Mark-Viverito pushes plan to hire 1,000 more cops

City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito on Sunday unveiled new details about her plan to hire 1,000 cops — while Mayor de Blasio continued to insist that the police force is fine "in its current state."

"We need to increase the overall headcount of the department," Mark-Viverito contended in a press release.

She said that, according to calculations made by council staffers, the total cost of the plan would hit more than $69 million in 2016, its first year, and rise to a total of $111 million by 2019.

The cost per new officer next year is projected to be $90,000, including salary and benefits, she said. Seven years in, it would climb to $181,000.

The council speaker said the city planned to make up some of the money through cuts to police overtime.

As The Post exclusively reported earlier this month, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton got into a shouting match with a top mayoral aide in pushing for the new cops, then denied it. De Blasio later insisted the force was "good . . . in its current state.''

Asked what de Blasio thought about the details of Mark-Viverito's plan Sunday, a rep, Amy Spitalnick, said, "The mayor's most recent comments still hold. The executive budget will come out this spring, and we look forward to working with the council throughout the budget process."

17.08 | 0 komentar | Read More

‘The Fault In Our Stars’ wins big at MTV Movie Awards

LOS ANGELES — Vin Diesel sang, Channing Tatum danced and Zac Efron showed off his toned abs yet again as the best shirtless winner for the second year in a row at Sunday's MTV Movie Awards.

"This is definitely not the Oscars," said "22 Jump Street" star Jillian Bell as she arrived for MTV's 24th annual irreverent treatment on Hollywood award shows.

In addition to such cheeky, fan-voted honors as best kiss and best shirtless performance, the awards at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles also served as an unofficial promotional platform for the upcoming blockbuster season.

Almost at odds with the raunchy spirit of the show, the big winner of the evening was the teen tearjerker "The Fault in Our Stars," which got the Golden Popcorn statuette for best movie of the year as well as multiple wins for star Shailene Woodley.

Other winners included Bradley Cooper, Channing Tatum and Jennifer Lopez, as well as Jennifer Lawrence and Meryl Streep, who were not in attendance.

Woodley, who picked up the award for best female performance in "The Fault in Our Stars" in addition to the Trailblazer Award and best kiss honor (with Ansel Elgort), gave an emotional speech dedicated to the book's author, John Green.

"He gave this world a beautiful masterpiece," she said directly to Green, who was seated in the audience. Woodley said that the book changed her life when she read it and that his words will transcend the test of time.

Shailene WoodleyPhoto: Getty Images

In another poignant moment, Cooper, who won best male performance for portraying the late Chris Kyle in "American Sniper," thanked the audience for making the film such a big success and bringing attention to the plight of the soldiers.

"Chris Kyle would have turned 41 four days ago. Chris, this is for you," said Cooper.

But it was hard to be uniformly gracious when categories include other wacky awards like best villain (Streep for "Into the Woods"), and best WTF moment (Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen for "Neighbors").

Kevin Hart, who was the target of many size-related jokes throughout the night, brought his kids on stage to accept the comedic genius award. "I do it all for them," he said. "I'm trying to leave a legacy behind."

"The Fault in Our Stars" Writer John Green accepts the award for Movie of the Year.Photo: Reuters

Host Amy Schumer set the tone at the outset, poking fun at MTV, Hillary Clinton and even Harrison Ford.

"This is going to be the party of the year. I just hope Harrison Ford doesn't crash it," Schumer said, referring to the actor's recent plane mishap.

In one of the most energetic moments of the show, Robert Downey Jr. brought his fellow Avengers to their knees while accepting the Generation Award.

Cast mates Scarlett Johansson, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo and Jeremy Renner all took the stage to present their co-star with the award, which Downey called "the recognition I so desire." They then fell to their knees as Downey talked about his memories of the first MTV Movie Awards, and "clawing" his way to the top.

Woodley accepts another award for Best Female Performance.Photo: Reuters

"I partied way too much. I've squandered, resisted, repented," he said, imploring the audience to "dream big, work hard, keep your nose clean."

But the real focus was on what's coming up at the multiplex this summer. The Movie Awards' 2013, host Rebel Wilson, and her "Pitch Perfect" co-stars introduced a new clip from their upcoming sequel.

