The city’s Health Department reported on Monday that diabetes-related deaths have reached an all-time high in the city.

There were a record 5,695 deaths in 2011 in which diabetes was either an underlying cause or a contributing cause, according to the report. That adds up to one death every 90 minutes and 16 deaths a day in New York City.

“Diabetes is a condition that too many people live with and die from,” said Health Commissioner Thomas Farley. “It is linked to our epidemic of obesity, and like obesity, it can be prevented.”

Although the overall number of deaths has declined in the city, the number of diabetes-related deaths has been steadily increasing since 2007, the report shows.

Non-Hispanic blacks had the the highest diabetes-related mortality rate than any other racial/ethnic group, with 116 deaths per 100,000 population. The diabetes-related mortality rate was 2.7 times higher among individuals in high-poverty neighborhoods than in low-poverty neighborhoods. It was also 1.4 times higher among men than in women.

While the diabetes-related death rate was 19 per 100,000 in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan, it was 177 per 100,000 in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn—a nine-fold difference, the report shows.

Life-threatening complications of diabetes include heart disease, stroke and kidney failure. People with diabetes are twice as likely to die than other people their age without diabetes, according to the Health Department.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has maintained the importance of his proposed sugary drink regulation, often referred to as a “Soda Ban,” is evidenced by such studies, particularly the finding that diabetes hits lower-income communities the hardest.

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Three Americans, two soldiers and a civilian, were killed in Afghanistan on Saturday when a man in an Afghan army uniform turned his weapon on them in the eastern province of Paktika, the NATO-led force said.

So-called insider attacks by Afghan soldiers on their NATO-force allies have become an increasing problem over the past year or so, threatening to undermine already waning support for the war among Western nations sending troops.

Last year, a surge in such attacks prompted NATO to temporarily curtail some joint operations with Afghan government forces.

The three Americans were shot dead by the man following an argument, the Paktika provincial governor’s spokesman Mukhlas Afghan said, adding that three other Americans had been wounded.

The attacker was himself shot dead soon after opening fire, the spokesman said.

“Two U.S. International Security Assistance Force service members and one U.S. civilian were killed today when an individual wearing an ANA uniform turned his weapon against (them),” a statement from Afghanistan’s NATO-led force said.

A previous statement had said all three were soldiers.

Insider attacks accounted for one in every five combat deaths suffered by NATO-led forces in Afghanistan and 16 percent of all American combat casualties, according to 2012 data.

The toll has alarmed Afghanistan’s Western allies and raised troubling questions about the unpopular war’s direction as most international forces prepare to withdraw by the end of next year.

Also on Saturday, an Italian soldier was killed and three were wounded when a child threw a grenade at a NATO convoy in the western province of Farah, a spokesman for the governor and a Taliban spokesman said

“A brave, heroic 11-year-old Afghan child hurled a hand grenade at dismounted Italian troops in Farah city,” the Taliban said in an English-language statement.

The four deaths on Saturday bring to 16 the number of international troops killed in Afghanistan this month and come two days after seven Georgian soldiers were killed in a suicide car-bomb attack in the southern province of Helmand.

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The Boston Police Department, during a  press conference at the Westin Hotel following the deadly blasts on the course of the Boston Marathon, confirmed a third blast at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library this afternoon. Police said they are not aware of any injuries from that blast.

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  PHOTOS: Explosion during Boston Marathon

The first two simultaneous blasts occurred around 2:50 p.m about 50 to 100 yards apart along the marathon course.

Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said he does not have the number of casualties, though two people have reportedly been killed and dozens injured. Davis said the department immediately activated an emergency response and sent resources. He recommended people stay inside their homes and avoid large crowds.

A phone number for people trying to locate loved ones who participated in the marathon has been set up: 617-635-4500.

If anyone has information about the blasts, they can call 1-800-494-TIPS

“People should be calm, but they should understand this is an ongoing event,” Davis said.

He added that they are not looking for any particular type of vehicle.

When asked whether the incident is being treated as terrorism, Davis replied, “You can reach your own conclusions based upon what happened.”

Davis also said that in their panic to flee the scene, many people left bags behind.

“All bags and parcels left behind being treated as a suspicious device at this point,” he said, adding that people may hear additional explosions from controlled detonations of those parcels.

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A cold front marched eastward across the United States on Friday, threatening to bring heavy rain and thunderstorms from Florida to the Northeast and snow to New England.

It was part of a broad storm blamed for at least three deaths as it moved across the nation earlier in the week.

The system will bring much cooler temperatures to the East Coast during the weekend, forecasters at the National Weather Service said.

“Mixed wintry weather is also expected for parts of the Great Lakes and into northern New England, where the air is cold enough for that,” the forecasters said.

The storm brought heavy snow to Colorado, South Dakota and Minnesota earlier in the week. In Nebraska, the state patrol said 37-year-old Lisa Conrad, of Berea, died from exposure Tuesday after abandoning her disabled car and trying to walk to her home a mile away during a blinding snowstorm.

The system spun off a tornado that killed one person and injured five in Mississippi on Thursday, and brought, hail, damaging winds and twisters to Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.

High winds and heavy wet snow downed power lines in several states, and outages persisted Friday in nearly every state from Missouri eastward.

A utility worker in Ameren, Miss., was electrocuted Thursday while helping restore power knocked out by the storm in the St. Louis area, the company said.

Missouri was hardest hit with about 5,000 electrical customers without service Friday, while 3,000 were without power in North Carolina, utility companies said.

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New York City plans to start sifting through earth and debris recovered from the World Trade Center site on Monday to look for the remains of victims from the attacks of September 11, 2001, officials said on Friday.

The city’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner on Friday advised families of the dead about the new sifting operation, the first since 2010, a spokeswoman said in a statement.

The Medical Examiner’s office has identified remains of 1,634 people out of 2,752 killed when suicide hijackers crashed into the twin towers, leaving more than 1,000 families without any physical remains of those who died.

After the initial cleanup of the site, the city scaled back operations to search for remains, drawing criticism from families of the dead, who said they could not properly grieve. The city widened its search again in 2006.

The next search will comb through 590 cubic yards (451 cubic meters) of excavated material taken from and near the World Trade Center site, said Caswell Halloway, deputy mayor for operations, in a memo to Mayor Michael Bloomberg made public by the Medical Examiner’s office.

Much of the site known as Ground Zero is a construction zone for new skyscrapers and a memorial where the twin towers once stood.

The building under construction known as One World Trade Center has surpassed the Empire State Building as the tallest in New York and, when completed, would be the tallest in the Western Hemisphere at 1,776 feet.

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At least 18 people, most of them Asian and European tourists, were killed when a hot air balloon crashed on Tuesday near the ancient Egyptian town of Luxor following a mid-air gas explosion, officials said.

The balloon came down in farmland a few kilometers (miles) from the Valley of the Kings and pharaonic temples that draw tourists to Luxor. Rescue workers gathered the remains of the dead from the field where the charred remains of the balloon, gas canisters and other pieces of burnt wreckage landed.

One Egyptian was also killed, Health Minister Mohamed Mostafa Hamed told Reuters, listing the others killed as tourists from Japan, China, France, Britain and Hungary. Earlier, officials had said all the dead were tourists.

