New York, New Jersey, Connecticut News

Tuesday, 1 May 2012

Five arrested by FBI in Ohio bridge bomb plot

Eyewitness NewsCLEVELAND -- Federal authorities say five men have been arrested in an alleged plot to blow up a bridge near Cleveland.

The FBI said Tuesday there was no danger to the public because the explosive devices were inoperable and were controlled by an undercover FBI employee.

The men were arrested Monday on charges of conspiracy and trying to use explosive to damage property affecting interstate commerce. They range in age from 20 and 35. Authorities say at least three of the men are self-described anarchists and are not tied to international terrorism.

The FBI says the target of the plot was a bridge over the Cuyahoga Valley National Park in the Brecksville area, roughly 15 miles south of downtown Cleveland.

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76 neglected dogs found in Wallkill home

WALLKILL (WABC) -- A Wallkill woman was arrested and charged with two counts of animal cruelty on Monday morning after police executed a search warrant at her home on Derby Road.

Police say they found 76 neglected dogs at the home of 64-year-old Sylvia Panetta. Two of the dogs were seriously injured, including one who had to have his leg amputated.

Pancetta was reportedly breeding Rottweilers for sale on the Internet, except officials say her dogs were in a heartbreaking state of neglect, disease and deformity. Pancettal allegedly starved them on a diet of bread and water.

The dogs that needed the most urgent care were removed immediately, while the rest will be rescued later.

Panetta was charged with animal cruelty and was allowed back on her property. More charges could follow as authorities finish removing the rest of the dogs.

Most did them will likely end up at the animal sanctuary Pets Alive, where they can be nursed to better health.

If you would like to help by donating, visit PetsAlive.org.

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New York City issues social media guidelines for teachers

Eyewitness NewsNEW YORK -- New York City has issued its first social media guidelines for public school teachers.

The guidelines say teachers should reject friend requests or other contact with students on their personal accounts.

They come as school districts across the country seek to balance the risks of inappropriate contact with the academic benefits of social networking.

This month, the Department of Education will start providing training sessions for teachers in how best to use social media in the classroom.

Department officials told the Wall Street Journal (http://on.wsj.com/KAgeKb ) that the recommendations have been in the works for about six months.

Spokesman Matthew Mittenthal says there are no consequences for not abiding by the guidelines as long as other department policies about appropriate conduct are followed.

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(Copyright ©2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard welcome second baby girl

Maggie Gyllenhaal welcomed her second daughter with husband Peter Sarsgaard, it was announced on April 30.

Gloria Ray was born on April 19 in New York, Gyllenhaal's rep confirmed to the Associated Press. Gyllenhaal married Sarsgaard, 41, in 2009. The couple welcomed their daughter Ramona in 2006, shortly after announcing their engagement.

The 34-year-old actress first sparked pregnancy rumors at the Rome Film Festival in October, when she appeared to have a baby bump. The news was confirmed in November.

"I find it difficult to pretend you're not pregnant, which I had to do," Gyllenhaal told USA Today in March. "I didn't let anyone know until three and a half months this time. I went to film festivals. I'm throwing up in the bathroom and having to keep pretzels in my purse, and having to fit into dresses."

Maggie Gyllenhaal most recently filmed "Hysteria," a comedy following the invention of the vibrator . The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and stars Hugh Dancy as a young doctor hired to aid the leading doctor in women's medicine in "stimulating the nervous system" of his female patients. The film also stars Rupert Everett, Jonathan Pryce and Felicity Jones.

Gyllenhaal rose to fame after appearing in the sadomasochistic romance "Secretary," which earned her a Golden Globe nomination. She has since appeared in films like "Sherrybaby," "World Trade Center," "The Dark Knight" and "Crazy Heart."

Sarsgaard is best known for his roles in "Garden State," "Jarhead" and "Boys Don't Cry." He most recently portrayed Hector Hammond opposite Ryan Reynolds in "Green Lantern."

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Judge rules maid's suit against Strauss-Kahn can proceed

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former head of the International Monetary Fund, is arraigned Monday, May 16, 2011, at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York. ( (AP Photo/Emmanuel Dunand, Pool))

JENNIFER PELTZNEW YORK -- A hotel maid's sexual assault lawsuit against Dominique Strauss-Kahn can go forward to trial, a judge ruled Tuesday, rebuffing the former International Monetary Fund leader's diplomatic-immunity claim.

Bronx state Supreme Court Justice Douglas McKeon's ruling kept alive the civil case that emerged from a May 2011 hotel-room encounter that also spurred now-dismissed criminal charges against Strauss-Kahn, then a French presidential hopeful. The episode was the first in a series of allegations about his sexual conduct that sank his political career.

The housekeeper, Nafissatou Diallo, 33, said Strauss-Kahn, 63, tried to rape her when she arrived to clean his Manhattan hotel suite. Strauss-Kahn has denied doing anything violent during the encounter.