The team behind "Paper Towns," an adaptation of John Green's novel, debuted a new clip as well.

Of course, there was also an agenda behind Downey's accolade: the promotion of "Ultron." The "Iron Man" star introduced a new clip from the Marvel blockbuster, which bows May 1.

Even host Schumer had a film to promote: "Trainwreck," a relationship comedy with Bill Hader from director Judd Apatow that Schumer wrote and stars in.

"Go see my movie 'Trainwreck,' I think that's the biggest lesson we've all learned here tonight," said Schumer as she closed the show.

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Celebrity tattoos and the danger of regret

What are these illustrated exhibitionists thinking?

Lena Dunham's body is a human canvas, scrawled with seven big and small tattoos, making her resemble a zaftig prison inmate.

With an estimated 17 tats inscribed on her porcelain skin, Angelina Jolie has turned herself into an orgy of ink.

But Dunham is 28 years old and so content with her generous curves, she can't keep her clothes on while appearing on TV.

Still, I wonder if the creator, writer, director, co-executive producer and star of the disturbing HBO show "Girls'' will regret her tramp stamps years down the road when her boobs lose their valiant struggle with gravity and the skin on her lower back sags like week-old lettuce.

At age 39, Jolie is a gorgeous movie star, filmmaker, the United Nations' special envoy for refugee issues, a crusader against cancer, and mother of six who's married to Hollywood hottie Brad Pitt, 51.

She's also made some major goofs.

Jolie was so into her second husband, fellow Hollywood denizen Billy Bob Thornton, now 59, that she and her man hung vials of each other's blood around their necks. But after their inevitable divorce in 2003, Angie had a tattoo of his name lasered off a spot below her bikini line, and had the inscription "Billy Bob'' erased from her upper left arm.

Her tats now include one displaying the geographical coordinates of her children's birthplaces. When Jolie gives in to wrinkles, age spots and cellulite, will she dare leave the house without wearing a burqa?

Angelina Jolie sports more tattoos on her inner arm.Photo: AP

Forget for a moment the tats multiplying all over pop runt Justin Bieber, 21, and focus instead on the skin decorations enveloping the high-end epidermises of female singers like Rihanna, 27, and Miley Cyrus, 22.

Bahamian-born RiRi (estimated tattoo count: 23) has admitted that her thirst for tats is like an addiction.

Lena Dunham has a tattoo of Eloise on her lower back.Photo: HBO

Cyrus (estimated tattoo count: 38, including the word "LOVE" inside her right ear) had her first one, the words "Just Breathe,'' inscribed below her left breast when she was just 17 years old, beating the 18-year-old age minimum in most states legally by obtaining her inked parents' permission.

Tattoos. Once they were sought mainly by men, many of them bikers, in the military or drunk. In a column that ran last month, I excoriated male celebs and ordinary mortals bearing XY chromosomes for lately rocking their inner Amish dudes by growing facial hair. Yuck.

Tattooed dames have succumbed to a mania that's grown alarmingly common among rich, narcissistic famous types, ladies who don't give a rat's rump if the sight of their flesh is capable of scaring small children and senior citizens.

And the insanity is contaminating ordinary women like measles.

So what drives gals to reinvent themselves as carnival freaks?

"I think it goes with the fantasy world [famous folks] live in,'' New York City-based celebrity stylist Oksana Pidhoreckyj, who's never considered getting a tattoo, told me. "I'm not against them. It's a personal choice. But while I find Angelina Jolie's tattoos are elegant, Lena Dunham's are the complete opposite. Let's leave it at that.''

"While I find Angelina Jolie's tattoos are elegant, Lena Dunham's are the complete opposite. Let's leave it at that." - Celebrity stylist Oksana Pidhoreckyj

Laura Osenni of Brooklyn, who has the image of a rose and a dolphin tattooed on her right shoulder, makes sure that her ink is visible to strangers only when she's wearing a bathing suit or a tank top.

"I don't want my body to be a conversation piece,'' said the showroom manager of a Manhattan commercial flooring company. "They can't cover up imperfections — maybe just divert people's eyes.''