The pilot survived by jumping from the basket when it was 10-15 meters (yards) from the ground, said Ahmed Aboud, head of an association representing Luxor balloon operators. Two other survivors, both British, were being treated at Luxor hospital, said Mohamed Mustafa, a doctor at Luxor hospital. The fatalities were caused by burns and by the impact, he said.

“We believe a small number of British nationals are involved in an incident in Luxor this morning,” Britain’s Foreign Office said in an emailed statement. The Japanese embassy in Cairo said it believed four Japanese had been aboard and had sent staff to Luxor to confirm. France’s foreign ministry said two French citizens had been killed.

Aboud said the blast had happened in the pipe linking the gas canisters to the burner. He said that it was an accident.

Transport accidents are frequent in Egypt. Dozens of children were killed in November when the bus they were on collided with a train. Accidents affecting foreign tourists are fewer, but are not unusual. Five Germans were killed in December in a bus crash near a Red Sea resort.

Konny Matthews, assistant manager of Luxor’s Al Moudira hotel, said she heard an explosion at about 7 a.m. (0500 GMT). “It was a huge bang. It was a frightening bang, even though it was several kilometers away from the hotel,” she said by phone. “Some of my employees said that their homes were shaking.”

The balloon crashed on the west bank of the Nile river, where many of the major historical sites are located.

U.S. photographer Christopher Michel, who was on board another balloon, told Britain’s Sky News television that the balloon was one of eight flying at the time.

“We heard a loud explosion behind us. I looked back and saw lots of smoke. It wasn’t immediately clear that it was a balloon,” he said.

Hot air ballooning at dawn is popular with tourists, who are a mainstay of the Egyptian economy, although visitor numbers have fallen sharply since a 2011 uprising that toppled veteran President Hosni Mubarak. Two years of political instability have kept away many foreign tourists.

Tourism accounted for more than a 10th of Egypt’s gross domestic product before the revolt. In 2010, about 14.7 million visitors came to Egypt, but this slumped to 9.8 million people the next year.

The civil aviation minister said a committee from the ministry was heading to Luxor to investigate the incident, the state news agency reported. The minister along with other officials from the ministry also went to Luxor.

The governor of Luxor ordered an immediate halt to all ballooning, the state-run al-Ahram newspaper reported.

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The April 2010 explosion on a rig in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers. The mile-deep Macondo oil well then spewed 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf over 87 days, fouling shorelines from Texas to Florida.

“The judge has accepted the plea,” a court official said on Tuesday.

The company had said previously it would plead guilty to 11 felony counts related to the workers’ deaths, a felony related to obstruction of Congress and two misdemeanors. It also faces five years’ probation and the imposition of two monitors who will oversee its safety and ethics for the next four years.

With the plea agreement approved, BP has 60 days to send a remedial plan to the Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency laying out how it plans to meet all of its stipulations.

The agencies will then review the plan and likely send it back to BP with proposed changes. The plan could go back and forth among all three parties before a final plan agreed to by all sides is reached.

(Reporting by Braden Reddall in San Francisco and Timothy Gardner in Washington; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Nick Zieminski)

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No charges were filed against the four men, but prosecutors said they could be held for up to five days as police press them for clues as to how the fire early Sunday morning could have caused so many deaths.

Stunned residents in the southern city of Santa Maria attended a marathon of funerals beginning in the pre-dawn hours. As sunset approached, friends and family members readied for a candle-lit procession through the streets of the city.

The tragedy came as Brazil prepares to host the 2014 World Cup soccer tournament and 2016 Olympics, putting its safety standards and emergency response capabilities in the international spotlight.

President Dilma Rousseff, who cut short a visit to Chile to fly to the scene of the disaster on Sunday, called for a minute of silence before addressing a meeting of newly elected mayors in the capital, Brasilia.

“The pain I saw in Santa Maria was indescribable,” Rousseff said. “Faced with this tragedy, it is our duty to make sure it never happens again.”

Most of the dead were suffocated by toxic fumes that rapidly filled the Kiss nightclub after the band set off a flare at about 2:30 a.m. on Sunday, authorities said.

The club’s operating license was under review for renewal after expiring last year.

Witnesses said bouncers initially blocked the only functioning exit because they believed fleeing customers were trying to skip out on their bar tabs.

Tarso Genro, governor of the prosperous southern state of Rio Grande do Sul where the disaster occurred, said authorities had shifted their focus from rescue and taking care of the wounded to investigating the scene.

“We’re going to find out who was responsible,” he vowed.

The death toll was revised down to 231 from 233 as officials said some names had been counted twice. Eighty-two people were hospitalized, 75 of them in serious condition, officials said.

Mourning throughout Brazil was mixed with frustration at a culture of lax regulation blamed for putting lives at risk.

“So many young ones with all of their lives ahead of them,” Brazilian soccer legend Pele wrote on Twitter. “The government has to make a priority of event security in this country!”

SAFETY ENFORCEMENT UNEVEN

Relatives and friends of the dead demanded accountability, signaling the start of a wave of police probes, lawsuits and recriminations that could drag on for months or even years.

Based on testimony from more than 20 witnesses, investigators are now certain that the band’s pyrotechnics show triggered the blaze, police official Sandro Meinerz said.

The band’s guitarist, Rodrigo Lemos Martins, 32, said he doubted the band was responsible for the blaze. “There were lots of wires (in the ceiling), maybe it was a short circuit,” he was quoted as saying in Folha de S.Paulo newspaper.

The band’s accordion player, Danilo Jaques, 30, was among those killed, but the other five members survived. The band’s vocalist and production engineer were detained by police investigating who was responsible for firing the flare, according to Brazilian media.

It seems certain others will share the blame for Brazil’s second-deadliest fire ever. The use of a flare inside the club was a clear breach of safety regulations, fire officials said.

Some details may never be known. Meinerz said the club owner told authorities that the club’s internal video surveillance system had stopped working three months ago.

Clubs and restaurants in Brazil are generally subject to a web of overlapping safety regulations, but enforcement is uneven and owners sometimes pay bribes to continue operating.

The investigation of the Kiss fire could drag on for years. After a similar fire at an Argentine nightclub in 2004 killed 194 people, more than six years passed before a court found members of a band criminally responsible for starting the blaze and causing the deaths.

That tragedy also provoked a massive backlash against politicians and led to the removal of the mayor of Buenos Aires.

Civil lawsuits stemming from the Brazil fire are likely to be directed at the government because the owners of the nightclub probably don’t have much money, said Claudio Castello de Campos, a Brazilian lawyer who has handled big cases including the crash of a TAM Airlines jet in Sao Paulo in 2007.

Castello de Campos disputed some statements by local officials that the Kiss nightclub could have continued operating legally while it was waiting for its license to be renewed. “If the license was expired, that’s an irregular situation,” he said.

Valdeci Oliveira, a legislator in Rio Grande do Sul state, said he and his colleagues would seek to ban pyrotechnics displays in closed spaces such as nightclubs.

“It won’t bring anybody back but we’re going to introduce the bill,” Oliveira said on his Twitter feed.

The Brazil fire is the worst to hit an entertainment venue since a fire on Christmas Day in 2000 engulfed a mall in Luoyang, China, killing 309 people.

