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White Plains newspaper The Journal- News, a Gannett publication, has published the full name and address of every licensed pistol permit holder in three New York counties. I don’t know whether the Journal’s publisher Janet Hasson is a permit holder herself, but here’s how to find her to ask: (UPDATE: Uh oh – InstaPundit’s linked here. Hundreds of thousands of readers; Janet, you have a great Christmas Eve) Janet Hasson, 3 Gate House Lane, Mamaroneck, NY 10534. Phone number: (914) 694-5204 Here’s a photo showing her Mamaroneck house – interior shots are on Zillow: UPDATE: From reader RJS: Gannett’s CEO- Gracia C Martore 728 Springvale Rd Great Falls, VA 22066 (703) 759-5954 The reporter on the story is Dwight R Worley 23006 139 Ave Springfield Gardens, NY 11413 (718) 527-0832 UPDATE: Intrepid readers have come up with all sorts of contacts for these people: EDITOR: Miss Royle’s married name is Lambert. She lives in White Plains and here is her Facebook page complete with pictures of her and her kids. Hello Sanctimony. http://www.facebook.com/CynDeeRoyle Cynthia R Lambert 17 Mcbride Ave White Plains, NY 10603 (914) 948-9388 Work: 914-694-5001 [email protected] https://twitter.com/croyle1 https://www.facebook.com/cyndee.royle.7 https://www.facebook.com/CynDeeRoyle Drives a red convertible:http://s13.postimage.org/k8ffnxuo7/cyndee_royle_aka_cynthia_lambert_red_convertible.jpg Family photo: http://s7.postimage.org/dkqtytvyj/cyndee_royle_aka_cynthia_lambert_fb_alt_private.jpg Publisher, Janet Hasson, 3 Gate House Lane, Mamaroneck NY, 10543 (914) 694-5204 Reporter, Dwight R. Worley, 23006 139 Ave Springfield Gardens, NY 11413 (718) 527-0832 The “Visual Editor” responsible for the map itself is: Robert F. Rodriguez Stephanie Azzarone Home (212) 222-4566 420 Riverside Dr, Apt 7A New York, NY 10025-7748 Publisher: Janet Hasson (@janhasson on twitter) 3 Gate House Rd, Mamaroneck, NY 10534 GANNET CEO: Gracia C Martore 728 Springvale Rd Great Falls, VA 22066 (703) 759-5954 Janet Hasson herself is married with one child, and her personal interests, as culled from her credit card records, are noted below: ||||| The map indicates the addresses of all Journal News Employees in the New York Tri-State area. Each dot represents an individual Journal News employee -- a reporter, editor or staffer. The data does not include freelancers — reporters or photographers — which can be hired without being an employee. Being included in this map does not mean the individual at a specific location is a responsible reporter or editor, just that they are a reporter or editor. Data for all categories is included, but certain information is not available on an individual basis. To create the map, Talk of the Sound submitted Google searches for the names and addresses of all Journal News employees in the New York Tri-State area. By state law, the information is public record. Readers are still putting together records and could not immediately provide some data. The map will be updated when that data is released. UPDATE: The Journal News has removed their gun map. Before you ask. "No, we are not taking down our map". My Washington Examiner Op-Ed is now up: Why I will not be taking down my map of Journal News employees View Journal News Employees in a larger map Welcome Instapundit readers! Thanks Glenn. Welcome For What It's Worth readers. Thanks Chris. Welcome Gateway Pundit readers. Thanks Jim. Welcome Newsbusters readers. Thanks Tom. Welcome Atlantic Wire and Yahoo! readers. Thanks J.K. Welcome readers of The Blaze. Thanks Liz. Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute has a thoughtful article on the journalistic considerations behind the Journal News decision to publish their map. I find myself entirely in agreement with his views on this issue. The problem is not that the Gannett-owned Journal News was too aggressive. The problem is that the paper was not aggressive enough in its reporting to justify invading the privacy of people who legally own handguns in two counties it serves. GOING GLOBAL: El Pais, the largest-circulated daily in Spain, has linked this article. Politiken, one of Denmark's leading papers, has linked this article. The Daily Mail, the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper, linked this article. Toronto Sun, one of Canada's largest papers, has linked this article. Lenta.ru, one of the most popular Russian language online resources, has linked this article. My map is a "rather sad-looking Google map" according to Rebecca at The Gothamist. The links and traffic coming into the site are now in hyperdrive so I can no longer update every single link. Let me just give a general shout out to: Newser, Wizbang Blog, Politico, The Jawa Report, American Thinker, The New York Observer, Mediaite, The Village Voice, Gawker, Huffington Post, Live Leak, GOPUSA, San Francisco Chronicle, Reddit, I Own The World, Breitbart Big Journalism, World News Daily, New York Magazine, Yahoo! News, The Wrap, Free Republic, Lucianne, Ann Coulter, BizzyBlog, BizPacReview, Opposing Views, The Hartford Courant. I appeared on the The Ben Ferguson Show on WBAP in Dallas, TX Thursday morning (with Guest Host Steve Malzberg). On 12/28, I appeared on the nationally syndicated Bill Bennett's Morning: Bill Bennet Radio Show Cox 2012 1228 (.mp3) On 12/28, I appeared on the Schnitt Show on 12/28. His show is syndicated on about 50 stations nationwide. Guest hosting is my pal Pat Campbell of the The Pat Campbell Show weekday mornings on 1170 KFAQ in Tulsa, OK: Schnitt Show Cox 2012 1228 (.mp3) Talk of the Sound readers and other bloggers are involved in a sort of a crowd-sourcing on gather home addresses and other contact information for Journal News employees. Based on reader submissions and this site in particular I have created a list of names and information sought. I then mapped what I had (above). I will add what more I get from readers and my own poking around. If you see some public data that matches, send me a link to [email protected] and I will add it as quick as I can. Be advised that the Journal News has been in downsizing mode for the past several years. I have to wonder if all these names are current employees but we will treat them as such until we learn otherwise. The map was begun with 11 names. Help fill in the blanks below. ** = loaded into Google map UPDATE 12/27 11:30 AM: With the assistance of readers JK, SS, BW, AH and others, the following entries have been updated and added to the map. More are on the way. Added Info: Janet Hasson, Ed Forbes. New Entry: Thane Grauel, Elizabeth Ganga, Rick Carpiniello, Liz Anderson (Elizabeth Anderson Steinke), Nicole Futterman. The map now has 16 names. You will note that one Journal News employee, Ian Thane Grauel, has recently removed his LinkedIn profile and Twitter account. Also, that Cyndee has removed her Facebook page and hidden her tweets. I have received requested to remove the names of former Journal News employees and freelancers from this list and will continue to do so if those people make such a request. UPDATE 12/27 6:30 PM: Updated the database for Stacy A. Anderson, Jane Lerner, Steve Lieberman and Herb Pinder but still no home address information so still not on the map. The database and map has been updated for Janet Hasson. New to the map are Robert Brum, Anjanette Rieger Delgado, Randi Weiner, James Kwasnik, Tania Savayan, Phil Reisman. The map now has 22 names. Liz Anderson removed photos of her children from her Facebook page. She has also changed her Twitter account from @lizsteinke to @lizscribe. UPDATE 12/28 1:30 PM: Readers have provided enough information to put Alex Weisler, Hema Easley, Frank A. Becerra, Jr and Jonathon Bandler on the map which now has 26 names. Make that 27 names, I just added Steve Lieberman after reader SM showed I needed to edit Nancy Cutler and Lieberman. I removed Nicole Futterman, Dan Donovan, Jamie O'Grady and Howard Megdal as I am informed they are not full-time employees. I removed Rebecca Baker because she no longer works at the paper. I am finding that the Journal News has a lot of people listed on its web site as working for them who do not seem to actually work for them. Today, based on popular demand, I made the following FOIL request to the County Clerk's in Westchester, Rockland, and Putnam counties. Dear Mr. Clerk, This is a public records request. I would like to obtain a copy of the FOIL request made by the Journal News on through which they obtained information on pistol permit, any follow up communications with them regarding that request as well as any documents they obtained under FOIL. If they filed any sort of litigation to obtain additional information (e.g. an Article 78, etc.) I would like to obtain that as well. If this is a matter of forwarding some emails I would consider that an acceptable fill of my request. Where possible I would like records in electronic format. If possible, I would like the electronic documents converted into standard Microsoft Office format (Word, Excel, etc.). I would like all communications including the delivery of documents to take place via email as much as is possible based on the nature of the available records.. I would like the Records Access Officer to certify that the records are genuine. If the documents only exist in paper form I am willing to pay. If the cost of converting the documents to a standard electronic format or making photos copies exceeds $20.00 I would like prior notification of the estimated cost to comply with this records request. Sincerely, Robert Cox Managing Editor Talk of the Sound UPDATE: 12/30 8:30 AM I was interviewed for this article below but none of my answers were included. The writer, Ms. O'Donnell failed to mention in her email to me or in the article itself that she was, up until recently, a long-time employee of the Journal News. Reuters: New York newspaper to list more gun permit holders after uproar by Noreen O'Donnell. While she did not include my explanation as to why I created the map, she did manage to find a journalism professor to call me "childish and petulant". Some critics retaliated by posting reporters' and editors' addresses and other personal information online. Howard Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, called the critics' response childish and petulant. "It doesn't move the issue of gun control to the level of intelligent public discussion," he said. "Instead, it transforms what should be a rational public debate on a contentious issue into ugly gutter fighting." Draw your own conclusions about Ms. O'Donnell and Professor Good or why she gives him four paragraphs to criticize my actions and I get none to explain my actions. Here is my Q&A with the reporter that got left on the cutting-room floor. Q. What was your general reaction to the article and the map. A. Given the nature of my hyper-local site, I monitor lohud.com 24/7 so I saw the story as it was published to the web. I could not believe what I was seeing -- what I perceived to be a transparent attempt to intimidate and ostracize law-abiding citizens by using the Newtown murders as a pre-text to advance an anti-gun agenda and draw traffic to the site. You worked there so you know about their cost-cutting, outsourcing and pay-wall approach and how desperate things have become at the paper. At best, this map reeked of a stunt to drive traffic at the expense of private citizens who had done nothing that warranted having their privacy violated. In fact, I will not be surprised if there is a class-action lawsuit on privacy grounds. I can only laugh when the publisher claims the map is "journalism". The map is more like voyeurism than journalism with the Journal News acting as a digital "Peeping Tom", peering into the bedrooms of thousands of people just because they can. } The result is a map that is a bizarre form of "gun porn". The thought occurred to me to make a contra-Google Map the instant I saw the article. I was hesitant to do so because I am a First Amendment advocate and generally want to be supportive of newspapers and those who work there. I know plenty of people who work at Gannett, the Freedom Forum and the Newseum. I have spoken on panels at many of their events with people like Gene Policinski, Ken Paulson, John Seigenthaler and many others. I had the honor of being part of one of the inaugural exhibits at the Newseum for being the first blogger formerly credentialed as a blogger to cover a federal trial (Scooter Libby). I knew that creating such a contra-map was a serious, highly provocative move and would likely cause a number of the people referenced above to be very unhappy with me/ I mulled this over for two days. In the meantime my readers had taken it upon themselves to collect information about reporters and editors. They were also linking to Chris Fountain up in Greenwich, CT who is the one who really got the ball rolling. After being on the fence for a couple of days I decided to organize the efforts of my readers, create a crowd-sourcing project and start to build the contra-map. Q. Why did you decide to make the reporters' and editors' information public on the web. I trust you are aware that unlike most states, New York (and California) requires that a pistol permit holder to register EVERY handgun they own not just get the license. The initial Journal News FOIL request sought this information. I expect that the Journal News will ultimately prevail and get this information and update their map and make it searchable by weapon type. I would oppose that as I do the current iteration of the map. I did not want to merely respond but discourage further development of their map or at least give them pause. I wanted a direct and proportionate response in the spirit of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". I could not think of anything more direct and proportionate than flipping the script by using public records to map the folks at the Journal News the way they mapped my friends and neighbors. I hope they now realize that in the age of social media and blogs, the people known formerly as the audience, can throw a counterpunch from time to time. My map was my counterpunch. UPDATE: 12/30 8:45 AM Per my FOIL request (above) to the Putnam County Clerk, I obtain a copy of the email sent by the Journal News reporter who wrote the map story. From this it is clear the Journal News sought (and continues to seek) not to create just a map of "pistol permit holders" but a map of every gun registered in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties. The have requested information on every type of weapon including "manufacturer, type of weapon, caliber, serial number and model". Putnam-JN Pistol FOIL.pdf FOIL REQUEST Worley, Dwight [[email protected]] Mr. Bartolotti, Sent: Monday, December 17, 2012 2:26 PM To: Michael Bartolotti Under the provisions of the New York Freedom of Information Law, Article 6 of the Public Officers Law, I hereby request records or portions thereof pertaining to Putnam County’s pistol permit database. I am requesting the names, complete addresses, the type of permits issued (carry concealed/possess on premises/possess carry during employment), and the type of weapons possessed, including the weapon's manufacturer, type of weapon, caliber, serial number and model, for all permit holders in your database. Also, please provide a complete record layout and data dictionary for your pistol permits database. I would like all of the records in electronic format, such as a database, spreadsheet, plain text file or other digital format. I have been instructed instructed by you that state penal law prohibits the disclosure of the types of weapons possessed by permit holders even though such information is collected by the county. If it is determined that that category of information cannot be released please process my request, excluding the protected information, without delay. In your response, please indicate the specific sections of the law that expressly prohibit the disclosure of the protected information. As you know, all government records and data are presumed public unless there is a specific provision of law barring their release. So while the law expressly says names and addresses of permit holders are to be made public, if the law does not specifically bar the release of the types of permits issued and types of weapons possessed, that information can and should be released. In that case, I would expect that information to be included. As Robert Freeman, executive director of the New York State Committee on Open Government, has said in several opinions regarding the disclosure of pistol permit data beyond names and addresses, “the only instance in which records must be withheld would involve the case in which a statute prohibits disclosure. Again, as I interpret §400.00 of the Penal Law, there is nothing in that statute that precludes the custodian of the records at issue from disclosing the records.” If there are any fees for copying the records requested, please inform me before filling the request or please supply the records without informing me if the fees are not in excess of $25. This request is in relation to a news event. Because of the timely nature of this request, I ask that it be expedited. Also, because of time constraints, I ask that if there are any concerns or questions regarding this request that I be contacted by telephone at 914‐629‐1060 or by email at [email protected]. As you know, the Freedom of Information Law requires that an agency respond to a request within five business days of receipt of a request. Therefore, I would appreciate a response as soon as possible and look forward to hearing from you shortly. If for any reason any portion of my request is denied, please inform me of the reasons for the denial in writing and provide the name and address of the person or body to whom an appeal should be directed. Thank you for your prompt attention. Dwight R. Worley | Reporter/Data Analyst 1133 Westchester Avenue, Suite N110 White Plains, NY 10604 Voice: 914.629.1060 | Fax: 914.694.5018 E-mail: [email protected] | Web: lohud.com Twitter: twitter.com/lohud | Facebook: facebook.com/lohud Foursquare: foursquare.com/lohud | tumblr: lohud.tumblr.com Michael C. Bartolotti, First Deputy County Clerk of the Putnam Count Clerk's Office, responded to Worley on December 21st. Putnam-Pistol List FOIL 1.pdf Dwight R. Worley Journal News Media Group 1133 Westchester Avenue Suite N110 White Plains, NY 10604 RE: FOIL request Dear Mr. Worley: This office is in receipt of your electronic mail message dated December 17th, 2012 in which you request certain information in electronic format for all pistol permit files maintained by this office. This request is quite involved and will yield voluminous results. Further, certain information requested may be withheld due to operation of law. This office is currently working with its IT provider to compile the requested information. Upon a complete compilation of the information suitable for dissemination we will provide you with an estimate of cost as well as instructions on how to complete your request. I hope that you can work with this office by illustrating patience and if you have any questions please contact this office. Thank you very much. Sincerely Michael C. Bartolotti For those not familiar with the Freedom of Information Law in New York State, as a general summary, an agency has 5 business days to acknowledge receipt of a request for information and 22 business days after that to deny, fulfill or partially deny/partially fulfill a records request. After the 22 days the agency must provide the records or explain why they need more time and then provide a date certain when the records will be available. As a practical matter, a public records officer can keep a request pending for 27 business days and the requestor has no grounds to appeal or challenge the agency. Agencies can also charge for records based on a scale described in the statute. In this case, the Clerk got the request on Monday December 17th. The Clerk then waited until the last day of the week, Friday December 21st before acknowledging receipt and has still not provided the records. Adding in three holidays -- Christmas, New Year's Day and Martin Luther King Day -- the clerk does not have to deliver the records until January 25th, 2013. The Clerk's in Rockland County and Westchester County had the same option and chose to expedite the request. Readers can draw their own conclusions as to why 2 clerks turned over the requested records a month earlier than required and 1 clerk has still not turned over the requested records. I hope to have a copy of communications between the Journal News and the other two clerks soon. UPDATE: 12/30 9:22 AM This is interesting, from the Christian Science Monitor In an online survey, the Journal News finds overwhelming support – 89-11 percent – for the proposal to keep gun ownership private. UPDATE: 12/30 9:24 AM We made Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Journal_News#Controversy UPDATE: 12/30 9:30 AM The Westchester County Firearm Owners Association is an organization whose members were most directly targeted by the Journal News. They view the map as an attempt by the paper to "intimidate and bully lawful gun-owning citizens". In response, the WCFOA has compiled a list of Journal News Advertisers. gannett_advertisers_12-28-2012_c.pdf There has been a great deal of interest from readers in such a list so, with permission, we reprint that list below. The list is based on online resources and volunteers reviewing the print editions of the paper to identify advertisers. According to the WCFOA, the focus was on consumer-oriented advertiser so not every advertised was included in this list. The WCFOA is encouraging its members and supporters to write a short letter which starts by "quickly outlining the irresponsible Journal News act of publishing the names and addresses of pistol license holders (and a Google Map with directions and family members names)". The want the letters to state "you will no longer patronize any advertiser who uses Gannett unless and until that advertiser withholds further ads until Gannett takes down the pistol license page and ceases attacking lawful firearm ownership." MAJOR AND NATIONAL ADVERTISERS AARON'S aarons.com 1-877-607-9999 1-800-950-7368 Garet Hayes Senior Vice President Hope-Beckham, Inc. Office: 404.604.2602 Mobile: 770.403.8720 [email protected] Ace Hardware acehardware.com 2200 Kensington Court Oak Brook, IL 60523 U.S.A 1-866-290-5334 1.630.990.6600 ALDI Grocery aldi.us Aldi Inc. 1200 N Kirk Rd, Batavia, IL 60510-1443, United States Phone: (630) 879-8100 Corporate Phone Number: 1-630-879-8100 Babies 'R Us babiesrus.com Babies R Us Corporate Office Headquarters Toys R Us, Inc. 1 Geoffrey Way Wayne, NJ 07470-2030 USA Corporate Phone Number: 1-973-617-3500 Fax: 973-617-4006 Customer Service Number: 1-888-222-9787 Best Buy bestbuy.com Best Buy Corporate Office Headquarters in the USA: 7601 Penn Avenue South Richfield, MN 55423 Corporate Phone Number: 1-612-291-1000 Corporate Fax Number: 1-612-292-4001 Corporate Email: [email protected] the email [email protected] does not work. Please publish the below instead. Thanks. Susan Busch, Senior Director, Public Relations (612) 291-6114 or [email protected] Lisa Hawks, Director, Public Relations (612) 291-6150 or [email protected] or [email protected] Bloomingdales Corporate Office Headquarters Bloomingdale's, Inc. a division of Macy's 1000 3rd Ave. New York, New York 10022 USA Website: http://www.bloomingdales.com/ Corporate Phone Number: 1-212-705-2000 Customer Service Number: 1-800-777-0000 CVS Stores's Corporate Office Headquarters in the USA: CVS Caremark One CVS Drive Woonsocket, RI 02895 Corporate Phone Number: 1-401-765-1500 Corporate Fax Number: 1-401-762-2137 Corporate Email: [email protected] Dick's Sporting Goods Corporate Office Headquarters 300 Industry Drive RIDC Park West Pittsburgh, PA 15275 USA Corporate Phone Number: 1-724-273-3400 Fax Number: n/a Customer Service Phone Number: 1-877-846-9997 GNC Corporate Office Headquarters 300 Sixth Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15222 USA Corporate Phone Number: 1-412-288-4600 Customer Service Number: 1-877-462-4700 Office Depot Corporate Office Headquarters 6600 North Military Trail Boca Raton, Florida 33449 Corporate Phone Number: 1-561-438-4800 Corporate Fax Number: 1-561-438-4400 Corporate Email: [email protected] IKEA America USA 420 Alan Wood Rd. Conshohocken, PA 19428 USA Ikea USA Corporate Phone Number: 1-610-834-0180 Customer Service Number USA: 1-800-434-4532 JoAnn Fabrics Corporate Office Headquarters 5555 Darrow Rd. Hudson, Ohio 44236 USA Corporate Phone Number: 1-330-656-2600 Fax Number: 1-330-463-6675 Customer Service Number: 1-888-739-4120 K Mart Corporate Office Headquarters Sears, Roebuck and Company (kmart.com) 3333 Beverly Road Hoffman Estates, Illinois 60179 USA Corporate Phone Number: 1-847-286-2500 Corporate Fax Number: 1-847-286-8351 Customer Service Number: 1-866-562-7848 Kohl's Corporate Office Headquarters N56 W17000 Ridgewood Drive Menomonee Falls, WI 53051 USA Corporate Phone Number: 1-262-703-7000 Fax Number: 1-262-703-6143 Customer Service Number: 1-866-887-8884 Lowes Corporate Office Headquarters in the USA: 1000 Lowe's Blvd. Mooresville, NC 28117 Corporate Phone Number: 1-704-758-1000 Corporate Fax Number: 1-336-658-4766 Corporate Email: [email protected] Macy's Macys Corporate Office Headquarters HQ: 7 West Seventh Street Cincinnati, OH 45202 Corporate Phone Number: 1-513-579-7000 Michaels Corporate Office Headquarters Michaels Stores, Inc. 8000 Bent Branch Dr. Irving, TX 75063 USA Corporate Phone Number: 1-972-409-1300 Fax Number: 1-972-409-1556 Customer Service Number: 1-800-642-4235 Naturalizer Shoes 712 Lexington Ave New York, NY 10022 (212) 759-3094 Office Depot Corporate Office Headquarters 6600 North Military Trail Boca Raton, Florida 33449 Corporate Phone Number: 1-561-438-4800 Corporate Fax Number: 1-561-438-4400 Corporate Email: [email protected] OfficeMax Corporate Office Headquarters 263 Shuman Boulevard Naperville, IL 60563 Corporate Phone Number: 1-630-438-7800 Petco Corporate Office Headquarters Petco Animal Supplies Stores, Inc. 9125 Rehco Rd. San Diego, California 92121 USA Corporate Phone Number: 1-858-453-7845 Fax Number: 1-858-784-3489 Customer Service Number: 1-888-824-7257 PetSmart Corporate Office Headquarters PetSmart, Inc. 19601 North 27th Avenue Phoenix, AZ 85027 United States Corporate Phone Number: 1-623-580-6100 Fax: 1-623-395-6517 Customer Service Number: 1-888-839-9638 Proctor & Gamble Procter and Gamble Corporate Office Headquarters One Procter & Gamble Plaza Cincinnati, OH 45202 United States Corporate Phone Number: 1-513-983-1100 Fax: 1-513-983-4381 Customer Service Number: Product Specific Email: Online Only Radio Shack Corporate Office Headquarters RadioShack Corporation 300 RadioShack Circle, Mail Stop CF3-201 Fort Worth, TX 76102-1964 United States Corporate Phone Number: 1-817-415-3011 Fax Number: 1-817-415-2647 Customer Service Number: 1-800-843-7422 Sears Corporate Office Headquarters in the USA: Address: 3333 Beverly Road Hoffman Estates, Illinois 60179 USA Corporate Phone Number: 1-847-286-2500 Corporate Fax Number: 1-847-286-8351 Corporate Email: [email protected] Sleepy's sleepys.com Mattress Giant Corporate Office Headquarters Mattress Firm Holding Corp. 5815 Gulf Freeway Houston, TX 77023 USA Corporate Phone Number: 1-713-923-1090 Customer Service Number: 1-866-942-3551 Staples Corporate Office Headquarters Five Hundred Staples Drive Framingham, MA 01702 USA Corporate Phone Number: 1-508-253-5000 Fax Number: 1-508-253-8989 Customer Service Number: 1-800-333-3330 Target Corporate Office Headquarters HQ in the USA: 1000 Nicollet Mall Minneapolis, MN 55403 USA Corporate Phone Number: 1-612-304-6073 Corporate Fax Number: 1-612-761-5555 Corporate Email: Online only at http://www.target.com/ Toys R Us Corporate Office Headquarters Toys R Us, Inc. 1 Geoffrey Way Wayne, NJ 07470-2030 USA Corporate Phone Number: 1-973-617-3500 Fax: 973-617-4006 Customer Service Number: 1-800-869-7787 Email: Online Only True Value Corporate Office Headquarters True Value Company 8600 W. Bryn Mawr Ave. Chicago, IL 60631-3505 USA Corporate Phone Number: 1-773-695-5000 Customer Service Number: 1-773-695-5000 Verizon Verizon Corporate Office Headquarters 140 West Street New York, NY 10007 Corporate Phone Number: 1-212-395-1000 Corporate Fax Number: 1-212-571-1897 Walmart Corporate Office Headquarters in the USA 702 SW 8th Street Bentonville, Arkansas 72716-8611 Corporate Phone Number: 1-800-925-6278 or 1-479-273-4000 Corporate Fax Number: 1-479-277-1830 Corporate Email: [email protected] Walgreen Company Corporate Office 106 Wilmot Road, MS 1640 Deerfield, IL 60015 1-847-940-2500 Online Inquiries: 1-877-250-5823 Store Inquiries: 1-800-WALGREENS 1-800-925-4733 walgreens.com LOCAL ADVERTISERS: Acorn Starlifts acornstarlifts.com US Corporate office Acorn Stairlifts Inc. 7335 Lake Ellenor Drive Orlando Florida 32809 USA General Enquiries: 888-212-8995 1-877-281-5259 Acura of Ramsey www.AcuraOfRamsey.com 65 Route 17 South Ramsey, NJ 1-201-934-8200 Arroway Chevrolet www.ArrowayChevy.com Route 117 Mt. Kisco, NY 1-888-277-6929 Batteries & Bulbs Plus 300 Tarrytown Road White Plains, NY 1-914-997-9400 Big Dee Volvo www.BigDeeVolvo.com 262 East Main Street Elmsford, NY 1-866-395-6386 Bill Kolb Jr. Subaru www.BKCars.com Route 30 Orangeburg, NY 1-866-414-0814 Brewster Honda brewsterhonda.com 899 Route 22 Brewster, NY 1-845-278-4100 Croton Auto Park Route 9A & 129 Croton-On-Hudson, NY 1-914-271-5100 Curry Honda curryhonda.com 3845 Crompond Road Yorktown Heights, NY 1-866-486-9463 Curry Hyundai www.curryhyundai.com 3040 East Main Street Cortlandt Manor, NY 1-866-429-7471 Curry Nissan www.CurryNissan.com 3495 Crompond Road Yorktown Heights, NY 1-877-876-5324 Curry Subaru www.CurrySubaru.com 3040 East Main Street Cortlandt Manor, NY 1-866-489-2664 Curry Toyota CurryToyota.com 3026 East Main Street Cortlandt Manor, NY 1-888-886-0695 DCH Paramus Honda www.DCHParamusHonda.com 120 Route 4 East Paramus, NJ 1-877-606-1414 DCH Toyota Scion City dchtoyotacity.com 1305 E. Boston Post Road Mamaroneck, NY 10543 1-888-460-7112 Empire City Casino at Yonkers Raceway www.empirecitycasino.com 810 Yonkers Avenue Yonkers, NY 10704 1-914-968-4200 First Street www.jitterbugdirect.com 1998 Ruffin Mill Road Colonial Heights, VA 1-877-665-3312 Honda of New Rochelle www.HondaOfNewRochelle.com 25 East Main Street New Rochelle, NY 1-800-639-8294 First Street jitterbugdirect.com 1998 Ruffin Mill Road Colonial Heights, VA 1-877-665-3312 Hyundai of White Plains hyundaiofwhiteplains.com 130 Westchester Avenue White Plains, NY 1-800-730-7903 Jennifer Convertibles jenniferconvertibles.com 2373 Central Avenue Yonkers, NY 1-914-779-0214 Jennifer Convertibles www.jenniferconvertibles.com 2373 Central Avenue Yonkers, NY 1-914-779-0214 Jim Harte Nissan www.JimHarteNissan.com 283 North Bedford Road Mt. Kisco, NY 1-877-661-4901 KIA of West Nyack www.KiaOfWestNyack.com 250 Route 303 North West Nyack, NY 1-845-353-1919 Liberty Hyundai www.LibertyHyundai.com 305 Route 17 North Mahwah, NJ 1-201-529-2400 Mt. Kisco Honda mtkiscohonda.com Route 117 Bedford Hills, NY 1-914-666-0030 New Country Audi of Greenwich www.NewCountryAudi.com 181 West Putnam Avenue Greenwich, NY 1-203-661-1800 New Rochelle Chevrolet www.newrochellechevyny.com 291 Main Street New Rochelle, NY 1-800-750-2651 New Rochelle Hyundai www.HyundaiOfNewRoc.com 125 East Main Street New Rochelle, NY 1-914-654-8300 New Rochelle Toyota newrochelletoyota.com 47 Cedar Street New Rochelle, NY 1-888-498-4843 Nissan City www.nissancity.com 225 Boston Post Road Port Chester, NY 1-866-589-2356 P.C. Richard & Son, LLC pcrichardc.om 150 Price Pkwy. Farmingdale, New York 11735 USA 1-866-419-4096 Rockland Nissan www.RocklandNissan.com 608 Route 303 South Blauvelt, NY 1-888-614-8898 Rye Ford ryeford.com 1151 Boston Post Road Rye, NY 1-914-967-6300 Schultz Ford-Lincoln 877shultz.com 80 Route 304 Nanuet, NY 1-845-624-3600 Stickley Audi & Company stickleyaudi.com 207 W. 25th Street Manhattan, NY 1-212-337-0700 Tarrytown Honda tarrytownhonda.com 480 S. Broadway Tarrytown, NY 1-888-408-0673 Varmax Liquor Pantry varmax.com 19 Putnam Avenue Port Chester, NY 10573 1-914-937-4930 Westchester Subaru www.westchestersubaru.com 258 East Main Street Elmsford, NY 1-888-747-8929 Westchester Toyota www.westchestertoyota.com 2167 Central Park Avenue Yonkers, NY 10710 1-888-560-6662 Sales: 888-224-4595 Fax: 914-779-7623 White Plains Dodge Chrysler Jeep www.WhitePlainsChrysler.com 70 Westchester Avenue White Plains, NY 1-800-679-0328 White Plains Buick GMC www.WhitePlainsBuickGMC.com 358 Central Avenue White Plains, NY 1-800-799-6795 White Plains Honda whiteplainshonda.com 344 Central Avenue White Plains, NY 10606 1-877-553-9292 World Wide BMW worldwidebmw.com 125 E. Route 59 Spring Valley, NY 1-800-635-2697 UPDATED 12/30 5:45 PM Stacy A. Anderson and Yaron Weitzman were removed as they no longer work at the Journal News. Nancy Cutler, Elizabeth Ganga, Thane Grauel were on the map and updated. Scott Faubel is not on the map but was updated. New to the map are Jorge Fitz-Gibbon, Terence Corcoran, Jon Campbell, George Troyano, Brian Tumulty, Greg Shillinglaw, YS------, Shawn Cohen, Jane Lerner, Herb Pinder, Marcela Rojas, Eileen Zaccagnino, Mary Dolan, Theresa Juva-Brown, Laura Incalcaterra, and Colin Gustafson. There are 92 names on the list. That gets up to 42 names on the map. So we are just short of half at this point although may me understanting things as some of the 92 may no longer work at the Journal News or work as freelancers. We are only interested in full-time employees. The list is now color-coded. Employees in GREEN are on the map but may be missing some information which is indicated in RED. Employees in ALL RED are not on the map because we do not have home address information. There have been hundreds of emails with lots of suggestions but there are a few folks that have been working these names very hard over the past couple days and I want to acknowledge them by initials -- JK, PT, BM, BG, SM, CB, MR, GA, JD, SK, BW, SS, RH, GB, UPDATED 12/31 4:45 PM Removed Robert Marchant, he no longer works at the Journal News Add to the map are Vincent Mercogliano, Carrie Yale, Heather Salerno, Mauro Ferrotta, Scott Faubel, John Czarnecki, Terence Corcoran, Colin Gustafson, Ned Rauch, Marcela Rojas, Matthew Brown, Gary McGriff, Akiko Matsuda, Linda Lombroso, Betsy Lombardi, Elaine Kirsch, Robert Brum. That makes it 57 of 91 or 63%. We have 34 names left to either clear (are not full-time employees) or get on the map. They are Chris Brown , Albert Conte, Ed Cummins , Wilfred David , Mike Dougherty, Ricky Flores, Ernie Garcia, Tessa Garcia, Tim Henderson, Lee Higgins, Brian Howard, Liz Johnson , Chad Jennings, Peter Kramer, Rich Liebson , Cara Matthews , Sean Mayer, Joe McDonald, Caryn McBride , Mike Meaney , Jill Mercadante, Kathy Moore, Mareesa Nicosia, Cathey O’Donnell, James O'Rourke, Leah Rae , Ben Rubin, Khurram Saeed, Erik Shilling , Joe Spector, Gary Stern, Alex Taylor, and Chris Vaughan. As noted above, names below in GREEN are on the map but may be missing a single item (marked in RED). Names in red are the ones not yet on the map. UPDATED 1/1 6:30 PM Liz Johnson, Mike Meaney, Wilfred David, Cara Matthews were added to the map. YS------ was edited because we got an exact address. Chris Brown was removed because he is a freelancer. That makes it 61 of 90 or 68%. UPDATED 1/2 2:30 PM The following were added to the map: Caryn McBride, Mareesa Nicosia, Leah Rae, Erik Shilling, Ed Cummins and Rich Liebson. Ben Rubin was removed because he does not work there anymore. That gets us to 77 out of 89 or 75%. We have 12 names left to either clear (are not full-time employees) or get on the map. They are Albert Conte, Mike Dougherty, Ricky Flores, Ernie Garcia, Tessa Garcia , Tim Henderson , Lee Higgins, Brian Howard, Chad Jennings, Peter Kramer, Sean Mayer, Joe McDonald, Jill Mercadante , Kathy Moore, Cathey O’Donnell , James O'Rourke, Khurram Saeed, Joe Spector, Gary Stern, Alex Taylor, and Chris Vaughan . UPDATED 1/2 6:30 PM The following were added to the map: Jill Mercadante, Chris Vaughan, Tim Henderson, Tessa Garcia. Cathey O’Donnell was removed because she does not work there anymore. Wow! That gets us to 71 of 83 or 86% We have 12 names left to either clear (are not full-time employees) or get on the map. They are Albert Conte, Mike Dougherty, Ricky Flores, Ernie Garcia, Lee Higgins, Brian Howard, Chad Jennings, Peter Kramer, Sean Mayer , Joe McDonald , Kathy Moore, James O'Rourke, Khurram Saeed, Joe Spector , Gary Stern , and Alex Taylor. ADDED: Sean Mayer, Joseph Spector, Gary Stern REMOVED: Joe McDonald (no longer works at Journal News. That gets us to 74 of 82 or 90%. We have 8 names left. SMALL FAVOR TO MY TEAM: While I have this crack team of researches hard at work I will take everything you can find on these two individuals James Vincent Bonanno and his son, Vince James Bonanno. You can certainly appreciate that given my willingness to take on causes like this Journal News map I have made more than my share of The Bonannos are currently suing me for defamation in New York State Supreme Court because I accurately reported on their various misdeeds. They both work for the local school district. This is the father… James Vincent Bonanno 24 Ronalds Avenue New Rochelle, NY Not sure where the son lives… Vince James Bonanno ("Little Jimmy") Any information you can pull on them will be appreciated. Little Jimmy, a heroin addict who is in the Westchester County Methadone Program has at least one prior arrest that I know of, not sure about the father. I believe the father is also involved in various side-businesses. JOURNAL NEWS REPORTERS/EDITORS/STAFF **The Journal News/LoHud.com** Main Office: The Journal News 1133 Westchester Avenue Suite N110 White Plains, NY 10604 Main phone number: 914-694-9300 Report breaking news: 914-694-5077 **The Journal News/LoHud.com** Mount Kisco Bureau The Journal News 1133 Westchester Avenue 185 Kisco Avenue Mount Kisco, NY 10549 Main phone number: 914-666-6579 The Mt. Kisco office of The Journal News covers news and newsmakers in northern Westchester and Putnam. It is staffed editorially with advertising. Breaking news, features and editorials. **Liz Anderson (Elizabeth Anderson Steinke)** Westchester/Putnam Local News Editor The Journal News/LoHud.com 226 Read Avenue Tuckahoe, NY 10707 Home Phone: 914-779-2081 Work Phone: 914-696-8538 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/lizsteinke, https://twitter.com/lizsteinkelizscribe FB: https://www.facebook.com/lizsteinke LinkedIN: Image File: https://si0.twimg.com/profile_images/2429594937/al4lffav3ybii4f0df34.png **Jonathan Bandler** Investigations Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com 600 Columbus Ave #3H New York, NY 10024 212-579-7348 Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/jonbandler FB: http://www.facebook.com/jon.bandler LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jon-bandler/12/586/851 Image File: https://si0.twimg.com/profile_images/1764573322/.jpg **Frank A. Becerra, Jr.** Photographer The Journal News/LoHud.com 20 Ernest Road Brewster, NY 10509-4336 845-278-1933 Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: FB: https://www.facebook.com/frank.becerra.37 LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/frank-becerra/17/b00/4a0 Image File: http://www.lohudblogs.com/mugs/fbecerra.jpg **Matthew Brown** Photographer The Journal News/LoHud.com 90 Wood Street Mahopac, NY 10541-4904 914-769-5845 Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/MattBrownLoHud FB: LinkedIN: Image File: http://www.lohudblogs.com/mugs/mbrown.jpg Matthew Brown joined The Journal News in March 1994. He covers a variety of assignments as a Visual Journalist for The Journal News and LoHud.com. For the past year, he has been able to bring his cameras into the schools, covering visual stories of interest to the communities in White Plains, Valhalla, Elmsford and Greenburgh School districts. Prior to that, he could be seen on the sidelines covering major and local sporting events or behind the scenes covering local news in the tri-county coverage area of The Journal News. Prior to coming to work for the Journal News, he worked as a Sports Picture Editor for the Providence (R.I.) Journal and as a Boston-based freelance photojournalist for the Associated Press wire service. **Robert Brum** Northern Westchester News Manager The Journal News/LoHud.com 11 Deer Tree Ln Unit 1102 Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510-1752 Home Phone: Work Phone: 914-666-6579 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: FB: LinkedIN: http://www.http://www.linkedin.com/in/robertbrum Image File: http://m.c.lnkd.