The New York Police Department says a large balloon is being unleashed above the city for two days to measure the heights of the city’s buildings.
The police department said the balloon will remain aloft for about nine hours on Sunday in lower Manhattan and more than 13 hours on Monday in midtown.
Police said the balloon will be about 800 feet in the air as it collects data for a private architecture firm conducting height surveys of Manhattan buildings.
(AP)
[By Rabbi Yair Hoffman]
This year, the Daf HaYomi of Shvii shel Pesach deals with the issue of bathing on Yom Tov. The notion of showering on Yom Tov remains a very controversial area of halacha. This article will attempt to explain the complex issues involved. We will begin with the general prohibitions and we will continue with the exceptions. It should be noted that this article ...
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A transcript released Sunday shows the South Korean ferry that sank was crippled with confusion and indecision well after it began listing dangerously, possibly adding to a death toll that is officially at 58 but could eventually exceed 300.
Three times in succession, and about half an hour after the ferry Sewol began tilting on Wednesday, a crew member asked Jindo Vessel Traffic ...
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A warning has been issued to Rockland County residents after a wild animal was spotted Saturday night.
A coyote was seen wandering near Pearl and Centre streets in Pearl River.
Police are warning residents to take precautions, and to keep small children and pets close by when outdoors.
They advise residents to remain calm if they come across a coyote, and to start making a lot ...
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A cracked windshield is blamed for forcing a United Airlines flight from JFK to make an emergency landing Saturday.
United Flight 766, a Boeing 757, was headed to San Francisco when a crack appeared in a cockpit window.
The flight was diverted to Indianapolis, where it landed safely Saturday night.
United says the 138 passengers aboard were put on another plane.
Maintenance ...
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Police officials in New York City have changed the way officers respond to fires following the death of an officer.
They’ll now require officers responding to structures on fire to take the stairs.
Deputy Chief Kim Royster said Friday an internal memo detailing the preliminary guidelines has been distributed to precincts.
Royster says the new protocol replaces a memo ...
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Motorists who repeatedly speed through New York state toll booths without paying would see their vehicle registrations suspended under legislation being considered by state lawmakers.
Under current law, toll evaders are contacted by a collection agency and can only face the loss of their registration if they commit multiple violations within the same locality.
Scofflaws run up ...
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Charlotte van den Berg was a 20-year-old college student working part-time in Amsterdam's city archives when she and other interns came across a shocking find: letters from Jewish Holocaust survivors complaining that the city was forcing them to pay back taxes and late payment fines on property seized after they were deported to Nazi death camps.
How, the survivors asked, could they ...
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General Motors waited years to recall nearly 335,000 Saturn Ions for power steering failures despite getting thousands of consumer complaints and more than 30,000 warranty repair claims, according to government documents released Saturday.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the government's auto safety watchdog, also didn't seek a recall of the compact car from the ...
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Several days after the Boston Marathon bombing, Gov. Deval Patrick received a call in the pre-dawn hours from a top aide telling him that police officers outside the city had just engaged in a ferocious gun battle with the two men suspected of setting the bombs and that one was dead and the other had fled.
Within hours, Patrick shut down the region's public transportation system and ...
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Travelers at Asian airports have asked questions about the March 8 disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Here are some of them, followed by answers.
Samuel Rogers, a 20-year-old German on a backpacking trip, in Bangkok and on his way to Malaysia.
He asked: "Why did the Malaysian military see the plane on their radar but not ...
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People who have accounts on the enrollment website for President Barack Obama's signature health care law are being told to change their passwords following an administration-wide review of the government's vulnerability to the confounding Heartbleed Internet security flaw.
Senior administration officials said there is no indication that the HealthCare.gov site has been compromised ...
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Thousands of pages of documents from President Bill Clinton's White House affirm a longtime adage: The more things change, the more they stay the same.
As Clinton prepared for an August 1994 news conference in which he hoped to build public support for his struggling — and ultimately unsuccessful — health care overhaul, he told his advisers: "A lot of them want to know they can ...
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A second, milder wave of flu is hitting the Northeast.
Months ago, the flu season seemed to be winding down. But health officials on Friday reported widespread flu-like illnesses in six states. Rhode Island is the latest to join the list which includes Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, New Jersey and New York.
Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say the flu ...
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A Brooklyn man visiting Ukraine says he witnessed masked men handing out leaflets ordering Jews in eastern Ukraine to register with authorities.
Yosef Gurevitz, who is from Crown Heights and is in Donetsk visiting family, told NBC News he saw the men outside a synagogue earlier this week.
"There were about 100 of us outside the synagogue after Passover eve prayers [on Wednesday] ...
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An agreement struck by the U.S., the European Union, Russia and Ukraine has raised hopes for defusing the Ukrainian crisis, which has strained East-West ties to a degree unseen since the Cold War. The deal Thursday in Geneva came after the four parties held talks together for the first time since Ukraine's turmoil began nearly five months ago. A look at how the Ukrainian crisis has ...