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Sellal also said that 29 Islamists had been killed in the siege, which Algerian forces ended by storming the plant, and three had been captured alive.

Earlier an Algerian security source told Reuters that documents found on the bodies of two militants had identified them as Canadians, as special forces scoured the plant following Saturday’s bloody end to the siege.

“A Canadian was among the militants. He was coordinating the attack,” Sellal told a news conference, adding that the raiders had threatened to blow up the gas installation.

The Canadian’s name was given only as Chedad.

In Ottawa, Canada’s foreign affairs department said it was seeking information, but referred to the possible involvement of only one Canadian.

American, British, French, Japanese, Norwegian, Filipino and Romanian workers are dead or missing after the attack, for which veteran Islamist fighter Mokhtar Belmokhtar has claimed responsibility on behalf of al Qaeda.

The jihadists had planned the attack two months ago in neighboring Mali, where French forces began fighting Islamists this month, Sellal added.

In Tokyo, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told a news conference he had received information that seven Japanese had been killed and the fate of three more was still unknown.

Six Filipinos died and four were wounded, a government spokesman in Manila said.

Norwegian International Development Minister Heikki Holmaas said his stepfather, Tore Bech, was among the missing and presumed dead. Bech was a manager at the site for the Norwegian energy company Statoil.

Sellal said that initially the raiders in Algeria had tried to hijack a bus carrying foreign workers to a nearby airport and take them hostage. “They started firing at the bus and received a severe response from the soldiers guarding the bus,” he said. “They failed to achieve their objective, which was to kidnap foreign workers from the bus.”

He said special forces and army units were deployed against the militants, who had planted explosives in the gas plant with a view to blowing up the facility.

One group of militants had tried to escape in some vehicles, each of which also was carrying three or four foreign workers, some of whom had explosives attached to their bodies.

After what he called a “fierce response from the armed forces”, the raiders’ vehicles crashed or exploded and one of their leaders was among those killed.

LIBYAN NUMBER PLATES

Sellal said the jihadists who staged the attack last Wednesday had crossed into the country from neighboring Libya.

An Algerian newspaper said they had arrived in cars painted in the colors of state energy company Sonatrach but registered in Libya, a country awash with arms since Muammar Gaddafi’s fall in 2011.

The raid has exposed the vulnerability of multinational-run oil and gas installations in an important producing region and pushed the growing threat from Islamist militant groups in the Sahara to a prominent position in the West’s security agenda.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has ordered an investigation into how security forces failed to prevent the attack, the daily El Khabar said.

Algerian Tahar Ben Cheneb – leader of a group called the Movement of Islamic Youth in the South who was killed on the first day of the assault – had been based in Libya where he married a local woman two months ago, it said.

ONE-EYED JIHADIST

Belmokhtar – a one-eyed jihadist who fought in Afghanistan and Algeria’s civil war of the 1990s when the secular government fought Islamists – tied the desert attack to France’s intervention across the Sahara against Islamist rebels in Mali.

“We in al Qaeda announce this blessed operation,” he said in a video, according to Sahara Media, a regional website. About 40 attackers participated in the raid, he said, roughly matching the government’s figures for fighters killed and captured.

Belmokhtar demanded an end to French air strikes against Islamist fighters in neighboring Mali. These began five days before the fighters swooped before dawn and seized a plant that produces 10 percent of Algeria’s natural gas exports.

U.S. and European officials doubt such a complex raid could have been organized quickly enough to have been conceived as a direct response to the French military intervention. However, the French action could have triggered an operation that had already been planned.

The group behind the raid, the Mulathameen Brigade, threatened to carry out more such attacks if Western powers did not end what it called an assault on Muslims in Mali, according to the SITE service, which monitors militant statements.

In a statement published by the Mauritania-based Nouakchott News Agency, the hostage takers said they had offered talks about freeing the captives, but the Algerian authorities had been determined to use military force. Sellal blamed the raiders for the collapse of negotiations.

BLOODY SIEGE

The siege turned bloody on Thursday when the Algerian army opened fire, saying fighters were trying to escape with their prisoners. Survivors said Algerian forces blasted several trucks in a convoy carrying both hostages and their captors.

Nearly 700 Algerian workers and more than 100 foreigners escaped, mainly on Thursday when the fighters were driven from the residential barracks. Some captors remained holed up in the industrial complex until Saturday when they were overrun.

The bloodshed has strained Algeria’s relations with its Western allies, some of which have complained about being left in the dark while the decision to storm the compound was being taken.

Nevertheless, Britain and France both defended the military action by Algeria, the strongest military power in the Sahara and an ally the West needs in combating the militants.

Among other foreigners confirmed dead by their home countries were three Britons, one American and two Romanians. The missing include five Norwegians, three Britons and a British resident. An Algerian security source said at least one Frenchman was also among the dead.

The raid on the plant, which was home to expatriate workers from Britain’s BP, Norway’s Statoil, Japanese engineering firm BGC Corp and others, exposed the vulnerability of multinational oil operations in the Sahara.

However, Algeria is determined to press on with its energy industry. Oil Minister Youcef Yousfi visited the site and said physical damage was minor, state news service APSE reported. The plant would start up again in two days, he said.

Algeria, scarred by the civil war with Islamist insurgents in the 1990s which claimed 200,000 lives, insisted from the start of the crisis there would be no negotiation in the face of terrorism. France especially needs close cooperation from Algeria to crush Islamist rebels in northern Mali.

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The attack, which plunged capitals around the world into crisis mode, is a serious escalation of unrest in northwestern Africa, where French forces have been in Mali since last week fighting an Islamist takeover of Timbuktu and other towns.

“We are still dealing with a fluid and dangerous situation where a part of the terrorist threat has been eliminated in one part of the site, but there still remains a threat in another part,” British Prime Minister David Cameron told his parliament.

A local Algerian source said 60 foreigners were still in the facility and some were being held hostage, but it was unclear how many and how many might be in hiding elsewhere in the sprawling compound. It was also not known whether some might have been killed and the bodies not found.

Those still unaccounted for included 10 from Japan, eight Norwegians and a number of Britons put by Cameron at “less than 30″. Washington has said a number of Americans were among the hostages, without giving details, and the local source said a U.S. aircraft landed nearby on Friday.

As Western leaders clamored for news of their nationals, several expressed anger they had not been consulted by the Algerian government about its decision to storm the facility.

Algeria’s state news agency said earlier more than half of 132 foreign hostages were freed and that the army had rescued 650 hostages, 573 of whom were Algerians.

“(The army) is still trying to achieve a ‘peaceful outcome’ before neutralizing the terrorist group that is holed up in the (facility) and freeing a group of hostages that is still being held,” it said, quoting a security source.

Thirty hostages, including several Westerners, were killed during Thursday’s assault, the source said, along with at least 18 of their captors, who said they had taken the site as retaliation for French intervention against Islamists in neighboring Mali.

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Disaster struck at 8 am, when the low-flying aircraft span out of control and collided with a construction crane on St George Wharf Tower, a luxury apartment building under development along the River Thames. Both the helicopter and part of the crane crashed to the ground in flames, terrifying passersby on one of London’s busiest commuter routes.

