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Flu shots for Wall Street stirs ire in New York City

New York City health officials scrambled to explain themselves on Thursday in the wake of media reports about bankers who got scarce H1N1 flu vaccines through their employers.

A shortage of H1N1 vaccines has frayed nerves, and public health departments across the country say they will not be able to meet the bulk of the demand until December or January. The CDC estimates swine flu has infected more than five million people and it is documented as having killed 1,000.

» Reuters [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Bloomberg Buys Election Through Money and Muscle?

A close adviser to the mayor, who stayed neutral in the presidential race, described the campaign’s pitch to the White House this way: “He didn’t pick sides in your race. Don’t pick sides in his.”

In the race for mayor of New York City, there was one campaign on the surface. But there was a more dramatic effort, unfolding behind the scenes, that really mattered: ensuring, through money and muscle, that Mr. Bloomberg faced no serious obstacle to winning a third term.

Mr. Sheekey pushed what he called the Powell Doctrine — a burst of overwhelming force that would discourage anybody who was even thinking about taking on the mayor.

» NY Times [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Swine Flu Causes Brawl On NYC Subway

Coughing, spitting, hair pulling, punching and much more.

More than a few sympathized with the woman who was coughed on. "She wasn't even covering her mouth," said one woman. "That sh-t was going all over the train." Added a male witness: "I could have decked her too. That swine flu is treacherous."

» Business Insider [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

NYC MTA Looks To London On How To Run A Subway

The Guardian described the agreement as an “apparent admission of inferiority on the part of New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority towards its equivalent public body across the pond.”

» The Guardian [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

New York Newspapers In A Death Spiral

Daily (Monday-Friday) circulation for the six months ending September 2009 from the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The percent change compares the same six-month period ending September 2008.

THE NEW YORK TIMES -- 927,851 -- (-7.28%)
DAILY NEWS (NEW YORK) -- 544,167 -- (-13.98%)
NEW YORK POST -- 508,042 -- (-18.77%)
NEWSDAY -- 357,124 -- (-5.40%)

» NYC Blog [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Obama Declares Swine Flu a National Emergency

He is clearing the way for legal waivers to allow hospitals and doctors offices to better handle a surge of new patients.

» Rx Blog [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Michael Bloomberg Spends $85 Million On Reelection Campaign..

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has spent more of his own money in pursuit of public office than any other individual in U.S. history, spending $85 million as of Friday on his latest reelection campaign.

» NYC Blog [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

NYC's Model City: Ever-Present Surveillance Rankles the British Public

It has become commonplace to call Britain a “surveillance society,” a place where security cameras lurk at every corner, giant databases keep track of intimate personal details and the government has extraordinary powers to intrude into citizens’ lives.

A report in 2007 by the lobbying group Privacy International placed Britain in the bottom five countries for its record on privacy and surveillance, on a par with Singapore.

» NY Times / Privacy Int. PDF Report [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

109,698

Estimated total NYC jobs lost since August 2008

» Department of Labor, as of 10/16/09 [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Swine Flu: Mandatory H1N1 Flu Shot Order Rescinded By New York Officials

New York state health officials have suspended a ruling that would have forced health care workers across the state to get vaccinated against the swine flu by the end of November or risk losing their jobs, saying in a decision issued Thursday that they did so because the vaccine is in short supply.

» NYC Blog [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

MTA Considers Lower Off-Peak Fares

A pricing policy that would offer passengers discounts to ride late at night and on weekends.

“We have an infrastructure that is set for the capacity of the peak,” Mr. Walder said. “What we really want to do is use that infrastructure all the time.”

» NYC Blog [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

New York City Unemployment Surges To 10.3 Percent

The official unemployment rate does not count all people who are out of work, only those who are actively seeking full-time jobs. If all out-of-work New Yorkers were included, the city’s unemployment rate would be 15.8 percent

» NYC Blog [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

NYPD tracking cell phone owners, but foes aren't sure practice is legal

The NYPD is amassing a database of cell phone users, instructing cops to log serial numbers from suspects' phones in hopes of connecting them to past or future crimes.

The cell phone information joins another database of more than 20 million 911 callers that the NYPD has been building. It has paid off. The NYPD started collecting 911 data for incidents involving a police response in 2003. Four years ago, it began putting the information into its new computer nerve center, the Real Time Crime Center.