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Community leaders are praising the leadership at the NYPD's 70 Precinct, after police apprehended 21-year-old Kareem Potomont, Thursday afternoon.
Cops arrested Potomont in Queens, just hours after releasing his photo to the public.
Potomont is the suspect in the shooting of 13-year-old Gamma Droiville. A stray bullet struck him in the eye as he waited for a bus on Flatbush Avenue on ...
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Election-year memo to Democratic candidates: Don't talk about the economic recovery. It's a political loser.
So say Democratic strategists in a blunt declaration that such talk skips over "how much trouble people are in, and doesn't convince them that policymakers really understand or are even focusing on the problems they continue to face."
In addition, Stan Greenberg, James ...
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On the first day of Chol HaMoed, the Five Towns/Far Rockaway community was privileged to hear a shiur from Rav Mordechai Stern, the newly installed Rabbi of the W Shul in Lawrence, New York. Rabbi Stern is the son-in-law of Rav Moshe Brown Shlita, the son of Rabbi Stern Shlita from Mesivta Chaim Shlomo (Darchei Torah’s high School) and is an alumnus of BMG. The Shiur was delivered to ...
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Traffic signals will be retimed for 25 mph along the Grand Concourse in the Bronx to reduce dangerous speeding.
The city's Department of Transportation says the 5.2 mile-corridor from East 140th Street to Mosholu Parkway has seen 12 fatalities between 2008 and 2012. Seven of those involved pedestrians.
It says the Grand Concourse is the second of 25 planned Arterial Slow Zones to ...
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An avalanche swept down a climbing route on Mount Everest early Friday, killing at least 12 Nepalese guides and leaving four missing in the deadliest disaster on the world's highest peak. Several more were injured.
The Sherpa guides had gone early in the morning to fix ropes for other climbers when the avalanche hit them at about 6:30 a.m., Nepal Tourism Ministry official Krishna ...
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A new Obama administration privacy policy released Friday explains how the government will gather the user data of online visitors to WhiteHouse.gov, mobile apps and social media sites, and it clarifies that online comments, whether tirades or tributes, are in the open domain.
"Information you choose to share with the White House (directly and via third party sites) may be treated as ...
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An Egyptian imam who led a London mosque more than a dozen years ago was portrayed in opening statements at his terrorism trial as an enthusiastic supporter of al-Qaida by a prosecutor and as a reasonable man who helped authorities in England keep people calm by his defense attorney.
The openings Thursday at the trial of Mustafa Kamel Mustafa came after U.S. District Judge Katherine ...
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Officials are advising commuters who use the Pulaski Skyway that this past week was the exception, not the norm.
No major traffic problems have been reported since northbound lanes were closed on Saturday to repair the 81-year-old span on which 74,000 vehicles travel daily between Newark with Jersey City.
Officials say that's because Jersey City schools were closed and traffic was ...
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A doomed ferry's captain delayed evacuation for half an hour after a South Korean transportation official ordered preparations to abandon ship, raising more questions about whether quick action could have saved scores of passengers still missing Friday and feared dead, according to a transcript of the ship-to-shore exchange and interviews with a crewmember.
The order by an ...
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Thousands of PA (Palestinian Authority) residents on Thursday, 17 Nissan 5774 marched in Ramallah in observance of Prisoners Day, a day of solidarity with terrorists imprisoned in Israel. Similar protests involving thousands of residents were held in Shechem and Hebron as well.
In Hebron where over 2,000 people took part in events pelted Israeli security troops with rocks. Marchers ...
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Secret Service investigators say they are close to gaining a full understanding of the methods hackers used to breach Target's computer systems last December.
But the agency says it could take years to identify the criminals who stole some 40 million debit and credit card numbers of Target shoppers and other personal information from as many as 70 million people in the pre-Christmas ...
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Embattled Toronto Mayor Rob Ford acknowledged "rocky moments over the past year" but vowed to fight harder than ever to win re-election at a rally he dubbed the official launch of his campaign.
Ford, who was the first to register as a candidate in January, invoked the spirit of second chances during a speech in front of supporters on Thursday. Ford is seeking re-election on Oct. 27 ...
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A federal judge has approved plans to sell a 36-story Manhattan office building and other properties owned by Iran nationwide in what will be the largest terrorism-related forfeiture ever, a prosecutor said Thursday.
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said Judge Katherine Forrest approved the deal between the U.S. government and 19 holders of more than $5 billion in terrorism-related ...
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The ISA (Israel Security Agency – Shin Bet) arrested Israeli Arab journalist Majd Kayyal on Shabbos, 12 Nissan 5774 when he returned to Israel from Lebanon. He was in Beirut for three weeks according to reports.
He was taken into custody for visiting a hostile country. Majd, a resident of Haifa, was imprisoned and prevented from meeting with his attorney. There was a gag order on ...
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Hopon is Israel’s new smartphone app that will permit payment and ticketing for public transportation. The app is currently available for iPhone and promises to soon be available to android users as well.
Persons interested in becoming the first to use the application may register and download it.
(YWN – Israel Desk, ...
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