Emergency services were quickly on the scene, with 90 firefighters tackling the blaze and rescuing one man from a burning car. Six of the injured were treated on site with the rest transferred to hospital, while police cordoned off the area and closed local tube, train and bus stations.

One of the fatalities was pilot Peter Barnes, alone in the helicopter. The other is understood to have been in a nearby building.

Eyewitnesses described the terror. “I was walking to work when I heard a bang and looked up to see the crane crashing down,” Terry Fernee, a local construction worker, told Metro. “I ran back to the traffic lights and looked up the road and saw it was in flames.”

Security guard Hadji Bangoura said, “The sound of the crash was like an explosion. People were running in panic, screaming ‘we are under attack’.”

Although the crash took place just meters from the MI6 headquarters, the intelligence agency dismissed fears of a terror attack. Aviation authorities are investigating, but witnesses reported the crane’s aviation light was not working and hidden by fog.

Despite the tragedy, Met Police Commander Neil Basu said “it was something of a miracle that this was not many, many times worse.” Had the crash taken place later in the morning, there would have been many more commuters on the street, and the crane operator was saved by being late for work that day.

The city was suffering severe disruption Wednesday, with several hub stations and roads locked down.

“The priority is to get transport running again,” said Basu.

The construction site adjacent to the crane had also been suspended, and workplaces on the street remained inaccessible.

(Image via Twitter)

(Image via Getty)

Wreckage at the scene after a helicopter reportedly collided with a crane attached to St Georges Wharf Tower in Vauxhall.

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After nearly six hours of failed negotiations, police killed the gunman as he opened fire on them through a second-story window of a townhouse where he had barricaded himself, said Aurora police spokeswoman Cassidee Carlson.

It was unclear from police and media reports whether officers entered the home or shot the man through the window. KUSA television reported that he was killed after police fired tear gas and entered the home, where they found three more bodies.

The victims were believed to be related to the gunman, Carlson said.

Around 3 a.m. (1000 GMT), police notified neighbors of an emergency situation and evacuated several blocks, Carlson said in a news briefing outside the row of beige townhouses in this middle-class Aurora neighborhood, just outside Denver.

One person inside had escaped and alerted authorities, she said.

Around 8 a.m., the gunman fired on a police vehicle, leading to an exchange of gunfire, KMGH television said. At that time police saw the first body, the station reported.

Carlson said the gunman, whose name has not been released, died just before 9 a.m.

A neighbor, Michael Ignace, 46, said he had spoken to the gunman and “he seemed like a reasonable guy, and we talked about motorcycles.”

Police entered Ignace’s apartment during the night and alerted him, but he chose to stay in his house, he said.

The same Denver suburb was rocked by the mass shooting in July that had been the deadliest in the United States of 2012 until the December 14 massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, where 28 died, including the shooter.

In Aurora, the gunman opened fire during a midnight screening of the Batman movie “The Dark Knight Rises.” Police identified former neuroscience graduate student James Holmes as the suspect in a crime that renewed debate about the sale of powerful semi-automatic rifles and extended capacity magazines.

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The Tuesday afternoon shooting frenzy at the Clackamas Town Center in the Portland suburb of Happy Valley triggered pandemonium inside the mall at the height of the busy holiday season, sending thousands of shoppers streaming out of the complex as authorities arrived on the scene.

Two people were shot to death and the lone gunman died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Police were expected to release the identities of the dead at a news conference in the nearby town of Clackamas on Wednesday.

In the meantime, a 15-year-old girl wounded in the attack was listed in serious condition, a hospital official said. She was identified as Kristina Shevchenko.

“The family is doing OK,” said her brother, Yevgeniy, declining to comment further.

In a Facebook posting on Tuesday night, he said: “As of now she is stable and sleeping. The bullet went (through) bruising her lung, it missed any vital organs and it missed her ribs. She will need two more operations. We appreciate any and all support including your prayers! Thank you.”

Authorities remained baffled at what led the suspect to open fire in the mall, the latest in a flurry of U.S. gun violence this year, most notably the killing of 12 people and wounding of 58 others at a midnight screening of the Batman film “The Dark Knight Rises” in Colorado in July.

“It did not appear as though he was targeting any specific individuals,” Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts told the NBC morning news program “Today.” “It really looked as though it was a random shooting.”



MISSION TO TAKE LIVES AT MALL

Asked what may have motivated him to carry out the attack, Roberts said, “He had a mission set forth to take the lives of people at that mall.” Roberts added that he believed the shooting only came to a halt after the gun jammed.

Undersheriff Matt Ellington said on CNN that police had recovered a rifle, multiple shell casings and a mask matching the one witnesses said was worn by the shooter. He said the gunman had no known connection to those he shot.

Police converging on the mall on Tuesday evacuated terrified shoppers, who were reported by local media and via Twitter to have hidden in the back rooms of shops as gunshots rang out in the 1.4 million-square-foot mall.

High school student Hannah Baggs, 14, told the Oregonian newspaper that she got a close look at the gunman before he entered the mall and opened fire.

“He was, like, 10 feet away from us, wearing a white mask and carrying something heavy with both hands,” Baggs said in a report on the newspaper’s website. “He went running into the store.”

Police and SWAT teams established a perimeter around the scene and worked to evacuate the mall as they searched for the gunman. Video footage from inside the mall, aired on CNN, showed shoppers heading toward exits with their arms raised above their heads.

Ellington said the Clackamas Town Center mall had been used recently by police for a mass evacuation drill.

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The mayor referenced today in a press conference two children playing inside their home who were killed yesterday when a tree fell on the house.

The first reported death was a 31-year-old man who was killed when a tree fell on his home in Flushing, Queens Monday night.

As Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he expected yesterday, more people have been found killed by the storm.

This number included a woman walking her dog, another who stepped on a live wire during the storm and people whose bodies were found inside their homes.  

Police said Staten Island cop Officer Arthur Kasprzak died when he was trying to help his family get to safety in the borough.  

The NYPD reported that Kasprzak, 28 and a six-year-veteran, went to help his family, helping move six adults and a 15-month-old boy into his attic, but when he went to check the basement, he did not return.

NYPD officers with scuba gear arrived to help, but were unable to find his body until the next morning.  
In Brooklyn, Jessie Streich-Kest and Jacob Vogelman were crushed by a tree in Ditmas Park as they walked her dog, who survived.  

Streich-Kest was a high school teacher in Bushwick. Ditmas Park Corner has information on how to donate to a memorial fund, which will help with veterinary costs for her injured dog, Max.  

Power outages

More than 760,000  homes in New York City and Westchester County lost power during the storm, according to Con Edison. About 200,000 people lost power during Hurricane Irene. In Manhattan, most homes and businesses below 34th Street lost power Monday night. 

About 1,922,945 people in the state are still without power, Gov. Cuomo said.

Workers are scrambling to restore electricity as many areas and power lines remained under water. Mayor Michael Bloomberg urged New Yorkers without power to not expect it to be restored before the weekend. According to Cuomo, the New York Power Authority is sending 1,800 workers from upstate to help restore electricity in NYC. Cuomo said Long Island is faced with the largest challenges when it comes to power.

“This is the largest storm-related outage in our history,” Con Edison senior vice president for electric operations John Miksad said.

(Photo: Getty)

Lower Manhattan goes dark after a power loss Monday night.

