Posts tagged "New York Post"

Councilwoman wants to make it a crime to buy knockoff handbags in NYC

Drop the Gucci, and put your hands up!

Councilwoman Margaret Chin wants to make it a crime to buy sham Chanels, pirated Pradas and other counterfeit handbags in Chinatown.

The Manhattan Democrat’s bill would slap tourists and bargain hunters caught buying designer fakes with a maximum $1,000 fine and up to a year in prison.

Chin and lower-Manhattan residents are petitioning for a hearing on the measure, saying Canal Street peddlers are spilling into side streets to harass anyone passing by.

“People think it’s an adventure,” Chin told The New York Post. “If you want to get these name-brand knock-offs at a cheap price, you go to Chinatown.

“It’s always illegal for people to sell, but it’s not illegal for the people who buy this stuff,” she added. “Hopefully, this law will cut down on the demand.”

Click for more from the New York Post.

Target apologizes for ‘manatee’ label on plus-size dress

Shoppers at a Target store in Brooklyn say a label that listed the color of a plus-size dress as “manatee gray” was insulting.

The label for the same dress in smaller sizes described it as “dark heather gray.”

Target apologized for the label.

Michelle Ho, shopping at the store at Atlantic Terminal Mall, told the New York Post that Target was “putting down one set of people over another” with the different labels.

Spokeswoman Jessica Deede called the labeling of the Mossimo-brand “Women’s Plus-Size Kimono Maxi Dress” ”an unintentional oversight.”

She said although manatee gray was a seasonal color, Target was “fixing the discrepancy.” She said the item was removed from the company website.

Former Weather Underground radical jailed in 1981 killing reportedly now teaching at Columbia

A former Weather Underground radical who spent 22 years in prison for an armored-car robbery that killed two cops and a Brinks guard now reportedly holds a prestigious adjunct professorship at Columbia University’s School of Social Work.

The New York Post reports that Kathy Boudin’s return to respectability after her 2003 parole occurs a week before the release of Robert Redford’s “The Company You Keep,” a movie loosely based on the $1.6 million heist.

Boudin, 69, acted as a getaway driver in the heist and her status as perp-turned-prof outraged the widow of one of her victims, Brinks guard and father of three Peter Paige, who was killed in New York’s Rockland County by her accomplices from the Black Liberation Army on Oct. 20, 1981.

“She doesn’t deserve a job at all,” Josephine Paige, 74, told the Post. “She doesn’t deserve anything, nothing at all. I think she should be back in an institution.”

Of the hundreds of students Boudin has taught since her hiring in 2008, just three have express concerns regarding her criminal background and only one “switched out” of a class due to that reservation, Columbia School of Social Work Associate Dean Marianne Yoshioka said.

Boudin, who teaches about issues facing convicts and relatives when a person is released from prison, did not respond to a request for comment.

John Hanchar — the nephew of another victim of the robbery, Nyack Police Officer Edward O’Grady — said that while Boudin “has a right to do whatever she wants . . . I just hope the people that she’s lecturing are smart enough to question why [she felt] like killing people is an acceptable choice to forward their goals.”

Hanchar continued: “It’s easy to forget that violence is never the answer. Nine children grew up without their dads because of her actions.”

Yoshioka, meanwhile, said Boudin has been an “excellent teacher who gets incredible evaluations” from students each year.

Click for more from the New York Post.

Bowl bought for $3 sells for more than $2 million at NY auction

A New York family scored a huge payday when a small bowl, which they bought at a garage sale for $3, turned out to be a 1,000-year old Chinese piece that sold for $2.2 million at Sotheby’s yesterday. The family bought the rare bowl at the secondhand sale in 2007, and kept it sitting on their mantle for years, the auction house said.

After becoming curious, the bargain hunters began consulting experts about the bowl. They finally brought the piece to Sotheby’s, which estimated it would sell for somewhere in the $200,000 to $300,000 range.

But yesterday, London art dealer Giuseppe Eskenazi blew away those figures when he plunked down $2.2 million for the museum-quality piece.

He beat four other bidders for the Northern Song dynasty bowl — known as a Ding bowl — which dates back to the 10th or 11th century.

There is only one other bowl like it in the world, and it is in the British Museum.

Click for more from the New York Post.

New York approves realistic war-oriented textbooks for third graders

Tales of war, bombs and abduction — coming to a third-grade classroom near you.

City and state education bureaucrats have given the green light to an English curriculum for elementary schools that includes picture books with startlingly realistic portrayals of war — to be read by 8-year-olds.

