I woke up this morning, and I thought about 9-11. I tried to picture what the twin towers looked like in my head before the thought of the airplane sticking out of the building. Unfortunately I never got to see them other than pictures or in movies. As I sat and I tried to picture the towers ....I looked at historic pictures of the New York Skyline, I started to feel guilty. I thought about what exactly happened 10 years ago today, that the country I lived in my whole life, the only place I knew... fell victim to one of the most horrendous attacks of my lifetime.
As a young americans we sometimes feel that america does not care, does not care about the blue collar families that we come from. That our voice, and our opinion does not matter, but that day...Yes that day when I was sitting inside of one of my classes in college, Yes that day when I heard a female scream and say "They ran a plane into the World Trade Center!"
Yes THAT DAY... I witnessed grown men crying, Yes THAT DAY I witnessed our President with FEAR in his Eyes.... YES that DAY September 11, 2001 as the World Trade Center burned, and a plane approached the 2nd Tower, I remember feeling like a american...and I seen my fellow Americans hurting, scared, helping, and most of all Praying together for the safety of our country WE live in.
The events that would come after THAT DAY...September 11th, 2001 changed our country forever, but on that day we were one group of people. Through the pain, the heartache, the loss of life, the acts of bravery, the wars that would follow, the searches that lasted for days after, the clean up.... I realized that sometimes it's okay to feel, hurt, and be scared. It's okay to show triumph, defeat, and grow. That Day I will always remember as the day when color, race, religion, did not matter. What mattered was helping each other make it until September 12th, and the next day, and the next year.
So I may not have gotten to see the World Trade Center, I may not remember what it looks like in my memory, I may feel that people still get treated unfair, and sometimes the people who sacrifice the most get looked over.... BUT Yet and still I am a American, and with all the problems we may have, we care for each other, and we ban together in a time of need, we are stronger than we see, we are braver than we know, and we truly are lucky to live in such a great country, where innocent people risk their lives just to save another, where Muslims, Jews, Christians, Catholics, no matter the religion, the race, the background, what area or city people lived in, they prayed together for safety of people they never seen or met.
Yes... That Day has passed but the lessons, the people, the things i witnessed, the memories, the bond...Lives Forever.
So today us here at So Stadium Status we would like to thank those who sacrificed their lives, their time, to help people out of tough situations. We would like to thank our military and troops for trying their best to keep us safe. We would like to thank the other countries across the world who sent out their prayers and helped us through this hard time. Today on September 11, 2011 the 10 year anniversary of 9/11 We want to take the time out to say Thank You.
We ask if you read this post, take time to comment, Just to say thank you to those who sacrificed.
In August 2006, the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey began heavy construction on the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. The memorial will be located at the World Trade Center site, on the former location of the Twin Towers destroyed during the September 11 attacks in 2001. The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation was renamed the National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center in 2007. The winner of the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition was Israeli-American architect Michael Arad of Handel Architects, a New York and San Francisco-based firm. Arad worked with landscape architecture firm Peter Walker and Partners on the design which calls for a forest of trees with two square pools in the center, where the Twin Towers once stood.
The design is consistent with the original Daniel Libeskind master plan that called for the memorial to be 30 feet below street level (originally 70 feet) in a piazza. The design was the only finalist to throw out Libeskind's requirement that buildings overhang the footprints.
A memorial was planned in the immediate aftermath of the attacks and destruction of the World Trade Center to remember both the victims and those involved in rescue. The National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center is a non-profit corporation with the mission to raise funds for, program, own and operate the memorial and museum at the World Trade Center site. The memorial will be opened on September 11, 2011, and the museum will open in 2012.
The World Trade Center Memorial consists of two huge pools built within the footprints of the Twin Towers with the largest man-made waterfalls in the country cascading down their sides.
Michael Arad, the architect of the Memorial Pools said: “The design strives to make visible what is absent. The primary responsibility we have is to those we lost that day.” It’s the architecture of absence.
source:Google Images
I was looking at the images of those pools and the feeling is really of absence. Something is missing. The pools should be full, that’s the purpose of pools, but they’re not. The water keeps disappearing. It gives the feeling of that something is going away, like the lives of those 3 thousand people, victims of the attack. To reinforce that idea, the names of the nearly 3,000 individuals who were killed in the September 11 attacks in New York City, and at the Pentagon, and the February 1993 World Trade Center bombing are inscribed in bronze on the edges of the Memorial Pools.
Victims names inscribed in bronze on the edges
And completing that sensation of absence, you have the constant waterfalls reminding the non-stop tears of the survivors who miss their relatives.
It’s amazing that the twin pools are perfect footprints of the Twin Towers. The idea of footprint is exactly absence. When we see a footprint, we know that something or somebody was there, but it’s not anymore.
source:Google Images
Footprints are always something left behind.
I imagine that looking at the Twin Memorial Pools must be a very strong feeling to those who witnessed the September 11terrorist attack and lost relatives and friends.
Actually, all the architecture was projected based on the concept of remembering the event and the victims. Observe the photo below. Can you see? The orientation of the tower is a way of acknowledge (what in Portuguese we say “reconhecimento”) of the void left by the Twin Towers.
It looks like the new tower is looking at the place of the old ones. The position of the new tower also allows the entrance of light, in a way that the new tower doesn’t project permanent shadow on the memorial.
I’ve loved the architecture. I’ve found it intelligent, creative and touching.
man-made (adjective): artificial rather than natural
to witness (verb): to see something happen, for example a crime or an accident.