I have a confession to make. During a night of heavy drinking during my freshman year of college, I wandered into a tattoo parlor and had a picture of a blue bird etched into my flesh. But unless you know me extremely well, you'll never find out where the bird exists on my body.

So if my teenage daughter came home tattooed, her dad and I would take deep breaths, express admiration for her independence — then lock her up until age 40. Kidding.

She's too smart to make my mistake.

Cradle robber sobber

In a cringe-worthy interview that aired on the ABC News program "20/20'' Friday, Barbara Walters sat down with monster mom Mary Kay Letourneau Fualaau and her husband, Vili Fualaau, and introduced to the world the couple's daughters, Audrey, 17, and Georgia, 16.

I feel sick.

The demented woman was a 34-year-old Seattle schoolteacher and married mother of four when she first bedded her 12-year-old sixth-grade student. She bore the first of his daughters when he was 13, then a second one behind bars. Mary Kay Fualaau served nearly 7¹/₂ years in prison after pleading guilty in 1997 to two counts of raping a child, then married her boy toy 10 years ago next month.

The freaks said they'd object if one of their daughters slept with a teacher!

At age 53, Mary Kay Fualaau today works as a paralegal, tutors some students and gives piano lessons. (Scary.) She said that she wants to start teaching again and have her name removed from the national sex-offenders registry. (Very scary.)

Vili Fualaau, a 31-year-old high-school dropout and disc jockey, talked on TV about his struggles with depression and alcoholism.

With a wife like that, I'm not surprised.

Wrong aisle to happiness

Liana Barrientos of The Bronx allegedly married 10 men between 1999 and 2010 — including immigrants from countries believed to harbor terrorists.

The serial bride at one point was wed to eight men simultaneously, a prosecutor alleged, as part of an apparent scam to help men remain in the United States. Now, she's believed to have just four spouses. The busty blonde, 39, pleaded not guilty Friday to two counts of filing a false instrument.

A message to lonely folks in New York City — it's not worth it.

High times in the bedroom

Seventy-nine percent of people who took drugs or drank alcohol before having sex reported that the substances made for hotter experiences.

That means that 21 percent of folks who said they did the nasty while drunk or high did not get extra pleasure, according to a survey commissioned by Adam & Eve, a company that sells sex toys, adult videos and other kinky stuff.

Not everyone gets drunk or high on things like pot, cocaine, ecstasy or heroin, before rolling in the hay — 52 percent of respondents said they had sex sober.

That's good news for those who want to remember it.

Only death for Dzho

If Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 21, is sentenced to life in prison rather than death, he could one day walk free, reader Jay Taikeff of Brooklyn reminded me.

Free, like the Libyan intelligence officer who was convicted in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The terrorist was convicted of murdering 270 people in the plane and on the ground and sentenced to life in prison in 2001. But in 2009, Scottish authorities sent him home after he developed prostate cancer. He was hailed as a Libyan hero until his death in 2012.

For murdering three people at the 2013 Boston Marathon, wounding 264 others and taking a campus cop's life, Tsarnaev should die.

17.08 | 0 komentar | Read More

Slain Walter Scott struggled to be a better dad

When I interviewed Walter Scott for a story about deadbeat dads in 2003, he talked about his struggle to support his kids — the same issue that haunted him the day he died in South Carolina a week ago.

Scott is believed to have fled a police officer during a traffic stop in North Charleston because he was concerned he'd be arrested over his late child-support payments. The unarmed, black man was then fatally shot in the back by the cop.

When I first met Scott in Charleston, it was to talk about Father to Father, a program he enrolled in after being locked up for failing to make child-support payments.

Scott didn't stand to get a reduction in those payments by agreeing to talk to me. Outing himself as a deadbeat wasn't going to help his public image, either.

The most he could hope for was that other dads struggling to make payments would learn about the program, which aimed to help them.

Scott told me at the time that after he initially got pinched, "I said, 'Man, you got four kids depending on you, and you got people in your life that love you. You got to get it together.' "

Scott wasn't perfect, but he was honest and didn't hide his time in the clink.

