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30 Dec 2010 11:49

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U.S.: Rage against snow not really new thing with New Yorkers

  • 1969 Former mayor John V. Lindsay faced the kind of rage about a blizzard that Michael Bloomberg is currently facing.
  • 1996 Brooklyn borough president Howard Golden, accused the sanitation department of simply ignoring Brooklynites.
  • 2000 Rudy Guliani scored points against the Port Authority by ripping their inability to get the airports up to speed again.
  • 2001 Weatherman felt the rage of New Yorkers after a massive blizzard didn’t actually produce the pain promised. source

29 Dec 2010 21:53

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U.S.: Michael Bloomberg: Sorry about NYC’s crappy 911 service, guys

  • My heart really does go out to those who experienced trauma and tragedy during the storm. We take our emergency life-saving responsibilities very seriously and I’m extremely dissatisfied with the way our emergency-response systems performed.
  • New York mayor Michael Bloomberg • Expressing remorse about the crappy 911 service in NYC over the last couple of days due to the snow, which is leaving quite the mark on his reign. Multiple people died due to lacking and downright unavailable service, and over 1,700 911 calls went unanswered on Monday night and were stuck in a massive backlog. But the call volume itself was something else on Monday – 49,400 calls, the sixth-highest volume the emergency line has received in New York history. What happened, Mikey? source

28 Dec 2010 21:56

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U.S.: How many flights have been cancelled due to the NYC blizzard?

  • 9,726+ flights have been cancelled since Saturday due to weather
  • 1,335+ were cancelled today alone – which is still a freaking lot source

27 Dec 2010 22:46

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Offbeat: NYC blizzard’s worst victim: This unlucky Ford Explorer

  • We don’t know the sanitation workers who did this to this poor vehicle, but if we did, we’d smack them around for a little bit. (thanks Adam Griffiths)

25 Dec 2010 21:02

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U.S.: Gods of holiday travel converge on East Coast to ruin weekends

  • 16 inches of snow likely headed towards NYC tomorrow
  • one annoyed SFB staffer who may not be headed home tomorrow source
  • » Worst-case scenario: OK, OK, this storm hit the South first, so we can’t really complain that much, but at the same time, this storm could have a ripple effect on large swaths of the country. And it makes one regret taking an Amtrak up to Connecticut from D.C.

23 Dec 2010 14:12

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Biz: We hear Google bought this NYC building for over a billion dollars

  • See this building right here? It’s iconic in NYC – the former Port Authority building in the city. Guess who now owns it? That’s right, Google. In what could be the largest real estate deal in the U.S. this year, Google reportedly spent $1.9 billion on this building, which the company already uses for offices and data centers. Just to be meta, we grabbed the image using Street View. source

15 Dec 2010 20:54

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U.S.: NYC TV meteorologist arrested for filing false rape report

  • accusing Heidi Jones, an on-air personality and meteorologist for WABC in New York City, claimed that she was sexually assaulted in Central Park, then ran into her alleged victim a couple months later.
  • recanting Jones, when questioned about the accusations by police, recanted her story and said she made it up. She was later arrested for filing a false report and has been suspended by her employer. source
 

26 Nov 2010 11:51

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U.S.: Retired NYC fire marshal: I wanna kill Obama, then myself

  • It had been a good solid fifteen months or so. We were due for another one of these. Seems that Michael Bowden, a 77-year-old retired police officer and fire marshal who worked in NYC, had discussed a plan to kill Obama – and then himself – because he was not doing enough to help out African-Americans. (Bowden is white, by the way.) Police checked his Spartanburg, South Carolina home and found a ton of loaded semiautomatic weapons next to his bed, suggesting that he was well along with his plan. Obama has faced a handful of assassination plots like these, but generally it’s not because Obama is doing too little to help black people. So this is new. source

23 Nov 2010 21:43

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U.S.: Don’t let suspect’s acting role overshadow grisly Brooklyn murder

  • He was a very nice kid, a gentle kid. I can’t believe this, man. This is my Thanksgiving.
  • Brooklyn resident Serge Marcel • On the grisly murder of his sister, Yannick Brea. The main suspect in the murder, Michael Brea, is getting a lot of attention because he was in a couple of minor acting roles, including  an episode of “Ugly Betty.” But the murder itself is why this murder case should be getting lots of attention. Brea reportedly asked his mother if she believed in God, then killed her with a machete. She was found decapitated.  He’s being given a psychiatric evaluation and has been charged with second-degree murder. source

18 Nov 2010 00:13

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U.S.: Two dudes floated NYC-Subway-under-Hudson-River idea first

  • Know what’s awesome? When you offer up a crazy idea to make people’s lives easier, it gets ignored, and then, all of a sudden, The New York Times is playing it up as a lead headline. Such is the life of Steve Lanset and Ralph Braskett, who floated the idea of putting a NYC Subway tunnel under the Hudson River a whole five years before Michael Bloomberg got to the idea. source