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The US Northeast is so short on heating oil that the fuel used to power home furnaces is being rationed even before the start of winter.

Some wholesalers in Connecticut are putting retailers on allocation, meaning they can only get a limited amount of fuel based on availability, according to Chris Herb, president of the Connecticut Energy Marketers Association, which represents around 600 family-owned retailers in the state. These retailers must in turn ration their customers.

The measure, designed to prevent panic buying, highlights the extreme fuel tightness across the New York Harbor and New England regions that has attracted the attention of the White House. National Economic Council Director Brian Deese told Bloomberg Television earlier this week that diesel inventories are “unacceptably low” and “all options are on the table” to bulk up supply and cut costs to consumers. In New England, where more people burn diesel — the same product as heating oil — to warm their homes than anywhere else in the country, stockpiles are a third of typical levels for this time of year, government data show.

A main hurdle to replenishing regional fuel supplies has been a steep, sustained backwardation in the diesel market. Backwardation happens when prompt deliveries are priced at a premium over deliveries in the future, which in effect causes product to lose value over time. “There’s just no incentive to store large amount of product,” said Michael Ferrante, president of the Massachusetts Energy Marketers Association

In addition to the scarcity, there’s also the cost. Wholesale heating oil in New York Harbor averaged $4.09 a gallon on Thursday, compared with $2.46 at the same time a year ago, according to data from price reporting agency Argus Media…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Meanwhile At A Costco In Brooklyn, The Hoarding Begins

February 29, 2020

Meanwhile At A Costco In Brooklyn, The Hoarding Begins

The same long lines that we’ve seen in China, Japan, South Korea, and across the world as people panic buy food and health supplies have started in the US.

On Saturday, the US Surgeon General urged people to “stop buying masks,” saying on Twitter that they’re not effective in preventing the general public from catching coronavirus.

✔

Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS!

They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!

http://bit.ly/37Ay6Cm Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a virus (more specifically, a coronavirus) identified as the cause of an outbreak of respiratory illness first detected in Wuhan, China.cdc.gov

Despite the CDC telling everyone to calm down, alleged video of long lines pouring out of a Costco store in Brooklyn, New York, surfaced on YouTube Saturday afternoon.

This comes days after we reported Hawaiians raced to Sam’s Club and Costco to panic buy food and health supplies as virus fears surge.

And as we noted earlier today: “The great panic of 2020 is underway” as Americans are now stocking up on supplies as the next pandemic could be imminent.

Suspected Case Of Coronavirus Discovered In New York As Death Toll Nears 300

February 1, 2020

Suspected Case Of Coronavirus Discovered In New York As Death Toll Nears 300

Summary:

Death toll jumps to 294, 13,983 cases reported
Suspected case being tested in New York City
8th US case confirmed in Massachusetts
Vietnam, Japan, Australia limit travel to China
Hong Kong health-care workers threaten to strike unless border to mainland closed

* * *

Update (1900ET): Death toll jumps to 294 as China reports 1,921 new infections, bringing the new global total to 13,983, according to Johns Hopkins CSSE.

Here’s a map of known cases:

* * *

Update (1645ET): The New York Times reports that NYC has yet another suspected case of the coronavirus. This is at least the third report of a suspected coronavirus patient in NYC or New Jersey.

The scares have made the sight of people wearing masks more common throughout the Five Boroughs.

The suspected patient is in their 40s and recently returned from China suffering from telltale symptoms including fever, cough and shortness of breath.

The suspected virus carrier is undergoing testing at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan.

NEW YORK CITY HEALTH DEPARTMENT TESTING PATIENT FOR CORONAVIRUS
NYC HEALTH OFFICIALS SUSPECT A PATIENT HAS CORONAVIRUS: NYT
NYC OFFICIALS AWAITING CONFIRMATION FROM FEDERAL AGENCY: NYT
SUSPECTED NYC CORONAVIRUS PATIENT IS AT BELLEVUE HOSPITAL: NYT

City health officials have been bracing for a case given NYC’s large population of Chinese immigrants.

