Webcans mostram a chegada do Furacão Sandy

Através da internet na página do Google Maps, é possível acompanhar a chegada do furacão Sandy a cidade de Nova York. Veja algumas imagens que estão em alguns pontos espalhados pela cidade americana.

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Câmera localizada na Throgs Neck Bridge Toll Plaza, junto a uma praça de pedágio na região.

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Imagem de um túnel que fica localizada na Battery Park Underpass, próximo ao Memorial Marina Mercante Americano, em Manhattan, Nova York.

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Imagens: Reprodução

Hero cop shot in the head gets promoted to sergeant

A hero cop who miraculously survived being shot in the head was promoted to sergeant Friday.

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Kevin Brennan, who was wounded in Brooklyn in January, took the test late last year. He was promoted to detective in February after the brave cop was shot by a thug outside a Bushwick housing project.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said at the promotion ceremony at One Police Plaza that Brennan made “a miraculous recovery from a near fatal gunshot wound he sustained in the line of duty last January.”

Brennan and 47 other cops were promoted to sergeant on Friday.

“I feel proud to be a sergeant, I put my life on hold to study,” said Brennan. “The last seven months have been crazy—getting shot, having a daughter, being promoted to detective and sergeant.”

Brennan is undergoing physical therapy and home with his daughter who turned six months old last week. He said he is experiencing a lot of pain in his spine.

Manhattan cop Nelson Vargara was also shot in the Bronx last Sunday. “I don’t want to see any police officer get shot, or anyone shot,” said Brennan. “I hope we get more guns off the street.”

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Date of publication: June 29, 2012
Source: Rebecca Harshbarger/New York Post
Photo: NYPD