He told me he was so overwhelmed with not being able to hold down a job and make the payments that he withdrew from his children and turned to booze to kill the pain.

His mother, whom he tried to call before running from the cop nine days ago, set him straight for a spell, telling him that his kids missed him.

"That just broke my heart," he told me. "It helped me come to my senses."

Warning: The following video contains graphic content

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The best subway lines for finding a seat on your morning commute

Park Slope, Bay Ridge, the Upper West Side and Forest Hills are the best neighborhoods to move to if you want to get a subway seat during the a.m. rush hour, transit data show.

As long as you're willing to ride the local.

New York's subway system has been breaking ridership records in the last year, with 6 million people cramming on trains on each of 29 different days in 2014. But riders looking to escape sardine-can trains can take the R line into Manhattan from Brooklyn neighborhoods including Park Slope, Bay Ridge, and Sunset Park.

That line operates at only 57 percent capacity.

MTA officials say this is because R train riders typically transfer in Brooklyn to either the express N train at 59th Street, or the D train at 36th Street in order to shave a few minutes off their commutes — even though those lines are more crowded.

Bruni Perez, 38, of Bay Ridge, said the R is a long trip for her but worth it to read in peace.

"I usually do get a seat," she said. "You have to get on towards the back. It's a slow train, you slog through Brooklyn, but having a seat and being able to read my Kindle makes it bearable."

Others said that though they might not always get a seat on the R train, it's still a lot less crowded.

"It's not super crowded, but I'm usually standing," said Justin Felder, 25, who lives off of the Union Street stop.

Upper West Siders also have good odds of getting a seat, as long as they don't mind taking the local.

The B and C lines above 60th Street only run at 58 percent capacity level.

"Oh no! My secret is out," said Cindy Martinez, 48. "I avoid the 2 and 3 in Manhattan. Crazy crowded. You take the B or the C to the Upper West Side, and you almost always get a seat. Plus it's quiet. It's like Upper Manhattan's secret."

Unlike the Upper East Side, where the Second Avenue Subway line is being built, the Upper West Side has two major subway routes — one on Broadway and the other on Central Park West.

The next-best lines are the M and R trains from Queens to Manhattan.

The lines, which are 59 percent full, run through neighborhoods including Jackson Heights, Forest Hills, and Rego Park.

The G train, which runs from Queens to Brooklyn, as well as the 2 and 3 line from Brooklyn to Manhattan, are other lines that aren't packed to the gills.

The MTA says they are at 61 and 63 percent capacity during rush-hour, respectively.

17.08 | 0 komentar | Read More

Government logic: Spending $28M to create 76 jobs

You've seen Andrew Cuomo's TV commercials, the ones that say, "The new New York is open. Open to innovation. Open to ambition. Open to bold ideas." The spot is promoting the Start-Up NY program.

Now the results are starting to come in: 76 jobs so far.

In the entire state. From a program that has spent $28 million advertising its own existence.

That's $368,000 per job.

Start-Up NY sounds great on its face. It's a tax cut. Who could argue with that? The problem is that it's a very, very narrow tax cut. It's only for certain kinds of businesses that do certain kinds of things in certain areas of the state. Surprise: It's had very narrow effects.

It's a classic example of how politicians have an irrepressible urge to tinker, to steer, to organize. Tech jobs in university towns are great, but they aren't defining the New York economy. Start-Up NY's professed goal? Creating 2,100 jobs. Over five years. Points for modesty.

In a state in which there are 7,775,000 jobs, that's projected job growth of 0.005% a year. Touting this as "economic development" is like saying you're going to fight hunger in India by sending Mumbai one box of Minute Rice.

What's really going on with sluggish job growth? It isn't a mystery. According to the annual survey by TaxFoundation.org, New York is the worst state for taxes.

That's 50th, out of 50. (New Jersey was 49th). In unemployment-insurance taxes, New York was 45th. In individual income taxes, 49th. In property taxes, 45th.

A different survey, completed in 2013 by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, ranked states by personal and economic freedom. New York was 50th on that list, too.

Still another study, the Thumbtack Survey of over 12,000 small businesses conducted in 2014, gave New York a D+ on small-business friendliness, one of the worst grades in the country, and a D on difficulty of starting a business.

