Well this morning was the last time madoff would wake up and put on his pants and eat in his millions of dollar Manhattan penthouse. bail was revoked for maddoff this morings sending him to jail immediately. after madoff pled guilty. A sentencing date of June 16 has been set for disgraced financier Bernard Madoff.
Prosecutors are asking for him to be jailed immediately after he pleaded guilty Thursday to a worldwide financial swindle. They say he robbed investors of billions of dollars.
Madoff earlier told the judge he "cannot adequately express" how sorry he is.
Madoff told the judge his Ponzi scheme began in the early 1990s in response to a recession.
Two investors who spoke at the hearing said they opposed the guilty plea. One said she wanted it to wait until the lost money is found.
Madoff did not look at the investors as they spoke.
NEW YORK — With her slight frame and big grin, Sharell Butler still looks like a child. But the 15-year-old has been charged as an adult with killing two men over three days, including one whose dismembered remains were found in a garbage bag.
Butler pleaded not guilty over the weekend to second-degree murder in the deaths of 24-year-old Christopher Umpierre on Dec. 19 and 22-year-old John Hopkins-Drago on Dec. 21. She was being held without bail Monday.
Her attorney, Xavier Donaldson, referred to her as "just a kid" and said she is scared. Her father, James Butler, told the Daily News of New York that he believes his daughter is innocent.
Police say Sharrell Butler and others stabbed Hopkins-Drago at an apartment in the Bronx, perhaps as many as 40 times. A superintendent found the dismembered body stuffed in a garbage can outside a building the same day he was killed.
Hopkins-Drago, who had been adopted from a Russian orphanage by a suburban couple, was estranged from his family and had a history of drug arrests, his brother, Patrick Hopkins-Drago, told the Journal News. He had been living on the streets but had not been reported missing.
According to his brother, the victim was apparently trying to turn his life around this fall, hoping to enroll in classes at Westchester Community College outside New York City.
"He didn't deserve what he got," his mother, Ann Marie Hopkins, told the Daily News. "He's just an innocent kid."
Butler is also facing charges of criminal possession of a weapon and criminally negligent homicide in Hopkins-Drago's slaying. Prosecutors say she had a loaded gun at the time of the stabbing.
Officials said Monday that Butler may have killed Hopkins-Drago because she thought he might talk about the death of Umpierre, who was shot to death after a botched robbery at his apartment in the Bronx.
Authorities believe she and another suspect intended to rob Umpierre, but no one else had been charged in that slaying as of Monday.
Butler's nickname was Lady Red, which authorities say may refer to the notorious Bloods street gang. Butler's attorney denied that his client was involved with gang activity.
Four other suspects were in custody Monday in connection with both deaths, including a 23-year-old man suspected of hindering prosecution.
Hopkins-Drago was killed in the 23-year-old's apartment, but it wasn't clear whether the man was there at the time. Officials said he may have tampered with crime scene evidence. It also wasn't clear Monday what roles the other three might have played in the killings.
The New York Times Company plans to borrow up to $225 million against its mid-Manhattan headquarters building, to ease a potential cash flow squeeze as the company grapples with tighter credit and shrinking profits. The company has retained Cushman & Wakefield, the real estate firm, to act as its agent to secure financing, either in the form of a mortgage or a sale-leaseback arrangement, said James M. Follo, the Times Company’s chief financial officer.
The Times Company owns 58 percent of the 52-story, 1.5 million-square-foot tower on Eighth Avenue, which was designed by the architect Renzo Piano, and completed last year. The developer Forest City Ratner owns the rest of the building. The Times Company’s portion of the building is not currently mortgaged, and some investors have complained that the company has too much of its capital tied up in that real estate.
The company has two revolving lines of credit, each with a ceiling of $400 million, roughly the amount outstanding on the two combined. One of those lines is set to expire in May, and finding a replacement would be difficult given the economic climate and the company’s worsening finances. Analysts have said for months that selling or borrowing against assets would be the company’s best option for averting a cash flow problem next year.
Standard & Poor’s recently lowered its credit rating on the Times Company below investment grade, and Moody’s Investors Service has said it was considering a similar move. Times Company stock, which has lost more than half its value this year, closed on Friday at $7.64, down 30 cents.
NEW YORK – In a stark acknowledgment of the tough times ahead in the credit card industry, American Express Co. said Thursday that it plans to cut 7,000 jobs, or about 10 percent of its worldwide work force, in an effort to slash costs by $1.8 billion in 2009.