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - The recent executive shakeup at Bank of America followed by reports of massive layoffs at the bank may leave you wondering what the turmoil means for you - either as a client of the banking colossus and Merrill Lynch, the brokerage firm it owns, or as a shareholder.
As experts ponder these moves - which include the departure of Sallie Krawcheck, head of the bank's wealth management unit and Merrill's public face - they see a rocky period in the days ahead for the company's shareholders, but not necessarily its clients.
IF YOU ARE A MERRILL LYNCH CUSTOMER
What should Merrill customers do? If you like your financial adviser, a shake-up at the top shouldn't impact a good financial planning relationship. "This announcement does not affect how Merrill Lynch financial advisers interact with clients," says Selena Morris, a Bank of America spokesperson. "By reorganizing Bank of America around its three core client groups, the company is ensuring that it delivers the best of what it has to offer to clients."
Larry and Sandy Reed of Oak Park, Illinois, say they aren't going anywhere with their investments because the connection they have with the firm - and their adviser - is deep.
"We've worked with Merrill Lynch since 1981 because my uncle worked there at that time, and my grandfather had given us stock through Merrill Lynch for our wedding," Sandy Reed says. While she initially came to Merrill because of family ties, she takes comfort these days in Warren Buffett's decision to invest $5 billion in Bank of America last month.
The Reeds find other Bank of America headlines troubling, including those involving controversial mortgage practices at Countrywide Financial, which the bank purchased in 2008.
Existing clients should ponder whether Bank of America's financial woes will put too much pressure on the company to change its bottom line - meaning that Merrill's advisers may have a new agenda, such as pushing products that generate the most profits for the bank.
"Is the adviser doing what's best for me, or is the adviser doing what's best for the company?" says Jack Waymire, founder of Paladin Registry, an information services provider that rates financial advisers. "I would view Merrill Lynch more as a distribution system to sell products; in this environment, Bank of America just tells Merrill Lynch to sell its products."
That may not pose problems on its own. But Waymire, author of "Who's Watching Your Money?", believes Merrill Lynch and other big Wall Street firms now put their profits way ahead of investor gains.
"If you've got these household names handling your money, you may feel relatively safe," he says. "Merrill has all these resources, and they're using sales skills to convince you they're experts. The advisers are not even managing the money half the time. It's a big, big mess and it's not going to be cleaned up anytime soon."
The bank disagrees. "These comments are woefully dated and do not reflect the reality of how our financial advisers serve their clients," says Bank of America spokeswoman Morris. Nine out of 10 clients would recommend a Merrill adviser to their family and friends, she notes. "The average length of our relationship with clients is 13 years, and our client attrition rates are in the low single digits," adds Morris. "Our training program for advisers is the longest and most rigorous in the industry."
Moreover, Merrill Lynch "is hiring in a big way," says David A. Geracioti, editor in chief of Registered Rep magazine and RegisteredRep.com. This has generally meant forcing out financial advisers who produce less than $400,000 per year -prompting some defections of long-time Merrill advisers to the likes of HighTower, a Chicago-based aggregator of financial adviser firms.
For customers sticking with Merrill, such as the Reeds, there is good news: "Client assets have held up pretty well, all things considered," Geracioti says. "The only way Bank of America would spin out its best-performing unit is if it had to 'burn the furniture' to raise capital. In fact, Merrill Lynch is the crown jewel of Bank of America, one of the bright spots in an otherwise troubled company."
IF YOU ARE A BANK OF AMERICA SHAREHOLDER
Bad news has dogged Bank of America since the 2008 financial crisis. The bank has lost half its share value since January and reported an $8.8 billion quarterly loss in July. Much of that loss is related to a settlement over lingering mortgage problems, stemming from the bank's ill-timed purchase of Countrywide Financial. And reports estimate layoffs of 40,000 employees in the coming months (see http://link.reuters.com/nav63s).
By realigning its management team, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank is another effort to turn fortunes around. David Darnell, who rose to a newly-created co-COO position, will direct retail banking and take over Krawcheck's duties, which include supervising more than 16,000 financial advisers.
"If you're a Merrill investor, you're a Bank of America investor now," says Bill DeShurko, author of "The Naked Truth About Your Money" (Penguin) and president/owner of 401 Advisor, LLC in Centerville, Ohio. "And here's the concern: You've got a bank that's in financial trouble. There's no question about that; the stock market is not so stupid to value Bank of America at $7 a share if they didn't have serious problems."
Several brokerages are trimming their earnings estimates for the company. Skeptics say Bank of America needs an extreme makeover, which could include spinning off Merrill Lynch, a Chapter 11 restructuring or placing all of the rotting mortgages into a new entity.
Even the bulls who believe Bank of America can earn its way out of its problems freely admit that the bank's stock is not likely to do much the next several years. Says Australian hedge fund manager John Hempton, whose Bronte Capital owns a sizable stake in Bank of America: "I own a zombie bank."
IF YOU ARE A BANK OF AMERICA CUSTOMER
On the surface, Bank of America would seem, like Merrill Lynch, to fall into what Waymire calls the "too big to die" bracket. It serves about 58 million consumer and small business relationships with approximately 5,700 retail banking offices, 17,800 ATMs and an online banking system with 30 million active users, according to bank statistics.
Yet it also has one big, fat albatross on its balance sheets: Countrywide Financial. Bank of America acquired Countrywide for $4 billion, a deal that has proven a huge headache not just in dollars and cents, but in terms of the bank's reputation. "Basically all the mortgages that Countrywide produced from 2004 to 2007 were excrement," Geracioti says. "The question is: What are Bank of America's liabilities from Countrywide? Some say $100 billion, others say, 'Who knows?' The liabilities could be ginormous. The government is hassling the bank in a big way."