In 2012 the Institute for Justice ranked the states by the onerousness of their occupational licensing requirements. New York finished 40th (with No. 1 being the least onerous state).

Let's look at one particular job and what it takes to take this gig in the Empire State. You must:

Complete a physical;

Apply for and receive a license to be an apprentice (don't forget your $40 check);

Serve a two-year apprenticeship, carefully recording your days and hours worked on the appropriate form;

Go get another physical;

Apply again to be licensed (with another $40 fee);

Complete a state training course;

Await official certification.

What job are we talking about? EMT? Nuclear bomb disposal technician?

No, barber. Two years of study to learn how to operate scissors. Two years is the amount of experience Barack Obama had as a national politician before he announced he was running for president. (Did he even have two physicals in that period of time? Never mind, the health of a barber is much more important to national security.)

Oh, and prospective barbers, after all that hoop-jumping, you're still a long way from being able to open a barbershop, sunshine. Says the state of New York: "Note: A license to practice barbering does not allow the operation of a business. A separate barber-shop license is needed to operate a business."

I'd tell you about those requirements, but The Post's printers wouldn't give me permission to have them do a 300-page special issue today.

At the same time Cuomo has been struggling to deliver on a promise to create 2,100 jobs, he killed fracking in New York. The Marcellus Shale, which bestrides Western New York and Pennsylvania, directly employs more than 30,000 Pennsylvanians, with some 200,000 jobs partially or wholly dependent on this form of energy extraction. These are high-paying jobs, too. The average wage in the industry in Pennsylvania is $62,000.

Liberal politicians lament the decline of good-paying industrial jobs for blue-collar workers, but when something comes along that sounds vaguely new and scary, their impulse is to yield to noted economists like Yoko Ono and David Letterman and ban the thing.

But we all know only Republicans support fracking. "I would say that is the wrong way to go," said Texas Gov. Rick Perry of the anti-fracking movement. "There is a lot of misinformation about fracking. I think that localized efforts or statewide efforts in many cases don't understand the science behind it."

Oops, did I say Rick Perry? Typo. He didn't give that quote, Sally Jewell did. Jewell is the secretary of the interior. In the Obama administration. Jewell has won the National Audobon Society's Rachel Carson Award and sits on the board of the National Parks Conservation Association.

Fracking is a high-tech, high-wage industry: But, sorry, it's the kind of high-tech, high-wage industry that Cuomo won't allow. When economically besieged upstaters ask about fracking jobs, Cuomo's response is: Shut Up, New York.

17.08 | 0 komentar | Read More

War against ISIS shows limits of drones

Why not just send in the drones?

That seems the easy solution against the Islamic State, which has the capacity to shoot down jet aircraft and is vicious enough to burn captured pilots alive.

Yet as of March 31, only a handful of the more than 5,500 airstrikes carried out by the US and allies against ISIS were conducted by remote-control drones. Whatever Hollywood may tell you, the drone revolution is still in its infancy.

That's because while the US military has more than 8,000 drones, relatively few are armed — and they are not as powerful as you might think.

The Air Force operates two types of drones that carry weapons, the MQ-1 Predator and the MQ-9 Reaper, both made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. of Poway, Calif. The Predator, originally designed only for surveillance, was modified in 2001 to carry two laser-guided AGM-114 Hellfire missiles. The Reaper, a larger version of the Predator, typically carries four Hellfires and two precision-guided 500-pound bombs. The Air Force owns about 160 Predators and 140 Reapers, but not all are available to fly combat missions.

Meanwhile, the nature of drone operations means the armed fleet is spread thin.

Photo: ZUMA Wire

To fly one Combat Air Patrol, defined as keeping one Predator or Reaper over a given target area 24/7, requires three to four aircraft — one flying the patrol, another on its way to take the first one's place, a third returning to base for maintenance and refueling, and a fourth already on the ground and being serviced. Given the size of its fleet, the Air Force currently can fly 65 armed drone patrols a day.

