Tag: new york

‘Not Operational’: Camera Watching Doomed New York Subway Train Not Working — As Video Emerges Of Panicked Commuters Fleeing ‘Smoke Grenade’ Explosion

The camera overlooking the bloody scene of the Brooklyn subway shooting was “not operational,” meaning it did not capture the terrifying ordeal that 16 injured.

The incident happened at the 36th Street station in the Sunset Park neighborhood on Tuesday around 8:30 AM.

Video shows panicked commuters pushing their way out of the subway and running for their lives down the platform. Those injured emerged from the train bleeding profusely while collapsing on the cement.

During the press conference, it was confirmed of those 16 victims, 10 are suffering from gunshot wounds. Five are in critical but stable condition.

As of this post, the suspect is not in custody.

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NY Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin Arrested in Campaign Finance Fraud Case

New York Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin has surrendered to authorities to face campaign finance fraud-related charges in connection with a past campaign, two people familiar with the matter said Tuesday.

Benjamin is expected to appear in Manhattan federal court later Tuesday. Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on the arrest, nor could a representative for Benjamin.

His arrest comes after reports that Manhattan federal prosecutors and the FBI were investigating whether Benjamin knowingly engaged in a campaign finance fraud scheme. Subpoenas were issued in connection with the investigation, two sources familiar with the subpoenas said at the time.

The investigators also looked into whether Benjamin helped dole out state money to contributors and/or their projects as part of the alleged fraud.

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New York City Will Mandate Masks for Children Under 5 Years Old

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said that the city would mandate children aged 2 to 4 to continue wearing masks after a judge issued an order in favor of his administration.

“Every decision we make is with our children’s health and safety in mind. Children between 2 and 4 should continue to wear their masks in school and daycare come Monday,” the Democrat mayor said on Twitter on April 1.

It came after State Supreme Court Justice Ralph Porzio earlier that day struck down the city’s mask order for young children. However, an appellate court issued a stay in the lower court’s ruling, allowing the mask mandate to remain intact amid the appeals process.

Porzio stated that the mandate was “absurd” after it was lifted for children aged 5 and older, and characterized it as “arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable.” That ruling was handed down in response to a lawsuit from a group of parents who sued Adams and New York City agencies.

“Universal masking, therefore, presents one of the strongest, if not the strongest defense against COVID-19 for settings with children ages two to four,” New York City attorneys said in court papers, although numerous studies have shown that young children have exceedingly low COVID-19 death and hospitalization rates compared with other age groups—even compared with older children.

“For these reasons,” the city added, “throughout the pandemic, both the City and New York State had more stringent rules in place for this setting.”

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Billionaires Taking $1.01 Billion from Taxpayers to Finance a Football Stadium — Distracting You is Expensive

“Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer, and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult….”

― George Orwell, 1984

It’s no secret that the federal government has little restraint about using taxpayer dollars for non-essential initiatives and projects. One venture, in particular, continuously shouldered by taxpayers is the building, maintaining, and renovating of sports stadiums. These stadiums are often built with the help of federal subsidies as well as funding through state and local taxes. This issue is not new, as study of subsidized stadiums by the Department of Economics at the College of the Holy Cross noted that “construction costs alone for major league professional sports facilities have totaled in excess of $30 billion in nominal terms over the past two decades with over half of the cost being paid by the public.”

Of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with watching sports. However, it has become far more than just a game in this country. It is used to promote militarism, divide, and serve as bread and circus while the empire spreads across the globe. As the study mentions above, all of this comes with a hefty price tag too. Americans are quite literally financing their own distraction. 

As Reason magazine reported this week, if approved by the New York legislature, the New York Bills’ taxpayer-funded stadium would be the biggest public handout in NFL history.

State and local taxpayers will contribute about $850 million toward the estimated $1.4 billion stadium project. Most of the public funds are coming from the state but Erie County, where the Bills’ new stadium will be built down the street from their current home, will contribute $250 million of the total. That’s a huge contribution from a local government that in 2021 spent a little more than $1.5 billion on its entire budget. The Bills owners, which include multi-billionaire Terry Pegula, are chipping in just $300 million while the NFL will cover the remaining $200 million with a loan to the team, according to the Times.

“It’s a great day for western New York and I’m really proud to negotiate such a good deal for the state and our many, many fans,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said, according to the Associated Press.

While the sticker price for taxpayers is just $850 million on the surface, Neil deMause at Field of Schemes reminds us that the county — funded by taxpayers — will spend $75 million out of this year’s budget, and bond out the other $175 million and pay it back later. What’s more, the taxpayers are on the hook for another $6 million a year, for 30 years for a “Capital Improvement Fund” which will be used to upgrade the stadium for the next 30 years, plus an unknown additional amount of money from the county; and $6.67 million a year in state money for 15 years toward a “maintenance and repair fund.”

As deMause points out, “without counting that undetermined county expense on future upgrades, that’s worth about another $160 million in present value, bringing the total public subsidy to $1.01 billion — pretty much exactly what Hochul and Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz swore last week it was not.”