Prosecutors dropped related criminal charges last summer, saying they had developed doubts about her trustworthiness because she had lied about her background and her actions right after the alleged attack. She has insisted she told the truth about what happened in the encounter itself.

McKeon invoked an American sports metaphor in striking down the French diplomat's argument that he is immune from the lawsuit.

"Mr. Strauss-Kahn throws (legally speaking, that is) his own version of a 'Hail Mary' pass by asserting that once he was arrested and confined to a New York home as a condition of bail" he was covered by a treaty allowing departing diplomats reasonable time to leave the country before their immunity expires, even though he already had resigned his IMF post, McKeon wrote.

Strauss-Kahn didn't assert immunity from the criminal prosecution, and he resigned his IMF job days after his arrest. The lawsuit was filed about three months later.

That "may seem like an unfair result to some, but it's the result the law compels," Strauss-Kahn attorney lawyer Amit P. Mehta said at a hearing in March.

They pointed to a 1947 United Nations agreement that afforded the privilege to heads of "specialized agencies," including the International Monetary Fund. Although the United States didn't sign that agreement, Strauss-Kahn's attorneys said it has gained such broad acceptance elsewhere that it has become what's known as "customary international law."

But Diallo's lawyers said the immunity claim is off base. They stressed that the U.S. didn't join in the 1947 agreement, and that an IMF spokesman said shortly after Strauss-Kahn's arrest that he didn't have immunity because he was on personal business during his encounter with Diallo. Strauss-Kahn was visiting his daughter in New York.

"Dominique Strauss-Kahn thinks he's above the law," one of Diallo's lawyers, Kenneth P. Thompson, said after the March hearing.

McKeon's decision to allow the case to proceed was first reported by The New York Post.

Diallo's lawyers issued a statement calling the ruling "well-reasoned and articulate."

"We have said all along that Strauss Kahn's desperate plea for immunity was a tactic designed to delay these proceedings and we now look forward to holding him accountable for the brutal sexual assault that he committed," they wrote.

Strauss-Kahn's attorneys had no immediate comment on the ruling.

The Associated Press generally doesn't name people who report being sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Diallo has done.

After Strauss-Kahn's arrest in New York, a French writer came forward to say Strauss-Kahn tried to rape her during a 2003 interview. Paris prosecutors said that accusation was too old to try, but French authorities have pursued an unrelated allegation that he was involved in a hotel prostitution ring including prominent city figures and police in Lille.

In March, he was handed preliminary charges, which mean authorities have reason to believe a crime was committed but allow more time for investigation.

His French lawyer said the married Strauss-Kahn engaged in "libertine" acts but did nothing legally wrong and is being unfairly targeted for his extramarital sex life.

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Zuckerberg speaks exclusively with ABC News

News) wants to make it easier for its nearly 1 billion members to sign up to become organ donors. In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced today the addition of a new tool on Facebook that will allow users to share their organ donor status with their friends.

Users can add that they are organ donors to their Facebook timeline, and share their story about when, where or why they decided to become donors. If a user is not already officially registered as an organ donor, the new feature gives them a link to the appropriate donor registry in their state.

The new tool lets Facebook users click a button on their timelines to indicate that they want to be organ donors in the event of their death. They can also post a status or video explaining why they made that decision.

Here's how the tool works:

Users can go to their timeline, click on "Life Event," select "Health and Wellness," and add the new option "choose Organ Donor." Then they can add where and when they registered and include a personal story, picture or video.

Zuckerberg told ABC News' Robin Roberts that the initiative aims to bring the power of social media to a problem that continues to plague organ transplantation -- too many people who need organs and not enough who donate.

"What we hope will happen is that by just having this simple tool, we think that people can really help spread awareness of organ donation and that they want to participate in this to their friends," Zuckerberg said. "That can be a big part of helping solve the crisis that's out there."

Currently, there are more than 114,000 Americans waiting for kidneys, livers, hearts and other vital organs that could save their lives, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. But only a small percentage of those patients actually find suitable donors and get the transplants they need. Just over 28,000 organ transplants were performed in 2011. Every day, an estimated 18 people die waiting for an organ transplant.

The problem is a familiar one to Dr. Andrew Cameron, a transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and one of the inspirations for Facebook's new donor status option. He has witnessed the supply-and-demand problem that leaves many patients without the organs they desperately need.

Cameron, who graduated from Harvard College, wrote about the shortage of organs for transplant in his Harvard Reunion Class report, a book in which alumni can tell old friends what they've been doing since graduation. Cameron was about to go to his 15th reunion.

One of the former classmates who read Cameron's entry was his college friend Sheryl Sandberg, soon to be Facebook's chief operating officer.