“An individual with a travel history to China felt unwell and sought help from a medical provider who promptly contacted the Health Department,” said the health commissioner, Dr. Oxiris Barbot.

NYC has already struggled with outbreaks recently, including an outbreak of measles in the ultra-orthodox Jewish community.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Extinction Rebellion’s Direct-Action Climate Activism Comes to New York

December 16, 2018

THE EXTINCTION REBELLION’S DIRECT-ACTION CLIMATE ACTIVISM COMES TO NEW YORK

THE NEW YORK CHAPTER of Extinction Rebellion held its first planning meeting on Thursday. Incensed and terrified by the accelerating climate crisis, activists gathered in Manhattan to discuss how they might replicate some of the successes the direct-action group has had in the United Kingdom.

In London, less than a month after Extinction Rebellion activists blocked roads, occupied bridges, lay down in the street and got arrested to draw immediate attention to the climate crisis, Mayor Sadiq Khan declared a climate emergency, vowing to do “everything in our power to mitigate the risk” of climate catastrophe. Coincidence? Greg Schwedock doesn’t think so.

“That was unthinkable before the Extinction Rebellion,” Schwedock told a standing room-only crowd gathered in a Manhattan co-working space on Thursday night. Dressed in office gear and “Rise and Resist” sweatshirts, accompanied by their children and at least one dog, the attendees came together with the hope that a New York chapter of the group might have similar success in sparking a response commensurate with the dire crisis.

“Getting a million people to D.C. isn’t enough. We need to escalate,” said Schwedock, who emphasized that the group will take the path of disruptive, attention-grabbing civil disobedience, rather than just marching and chanting about the importance of climate change. “We’re not the ‘Extinction Yell About It.’”

The explosive growth of the Extinction Rebellion — which began in England with the support of a group of academics just a few months ago and already has 190 affiliates on five continents — is fueled by the ballooning ranks of people around the world who are frustrated, alarmed, and depressed by the failure to tackle the accelerating climate disaster.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Are New York’s Free LINKNYC Kiosks Tracking Your Movements?

September 9, 2018

Photo illustration: Soohee Cho/The Intercept, Getty Images

ARE NEW YORK’S FREE LINKNYC INTERNET KIOSKS TRACKING YOUR MOVEMENTS?

LINKNYC KIOSKS HAVE become a familiar eyesore to New Yorkers. Over 1,600 of these towering, nine-and-a-half-foot monoliths — their double-sided screens festooned with ads and fun facts — have been installed across the city since early 2016. Mayor Bill de Blasio has celebrated their ability to provide “the fastest and largest municipal Wi-Fi network in the world” as “a critical step toward a more equal, open, and connected city for every New Yorker, in every borough.” Anyone can use the kiosks’ Android tablets to search for directions and services; they are also equipped with charging stations, 911 buttons, and phones for free domestic calls.

But even as the kiosks have provided important services to connect New Yorkers, they may also represent a troubling expansion of the city’s surveillance network, potentially connecting every borough to a new level of invasive monitoring. Each kiosk has three cameras, 30 sensors, and heightened sight lines for viewing above crowds.

Since plans for LinkNYC were first unveiled, journalists, residents, and civil liberties experts have raised concerns that the internet kiosks might be storing sensitive data about its users and possibly tracking their movements. For the last two years, the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and a small but vocal group of activists — including ReThink LinkNYC, a grassroots anti-surveillance group, and the anonymous Stop LinkNYC coalition — have highlighted the kiosk’s potential to track locations, collect personal information, and fuel mass surveillance.

Now an undergraduate researcher has discovered indications in LinkNYC code — accidentally made public on the internet — that LinkNYC may be actively planning to track users’ locations.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Facial Recognition Toll Booths Identify Drivers and Passengers, Notify Police Within Seconds

July 27, 2018

Facial Recognition Toll Booths Identify Drivers and Passengers, Notify Police Within Seconds

The state of New York is using facial recognition cameras to identify drivers and passengers at toll booths.