Bank of America has long held that Countrywide's problems were it own doing. But on September 2, the Federal Housing Finance Agency sued 17 firms - including Bank of America and Countrywide - for violations of federal securities laws in the sale of mortgage-backed securities. In an 88-page filing, the FHFA alleges that around 2005, top executives of Countrywide - which it labels as a "notorious mortgage lender" for its practice - "complained to each other at the time that BOA's appetite for risky products was greater than that of Countywide."
What does all of this mean for customers? Layoffs could impact customer service, but chances are the bank will pull out all of the stops to keep your business, which may include slashing your mortgage rate or extending any existing credit lines, assuming you have excellent credit scores.
Geracioti is a satisfied customer. The bank recently lowered the interest rate on his credit card - "by a lot," he says.
SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — A bit actor who appeared in the first "Austin Powers" movie was sentenced Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole in the violent 1990 gang rape of a Southern California woman.
Joseph Son, 40, was found guilty of one felony count of torture Aug. 25 after being linked to the crime through DNA evidence, said Farrah Emami, spokeswoman for the Orange County district attorney.
In 1997's "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery," Son wore a bowler hat and played one of Dr. Evil's henchmen, named Random Task.
Son and co-defendant Santiago Lopez Gaitan, 40, abducted the then-19-year-old victim as she was walking her dog by her apartment on Christmas Eve.
Son and Gaitan drove the woman to Huntington Beach and repeatedly raped and sodomized her in the back of the car at gunpoint. They also pistol-whipped her and repeatedly threatened to kill her, counting the bullets and telling her she was going to die.
Prosecutors say the woman, identified in court papers as Jane Doe, begged for her life before Son and Gaitan released her, naked, badly injured and blindfolded with her own pants. She went to a local home, where police were called.
Evidence was collected from the woman that Christmas Eve, but the case eventually went cold.
It wasn't until Son pleaded guilty to felony vandalism in 2008 and violated probation that he was required to provide a DNA sample. That sample was linked to DNA collected from Doe in 1990.
In an "impact statement" to the court, the woman said she deals with post-traumatic stress disorder daily, and Christmas has become difficult to celebrate every year.
"My emotional scars are intense," she told the court. "My twenties were stripped from my life as I relearned how to walk, see, hear and cope with the outside world again."
Gaitan pleaded guilty in January to five felonies, including kidnapping and sodomy by force in concert. He was sentenced to 17 years and four months in state prison.
PORTSMOUTH, Ohio (AP) — An Ohio woman frustrated by the mix-up of the trash pick-up schedule after the Labor Day holiday decided to haul her own garbage — right into her mayor's office.
Janice Shanks carried two bags of refuse into Portsmouth Mayor David Malone's office on Friday morning.
Shanks says she had more garbage than normal because of a holiday family get-together, and the lack of collection put her in "a real pickle."
Malone accepted the trash and says he will take it to the city's waste disposal department.
Malone says certain routes were skipped so the city could avoid paying overtime for the holiday work. He says there was confusion over how notice was sent out to residents.
MEXICO CITY — Mexico's state oil company said Friday it was searching for 10 workers from a Texas-based company who evacuated from a platform in the Gulf of Mexico ahead of Tropical Storm Nate.
Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) said it has two ships searching in the area where the workers called for help Thursday afternoon and left the Trinity II, a "jack-up" structure, on a life raft.
Geokinetics, a Pemex subcontractor that specializes in seismic studies for the oil and gas industry, said in a statement on its website that it employed some of the workers.
The company said in the statement that high seas had disabled the "jack-up" structure, called a lift boat and operated by Trinity Lift Boat Services, and the crew was seen boarding the life raft after making the distress call about 12:25 p.m. CDT. It said families of its employees had been notified.
"We're deeply concerned about the incident in the Gulf of Mexico involving our employees and others who had to abandon a disabled lift boat due to conditions brought about by Tropical Storm Nate," said Geokinetics spokeswoman Brenda Taquino. "The safety and rescue of the employees, everyone on the life raft, is a top priority."
The Trinity II was trying to reach the nearby oil port of Dos Bocas when it ran into problems.
Taquino said the company learned Thursday morning that the Trinity II was disabled in the Bay of Campeche because of storm conditions. The lift boat, a rig with legs for offshore drilling, was being used as a recording vessel and housing for the crew and it was in waters about 25 feet deep.
On board were four crew members who operate the lift boat, three contractors and three employees of Geokinetics, which specializes in seismic studies for the oil and gas industry. Mexican authorities said the majority were foreigners, though it did not say from which countries.
A person who answered the phone at Trinity Liftboat Services told msnbc.com that there was no further information.
The Pemex communications office said Friday that its boats had reached the area about 8 miles off the southeastern Mexican state of Tabasco but it couldn't say what weather conditions were like.
Taquino said the life raft is a sealed capsule that contains enough food and water to last for several days, but there is no way to communicate with it.
"Visibility is not that great," she said.
Two additional vessels are monitoring the Trinity II because it cannot be secured due to high seas, and a helicopter was sent out, Taquino said.
Tropical Storm Nate was drifting slowly west-southwestward over the southern Gulf Friday with maximum sustained winds of near 50 mph (80 kph), according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. It was centered about 150 miles (241 kilometers) west of Campeche. Forecasters said it was expected to resume a northwestward path later Friday and hit Mexico's Gulf Coast Sunday or Monday.
A hurricane watch was declared from Tampico to Veracruz.
Gulf of Mexico ports were closed to navigation Friday and preparation were under way in the neighboring Gulf state of Veracruz, where civil protection authorities decreed a tropical storm alert Friday for 212 municipalities.