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrink_200_200/p/1/000/024/2b2/399d064... **Jon Campbell** State Government Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com 150 State Street Albany, NY 12207 Home Phone: Work Phone:518-436-9781 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/JonCampbellGAN FB: https://www.facebook.com/jon.campbell.184?ref=ts&fref=ts LinkedIN: www.linkedin.com/pub/jon-campbell/13/20b/424/ Image File: http://m.c.lnkd.licdn.com/media/p/1/000/095/3dd/018d1df.jpg **Rick Carpiniello** Rangers Beat Writer The Journal News/LoHud.com 25 Parry Road Stamford, CT 06907 203-979-1226 Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/RangersReport, https://twitter.com/CarpRick FB: LinkedIN: Image File: https://si0.twimg.com/profile_images/1423479317/carp.jpg **Peter Carr** Photographer The Journal News/LoHud.com Home Address: Home Phone: Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: FB: https://www.facebook.com/peter.carr.5496 LinkedIN: www.linkedin.com/pub/peter-carr/25/364/795 Image File: http://www.lohudblogs.com/mugs/pcarr.jpg **Shawn Cohen** Westchester County Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com 5800 Arlington Ave, Apt 20V Bronx, NY 10471-1422 Home Phone: Work Phone: 914-694-5046 Work Email: [email protected], [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/spccohen FB: https://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/shawn.cohen.37 LinkedIN: Image File: https://si0.twimg.com/profile_images/2321165831/a89l10n9fkakp0ii7dbi_big... Albert Conte Photo Reprints The Journal News/LoHud.com Home Address: Home Phone: Work Phone: 914-696-8401 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: FB: LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/albert-conte/24/120/418 Image File: **Terence Corcoran** Northern Westchester and Putnam County The Journal News/LoHud.com 20 Park South Dr Rye, NY 10580 Home Phone: Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/corcoranterence FB: https://www.facebook.com/terence.corcoran.3 LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/terence-corcoran/20/802/67 Image File: https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net/hprofile-ak-ash3/c76.0.453.453/s160... **Karen Croke** LoHud Weekend The Journal News/LoHud.com 15 Grove Street Pleasantville, NY 10570-2103 914-769-9234 Work Phone: 914-696-8267 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/KarenCroke https://twitter.com/livinghereNY FB: https://www.facebook.com/karen.croke.12#!/kcroke1 LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/karen-croke/a/1a1/71b Image File: https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net/hprofile-ak-prn1/c59.59.732.732/s16... **Ed Cummins** News Editor The Journal News/LoHud.com 21 Harrison Street Croton, NY 10520-2132 Work Phone: Work Email: Twitter: FB: https://www.facebook.com/ed.cummins.54 LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ed-cummins/16/413/5a5 Image File: http://www.newrochelletalk.com/files/EdCummins.jpg **Nancy Cutler** Opinion Editor The Journal News/LoHud.com 81 Elysian Avenue Nyack, NY 10960 845-353-4647 Work Phone: 845-578-2403 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/nancyrockland FB: https://www.facebook.com/nancy.cutler.16 LinkedIN: www.linkedin.com/pub/nancy-cutler/10/412/44 Image File: http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/1307085494/nancyhedshottjndc5-5bhwwlg... **John Czarnecki** Home Delivery Operations Manager The Journal News/LoHud.com 31 Midland Ave Apt White Plains, NY 10606-2824 Home Phone: Work Phone: 914-696-8540 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: FB: LinkedIN: www.linkedin.com/pub/john-czarnecki/3/a24/755 Image File: **Wilfred David** Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com 32 Undercliff Street Apt 2 Yonkers, NY 10705-1433 914-965-1695 Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: FB: LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/will-david/1b/27/809 Image File: Will covers police news in New Rochelle, Scarsdale, Eastchester, Bronxville, Tuckahoe, Mount Vernon and Yonkers. **Anjanette Rieger Delgado** Interactivity Editor The Journal News/LoHud.com 7 Sunset Trail New Fairfield, CT 06812 203-746-6429 Work Phone: 914-694-5072 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/anjdelgado FB: https://www.facebook.com/anjanette.delgado LinkedIN: Image File: http://www.gannett.com/assets/pdf/5Z170359212.JPG **Mary Dolan** Deputy Managing Editor The Journal News/LoHud.com 70 Morningside Drive Croton, NY 10520-2807 914-271-7929 Work Phone: 914-694-5230 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/featuresed FB: LinkedIN: www.linkedin.com/pub/mary-dolan/62/645/397 (REMOVED) Image File: http://www.gannett.com/assets/pdf/5Z170361212.JPG Mike Dougherty Sports Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com Home Address: Home Phone: Work Phone: Work Email: Twitter: https://twitter.com/hoopsmbd FB: LinkedIN: Image File: **Hema Easley** Clarkstown Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com 18 Bianca Boulevard Chester, NY 10918 Home Phone: Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/EasleyH FB: LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/hema-easley/23/690/26 Image File: http://www.lohudblogs.com/mugs/heasley.jpg **Scott Faubel** White Plains News Manager The Journal News/LoHud.com 20 Bursley Place White Plains, NY 10605 914-289-0497 Work Phone: 914-696-8569 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: FB: https://www.facebook.com/#!/d.scott.faubel LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/d-scott-faubel/18/4b6/25b Image File: http://www.lohudblogs.com/mugs/sfaubel.jpg D. Scott Faubel is The Journal News/LoHud.com’s assistant local editor for central Westchester. He has been with the organization nearly 30 years, working in many of the communities it covers on the east side of the Hudson River. He grew up in Westchester and Putnam counties and now lives in White Plains. **Mauro Ferrotta** Single Copy Manager The Journal News/LoHud.com 19 Mayflower Avenue Dover Plains, NY 12522-5610 845-298-9037 Work Phone: 914-694-5233 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: FB: http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-ash3/c0.5.180.180/s160x160/5408_... LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/mauro-ferrotta/1b/499/79b Image File: http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-ash3/c0.5.180.180/s160x160/5408_... **Jorge Fitz-Gibbon** Investigations Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com 53B Van Cortlandt Avenue Ossining, NY 10562-3308 Home Phone: Work Phone: 914-694-5016 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/jfitzgibbon FB: https://www.facebook.com/jorge.fitzgibbon?fref=ts LinkedIN: www.linkedin.com/pub/jorge-fitz-gibbon/4/9ab/80a/ Image File:http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/677617775/Picture_1_reasonably_small.png **Ed Forbes** Digital Editor The Journal News/LoHud.com 67 Grandview Drive Mount Kisco, NY 10549 Home Phone: Work Phone: 914-696-8488 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/edforbes FB: https://www.facebook.com/ed.forbes LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/in/edforbes Image File: https://si0.twimg.com/profile_images/1985407680/FORBES_ED_MUG_TWITTER.jpg Ricky Flores Photographer The Journal News/LoHud.com Home Address: Home Phone: 914-500-8523 Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/Ricky_Flores FB: https://www.facebook.com/Flores.photography LinkedIN: Image File: **Elizabeth Ganga** Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com 29 Vollmer Avenue Norwalk, CT 06851 Home Phone: 203-847-2215 Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/eganga FB: https://www.facebook.com/#!/elizabeth.ganga.5, https://www.facebook.com/#!/elizabeth.ganga.5.5 (REMOVED) LinkedIN: Image File: http://www.lohudblogs.com/mugs/elizabethganga.jpg Elizabeth Ganga covers the towns of North Castle and North Salem along with the North Salem and Byram Hills school districts. She has worked for The Journal News/LoHud.com since 2000. Ernie Garcia Small Business/Consumer News Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com Home Address: Home Phone: Work Phone: 914-696-8290 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/YonkersReporter FB: https://www.facebook.com/#!/ernie.garcia.777158 LinkedIN: Image File:https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/271089_107153612714282_37636... Tessa Garcia Director, Marketing and Client Solutions The Journal News/LoHud.com 4 Echo Lane Warwick, NY 10990-2707 Home Phone: Work Phone: 914-694-5188 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: FB: LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/tessa-garcia/9/928/291/ Image File: **Thane Grauel (Ian Thane Grauel)** Local Editor Rockland/Digital Editor The Journal News/LoHud.com 29 Vollmer Avenue Norwalk CT 06851 Home Phone: 203-847-2215 Work Phone: Work Email: Twitter: https://twitter.com/thaneg (REMOVED) FB: https://www.facebook.com/#!/thaneg LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/thane-grauel/9/35/957 (REMOVED) Image File: https://twimg0-a.akamaihd.net/profile_images/2516613099/2oen7uzstpecbyeh... **Colin Gustafson** Reporter for Yonkers and Mount Vernon The Journal News/LoHud.com 327 Henry Street Apt 1F Brooklyn, NY 11201-6757 Home Phone: Work Phone: 914-694-5077 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/GustafsonC FB: https://www.facebook.com/colin.gustafson.9 LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/colin-gustafson/54/2b3/195 Image File: https://profile-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ash3/c127.37.466.466/s160x160/64... Colin grew up in Washington, D.C., went to college in St. Paul, Minn., and now lives in Queens. Before joining The Journal News, he worked as an education reporter for Greenwich Time, a daily newspaper in Connecticut. Before that, he was a contributor to the business desk at the New York Sun and an assistant managing editor at the weekly Queens Chronicle. **Seth Harrison** Photographer The Journal News/LoHud.com 107 Valleyview Rd Irvington, NY 10533 (914) 231-5411 Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: FB: https://www.facebook.com/seth.harrison.391 LinkedIN: Image File: Seth Harrison has been a staff photographer at The Journal News since 1987. In that time, he has covered 9/11, elections in Israel, national political conventions, several World Series, and all facets of local news. Covering national and international events is exciting, however Harrison gains tremendous satisfaction telling the stories close to home. "The mother who has dedicated her life to helping to find a cure for the rare and fatal disease that afflicts her son, the story of troubled children housed in residential treatment centers, or the scores of young Mormon's who come to this area every year to try to spread their faith, are the types of stories that allow me to step in to the lives of our neighbors and offer a glimpse of lives that, while unfolding right around the corner, are very different from our own." Harrison has a bachelor's degree in photojournalism from Rochester Institute of Technology. A lower Westchester resident, he was born in Brooklyn, and grew up in Yonkers and Hastings-on-Hudson. He is married with three daughters. **Janet Hasson** Publisher The Journal News/LoHud.com 3 Gate House Lane Mamaroneck, NY 10543 Home Phone: (914) 694-5204 Work Phone: Work Email: Twitter: FB: LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/janet-hasson/6/316/254 Zillow: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/17-Mcbride-Ave-White-Plains-NY-10603/3... Image File: http://www.westchestermagazine.com/images/2011/BLOGS/June/914INC/Blog_Ja... **Tim Henderson** Data Analyst The Journal News/LoHud.com 111 W Washington Avenue Pearl River, NY 10965-2112 Home Phone: Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/timhendo FB: https://www.facebook.com/henderson.tim LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/tim-henderson/4/264/429 Image File: https://si0.twimg.com/profile_images/2797748958/0aa24ccd8e093b25a31ee47b... Lee Higgins Breaking News Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com Home Address: Home Phone: Work Phone: 914-696-8570 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/LeeHiggins FB: LinkedIN: Image File: Brian Howard Social Media Editor The Journal News/LoHud.com Home Address: Home Phone: Work Phone: 914-666-6177 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheBrianHoward FB: https://www.facebook.com/howard.brian#!/HowardBrianJ LinkedIN: linkd.in/UbA6UX Image File: **Laura Incalcaterra** Reporter for Rockland Government/Politics, Environment, Development and Housing The Journal News/LoHud.com 78 Regina Road Airmont, NY 10952 845-356-9215 Work Phone: 845-578-2486 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/LauraLoHud (REMOVED) FB: LinkedIN: Image File: http://www.lohudblogs.com/mugs/lincalcaterra.jpg Laura Incalcaterra covers the environment, open space and zoning and planning issues for The Journal News. A Boston College graduate, Laura grew up in Rockland, attended East Ramapo schools and has worked for The Journal News since 1993. Laura has written features and covered North Rockland, crime, government and a host of other issues. **Liz Johnson** Food Editor The Journal News/LoHud.com 4A Ross Avenue #A Nyack, NY 10960-4309 845-353-3351 Work Phone: 914-694-5075 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/small_bites FB: https://www.facebook.com/sourcherryfarm LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/in/lizzyj Image File: https://si0.twimg.com/profile_images/1129012341/lizjohnson09_bigger.JPG **Theresa Juva-Brown** Transportation Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com 21302 75th Avenue Apt #4D Oakland Gardens, NY 11364-3348 Home Phone: Work Phone: 914-393-0863 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/TJuva FB: https://www.facebook.com/theresa.juvabrown LinkedIN: Image File: http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/2982488616/4c8bab6336fcbd5ee6f04c5286... Chad Jennings LoHud Yankees Beat Writer The Journal News/LoHud.com Home Address: Home Phone: Work Phone: Work Email: Twitter: https://twitter.com/LoHudYankees FB: LinkedIN: Image File: **Elaine Kirsch** Director/Circulation Operations The Journal News/LoHud.com 22 Marget Ann Lane Suffern, NY 10901-3313 845-358-0787 Work Phone: 914-696-8511 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: FB: LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/elaine-kirsch/b/a97/373 Image File: Peter Kramer Theater The Journal News/LoHud.com Home Address: Home Phone: Work Phone: Work Email: Twitter: https://twitter.com/PeterKramer FB: LinkedIN: Image File: **James Kwasnik** Online Director The Journal News/LoHud.com Harrison, NY 10528 Home Phone: Work Phone: 914-694-5172 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/schmooze FB: https://www.facebook.com/jameskwasnik LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jameskwasnik Image File: http://m3.licdn.com/mpr/pub/image-TILqHxAbKWWrsOcvmD0IrKIY5ROiFWz6TIEQ0Y... **Cynthia R. Lambert** Editor The Journal News/LoHud.com 17 McBride Ave White Plains, NY 10603 (914) 948-9388 Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/croyle1 FB: LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/in/cyndeeroyle?trk=pub-pbmap Image File: http://m.c.lnkd.licdn.com/media/p/1/000/105/184/21649c2.jpg **Jane Lerner** Reporter for Health and Hospitals The Journal News/LoHud.com 1 Tilda Lane New City, NY 10956 845-634-3512 Work Phone: 914-694-9300 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/JaneLernerNY FB: https://www.facebook.com/jane.lerner1 (REMOVED) LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jane-lerner/10/317/260/ Image File: http://www.lohudblogs.com/mugs/jlerner.jpg Jane Lerner covers the health and hospitals beat for The Journal News in Rockland. She has worked for The Journal News since 1991, first in Westchester, then in Rockland. She has a master's degree from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, where she completed a concentration in health and science writing. She lives in Rockland with her husband and two children. **Steve Lieberman** Police and Courts Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com 81 Elysian Avenue Nyack, NY 10960 845-353-4647 Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/LoHudLegal FB: https://www.facebook.com/steve.lieberman.7 LinkedIN: www.linkedin.com/pub/steve-lieberman/17/796/547 Image File: http://www.lohudblogs.com/mugs/slieberman.jpg Steve Lieberman joined The Journal News as an editor in February 1984 and became a reporter during the spring of 1986. He has covered police, courts and legal issues for more than a decade, after reporting on county, town, village and state governments and general issues. He received more than a dozen state awards for writing and reporting. Born and raised in The Bronx, he has lived in Rockland since 1988. Rich Liebson Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com 2 Greenacres Way White Plains, NY 10606-3122 914-686-8940 Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/RichLiebson FB: LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/rich-liebson/a/1a0/404 Image File: http://www.lohudblogs.com/mugs/rliebson.jpg Rich Liebson grew up on military bases in the U.S. and Germany as the son of an Air Force master sergeant. After serving four years in the U.S. Army he was hired as a part-time reporter in 1983 and promoted to full-time in 1985. He's had a number of beats over the years including education, municipal government and public safety. He's also been a columnist and city editor for central Westchester. Rich lives in White Plains. **Betsy Lombardi** Universal Desk Editor The Journal News/LoHud.com 59 Tamarack Road Rye Brook, NY 10573-2138 914-937-2389 Work Phone: Work Email: Twitter: https://twitter.com/betsylombardi (REMOVED) FB: LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/elizabeth-lombardi/39/136/760 Image File: http://www.scrapgirls.com/AboutUs/Bio_BetsyLombardi.jpg **Linda Lombroso** Features Writer The Journal News/LoHud.com 237 Broadfield Rd New Rochelle, NY 10804-2409 914-654-0527 Work Phone: Work Email: Twitter: https://twitter.com/LindaLombroso FB: https://www.facebook.com/lindalombroso LinkedIN: Image File: http://lohudblogs.com/mugs/llombroso.jpg **Akiko Matsuda** Reporter for Haverstraw and Stony Point The Journal News/LoHud.com 4329 Broadway Apt 5B New York, NY 10033-2404 NEW YORK COUNTY Home Phone: Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/LoHudAkiko FB: LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/akiko-matsuda/10/54a/13 Image File: http://www.lohudblogs.com/mugs/amatsuda.jpg Akiko Matsuda has been a reporter with The Journal News since August 2005, covering the communities of North Rockland — Haverstraw town and village, Pomona, West Haverstraw, Stony Point. Before that, she covered local governments in upstate New York and Connecticut. A Japanese native, she was a reporter and news anchor for a TV station in Sapporo, covering various beats, including courts, politics and the environment. **Cara Matthews** Statehouse Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com 12 Hamilton Avenue Apt A Norwalk, CT 06854-3510 Home Phone: Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/GannettAlbany FB: https://www.facebook.com/cara.matthews.54 LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/cara-matthews/35/139/336 Image File: https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net/hprofile-ak-ash4/c0.13.80.80/208440... **Sean Mayer** Sports and Operations Editor The Journal News/LoHud.com 5 Edward Place Monroe, NY 10950 Home Phone: Work Phone: 914-696-8527 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/scoopmayer35 FB: https://www.facebook.com/sean.mayer LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/sean-mayer/6/b13/b58 Image: https://si0.twimg.com/profile_images/2685229598/12c5242e36d86a0613d86367... **Caryn McBride** REMOVED BY REQUEST -- No Longer Employed by Journal News **Gary McGriff** The Journal News/LoHud.com 14 Ball Pond Road New Fairfield, CT 06812-4920 203-312-0805 Work Phone: Work Email: Twitter: FB: https://www.facebook.com/gary.mcgriff LinkedIN: Image File: https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net/hprofile-ak-prn1/c113.33.414.414/s1... **Mike Meaney** Morning Breaking News The Journal News/LoHud.com 118 Frank Ave Mamaroneck, NY 10543-2808 914-381-4245 Work Phone: 914-696-8565 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: FB: https://www.facebook.com/michael.meaney.125 LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelmeaney/ Image File: https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net/hprofile-ak-ash4/c0.54.180.180/s160... **Vincent Mercogliano** High School Sports Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com 475 Wilmot Road New Rochelle, NY 10804-1019 914-637-9367 Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/vzmercogliano FB: LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/in/vincentmercogliano Image File: https://si0.twimg.com/profile_images/1607948970/mecropped3_bigger.jpg **Jill Mercadante** Multimedia/Marketing Editor The Journal News/LoHud.com 222 Sackett Street #2F Brooklyn, NY 11231 Home Phone: Work Phone: Work Email: Twitter: https://twitter.com/tumbling_after FB: https://www.facebook.com/jill.mercadante LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jill-mercadante/13/642/5a0 Image File: http://media-cache-ec2.pinterest.com/avatars/tumblingafter_1329768787_60... Kathy Moore (Kathy Moore O'Connor) Local Content Editor The Journal News/LoHud.com 11 Woodland Drive Brewster, NY 10509-2523 845-278-0144, 845-279-2666 Work Phone: 914-694-3523 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: FB: LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/kathy-moore-o-connor/59/679/160 Image File: http://www.lohudblogs.com/mugs/kmoore.jpg Kathy Moore is the local editor for northern Westchester and Putnam counties. She began working at The Journal News in 1985 and covered towns, schools, Mount Vernon City Hall, Putnam County government and general assignment before becoming a bureau chief and then an editor overseeing the northern reaches of our coverage area. She works with a terrific staff in the paper’s Mount Kisco office whose writing and reporting fuels The Journal News, Lohud.com, the Northern Westchester and Yorktown/Cortlandt Express and their corresponding community blogs. **Barbara L Nackman** Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com 279 Farrington Avenue Tarrytown, NY 10591 (914) 332-5185 Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: FB: LinkedIN: Image File: A municipal reporter for The Journal News since 1997, Barbara Livingston Nackman has covered local governments, events and breaking news from many communities. She began her journalism career by writing for bookselling and library publications. She reported on Putnam County communities for 10 years before getting her latest assignment, keeping track of Briarcliff Manor and Somers. **Mareesa Nicosia** Ramapo Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com 104 Gordon Ave Sleepy Hollow, NY 10591-1910 585-402-6535, 607-437-1895 Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/Mareesanicosia FB: http://www.facebook.com/mareesa.nicosia?fref=ts LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/mareesa-nicosia/5/a99/18 Image File: http://m.c.lnkd.