- Good luck finding a new home for the world’s most famous
arena, Madison
Square Garden officials. The iconic venue, home to all manner of concerts,
sporting events and other major festivities, has a ticking clock to move from
its current home at the corner of 34th and 8th streets in midtown Manhattan. A
47-1 vote this week by the New York City Council gives the arena a decade to
relocate amid efforts to renovate the equally well-known Penn Station that sits
below it. The council approved a special permit allowing the arena to operate
for 10 years while its management seeks to relocate. City officials and
business interests have pushed to expand Penn Station for years and when Madison
Square Garden's 50-year land-use permit expired in January, the door was open
to force a move. It is a reversal of what happened in 1963, when the original
Penn Station and its Corinthian columns, vast hallways and glass ceilings was
demolished make way for the construction of the current Madison Square Garden,
which opened in 1968. "The approval of this permit offers us a great
opportunity to re-imagine and redevelop Penn Station as a world-class
transportation destination and allow time to relocate Madison Square Garden to
a new and improved home," Council Speaker and mayoral candidate Christine
C. Quinn said after the vote. Current New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg had
hoped for a 15-year permit, but if the arena cannot find a new home, it will
have to reapply for a permit once it expires. Finding that much real estate in
one of the world’s most expensive cities is going to be a huge challenge, but
the council argued at its meeting that the arena’s presence above Penn Station is
an "intractable problem." "Imagine 220 mph bullet trains that
sweep you to D.C. or Boston in 90 minutes or less. These plans are on the
table, but they can only be realized with a modern, renovated Penn
Station," Manhattan Borough President and city comptroller candidate Scott
M. Stringer said. "That is not possible as long as the Garden sits
squarely on top of the nation's busiest rail transit hub." It is a
situation rife with problems regardless of the final solution……..
- Down with “American Karaoke!” That has been the battle cry
in this space for years and it is now the cry of 10 former contestants on Fox’s
lame-tastic reality karaoke show. The 10 contestants, all black, have filed a
lawsuit against the show, claiming that they were eliminated from the
competition due to a racist ratings scheme. Never mind the fact that black
contestants have won multiple seasons of the show, because Corey Clark (Season
2), Jaered Andrews (Season 2), Jacob John Smalley (Season 2), Donnie Williams
(Season 3), Terrell Brittenum (Season 5), Derrell Brittenum (Season 5), Thomas
Daniels (Season 6), Akron Watson (Season 6), Ju'Not Joyner (Season 8) and Chris
Golightly (Season 9) believe they were targeted for elimination because of
their skin color. All 10 are seeking $25 million each in damages for the show's
alleged discrimination and other misdeeds and they also want the show to adopt
new anti-racism rules. New York attorney James H. Freeman represents the group
and said he began investigating the show after Jermaine Jones was kicked off on
March 15, 2012 for not telling producers about multiple outstanding warrants
for his arrest. When Freeman investigated, he said he discovered that 10 people
had been publicly disqualified from the show and all of them happened to be
black. Even though being a wanted criminal seems like a solid reason to boot a
person from a show, Freeman argues in the lawsuit that the eliminations were part
of a "cruel and inhumane" plot to humiliate black singers to boost
ratings. The claim makes no sense because humiliating black people isn’t exactly
a known ratings gold mine, but the lawsuit also cites the show’s background
checks, in which producers ask, "Have you ever been arrested?" This
is a violation of the California employment law, according to Freeman. Just to
be safe, maybe it’s time to shut the entire show down and board up the
windows……..
- Hackers are always looking for a security flaw to exploit
and security firm BlueBox claims to have identified the first
known malicious use of Android's "master key" vulnerability. The bug
was first identified publicly earlier this month and allows attackers
to install code on to phones running Google's mobile operating system and then
take control of them. Another security firm, Symantec, said it identified two apps distributed in China that had
been infected using the hack. Two weeks ago, Google released a patch to
manufacturers, but the fix has not been sent to all customers yet even though
the company is insistent that it has taken the necessary steps to address the
problem. It has also searched its own Play marketplace for the bug, but there
is no such protection for consumers who download software from other stores.
BlueBox first reported the bug on July 3, but Google hasn’t address the topic much
publicly. Android apps are built with an encrypted signature that the operating
system uses to check the program is legitimate and has not been tampered with,
but BlueBox was allegedly able to find a back door that allowed it to make
changes to an app's code without affecting the signature. The technique could be
used to install a Trojan to read any data on a device, harvest passwords,
record phone calls, take photos and carry out other functions that would put a
person’s digital security and personal information in jeopardy. In this case,
hackers exploited the flaw to install malware called Android.Skullkey, which steals
data from compromised phones, monitors texts received and written on the
handset sends its own SMS messages to premium numbers. According to Symantec,
users can manually remove the malicious software by going into their settings
menu. Eventually, the Google fix may make its way to all consumers………
- NFL players don’t always pay close attention to every
detail regarding their contract and other business deals. As many would tell
you, that’s why they have an agent. San
Francisco 49ers starting cornerback Tarell Brown is wishing right now that he
had focused more on the details of his deal because if he had, he would not
have missed out on a $2 million escalator in his contract by not participating in
the team's voluntary offseason program. The team voided that provision in the
deal when Brown was AWOL and he openly admitted that he didn't know about that
clause in the deal and only learned of it via Twitter after practice Thursday.
Once he found out, it took him all of five seconds to fire agent Brian
Overstreet for the mistake. Before his f*ck-up, Brown had been due to earn
$2.925 million in salary for the 2013 season. He is entering his contract year
and worked out on his own this offseason -- something he said he routinely has
done. With $2 million on the line, he said he would have acted differently if
he had known about the clause. "No one wants to leave money on the
table," Brown said. "If I would have known the clauses in my contract
-- that's what agents get paid to do, to orchestrate the contract and to let
you know what you can and can't do as far as workouts and OTAs and things of
that sort. That's what he got paid to do. He didn't do that, so in my opinion,
you have to be let go. We all are held accountable for our actions. This is
part of the business." Once he learned about his lost money, Brown
contacted Overstreet and the agent reached out to the 49ers. By that point,
there was little either Brown or his now-former agent could do. The veteran
cornerback received a $7.125 million, three-year contract extension in late
October 2009 that takes him through this season. He hopes to work out some sort
of compromise with the team, but at this point there is little incentive for
the 49ers to give him a single cent of the money they could have owed him……..
- In the land of neutrality, there are still some situations
where avoiding confrontation is not an option. This would be one of those
times. Milan
Poparic, a member of the notorious 'Pink Panther' jewel thief gang, exploited a
crack in the proverbial walls of the Swiss penal system Thursday night when he
escaped from the Orbe prison in the western canton of Vaud. The plan to break
Poparic out wasn’t exactly sophisticated or subtle, as he fled the prison with
a fellow inmate late Thursday after two accomplices rammed a gate and fired on
guards. The Bosnian national was serving a sentence of six years and eight
months for robbing a jewelry store in Neuchatel, Switzerland, in 2009. In
confirming the escape, Swiss police confirmed that Poparic was a member of the
Pink Panthers group, prime suspects in a series of thefts over the past decade.
While not exactly rocking the most badass nickname ever for a criminal outfit,
the gang takes its name from the 1963 movie starring Peter Sellers as the
bungling Inspector Clouseau. Police did not immediately reveal the nature of
the relationship between Poparic and fellow inmate and escapee Adrian Albrecht,
who was serving a seven-year prison for various crimes. The search continues
for both men, but in a mountainous coutnry where so much of the terrain is
remote and hilly, finding an intelligent criminal with a known network of
associates won’t be easy……..
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