Tropical Storm Maria, meanwhile, could reach the Lesser Antilles in the Atlantic by Friday night and rain from what had been Tropical Storm Lee continued inundating a wide portion of Pennsylvania and other northeastern states, leaving at least seven dead.
Maria's maximum sustained winds Friday were near 45 mph, with some slight strengthening possible, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami and it was moving toward the west-northwest near 14 mph.
A tropical storm warning was in effect for a host of islands: Antigua, Anguilla, Barbuda, Montserrat, Nevis, St. Kitts, the British Virgin Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guadeloupe, St. Maartin, Saba and St. Eustatius.
A tropical storm watch was in effect for St. Barthelemy, St. Marteen, Martinique, Dominica, and Puerto Rico including Vieques and Culebra.
On its current forecast track, Maria's center would reach the Leeward Islands early Saturday and be near the Virgin Islands by Saturday night, the hurricane center said.
Also in the Atlantic, Hurricane Katia was moving northeast over open water after passing between the U.S. and Bermuda. Despite not hitting land, the hurricane center said large swells generated by the Category 1 storm will continue affecting the U.S. East Coast and Bermuda.
Katia was centered midway between Bermuda and Nova Scotia and was moving northeast near 29 mph (46 kph). It had maximum sustained winds of 85 mph (140 kph). The long-term forecast indicated it could reach Scotland as a storm on Monday.
Damon Dash ran into some new issues. Following all the talk about his financial struggles over the past several years, the once predominant hip-hop mogul has been hit with a lawsuit from the City of New York for serving liquor without a license.
According to Village Voice, Dash's DD172 gallery space in New York City's Tribeca area -- which was touted as a gallery, photo studio, and rehearsal space -- was also used as an "unlicensed club," which residents of the area called a nuisance.
On Wednesday after noon (September 7), authorities served the property with a court summons and order to show cause.
Dash and his associated are being accused of six counts of storing and selling alcoholic beverages without a license, which is detailed in court documents obtained by the Voice. Apparently, DD172 was caught violating the liquor code for the first time in November 2010 and as recently as May, according to the affidavits of police who investigated the club.
The docs say the violations "were conducted in an open and notorious manner and the operators of this establishment appear to have evinced a 'business as usual' attitude in the subject premises."
Also, the repeated violations are used as evidence that the club's actions constitute a public nuisance.
DD172 was shut down in June of 2011, but some of Dash's former neighbors are still mad at him.
"Damon Dash was a terrible neighbor. It was always super loud, super noisy, tons of garbage in the street. All these 18-year-old kids smoking and drinking -- real thugs. They were disrespectful to the neighborhood," one neighbor told the paper, who claims that "the owner rented to Damon Dash to f*** with the neighbors."
"This isn't a club neighborhood," another resident said. "It used to be, but it isn't anymore. If it was an industrial neighborhood, it would be fine."
Woman, 22, found outside a vacant Hooters restaurant, covered in man's blood:
A self-proclaimed vampire attacked an elderly wheelchair-bound man outside a Florida Hooters Restaurant just before midnight on Thursday, leaving him bloodied and in need of stitches, police said.
Milton Ellis, 69, had fallen asleep on the porch of the deserted Hooters in St. Petersburg when he woke up to find Josephine Rebecca Smith, 22, on top of him, he told police.
Smith told Ellis she was a vampire and then proceeded to bite him, tearing off chunks of his face and a part of his lip, St. Petersburg police spokesman Mike Puetz said, according to The St. Petersburg Times.
"After he fell asleep on the ground, he claims that she attacked him, started yelling that she was a vampire, that she was going to eat him and started biting him by his face and body," Puetz said.
Blood dripping from bite marks on his neck and face, Ellis managed to scramble back into his motorized wheelchair and reach a nearby Shell gas station, where he called police.
Police: 'Vampire' said she remembers nothing Police found Smith on the blood-stained Hooters porch, half-naked. She was covered in Ellis' blood and said she didn't remember anything about the attack, according to Tampa Bay's Fox 13 News. She wasn't injured and hadn't been assaulted, police said.
Ellis was hospitalized and given stitches and was expected to recover.
Smith was arrested and jailed on charges of aggravated battery on an elderly person, with bail set for $50,000.
The two had met earlier in the night. Ellis, who had no place to sleep Thursday night, said Smith, of Pensacola, had been dropped off at the Shell station by relatives earlier that evening. Because it was raining out, he suggested Smith take refuge with him under the Hooters overhang, according to The St. Petersburg Times.
Ellis offered to keep Smith company until someone came to pick her up, but he eventually fell asleep, reported The Times.
Smith was fully dressed when Ellis last saw her, he told authorities, even though they had found her half-naked.
Ellis has been arrested before too. He has been cited for multiple offensives in Penellas County, including panhandling, trespassing, and disorderly intoxication, The Times reported.
Ontlametse Phalatse is the first black child diagnosed with progeria, a rare and fatal genetic condition that accelerates the aging process, according to the Progeria Research Foundation. Nobody knows how many kids in the world have it. In a two-year campaign to identify them, the Progeria Research Foundation says the number of children diagnosed around the world has soared from 48 to 80 on five continents.
The small and delicate 12 year old girl calls herself "the first lady" and dreams of the future. "I call myself a first lady because I'm the first black child with this disease ... Which other black child do you know with this disease?" she asked.
The foundation's executive director, Audrey Gordon, says there are several holes on the map where they have found children living with progeria. "We know that there are children (with progeria) in Africa, in China and Russia, but we just can't seem to get to them," she said.