The New York-based credit card issuer said it is also suspending management level salary increases next year and instituting a hiring freeze.
The job cuts will be across various business units, but will primarily focus on management positions, the company said.
Additionally, American Express said it plans to scale back investments in technology and marketing and business development, and streamline costs associated with some rewards programs. The company also expects to cut expenses for consulting and other professional services, travel and entertainment and general overhead.
As a result, American Express plans to take a restructuring charge of between $240 million and $290 million in the fourth quarter.
The company has been gearing up for a big restructuring for some time, first announcing in July that it planned to reduce overall costs and staffing levels, and take a related charge during the second half of the year.
"We've been engaged for the past few months in an intensive, companywide review of priorities and staffing levels," said Kenneth I. Chenault, chairman and chief executive, in a statement. "The re-engineering program we announced today will help us to manage through one of the most challenging economic environments we've seen in many decades. It will also put us in position to ramp up investment spending as economic conditions improve so that we can take advantage of the substantial opportunities that will be available to us over the medium to long term."
Last week, American Express reported a better-than-expected 24 percent decline in third-quarter profit. But the report echoed recent results from JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc. and Capital One Financial Corp. showing that the credit card environment is worsening as cardholders have trouble paying off debt and pull back their spending.
Even a company like American Express, which prides itself on catering to a more well-heeled clientele, is not immune.
The company's customers tend to be more affluent than those of other card companies, but they are more heavily concentrated in California and Florida, where the slumping housing market is taking a toll. American Express also has a higher percentage of small-business customers, and small businesses tend to miss payments more than individuals, executives have said.
"Cardmember spending is likely to remain soft," Chenault said in a statement last week. "Loan growth will be restrained, in part because of the steps we are taking to reduce credit risks, and credit indicators are likely to reflect the continued downturn in the economy and throughout the housing sector."
American Express has been able to finance its operations amid the tight credit markets, but the efforts have been tougher and more costly.
Shares rose $1.23, or 4.9 percent, to $26.44 in morning trading. Shares have traded between $20.50 and $61.55 in the past 12 months.
WE ARE SO GLAD THEY FINALLY PUT THIS 80 YEAR OLD PARIS HILTION LOOK WOMEN ON BLAST
Now considering the trashy behavior in which the McCain-Palin ticket has tried to smear Obama with 1960s radical Bill Ayers, isn't it ironic that they would get so angry about a story that sheds an interesting light on Cindy McCain, and her essentially long distance marriage with the senior senator from Arizona?
Madonna went on VP candidate "Sarah fucking Paling" at her Madison Square Garden show Monday night, saying "get that bitch out of here" to a crowd of screaming fans. She uttered a similar, less aggressive statement over the weekend. Watch the clip below, in which she also goes off on the man in the front row not paying attention and demands cheers from the audience because her ego needs it.
NEW YORK — An officer appears to have violated police department guidelines when he used a Taser stun gun on a naked, distraught man teetering on a building ledge, officials said Thursday.
Inman Morales, 35, was pronounced dead at a hospital after his nearly 10-foot fall Wednesday. Police said he suffered serious head trauma when he hit the sidewalk.
Officers had radioed for an inflatable bag as the incident unfolded, but it had not yet arrived at the scene when Morales fell.
"None of the ... officers on the scene were positioned to break his fall, nor did they devise a plan in advance to do so," said chief department spokesman Paul Browne.
The lieutenant who directed the use of the stun gun was stripped of his gun and badge, and the officer who shocked Morales was placed on desk duty as the investigation continues. Their names were not released.
Witnesses and neighbors said Morales had become distraught and threatened to kill himself earlier in the day. When police arrived in response to a 911 call, he fled naked out the window of his third-floor apartment, clambered down to a ledge and began jabbing at officers with an 8-foot-long fluorescent light.
An amateur video posted on the Web site of the New York Post shows one of the officers raising a stun gun at Morales, who freezes and topples over headfirst as the crowd screams.
The man's death renewed focus on the use of stun guns by the NYPD. Thousands of city police sergeants began carrying Tasers on their belts this year after the department expanded use of the weapons. The pistol-shaped weapons fire barbs up to 35 feet and deliver 50,000-volt shocks to immobilize people.
Browne said guidelines specifically prohibit the use of stun guns when the subject may fall from an elevated surface.
(photo&article nypost & MTO)
(UPDATE 10/2/08)Lt. Michael Pigott (pictured below) of the New York Police Department was found dead yesterday, exactly one week after ordering the fatal tasering of an erratic, naked man on a Brooklyn building
HANDLE YA BUSINESS JOE!!! As if his endorsement of John McCain weren’t enough! Apparently, Daddy Yankee wants to make it clear that his support of the Republican presidential candidate goes far beyond a few photo shoots and public appearance.
