Tag: new york

New York’s Proposed Minor Consent Law ‘Dangerous’ and ‘Misleading,’ Critics Say

New York state lawmakers are weighing legislation that would allow any child or teen under 18 to seek out and consent to medical treatment — including vaccines, dental procedures, hospitalization and even surgery — without parental consent, as long as the minor appears to have the mental capacity for making that decision.

Assembly Bill A6761, introduced by New York Assemblymember Karines Reyes (D-Bronx), also would allow Medicaid funds to pay for procedures and drugs administered to children.

Proponents of the legislation, such as the American Civil Liberties Union of New York, say the measure is about ensuring all youth have access to quality care.

But critics, including John Gilmore, founder and executive director of the nonprofit Autism Action Network, said the bill is dangerous.

“The bill’s biggest problem,” Gilmore told The Defender, “is that it allows any medical procedure to be done to children of any age without parental knowledge or consent. That’s the kicker.”

Gilmore said the bill has another problem, too: The “active summary” statement on the official New York Assembly website says it “allows homeless youth to give effective consent to certain medical, dental, health, and hospital services.”

But Gilmore said that statement is “deliberately misleading” because the bill’s text applies to more than just “homeless” youth seeking “certain” services.

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NYC public school aide obsessed with ‘queer vampires’ accused of sexually molesting 8-year-old girl

A former aide at a Harlem public school in New York City has been arrested on child sex crime charges.

Miles (Myles) McNeal, 25, of Yonkers, who uses “they/he” pronouns and who during his free time before the incident would rant about topics ranging from “sexy” and “queer” vampire stories to the “white supremacy” of the “capitalist system,” has been accused of sexually abusing an 8-year-old girl over nearly a year.

McNeal has been charged with child sex abuse, using a child in a sexual performance, and other lesser counts, court records show. He is being held at Rikers Island. McNeal pleaded not guilty to the charges in Manhattan Criminal Court on Friday.

He was arrested on Thursday by detectives with the Manhattan Child Abuse Squad. A judge set his bail at $75,000 cash or $200,000 bond.

According to charging documents, McNeal first began to target the 8-year-old student victim on Sept. 8, 2022. He allegedly molested and took nude photos of the child at the school. The abuse lasted until at least Aug. 18, 2023, prosecutors said. NYPD released a mugshot of McNeal on Satuday with arresting details.

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NYC launches $53M program to hand out pre-paid credit cards to migrant families

Mayor Eric Adams’ administration will soon start handing out pre-paid credit cards to migrant families being put up in Big Apple hotels, The Post has learned.

The $53 million pilot program, run by the New Jersey company Mobility Capital Finance, will provide asylum seekers arriving at the Roosevelt Hotel with the city cash to help them buy food, according to city records.

It’ll start with a group of 500 migrant families in short-term hotel stays and will replace the current food service offered there, according to City Hall.

The cards can only be used at bodegas, grocery stores, supermarkets and convenience stores — and migrants must sign an affidavit swearing they will only spend the funds on food and baby supplies or they will be kicked out of the program.

The Immediate Response Card initiative appears akin to the state’s food stamp program, dubbed SNAP, which provides lower-income New Yorkers with a credit card to cover the cost of meals, and will provide funds based on the same scale.

The amount on each card will vary depending on the size of the family and whether any income is coming in, according to the details of the contract.  A family of four, for instance, could be provided nearly $1,000 each month, which comes out to $35 per day for food. Cards will get refilled every 28 days.

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‘Sect and the city’: Striking photo shows bosses of ‘orgasm cult’ OneTaste leave NYC courthouse with female entourage, after two of them were charged with forcing women into sex acts

It made for a glamorous change to the usual perp walk outside Brooklyn Federal Court.

The founder and the ex-sales boss at ‘orgasmic meditation cult’ OneTaste dressed to impress as they appeared with an entourage of supporters to face charges of forcing women into sex acts and keeping them in ‘residential warehouses‘.