Children with progeria look remarkably similar, despite different ethnic backgrounds: small and bald with oversized heads, eyes that bulge a bit, gnarled hands. They suffer from thinning skin which has a network of blue veins showing on the heads of white children.
Ontlametse and her mother
Ontlametse's mother, Bellon Phalatse, says her baby was born looking normal but that she realized early on that something was wrong. The baby suffered constant rashes and by the time she was 3 months old Phalatse thought she had a skin disease.
Before Ontlametse celebrated her first birthday "her hair was falling, her nails weren't normal, the skin problems, we were going up and down to the doctors." Bellon still tells that as the child aged prematurely, her father abandoned the family when Ontlametse was 3 years old.
Despite her frequent illnesses, Ontlametse enrolled in school at 6 and proved a bright pupil. But she was often scorned by classmates, teachers and others who thought she was so small and skinny because she had AIDS. South Africa has the highest number of people living with AIDS of any country but the disease still carries a terrible social stigma.
Each school holiday, Ontlametse and her mom fly to the United States, where she participates in research funded by the Progeria Research Foundation at Children's Hospital Boston. It gives her access to cutting edge drugs that are not yet commercially available.
Children with progeria die almost exclusively from heart disease between the ages of 8 and 21, commonly suffering high blood pressure, strokes, angina, enlarged heart and heart failure.
In 2003, the foundation was instrumental in the discovery of the progeria gene. Now they hope it can help provide answers about the ordinary aging process and cardiovascular disease.
Vocabulary:
soared (noun): the act of rising upward into the air; (to) soar (verb): go or move upward "The stock market soared after the cease-fire was announced";
backgrounds (noun): the general situation in which something happens;
remarkably (adverb): in a way that is unusual and surprises or impresses you;
bald (adjective): with little or no hair on your head;
oversized (adjective): much larger than usual;
bulge (noun): a shape that curves outward on the surface of something, often made by something under it or inside it;
gnarled (adjective): old and twisted and covered in lines;
scorned (adjective): treated with contempt;
cutting edge (noun): the position of greatest advancement; the leading position in any movement or field.
WILKES-BARRE, Pa. (AP) — Days of rainfall from what had been Tropical Storm Lee inundated a wide portion of Pennsylvania and other northeastern states Thursday, pouring into basements and low-lying homes and forcing tens of thousands of people to seek higher ground. At least seven were left dead.
The damage was concentrated along the Susquehanna River in Wilkes-Barre and other communities along the river. The National Weather Service said the Susquehanna crested above 38 feet Thursday night — below the top of the levee system protecting residents in northeastern Pennsylvania.
Lee's impact was felt widely in already waterlogged Pennsylvania, as authorities closed countless roadways, including some heavily traveled interstates, and evacuation shelters were opened to serve the many displaced people. Similar scenarios played out in Maryland and New York, but the fading storm's wrath was also felt from Connecticut to Virginia.
President Barack Obama declared states of emergency in Pennsylvania and New York early Friday, clearing the way for federal aid.
Rose Simko was among some 75,000 residents of Wilkes-Barre and neighboring communities who left Thursday under a mandatory evacuation order. As she packed her belongings into a car and prepared to drive away from her home, which sits about 150 feet from Wilkes-Barre's levee, she said she knew she had to get out.
"Everything is replaceable," she said, "but my life is not."
Evacuees were told to expect to stay at least until Sunday or Monday, and it will be some time before officials get a handle on the damage that included a partial bridge collapse in northern Pennsylvania, vehicles and other property swept away, and failed sewage treatment plants.
"We're going to have some damage, but you won't know until it's over," said Wilkes-Barre Mayor Tom Leighton.
The flooding was fed by drenching rains from Tropical Storm Lee that continued for days, and followed a little more than a week the dousing that Hurricane Irene gave the East Coast. In some areas of Pennsylvania the rainfall totals hit 9 inches or more, on top of what was already a relatively wet summer.
People in many small towns and rural areas in central Pennsylvania scrambled to get their families and their belongings out of harm's way as waters sometimes rose with frightening speed.
In West Pittston, which is near Wilkes-Barre but unprotected by the levees, several hundred homes were under water — many to the second floor, said former Mayor Bill Goldsworthy. Goldsworthy's own home was among those inundated.
It was the same story downriver in Plymouth Township, where floodwater swamped about 80 businesses and houses.
Further down the Susquehanna River in Bloomsburg, flood waters topped the height reached by Hurricane Agnes in 1972 and were expected to crest just short of the record set by a 1904 flood.
Columbia County Public Information Officer John Thomas said about a quarter of Bloomsburg is affected by flood waters and several homes have been swept off their foundations by the rushing waters.
"There's going to be a major damage assessment, I'm sure," Thomas said early Friday morning. Those things can't be determined right now because of the difficulty in getting to the places affected."
Harrisburg evacuated 6,000 to 10,000 residents in low-lying areas, while in Luzerne County, Pa., which includes Wilkes-Barre, the evacuation order covered all communities along the Susquehanna River that were flooded in the historic Hurricane Agnes deluge of 1972.
About 75 people and five pets were staying at a Red Cross shelter at Solomon-Plains Elementary School in Plains Township, outside Wilkes-Barre, many clustered around a big-screen TV to watch news coverage of the flooding.
"I'm trying to make the best of it," she said. "I brought the (playing) cards. I brought the games for the kids."
She said it's been a long time since they've seen sunny, blue skies.
"We've had rain for about five straight days and it's like, as soon as it's done, it picks back up," Holmes said.
