll the United States to find out his chances as a viable Presidential candiate in 2008, but in the end, Rudy might just stick to being a highly paid speaker and consultant.
Demonstrators hit the streets yesterday, to protest the second anniversary of the Iraqi war. One protest started in Harlem, followed by a rally in Central Park featured words from Representative Charles Rangel ("It's one thing to go to war; it's another thing to mislead the American people") and other politicans. Protestors also went to Mayor Bloomberg's Upper East Side townhouse. One protest organized by United for Peace and Justice stopped traffic in Times Square when they laid down next to coffins; police arrested 27 of the protesters there. Manhattan resident, David McReynolds, age 75, told WNBC 4, "This country was founded by acts of civil disobedience," as he marched with the UPJ group.
Pauline Millard, Writer/Mezzo Soprano
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