A recent article in the New York Post revealed that toll booths use facial recognition to identify everyone.

“We are now moving to facial-recognition technology, which takes it to a whole new level, where it can see the face of the person in the car and run that technology against databases,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. (Click here & here to learn more.)

Police are also testing facial recognition cameras that can identify people based on the shape of their ears!

“Because many times a person will turn their head when they see a security camera, so they are now experimenting with technology that just identifies a person by their ear, believe it or not,” Cuomo said.

NYC’s spying bridges

Last year Vocativ revealed that NYC is using toll booth gantries to create a ring of spying cameras.

The Authority is interested in implementing a Facial Detection System, in a free-flow highway environment, where vehicle movement is unimpeded at highway speeds as well as bumper-to-bumper traffic, and license plate images are taken and matched to occupants of the vehicles (via license plate number) with Facial Detection and Recognition methods from a gantry-based or road-side monitoring location.

Police facial recognition to identify drivers within seconds

According to the NY Post, toll booth gantries can identify vehicles within seconds.

License plates scanned at the toll plazas, at least, are already being checked for warrants, suspected felons, parole violators, terrorist suspects and the intel is passed within five seconds on to cop cars stationed at the crossings.

How long before NYC uses facial recognition cameras to identify drivers and passengers within seconds?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Big Brother Surveillance Begins: Cuomo Unveils Facial Scanning At New York Toll Plazas

July 21, 2018

Big Brother Surveillance Begins: Cuomo Unveils Facial Scanning At New York Toll Plazas

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo revealed on Friday that facial recognition cameras installed at bridge and tunnel toll plazas across New York City are scanning every driver’s face and feeding them into a massive database designed to catch suspected criminals.

“When it reads that license plate, it reads it for scofflaws . . . [but] the toll is almost the least significant contribution that this electronic equipment can actually perform,” Cuomo said at a press conference outside the Queens Midtown Tunnel.

“We are now moving to facial-recognition technology, which takes it to a whole new level, where it can see the face of the person in the car and run that technology against databases… Because many times a person will turn their head when they see a security camera, so they are now experimenting with technology that just identifies a person by their ear, believe it or not,” he continued.

The technology is currently in use at the RFK/Triborough Bridge, and was switched on at the Queens Midtown and Brooklyn-Battery tunnels on Friday, according to the Governor’s office.

It will also eventually come to at least two of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s six other spans — the Throgs Neck and Whitestone bridges — and down the road will be added at all area airports, Cuomo’s office confirmed.

A request for proposals from contractors previously published by the online news outlet Vocativ says the tech is slated for all seven of the city’s toll bridges in addition to the two tunnels. –NY Post

The Governor’s office wouldn’t say when forthcoming cameras will be activated, which databases will be used to compare photos, or who will have access to the data, however Cuomo said that license plates which are already scanned at the plazas are currently checked “for warrants, suspected felons, parole violators, terrorist suspects.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

NY Declares State Of Emergency: JFK, La Guardia Close Due To Huge Winter Storm

January 4, 2018

NY Declares State Of Emergency: JFK, La Guardia Close Due To Huge Winter Storm

Flights at JFK airport have been temporarily suspended “due to strong winds and whiteout conditions” caused by Winter Storm Grayson.

Kennedy Airport
✔@JFKairport

Due to strong winds and whiteout conditions, flights at JFK have been temporarily suspended. Travelers are urged to contact their airline carriers for updates on resumption of service

11:05 AM – Jan 4, 2018

“Travelers are urged to contact their airline carriers for updates on resumption of service,” the JFK Twitter account advised.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared an official weather emergency in New York City, Long Island and Westchester County on Thursday as the storm is expected to drop up to a foot of snow on New York City.

Nearly all flights out of La Guardia, New York City’s other major airport, were cancelled late last night in anticipation of the storm.