Late Thursday, Wilkes-Barre city crews scrambled to plug holes in the city's elaborate flood control system with sandbags. The river's dramatic rise began to slow, giving hope that the walls and earthen mounds would hold.
In nearby places unprotected by the levee system, however, emergency officials expected catastrophic flooding of 800 to 900 structures, as the river was likely to crest above some rooftops.
At least four deaths in Pennsylvania were at least partially attributed to flooding, while a fifth person was reported missing.
In the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., two people, including a child, died when they were swept away in rain-swollen waters Thursday night, fire officials said.
Anne Arundel County, Md., police were treating a death there as drowning, pending autopsy results, after a man was pulled from flood waters near his home.
The heavy rains also shut down parts of the Capital Beltway in Fairfax County, Va.; some portions have reopened. As many as 10 inches of rain have fallen in some places in the area around Washington since Wednesday.
In northeast Maryland, most of the 1,000 residents of Port Deposit were told to evacuate after the massive Conowingo Dam, upstream on the Susquehanna, opened its spill gates, and hundreds more were told to leave their homes in Havre de Grace, where the river meets the Chesapeake Bay. Shelters were opened in Perryville and Aberdeen, with river levels projected to be their highest since Hurricane Agnes.
There were also mandatory evacuations in a neighborhood along the Housatonic River in Shelton, Conn., just as residents were mopping up from the mess Hurricane Irene left behind.
"I even have fish swimming in my garage, that's a first," Brian Johnson told the Connecticut Post. "There's minnows swimming in there."
The mayor of Binghamton, N.Y., said severe Susquehanna River flooding was the worst in more than 60 years. Twenty thousand people were ordered to head for higher ground, and only emergency officials were allowed in the city.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Thursday ordered a redoubling of U.S. counter-terrorism efforts in the face of a "credible but unconfirmed" threat ahead of the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
U.S. officials, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said the threat involved Washington D.C. and New York City -- the sites involved in the al Qaeda attacks a decade ago this Sunday that killed nearly 3,000 people.
A law enforcement source said a manhunt was underway for two or three suspects.
But the officials used strong caveats when discussing the threat information privately, with a national security official cautioning that experts thought the threat would ultimately not check out.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg also stressed that the threat had not been corroborated, even as he announced heightened security measures "some of which you may notice, some of which you may not notice."
"There is no reason for any of the rest of us to change anything in our daily routines," he told a news conference.
Still, Bloomberg asked citizens to report suspicious or dangerous activity, adding: "Over the next three days we should all keep our eyes wide open."
The White House said Obama was briefed on specific threat information on Thursday morning, and noted that the government had already "enhanced its security posture" ahead of the anniversary.
"Nevertheless, the President directed the counterterrorism community to redouble its efforts in response to this credible but unconfirmed information," a White House official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"HYPER-VIGILANT"
White House spokesman Jay Carney said "we're hyper-vigilant to this specific report that's just coming in." He told MSNBC television that the government was taking all necessary precautions, without offering details.
Documents discovered in Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, after he was killed in a raid in May by Navy SEALs highlighted his persistent interest in attacking the United States around the anniversary of the 2001 attacks. But it is unclear if those plans ever evolved beyond aspiration.
"As we know from the intelligence gathered following the Osama bin Laden raid, al Qaeda has showed an interest in important dates and anniversaries, such as 9/11," said Jan Fedarcyk with the FBI's New York field office.
The Department of Homeland Security, which said only last week that there was no credible information that al Qaeda was plotting an attack around the September 11 anniversary, declined to offer details on the threat.
It cautioned that there were always threat reports before important dates like the anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
"Sometimes this reporting is credible and warrants intense focus, other times it lacks credibility and is highly unlikely to be reflective of real plots under way," spokesman Matt Chandler said.
"Regardless, we take all threat reporting seriously, and we have taken, and will continue to take all steps necessary to mitigate any threats that arise."
A second law-enforcement source played down an ABC News report about missing rental trucks -- saying the vehicles had been recovered and there was no connection to terrorism.
LUBBOCK, Texas — Texas just finished the hottest June through August on record for any state in the U.S., weather officials said Thursday.
National Weather Service meteorologist Victor Murphy told The Associated Press that Texas' 86.8 degree Fahrenheit average beat out Oklahoma's 85.2 degrees in 1934.
That Dust Bowl year is now third on the list for the three-month span, behind No. 2 Oklahoma's heat wave this June through August at 86.5 degrees.
Both states and others in the nation's southern tier have baked in triple-digit heat this summer.
Louisiana's heat this June through August puts it in the fourth spot all-time, 84.5 degrees.
Drought more dire The records were announced as raging wildfires and scorching heat continued across the South over the past week, adding to the human, economic and agricultural toll of a historic drought that climatologists said was only growing more dire.
A tropical storm that moved out of the Gulf of Mexico within the last week brought no relief and instead brought high winds that fueled wildfires, according to a weekly report dubbed the U.S. Drought Monitor that was issued Thursday by a consortium of state and federal climatologists.
"In a bit of cruel irony, it was the strong and persistent winds of (Tropical storm) Lee, which just missed the mark of the drought's epicenter in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico, that fanned the large number of fire outbreaks in Texas," the report said.
"These people are really suffering out there," said climatologist Mark Svoboda, who is stationed at the University of Nebraska's National Drought Mitigation Center. "How can it get any worse?"
Svoboda said a new tropical storm dubbed Nate was moving toward southern Texas and should make landfall late next week.
"We'll see where that goes. That might be the next potential shot of relief for Texas," Svoboda said.
Texas has been the hardest hit by the long-lasting drought, which is the longest on record for the key agricultural state.