Weeks After Acquittal, an Assemblyman Is Facing New Bribery Charges

30/11/2011 - 0h19min
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Even to those accustomed to the sins of New York politicians, the latest trial and tribulations of Assemblyman William F. Boyland Jr. may have hit a new low.
Mr. Boyland, 41, who comes from one of Brooklyn’s most prominent political families, was arrested on Tuesday on federal bribery charges in the borough; the arrest comes nearly nine months after he was arrested on similar but separate bribery charges in Manhattan.
In the new case, prosecutors said Mr. Boyland had the temerity to continue to commit bribery — they say he solicited more than $250,000 in bribes — even after he had been charged in the Manhattan case.
And in a twist, Mr. Boyland intended to use some of the bribe money to pay for lawyers who were representing him in the Manhattan bribery case, prosecutors said; in one case, he solicited $7,000 in cash bribes to “solidify some attorneys,” as he put it in a phone call that was secretly recorded by the government.
Mr. Boyland was acquitted on Nov. 10 in the Manhattan case, and left the courthouse that day triumphant, declaring he was looking forward to returning to his work as an assemblyman. That case was largely circumstantial and the jury never heard Mr. Boyland’s voice, for example, on secretly recorded phone calls.
His voice is all over the new case, the authorities say.
Last April, for example, just weeks after he had been released on bond in the earlier case, Mr. Boyland was secretly recorded by the authorities as he solicited a $250,000 bribe from two undercover agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in an Atlantic City hotel suite. In that conversation, he talks about his need to “stay clean” and work through a “bag man,” a criminal complaint shows.
He also says that he prefers personal meetings to phone calls, according to the complaint. “I stopped talking on the phone a while ago,” he said, adding, “especially with what we’re talking about.”
The complaint quotes Mr. Boyland as telling the undercover agents, who were posing as investors interested in real estate projects in Brooklyn, that he needs $250,000 to cover his “legal fees for this legal thing that I have,” a clear reference to the Manhattan bribery case.
“I have a good attorney — I just can’t pay him,” Mr. Boyland says with a laugh, according to the complaint. “I have to get clear of these ... charges, but I have to come back in a bigger sense. That, that’s what has to happen.”
Mr. Boyland was arrested at his home in Brooklyn on Tuesday morning, an official said; later in the day, he appeared in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, wearing a blue jogging suit and sneakers. His demeanor was calm.
Magistrate Judge Joan M. Azrack released him on a $100,000 personal recognizance bond and ordered him not to leave the state.
“We’re sorry to have to be here again,” his lawyer, Michael K. Bachrach, said as he and Mr. Boyland left the courtroom. “We intend to vigorously defend this case,” the lawyer added.
Mr. Boyland declined to comment.
The United States attorney in Brooklyn, Loretta E. Lynch, who announced the new charges with Janice K. Fedarcyk, the F.B.I. official who leads the bureau’s New York office, said the “extent of the charged corruption is staggering.”
Prosecutors accused Mr. Boyland of soliciting and accepting a stream of bribes between August 2010 and June 2011 from a carnival promoter who had known Mr. Boyland for years, and who was cooperating with the government. In exchange, Mr. Boyland agreed to take official actions to secure business opportunities, according to the complaint, which is signed by F.B.I. Special Agent Richard Wilfling.
The complaint says the case stemmed from an investigation of another elected official, identified only as John Doe No. 1, who was said to have solicited a bribe from a carnival operator in the past.
Originally, the undercover agents said they were looking for locations for carnivals in Brooklyn, and Mr. Boyland had said he would help them, the complaint notes.
In October 2010, Mr. Boyland told the undercover agents that he had the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development “locked up,” the complaint says, adding that Mr. Boyland apparently intended to have the city agency help find carnival locations.
Mr. Boyland and the agent also discussed ways to compensate Mr. Boyland for his assistance, the complaint says. “Boyland suggested ‘a consultancy,’ ” by which he would accept payments disguised as consulting fees, the complaint adds.
In November 2010, Mr. Boyland was recorded telling one undercover agent and the carnival promoter that he had arranged for a meeting with the new parks commissioner for Brooklyn, the complaint says. “We pretty much have a green light here, guys,” Mr. Boyland said, according to the complaint. “We can pretty much do what we need to do here.”
Vickie Karp, a spokeswoman for the parks department, said: “It’s premature to comment. We’re looking into it.”
In the April meeting in the Atlantic City hotel suite, in which Mr. Boyland solicited $250,000, the assemblyman proposed a deal by which the two agents posing as investors could buy a financially troubled hospital in his district for $8 million, renovate it with state grant money that he would help obtain and then resell it for $15 million to a nonprofit organization that Mr. Boyland indicated that he controlled, prosecutors said.
One undercover agent asked how much money he wanted in the deal. “Don’t be bashful,” the agent said.
When the undercover agent asks for a specific figure, Mr. Boyland responds “Two fifty,” the complaint says.
“Two hundred and fifty?” the agent asks.
“Yeah,” Mr. Boyland is quoted as saying.
Mr. Boyland, who was first elected in 2003, succeeded his father, William F. Boyland Sr., who had served two decades in the Assembly. The father, in turn, had succeeded his brother, Thomas S. Boyland, who won the seat in the late 1970s but died at age 39 in 1982. Mr. Boyland Jr.’s sister, Tracy, served on the City Council as well.
Mr. Boyland’s Assembly district, the 55th, includes neighborhoods like Ocean Hill and Brownsville, and the district includes a street, school and park all named after Thomas Boyland.
In the trial in Manhattan, Mr. Boyland was acquitted of charges that he had received $175,000 in bribes through a sham consulting agreement with the chief executive of a health care organization, MediSys, which runs hospitals in Brooklyn and Queens.
If convicted of the new charges, Mr. Boyland could face up to 30 years in prison, prosecutors said.
As he left the courthouse, Mr. Boyland was asked by a reporter whether he intended to remain in office. He nodded in assent. Then he walked into the rain shielded by his lawyer’s umbrella.
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Matter: Benjamin Weiser e Lisa W. Foderaro/The New York Times