But there were no grimy mugshots for Nicole Daedone and Rachel Cherwitz as they faced down photographers outside the New York courthouse for a procedural hearing on Thursday. 

Their San Francisco based company was making $12million a year from their sexual disfunction treatments for women which included being genitally massaged by a man with a latex glove.

It won praise from celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow and Khloe Kardashian, and welcomed 35,000 people to its events in 2018.

But the FBI began investigating in November that year after ex-customers came forward saying they were left in debt after paying for expensive classes, and former employees said they were ordered to have sex with potential investors.

Former staffer Ayries Blanck filed a lawsuit against the company in August of 2015, claiming they subjected her to a ‘hostile work environment, sexual harassment, failure to pay minimum wage and intentional infliction of emotional distress’.

But she was counter-sued by the group for breaking a non-disclosure agreement when she contributed to the 2022 Netflix documentary Orgasm Inc: The Story of OneTaste in 2022.

Blanck’s sister Autymn repeated allegations that OneTaste ‘condoned violence’ and ‘found strangers to rape her’.

Prosecutors say that Daedone and former head of sales Rachel Cherwitz deployed a series of abusive and manipulative tactics against volunteers, contractors, and employees.

They also claim the duo rendered OneTaste members dependent on the group for their shelter and basic necessities and limited their independence and control.

The company operated in 39 cities including New York, San Francisco, Denver, Las Vegas, Boulder, Los Angeles, Austin and London, but some former customers alleged that they were ‘raped’ after becoming involved in the company, with one telling the BBC she was attacked by a man called ‘Jake’.

The company closed all of their US locations in 2018 halting all in-person classes, and Anjuli Ayer, who became CEO in 2017 is not facing charges.

But she told Dailymail.com last year the allegations are ‘totally false’, and that consent is the ‘first thing’ they teach.

‘I did not anticipate a five-year snowballed media campaign of negative allegations against us,’ she added.

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The US Has Failed to Pass AI Regulation. New York City Is Stepping Up

AS THE US federal government struggles to meaningfully regulate AI—or even function—New York City is stepping into the governance gap.

The city introduced an AI Action Plan this week that mayor Eric Adams calls a first of its kind in the nation. The set of roughly 40 policy initiatives is designed to protect residents against harm like bias or discrimination from AI. It includes development of standards for AI purchased by city agencies and new mechanisms to gauge the risk of AI used by city departments.

New York’s AI regulation could soon expand still further. City council member Jennifer Gutiérrez, chair of the body’s technology committee, today introduced legislation that would create an Office of Algorithmic Data Integrity to oversee AI in New York.

If established, the office would provide a place for citizens to take complaints about automated decisionmaking systems used by public agencies, functioning like an ombudsman for algorithms in the five boroughs. It would also assess AI systems before deployment by the city for bias and discrimination.

Several US senators have suggested creating a new federal agency to regulate AI earlier this year, but Gutiérrez says she’s learned that there’s no point in waiting for action in Washington, DC. “We have a unique responsibility because a lot of innovation lives here,” she says. “It’s really important for us to take the lead.”

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Large Underground Hidden Tunnel Found in New York State

Some of these ‘hidden’ tunnels in New York State were part of the underground railroad or from prohibition and you have to see these pictures.

If there was a hidden tunnel under your house, you would be super surprised. Maybe even scared to know where it goes to, but here in the Buffalo area there are quite a few of these ‘hidden tunnels’. These are pretty crazy. You have to see some of these pictures below.

Bartel Miller, a Buffalonian posted in the Facebook group, Buffalo, A Toast to the town about places where all of these very, very old tunnels in Buffalo could be found. There were quite a few people who have been arrested around town that say they have walked the tunnel to the Holding Center and they say that it is, in fact, creepy.

Where else are there some underground not-so-hidden tunnels?

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Migrant family with two young children camp in the freezing cold outside the NYC offices of billionaire George Soros, 93, who poured at least $47 million into backing loose immigration policies and open border

A migrant family with two young children have camped in the freezing cold outside the New York City offices of billionaire George Soros, 93, who poured at least $47 million into backing loose immigration policies and open borders.