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrink_80_80/p/4/000/169/36f/0528346.jpg Cathey O’Donnell Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com Home Address: Home Phone: Work Phone: 914-694-3596 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/catheyodonnell FB: https://www.facebook.com/cathey.odonnell.7 LinkedIN: Image File: James O'Rourke Westchester and Rockland County Night Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com Home Address: Home Phone: Work Phone: Work Email: Twitter: https://twitter.com/NightWriter_TJN FB: LinkedIN: Image File: **Herb Pinder** Opinion Page Editor The Journal News/LoHud.com 66 W 89th St Apt# 2R New York, NY 10024-2045 212-769-1945 Work Phone: 914-694-5031 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/herbpinderNY LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/herb-pinder/15/935/462 Image File: http://m3.licdn.com/mpr/pub/image-0WglTCMcAxljLDuquqGUlnKTF-i6J-tzpBsblk... **Leah Rae** Reporter for Port Chester, Rye Brook and Rye City The Journal News/LoHud.com 13 N Cottenet St Irvington, NY 10533-1508 914-591-0319 Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/LeahRaeNY FB: https://www.facebook.com/leah.rae.33 LinkedIN: http://www.http://www.linkedin.com/in/leahrae?trk=pub-pbmap Image File: http://m.c.lnkd.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrink_200_200/p/2/000/104/03d/26e3243... Leah Rae covers the Port Chester-Rye Brook beat for The Journal News. She’s written about Westchester's immigrant population since joining the paper in 1994, and reported from two immigrant “hometowns” in Ecuador and Guatemala. Leah studied at the University of Toronto and worked at her hometown paper, The Buffalo News, before migrating downstate. She writes the Beyond Borders blog at immigration.lohudblogs.com and contributes to the Sound Shore blog at soundshore.lohudblogs.com. **Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy** Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com 306 Quaker Rd Chappaqua, NY 10514 (914) 238-4607 Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/SwapnaVenugopal FB: https://www.facebook.com/swapna.venugopal.14 LinkedIN: Image File: Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy, a staff writer for The Journal News/LoHud.com, covers several communities in Westchester County and writes about everything from local politics to schools to development issues. She joined the paper in October 2006 and expanded her byline to include Ramaswamy -- reportedly the longest byline ever. Previously, Swapna worked as a municipal reporter for the Home News Tribune in New Jersey and interned at the New York Daily News as a general assignment reporter. She earned a master's degree in journalism from New York University, where she was associate features editor of NYU's daily newspaper, The Washington Square News. **Ned P. Rauch** Reporter for Harrison and Mt. Vernon The Journal News/LoHud.com 922 Lorimer Street Apt 2 Brooklyn, NY 11222-3178 Home Phone: Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/NPRauch FB: https://www.facebook.com/ned.rauch LinkedIN: Image File: https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net/hprofile-ak-prn1/c90.0.540.540/s160... **Phil Reisman** Columnist The Journal News/LoHud.com 73 Rossmore Avenue Bronxville, NY 10708 914-337-6522 Work Phone: 914-694-5008 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/philreisman FB: https://www.facebook.com/phil.reisman LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/phil-reisman/6/237/377 Image File: https://twimg0-a.akamaihd.net/profile_images/305269697/phil.jpg **Michael J Risinit** Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com 42 Robinson Lane Wappingers Falls, NY 12590 845-454-2278 Work Phone: Work Email: Twitter: https://twitter.com/mikerisinit FB: https://www.facebook.com/michael.risinit/info LinkedIN: Image File: Mike Risinit covers politics, the environment and other issues touching on northern Westchester. He has been a reporter at The Journal News since 1998. **Robert F. Rodriguez** Visual Editor The Journal News/LoHud.com 420 Riverside Dr, Apt 7A New York, NY 10025-7748 212-222-4566 Work Phone: Work Email: Twitter: FB: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1522994678 LinkedIN: Image File: **Marcela Rojas** Reporter for Somers, Ossining and Peekskill The Journal News/LoHud.com 43 Mitchell Place Apt White Plains, NY 10601-4337 Home Phone: Work Phone: 845-228-2271 Work Email:[email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/MRO3 FB: LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/marcela-rojas/45/416/2ab/ Image File: http://lohudblogs.com/mugs/mrojas.jpg Khurram Saeed Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com Home Address: Home Phone: Work Phone: Work Email: Twitter: [email protected] FB: LinkedIN: Image File: http://www.lohudblogs.com/mugs/ksaeed.jpg Khurram Saeed has been reporting for The Journal News since 2000. He writes about transportation issues in Rockland and has a weekly column called Getting There, which appears Wednesdays. Raised in Chestnut Ridge, Saeed previously worked at a newspaper in Washington and at magazines in Canada. Reach him at [email protected] or 845-578-2412. **Heather Salerno** Feature Writer The Journal News/LoHud.com 103 Cambridge Ave Garden City, NY 11530-4101 Home Phone: 516-739-9709 Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/heather_salerno FB: https://www.facebook.com/heather.salerno.7 LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/in/heathersalerno Image File: http://m.c.lnkd.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrink_200_200/p/4/000/158/2d4/2cab4b8... **Tania Savayan** Photographer The Journal News/LoHud.com 7562 Kessel Street Forest Hills, NY 11375-6846 718-793-5642 Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/TaniaSavayan FB: https://www.facebook.com/tania.savayan LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/tania-savayan/3/984/687?_mSplash=1 Image File: https://si0.twimg.com/profile_images/1748955967/398693_10150433665426992... **Erik Shilling** Courts Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com 157 Newell St Fl 3 Brooklyn, NY 11222-3036 Home Phone: Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/ErikShilling FB: LinkedIN: Image File: http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/1599921084/profile_reasonably_small.jpg **Greg Shillinglaw** Reporter for Greenburgh and Mount Pleasant Multimedia Journalist at The Journal News The Journal News/LoHud.com 80 Greenway Drive Irvington, NY 10533-1844 Home Phone: Work Phone: Work Email: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gshilly FB: https://www.facebook.com/gshillinglaw?ref=ts&fref=ts LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/greg-shillinglaw/2a/706/6b5/ Image File: http://www.thenewshouse.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/profile-norma... **Joseph Spector** Statehouse Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com 20 Greenock Road Delmar, NY 12054-3510 Home Phone: Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/GannettAlbany FB: LinkedIN: Image File: https://si0.twimg.com/profile_images/2349711046/4otq43a5rnjei3lyr911_big... YS [Removed upon request, no longer works at the Journal News] Digital Editor/Nights The Journal News/LoHud.com Gary Stern Education Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com 165 Orchard Street White Plains, NY 10604-1407 914-948-8996 Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/faithbeat FB: http://www.facebook.com/gary.stern.5095?fref=ts LinkedIN: Image File: https://si0.twimg.com/profile_images/303469987/16Gary_Stern_bigger.jpg Alex Taylor Reporter for Orangetown, Pearl River and Colleges The Journal News/LoHud.com Home Address: Home Phone: Work Phone: Work Email: Twitter: https://twitter.com/alextailored FB: LinkedIN: Image File: **George Troyano** Vice President Sales & Marketing The Journal News/LoHud.com 2 Rams Gate Court Medford, NJ 08055-9704 609-953-2745 Work Phone: 914-694-5157 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter:https://twitter.com/GTmedford FB: https://www.facebook.com/george.troyano LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/george-troyano/33/4bb/a84 Image File: http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-ash3/c0.34.180.180/s160x160/3695... **Brian Tumulty** DC Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com 5589 Cedar Break Drive Centreville, VA 20120-3329 703-830-0926 Work Phone: Work Email:[email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/NYinDc FB: https://www.facebook.com/brian.tumulty?ref=ts&fref=ts LinkedIN: www.linkedin.com/pub/brian-tumulty/4a/879/2b1 Image File: https://si0.twimg.com/profile_images/899919514/brian_bigger.JPG **Ken Valenti** Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com 2221 Palmer Ave Apt# 2P New Rochelle, NY 10801-3064 914-498-9289 Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/lohudgoing, https://twitter.com/NewRoKen FB: https://www.facebook.com/ken.valenti, https://www.facebook.com/ken.valenti.1 LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ken-valenti/a/677/59 Image File: http://m.c.lnkd.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrink_200_200/p/3/000/01e/266/3646910... **Chris Vaughan** Community Web Producer The Journal News/LoHud.com Street Address: Tarrytown, NY Home Phone: Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChrisLLVaughan FB: http://www.facebook.com/christopher.vaughan2?fref=ts LinkedIN: Image File: http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/1752407565/Picture_5_reasonably_small... **Randi Weiner (Randi W. Gormley)** Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com 843 Mill Plain Road Fairfield, CT 06824 203-254-3285 Work Phone: Work Email: Twitter: FB: https://www.facebook.com/randi.weiner.92 LinkedIN: Image File: http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc6/c0.40.180.180/s160x160/2263... **Alex Weisler** Reporter for Mount Kisco, New Castle and North Castle The Journal News/LoHud.com 5 Wheatstone Road New City, NY 10956-2515 845-639-0868 Work Phone: 914-666-6482 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/alexweisler FB: http://www.facebook.com/weisler.alex LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/in/alexweisler Image File: http://m.c.lnkd.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrink_200_200/p/4/000/177/110/1935719... **David McKay Wilson** Columnist The Journal News/LoHud.com 104 Topland Rd Mahopac, New York 10541 Home Phone: Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/davidmckay415 FB: https://www.facebook.com/davidmckaywilson LinkedIN: Image File: **Dwight R Worley** Education Reporter The Journal News/LoHud.com 230-6 139th Avenue Queens, NY 11413 718-527-0832 Work Phone: Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/dwightworley FB: LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/in/dwightworley Image File: http://lohudblogs.com/mugs/dworley.jpg Dwight R. Worley is an education/urban affairs reporter covering central Westchester schools for The Journal News, The White Plains Express and LoHud.com. He also serves as a database reporter for the publications, using computer-assisted reporting techniques to develop a wide range of stories about diversity, race, immigration and how changing demographics have impacted the Lower Hudson Valley. He joined The Journal News in 1999 as a business reporter. **Carrie Yale** Visuals Director The Journal News/LoHud.com 10 Meadowbrook Court Apt 1B Brewster, NY 10509-3616 914-948-6312 Work Phone: 914-694-5092 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/carrieyale FB: https://www.facebook.com/carrie.yale.7 LinkedIN: Image File: https://si0.twimg.com/profile_images/1777110797/me1_bigger.jpg **Eileen Zaccagnino** Online Ad Director The Journal News/LoHud.com 6 Birch Road South Salem, NY 10590-2314 914-533-5278 Work Phone: 914-696-8463 Work Email: [email protected] Twitter: FB: https://www.facebook.com/eileen.zaccagnino?fref=ts LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/in/eileenzaccagnino/ Image File: http://m.c.lnkd.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrink_200_200/p/2/000/1a8/256/15d4520... UPDATE 12/31 2:20 PM I am in receipt of all communications between the Journal News and the Westchester County Clerk including the entire list of "pistol permits" (i.e., license holders) for Westchester County. My next project, once I complete the map, is to run all Journal News employees living in Westchester against the list I just got. UPDATE 1/1 6:30 PM Let me set to rest the speculation that the Journal News exempted their own employees from their map. YS [removed] is a photographer and editor at the Journal News. He resides in [removed]. He is in the Westchester County list provided to the Journal News and he is a dot in the map so we can at least put to rest any conspiracy theories in this regard. [removed] Journal News Hypocrisy Most of the readers of this article are not from the area and may have never heard of the Journal News until this week. Many of speculated on the motives behind their pistol LICENSE map. If you want just a few of very real examples of hypocrisy from the Journal News you can look at the following three exclusive stories than we have run over the past three months that the Journal News did not bother to report at all. New Rochelle Police Confiscate Loaded .9mm Semi-Automatic Carbine from Monroe College Basketball Player, Former Coach of the Year Fired By any measure, this is a major story -- a member of the NJCAA National Championship women's basketball team delivers a savage beating to a teammate. While the victim of the assault is in the hospital she receives a text message from her assailant threatening to kill her, and her mother with a gun she keeps at an apartment on campus. School officials recovered a loaded .9mm Semi-Automatic Carbine. Before the District Attorney could bring charges the player fled the state. The player was kicked off the team, the other player suspended and the coach fired because he knew of the gun and failed to report it to school officials or the police. The Journal News did not cover this story at all. Monroe College is a major advertiser in Westchester County. New Rochelle Suspends Three Following Gun to Head Incident on Bee-Line School Bus Three students leave a school bus an enter a middle school with a gun after terrorizing a 6th grader on the bus by placing her in a headlock, holding the gun to her head and threatening her. The Journal News does not report on this incident. New Rochelle Barnard School Principal Waits Hours to Notify Police of Intruder; Parents Told Man In Building Was Outside In this case, a man was in the building for hours, he was found hiding in a closet in a second floor classroom by a teaching assistant. Even then, the building principal waited 45 minutes to call police and then lied about the entire incident to parents. The Journal News did not cover this story. New Rochelle Board President Says District in "Full Compliance" with School Safety Laws Four days after the Newtown Shooting, the local school board President and Superintendent make false claims that the district is in full compliance with New York State school safety laws. By statute the district must review and update plans for the district and each school in the district once a year. 10 of 11 schools have not been updated since 2001. The 11th was updated in 2006. The Journal News does not even cover the board meeting let along report this. UPDATE: 1/2 9:15 AM: I appeared this morning on the Pat Campbell Show in Tulsa, OK to discuss the latest on the Journal News gun owner map: Pat Campbell Show 1-2-13 UPDATE: 1/2 12:10 PM: My FOIL request to the Westchester County Clerk resulted in my receiving the communications between the clerk's office and Journal News reporter Dwight Worley. It was a jumbled mess of documents which I cut, paste and re-ordered in chronological order so readers can follow the discussion between Deputy Clerk John J. Allen and Worley (link below). Communications Between Westchester County Clerk & Journal News for FOIL Pistol Licenses December 2012 I am requesting the names, complete addresses, the type of permits issued (carry concealed/possess on premises/possess carry during employment), and the type of weapons possessed, including the weapon's manufacturer, type of weapon, caliber, serial number and model, for all permit holders in your database. Also, please provide a complete record layout and data dictionary for your pistol permits database. There is a brief sidebar after Worley appeals the partial denial of the paper's request to County Executive Rob Astorino on December 17th and County Attorney Robert F. Meehan responds for Astorino on December 20th to deny the appeal. The Westchester County Clerk Tim Idoni is a Democrat from New Rochelle (where we operate) and Astorino is a Republican. If you are wondering how divided government works in Westchester read how the Democrats in the County Legislature literally turned out the lights in the chamber when they did not get their way on the 2013 budget. This stands in stark contrast to the decided lack of cooperation in Putnam County, north of Westchester. New York County denies request for names of gun permit holders Authorities in a suburban county north of New York City said on Tuesday they will refuse to release names of local gun permit holders to a newspaper that has been publishing the identities of thousands of license-holding residents. Putnam County Clerk Dennis Sant said he would defy a request for information about pistol permit holders from the White Plains, New York-based Journal News, which has come under criticism for publishing thousands of such identities already. UPDATE 1/2 2:50 PM: I have been advised that the phone listing for Robert Brum in Pomona is incorrect. Please disregard 845-354-0243. That is the number for an older woman who was assigned that number after Robert Brum moved. UPDATE 1/3 8:30 AM: Newspaper threatened with ‘suspicious white powder’ after publishing gun owners’ names The suspicious package turned out to be a non-event but I was surprised to see this... The article mentions Christopher Fountain who put up a lot of detail about the publisher, Janet Hasson and a few other Journal News employees. I am not sure how many, maybe 5 or 6 names. New York State Rifle and Pistol Association President Tom King is quoted saying “I’m sure that the blogger will take down the list as soon as the gun names come down.” Meanwhile, we have now crowd-sourced 73 of 82 (89%) Journal News employees and mapped each one. We are in the process of clearing the list and I expect we will be at 100% shortly. I would tell Mr. King a thing or three: (1) the Journal News intends to EXPAND their map to include Putnam County not take it down; (2) the Journal News was never just seeking names and addresses -- their Freedom of Information Request is for "names, complete addresses, the type of permits issued (carry concealed/possess on premises/possess carry during employment), and the type of weapons possessed, including the weapon's manufacturer, type of weapon, caliber, serial number and model, for all permit holders in your database; (3) (1) I have no intention of taking down my list or map regardless of what the Journal News does or what he says. UPDATE 1/3 1:15 PM: If my actions are going to be disapproved of by anyone I would prefer that it be Jack Shafer: Let’s not go crazy over publishing gun lists Undeterred by the fact that the handgun data was, by state