Woman Gave Councilman Part of Her Pay, She Testifies

29/11/2011 - 23h53min | Nova Iorque - EUA
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A woman who had a romantic relationship with City Councilman Larry B. Seabrook testified on Monday that in instances in which she was hired as a consultant based on Mr. Seabrook’s recommendation, she gave him part of the money she received from her employers.
The woman, Gloria Jones-Grant, also testified that she was paid even when she failed to do the agreed-upon work. In one case, she said, she was hired by Arlington Leon Eastmond, a Bronx businessman whom Mr. Seabrook helped secure a contract to install boilers at the new Yankee Stadium. Her task was to go to an engineering conference to try to persuade attendees to use boilers of the sort that Mr. Eastmond manufactured. Even though she never made it to the conference, she was still paid her fee of $2,500, she testified.
The testimony by Ms. Jones-Grant came toward the end of the federal government’s corruption case against Mr. Seabrook, a Democrat from the Bronx, and it is likely to play a major part in the trial, in United States District Court in Manhattan. She was on the stand for about 90 minutes on Monday and is expected to resume testimony on Tuesday.

City Councilman Larry B. Seabrook, second from left, a Democrat from the Bronx, exiting Federal District Court in Manhattan, where he is being tried on corruption charges.
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Her testimony directly followed the approval of an immunity agreement by Judge Robert P. Patterson under which prosecutors agreed not to use her statements in court against her as long as she testified truthfully.
Ms. Jones-Grant told jurors on Monday that she had given part of her consulting payments from at least two groups to Mr. Seabrook in cash. But she was vague at times about how much she had given to the councilman, and she often punctuated her testimony with long pauses.
Her testimony is expected to be relevant because she served as the executive director of three nonprofit organizations connected to Mr. Seabrook. Prosecutors said that the councilman secured government financing for those groups and then used them to distribute money to himself and others, including Ms. Jones-Grant.
Soon after Ms. Jones-Grant took the stand, a prosecutor, Brent Wible, asked her to state the nature of her relationship with Mr. Seabrook.
“It was an intimate relationship,” she said.
Although her testimony on Monday did not tie Mr. Seabrook directly to unlawful behavior, she acknowledged that he used his influence to help her and admitted that she had committed forgery while running the nonprofit groups.
Prosecutors displayed two sublease agreements from 2005 in which two groups led by Ms. Jones-Grant rented office space from another nonprofit group connected to Mr. Seabrook, the African-American Bronx Unity Day Parade. In both instances, Ms. Jones-Grant testified, she had signed the agreements on behalf of the groups she headed — the Northeast Bronx Redevelopment Corporation and the African-American Civic and Legal Hall of Fame — and forged the signature of an official from the Unity Day Parade.
Before she began running the two groups, Ms. Jones-Grant testified, Mr. Seabrook arranged for her to have consulting jobs with each organization.
He also helped her get consulting work with Congress Pharmacy in the Bronx and with the Friends of Kevin McAdams, a political organization supporting a candidate for the House, she said in court.
At times, Ms. Jones-Grant appeared to flummox prosecutors; at one point, she testified that she did not remember what she had done with $6,700 in checks made out to cash that were written on her own account in April 2003. She also testified that she had given Mr. Seabrook just $500 of the $7,000 she received from Mr. McAdams’s campaign, then volunteered that her payment was part of an effort to repay an $18,000 loan from Mr. Seabrook.
At one point, Mr. Wible referred to the money that Ms. Jones-Grant had received from Mr. Eastmond and asked if she remembered telling investigators that she had given half of that amount to Mr. Seabrook.
“I don’t recollect that I said about half,” she replied.
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Matter: Colin Moynihan/The New York Times
Photo: John Marshall Mantel/The New York Times
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A version of this article appeared in print on November 29, 2011, on page A24 of the New York edition with the headline: Woman Gave Councilman Part of Her Pay, She Testifies.