While big cities like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago are often associated with the threat of violent crime, none of these cities made this year’s Most Dangerous Cities List. The list, compiled by neighborhood search engine NeighborhoodScout, is based on the most up-to-date reports of violent crimes from all…
Nobody wants to hear that the money they donated to a charitable cause has gone to waste, but that happened on a massive scale last spring when the Federal Trade Commission charged 4 cancer charities with fraud. The Breast Cancer Society Inc., the Children’s Cancer Fund of America, Inc., Cancer…
Bill Cosby. Bryan Singer. Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Now we can add Bikram Choudhury, founder of Bikram Yoga, to the growing list of powerful men thrust into the spotlight in recent years for allegations of sexual abuse. The 69-year-old hot yoga guru, whose followers include former presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton,…
“Government failed you — federal, state and local leaders — by breaking the trust you place in us,” Michigan Governor Rick Snyder conceded in his State of the State address last week after months of ignoring Flint residents’ complaints about contaminated water. “I’m sorry, and I will fix it.” The…
It started last July in Seattle, when 5 Chipotle customers reported symptoms of the bacterial infection E. coli. The following month, 234 people contracted norovirus after eating Chipotle in Simi Valley, California. Then it was salmonella in Minnesota. 64 infections. 9 hospitalizations. Then again in Boston. 140 cases of norovirus…
Last fall, Volkswagen admitted to installing illegal software on its diesel vehicles in order to cheat pollution emissions tests, defrauding the purchasers of up to 11 million vehicles worldwide. CEO Martin Winterkorn resigned in the immediate wake of the scandal, and 9 VW executives were suspended. The US Justice Department…
One of the most heroic acts of 2015 took place in the year’s final moments, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Just a few minutes before midnight on New Year’s Eve, 25-year-old Stephen Hewett-Brown helped a woman climb safely out of a stalled elevator before being crushed to death…
New York City Public Advocate Letitia James introduced several new bills this week that would increase the city’s power to fight back against negligent landlords. One bill would expand the scope of the city’s public nuisance law to allow city officials to bring landlords to court for maintaining unsanitary or…
At least nine motorists are dead because of a design change in the highway guardrails produced by Texas-based Trinity Industries Inc. In 2005, Trinity changed the design of its ET-Plus guardrail systems in order to cut production costs, but in doing so the company created an added danger for the drivers and passengers…
Though it may not feel like it yet, winter is here. We’re all familiar with the shorter days, freezing temperatures and occasional snowfall that winter brings, but what about the added dangers for pedestrians and cyclists? Colder weather means many cyclists are bundling up, limiting their range of vision and…