But with global responsibilities that include flying Predators and Reapers not only over the Middle East but parts of Asia, Africa and sometimes elsewhere, only a few patrols have been devoted to the parts of Syria and Iraq where Islamic State targets can be found — a fact revealed, perhaps unintentionally, by Air Force budget documents released in February. A slide in a presentation titled "United States Air Force Fiscal Year 2016 Budget Overview" warned that if Congress let automatic, across-the-board budget cuts known as sequestration take effect, the service would have to reduce its 65 daily armed drone patrols by 10, "equiv to Iraq/Syria today."

Even if the armed-drone fleet were far larger, though, today's drones couldn't do much damage to a foe such as the Islamic State because they carry very little firepower.

"They are a great asset to have," said Eliot Cohen, a Johns Hopkins University professor and former Pentagon official who directed a Gulf War Air Power Survey for the Air Force from 1991 to 1993. But "you've got to be realistic about what you can actually accomplish with them."

The laser-guided Hellfire is perhaps the most accurate air-to-ground weapon in the world, but its warhead weighs a mere 13 to 45 pounds, depending on the variant. Such a weapon is ideal for targeting an individual or a vehicle, as the CIA does in counterterrorism targeted killings, but the Hellfire falls far short of the firepower needed to attack big targets.

The larger Reaper can carry around 3,000 pounds of munitions — the rough equivalent of six 500-pound bombs — but that pales in comparison to the manned B-1 bomber, which can carry 80 such bombs, a payload of 40,000 pounds.

Why that's important was dramatically illustrated in a Jan. 26 CBS News broadcast that showed how the Air Force needed nearly two dozen satellite-guided bombs to destroy a building the Islamic State was using as a weapons factory. A B-1 dropped 16 GPS-guided 2,000-pound bombs and six 500-pound bombs on the structure, their fuses timed to dig into the earth.

Rather than delivering firepower, the value of the Predator and Reaper against the Islamic State is their ability to loiter over the war zone virtually around the clock, gathering intelligence, finding targets and leading manned aircraft to them with the aid of daylight video and infrared cameras, laser designators and other sensors.

But if the number and firepower of today's drones limits their role in such conflicts, that probably won't always be the case.

The Predator and Reaper are the drone equivalent of World War I's biplanes, and future drones will be far more capable. The Navy is experimenting with a drone technology demonstrator the size of a conventional fighter plane, and one vision for the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter — sometimes called the "last manned fighter" — is that its pilot may fly with a swarm of drone escorts equipped to penetrate tough air defenses and rain weapons on enemy ground targets.

Fearsome or awesome as that may sound, it's a prospect that still lies over the horizon.

Richard Whittle is the author of "Predator: The Secret Origins of the Drone Revolution" (Henry Holt and Company), out now.

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JFK made Garland sing ‘Over the Rainbow’ every time she called

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April 12, 2015 | 6:00am

In the Company of Legends
by Joan Kramer and David Heeley
Beaufort Books

In the 1980s, Joan Kramer and David Heeley were Emmy-winning documentary makers, filming one-hour celeb profiles that would typically run on PBS.

But not everything they filmed made the final cut. And in their new book, "In the Company of Legends," the duo share some of their favorite off-camera stories.

• Elizabeth Taylor was tough to pin down, dubiously putting them off with claims of back pain, until the filmmakers asked their pal Katharine Hepburn to put in a good word. Kate agreed, but joked, "If she asks me to appear at one of her benefit fundraisers, I'll strangle the two of you." Taylor agreed, and while waiting for the violet-eyed glamour queen to arrive, filmmaker Kramer noticed a picture was taped to the fridge of Taylor at her heaviest. The actress put it there to try to keep her from eating.
• Frank Sinatra, too, was elusive. But they got a time for a sitdown at his home outside Palm Springs. A pistol-packing security guard told them, "Just point your camera at Mr. Sinatra. Don't shoot the house or any scenery. Security reasons." Talk about Rat Pack: Each of his pool's tiles bore the image of playing card — ace of spades, queen of diamonds — and his bathroom was decorated with framed cartoons he'd collected about Frank's ties with the Mafia.
• For a 1984 show about the late Judy Garland, the filmmakers set out to confirm a rumor they'd heard that the "Wizard of Oz" star was known to call John Kennedy at the White House, but he'd never let her hang up without singing "Over the Rainbow."
  