Flooding

Many areas of Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn were under water Monday night and into Tuesday morning. City streets on Manhattan’s west side, Financial District and Lower East Side were submerged in flood water at the height of the storm.  Brooklyn neighborhoods Carroll Gardens, DUMBO and Red Hook also experienced heavy flooding.

(Photos: Getty)

Cars submerged in flood waters in Manhattan’s Financial District.

Parts of Brooklyn’s DUMBO section remain under water Tuesday.

Fires

In the midst of the storm, firefighters were forced to battle a massive six-alarm blaze that broke out at 11 p.m. in Breezy Point, Queens. According to the FDNY, about 50 homes were completely destroyed. The flames raged well into Tuesday morning. No serious injuries or deaths were reported. The cause of the fire is under investigation.

There was a massive explosion at the 14th Street Con Edison building in the East Village, shortly before power was lost throughout much of lower Manhattan last night around 8 p.m.

Transportation updates

Seven subway tunnels under the East River flooded overnight, according to the MTA. Several subway stations also experienced flooding. Train service is still at a halt. Most major bridges into Manhattan are expected to re-open today. For the latest MTA updates, click here.

(Photo by Getty)

Flood waters rush the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel in Manhattan.

Evacuations

People living in Zone A are still under evacuation orders, Mayor Bloomberg said Tuesday evening.

Patients were evacuated from the New York University Langone Medical Center last night when a backup generator failed to work following a power outage. About 200 patients, including several infants from neonatal intensive care unit, were transferred by ambulance to other city hospitals.

(Photos: Getty)

A view of the corner of 34th Street and 1st Street in front of NYU Langone Medical Center in Manhattan during rains from Hurricane Sandy Monday night.

A woman stands outside of the sandbagged East 34th Street entrance of NYU Langone Medical Center.

The post UPDATE: At least 37 killed, death toll includes cop, teacher appeared first on Metro.us.

Forecasters warned the late-season storm is expected to combine with a polar air mass near the United States next week, potentially producing a highly unusual and potent storm that could wreak havoc along the U.S. East Coast.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center early on Friday issued tropical storm warnings for much of the Florida coast and tropical storm watches up through much of North Carolina.

Late Thursday, Sandy weakened to a Category 1 storm as it tore though sparsely populated low-lying southeastern islands in the Bahamas, knocking out power and blowing off rooftops of some homes.

Sandy’s torrential rains and heavy winds were blamed for the deaths of 21 people. The Cuban government said on Thursday night that 11 people died when the storm barreled across the island, most killed by falling trees or in building collapses in Santiago de Cuba province and neighboring Guantanamo province.

Haiti’s civil protection office said nine people died even though the country did not suffer a direct hit from Sandy, and one person was killed by falling rocks in Jamaica when the storm struck there on Wednesday.

The Cuban deaths were an unusually high number for the communist island which prides itself on protecting its people from storms by ordering mass evacuations.

Winds and rains generated by Sandy were also being felt in south Florida.

Early Friday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said Sandy was about 15 miles southeast of Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas and packing maximum sustained winds of 80 miles per hour (130 km per hour).

Sandy is forecast to remain a Category 1 hurricane as it continues to move over the Bahamas on Friday, sending swirling rains and winds across several hundred miles.

In the Bahamas, government officials warned residents to stay indoors until the storm passed. There were no immediate reports of casualties or serious injuries.

On Long Island, in the southeast corner of the Bahamas island chain, Joel Friese, general manager of the Stella Maris Resort, said Sandy was fierce as it cut across the island on Thursday.

“It was way stronger than we expected,” he said by telephone. “There are lots of downed trees and partial to heavy roof damage on some of the buildings.”

The Bahamas Electricity Corporation, which supplies power to most of the Bahamas, said Sandy had caused power outages on several islands.

Sandy was expected to move past the Bahamas by Friday evening and head north off the U.S. coast.

Forecasters say Sandy is expected to be pulled in by another storm system moving from the west, making it come ashore in the northeastern United States late Monday or early Tuesday and unleashing heavy rains, storm surges and possibly near hurricane-force winds.

Weather trackers say the hardest-hit areas could span anywhere from the coastal Carolinas up to Maine, with New York City and the Boston area potentially in harm’s way.

“There are many questions surrounding this hurricane and its forecast, but I find it important to convey that Sandy’s impacts will be widespread, no matter the location of landfall,” Jeff Masters, a hurricane expert at private forecaster Weather Underground (www.wundergournd.com), wrote in a blog.

He said a landfall by Sandy along the Mid-Atlantic coast could trigger “a billion-dollar disaster.”

Amid final preparations for the crucial November 6 presidential election, the storm could hit an area of New England where Hurricane Irene caused severe damage last year.

Unlike Irene, which caused billions of dollars in damage as it battered the Northeast in August last year, Sandy is forecast to be a weaker storm but will be moving slower than Irene, likely bringing more rain and increasing its potential for damage, weather forecasters said.

At $4.3 billion in losses, Irene ranks as one of the 10 costliest hurricanes, adjusted for inflation and excluding federally insured damage, according to the Insurance Information Institute, an industry group.

Sandy is expected to hit the United States during a full moon, increasing the flood potential since tides will be at or near their highest.

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The 23-year-old Army National Guardsman suffered a single fatal gunshot on Oct. 4 from NYPD detective Hassan Hamdy, who later said he thought Polanco was reaching for a weapon. There were no guns found in Polanco’s car.

The incident caused more shock after it was revealed that Hamdy is part of the NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit, a highly skilled group of officers who endure elite training.

Polanco’s death comes after a spate of headline-grabbing incidents where NYPD officers have fired fatal shots, sometimes against unarmed people. Ramarley Graham, 18, was shot and killed after officers followed him into his home in February.

According to the NYPD, officers are “re-qualified” in their firearms twice a year, though officials would not disclose what the training entailed.

“They could definitely use more hands-on training and I think most cops would agree,” Eugene O’Donnell, a former NYC police officer and prosecutor, told Metro. “The problem is it’s expensive and the agency is so big.”      

Although the rate of people shot and killed by the NYPD has slowly declined over the last decade, some wonder whether more training for specific scenarios could lead to even lower numbers. Attorney Kenneth Ramseur has represented clients who have been shot by the NYPD and said that at 35,000 officers strong, not every member of the force is cut out to be a cop.

“Because of the American economy, a lot of people are becoming police officers as a default position to make a living,” Ramseur said. “But when somebody is given the power to carry a dangerous instrument, they must have the right temperament.”

While O’Donnell said the NYPD has more to learn on how to diagnose situations, he warned that an overemphasis on firearms training could have a reverse effect.

“There is a danger if you get so into firearms and tactics, it could become a different department and that could be a bad thing,” O’Donnell cautioned. “Do you really want to turn a department into a place where you make shooting a big issue and turn them into Marine snipers?”

Calls for better handling of mentally ill people

The NYPD’s handling of situations involving mentally ill or emotionally disturbed people has long been a point of contention.

In August, officers shot Darrius Kennedy 12 times after he lunged at police with a knife in Times Square. While it’s unclear whether Kennedy was in fact mentally ill, Mayor Michael Bloomberg later said of the incident, “taking a knife and going after other people, particularly police officers, isn’t something that a sane person would do.”