LaGuardia Airport

✔@LGAairport

Almost all #LGA airport flights are cancelled today (January 4) due to weather. To determine if your carrier may still operate later this evening or what your flight status will be tomorrow (January 5), please contact them directly.#LaGuardia #Winterstorm #Grayson #Blizzard2018

11:08 AM – Jan 4, 2018

Newark Airport warned flyers to double check on the status of their flights because many had been cancelled.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Creditworthiness of New York and Illinois: One is Bankrupt

October 18, 2017

CREDITWORTHINESS OF NEW YORK AND ILLINOIS: ONE IS BANKRUPT

Summary

Unless used for capital improvements, any new Illinois State borrowing, regardless of security structure, will amount to nothing more than kicking the can further down the road.
Markets remain open to uncreditworthy government borrows longer than they should. In a low interest rate environment, investors will stretch credit standards.
Benchmark bond ratings are at variance with the rating agencies.

Everyone knows Illinois’ financial condition is poor. Conventional thinking seems to be that a bond default, should that happen, would be many years in the future. Pardon me, but wasn’t that the thinking right up to Puerto Rico’s, “We can’t pay” announcement? To answer the question of just how badly off is Illinois, I assembled a list of key creditworthiness indicators and applied them to New York, a highly rated state, and Illinois.

COMMENTARY AND BENCHMARK PRIVATE BOND RATINGS

The State of New York is managing its financial resources and obligations in a better-than-average manner. Particularly, the State’s employee pensions are reported to be 90% funded, but the general fund deficit must be contained and then eliminated. Unfunded OPEB costs are too high and can be renegotiated. Funded and pro forma unfunded long-term contractual obligations equaled 23% of general fund revenue in FY ended June 30, 2017, and exceeds the 15% threshold for a Benchmark AA or AA+ credit rating.

*Both NYS income tax and sales tax bonds are payable from annual general fund appropriation. For additional information, click here.

COMMENTARY AND BENCHMARK PRIVATE BOND RATINGS

The State of Illinois, in my opinion, is past the point of no return. It does not have the ability to raise taxes or cut spending to the degree necessary to reduce the annual cost of bond and retiree benefits from 33% to a sustainable level. The amount of debt issued by Illinois requires a moderate 8% of general fund revenues to pay P&I.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Total Chaos: Cyber Attack Fears As MULTIPLE CITIES HIT With Simultaneous Power Grid Failures: Shockwave Of Delays In San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York

April 22, 2017

Total Chaos: Cyber Attack Fears As MULTIPLE CITIES HIT With Simultaneous Power Grid Failures: Shockwave Of Delays In San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York

grid-down-city

The U.S. power grid appears to have been hit with multiple power outages affecting San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles.

Officials report that business, traffic and day-to-day life has come to a standstill in San Francisco, reportedly the worst hit of the three major cities currently experiencing outages.

Power companies in all three regions have yet to elaborate on the cause, though a fire at a substation was the original reason given by San Francisco officials.

A series of subsequent power outages in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City left commuters stranded and traffic backed up on Friday morning. Although the outages occurred around the same time, there is as of yet no evidence that they were connected by anything more than coincidence.

The first outage occurred at around 7:20 a.m. in New York, when the power went down at the 7th Avenue and 53rd Street subway station, which sent a shockwave of significant delays out from the hub and into the rest of the subway system. By 11:30 a.m. the city’s MTA confirmed that generators were running again in the station, although the New York subways were set to run delayed into the afternoon.

Later in the morning, power outages were reported in Los Angeles International Airport, as well as in several other areas around the city.

Via : Inverse

The San Francisco Fire Department was responding to more than 100 calls for service in the Financial District and beyond, including 20 elevators with people stuck inside, but reported no immediate injuries. Everywhere, sirens blared as engines maneuvered along streets jammed with traffic.

Traffic lights were out at scores of intersections, and cars were backing up on downtown streets as drivers grew frustrated and honked at each other.