They include “The Librarian of Basra,” which contains drawings of fighter planes dropping bombs on a palm-tree-lined Middle Eastern town.

In another illustration, the protagonist looks worried, peering out a window at soldiers manning machine guns on a rooftop.

The terrified townsfolk wonder, “Who among us will die?” and “Will our families survive?”

Similarly, “Nasreen’s Secret School” depicts the abduction of a young man from his home in Afghanistan by soldiers and discusses Taliban rules that forbid women to go out in public alone.

Click for more from the New York Post.

New York principal backs off threat to cancel prom over graduation rate

A New York high school principal was forced to back off her threat that the senior prom would be canceled unless every student was eligible to graduate, the New York Post reported.

Shadia Alvarez, principal of the Collegiate Institute for Math and Science in the Bronx, put a poster up at the school saying the senior prom was off unless every senior — nearly 140 students — graduates, MyFoxNY reported.

“It was a scare tactic basically for seniors to get their butts in gear,” said Jose Abreu, a senior at the school.

According to the Post, Alvarez told the Department of Education that there was no such ultimatum, saying the school has high expectations and she only told students the prom would be canceled if they did not try.

The prom is not canceled, DOE said. 

The school is on track to have a 90 percent graduation rate, higher than the city average of 66 percent, according to the Post.

Click for more from MyFoxNY.

Click for more from the New York Post.

Investigation launched after pilot spots ‘drone’ near JFK airport

The pilot of a commercial jetliner spotted a drone aircraft hovering near his plane as he landed at JFK Airport yesterday, according to sources.

The Joint Terror Task Force is now probing the sighting of the mysterious flying object, the sources said.

The Alitalia pilot spotted the unmanned craft — described as “a black drone” — hovering just 200 feet from his jet about three miles east of the airport as he made his approach from Brooklyn.

“He was very clear as to what he saw,” a source said.

The pilot told investigators the object was flying at about 1,800 feet and looked like “a black drone about a meter square, with helicopter rotors on the corners.”

“It didn’t require the pilot of the jet to take any evasive action, and it didn’t interfere with the aircraft,” a source said.

Click for more from the New York Post. 

New Yorker believes he was ‘sold’ as child, sues city for birth cerificate

A New Yorker who believes his birth mother “sold” him as a baby in 1945 is suing the city to get a birth certificate with the name he’s always known.

The New York City Law Department tells the New York Post it’s reviewing the case of Albert Higgins of Livingston Manor.

He discovered while trying to renew a driver’s license that there was no birth certificate under his name.

The 67-year-old says that in 1995, his dying mother revealed she bought him from a Bronx neighbor. He says an old handwritten note contained his birth parents’ names.

Higgins says a birth certificate exists under the name Garry Swingle. His goal is to be legally recognized under that name, then get a birth certificate with the name he’s always used.

NYer ‘sold’ as baby wants birth certificate

A New Yorker who believes his birth mother “sold” him as a baby in 1945 is suing the city to get a birth certificate with the name he’s always known.

The New York City Law Department tells the New York Post (http://bit.ly/YalcBL ) it’s reviewing the case of Albert Higgins of Livingston Manor.

He discovered while trying to renew a driver’s license that there was no birth certificate under his name.

The 67-year-old says that in 1995, his dying mother revealed she bought him from a Bronx neighbor. He says an old handwritten note contained his birth parents’ names.

Higgins says a birth certificate exists under the name Garry Swingle. His goal is to be legally recognized under that name, then get a birth certificate with the name he’s always used.

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Information from: New York Post, http://www.nypost.com

Slavery-math questions cause uproar at NYC school

A school principal said she’s “appalled” by a homework assignment that used scenarios about killing and whipping slaves to teach math.

Adele Schroeter has ordered sensitivity training for the entire staff of Public School 59 in Manhattan following last month’s assignment, the Daily News reported Friday.

A teacher had asked fourth-graders to write homework questions that blended math and social studies, education officials said. The teacher then used the students’ questions, including the slave-related ones, as homework for the class.

One question stated the number of slaves who died while taking over a ship. It asked how many slaves were still alive. The other said a slave was whipped five times a day and asked students to calculate how many times a month he was whipped.

A student-teacher said she was shocked by the wording and later refused to hand out the worksheet in another class.

“I looked at the questions and was like, `Wow! This is kind of inappropriate,”‘ Aziza Harding told the New York Post, saying the questions contained “desensitized” violence.

“I just found it alarming that this would happen in a state that you would think was more liberal,” said Harding.

The Department of Education said the situation was “obviously unacceptable.” It said “appropriate disciplinary action” would be taken.