“After all these years, they don’t have an effective policy on how to deal with someone who is mentally ill,” Attorney Kenneth Ramseur said of the NYPD. “If someone is mentally unstable, they are going to be killed.”

Officers respond to thousands of calls involving emotionally disturbed people each year, and advocates like Lisa Ortega of Rights for Imprisoned People with Psychiatric Disabilities insist the NYPD needs more specialized training.

“There is no deescalation process that happens, they go in guns a-blazing,” Ortega told Metro. “They are well aware that the community is upset with the way they handle people who are ill, but still they resist getting training and being held accountable.”

Ortega said the NYPD is not interested in adopting community crisis intervention teams — a tactic popular within police departments in other cities.

Recent fatal shootings by the NYPD

• Noel Polanco, 23, was shot and killed by NYPD detective Hassan Hamdy after he was pulled over for erratic driving along the Grand Central Parkway on Oct. 4.  Hamdy said he thought Polanco was reaching for a weapon, but no guns were found in his car. There was a power drill on the floor near his seat.
• Eleven people were shot in August when a man shot and killed a former coworker outside the Empire State Building. Police officers fired 16 shots in the tourist-heavy area, and the shooter was killed while nine bystanders were injured by police bullets.
• That same month, officers fired 12 shots at Darrius Kennedy, who was wielding a knife as he walked backwards down Seventh Avenue off Times Square. He died after being hit seven times while onlookers took video.
• An officer shot Ramarley Graham, 18, inside his apartment in the Bronx in February after other officers reportedly thought he had a gun. No weapon was found. The officers were criticized for following Graham into his apartment, where he was shot in his bathroom.
• An officer shot and killed a man wielding a knife inside a building on West 124th Street in September. Cops said that they shot Mohamed Bah, 28, after trying to stun him with a stun gun two times and firing rubber bullets.
• In June, a detective shot and killed a woman in Brooklyn after she ran a red light. The woman, 23, was driving erratically, according to the NYPD, and crashed after running two red lights. An officer who approached struggled with the woman, and his gun fired, killing her.

How many people are shot by the NYPD?

According to the NYPD’s annual firearms discharge report, 19 people were shot by police officers in 2011. Nine of them were killed. The number of shootings since 2000 has fluctuated between 16 and 26, while shooting deaths has remained between eight and 14.

In 2002, 24 people were shot by cops, with 13 of those incidents proving fatal.

The highest recorded number of shootings in the report was in 1971, when officers shot 221 people, killing 93 of them.

The post Questions swirl about NYPD’s firearms training after shooting death of Noel Polanco appeared first on Metro.us.

The College Station Police Department has confirmed that Brian Bachmann, Constable Precinct 1 Brazos County, has died, according to KBTX. Police also say a male civilian was killed, and the suspect in the shooting has died.

The university issued a “code maroon” shortly after noon, warning students and employees that an “active shooter” was in the area west of campus and asking them to stay away.

The gunman fired shots from inside a home about two blocks from the campus, according to the university’s alert.

“We have been told to stay put,” said Keith Randall, a Texas A&M employee who was in his office. “They just asked us to stay where we are.”

[View the story "TAMU" on Storify]

The post Officer, suspect among 3 dead in shooting near Texas A&M University appeared first on Metro.us.

Known for his theatrical smile, little boy good looks and cheerful demeanor on the group’s hit TV show, Jones was the only Brit in the band full of Americans. His accented delivery of such hits as “Daydream Believer” and “I?Wanna Be Free” helped make the group a cuddly commodity in the ’60s.

Jones and his made-for-TV band would enjoy two great bursts of success, initially in the late ’60s, and again in the mid-’80s, when MTV and other networks began re-airing original episodes of “The Monkees.”

Jones’ other notable contributions to pop culture include pioneering the sashay dance that Axl Rose would later become known for (seriously, watch the video below and then watch this), a memorable cameo on a “Brady Bunch” episode and serving as the reason that David Bowie (who was born David Jones) took up a stage name.

The post Former Monkee Davy Jones dies at age 66 in Florida appeared first on Metro.us.

The burning of the Korans at the Bagram compound earlier this week has deepened public mistrust of NATO forces struggling to stabilize Afghanistan before foreign combat troops withdraw in 2014.

Hundreds of Afghans marched toward the palace of Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul, while on the other side of the capital protesters hoisted the white flag of the Taliban.

Chanting “Death to America!” and “Long live Islam!,” protesters also threw rocks at police in Kabul, while Afghan army helicopters circled above.

Friday is a holy day and the official weekly holiday in Afghanistan and mosques in the capital drew large crowds, with police in pick-up trucks posted on nearby streets.

Armed protesters took refuge in shops in the eastern part of the city, where they killed one demonstrator, said police at the scene. In another Kabul rally, police said they were unsure who fired the shots that killed a second protester.

Seven more protesters were killed in the western province of Herat, two more in eastern Khost province and one in the relatively peaceful northern Baghlan province, health and local officials said. In Herat, around 500 men charged at the U.S. consulate.

U.S. President Barack Obama had sent a letter to Karzai apologizing for the unintentional burning of the Korans at NATO’s main Bagram air base, north of Kabul, after Afghan laborers found charred copies while collecting rubbish.

Muslims consider the Koran to be the literal word of God and treat each copy with deep reverence. Desecration is considered one of the worst forms of blasphemy.

Afghanistan wants NATO to put those responsible on public trial.

In neighboring U.S. ally Pakistan, about 400 members of a hardline Islamist group staged protests. “If you burn the Koran, we will burn you,” they shouted.

To Afghanistan’s west, Iranian cleric Ahmad Khatami said the U.S. had purposely burned the Korans. “These apologies are fake. The world should know that America is against Islam,” he said in a speech broadcast live on state radio.

“It (the Koran burning) was not a mistake. It was an intentional move, done on purpose.”

Most Westerners have been confined to their heavily fortified compounds, including at the sprawling U.S. embassy complex and other diplomatic missions, as protests that have killed a total of 23 people, including two U.S. soldiers, rolled into their fourth day. The embassy, in a message on the microblogging site Twitter, urged U.S. citizens to “please be safe out there” and expanded movement restrictions to relatively peaceful northern provinces, where large demonstrations also occurred Thursday, including the attempted storming of a Norwegian military base.

The Taliban urged Afghan security forces Thursday to “turn their guns on the foreign infidel invaders” and repeatedly urged Afghans to kill, beat and capture NATO soldiers.

Germany, which has the third-largest foreign presence in the NATO-led war, pulled out several weeks early of a small base in the northern Takhar province Friday over security concerns, a defense ministry spokesman said.

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The pop superstar died on the eve of the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles at the same hotel where her mentor, record mogul Clive Davis, was holding an annual pre-event party featuring scores of music industry celebrities.

A dramatic scene unfolded at the Beverly Hilton hotel as guests arriving for the party expressed shock at her death, while reporters swarmed the hotel, fans gathered outside to light candles in her memory and helicopters hovered overhead.

Beverly Hills police said they were called to the Beverly Hilton at around 3:43 p.m. PST, and fire department personnel who were already at the location responded immediately. Houston was in her fourth-floor room but was unresponsive to CPR, and she was pronounced dead at 3:55 p.m.