Via: SF Gate

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Alabama, Tennessee, & Georgia Declare States Of Emergency As Gas Shortages Loom After Pipeline Leak

September 17, 2016

Alabama, Tennessee, & Georgia Declare States Of Emergency As Gas Shortages Loom After Pipeline Leak

As Native Americans protesters face arrest in North Dakota for blocking the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, TheAntiMedia’s Carey Wedler reports a gasoline pipeline spill is currently unfolding in the South. The leak has prompted Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, and Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal to declare states of emergency.

The Colonial Pipeline, which runs from Houston to New York, began leaking on September 9, spilling 250,000 gallons of gasoline, or 6,000 barrels. The pipeline was built in 1962, and the current leak in Helena, Alabama, is the largest one Colonial Pipeline has experienced in 20 years, Reuters noted.

AL.com reported that according to the Colonial Pipeline company’s spokesperson, Bill Berry, the pipeline could still be leaking:

“The leaking pipeline was shut down [last] Friday after the leak was discovered, but Berry said there may be additional gas still inside the pipeline. The leaking section of pipeline hasn’t been excavated yet due to safety precautions, so Berry said the condition of the pipeline and cause of the leak is still unknown.”

Hundreds of employees and contract workers face health risks from inhaling vapor as they work overtime to clean up the spill, which the company says is contained to a mining retention pond. AL.com reports “the leak was discovered at the inactive mine site by employees of the Alabama Surface Mining Commission.”

The governors of Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama have declared states of emergency, not due to environmental concerns, but over the gas shortage that will result from the leak. After Colonial Pipeline announced Thursday there would be a delay in restarting the pipeline because “work activity was intermittent overnight due to unfavorable weather conditions that caused gasoline vapors to settle over the site,” the price of gasoline futures rose six percent… even as crude futures prices tumbled…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Welcome To Hell: The Giant Fort McMurray Fire Is The Worst Blaze In Canadian History

May 8, 2016

Welcome To Hell: The Giant Fort McMurray Fire Is The Worst Blaze In Canadian History

The gigantic wildfire that has forced the evacuation of the entire city of Fort McMurray in northern Alberta has been nicknamed “the Beast“, and mainstream news reports are telling us that it is now approximately 25 percent larger than New York City. 88,000 people have already been forced out of their homes, at least 1,600 buildings have been destroyed, and smoke from the fire has been spotted as far away as Iowa. To say that this is a “disaster” is a massive understatement. Northern Alberta is “tinder dry” right now, and authorities say that high winds could result in the size of the fire doubling by the end of the weekend. One-fourth of Canada’s oil output has already been shut down, and the edge of the fire is now getting very close to the neighboring province of Saskatchewan. This is already the most expensive natural disaster in the history of Canada, and officials fully expect to be fighting this blaze for months to come.

At this point, only rain is going to stop this fire. Canadian authorities insist that they are not going to be able to defeat this raging inferno no matter how many resources they throw at it. The best that they can hope for is to try to steer it away from heavily populated areas until the rain comes.

Nobody knows precisely how this tragedy is going to end, but everyone agrees that it is going to last for quite some time. According to the Washington Post, this fire has the potential to keep on burning “for months”…

The images are ones of devastation — scorched homes, virtually whole neighborhoods burned to the ground. And Canadian officials say they expect to fight the massive wildfire that has destroyed large parts of Alberta’s oil sands town for months.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A New Digital Cash System Was Just Unveiled At A Secret Meeting For Bankers In New York

May 4, 2016

A New Digital Cash System Was Just Unveiled At A Secret Meeting For Bankers In New York

Last month, a “secret meeting” that involved more than 100 executives from some of the biggest financial institutions in the United States was held in New York City. During this “secret meeting“, a company known as “Chain” unveiled a technology that transforms U.S. dollars into “pure digital assets”. Reportedly, there were representatives from Nasdaq, Citigroup, Visa, Fidelity, Fiserv and Pfizer in the room, and Chain also claims to be partnering with Capital One, State Street, and First Data. This “revolutionary” technology is intended to completely change the way that we use money, and it would represent a major step toward a cashless society. But if this new digital cash system is going to be so good for society, why was it unveiled during a secret meeting for Wall Street bankers? Is there something more going on here than we are being told?