law, a matter of the public record, aggrieved gun owners retaliated. A crowdsourced map of the home addresses of Journal News employees — including their home and work phone numbers when found — went up. The site also listed the names and addresses of the paper’s local and national advertisers, suggesting Journal News readers write letters threatening to boycott their goods and services unless the Journal News took its map down. The New York State & Pistol Association urged a boycott of all Gannett enterprises, asserting that the map had “put in harm’s way tens of thousands of lawful license holders.” [read entire article] I met Jack in 2004 at a conference at Harvard. He wrote the PressBox column for Slate/Washington Post for years and I have emailed him from time to time. Between Jack Shafer and Jim Romensko you get about all you need in terms of media criticism. Jim was, for many years at Poynter. Jack writes today "Exactly how publishing public-record data constitutes privacy invasion is a topic worthy of a Poynter Institute seminar." Ironically, I was part of a Poynter conference on Online Journalism Ethics. I am pretty sure my map would have flunked the ethics test in that room back in 2006. The question then might be if my map flunks then what about the Journal News map? Having been part of this discussion in the past, I can tell you that some of the opinion would be driven by the idea that journalists are like members of a holy order on a divine mission. Not everyone at Poynter would take the side of the Journal News but I suspect they would also be against my map. I can tell you one other thing -- the melodrama that has ensued with the armed guards and the envelopes of talcum powder is the sort of thing that validates the self-image of journalists that what they do is important (and thus justifies the low wages they are paid). UPDATE: 1/9 9:00 AM - I was away this weekend and so not entirely top of this story. I was in Miami for the BCS Championship Game to see my Irish get stomped by Alabama :-(. I am back in New York. On my way to the airport, I received an email from WPIX 11's Erica Pitzi requesting an interview. Many of the questions were to the effect of whether I felt I was to blame for people who were making death threats to Journal News employees or whether I would take my map down after a New York Times article reported on threats against Journal News employees. (My answer? "No"). Having viewed what aired, the piece struck me as fairer than I expected. WPIX ARTICLE/VIDEO: Death threats, reporters’ families targeted over controversial gun-owner map “I don’t think my map is particularly fair to the Journal News employees, many of them have nothing to do with the story, but that’s in the same spirit of the Journal News map which is equally unfair,” Cox told PIX 11 News over the phone from Florida. In The New York Times article, Journal News Publisher Janet Hasson seeks to shift the issue away from Newtown, away from their map of gun owners, away from the entire issue of gun control and convert the issue into a First Amendment issue. "As journalists, we are prepared for criticism," Hasson told The Times. "But in the U.S., journalists should not be threatened." Actually, in the U.S., no one should be threatened. In fact, there are laws against threatening people with bodily harm and the apply to everyone, not just journalists. As I told WPIX, an appropriate response is to boycott or picket or otherwise express disapproval. Physically threatening someone is never the right thing to do. EDITORS NOTE:Speaking of getting paid. We are a small operation and the server costs alone for Talk of the Sound are almost $400 per month. If you would like to help defray that cost consider a contribution ($10, $25, or any amount). You can also support Talk of the Sound by doing your holiday shopping through this link: Amazon.com . We would also like you to Follow us on Twitter or Like us on Facebook. You can read our other articles here. MATCHING DONATION CHALLENGE -- $1,000 A previous donor to the site has made a very generous offer to match any donations to the site made by Wednesday 1/9 up to a maximum of $1,000. If you were thinking of making a donation to the site now is the time. Rob is doing a great job. I will match any donation until 9 Jan up to a cumulative of $1k. As stated my total matching donation will be $1,000.00. Support Rob so he can continue to support the 2nd amendment: The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is the part of the United States Bill of Rights that protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, along with the rest of the Bill of Rights. The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess and carry firearms. DAM Click to Donate UPDATE: The Journal News has removed their gun map. Before you ask. "No, we are not taking down our map". Here is the official statement from Janet Hasson: With the passage this week of the NYSAFE gun law, which allows permit holders to request their names and addresses be removed from the public record, we decided to remove the gun permit data from lohud.com at 5 pm today. While the new law does not require us to remove the data, we believe that doing so complies with its spirit. For the past four weeks, there has been vigorous debate over our publication of the permit data, which has been viewed nearly 1.2 million times by readers. One of our core missions as a newspaper is to empower our readers with as much information as possible on the critical issues they face, and guns have certainly become a top issue since the massacre in nearby Newtown, Conn. Sharing as much public information as possible provides our readers with the ability to contribute to the discussion, in any way they wish, on how to make their communities safer. We remain committed to our mission of providing the critical public service of championing free speech and open records. Self-serving claptrap from a woman who thought she could pick a fight at a time and place of her choosing, declare the rules for the fight and call the fight when she had enough. Sorry, Janet. It doesn't work that way. Our map of your employees stays. UPDATE: Just taped a radio interview with Gary Baumgarten of 1010 WINS-NY. Let me know if you hear it air. Teaser: he asked me if this was a victory, my answer "yes!" WINS 1010 has published a story with the audio clip here. UPDATE 1/21: My Washington Examiner Op-Ed is now up: Why I will not be taking down my map of Journal News employees UPDATE 1/23: I was on the Pat Campbell Show this morning, live on KFAQ 1170 Tulsa. Listen here. I also joined Pat, filling in, on the Schnitt Show this afternoon. Listen here. ||||| A week after the Newtown massacre, The Journal News published an interactive Google Map with the names and addresses of gun permit owners in select New York cities. The bold move has escalated into a transparency arms race, after a Connecticut lawyer posted the phone number and addresses of the Journal‘s staff, including a Google Maps satellite Image of the Publisher’s home. “I don’t know whether the Journal’s publisher Janet Hasson is a permit holder herself, but here’s how to find her to ask,” read Christopher Fountain’s blog post. The double irony here is that open data was heralded as a tool of enlightened civic dialog, and has been co-opted for fierce partisanship, bordering on public endangerment. The Journal‘s original publication of the map sparked nationwide outrage and thousands of angry comments. Gun permit holding is public information in New York, and can be acquired through a mere request via the Freedom of Information Act. But, coming on the heels of the Newtown shooting, the publication had a clear provocative intent. “New York residents have the right to own guns with a permit and they also have a right to access public information,” said a defiant Hasson. Given that the Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle used in the school shooting was reportedly legally registered with the killer’s mother, the Google Map sparked a debate about whether gun owners should be labeled like other potential menaces to society, “The implications are mind-boggling,” said Marine Scott F. Williams to The Journal News, “It’s as if gun owners are sex offenders (and) to own a handgun risks exposure as if one is a sex offender. It’s, in my mind, crazy.” Blogger Christopher Fountain took the debate into his own hands, publishing the personal information of The Journals‘ staff. “Hundreds of thousands of readers; Janet, you have a great Christmas Eve,” he wrote, after a popular political outlet, Instapundit, linked to his post. Ironically, the promise of open data was supposed to lead to open-minded discussion. “If the broad light of day could be let in upon men’s actions, it would purify them as the sun disinfects,” reads the often-cited quote from Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who stands a champion to modern-day nonprofits fighting for greater access to health, legislative, and administrative government data. Open data advocates have struggled to get media attention for their utopian vision of automated government services. This latest use of open data via Google Maps, both to publish gun permit ownership and journalists’ geolocation data, seems to have hit the media sweet spot, as it plays into our debased partisan interests. It appears that transparency lends itself equally to being both a tool of democracy or a partisan weapon.
– The interactive map of gun-owning homes published by Westchester's Journal News inspired more than outrage: Now a Connecticut lawyer has published the home addresses and phone numbers of the Journal News' publisher and 50 employees on his blog, reports Tech Crunch. “I don’t know whether the Journal’s publisher Janet Hasson is a permit holder herself, but here’s how to find her to ask,” writes blogger Christopher Fountain, who added a Google Maps shot of Hasson's house, complete with interior shots via Zillow. Another enterprising blogger even took that data and made another interactive map of his own. "Ironically, the promise of open data was supposed to lead to open-minded discussion," notes Tech Crunch's Gregory Ferenstein, but it "appears that transparency lends itself equally to being both a tool of democracy or a partisan weapon."
NTSB Press Release National Transportation Safety Board Office of Public Affairs NTSB statement on erroneous confirmation of crew names July 12 The National Transportation Safety Board apologizes for inaccurate and offensive names that were mistakenly confirmed as those of the pilots of Asiana flight 214, which crashed at San Francisco International Airport on July 6. Earlier today, in response to an inquiry from a media outlet, a summer intern acted outside the scope of his authority when he erroneously confirmed the names of the flight crew on the aircraft. The NTSB does not release or confirm the names of crewmembers or people involved in transportation accidents to the media. We work hard to ensure that only appropriate factual information regarding an investigation is released and deeply regret today's incident. Appropriate actions will be taken to ensure that such a serious error is not repeated. Office of Public Affairs 490 L'Enfant Plaza, SW Washington, DC 20594 (202) 314-6100 Kelly Nantel [email protected] ### The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is an independent federal agency charged with determining the probable cause of transportation accidents, promoting transportation safety, and assisting victims of transportation accidents and their families. ||||| Latest Update, July 14: Asiana Airlines, not surprisingly unamused by the whole thing, thinks an on-screen apology may not be sufficient, it said in a statement: "The reputation of the four pilots and of the company had been seriously damaged by this report. The company is reviewing taking legal action against both KTVU-TV and the NTSB." Update: The NTSB has released a statement stating an intern is responsible for confirming the incorrect names. Sounds like someone's summer internship is over. KTVU has also provided further explanation into why they said these names on air: They didn't say them out loud before rattling them off during their live taping and they didn't confirm with the NTSB employee (intern) on their position within the organization. They did, however, call to verify the correct spelling of the names. Update: Peter Knudson, a spokesman for the NTSB, just confirmed to SF Weekly that the NTSB did not release the names of the pilots of flight 214 to KTVU, or any news organization, for that matter. Original Story: Local station KTVU totally screwed up the names of Asiana Flight 214 pilots when announcing them on live television today, and we're a little worried the name "Ho Lee Fuk" might actually go down in history. So just to correct the record: The ill-fated Boeing 777 wasn't actually being steered by Mr. Fuk and his co-pilots Sum Ting Wong, Wi Tu Lo, and Bang Ding Ow. KTVU rushed to fix the blunder and issued an apology,blaming the NTSB for the fuck-up. The apology didn't do much to stop screenshots of the offensive names from making their rounds through the blogosphere. Oh, look -- here they are: And here's a video of the newscaster announcing the names with complete sincerity -- with "Fuk" pronounced "Fook," lest you suspect the station of impropriety: Note: Asiana actually released the names of two pilots -- the ones allegedly responsible for the botched landing -- on Sunday. Junior pilot Lee Gang-guk had 43 hours of experience flying the Boeing jet; his supervisor Lee Jeong-min tried to take over to abort the crash. Someone call Ron Burgundy, this is a story for him. ||||| On today’s Noon newscast on KTVU, the station claimed it had “just learned the names of the 4 pilots on board” Asiana flight 214 which crashed last Saturday. But the station was given bad information that made it all the way into the newscast. If you read the names it becomes immediately clear this is a joke, which went unnoticed by the newsroom, producers and the anchor. You’ll recall earlier this week, KTVU touted its coverage as being not only first, but “100% accurate.” “Being first on air and on every platform in all aspects of our coverage was a great accomplishment, but being 100% accurate, effectively using our great sources and social media without putting a single piece of erroneous information on our air, is what we are most proud of as a newsroom,” said News Director Lee Rosenthal at the time. Watch: About 15 minutes later the station corrected its mistake, but claimed an NTSB official had confirmed the names. Earlier in the newscast we gave some names of pilots involved in the Asiana Airlines crash. These names were not accurate despite an NTSB official in Washington confirming them late this morning. We apologize for this error. > More: Further apology from KTVU president & GM Tom Raponi: “We sincerely regret the error and took immediate action to apologize, both in the newscast where the mistake occurred, as well as on our website and social media sites. Nothing is more important to us than having the highest level of accuracy and integrity, and we are reviewing our procedures to ensure this type of error does not happen again.” >More: The NTSB has released a statement saying a summer intern “acted outside the scope of his authority” and mistakenly confirmed the fake names for KTVU Friday morning: The National Transportation Safety Board apologizes for inaccurate and offensive names that were mistakenly confirmed as those of the pilots of Asiana flight 214, which crashed at San Francisco International Airport on July 6. Earlier today, in response to an inquiry from a media outlet, a summer intern acted outside the scope of his authority when he erroneously confirmed the names of the flight crew on the aircraft. The NTSB does not release or confirm the names of crewmembers or people involved in transportation accidents to the media. We work hard to ensure that only appropriate factual information regarding an investigation is released and deeply regret today’s incident. Appropriate actions will be taken to ensure that such a serious error is not repeated. > More: An apology on the 6pm news: “We made several mistakes. First of all, we never read the names out loud, phonetically sounding them out.” > More: The AAJA responds: “Those names were not only wrong, but so grossly offensive that it’s hard for us at the Asian American Journalists Association to fathom how those names made it on the broadcast.”
– There's not fact checking, and then there's ... not even using your brain. A newscast on Bay Area Fox affiliate KTVU apparently fell for a (racist and offensive) joke, incorrectly reporting that the pilots of the plane that crashed at San Francisco airport were named "Sum Ting Wong," "Ho Lee Fuk," "Bang Ding Ow," and "Wi Tu Lo," SF Weekly reports. The network later apologized, but said an NTSB official in Washington had "confirmed" them. It wasn't exactly an official. Per the NTSB: "Earlier today, in response to an inquiry from a media outlet, a summer intern acted outside the scope of his authority when he erroneously confirmed the names of the flight crew on the aircraft." The kicker, as Mediabistro notes, is that KTVU had just been boasting about its "100% accurate" coverage of the disaster earlier this week.
Cops: Connecticut Burglar Gets Tripped Up By Stolen Sweatshirt And Its Vigilant Owner Share Tweet A Connecticut man already facing multiple burglary charges has been arrested on new criminal counts after he was spotted wearing a stolen sweatshirt in a mug shot photo, police report. According to cops, a Glastonbury residence was burglarized in July 2014, but the probe of the crime was suspended after no leads were developed. However, two months ago, the victimized homeowner contacted cops to report seeing a booking photo of Derek Benson, 30, who was arrested late last year in connection with a series of burglaries during which expensive golf equipment was stolen. “In the photo, Benson was wearing the victim’s sweatshirt, which had been stolen during the burglary of his residence,” the Glastonbury Police Department reported. The stolen gray sweatshirt contains the logo for Coco Libre, the “pure organic coconut water.” The victim, a police spokesperson said, works for Coco Libre. Benson is seen in the above mug shot wearing the purloined garment. After being tipped by the homeowner, cops noted, “A subsequent investigation linked Benson to the burglary.” In addition to the sweatshirt, jewelry was stolen during last year’s burglary. Benson was arrested last week on burglary, larceny, and criminal mischief counts. He remains locked up in lieu of $125,000 bond. ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.
– Derek Benson wore a sweatshirt that said "libre" ("freedom") on it for a 2014 mugshot, but he got quite the opposite after a man contacted police in Glastonbury, Conn., to report he had seen the mugshot and that Benson, 30, was wearing the victim's Coco Libre sweatshirt—which had been stolen from his residence in July 2014, the Smoking Gun reports. The victim works for the coconut water company, a police rep says. A "subsequent investigation" led to Benson's Sept. 16 arrest for that home burglary as well, a Glastonbury Police Department press release notes, and Benson was charged with burglary, larceny, criminal trespass, and criminal larceny, Fox Connecticut reports. (This suspected burglar didn't just take stuff with him—he left stuff behind.)
MORE than 1,000 metres of overhead cabling has been stolen in Lincolnshire - leading to a village blackout. The theft took place overnight on Friday on land off the A1133 at Newton-on-Trent and left the village without power for several hours. It is the second recent theft of overhead cabling in Lincolnshire, with a similar incident taking place at Normanby-Le-Wold in August. Officers are warning of the obvious extreme dangers of this type of crime and are appealing for anyone who has any information to call them on 0300 111 0300.
– A rash of power line thefts is dogging Britain. An entire English village lost electricity for several hours on Friday after thieves stole some 3,000 feet of cable—and it’s the second such theft in that county alone since August, This Is Lincolnshire reports. It’s a running problem on train lines, too, notes the Telegraph. Cable robbers have been cutting lines and leaving the sparking ends hanging; today, firefighters had to be called out to address the problem. Rail officials found that more than 650 feet of power line had been cut, causing a fire and shutting down train travel into one of London’s major stations. “Yet again, commuters in the capital have had their journeys disrupted by criminals,” said a railway spokesman. “We need to see tougher sentences in the courts for anyone caught stealing cable and new legislation to help crack down on the minority of scrap metal dealers who knowingly profit from rail users' misery."