» NY Daily News [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

New York City or Iran?

As demonstrations have evolved with the help of text messages and online social networks, so too has the response of law enforcement.

On Thursday, F.B.I. agents descended on a house in Jackson Heights, Queens, and spent 16 hours searching it. The most likely reason for the raid: a man who lived there had helped coordinate communications among protesters at the Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh.

» NY Times [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Unemployment Becoming Leading Indicator for Pimco’s New Normal

Mohamed El-Erian says economists are wrong to dismiss unemployment as merely a lagging indicator, a sign of where the economy has been. For the chief executive officer of Pacific Investment Management Co., the 26-year high jobless rate is also an omen of things to come.

“Today’s unemployment rate is much more than a lagging indicator,” said El-Erian, whose Newport, California-based Pimco manages the world’s largest bond fund, in an e-mail after the Labor Department report on Oct. 2. “It is also a signal of future pressures on consumption, housing and the country’s social safety net.”

» Bloomberg [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Report: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Secretly Jewish

Shocking claim from British newspaper the Daily Telegraph: Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is Jewish!

The Telegraph reports, "A photograph of the Iranian president holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 clearly shows his family has Jewish roots" "A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian - a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver. The short note scrawled on the card suggests his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth.

» Telegraph [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Bloomberg: 'We can't just say everybody can go everyplace and do anything they want'

A network of private and public surveillance cameras, license plate readers and weapons sensors already established in Lower Manhattan as an electronic bulwark against terrorist attacks will soon expand to a large patch of Midtown Manhattan, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said Sunday as they announced the allocation of $24 million in Homeland Security grants toward the effort.

» NY Times [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

$64,756,118.47

That's how much Michael Bloomberg's campaign has spent so far. Since the last campaign filing on July 11, Bloomberg has spent $28 million, which which Sara Kugler calculated to be a rate of spending of $15,000 per an hour.

» Politickerny [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Manhattan Apartment Prices Drop for Second Quarter

Manhattan apartment prices fell for a second consecutive quarter, helping drive the biggest gain in sales in more than 13 years as buyers seized on discounts.

The median price slid 8.4 percent to $850,000 in the third quarter from a year earlier. The number of sales jumped 46 percent from the second quarter. Values fell for cooperatives and condominiums of every size and price as New York City’s unemployment rate jumped to 10.3 percent in August.

» Bloomberg [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Man denies Letterman 'blackmail'

A man has pleaded not guilty to trying to blackmail chat show host David Letterman over sexual relationships he had with female staff members. CBS employee Robert "Joe" Halderman, who was arrested on Thursday, appeared in court in New York.

» BBC

Letterman reveals 'sex blackmail'
US chat show host David Letterman has confessed during a recording of his show he has had sexual relationships with female members of his staff.

"I have had sex with women who work for me on this show," he told an audience in New York, saying an attempt had been made to blackmail him over the affairs. Letterman said "a guy" had threatened to expose the relationships unless a payment of $2m (£1.2m) was made.

» BBC [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

New York And Northeast U.S. May Experience 'Coldest Winter in Decade'

The U.S. Northeast may have the coldest winter in a decade because of a weak El Nino. Warming in the Pacific often means fewer Atlantic hurricanes and higher temperatures in the U.S. Northeast during January, February and March, according to the National Weather Service. El Nino occurs every two to five years, on average, and lasts about 12 months, according to the service.

“It could be one of the coldest winters, or the coldest, winter of the decade”

» Bloomberg [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

FCC To Support 'Net Neutrality' And Open Internet

The U.S. government plans to propose broad new rules Monday that would force Internet providers to treat all Web traffic equally, seeking to give consumers greater freedom to use their computers or cellphones to enjoy videos, music and other legal services that hog bandwidth.

The move would make good on a campaign promise to Silicon Valley supporters like Google Inc. from President Barack Obama, but will trigger a battle with phone and cable companies like AT&T Inc. and Comcast Corp., which don't want the government telling them how to run their networks.

Treating Web traffic equally means carriers couldn't block or slow access to legal services or sites that are a drain on their networks or offered by rivals.