None of us probably would have ever heard about this secret meeting if it was not for a report in Bloomberg. The following comes from their article entitled “Inside the Secret Meeting Where Wall Street Tested Digital Cash“…

On a recent Monday in April, more than 100 executives from some of the world’s largest financial institutions gathered for a private meeting at the Times Square office of Nasdaq Inc. They weren’t there to just talk about blockchain, the new technology some predict will transform finance, but to build and experiment with the software.

By the end of the day, they had seen something revolutionary: U.S. dollars transformed into pure digital assets, able to be used to execute and settle a trade instantly. That’s the promise of a blockchain, where the cumbersome and error-prone system that takes days to move money across town or around the world is replaced with almost instant certainty.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Indian Point: Fukushima’s Mini-Me

March 8, 2016

Indian Point: Fukushima’s Mini-Me

shutterstock_286493465 (2)

Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant New York continually leaks radioactivity into the Hudson River. This has been going on for years. Seriously!

Meanwhile, New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo agrees with advocacy groups such as Riverkeeper, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and The Sierra Club to close Indian Point. Why? Environmentalists claim the radioactive leaks are “just the tip of the iceberg,” Amy Kraft, Indian Point Nuclear Plant Called ‘Disaster Waiting to Happen, CBS News, Feb. 26, 2016.

According to CBS News, water at one of the monitoring wells for Indian Point showed a 65,000% increase in tritium, which, according to nuclear industry specialists, is the kind of radiation that passes through the body very quickly via urination. That’s a relief!

On the other hand, “… little research has been done on the health effects of exposure to increased levels of tritium. But the NRC states: ‘Exposure to very small amounts of ionizing radiation is thought to minimally increase the risk of developing cancer, and the risk increases as exposure increases,” Ibid.

On second thought, “the risk increases as exposure increases,” doesn’t sound too good. After all, +65,000% likely hits the marker within the category of “risk increases as exposure increases.” When is too much, too much?

“However, Jerry Nappi, a representative for Entergy Corporation, said that the most recent issue at Indian Point would not have any impact on human health or life in the river. ‘Concentrations would be undetectable in the river,’ Nappi told CBS News. ‘We know from more than 10 years of hydrological studies on the site that it [radioactive contaminants] can’t reach drinking water sources in nearby communities,” Ibid.

So, where do the radioactive contaminants go?

But wait, there’s more, according to Riverkeeper, since at least August 2005, radioactive toxins such as tritium and strontium-90 have been leaking from at least two spent fuel pools at Indian Point into the groundwater and the Hudson River.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

September 11, 2015

A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

This is a piece I wrote last year for Ron Paul’s Voices of Liberty. Now although mainstream media has all but put a gag order on 9/11 memorial coverage, I believe this article’s message has never been more relevant and so I’m posting again at what is obviously poignant time. I find it odd that we have 10 Hollywood blockbusters made each year about the holocaust 75 years on, but only 14 years after the event American media will no longer discuss 9/11, even upon the anniversary. It is perhaps the most telling phenomenon about the secretiveness and mystery surrounding the horrific tragedy.

It was the sixth week of my first job fresh out of college. I was still eagerly excited for each new day. Having moved stateside from a small town in Canada to finish up university and then on to the big city of Chicago, I was still in awe of America. I was working in the north building of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on the corner of Madison and Wacker. It was early morning and I was on the phone with Paul Salvio from our New York office when

4951419563_ab64ba5406_z

the phone went dead.

The day was September 11, 2001. Our New York office was on the 92nd floor of the World Trade Center Tower 1. None of the employees who had arrived to work that day survived. It is a moment that elicits strong emotions within me to this day and I know I’m not alone.

In the days and weeks that followed, while the world came together to mourn those lost and to condemn those responsible, our policymakers in Washington were working feverishly to find opportunity in this tragedy. Forty-five days after 9/11, President Bush signed into law the U.S. Patriot Act.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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