Archaeologists have uncovered a mysterious enclosure hidden deep inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, the oldest of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The massive cavity stretches for at least 30 metres and lies above the grand gallery, an impressive ascending corridor that connects the Queen’s chamber to the King’s in the heart of the historic monument. It is the first major structure found in the pyramid since the 19th century. It is unclear whether the void is a chamber or a corridor, or whether it played any more than a structural role in the pyramid’s construction – such as relieving weight on the grand gallery below. But measurements show that it has similar dimensions to the grand gallery, which is nearly 50 metres long, eight metres high and more than a metre wide. Scientists discovered the void using sensors that detect particles known as muons, which rain down on Earth when cosmic rays slam into atoms in the upper atmosphere. The muons travel at close to the speed of light and behave much like x-rays when they meet objects. Armed with suitable equipment, researchers can used them to reveal the rough internal structure of pyramids and other ancient monuments. “We know that this big void has the same characteristics as the grand gallery,” said Mehdi Tayoubi at the HIP Institute in Paris, a non-profit organisation that draws on new technology to study and preserve cultural heritage. “It’s really impressive.” Tomb raiders: what treasures could lurk inside Egypt's lost chambers? Read more Also known as Khufu’s Pyramid, or the Pyramid of Cheops, the Great Pyramid was built in the 4th dynasty by the pharaoh Khufu, who reigned from 2509 to 2483 BC. The monument rises 140 metres above the Giza Plateau and has three chambers known from previous explorations: a subterranean one at the base of the pyramid, the Queen’s chamber at the centre, and the King’s chamber above. While a granite sarcophagus sits in the King’s chamber, King Khufu’s mummy is missing, and his queens were buried elsewhere. Whatever riches were once in the chambers were looted long ago. Facebook Twitter Pinterest The ScanPyramids team examining an augmented reality review of the newly-discovered void. Photograph: ScanPyramids mission Egyptologists have scores of theories about how the pyramid was built, but there are no reliable accounts of its construction. Herodotus wrote of stones being drawn from quarries near and far, with some being shipped down the Nile on boats. The mammoth construction project occupied the lives of a hundred thousand men, fuelled in part by radishes, onions and leeks, he noted. To pinpoint the cavity, scientists from Nagoya University in Japan, and KEK, the country’s high energy physics lab, installed muon-detecting photographic plates and electronic muon detectors around the Queen’s chamber. At the same time, researchers from CEA, France’s energy research organisation, trained “muon telescopes” on the pyramid from the outside. All three techniques can tell from which direction incoming muons arrive. When the teams compared their results, all had found a muon hotspot in the same place, indicating the presence of a large cavity in the pyramid. While most of the monument is made of stone that absorbs muons, chambers and cavities let the particles pass through. Great Pyramid tombs unearth 'proof' workers were not slaves Read more Muon analysis allows scientists to look deep inside ancient monuments without drilling holes or causing other damage to the precious structures. But the technique produces low resolution images, making it impossible for the researchers to tell if the newly-found void runs horizontally or parallel to the grand gallery. Nor can they be sure it is a single enclosure rather than a series of smaller cavities close together, they report in Nature. “What we are sure about is that this big void is there, that it is impressive, and was not expected by any kind of theory,” said Tayoubi. To shed more light on the purpose of the cavity, Tayoubi called on specialists in ancient Egyptian architecture to come forward with ideas of what it may be so they can be modelled and checked against the team’s data. The cavity may have relieved weight on the roof of the underlying grand gallery, or be a hitherto unknown corridor in the pyramid. The team has no plans to drill into the cavity to explore inside, but they are developing a tiny flying robot that might one day be sent in, if the Egyptian authorities approve. “It’s a tribute to humankind,” said Tayoubi of the pyramid. “It asks a question about what is our future. If they have been able to do this with the means they had 4,000 or 5,000 years ago and they left this heritage today, what will our own society leave for future generations?” Peter Der Manuelian, professor of Egyptology and director of the Harvard Semitic Museum, said the discovery was “potentially a major contribution to our knowledge about the Great Pyramid.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest Researchers using muon detectors discover a void in the Great Pyramid of Giza. Credit: ScanPyramids mission “I’m sure there are imperfections and perhaps small voids or cavities in several locations in the pyramid. What makes this one so interesting is the size, seeming to rival the grand gallery itself in scale,” he said. “The muons can’t tell us about chambers, form, size, or any possible objects, so it’s far too early to speculate. I know most people want to know about hidden chambers, grave goods, and the missing mummy of King Khufu. None of that is on the table at this point. But the fact that this void is so large warrants further non-invasive exploration,” he added. In 2011, Rob Richardson, a researcher at the University of Leeds, sent a small snake-like robot into one of the tunnels of the Great Pyramid and took pictures of hieroglyphs that had not been seen for 4,500 years. “I think people assume that all these mysteries of what’s in our world are known but there are still places like the pyramids where we simply don’t know,” he said. “The pyramids have been there for thousands of years and we still don’t know exactly why they are there, what they were used for, or how they were built.” ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Mark Lehner: "A space that the builders left to protect the grand gallery?" The mysteries of the pyramids have deepened with the discovery of what appears to be a giant void within the Khufu, or Cheops, monument in Egypt. It is not known why the cavity exists or indeed if it holds anything of value because it is not obviously accessible. Japanese and French scientists made the announcement after two years of study at the famous pyramid complex. They have been using a technique called muography, which can sense density changes inside large rock structures. The Great Pyramid, or Khufu's Pyramid, is thought to have been constructed during the reign of Pharaoh Khufu between 2509 and 2483 BC. At 140m (460 feet) in height, it is the largest of the Egyptian pyramids located at Giza on the outskirts of Cairo. ScanPyramids has already detected a smaller void on the northern face The new cavity is perhaps 30m long and several metres in height All three muon technologies sense the same feature in the same place Khufu famously contains three large interior chambers and a series of passageways, the most striking of which is the 47m-long, 8m-high Grand Gallery. The newly identified feature is said to sit directly above this and have similar dimensions. "We don't know whether this big void is horizontal or inclined; we don't know if this void is made by one structure or several successive structures," explained Mehdi Tayoubi from the HIP Institute, Paris. "What we are sure about is that this big void is there; that it is impressive; and that it was not expected as far as I know by any sort of theory." Image copyright SCANPYRAMIDS Image caption The newly found void is directly above the Grand Gallery The ScanPyramids team is being very careful not to describe the cavity as a "chamber". Khufu contains compartments that experts believe may have been incorporated by the builders to avoid collapse by relieving some of the stress of the overlying weight of stone. The higher King's Chamber, for example, has five such spaces above it. The renowned American archaeologist Mark Lehner sits on a panel reviewing ScanPyramids' work. He says the muon science is sound but he is not yet convinced the discovery has significance. "It could be a kind of space that the builders left to protect the very narrow roof of the Grand Gallery from the weight of the pyramid," he told the BBC's Science In Action programme. "Right now it's just a big difference; it's an anomaly. But we need more of a focus on it especially in a day and age when we can no longer go blasting our way through the pyramid with gunpowder as [British] Egyptologist Howard Vyse did in the early 1800s." Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Mehdi Tayoubi: "It's a big void, similar to the Grand Gallery, but what is it?" One of the team leaders, Hany Helal from Cairo University, believes the void is too big to have a pressure-relieving purpose, but concedes the experts will debate this. "What we are doing is trying to understand the internal structure of the pyramids and how this pyramid has been built," he told reporters. "Famous Egyptologists, archaeologists and architects - they have some hypotheses. And what we are doing is giving them data. It is they who have to tell us whether this is expected or not." Much of the uncertainty comes down to the rather imprecise data gained from muography. This non-invasive technique has been developed over the past 50 years to probe the interiors of phenomena as diverse as volcanoes and glaciers. It has even been used to investigate the failed nuclear reactors at Fukushima. Muography makes use of the shower of high-energy particles that rain down on the Earth's surface from space. When super-fast cosmic rays collide with air molecules, they produce a range of "daughter" particles, including muons. These also move close to the speed of light and only weakly interact with matter. So when they reach the surface, they penetrate deeply into rock. But some of the particles will be absorbed and deflected by the atoms in the rock's minerals, and if the muon detectors are placed under a region of interest then a picture of density anomalies can be obtained. Image copyright SCANPYRAMIDS Image caption The muon detectors have to be placed under the region of interest The ScanPyramids team used three different muography technologies and all three agreed on the position and scale of the void. Sébastien Procureur, from CEA-IRFU, University of Paris-Saclay, emphasised that muography only sees large features, and that the team's scans were not just picking up a general porosity inside the pyramid. "With muons you measure an integrated density," he explained. "So, if there are holes everywhere then the integrated density will be the same, more or less, in all directions, because everything will be averaged. But if you see some excess of muons, it means that you have a bigger void. "You don't get that in a Swiss cheese." The question now arises as to how the void should be investigated further. Jean-Baptiste Mouret, from the French national institute for computer science and applied mathematics (Inria), said the team had an idea how to do it, but that the Egyptian authorities would first have to approve it. "Our concept is to drill a very small hole to potentially explore monuments like this. We aim to have a robot that could fit in a 3cm hole. Basically, we're working on flying robots," he said. The muography investigation at Khufu's Pyramid is reported in this week's edition of Nature magazine. [email protected] and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos ||||| Scientists Say They've Found Hidden Space In Great Pyramid Of Giza Enlarge this image toggle caption ScanPyramids mission ScanPyramids mission The Great Pyramid of Giza has been probed with the tools of modern particle physics by scientists who say they have discovered a huge, secret space hidden within its ancient walls. It is located above a tall, cathedral-like room known as the Grand Gallery, and this newly found space is comparable in size — about 100 feet long, according to a report in the journal Nature. That makes it a major structure within this royal tomb, which was built around 2500 B.C. and is considered to be one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Yet until now, despite centuries of study, no one knew this space was there. Enlarge this image toggle caption Amr Nabil/AP Amr Nabil/AP "The romantic interpretation and what everyone wants to hear is that this is a hidden room and the king's body is inside or there's grave goods we didn't know about or we're going to learn more about history ... and none of that is responsible speculation at the moment," cautions Peter Der Manuelian, an Egyptologist at Harvard University who was not part of the research team. "All we know is that we have a void, we have a cavity, and it's huge, which means possibly intentional and certainly worthy of further exploration," Manuelian says, noting that it's not yet clear whether it's a single chamber or more than one. "In that sense it's obviously frustrating," he says. "On the other hand, as an architectural discovery, something we didn't know about the interior of the Great Pyramid, it's absolutely big news." Indeed, the team that made the find reports that it is the first significant internal structure found within the Great Pyramid since the 19th century. Mehdi Tayoubi, with the HIP Institute in Paris, explains that he and his colleagues wanted to investigate the pyramid using the best available non-destructive analytical techniques. They settled on a type of imaging that involves muons, which are tiny particles, like electrons. "What is strange, for me, is to use those very, very small particles for a huge monument like the pyramid," says Tayoubi. Muons are made when cosmic rays from deep space hit the atoms of the upper atmosphere. These particles rain down and lose energy as they pass through materials — like the thick stones of the pyramid — and that makes them slow down and decay. By placing muon detectors in strategic locations, researchers can count the number of muons coming through and create a kind of picture that reveals whether the material above is dense, like stone, or an empty space. Tayoubi explains that his team installed sheets of muon-detecting film in a lower-level room of the pyramid known as the Queen's Chamber. The goal was to test whether they could use muons to accurately discern two well-known rooms located above: the King's Chamber and Grand Gallery. They saw those rooms but, to their surprise, they found an additional large space as well. "The first reaction was a lot of excitement, but then we knew that it would take us a long, long time, that we needed to be very patient in this scientific process," says Tayoubi. Because they didn't want to rely on just one method, they confirmed the find using two other muon-detection techniques. "The good news is the void is there. Now we are sure that there is a void. We know that this void is big," says Tayoubi. "I don't know what it could be. I think it's now time for Egyptologists and specialists in ancient Egypt architecture to collaborate with us, to provide us with some hypotheses." He's interested in whether small robots might somehow enter this space through tiny cracks or holes and provide more information. In the past, before the modern science of archaeology evolved, folks sometimes blasted through walls in the pyramids, says Manuelian. "That's the good thing about the muon project, there's absolutely no damage to the pyramid at all," says Manuelian. "I hope that, in collaboration with the Egyptian antiquities authorities, further exploration will be set in motion. The study of the pyramids has been going on for an awful long time. So any new contribution is always a welcome addition to our knowledge."
– It's not every day that what is essentially nothingness would be major news, but today is that day: Scientists announced in Nature that after two years of study, they've identified a roughly 100-foot-long void in Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza—built around 2500 BC, it's the most ancient of the seven wonders of the ancient world, notes the Guardian. It's the first discovery of a new structure in the monument since the 19th century, and it came by using muography, which can pick up on changes in density within rock. What was found, the BBC reports, isn't being called a "chamber," and it explains why: Also known as Khufu's Pyramid, the structure contains voids that are believed to have been incorporated to bolster the structural integrity of the pyramid. While three muon technologies confirmed its existence, "we don't know whether this big void is horizontal or inclined ... [or] made by one structure or several successive structures," says Mehdi Tayoubi. It sits above the pyramid's "most striking" chamber, the Grand Gallery, a corridor that links the Queen's and King's chambers. An archaeologist who reviewed the work says it's possible the void was intended to "protect the very narrow roof" of the gallery, though others contend that for the cavity to effectively have that function, it would need to be smaller. The Guardian notes the pharaoh Khufu's mummy is missing, but a Harvard Egyptologist tells NPR the idea that the cavity is "a hidden room and the king's body is inside ... none of that is responsible speculation at the moment." The team next hopes to get approval to drill a 1.2-inch hole that a robot could fit into. (The world's largest pyramid was mistaken as a mountain.)
Published on Sep 29, 2016 To use this video in a commercial player or in broadcasts, please email [email protected] Angry guy destroys everything in a French Apple Store with a steel ball. Very calmly till security comes to stop him. To use this video in a commercial player or in broadcasts, please email [email protected] ||||| Hell hath no fury like an Apple fanboy scorned. A French customer Hulked out in an Apple Store in Dijon, smashing everything in sight, one slick item at a time. He employed a small steel ball, the kind usually used in the yard game pétanque. The rampage was captured by others in the store. Un mec détruit un Apple Store avec une boule de pétanque PARTIE 1 pic.twitter.com/XC9i8C9chH — Qυεηтιη  (@Quentin_IOS) September 29, 2016 It appears the incident was sparked by a refund dispute. In between wrecking iPhone, MacBooks, and iPads, he says in French, “Apple is a company that 'violated' European consumers' rights. They refused to reimburse me, I told them: 'Give me my money back'. They said no. So you know what's happening? This is happening!" According to a local news report, the man was apprehended by a security guard and arrested, after causing considerable damage. Here’s a video of his attempt to flee the scene. Fun fact: The French word for Apple is "pomme,” which is the root word for “pummel,” so maybe this guy was just confused. H/T Mashable
– Geez, the French are even sophisticated while performing wanton acts of destruction. The Verge reports a young man was caught on video calmly and methodically wrecking up an Apple Store in France over a refund disagreement. The man used a steel ball—apparently the kind used in a French lawn game—to break at least 10 iPhones and a MacBook Air, one at a time, before being arrested outside the store. “Apple is a company that violated European consumers' rights," the Daily Dot quotes the man as saying in French during his iPhone smashing. "They refused to reimburse me. I told them: 'Give me my money back.' They said no. So you know what's happening? This is happening!"
Oh, baby! Kylie Jenner is pregnant with a baby girl, multiple sources confirm to PEOPLE. A source tells PEOPLE the 20-year-old reality star and business mogul is due in February with her first child with rapper Travis Scott. “They started telling friends a few weeks ago,” says the source. “The family has known for quite some time. She is really excited and so is Travis.” Another source close to the family tells PEOPLE: “It is an unexpected but completely amazing turn of events that she could not be more excited or thrilled about.” “Everyone is overjoyed for her,” says the source. “This is the happiest she’s ever been.” Another insider says Scott, 25, began telling friends about the pregnancy in July. “He was so excited he couldn’t keep it in,” says the insider. “He’s been so affectionate and protective of Kylie since they found out. He can’t wait to be a dad.” The insider adds Jenner was worried people would find out she was pregnant before she was ready to share the news, so she “started posting old photos of herself on social media” that flaunted her flat stomach. “Kylie was really surprised but is so happy,” says the insider. “She wants to be a mom.” Reps did not respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment. Bob Levey/Getty Jenner has been dating Scott since earlier this year after splitting from her on-again, off-again boyfriend Tyga in April. “Kylie broke up with Tyga partly because she felt too young to get serious,” says the insider, who adds there are “no plans” currently for Jenner and Travis to wed. “Now she’s having a baby with a guy she just started dating,” adds the source. “People around her are really surprised. It happened really fast, but for Kylie, being with Travis is so different than anyone else. She’s so in love with him. She’s really excited.” Want all the latest pregnancy and birth announcements, plus celebrity mom blogs? Click here to get those and more in the PEOPLE Babies newsletter. The star’s baby won’t be the only new member joining the famous KarJenner brood: Jenner’s older sister, Kim Kardashian West, is also expecting via surrogate. Kardashian West shares two other children with husband Kanye West, Saint, who is 21 months old, and daughter North, who turned 4 in June. Jenner is also aunt to brother Rob Kardashian‘s daughter Dream, 10 months, and sister Kourtney Kardashian‘s three children: Mason, 7, Penelope, 5, and Reign, 2. FROM COINAGE: The Lavish Lifestyle of the Kardashian Kids Though Jenner and Scott’s relationship is still rather new, her family is definitely on board with the romance: A source told PEOPLE in August that the KarJenner crew “loves Travis.” “Kylie and Travis are doing great,” said the source. “There’s no drama with Travis. He’s a cool guy.” “He treats Kylie with a lot of respect and love,” added the source. “Kylie is very happy.” ||||| Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window) Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Kylie Jenner is expecting her first child, a source confirms to Page Six. Her boyfriend is rapper Travis Scott. The 20-year-old makeup mogul and Scott, 25, have reportedly been dating since April, when they were seen holding hands at the Coachella music festival and walking arm in arm at Bentley University in Massachusetts, where Scott performed at the school’s Spring Day concert. A source tells us that she is expecting a baby girl. “She has been looking pregnant for about four months,” says the insider. The pair have already proved their permanent love for each other with ink. They Snapchatted new, matching butterfly tattoos on their ankles in June. In a 2016 clip of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” Kylie says 25 is a good age to have kids, with her father, Caitlyn, stating that 30 is a good age. “I feel like 30 is too late. Every psychic said that I’m only going to have two kids,” she responds. During a Q&A on Snapchat in October, the “Life of Kylie” star says, “I’m getting a lot of questions about kids. How many kids do I want? Do I want kids? And I do want kids, but not now.” A year later, Kylie is about to become a mother and is rumored to be due in February. Reportedly, Scott has been excitedly telling friends, but Jenner’s ex, rapper Tyga, posted and deleted a Snapchat of the news with the caption, “Hell nah that’s my kid,” along with a number of devil emojis. Jenner was dating Tyga — who fathered a child with Blac Chyna — for two years, splitting with him this past April. Sister Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, who are parents to daughter North, 4, and son Saint, 21 months, are also reportedly expecting via a surrogate. Their third child is said to be due in late January. Sounds like an excellent plotline for a TV show. Kourtney Kardashian has three children with Scott Disick: Mason, Penelope, and Reign. And brother Rob has reached an agreement for custody of his 10-month-old daughter with Chyna, Dream Kardashian. A request for comment was not immediately returned, although we hear the family is expected to confirm the news. ||||| Kylie Jenner Pregnant Kylie Jenner is Pregnant EXCLUSIVE Kylie Jenner is pregnant and Travis Scott is about to become a dad. We're told 20-year-old Kylie began telling friends earlier this month at the Day N Night Fest in Anaheim, CA. Sources also say 25-year-old Travis Scott, Kylie's boyfriend, has also been telling his friends. We're even told -- although we cannot verify -- that he's told friends they're having a girl. One source says Travis was at a recent event telling people about the pregnancy and how his life was going to change. If they are punking their friends with repeated pregnancy proclamations, it's super weird ... especially in light of the photo (above) which Kylie herself just posted on Snapchat. It's also interesting ... Kylie's been posting old pics of herself on Instagram and current shots from the chest up. Kylie and Travis have been together since April. If you're wondering what Kylie's ex, Tyga, thinks about the fetus news, he posted this on Snapchat and quickly deleted it. What do ya think -- is he bitter or relieved?
– According to multiple gossip outlets including TMZ, Kylie Jenner is pregnant. The 20-year-old sister of Kim, Khloe, and Kourtney Kardashian is said to be expecting a baby with boyfriend of six months Travis Scott. Both Jenner and Scott, 25, have reportedly been telling friends about the pregnancy, with Scott even said to have claimed it's a girl. TMZ acknowledges the couple could be "punking" their friends, but says it would be "super weird" if so. The gossip site also points out Kylie has been posting photos of herself from the chest up lately, or old photos, but that she recently posted a photo on Snapchat in which she could possibly be showing, per the Cut. A source helpfully tells Page Six that Jenner "has been looking pregnant for about four months." The Keeping Up With the Kardashians star and her rapper boyfriend "started telling friends a few weeks ago. The family has known for quite some time. She is really excited and so is Travis," one source tells People. Another source adds, "It is an unexpected but completely amazing turn of events that she could not be more excited or thrilled about. Everyone is overjoyed for her. This is the happiest she’s ever been." Older sister Kim is also reportedly expecting via surrogate, and that baby is rumored to be due in January.