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Top NYC health official sparks outrage after she refers to whites as ‘birthing people’ but calls pregnant blacks and Hispanics ‘mothers’ in tweet

New York City‘s top health official sparked outrage for a series of tweets where she referred to whites as ‘birthing people’ and blacks and Hispanics as ‘mothers’ 

On March 23 Dr. Michelle Morse, the first medical officer at the NYC Department of Health tweeted about the expansion of a new citywide ‘birth equity’ initiative.

In her tweets Morse, who also works as the department’s deputy commissioner for the Center for Health Equity and Community Wellness, refers to one group of moms by the woke term ‘birthing people’ and black and Hispanics as ‘mothers’ 

‘The urgency of this moment is clear. Mortality rates of birthing people are too high, and babies born to Black and Puerto Rican mothers in this city are three times more likely to die in their first year of life than babies born to non-Hispanic White birthing people,’ she wrote in a tweet. 

The tweets caused an uproar and Morse was accused of being divisive and separating mothers due to their race, with white mothers falling into the ‘birthing people’ category. 

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Rep. Ayanna Pressley says black and Latinx commuters ‘are disproportionately criminalized by fare evasion policies’

Rep. Ayanna Pressley popped up on Twitter Saturday to urge Congress to pass her Freedom to Move Act, which would “grant Black and brown riders the freedom to navigate their community without fear.” Apparently, black and Latinx commuters are hardest hit by “fare evasion policies.” It was back in 2019 when fellow squad member Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made a similar point, tweeting that “arresting people who can’t afford a $2.75 fare makes no one safer and destabilizes our community.” We suspect no one was arrested for not being able to afford subway fare; our suspicion is that the arrests had more to do with not paying one’s subway fare.

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Eric Adams considering using drones to fight NYC crime, sources say

Mayor Eric Adams is mulling a mini-army of drones to fight surging crime in the Big Apple — possibly deploying the high-flying robocops from rooftops as watchful guardians of Gotham, sources told The Post.

Tel Aviv-based Blue White Robotics and Easy Aerial of Brooklyn were two drone manufacturers featured earlier this month at an event to launch a NYC-Israel Chamber of Commerce.

Adams attended the gathering in the Williamsburg Hotel, and sources said the mayor was so impressed with the joint presentation that he suggested his chief technology officer Matthew Fraser and the firms’ honchos begin talks about the city potentially buying drones and expanding the NYPD’s use of them.

“Eric is a big booster of drones and how they can be used to streamline government function, but obviously whatever he would try to roll out would be constrained” under existing laws limiting drone use, said a source familiar with the mayor’s thinking.

The drone makers – whose clients include the US Department of Defense, Air Force and Customs and Border Protection – say they’ve dubbed the plan the “Soteria Project,” derived from a Greek word meaning “deliverance from a crisis.”

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Sarah Lawrence ‘sex cult’ leader Larry Ray allegedly tortured victim in hotel for hours

Accused Sarah Lawrence sex-cult leader Larry Ray allegedly tortured one of his victims for hours, suffocating her with a plastic bag after binding her to a hotel chair — and at one point stopped to have burgers and fries with his top lieutenant during the abuse, a witness testified Thursday. 

The alleged victim, Claudia Drury, 31, detailed the horrific, seven-hour torture session under questioning by a federal prosecutor at Ray’s racketeering and sex-trafficking trial in Manhattan federal court. 

Drury said Ray became enraged at her in October 2018 after she told one of her “main clients,” whom she identified as a man named Stuart Piltch, that Ray published his name on a website associated with her work as a prostitute. 

When he found out Drury told Piltch about the website, Ray and his alleged accomplice, Isabella Pollok, came to the Gregory Hotel in Midtown, where she was living and meeting clients, and began to torture her, she told jurors. 

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NYC’s elite are in a tizzy after Justice Department ‘inadvertently’ publishes list of 121 ‘clients’ – including lawyers, businessmen, and socialites – who solicited Sarah Lawrence ‘sex cult victim’ who was forced into prostitution

New York’s business elite was left shaking in its boots Tuesday after a list of alleged clients of the student prostitute in the Sarah Lawrence ‘sex cult’ case was inadvertently published online.

The list, which was entered into evidence under seal in the ongoing trial of accused cult leader Larry Ray, includes lawyers and businessmen and socialites throughout the Tri-state area.

DailyMail.com acquired a copy of the list of 121 names which was taken down nearly as fast as it was put up.

A top executive at The Gap clothing firm and her husband was one of two married couples included. A former New York State Supreme Court judge is also named.

Another alleged client is a painter who has studios in Manhattan’s East Village and in Italy. A third is an architect, famous for designing college and university buildings. 

An investment executive who was also in pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous little black book of contacts is also listed.  

Other names include a hedge fund manager who has donated millions to charity and has his name on a museum building in New York, a Washington DC, lobbyist who has worked for a foreign resistance movement and an international diamond dealer. 

Also included is an executive at the Metropolitan Transit Authority, an account executive at Amazon and a veteran travel writer. 

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