  

  Photo: Getty Images

  Brazenly, they tried to get a confirmation from Jacqueline Onassis. The former first lady's reply said simply "Story not true." Finally they reached Dave Powers, one of JFK's closest aides during his presidency. Powers answered: "Oh, sure I remember . . . He never would let her off the phone without asking her to sing a few bars . . . In fact, he would hold the phone out so that I could hear her sing, too."
• In 1987, at the height of the Iran-Contra affair, jokester Paul Newman answered his phone with "Ollie North here." Wife Joanne Woodward was just as funny. On the day of the interview, with the cameras ready, Paul asked her, "Darling, what if I go first." She replied, "Darling, I would mourn you."
• Michael Jackson has a walk-on in the book, in an anecdote told by Hepburn about shooting "On Golden Pond" on location at Squam Lake in New Hampshire. Jackson, who would have been around 22 during the shooting of the 1981 film, had come to visit friend Jane Fonda, but she had to fly back to LA one weekend.Hepburn found the pop star in a room in the attic of an old house they were staying in. "The room looked like a hurricane had hit it," Hepburn recalled. "I said, 'Michael, clean up this place right now.' And he said, 'Yes, Miss Hepburn,' in a voice I could hardly hear." The singer simply piled up all his clothes on a chair. Hepburn recalls, "I said to him, 'Don't you ever do your laundry?' And he said, 'Someone usually does that for me.' "
  

  Elizabeth TaylorPhoto: EPA

  So Hepburn took him to a public laundromat in a woodsy New England town and showed him how to feed quarters into the pay washing machines.

• During an interview one morning at Jimmy Stewart's home, there was a knock at the front door. It was a neatly dressed young man with an Australian accent. "Mr. Stewart's doing an interview," an assistant told the stranger, until Stewart — in classic Jimmy Stewart fashion — breezily told him, "Come on in."The young man from Melbourne sat down and explained that it had been his lifelong dream to travel to Hollywood and meet his idol. Then the stranger added, "Sylvester Stallone." They all sat in puzzled silence. "And since you lived in Hollywood for so long, Mr. Stewart, I thought you could introduce me to him."
  After politely explaining that he didn't know Sylvester Stallone, the endlessly affable Stewart had an assistant provide the man with the phone number for a publicist before showing him out.

  As he sat back down for his interview, Stewart said, "Well, he seemed like a nice fella."

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Saudi role in 9/11 being whitewashed by FBI

Just 15 days before the 9/11 attacks, a well-connected Saudi family suddenly abandoned their luxury home in Sarasota, Fla., leaving behind jewelry, clothes, opulent furniture, a driveway full of cars — including a brand new Chrysler PT Cruiser — and even a refrigerator full of food.

About the only thing not left behind was a forwarding address. The occupants simply vanished without notifying their neighbors, realtor or even mail carrier.

The 3,300-square-foot home on Escondito Circle belonged to Esam Ghazzawi, a Saudi adviser to the nephew of then-King Fahd. But at the time, it was occupied by his daughter and son-in-law, who beat a hasty retreat back to Saudi Arabia just two weeks before the attacks after nearly a six-year stay here.

Neighbors took note of the troubling coincidence and called the FBI, which opened an investigation that led to the startling discovery that at least one "family member" trained at the same flight school as some of the 9/11 hijackers in nearby Venice, Fla.

The investigation into the prominent Saudi family's ties to the hijackers started on Sept. 19, 2001, and remained active for several years. It was led by the FBI's Tampa field office but also involved the bureau's field offices in New York and Washington, and also the Southwest Florida Domestic Security Task Force.

Agents identified persons of interest in the case, establishing their ties to other terrorists, sympathies with Osama bin Laden and anti-American remarks. They looked into their bank accounts, colleges and places of employment. They tracked at least one suspect's re-entry into the US.

The Saudi-9/11 connection in Florida was no small part of the overall 9/11 investigation. Yet it was never shared with Congress. Nor was it mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report.