Siri, how do you say profit in Chinese? One answer Apple's digital assistant might consider giving is: start selling the iPhone 4S in China. And starting on Jan. 13th, Apple will do just that. The company said Wednesday that China will be among 22 countries that soon will get the newest iPhone, one of Apple's hottest-selling yet. The iPhone now accounts for nearly half of Apple's annual revenue, and some analysts believe it earns the company more than 60% of its profits. China is one of the world's largest mobile device markets, with close to a billion cellphone users by some estimates. Apple currently partners with China Unicom, one of the larger carriers with close to 200 million cellular subscribers. Apple said Wednesday it had no current plans to announce a partnership with China Mobile, the country's largest carrier with more than 630 million subscribers (a user base that, somewhat amazingly, is more than twice the size of the U.S. population). But for months now Apple has been rumored to be nailing down a deal with China Mobile, and millions of the carriers' customers are already using the iPhone by modifying the device to work on their network. Will Siri actually be able to speak and understand Mandarin? Eventually, yes. An Apple spokesman said the company plans to add official language support in 2012 — and that will include Chinese. But Siri won't yet be multilingual when the phone hits Chinese stores this month. RELATED: Orangutans go ape for iPads, gorillas not so much Apple design master awarded British knighthood Apple fined in Italy, accused of misleading warranties — David Sarno Photo: A couple look at an iPhone in Beijing in November. Credit: Diego Azubel / EPA ||||| Computerworld - Apple today announced it would start selling the iPhone 4S in mainland China a week from this Friday -- Jan. 13. The iPhone 4S was expected to eventually make it to the People's Republic of China (PRC) -- it debuted in Hong Kong on Nov. 11 -- but some analysts had forecast that Apple would move faster. Two months ago, Brian White of Ticonderoga Securities said he expected the iPhone 4S to reach China before the end of the calendar year. Today, White noted the Chinese iPhone 4S launch, but maintained that his projection of a faster iPhone 4S rollout had come true. "As we expected, this represents the fastest iPhone launch in Apple's history with availability in over 90 countries," White told clients in a short research note today. By comparison, Apple had placed the iPhone 4 in 105 countries by the end of September 2011, more than a year after its introduction. Apple launched the iPhone 4S on Oct. 14. Siri, the voice-activated assistant -- and the most-lauded feature of the iPhone 4S -- won't be able to understand Mandarin when the smartphone launches next week, White said. Apple today stuck to its previous commitment to bring Mandarin comprehension to Siri some time this year. China Unicom, the only Apple-sanctioned carrier on the mainland, will start selling the iPhone 4S on Jan. 13 as well. Talk of other Chinese mobile carriers, including the country's largest, China Mobile, remain just that for now. "We expect China Telecom to be added this year and we believe China Mobile will eventually become part of the Apple ecosystem," White said today. Based on the quick sell-out of the iPhone 4S in Hong Kong -- supplies were exhausted within minutes at its one Apple store on launch day -- White also anticipates a run on the iPhone 4S in the PRC. "We believe the demand for the iPhone 4S in Mainland China to be unprecedented," White said. China has increasingly been a major factor in Apple's massive revenues. In the quarter that ended Sept. 30, 2011, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong generated 16% of the company's total income. And China, White reminded clients today, is the largest smartphone market in the world. "The total mobile phone subscriber base in China was 963.7 million in November, and [the] high-end mobile phone market in China is estimated at 100-125 million subscribers or ~$70 billion," said White. Apple has not revealed prices for the iPhone 4S in China, but most experts believe it will carry the same tag as the iPhone 4 did in 2010: 4,999 yuan ($793) for the 16GB model and 5,999 yuan ($952) for the 32GB model. Those prices are sans a long-term carrier contract. The 8GB iPhone 4, which sells for $99 in the U.S. with a two-year contract, goes for 3,880 yuan ($633) in China without a contract. More than 20 other countries -- including Bolivia, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Senegal -- will also see the iPhone 4S selling on Jan. 13. Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His e-mail address is [email protected]. See more articles by Gregg Keizer. Read more about Smartphones in Computerworld's Smartphones Topic Center.
– Apple is about to get more than a billion new potential customers for the iPhone 4s—but many of them may find it tricky communicating with Siri just yet. The smartphone will be launched in China and 21 other countries next week, and while its voice-activated virtual assistant currently only speaks English, French, and German, Apple says it plans to add Mandarin later this year, the Los Angeles Times reports. "Customer response to our products in China has been off the charts, " Apple CEO Tim Cook said, noting that the iPhone 4S will soon be available in more than 90 countries and regions, making it the fastest-ever iPhone rollout. Apple currently partners with the carrier China Unicom, but insiders tell Computer World that it is close to forging a deal with the country's behemoth carrier, China Mobile, which boasts a whopping 630 million subscribers.
Editor's Note: This story has been updated with new forecast information. It’s been a tough winter for snow lovers. From Chicago to New England, February was actually hot in many parts of country. Daffodils and flowering trees have been blooming for weeks . So far in 2017, it’s been in the 60s or 70s as often as it’s snowed in New York City. That’s all about to change this week. One of the biggest March snowstorms on record appears poised to strike the East Coast on Monday night, packing strong winds and snow drifts measured in feet. It’s as if Mother Nature decided to make up for lost time and pack an entire season’s worth of winter into a single day. A blizzard warning is now in effect for a large swath of the Northeast from Philadelphia to Portland, Maine, including New York City — meaning white-out conditions and tropical-storm-force winds are likely. A relatively sharp cutoff between snow and slush should keep the biggest snow totals away from Washington, D.C. and Boston, but elsewhere, totals will rack up to 1 or 2 feet. The latest National Weather Service forecasts show a wide section of the Northeast, from Maryland to Maine , on tap for more than a foot of snow. Snowflakes should start Monday evening around Washington, D.C. and reach their peak early morning on Tuesday in New York City before tapering off by Tuesday evening across New England. The storm will be a relatively fast-mover, with most of its energy concentrated into a period of about nine hours of heavy snow and strong winds at each location. Besides heavy snow and strong winds gusting to nearly hurricane-force in parts of Massachusetts, the storm may bring at least moderate coastal flooding to parts of the New Jersey shore. The result will be a snow day for sure on Tuesday with schools and workplaces closed—the National Weather Service is warning that “several roads may become impassable” and those that travel should bring along a “winter survival kit.” NYC schools will be closed; the governor of Connecticut has issued a statewide travel ban. With leaves already out due to the early spring, there’s also a risk of widespread power outages . An experimental winter storm severity index used by the National Weather Service maxes out the scale: While the effects on land may be astounding for at least a short while—words like paralyzing and crippling are being used to describe it—meteorologists are also viewing the storm as eye candy and refer to its weather maps as “ art. ” From a weather nerd-out standpoint, the storm is close to perfection. The primary ingredients—a cold pulse from the Great Lakes and a low-pressure system forming off the Carolinas—will pull in subtropical moisture from a record-warm Gulf Stream right offshore . The storm will rapidly strengthen —in the process becoming a meteorological “bomb ” ( a technical term for rapidly strengthening low-pressure centers)—and travel over the sweet spot to maximize snowfall for New York City and New England. That’s forced meteorologists to add new colors to their weather maps, and marvel at an “ absolute crusher ” that will be “ puking snow .” An objective pattern-matching algorithm has compared this storm to some of the all-time strongest, too, including the Valentine’s Day 2007 blizzard and 1993’s “Storm of the Century.” There’s even a good chance of thundersnow—the meteorological Holy Grail, made infamous by a viral Weather Channel video from 2011 in Chicago. If you’re wondering, “but, it’s March—how is this happening?”—that’s a good question. If the current forecast—which was boosted early Monday morning by the National Weather Service—pans out, the storm will rank as the second-biggest March snowstorm in New York City history (records go back to 1869). Two studies published last year argue that climate change may be making the ingredients for big East Coast snowstorms more likely, and the evidence is starting to mount: Including this storm, eight of the 10 biggest snowstorms in New York City have occurred since 1996. High-resolution weather models continue to insist that most of this storm’s snowfall will come during just a few hours via an intense band with snowfall rates of up to 5 inches per hour—near the upper limit of what is physically possible along the East Coast. ||||| FILE- In this March 10, 2017, file photo, pedestrians walk through wet snow in the Brooklyn borough of New York. The Northeast is bracing for winter's last hurrah — a blizzard expected to sweep the New... (Associated Press) FILE- In this March 10, 2017, file photo, pedestrians walk through wet snow in the Brooklyn borough of New York. The Northeast is bracing for winter's last hurrah — a blizzard expected to sweep the New York region starting Monday, March 13, with possibly of being the season's biggest snowstorm. (AP... (Associated Press) NEW YORK (AP) — A powerful nor'easter could bring blizzard conditions and more than a foot of snow to some parts of the Northeast, proving that winter is not done yet. The National Weather Service issued a blizzard watch from late Monday night through Tuesday evening for New York City and parts of northern New Jersey and southern Connecticut, while winter storm warnings and watches were issued for the remainder of the Northeast. Meteorologists said the storm could dump 12 to 18 inches of snow on New York City with wind gusts of 40 to 50 mph. Mayor Bill de Blasio urged residents to avoid unnecessary travel and help keep the roads clear for sanitation crews and first responders. "We're preparing for a significant storm on Tuesday, and New Yorkers should also prepare for snow and dangerous road conditions," de Blasio said. Light snow is expected to begin late Monday night and intensify overnight into early Tuesday morning. The heaviest snowfall is expected Tuesday morning through the afternoon, with snowfall rates of as much as 2 to 4 inches per hour. "This would certainly be the biggest snowstorm of the 2017 winter season in New York City," said Faye Barthold, a weather service meteorologist based on Long Island. Boston also could get 12 to 18 inches, with isolated amounts of up to 2 feet across northeastern Massachusetts. In Philadelphia, crews began treating some area roadways on Sunday. The city could see 6 to 12 inches of snow. The weather service said there is a chance the snow could change over to a wintry mix or rain for a time Tuesday morning, which could limit total snowfall amounts. Farther south, in the nation's capital, where the National Cherry Blossom Festival is scheduled to start Wednesday, snow accumulations of 6 to 10 inches are expected. Winter's last hurrah arrives just a week after the region saw temperatures climb in the 60s.
– Residents of the Northeast have known that a storm was on the way for days now, but the forecasts are only getting more dire as the moment approaches. The National Weather Service has issued a blizzard watch from late Monday through Tuesday evening for New York City and parts of northern New Jersey and southern Connecticut, while winter storm warnings and watches were issued for the remainder of the Northeast, per the AP. Meteorologists said the storm could dump 12 to 18 inches of snow on New York City and Boston, with Philadelphia is expecting up to a foot. But as NBC News notes, the more dangerous component will be high winds on Tuesday morning, with gusts of 55mph to 70mph in the forecast. "This would certainly be the biggest snowstorm of the 2017 winter season in New York City," says a weather service meteorologist based on Long Island. In fact, it has the potential to be among the worst, if not the worst, March snowstorm in New York City history. Coastal flooding also is a risk along the Jersey shore and elsewhere, as is "thundersnow," explains the Daily Beast. Meanwhile, spring officially arrives on March 20.
Washington state Health Department The reactors on all the plants scrammed, shut off immediately as they were designed to do. Control rods were properly lowered into the uranium-filled pools to stop the nuclear reaction that generates the heat and steam that move huge turbines that generate the power. Enormous, high-volume pumps kicked in to send cooling water through the intricately designed, uranium-235-filled fuel rods, to prevent them from melting. Sponsored Links Radiation is terrifying to most people. And the less you actually know about it, the more frightening it can be.Watching what looked like an endless Hollywood production of carnage in the coastal communities of northeastern Japan as they were inundated by earthquakes and 30-foot-tall, tsunami-driven waves was bad enough. But then the fires of disbelief were stoked anew as panting cable news crews ticked off details of six separate nuclear reactors that had completely or partially melted down or were soon expected to.Older TV viewers might recall being terrified, along with the rest of the world, as they watched the nuclear-disaster-that-could-never-happen at Three Mile Island unit 2 along the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg, Pa., in 1979. Or the even more disastrous explosion seven years later at Chernobyl Reactor No. 4 in the Ukraine.These earth-shaking events involved a single reactor, not the six that are now focusing the world's attention on the Fukushima I and Fukushima II nuclear complexes 150 miles north of Tokyo.Nuclear event and emergency-response experts huddled over the weekend in command centers from the White House to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to state governments in California, Oregon and Washington. They watched the latest news unfold half a world away on big screens and shared information on dedicated, confidential government hot lines.They saw Japan's multiple-redundant nuclear safeguards work, at first.All worked according to much-practiced plans. But then, suddenly, a flood of information from the Japanese government described a cascade of almost unbelievable reports.The power running the pumps died. The locomotive-sized diesel backup generators were destroyed by the flooding from the tsunamis. Neutron-absorbing boron and seawater -- a combination so corrosive that it was a death sentence for the reactors -- was pumped in, in a final effort to avoid a nuclear meltdown.Then, like scenes from "The China Syndrome" or from the pages of "The Night We Almost Lost Detroit," an explosion ripped off the outer wall and roof of the building holding the 41-year-old General Electric reactor. Late Sunday night, a second building blew into pieces. In both explosions, the reactors were not yet breached.But several of the reactors were spewing a deadly cocktail of assorted radioisotopes, including iodine-131, cesium-137, xenon and krypton carried aloft with the radioactive steam.Almost instantly, postings on thousands of websites and blogs pontificated on the importance of every shred of information, real or imagined.Some presumed experts talked of curies, rads, becquerels, sieverts, mrems and other terms describing the escaping radiation, using measurement terms that haven't been used in years or had absolutely no relevance to a leaking reactor. Rarely did they explain what these numbers meant.Some postings were criminally absurd and flat-out wrong.One map that went viral showed color-coded plumes of radiation moving eastward across the Pacific and the prediction that radiation levels measuring 3,000 rads would reach the Aleutian Island chain in three days. Levels of 1,500 rads will hit the northern coast of British Columbia within a week and western North American "from Alaska to the Baja tip in 10 days, with radiation levels of 750 rads,'' the posting warned.These numbers, which would kill or sicken quickly, have absolutely no basis in fact at all. And, according to a radiation expert at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, they are more typical of the levels that might occur after a nuclear attack.In fact, Japanese nuclear officials have said repeatedly that they're dealing with "a minimal level of radiation that does not harm human health."It is good to sometimes be skeptical of government claims. During Three Mile Island, a hydrogen bubble in the damaged reactor was poised to destroy the unit, yet power company and state and federal officials denied the existence of the destructive bubble for days.Some companies were quick to take advantage of such skepticism about the Japanese reports.The Web was bristling with links from stories on the disaster taking readers to sites selling "Five Person Deluxe Survival Kits," "life-saving" potassium iodide pills, Swiss Army knifes, tools to turn off leaking gas lines and Geiger counters of all sizes. One site promised, "Your order can be overnighted to you before the lethal cloud arrives."These are ads that are automatically placed by computers and are not set there by the writers or editors.Leading the silliness parade were bloggers who were linking to Cold War civil defense ads from the 1950s showing Tommy the Turtle hiding from a nuclear blast and children being taught to "duck and cover" under their school desks.As real facts flowing from Japan fell to a trickle, the vacuum was filled with speculation.For example, meteorologists and their websites argued over the prevailing-wind currents and surface currents from Japan. Some said the winds would quickly carry the radioactive debris to the West Coast in days. Other forecasters, using the same charts, said the wind patterns would widely distribute and dilute any plume of radioactive material before it reached the U.S.Bad information was coming from even trusted sites. The respected Incident and Emergency Center of the International Atomic Energy Agency says it incorrectly reported that four of the damaged reactors were venting.The U.S. government's watchdog of nuclear power plants isn't doing all it can to keep the public calm.At a White House briefing this morning, Gregory Jaczko, the head of the NRC, said power plants in the U.S. are designed to handle all " significant phenomena," including tsunamis, floods and earthquakes. He was asked several times what size quakes U.S. plants are designed to withstand. But each time he flipped the question back to the Japanese crisis, avoiding answering what he was asked.AOL News called the NRC press office and was told that each site is built to a different seismic activity standard. But when we requested a list of the earthquake design limits for each plant under NRC control, that information isn't available, was the official reply.Asked what the range of protective limits was, he said he didn't think that information was available.What makes this information important is that the Japanese plants that are in crisis were designed to withstand a 7.9 quake, not the 8.9 monster that hit them. Government officials in the U.S. were doing their best to downplay the imminent danger on this side of the Pacific.Rumors spread wildly on the availability and shipments of potassium iodide tablets, which is pretty much the only preventive medication to neutralize the effect of radioactive poisoning that targets the thyroid gland and could eventually cause cancer.When AOL News questioned the Departments of Energy and Homeland Security on Saturday, spokesmen said that none of the medication -- also called KI -- has been shipped anywhere because there is "no apparent need." Officials questioned on the West Coast said the same.Oregon and Washington state health officials told AOL News that if it were needed, the radiation-blocking agent could quickly be shipped in from strategic stockpiles maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.An official in California echoed the comments but added that there were already quantities of KI in the state because there are four operating power stations at two sites.The federal agencies said that they "continue to work to assess what is a very serious and fluid situation" but insisted that no one expected any "meaningful effects on the U.S. homeland.''Oregon and Washington say they continue to use continuous-reading Environmental Protection Agency radiation detectors to monitor levels. This is the same EPA system that first detected radiation from the Chernobyl accident at ground level on the West Coast one week after the meltdown in Ukraine.State officials said risks to residents of both states are minimal given the current size of the release from the Japanese reactors and the distance from the West Coast. But they will continue to closely watch the radiation detectors until the Japanese reactors are shut down. ||||| After a once-in-300-years earthquake, the Japanese have been keeping cool amid the chaos, organizing an enormous relief and rescue operation, and generally earning the world's admiration. We wish we could say the same for the reaction in the U.S., where the troubles at Japan's nuclear reactors have produced an overreaction about the risks of modern life and technology. Part of the problem is the lack of media proportion about the disaster itself. The quake and tsunami have killed hundreds, and probably thousands, with tens of billions of dollars in damage. The energy released by the quake off Sendei is equivalent to about 336 megatons of TNT, or 100 more megatons than last year's quake in Chile and thousands of times the yield of the nuclear explosion at Hiroshima. The scale of the tragedy is epic. Yet the bulk of U.S. media coverage has focused on a nuclear accident whose damage has so far been limited and contained to the plant sites. In simple human terms, the natural destruction of Earth and sea have far surpassed any errors committed by man. Editorial Board Member Mary Kissel explains the Japanese response to the quake. Given the incomplete news reports, it is impossible to say how much worse the nuclear damage will be. Unlike the Soviets at Chernobyl, the Japanese have been taking sensible precautions like evacuating people near the plants and handing out iodine pills even if they may never be needed. These precautions increase public worry, but better to take them even if they prove to be unnecessary. We will have plenty of time to dissect events at the reactors and the safety lessons going forward. William Tucker provides some useful context nearby, and one crucial point is that the containment walls seem to have held. These walls are designed to withstand quakes and explosions, and it is good news if they have done so. The crisis seems to have been triggered by the failure of diesel generators that provided electricity to cool the reactors once they were shut down. Mr. Tucker explains that this weakness has been corrected in new nuclear plant designs. We have no special brief for nuclear power over any other energy source. Our view is that it should compete with other sources on a market basis, without subsidies or government loan guarantees. Every energy source has risks and economic externalities, whether they are noise and bird kills (wind), huge land requirements (solar), rig explosions and tanker spills (oil), or mining accidents (coal). But more than other energy sources, nuclear plants have had their costs increased by artificial political obstacles and delay. The U.S. hasn't built a new nuclear plant since 1979, after the Three Mile Island meltdown, even as older nuclear plants continue to provide 20% of the nation's electricity. Enlarge Image Close JIJI PRESS/AFP/Getty Images An aerial photo shows the quake-damaged Fukushima Dai-Ni nuclear power plant. The Tennessee Valley Authority is a couple of years away from completing a reactor at Watts Bar after years of effort. Proposals for 20 new reactors to be built over the next 15 to 20 years are in various stages of review in the multiyear approval process at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, with two each in Georgia and South Carolina at the front of the line. But the much-ballyhooed "nuclear renaissance" is a long way off, and it will be longer after events in Japan. Our larger point is less about nuclear power than how we react as a society to inevitable disasters, both natural and man-made. Because a plane crashes, we don't stop flying. Because an oil rig explodes in the Gulf, we don't (or at least we shouldn't) stop drilling for oil. And because the Challenger space shuttle blew up, we didn't stop shuttle flights—though we do seem to have lost much of our national will for further manned space exploration. We should learn from the Japanese nuclear crisis, not let it feed a political panic over nuclear power in general. *** The paradox of material and technological progress is that we seem to become more risk-averse the safer it makes us. The more comfortable we become, the less eager we are to take the risks that are the only route to future progress. The irony is that one reason Japan has survived this catastrophic event as well as it has is its great material development and wealth. Modern civilization is in the daily business of measuring and mitigating risk, but its advance requires that we continue to take risk. It would compound Japan's tragedy if the lesson America learns is that we should pursue the illusory and counterproductive goal of eliminating all risk. ||||| Even while thousands of people are reported dead or missing, whole neighborhoods lie in ruins, and gas and oil fires rage out of control, press coverage of the Japanese earthquake has quickly settled on the troubles at two nuclear reactors as the center of the catastrophe. Rep. Ed Markey (D., Mass.), a longtime opponent of nuclear power, has warned of "another Chernobyl" and predicted "the same thing could happen here." In response, he has called for an immediate suspension of licensing procedures for the Westinghouse AP1000, a "Generation III" reactor that has been laboring through design review at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for seven years. Author William Tucker explains why the danger is limited at Japan's nuclear reactors. Before we respond with such panic, though, it would be useful to review exactly what is happening in Japan and what we have to fear from it. The core of a nuclear reactor operates at about 550 degrees Fahrenheit, well below the temperature of a coal furnace and only slightly hotter than a kitchen oven. If anything unusual occurs, the control rods immediately drop, shutting off the nuclear reaction. You can't have a "runaway reactor," nor can a reactor explode like a nuclear bomb. A commercial reactor is to a bomb what Vaseline is to napalm. Although both are made from petroleum jelly, only one of them has potentially explosive material. Once the reactor has shut down, there remains "decay heat" from traces of other radioactive isotopes. This can take more than a week to cool down, and the rods must be continually bathed in cooling waters to keep them from overheating. On all Generation II reactors—the ones currently in operation—the cooling water is circulated by electric pumps. The new Generation III reactors such as the AP1000 have a simplified "passive" cooling system where the water circulates by natural convection with no pumping required. If the pumps are knocked out in a Generation II reactor—as they were at Fukushima Daiichi by the tsunami—the water in the cooling system can overheat and evaporate. The resulting steam increases internal pressure that must be vented. There was a small release of radioactive steam at Three Mile Island in 1979, and there have also been a few releases at Fukushima Daiichi. These produce radiation at about the level of one dental X-ray in the immediate vicinity and quickly dissipate. Editorial Board Member Mary Kissel explains the Japanese response to the quake. If the coolant continues to evaporate, the water level can fall below the level of the fuel rods, exposing them. This will cause a meltdown, meaning the fuel rods melt to the bottom of the steel pressure vessel. Early speculation was that in a case like this the fuel might continue melting right through the steel and perhaps even through the concrete containment structure—the so-called China syndrome, where the fuel would melt all the way to China. But Three Mile Island proved this doesn't happen. The melted fuel rods simply aren't hot enough to melt steel or concrete. The decay heat must still be absorbed, however, and as a last-ditch effort the emergency core cooling system can be activated to flood the entire containment structure with water. This will do considerable damage to the reactor but will prevent any further steam releases. The Japanese have now reportedly done this using seawater in at least two of the troubled reactors. These reactors will never be restarted. None of this amounts to "another Chernobyl." The Chernobyl reactor had two crucial design flaws. First, it used graphite (carbon) instead of water to "moderate" the neutrons, which makes possible the nuclear reaction. The graphite caught fire in April 1986 and burned for four days. Water does not catch fire. Second, Chernobyl had no containment structure. When the graphite caught fire, it spouted a plume of radioactive smoke that spread across the globe. A containment structure would have both smothered the fire and contained the radioactivity. If a meltdown does occur in Japan, it will be a disaster for the Tokyo Electric Power Company but not for the general public. Whatever steam releases occur will have a negligible impact. Researchers have spent 30 years trying to find health effects from the steam releases at Three Mile Island and have come up with nothing. With all the death, devastation and disease now threatening tens of thousands in Japan, it is trivializing and almost obscene to spend so much time worrying about damage to a nuclear reactor. What the Japanese earthquake has proved is that even the oldest containment structures can withstand the impact of one of the largest earthquakes in recorded history. The problem has been with the electrical pumps required to operate the cooling system. It would be tragic if the result of the Japanese accident were to prevent development of Generation III reactors, which eliminate this design flaw. Mr. Tucker is author of "Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America's Energy Odyssey" (Bartleby Press, 2010).