The singer has now committed to perform at the Fiesta Americana Concert as part of next week’s Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota.
I’m sure performing for a stadium full of 3,000 suit-and-tie Republicans is the ideal audience for some reggaeton. I bet that fiesta is going to get hot!
Daddy Yankee has been getting busted on left and right for his support of the Arizona senator. It seems that a lot of people just don’t see the link between reggaetoneros and 72-year-old white men.
Most recently, fellow performer Fat Joe put Daddy Yankee on blast for his politics, saying to MTV News:
“I opened the newspaper and got sick to my stomach. I felt like I wanted to vomit when I seen that. The reason why I called him a sellout is because I feel he did that for a [publicity] look, rather than the issues that are affecting his people that look up to him. How could you want John McCain in office when George Bush and the Republicans already have half a million people losing their homes in foreclosure? We’re fighting an unjust war. It’s the Latinos and black kids up in the frontlines, fighting that war. … We over here trying to take the troops out of Iraq and bring peace. This guy immediately wants war. If not with Iraq or Afghanistan, he’ll start a new one with Iran. I feel real disgusted that Daddy Yankee would do that. Either he did that for a look, or he’s just not educated on politics.”
Now, I don’t know how educated Fat Joe is on politics either, but at least he hit on some valid points! source bossip:
She may be the oldest murder victim in New York state history.
Police are hunting for the gunman who killed a 100-year-old woman in her home in the Hamptons.
Just over the bridge and off a peninsula from Sag Harbor, the tiny 2-and-half square mile village of North Haven, where residents were stunned to learn of the murder of one of East End's oldest residents.
"Obviously, this type of crime is out of character for the area, but also a 100-year-old woman being shot is unique," said Suffolk County Homicide Det. Lt. Jack Fitzpatrick.
Jessie Burke celebrated her 100th birthday on Aug. 7. Three and half weeks later the matriarch of a well known family here was found shot dead in the back of the head, sitting in a chair in the den of her daughter's home on Payne Avenue.
Police said daughter Jean Burke, a former trustee who was once interviewed on "60 Minutes," discovered her mother's body and called 911.
"People are just shocked," neighbor Glenn Ficorilli said. "Just a quiet community and it is unbelievable to end the summer on a Labor Day like this."
"When somebody like that dies, living in the Hamptons, probably real-estate and family related," neighbor Seth Kelley added.
Police said Jessie Burke had all of her faculties and was quite active on a daily basis.
"Mrs. Burke was quite spry for her age, was alert, did the New York Times crossword every day," Det. Lt. Fitzpatrick said.
Police said there was no break-in, no forcible entry and nothing stolen. Jessie Burke had no caregiver, and leaves behind four children.
Among those being interviewed by police are Jessie Burke's children. Police said they have no suspects at this time.
Detectives are asking anyone with information to contact the homicide squad or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-220-TIPS.
New York - Investigators say neighbors waited more than a half hour to call police after hearing a woman's screams for help as she was being stabbed to death at a New York City apartment.
Police found 21-year-old Ebony Garcia lying in a pool of blood at about 2:10 a.m Saturday. She was stabbed about a dozen times and died two hours later at a local hospital.
Witnesses say neighbors ignored the woman's screams for more than 30 minutes before someone called the police. One neighbor says she ignored the cries because she thought the victim had been drinking.
Police want to question Garcia's boyfriend. She had obtained a restraining order against him.
"Trashman" Nabbed For YouTube Threats JULY 31--A New York City man was charged today with posting YouTube videos in which he claimed to have poisoned thousands of bottles of Gerber baby food in a bid to kill black babies. According to federal investigators, Anton Dunn--using the alias "Trashman" and wearing a ski mask in his clips--created three videos claiming that the baby food had been tainted with cyanide. In one video, according a federal criminal complaint unsealed today, Dunn, filming himself from inside a shower stall, claims that his "plan is in motion" and that four babies had already died. Dunn, 42, claimed that he would not be caught, despite "attempts to 'rat him out,'" adding that he had the police and FBI on his "payroll." A copy of the two-count U.S. District Court felony complaint filed against Dunn can be found below. In April, federal investigators were alerted to Dunn's first video by a Gerber representative, and Food and Drug Administration investigators subsequently identified two other threatening videos.The Harlem resident, who has previously posted videos in which he claimed to have infected numerous female sex partners with the HIV virus
Walter Harvin shows blood stains and bruises (below) that he says resulted from a police officer wielding a baton. A city cop caught on tape beating a handcuffed Army vet paused to take a phone call and then went right back to smashing the man with his baton, police sources told the Daily News.