According to the Drought Monitor levels of extreme and exceptional drought in Texas totaled 95.68 percent, up from 95.04 percent of that state's area a week earlier, the Drought Monitor reported.
The dry conditions, coupled with persistent temperatures well above 100 degrees, has sparked wildfires throughout the state. So far this year, 18,719 fires have burned over 3.5 million acres and thousands of homes and other structures, according to the Texas Forest Service.
More than 95 percent of the state's pasture and rangelands are rated as poor or very poor, leaving little for livestock to eat or drink. Texas officials peg damages at more than $5 billion.
Oklahoma also continues to suffer. Extreme and exceptional levels of drought now are spread across 85.44 percent of the state, up from 85.37 percent a week earlier. New Mexico saw extreme and exceptional drought levels grow to 72.19 percent of the state, up from 64.88 percent, the Drought Monitor reported.
Carol Bartz says Yahoo's board of directors "f***ed me over" and intends to remain on the board after being fired as CEO.
Bartz made the statements during a passionate and blunt interview with Fortune. During the interview, she recalls how Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock read from a script when he fired her over the phone.
"I said, 'Roy, I think that's a script,'" Bartz says. "Why don't you have the balls to tell me yourself?' She adds one more jab, claiming she told Bostock, "I thought you were classier."
In the interview, Bartz blamed the board's impatience and incompetence for Yahoo's steady decline, stemming from its decision to turn down Microsoft's $40+ billion acquisition deal. "The board was so spooked by being cast as the worst board in the country," Bartz says. "Now they're trying to show that they're not the doofuses that they are."
Bartz claims their impatience stopped her from implementing a plan that would have started revenue growth in 2012. "They want revenue growth, even though they were told that we would not have revenue growth until 2012."
Finally, Bartz claims she intends to remain on the board of directors of Yahoo. She wants "to make sure that the employees don't believe that I've abandoned them," adding that she has "way too many purple clothes" to completely abandon the company.
Bartz, however, doesn't get to decide whether she remains on Yahoo's board. That's up to the shareholders. She certainly isn't likely to fine many allies on Yahoo's board of directors.
The UFSCar’s PortugueseReferenceCenter to foreigners receives enrollments until September 11. The courses of "Portuguese to Spanish Speakers" and "Portuguese to non-Hispanic speakers," levels, “Basic 1” and "Basic 2" and also the course of "Portuguese to Foreigners intermediate level."
The activities are geared toward undergraduates and postgraduates who are performing in Brazil and also for professionals from other countries who are acting in Brazil.
The start of classes is scheduled for September 12. The courses are free for people who are enrolled at UFSCar and to the ones who are not it will be charged a fee of R$ 202.00 for the second term of 2011. Information about the courses, fee payment and procedures for registration must be accessed in a specific form
Classes will be held at the PortugueseReferenceCenter to foreigners, located in the UFSCarArtDepartment in the campus south area. More information can be obtained by e-mail cenple@ufscar.br.
(to) gear (verb): to prepare something or make it suitable for a particular situation, group, or use. (gear toward: The museum is geared toward children);
scheduled (adjective): planned to happen at a particular time or day;
enrolled (adjective):officially entered in a roll or list ("An enrolled student");
term (noun): one of the periods of time into which the year is divided for students. In the U.S. a term can be, for example, a year, a semester, or a trimester: What classes are you taking this term?; You will be required to take an exam at the end of the term.
(AllHipHop News) Residents of a Philadelphia luxury building owned by international rap star Jay-Z claim that they are being harassed by the mogul's legal team, so that they will ultimately vacate the premises.
According to FoxNews, Jay-Z, born Shawn Corey Carter, is a co-owner of the company SCC North American Realty, LLC, which owns and operates a 24 unit condominium complex, which was purchased January of 2009.
Several tenants contacted FoxNews to complain about the treatment they have been receiving, claiming that they are being forced out of their apartments, with frivolous lawsuits, and other harassment tactics.
"The whole thing has been so unsettling,” a former tenant named Liza Tedeschi told FoxNews.com. "I’ve been in tears over this…They filed a lawsuit against me knowing that I had paid the rent. The lawyer admitted it to me, yet they still filed the lawsuit against me…It’s total and utter harassment."
Tedeschi told FoxNews that Jay-Z's real estate company even gave out the personal cell phone numbers of tenants to realtors to show off apartments that are not even up for sale.
According to residents, Jay-Z's ultimate goal is to evict all of the tenants from the property and it seems to be working - 15 tenants have left the building since May.
The tenants in the building became so angry that they called Pennsylvania Sen. Larry Farnese, who sent Jay-Z's lawyer a letter, on August 12th.
Sen. Farnese expressed concern over the treatment of the residents in the letter.
"He expressed his concern about what was happening in the building and asked that the management thoroughly investigate each complaint and handle each tenant on a case-by-case basis, and determine if eviction was appropriate, or if it was not," Senator Farnese's Communications Director, Kathie Abookire, revealed. "The latest that we heard is that Liza was issued a stay while the matter was investigated further. Our concern is for the tenant, that they're being treated properly, fairly and in accordance with the law. The owner of the building is immaterial. The fact that someone may be famous is not our concern."
Due to flooding fears, officials in northeastern Pennsylvania are calling for a mandatory evacuation of communities along the Susquehanna River — an area that was inundated in the historic Agnes flood of 1972.
The order affects more than 100,000 residents.
Luzerne County Management Agency official Frank Lasiewicki told The Associated Press Thursday the river is projected to crest at nearly 41 feet between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. ET Thursday — the same height as the levee system protecting riverfront communities including Wilkes-Barre and Kingston.