Now it's being whitewashed again, in a newly released report by the 9/11 Review Commission, set up last year by Congress to assess "any evidence now known to the FBI that was not considered by the 9/11 Commission." Though the FBI acknowledges the Saudi family was investigated, it maintains the probe was a dead end.
The review panel highlighted one local FBI report generated from the investigation that said Abdulaziz and Anoud al-Hijji, the prominent Saudi couple who "fled" their home, had "many connections" to "individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001."

Abdulaziz Al-Hijji

But: "The FBI told the Review Commission that the communication was 'poorly written' and wholly unsubstantiated," the panel noted in its 128-page report. "When questioned later by others in the FBI, the special agent who wrote (it) was unable to provide any basis for the contents of the document or explain why he wrote it as he did."

How strange. Yet panelists did not interview the unidentified agent for themselves. They just accepted headquarters' impeachment of his work.

Odder still, the agent's report was just one of many other FBI communications detailing ties between the Saudi family and the hijackers. In fact, the Tampa office of the FBI recently was ordered to turn over more than 80,000 pages of documents filling some 27 boxes from its 9/11 investigation to a federal judge hearing a Freedom of Information Act case filed by local journalists over the Sarasota angle. The judge is sorting through the boxes to determine which documents should remain classified. Most are marked "SECRET/NOFORN," meaning no foreign nationals — a classification reserved for highly sensitive materials.

"The report provides no plausible explanation for the contradiction between the FBI's current claim that it found nothing and its 2002 memo finding 'many connections' between the Sarasota family and the 9/11 terrorists," Thomas Julin, the attorney who filed the FOIA lawsuit against the FBI, told the Miami Herald.
The panel's report also doesn't explain why visitor security logs for the gated Sarasota community and photos of license tags matched vehicles driven by the hijackers, including 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta.

The three-member review panel was appointed by FBI Director James Comey, who also officially released the findings.

Former Democratic Sen. Bob Graham, who in 2002 chaired the congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11, maintains the FBI is covering up a Saudi support cell in Sarasota for the hijackers. He says the al-Hijjis "urgent" pre-9/11 exit suggests "someone may have tipped them off" about the coming attacks.

The Florida home Abdulaziz Al-Hijji left two weeks before 9/11.

Graham has been working with a 14-member group in Congress to urge President Obama to declassify 28 pages of the final report of his inquiry which were originally redacted, wholesale, by President George W. Bush.

"The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11, and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier," he said, adding, "I am speaking of the kingdom," or government, of Saudi Arabia, not just wealthy individual Saudi donors.

Sources who have read the censored Saudi section say it cites CIA and FBI case files that directly implicate officials of the Saudi Embassy in Washington and its consulate in Los Angeles in the attacks — which if true, would make 9/11 not just an act of terrorism, but an act of war by a foreign government. The section allegedly identifies high-level Saudi officials and intelligence agents by name, and details their financial transactions and other dealings with the San Diego hijackers. It zeroes in on the Islamic Affairs Department of the Saudi Embassy, among other Saudi entities.

The review commission, however, concludes there is "no evidence" that any Saudi official provided assistance to the hijackers, even though the panel failed to interview Graham or his two key investigators — former Justice Department attorney Dana Lesemann and FBI investigator Michael Jacobson — who ran down FBI leads tying Saudi officials to the San Diego hijackers and documented their findings in the 28 pages.

Graham smells a rat: "This is a pervasive pattern of covering up the role of Saudi Arabia in 9/11 by all of the agencies of federal government which have access to information that might illuminate Saudi Arabia's role in 9/11."

Paul Sperry is a Hoover Institution media fellow and author of "Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington."

17.08 | 0 komentar | Read More

City Democrats rally to raise money for Hillary Clinton

The local wing of Ready for Hillary sipped $10 Ceiling Breaker cocktails made with tequila, strawberry and lime juice at its final fund-raiser Saturday in anticipation of Clinton's presidential announcement.

Over 200 attended the event at SouthWest NY restaurant in Battery Park City, chanting, "Who are we ready for?" "Hillary!" and, "Who's going to be the first woman president?" "Hillary!"

They heard speeches from Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan), South Bronx Assemblyman Michael Blake and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer.

17.08 | 0 komentar | Read More