"Well, fast forward to just under a year ago, at our 20th reunion, Sheryl was now COO at Facebook, and with this really powerful communication tool in hand, we crossed paths again," Cameron told ABC News. "She said, 'I remember what you wrote last time and I think Facebook can help with the problem of organ donation.'"

They talked about using the power of Facebook for communication to let people share their wish to be organ donors, just as they already share their birthdays, new jobs or what they had for lunch.

Surveys have shown that most Americans support organ donation, but only about 40 percent of the adult population register as organ donors. Cameron said he thinks the shortfall is the result of a communications problem that a button on a Facebook profile could help solve.

"I think it's possible that we will see an impact over the next couple of years, where we would imagine eliminating the transplant waiting list," Cameron told ABC News. "We've got 100,000 people waiting. Each donor can help three or four of those waiting. If we could do twice as well as we're doing now, if we could get another 10,000 donors a year, I think we could have that transplant waiting list down to almost nothing in three or four years. That would be a spectacular moment in medical history and in the history of public health."

The hope is that bringing a social aspect to organ donation will help people think carefully about their decision and share it with others.

"There have been so many public health campaigns to get people to sign up to be organ donors. Unfortunately, they just haven't been very successful," said ABC News' chief health and medical editor, Dr. Richard Besser. "This Facebook initiative is absolutely ingenious. Imagine what happens if signing up to be a donor goes viral and becomes a cool thing to do? Problem solved!"

The Trend: May Day, Octomom and Impromptu Dates

Good morning!

It would appear that the presidential race of 2012 has gone to the dogs. First, we had Mitt Romney criticized for a story published a few years ago by the Boston Globe in which the Republican hopeful allegedly put the family's dog in a crate in on top of their car during a 12-hour drive to Canada for vacation. Now, we have President Obama eating dog meat as a child in Indonesia. He actually wrote about it in his autobiography:

With Lolo, I learned how to eat small green chill peppers raw with dinner (plenty of rice), and, away from the dinner table, I was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy). Like many Indonesians, Lolo followed a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu faiths. He explained that a man took on the powers of whatever he ate: One day soon, he promised, he would bring home a piece of tiger meat for us to share.

Of course, all this is fuel for conservatives to strike back against liberals who have gone so far as to launch Facebook pages based on the story that's hounded Romney for years. Blogger Jim Treacher writes, "Say what you want about Romney, but at least he only put a dog on the roof of his car, not the roof of his mouth."

Where do the campaigns go from here?

Dickclark2002

Tributes continue to pour in for Dick Clark, especially on Twitter. The iconic host of American Bandstand and New Year's Rockin' Eve and countless other television programs died of a massive heart attack on Wednesday. Here is a sampling of the celebrity remembrances on Twitter:

@MariahCarey R.I.P. Dick Clark. Your memory will live on eternally as an incredible legend.

@levarburton As a professional, Dick Clark was all about excellence. I learned so much from him. He was authentic, talented and generous!

@JoeMantegna Dick Clark gave me my first job in LA 35 years ago. Thanks Mr. Clark, I hope I did you proud.

@MCHammer Dick Clark When a man invites you to his home you learn the substance of whom he is, thank you for your love & wisdom You're The Best.

@IAMANITABAKER He opened the door wide enough to let ALL the MUSIC come thru. Thank You. Dick Clark ...r.i.p.

One of my favorites tweets came from Alice Cooper, who wrote "Nobody loves rock n' roll more than Dick Clark" and included a personal letter to him after the American Music Awards in 1982.

Dickclarkletter

Dick Clark was 82. RIP.

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. In Israel, life came to halt for two minutes this morning as people paused in memory of the six million Jews killed during the Holocaust. The theme of this year's commemoration is "My Brother's Keeper - Jewish Solidarity during the Holocaust."

Earth Day is Sunday, but it continues to rise in searches and in Twitter trends. Many of the tweets contain information about Earth Day events and "green" deals to help you save money on Earth-friendly products.

Cannes is trending after this year's line-up for the annual film festival was announced this morning. The 54 films include a strong American slant, including an adaptation of Jack Kerouac's Beat classic On The Road. The festival runs May 16-27. You can find the complete line-up on the Cannes website.

Among the trending videos on YouTube is a mix of Stars Wars and the Tupac hologram performance. (Note: Foul language in this clip.)

Then we have Yahoo! Studios producing a parody of Fun.'s "We Are Young" called "We're NOT Young."

Next, a woman demonstrates how she transforms herself into Mona Lisa.

How would you like to travel from New York to Los Angeles in 45 minutes?

If you like attention while driving, check out this scooter.

From the BBC, we have what is described as the "best videobomb behind a reporter ever." You be the judge.

Finally, I don't know anyone with a pet lamb, but they sure do look like fun. At least on wood floors.

That's the trend!

Have a great day,

Bob

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