» Reuters [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]
» Wall Street Journal
» Washington Post

Unemployment Hits 10.3% in New York City

In the year since the Lehman Brothers investment bank collapsed and others had to be rescued from failing, the number of unemployed city residents has risen to more than 415,000, the highest total on record. The still-shrinking financial sector, which had been the main engine of employment growth in the city before the downturn, has essentially been declared to be in a state of emergency.

» NY Times [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

UN Finds 'War Crimes' In Gaza Conflict By Israel And Palestinian Forces

While the long-anticipated, 575-page report condemned rocket attacks by Palestinian armed groups against Israeli civilians, it reserved its harshest language for Israel’s treatment of the civilian Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip, both during the war and through the longer-term blockade of the territory.

The report called Israel’s military assault on Gaza “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.”

» BBC / NY Times [ PDF ] UN Report [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

NYPD looking through Queens neighborhoods for powders, gels, TNT and fuses

A neighbor said she saw FBI agents armed with what she called machine guns storm the apartment building, and that one of them emerged carrying a box.

» Reuters [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

New York Faces Dramatic Consequences of Crisis

The global financial crisis began in Manhattan, and its effects are being felt far more strongly there than elsewhere. Mayor Michael Bloomberg says the situation is critical. Millions are fighting to keep their jobs. Is what is happening in New York today a harbinger of the fate of the rest of the world?

They still remember how things used to be. That's part of the problem. New York's heroes, the men and women who only yesterday considered themselves the knights and conquerors of Manhattan, remember all too well what New York was like in the 1970s -- the era before seven-figure salaries came to the Big Apple.

They remember -- and they see the signs. That's why they're afraid.

» Spiegel [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

NYC-Area Sea Levels May Rise Faster Than Other Cities

When major ice sheets thaw, they release enough fresh water to disrupt ocean currents world-wide and make the planet wobble with the uneven weight of so much meltwater on the move. Studying these effects more closely, scientists are discovering local variations in rising sea levels -- and some signs pointing to higher seas around metropolitan New York.

Sea level may rise faster near New York than at most other densely populated ports due to local effects of gravity, water density and ocean currents, according to four new forecasts of melting ice sheets. The forecasts are the work of international research teams that included the University of Toronto, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., Florida State University and the University of Bristol in the U.K., among others.

» WSJ [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

White House Econ Advisor: High Unemployment For Years To Come

The president’s chief economic adviser warned Friday that the nation’s unemployment rate could stay “unacceptably high” for years to come — a situation that would seriously complicate Barack Obama’s ability to convince Americans that he’s beating back the recession.

“The level of unemployment is unacceptably high,” National Economic Council Director Larry Summers said Friday. “And will, by all forecasts, remain unacceptably high for a number of years.”

Summers’ comments came in a briefing with reporters ahead of Obama’s speech in New York City on Monday, marking the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, an event widely regarded as having created a panic that caused the global economic meltdown.

» Politco [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Double-Dip Recession Still A Risk, Nouriel Roubini's Financial Times Interview

Economist Nouriel Roubini, the president of RGE Monitor who's often referred to as "Dr. Doom," recently sat down with Martin Wolf of The Financial Times, and said that the world faces a "rising risk" of a double-dip recession.

Earlier this year, he warned of a "perfect storm of rising oil prices, rising taxes and rising nominal and real interest rates on the public debt of many advanced economies."

In his interview with The Financial Times, Roubini was similarly pessimistic:

"I do agree with the consensus that we'll have a couple of quarters of strong economic growth. The question is whether the medium-term growth is going to be V-shaped a return to potential or anemic growth below potential. My view of it is that it's going to be anemic."

» Financial Times [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Swine flu (H1N1) hit estimated 10 percent of New Yorkers

The new H1N1 swine flu is estimated to have infected about 800,000 people in New York City in the spring, a top U.S. health official said on Sunday, citing a study due to be released later this week.

Dr. Thomas Frieden, who heads the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said surveys suggested the virus was widely spread around the city. Frieden was New York City's health commissioner before taking the top CDC job in June.

"In New York City where we had a lot of H1N1 this last spring the estimate is about 800,000 people, about 10 percent of New York City residents, got infected with the flu," Frieden said in an interview with C-SPAN television aired on Sunday.

"That's a lot of people."

» Reuters [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]