Residents were ordered to leave by 4 p.m. Wilkes-Barre Mayor Tom Leighton said residents should prepare for an extended evacuation of 72 hours and advised them to take clothing, food and prescription medicine. He also asked city businesses to close their doors by noon.
At least three people have died as heavy rains from the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee saw flash flood warnings issued from Maryland to New York.
Police in Derry Township, Pa., said an elderly man who was trying to bail water out of his basement was killed when the house's foundation collapsed Wednesday.
Lancaster County Emergency Management Director Randy Gockley said a motorist trapped in a vehicle drowned early Thursday morning in Elizabeth Township, Pa. Gockley said responders found between 3 and 4 feet of water on the roadway as the nearby Hammer Creek went over its banks. Another death was confirmed Thursday morning by Gockley.
The National Weather Service predicted the rain would continue to fall heavily across the mid-Atlantic and Northeastern states through Thursday with anywhere from 4 to 7 more inches falling and up to 10 inches in isolated pockets.
The NWS issued a string of flash flood warnings early Thursday for parts of Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.
A flash flood warning for parts of Maryland said that "although rain has become light ... a very dangerous situation still exists" in the affected areas.
The warning for New York, due to last until 11 a.m. ET, said rapid flooding of streams, creeks and poor drainage areas was likely in the affected locations.
'Very severe' flooding An earlier warning issued Thursday for New York said that flooding "is ongoing and is very severe in many places with numerous evacuations."
"Flooding will continue to worsen overnight as the rain continues. Rainfall totals for Wednesday through early Thursday morning will range from 5 to 12 inches across much of the warning area by 6 a.m.," the warning said.
"Travel will be hazardous through the early morning hours and is not advised except for emergencies," it added.
A notice posted on the Broome County website detail areas of Binghamton, N.Y., under a mandatory evacuation order with flooding expected from the Susquehanna and Chenango rivers.
It urged people to drive to a "safe location." Buses were also being sent to pick up evacuees, who were being taken to Broome County Airport.
"Please remain calm and drive in a safe and orderly fashion," the notice said, adding that anyone unable to evacuate or facing a life-threatening emergency should call 911.
The pressconnects.com website, part of the Gannett media company, reported that Broome County's director of emergency services Brett Chellis warned late Wednesday that people should "be prepared for the worst."
"Binghamton is starting to evacuate now," he added, saying 10,000 people were under mandatory evacuation. "People need to be ready to move."
NBC News reported that Wednesday's rainfall boosted the total for 2011 in Binghamton to 49.86 inches, breaking the annual record set in 2006 with some 115 days left to go in the year. Records began in 1951.
The National Weather Service said the Susquehanna River was expected to crest in Binghamton at 26.2 feet Thursday evening, NBC News reported. At 25.6 feet, the river will overtop downtown Binghamton's flood walls.
The Weather Channel said the river had risen 18 feet in 24 hours.
Dam at risk of 'imminent failure' An NWS warning issued at 3:29 a.m. ET said the Elk Lake Dam in Susquehanna County, northeast Pennsylvania, was at risk of "imminent failure." It urged people living below the dam to "move to higher ground immediately."
Flash flooding across a wide swath of Pennsylvania shut down roads, closed some schools early and forced evacuations.
"The same areas are getting hit repeatedly" by rain, said Larry Nierenberg, a national weather service spokesman who monitors an area that includes Greater Philadelphia and most of New Jersey.
New York positioned rescue workers, swift-water boats and helicopters with hoists to respond quickly in the event of flash flooding.
"Now it's getting on my last nerves," said Carol Slater, 53, of Huntersfield, N.Y., on the northern edge of New York's Catskill Mountains and just outside of hard-hit Prattsville.
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation was installing flood control gates in several locations, according to a statement from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who planned to tour the affected region on Thursday.
Numerous sections of the New York Thruway, including exit ramps, flooded Wednesday night and motorists were advised to take alternate roads, but many of them, too, were covered with water.
On Wednesday afternoon, Prattsville was cut off, its main roads covered with water as public works crews tried to dredge the creeks to alleviate the flooding. "Businesses and residential areas were devastated before," Wayne Speenburgh, chairman of the Greene County Legislature, said of Prattsville. "Downtown, there's nobody living because there's no homes to live in."
'Lots of stress' Flooding also led to voluntary evacuations in the Catskills town of Shandaken, Rotterdam Junction near Albany, and a section of Schenectady along the Mohawk River. Some schools in the Hudson Valley north of New York City closed or delayed start times.
Patrick Darling said he and wife Dawn are trying to keep their sense of humor while dealing with a second week of flooding.
"We have stress, lots of stress," he said after using shovels to clear mud and debris from his neighbors' homes. "We've been shoveling our stress out."
In Maryland, firefighters were among those who had to be rescued Wednesday as storms flooded roads, stranding drivers who had to be pulled from rushing water and pushing residents from their homes.
A swift-water rescue boat capsized in the Patapsco River near Catonsville as firefighters responded to rescue calls near the Howard County line, Baltimore County spokeswoman Elise Armacost said, adding that all firefighters were later accounted for.
A flood watch was also in effect through Thursday afternoon in Vermont. Parts of the state are still recovering from flooding from the remnants of Irene, which was a tropical storm by the time it swept over the area.
Swift water rescue teams areon call, and residents should be ready to evacuate if rivers rise fast, said Vermont Emergency Management spokesman Mark Bosma.
Irene hit upstate New York and Vermont particularly hard, with at least 12 deaths in those areas and dozens of highways damaged or washed out. Several communities in Vermont were cut off entirely and required National Guard airdrops to get supplies.