Officer David London, 43, was stripped of his gun and badge Monday and placed on desk duty as the NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau investigated the July 18 incident, sources said.
"He takes a cell phone break, then turns back to tuning up the [suspect]. He did it while the building security camera was rolling," a source said.
London and his partner stopped Walter Harvin, 28, as he tried to enter the DeHostos Apartment on W. 93rd St., where Harvin's mother lives, about 1:15 a.m.
"I told him don't close it because I don't have the keys," said Harvin, a vet who was discharged in 2004 for posttraumatic stress disorder.
"As I walked into the elevator he grabbed my arm. That's when I pushed him," Harvin said. "I was on the floor and he kept beating me with the stick. He sprayed me with Mace. While I was on the floor, he handcuffed me. I don't remember too much about it."
Security video from the building showed London beating Harvin after he was cuffed and on the ground, a source said.
"You are not supposed to beat a man once he is cuffed, but the video shows the [suspect] down on the ground, cuffed. They even stand him up in the corner and beat him with the [baton] some more," said a police source familiar with the security video.
As London and his partner propped the handcuffed war vet up against a wall, London's cell phone rang, sources said.
Video showed London talking on the phone for 90 seconds before he resumed beating Harvin, sources said.
London told colleagues Harvin went berserk when he was asked to show identification or proof he was entitled to be in the building.
Harvin started punching and kicking the cops, screaming, "You can't take me!" court papers say.
"He is a big guy who fought being cuffed, kicking. He was not quiet, lying there like a lamb," one source said.
London took the cell phone call only because it was an emergency, another source said, although he wouldn't elaborate.
Harvin said he didn't remember much of what happened once the beating started. He was charged with assault and resisting arrest and was released pending a hearing.
Harvin said he told the cop he served 3 1/2 years in the 101st Airborne Division, including six months in Iraq.
"[London] said he was in the Navy. It didn't matter to him. He said I was a disgrace," Harvin said.
There is no headline on the cover of art. The flap on the cover says the following: "How Obama became a pol. Ryan Lizza on the candidate's first campaigns - and how Chicago's byzantine politics shaped him"
And the headline on the inside says: "Making It: How Chicago shaped Obama" by Ryan Lizza.
That's it. No article deals with the issue of fear, and the headline doesn't match it at all.
The New Yorker is saying one thing and is doing another.
And frankly, they missed an opportunity.
The real culprits are the people the New Yorker should have been ripping to shreds: the rhetorical bullies, mostly on right wing conservative and television, that have been the chief merchants in selling this mess to the American people.
With their twisted logic, adherence to removing any context, and just flat out lying, they have been the driving force behind the smearing of Obama.
I've heard these rhetorical thugs call Michelle Obama "militant," and offer nothing to back it up, hoping folks will envision Angela Davis and the Black Panthers when they think of Michelle.
You've had right wing windbags continue to speculate about Obama being Muslim, even though the evidence is against that.
From day one these nuts have tried to scare the hell out of America, whether it was trying to make Obama accept every word from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright; assert that neither Obama is a true American; all in an effort to make them both ungrateful to what America "gave" them.
Save your passion and anger for those fools, not a magazine that was trying to push the envelope to show the fear in which they choose to instill in the minds of the uneducated and easily impressionable. Unfortunately, the New Yorker failed.
Shame on them, but also shame on the fear mongerers, and they should be called out by name, no matter what network they work for, no matter what time of day their radio shows come on, and no matter which magazine, newspaper or syndicate they write for.
AND WHERE IS HILLARY TO CONDEMN THIS GARBAGE? SINCE NEW YORK IS SUPPOSE TO BE HER STATE, AND SHE WANTS OBAMA'S SUPPORTERS TO HELP HER WITH HER DEBT?
Police have a suspect in the murder of a woman and her son.
Lamar Platt, 24, allegedly admitted he shot his mother Marlene, and younger brother Nashan to death in the second floor apartment they all shared, then cut up their bodies into pieces and dumped them in the Harlem River near Roberto Clemente Park, according to police.
Platt has been charged with two counts of murder.
Some neighbors reportedly remembered seeing Lamar with a blue laundry cart and a big plastic bag, but others still they can't believe it. "I heard the possible scenario but nothing's been confirmed and I would hate to believe that's what happened," neighbor Dwayne Bowser said.