“She has been positively identified by friends and family (who) were with her at the hotel, and next of kin have already been notified,” Lieutenant Mark Rosen told reporters. Police said there were no obvious signs of criminal intent.

Los Angeles County coroners removed Houston’s body from the hotel after midnight through a backdoor to avoid the crush of media set up to cover her shocking death.

Typically, coroners conduct an autopsy within a day or two, at which point they might release some preliminary information about the death. If drugs or alcohol are involved, however, an official cause of death would not be released until after toxicology tests, which could take six to eight weeks.

BRILLIANT CAREER

Tributes poured in from around the world for a singer whose remarkable vocal power and range produced some of the most memorable music of her generation, including her signature hit, “I Will Always Love You.”

“I don’t have to mask my emotion in front of a room full of so many dear friends,” Davis told a somber crowd at his gala dinner and party just hours after Houston’s death. “I am personally devastated by the loss of someone who has meant so much to me for so many years.”

Neil Portnow, president of the Recording Academy, which runs the Grammys, told the audience at Davis’s party that Jennifer Hudson would sing a tribute to Houston at Sunday night’s Grammy Awards.

“We will do something appropriate tomorrow, and nothing could be more appropriate than having Jennifer Hudson sing on stage for Whitney,” Portnow said. “In our community, we celebrate things … let’s celebrate Whitney Houston.”

Outside the hotel in the wealthy enclave of Beverly Hills, a phalanx of hotel security personnel guarded the perimeter to prevent reporters and fans from entering. Some of Houston’s admirers gathered on the sidewalk, lighting candles and singing her songs.

Over the course of a 30-year career in which she established herself as one of the most-admired and influential singers of her time, Houston won six Grammys, 30 Billboard awards and 22 American Music Awards. She released seven studio albums and sold some 170 million CDs, singles and videos. The soundtrack for a hit movie in which she starred, “The Bodyguard,” was among the best-selling soundtracks in movie history.

Her 1985 debut, “Whitney Houston,” became the best-selling debut album by a female act at that time, and spawned several hits including “How Will I Know.” Her second studio CD, 1987′s “Whitney,” became the first album by a female artist to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart.

She crossed over from music success to TV and movies, appearing in “The Bodyguard” (1992), as well as “Waiting to Exhale” (1995) and “The Preacher’s Wife” (1996).

Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1963, Houston was inspired to perform as a child by soul singers in her family, including mother Cissy Houston and cousins Dionne Warwick and the late Dee Dee Warwick. Her godmother was Aretha Franklin.

“I just can’t talk about it now,” Franklin said in a statement. “It’s so stunning and unbelievable. I couldn’t believe what I was reading coming across the TV screen. My heart goes out to Cissy, her daughter Bobbi Kris, her family and Bobby (Brown).”.

PERSONAL TURMOIL

By the early 1990s, Houston reigned as the queen of pop, but her critical and commercial success on stage was accompanied by an increasingly troubled personal life. In 1992 she married singer Bobby Brown, who had a bad-boy reputation, and their tumultuous 14 years together were marred by drug abuse and domestic violence.

In 2000, she and Brown were stopped at an airport in Hawaii and security guards discovered marijuana in their luggage. In a 2002 TV interview, she admitted using marijuana, cocaine, alcohol and prescription drugs.

The pair also starred in a reality TV series, “Being Bobby Brown,” which painted an often unflattering portrait of the couple.

The last 10 years of Houston’s life were dominated by drug use, rumors of relapses and trips to rehab.

She launched a comeback tour in 2009, and in April 2010 she called media reports she was using drugs again “ridiculous.” In May 2011, Houston enrolled in a drug and alcohol rehab program.

Despite her personal troubles, Houston commanded great affection among her music industry colleagues, and emotional tributes flooded the media in the hours after news broke of her death.

“I am absolutely heartbroken at the news of Whitney’s passing,” legendary music producer Quincy Jones said in a statement. “… I always regretted not having had the opportunity to work with her. She was a true original and a talent beyond compare. I will miss her terribly.”

Barbra Streisand said in a statement: “She had everything, beauty, a magnificent voice. How sad her gifts could not bring her the same happiness they brought us.”

Pop star Rihanna posted on Twitter “No words, just tears.”

Related:
Five performances that made Whitney Houston a superstar

The post Whitney Houston dead at 48; Ray J denies he found her appeared first on Metro.us.

Mathieu Lefevre, 30, a Canadian native who lived in Brooklyn, died Oct. 18 after he was struck by a flatbed truck at the intersection of Meserole and Morgan avenues in Brooklyn.

Erika Lefevre, who says the NYPD is not returning her calls, traveled from Canada to speak yesterday, and was joined by advocacy group Transportation Alternatives.

TA director Paul Steely White said the NYPD is not aggressive enough in investigating drivers who hit cyclists.

The driver left the scene — cops told Gothamist that he didn’t know he had hit anyone — and no charges have been filed in the case.

“There’s no criminality,” an NYPD spokesman told Metro. “That’s why they call it an accident.”

Lefevre said that, unlike in New York, drivers in Canada are often prosecuted when they hit cyclists.
Last week, a driver who said he fell asleep and did not realize he hit five cyclists was convicted in Ontario of dangerous driving.

White demanded that the NYPD take dangerous driving more seriously. Five cyclists have died since August after being hit by cars.

Nearly 70 percent of fatal car accidents, including instances where cyclists and pedestrians are hit, are caused by a driver who is driving dangerously or illegally, according to a TA analysis of data from the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles.

Recently killed

Sept. 2: Nicolas Djandji, 24, was hit by an SUV in Williamsburg.
Aug. 30: Erica Abbott, 29, was hit by a Mercedes-Benz when she fell off her bike in Bushwick.
Aug. 18: Jeffrey Axelrod was killed while riding his bike on Chrystie Street.
Aug. 3: Andrzei Wiesniuk was fatally hit in Ridgewood, Queens.

Follow Alison Bowen on Twitter @AlisonatMetro.

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Police said Jose Sierra went to a marina on City lsland on Sunday to check on his boat. There, he reportedly fell into the water and drowned.

That same day, a 46-year-old man was found dead in floodwaters in Bristol, Conn. Cops said Shane Seaver was canoeing on East Main Street and capsized.

In Rockland County, a man trying to save a child stranded on a flooded street was electrocuted by live wires. The child had been caught in the wires and is in serious condition at a burn unit. 

In Kearny, N.J., Ronald Dawkins died after he was trying to get to his office building. Officials said he was wading through a flooded road when he was swept into a drainage ditch. On Sunday night, the NYPD’s Aviation Unit was called to help five people whose raft had capsized in the Croton River in Westchester County. Peter Engel, 53, was thrown from the raft after it flipped in choppy waters. Rescuers pulled him onto a police boat, but he died at the hospital. 

Follow Alison Bowen on Twitter @AlisonatMetro.

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In the New York metropolitan area, pedestrians were involved in 31 percent of all traffic deaths, topping the next highest region, Buffalo, where pedestrians made up 19 percent of all fatalities.  
Brooklyn led the way, with 515 total pedestrian fatalities from 2000 to 2009. Not far behind was Manhattan, with 399, and Queens, with 376.