– America is positively freaking out over the state of Japan’s nuclear reactors, with some calling for a halt to the development of new nuclear plants. But that’s a wild overreaction, opines a Wall Street Journal editorial. The media’s done a poor job of putting the tragedy in Japan in proportion: The quake killed hundreds, and released a thousand times more energy than the nuclear explosion at Hiroshima. “In simple human terms, the natural destruction of Earth and sea have far surpassed any errors committed by man.” In a separate piece, William Tucker breaks down the technical workings of the reactors, and concludes that there’s little danger. “None of this amounts to ‘another Chernobyl,’” he says. Chernobyl had massive design flaws that these Generation II reactors don’t; their containment structures have held. “If a meltdown does occur,” he concludes, “it will be a disaster for the Tokyo Electric Power Company, but not for the general public.” For another (paywall-free) dose of realism, click here.
Virginia's outgoing governor has pulled a prank on his successor. The Washington Post reported Sunday that Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam found images of Terry McAuliffe on his bed pillows at the Governor's Mansion. McAuliffe, also a Democrat, emblazoned the pillows with one of his favorite sayings: "Sleep when you're dead." Northam and his wife, first lady Pam Northam, spent their first night in the mansion resting their heads on the 72nd's governor's grinning mug. The Post reports that the newly inaugurated Governor was also treated to several photos of McAuliffe around the residence and an early morning wake up call. "There are pictures of the governor all over the mansion that he left for me," Northam told the Post. "Also, at 3 o'clock this morning, an alarm clock went off, which I have yet to find. I texted him and thanked him, and he said there was more to come. Such pranks are common in Virginia, the only state where the governorship changes hands every four years. During the last changeover, Republican Bob McDonnell had left a huge stuffed bear in the private bathroom for a newly sworn-in McAuliffe. It was a real bear taken from the office of McDonnell's natural resources secretary Doug Domenech. At a chilly ceremony in Richmond surrounded by his family and, further back, a number of former governors, Northam took the oath to become the Old Dominion's 73rd chief executive on Saturday. Northam, a Democrat, veteran and pediatrician who was previously the state's lieutenant governor, beat Republican Ed Gillespie for the seat in November. ||||| Newly inaugurated Gov. Ralph Northam and his wife found pillowcases emblazoned with former governor Terry McAuliffe’s face and a favorite saying on their bed in the governor’s mansion. (Photo by Gov. Ralph Northam/Photo by Gov. Ralph Northam) The peaceful transfer of power in Virginia would not be complete without a prank pulled by the outgoing governor on his successor. So it was that as newly inaugurated Gov. Ralph Northam (D) hit the sack Saturday night after his inauguration, he found something special on his pillowcase — and it was not one of those fancy hotel good-night chocolates. An image of former governor Terry McAuliffe (D) was plastered on his pillowcase, emblazoned with one of the go-go-go ex-governor's favorite sayings: "Sleep when you're dead." And yes, Virginia's 73rd governor spent his first night in the mansion with his head resting on the 72nd's governor's grinning mug. His wife, first lady Pam Northam, let him use her McAuliffe-covered pillow, too, opting for a plain pillowcase for herself. "Let me show you the picture," Northam said, pulling out his cellphone after a brunch hosted by the first lady Sunday at Richmond's Jefferson Hotel. The pillowcases are not the only reminders McAuliffe left behind. Gov.Ralph Northam and his wife, Pam, arrive at the south portico before Northam took the oath of office at the Capitol in Richmond, Va., on Saturday. (Kevin Morley/AP) "There are pictures of the governor all over the mansion that he left for me," Northam said. "Also, at 3 o'clock this morning, an alarm clock went off, which I have yet to find. I texted him and thanked him, and he said there was more to come." The alarm clock trick is not a new one, but certain pranks are bound to get recycled in the only state where the governorship changes hands every four years. Departing governor Robert F. McDonnell (R) set one to go off at 4 a.m. four years ago, giving McAuliffe a jolt on his first weekend in the Executive Mansion. Another surprise awaited the newly sworn-in McAuliffe when he got to his office: a huge stuffed bear in the private bathroom. It was no teddy bear. It was the real, taxidermied thing, poached from the office of McDonnell's natural resources secretary Doug Domenech. On his way out of the governorship, in 2010, now-Sen. Tim Kaine (D) hid cellphones in the mansion elevator shaft and periodically called them as a trick on McDonnell. It took a few days for McDonnell's team to locate them. And before that, now-Sen. Mark R. Warner (D) left a life-size cutout of himself in the governor's mansion shower for Kaine.
– Playing pranks on your successor is a tradition among Virginia governors. When Mark Warner moved out of the governor's mansion in 2006, for example, he left a life-size cutout of himself in the shower for the recently elected Tim Kaine, the Washington Post reports. Kaine paid that favor forward four years later when he occasionally called cell phones he'd left in the elevator shafts to irk his successor, Robert McDonnell. But outgoing Gov. Terry McAuliffe may have taken the cake Saturday night, greeting new Gov. Ralph Northam and his wife, Pam, with pillowcases on their new bed plastered with McAuliffe's image. And right above the image was one of McAuliffe's favorite lines: "Sleep when you're dead." Northam took his hazing in stride, spending his first night in office with his head rested on the portrait of his predecessor. He also showed a picture he had taken of the pillowcases to reporters at a brunch the next morning. But McAuliffe's mischief didn't stop there, CBS News reports. He also left pictures of himself throughout the governor's mansion. And, according to Northam, an alarm went off at 3am that first night, an alarm Northam has yet to find. "I texted him and thanked him," Northam said, "and he said there was more to come."
A paradox of the new music industry: Albums sell less and less well every year, but as a marketing tool they are now more important than ever. A case in point is Lady Gaga, whose new album, “Born This Way” (Interscope), was released on May 23 and sold 1,108,000 copies in the United States in its first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Some 662,000 of those sales, or about 60 percent, were digital downloads, the most any album has ever sold in a week. The extraordinary success of “Born This Way” — it outsold the next 42 albums on Billboard’s chart combined — are a testimony to Lady Gaga’s appeal and the hard work of her business team, which devised one of the most extensive and savvy marketing campaigns ever mounted in music. Once an artist’s biggest source of income, recorded music now plays second fiddle to touring, endorsements, merchandise sales and an array of other revenue streams once considered ancillary. That’s especially true for an artist like Lady Gaga, who has lined up more branding and promotional deals in the last six months than most artists will in a lifetime. “People lose sight of how an artist becomes successful in 2011,” said Bill Werde, Billboard’s editorial director. “She could have sold 600,000 albums, or a million, or two million. But in terms of revenue that’s going to be a smaller piece of the pie.” If there is any asterisk on her achievement, it’s that about two-thirds of the digital downloads are owed to a 99-cent deal offered by Amazon, which helped sales pass the million mark. The huge discount drew an angry reaction from brick-and-mortar retailers who saw their sales drop in response. Ish Cuebas, vice president for music merchandising of Trans World Entertainment, which operates 460 music and media stores, including F.Y.E., said that his shops sold about half as many copies of “Born This Way” as he had expected. “I don’t think it sends a good message,” Mr. Cuebas said of Amazon’s deal. “I can understand what Amazon did, but I think it devalues music even further. In the customer’s mind it’s worth 99 cents.” But something is still needed to organize the flurry of products, activities and side deals that now constitute an artist’s business, and most often that role is filled by an album, no matter what the cost. The album still establishes an artist’s sound, look and message and provides an anchor around which long promotions can be built, from early singles (and leaks) to concert tours and television appearances. Recognizing this, Interscope and Lady Gaga’s manager, Troy Carter, built their campaign around the release date, which they chose late last year to take advantage of music-related high points on the television calendar, like the Grammy Awards in February (where Lady Gaga played the premiere of her song “Born This Way”) and the finale of “American Idol” last week (where she sang her latest single, “The Edge of Glory”). “We wanted to approach this like we were opening a blockbuster film,” said Steve Berman, vice chairman of Interscope Geffen A&M.; “It became: ‘We’ll put a flag in that date well in advance. We won’t move. And what we’ll do for the next six months is pour gas on that fire every day, really branding the date.’ ” Like any good movie campaign the selling of “Born This Way” began nearly a year in advance and continued as a well-timed drumbeat of promotional appearances, retail tie-ins and media deals that rose to a climax as the release date approached. Lady Gaga announced the title of the album at MTV’s Video Music Awards last September and gave the release date on New Year’s Eve. As the promotions piled up in recent weeks, she became inescapable. If you missed her HBO concert special or “Saturday Night Live” appearance, her GagaVille online game or fashion sale through Gilt Groupe, then perhaps you rode in one of the New York City subway cars decked out top to bottom with “Born This Way” advertising. Lady Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, apparently knows the value of these deals. Mr. Carter said she accompanied him on numerous trips to retailers and to Silicon Valley start-ups eager to attach themselves to the Gaga brand. But the most effective offering may have been the one the Gaga team knew nothing about. On May 23 Amazon put the digital version of the album on sale for 99 cents to draw music fans to Cloud Drive, its entry into the world of so-called cloud music services, which store a user’s songs on remote servers. Amazon paid Interscope’s distributor, Universal, the full wholesale price for the album — between $8 and $9 — and accepted the difference as a loss, according to several people briefed on the sales arrangement, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the details. Billboard reported that Amazon’s two-day sale yielded about 440,000 digital sales; if correct, that would mean that the retailer lost more than $3 million on the promotion. (Amazon declined to comment.) Several other new releases reached high on Billboard’s album chart this week, but none came close to “Born This Way.” Brad Paisley’s new “This Is Country Music” (Arista Nashville) is No. 2 with 153,000 copies sold, and “Glee: The Music, Vol. 6” (Columbia) sold 80,000, reaching No. 4. Adele’s “21” (XL), which has been No. 1 for a total of nine weeks this year, fell two spots to No. 3 with 127,000. Mr. Carter, Lady Gaga’s manager, said the prerelease promotional campaign for “Born This Way” had been in full swing for six months. “If you look at ‘The Fame,’ ” Mr. Carter continued, referring to Lady Gaga’s first album, “it wasn’t marketing ploys that drove the success of that album. It was the quality of the content and Gaga’s willingness to go around the world and play for the fans, do the promotion, do the TV shows, visit the radio stations and the club D.J.’s. There’s a lot more of that than there are marketing ploys.” That means the promotion for “Born This Way” is far from over. “This is where the work begins,” he said. ||||| After all that talk about underperforming singles and creative bankruptcy and overexposure, Lady Gaga did exactly what she was supposed to do with Born This Way, her first album since officially branding herself a superstar: sell a ridiculous number of units. The exact number, 1.1 million in the first week , is startling — but it comes with a caveat. That final tally was greatly boosted by the fact that Amazon, looking to drive people toward their new Cloud Drive music locker service, dropped the price on Born This Way’s digital release to an all-new loss-leader low of 99 cents. Over the two days of the offer, the album was downloaded 440,000 times, roughly two thirds of its overall digital sales count. So how much did Amazon cough up in the process? According to the New York Times, Amazon paid Gaga’s distributor, Universal, full price (between $8 or $9 per album), meaning they lost more than $3 million. That is certainly a ton of money to have kicked into your campaign by an entity that has no actual interest in how well your album sells, and it provides much fodder for anyone wishing to quibble with the validity of the 1.1 million number. But Lady Gaga should still get a lot of the credit: Amazon would have wanted to pull this kind of sales gimmick with someone, and, thanks to the all-permeating pop-culture presence that Gaga has cultivated, she was the top option. Meanwhile, Amazon chalks all those millions up to marketing costs and moves on. Win-win! Still, Taylor Swift — who only mustered a paltry 1.04 million sales for Speak Now’s first week — is probably pretty salted.
– Lady Gaga sold a whopping 1.1 million copies of Born This Way in its first week, but 440,000 of those copies went for just 99 cents on Amazon.com. Amazon, however, did pay Gaga's distributor the full price of $8 to $9 per album—which means, the New York Times calculates, the online retailer lost more than $3 million. Of course, New York magazine points out, a big point of the gimmick was to drum up new users for its Cloud Drive service, so the company can just consider those millions "marketing costs." As for Gaga, the move does provide "much fodder for anyone wishing to quibble with the validity of the 1.1 million number," writes Amos Barshad. Click to see which artist Barshad thinks is "probably pretty salted" right now.
These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| CTVNews.ca Staff Nearly 30 years after his disappearance, a Kitchener, Ont., man solved his own cold case when he suddenly remembered his identity. Edgar Latulip was 21 years old when he vanished from the southern Ontario city. But this Wednesday, Waterloo Regional Police confirmed he was found roughly 130 kilometres away in St. Catharines, Ont., and is doing well. It was revealed that Latulip had suffered a head injury shortly after arriving in the city years ago and "effectively forgot who he was." But in January of this year, Latulip told a social worker in St. Catharines that he remembered his name, putting the gears in motion for his return home. At the time of his disappearance, police believed Latulip, who has a developmental delay, took a bus and travelled to the Niagara Falls area. Even though they were on the right track, they were unable to find him. Years later, police were tipped off that he may have been spotted in Hamilton, Ont., but they still could not track him down. "It's the only case, that I know of, where we've been able to find someone who has been missing for this period of time," Det. Const. Duane Gingerich, of the Waterloo Regional Police, told CTV Kitchener. Police say a DNA test on Friday confirmed his identity and a reunion with his family is in the works. "I did speak with one of the family members yesterday and today, and … they're obviously very happy about it, and they’re making plans to get together with Edgar and speak with him further," said Gingerich. Latulip's mother, Silvia Wilson, said she is overwhelmed by her son's return, but she hasn’t spoken with him yet. With a report from CTV Kitchener's Allison Tanner
– Almost 30 years after he went missing from a group home in Kitchener, Ontario, at the age of 21, Edgar Latulip remembered something very important last month: his name. Police say the 50-year-old, who has a developmental delay and functions at a child's level, has spent the last 30 years living in St. Catharines, around 80 miles from where he disappeared, CTV reports. From what investigators can piece together, Latulip took a bus to Niagara Falls in September 1986 and ended up in St. Catharines, where he suffered a head injury and "effectively forgot who he was" until this year, when he told a social worker he remembered. Before his disappearance, Latulip had attempted suicide at least once, leading to fears he may have killed himself. Police officer Duane Gingerich, who investigated the disappearance, tells the Guelph Mercury that he's thrilled that Latulip has turned up alive. "I had hopes that he was out there somewhere," he says. "For us as investigators, this is great, this is awesome. It's satisfying because most of these cases don't turn out this way. You expect the worst when a person is missing for that period of time." A DNA test confirmed Latulip's identity and police say a reunion with his mother, who moved to Ottawa years ago, is being arranged. In a 2014 interview, she told the Mercury she was still haunted by the disappearance. "This is always at the back of my mind. Having an answer would mean closure," she said. (A California hospital recently identified the man it had called "Garage 66" for 16 years.)
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