Patrol boats, helicopters and scuba divers searched the Harlem River, but did not find any remains.
The super tells CBS 2HD that Marlene was a nurse, and the older son worked as a barber up the block. The other son was a 22-year-old student. The dead woman's mother called police when she hadn't heard from the family for a week.
Marlene Platt reportedly told a friend she wanted to get a court order of protection because her older son had threatened to kill her.
Neighbor Veronica Banks says, "I am really sorry that it happened. She was a sweet person."
NEW YORK -- Three high-ranking members of the Latin Kings were convicted of torturing and killing a Bronx man in a Yankees Stadium parking lot.
A Bronx jury convicted the three men Tuesday following a trial that included grisly testimony that victim Dennis Rivera was beaten, branded on his genitals, shocked and forced to drink Drano. He was strangled before his body was set on fire.
George Melendez was convicted of first-degree murder, while Lawrence Perez and Virgilio Samo were found guilty of second-degree murder in the June 2005 slaying.
All three men face up to life in prison when they are sentenced later this month.
The wife of a veteran NYPD officer was arrested yesterday for fatally shooting a young Brooklyn man who had groped her 13-year-old daughter last month, The Post has learned.
Veronica Nickey, 40, walked up to Ellison Butler, 22, as he watched a basketball game at about 9 p.m. on June 27 in Lincoln Terrace Park in Crown Heights - then pulled a .380-caliber handgun, a source said.
She put one bullet into his chest, shouting, "That's what you get for messing with my children! That's what you get for messing with my daughter!" witnesses told cops.
She tried to shoot Butler again, but the gun jammed, according to sources.
Butler had been on the basketball court waiting to play the next game. After the shooting, he staggered to a men's room, collapsed and died.
"He was always very playful with girls," said a neighborhood friend who gave her name as Jacynta. "He . . . probably didn't take [the encounter with Nickey's daughter] seriously."
Cops initially did not know the motive for the shooting of Butler, who had several prior arrests. They now believe he was killed by an overprotective mother, according to the sources.
Butler had allegedly grabbed Nickey's daughter about two weeks earlier, the sources said.
After the mother fled the shooting scene, witnesses told cops they recognized her as "Veronica" from a nearby building.
Police gathered pictures of every woman named Veronica in that building and witnesses picked Nickey out.
Law-enforcement sources said her husband, Officer Arnold Nickey, a 14-year veteran out of the 73rd Precinct, has only two 9 mm pistols registered to his name. It was unclear where she allegedly got the .380.
Veronica Nickey was charged last night with murder and criminal possession of a weapon.
NEW YORK (July 1) - Video from a surveillance camera at a Brooklyn, N.Y., hospital shows a woman dying on the floor of a psychiatric emergency-room while people nearby ignore her. The video was released Monday by lawyers suing Kings County Hospital alleging neglect and abuse of mental health patients at the facility.
The video shows the 49-year-old woman keeling over and falling out out of her chair on June 19 and lying facedown on the floor, then thrashing before going still. About an hour passed before someone realized what was happening and tried to help.
The agency that runs the municipal hospital - the city's Health and Hospitals Corp. fired several staffers as a result. (45 minutes after she is dead these idiots notice her,that's some foul crap. )
What is wrong with people nowadays. First the people didn't help the man who was hit by the car and just watched him lie in the street and now this. What happened to compassion. To kindness. To giving help to those who need it. Very sad..not 5 minutes, 45 minutes. And we won't count the 24 hours that she was sitting, waiting to be helped by DOCTORS AT A HOSPITAL
June 22, 2008 -- Hundreds of people were incorrectly told they had tested positive for HIV at New York City STD clinics this winter.
Almost half the results given by the clinics were false positives, the Department of Health confirmed.
From November to April, 213 people tested positive after taking a rapid mouth-swab HIV test. A second test revealed they did not have the virus.
The city would not explain why, as false positives mounted, it continued to administer the tests.
The reason for the spike is under investigation by the DOH, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and test manufacturer OraSure Technologies. The DOH said it had stopped using OraSure's rapid swab tests.
DOH said anyone who received a positive result from the oral test was immediately given another test, this time using a finger stick to take blood.
"Nobody was misled or harmed," said Dr. Susan Blank, assistant DOH commissioner and director of the bureau of STD control.
The swab tests proved popular after they were introduced at city STD clinics in 2005. The number of people tested for HIV grew 24 percent that year.