Shocking footage captures the woman and two young children sitting on the busy sidewalk outside the headquarters of the Open Society Foundation, a nonprofit organization established by far-left billionaire Soros in Midtown Manhattan.

Consultant Jason Curtis Anderson, who shared the video on X, formerly Twitter, stated that the mother, an Asian migrant, has been there with her two babies for more than a week.

Anderson, who works nearby, wrote alongside the video: ‘An Asian immigrant and her two small children currently live on the sidewalk in front of the NYC headquarters of Open Society Foundation.’

The family’s presence on the streets of Manhattan came as city officials have struggled to accommodate migrants surging from the U.S.-Mexico border, with thousands sleeping in tents outside the city’s largest migrant shelter.

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Judge orders release of ‘Newburgh Four’ defendant and blasts FBI’s role in terror sting

A man convicted in a post-9/11 terrorism sting was ordered freed from prison by a judge who criticized the FBI for relying on an “unsavory” confidential informant for an agency-invented conspiracy to blow up New York synagogues and shoot down National Guard planes.

U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon on Friday granted James Cromitie, 58, compassionate release from prison six months after she ordered the release of his three co-defendants, known as the Newburgh Four, for similar reasons. The four men from the small river city 60 miles (97 kilometers) north of New York City were convicted of terrorism charges in 2010.

Cromitie has served 15 years of his 25-year minimum sentence. The New York-based judge ordered Cromitie’s sentence to be reduced to time served plus 90 days.

Prosecutors in the high-profile case said the Newburgh defendants spent months scouting targets and securing what they thought were explosives and a surface-to-air missile, aiming to shoot down planes at the Air National Guard base in Newburgh and blow up synagogues in the Bronx. They were arrested after allegedly planting “bombs” that were packed with inert explosives supplied by the FBI.

Critics have accused federal agents of entrapping a group men who were down on their luck after doing prison time.

In a scathing ruling, McMahon wrote that the FBI invented the conspiracy and identified the targets. Cromitie and his codefendants, she wrote, “would not have, and could not have, devised on their own” a criminal plot involving missiles.

“The notion that Cromitie was selected as a ‘leader’ by the co-defendants is inconceivable, given his well-documented buffoonery and ineptitude,” she wrote.

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NY unveils first rules for growing marijuana at home: How you can cultivate cannabis

This will take home gardens to new highs.

New York State cannabis regulators on Tuesday unveiled the first rules for budding growers to legally plant pot at home.

Stoners with a green thumb — and over the age of 21 — will be able to cultivate a maximum of six mature marijuana plants and posses up to five pounds of flower or concentrate from those buds per household.

The state Cannabis Control Board was scheduled to discuss the rules Wednesday but postponed the vote for a later date.

Following their approval, there would be a 60 day public comment period before the rules can go into effect.

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Squad member Jamaal Bowman on slave reparations – says he wants ALL 42 MILLION black Americans to get $333,000 and reveals ‘creative ways’ to pay them

A New York lawmaker is calling for every black person in the US to receive $333,000 as reparations for slavery.

Jamaal Bowman is among nine backers of federal bill H.R. 414, which states there is a ‘moral and legal obligation’ to make restitution to the descendants of slaves.

The legislation would force the government to distribute $14 trillion between almost 42 million black Americans.

The figure is based on academics’ estimates of the amount the US benefited from forced labor between 1619 and the end of slavery in 1865, according to the bill.

Yonkers representative Bowman, a member of the so-called ‘Squad’ of young controversial Democrats in Congress, also suggested ‘creative’ ways of paying, including staggering the payments over a number of years.

He also claims the federal government’s response to the pandemic and the space race prove it has the capacity for the program. 

‘When COVID was destroying us, we invested in the American people in a way that kept the economy afloat,’ Bowman told the Journal News. ‘The government can invest the same way in reparations without raising taxes on anyone.’

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