“It’s time to bring those numbers down to zero,” said Michael Murphy at Transportation Alternatives.

Statewide, one in five traffic deaths is a pedestrian, according to Transportation for America, which issued the report.

Minorities and seniors were most likely to be killed while walking, the group found. From 2000 to 2007, 2.34 Hispanics and 1.69 African-Americans out of every 100,000 people were killed while walking, compared to 1.4 non-Hispanic whites.

Ya-Ting Liu at the Tri-State Transportation Campaign said minorities are more at risk to be hit because they are more likely to be dependent on walking as a mode of transportation.

Follow Alison Bowen on Twitter @AlisonatMetro.

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Instead, they’ve gone a classier route on the FBI’s "Most Wanted Terrorists" list, with just a simple red "DECEASED" banner. Understated elegance, we like it. You know you did good.

(Also, if you’re curious, the new #1 most wanted terrorist is now Adam Yahiye Gadahn, if we’re reading the chart right.)

The post ‘DECEASED’: FBI ‘Most Wanted’ list celebrates bin Laden death appeared first on Metro.us.

The best we’ve seen in the first 12 hours after the announcement:

The .gif that kept on giving:

Many took joy at punking the Birthers one last time:

FOX News’s gaffe was a common target:

Obama’s tweet was pretty leet:

Many delighted in this pic of a knowing Obama smiling at Seth Myers’ bin Laden joke Saturday night:

Then there was the strange tale of Sohaib Athar, the guy who accidentally live-tweeted the raid that killed bin Laden:

And many people just watched music videos. (Some NSFW lyrics in the last one, obviously.)

The post Osama bin Laden dead: The best memes so far appeared first on Metro.us.

The War on Terror

In the New York Times, David E. Sanger argues that bin Laden’s death could mean that the War on Terror will cease to be America’s chief foreign policy concern:

"The
elimination of the central symbol of Al Qaeda offers a new opportunity
for Mr. Obama to argue that the group no longer needs to be a fixation
of American policy. [...] Bin Laden’s presumed successors, including
Ayman al-Zawahri, have none of his charisma and appeal, and that his
death will lead to a fracturing of the organization. The decision to
bury Bin Laden’s body at sea was part of a carefully-calibrated effort
to avoid having a burial place that would turn into a shrine to the
Qaeda leader, a place where his adherents could declare him a martyr." 

Meanwhile, Tony Karon of TIME says that little in the realm of foreign relations will change in the post-bin-Laden era, arguing that al Qaeda has long since been overtaken in Arab hearts and minds by smaller-scale Islamic movements such as Hamas and Hezbollah:

"[Al Qaeda's] strategy of spectacular acts of a terror had briefly allowed a band of a few hundred desperadoes to dominate America’s headlines and its nightmares, but on the ground in the Muslim world al-Qaeda had largely been a sideshow, failing miserably in its goal of rallying the Islamic world behind its banners and finding itself eclipsed by such despised rivals in the battle for Islamist leadership as Iran, Hizballah, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood."

Politics

But forget about all that real-life stuff, what about the horse race? Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight says that while Obama will undoubtedly receive an "Osama bump," by the time the 2012 election rolls around the electorate will have moved on:

"Yes, this is going to help Mr. Obama — to some degree or another — in November 2012. And yes, it’s also going to make Mr. Obama look much more formidable in the near-term. [...] But, the 2012 election was probably not going to revolve around national security. Instead, the Republican nominee was probably going to attempt to make the campaign about the size of government and the future of the welfare state: how to deal with entitlement programs in the face of an increasing national debt."

What do you think?

The post Osama bin Laden dead: What will change? appeared first on Metro.us.

Bin Laden was reportedly killed earlier today by U.S. forces in the
Pakistan city of Abbottobad, roughly 90 miles from Islamabad. The raid on bin Laden’s compound, where he had been suspected of living since last August, lasted roughly 40 minutes and left no U.S. casualties.

In his speech, President Obama sounded notes of resolute triumph: "Justice has been done."

"We must also reaffirm, the United States is not and never will be
at war with Islam," the president continued. "Bin Laden was not a Muslim
leader. He was a mass murderer of Muslims. His demise should be
welcomed by all who welcome peace and human dignity."

Reaction to the news, which leaked to Twitter roughly 20 minutes before the speech, was swift.

In a statement, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg cheered the news:
"The killing of Osama bin Laden does not lessen the suffering that New
Yorkers and Americans experienced at his hands, but it is a critically
important victory for our nation — and a tribute to the millions of men
and women in our armed forces and elsewhere who have fought so hard for
our nation."

The sentiment was shared across the country and the political spectrum. In New York, celebrants gathered at Ground Zero, while in Washington, crowds assembled in streets outside the White House to celebrate, chant "U-S-A!" and — reportedly — sing "Na Na Na Hey Hey Goodbye."

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Breuning was born September 21, 1896, in Melrose, Minnesota, and
spent most of his early life in South Dakota before taking a job with
the Great Northern Railway in 1913, according to the Rainbow Senior
Living retirement home in Great Falls.

He moved to Montana in 1918 to clerk for the railway and married Agnes Twokey, a telegraph operator, four years later.

He
retired from the railroad at age 66. He attributed his longevity to
restricting daily meals to breakfast and lunch and to downing an aspirin
a day.

An aspirin a day? Totally gonna do that, and live to the year
2101. What will life be like then? Ponder that, while we round up some
things younger than Walter Breuning:

»Amelia Earhardt (born July 24, 1897)

»H. G. Wells’ "The War of the Worlds"  (published 1898)

»The second Boer War (began October 11, 1899)

»Australia (became a Commonwealth in 1901)

»The Rose Bowl (first held in 1902)

»The New York Yankees (moved from Baltimore to New York in 1903; known as the New York Highlanders until 1913)

»The Theory of Relativity (published 1905)

»John Wayne (born May 26, 1907)

»The Model T (first sold in 1908)

»Gene Krupa (born January 15, 1909)

»Boy Scouts of America (founded 1910)

»The zipper (patented 1917)

»Justin Bieber (born March 1, 1994)

The post Walter Breuning: What was the world’s oldest man older than? appeared first on Metro.us.

 The rapper (born Nathaniel Hale) previously suffered two strokes in 2007 and 2008. He had been in recovery therapy up until his death, according to longtime collaborator Warren G.

To play him out, here’s Metro’s favorite Nate Dogg appearance, on "Regulate." The rhythm is the bass and the bass is the treble.

(Via Gawker)

The post Rapper Nate Dogg dead at 41 appeared first on Metro.us.

Last year, 269 people were killed in traffic accidents, according to Department of Transportation data released yesterday. That’s the second-lowest number since record-keeping began, nearly beating the all-time-low of 258 in 2009.

Pedestrian fatalities also dropped last year, from 156 in 2009 to 151 in 2010.

The city attributed the fewer deaths to better intersection engineering, safety campaigns and increased police enforcement of traffic laws.

Not all the numbers were positive. Fatal motorcycle crashes increased by 34 percent, a jump from 10 to 39 fatalities last year. Eighteen people died in bicycle accidents.

“Too many crashes that take lives on our streets are still all too avoidable,” DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said.

The post City traffic deaths hit a record low appeared first on Metro.us.