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Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) riders on the subway portions of the Red and Blue lines may see relief of the slow zone in the coming months. So-called “slow zones” are locations where trains travel at restricted speeds because of track work or deteriorating conditions.

The CTA is putting nearly US$15 millions towards renovation of the O’Hare to Clark/Lake portion of the Blue Line and Chicago to Belmont portions of the Red Line. Work will happen during off peak and overnight hours. The CTA says that one track operations and delays may occur.

“We have heard our customers’ frustration with slow zones and today we are acting to address their concerns,” said Chicago Transit Board chairperson Carole Brown. “I am pleased that we are able to leverage existing contracts to begin this work and I look forward to working with state lawmakers to increase transit investment to bring our entire system to a state of good repair.”

Monday, January 25, 2010

Sales of previously owned homes in the US fell at the fastest rate ever recorded last December, according to data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

According to the association, existing home sales fell 16.7% last month, to an annual rate of 5.45 million, the largest crash since 1968. The figure was less than the 5.90 million units, or an eleven percent drop, predicted by most analysts.

Sales of homes went up for the entire of 2009 to 5.156 million units, or 4.9% for the year, and prices dropped from 2008 by 12.4%.

NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun described the figures as being “probably the largest annual drop since the Great Depression”. He said that “the market is going through a period of swings driven by the tax credit. We’re likely to have another surge in the spring. Job creation is the key to a continued recovery in the second half of the year.”

Pierre Ellis, a senior economist for Decision Economics in New York, commented on the figures, saying: “The drop in home sales is the payback for the acceleration of sales that occurred with the original first-time home buyers tax credit. […] There is an issue as to whether the decline represents a fundamental weakening.”

“The housing market continues to face significant headwinds, including high unemployment, record delinquencies and foreclosures, the specter of rising mortgage rates as the Fed’s [mortgage-backed securities] purchase programs comes to a close in late March, and tight credit,” Omair Sharif, an economist for RBS Securities, noted.

“Still, the resale market showed resilience in the second half of 2009, and the expansion and extension of the tax credit to April 30 could boost purchases during the spring selling season,” he said.

“We’ll see a pickup in existing home sales in the next couple of months as people take advantage of the tax-credit extension”, economist Adam York of Wells Fargo Securities LLC in Charlotte, North Carolina claimed. He fore-casted a pace of 5.4 million. He said that there were unlikely to be buyers of homes, despite the fact that the U.S. was “past the bottom.”

All four regions of the country saw a decline in sales. In the Northeast, sales fell 19.5 percent, in the Midwest, they plunged 25.8 percent. The South, the country’s largest region, saw a 16.3% decline, while in the West, sales waned by 4.8%.

US stocks fell slightly after the announcement, but went back up later in the day.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

As gas prices have risen in the United States, the regional transport authority for southeastern Pennsylvania, SEPTA, has seen a sharp increase in ridership, which has caused overcrowding on the trains.

“As fuel prices have continued to rise, SEPTA ridership has steadily increased and is the highest in 18 years,” said SEPTA General Manager Joseph Casey. Monthly ridership was 22 percent higher last month than a year ago.

“They have crushed loads on their rail lines, already where people are standing, and there’s not enough seats,” said Rich Bickel, the director of the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission.

“At peak times some railcars are standing room only and commuter parking lots are nearly full. All Regional Rail lines are running near full capacity and the train station parking lots are at about 90 percent capacity or more,” SEPTA spokesperson Felipe Suarez said.

While SEPTA awaits new Silverliner V trains from Hyundai Rotem, which begin arriving in 2009, it had hoped to lease eight rail cars from New Jersey Transit, at an agreed-upon rate of US$10,000 per month. However, due to problems with insurance and liability indemnification, the deal fell through, according to Casey.

SEPTA has entered a new agreement to purchase the eight rail cars from NJ Transit. The transit authority will pay US$670,000 for the cars and assorted supplies plus one additional inoperative car which will be used for spare parts. The rail cars will be operated using a SEPTA provided locomotive as they are not self-propelled.

The cars are being disposed of by NJ Transit because it has switched from single-floor cars to double-decker cars.

SEPTA is expecting to raise US$3.1 million by selling rail that has been out of service since 1981 at auction.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

WMAQ-TV NBC 5 Chicago announced yesterday that reporter Amy Jacobson was leaving her job after being videotaped in a bikini with her two sons at the home of Craig Stebic. Jacobson has been covering the story of Stebic’s wife Lisa, who has been missing since April 30.

Jacobson says that she took her children on a social visit on her day off, following an invitation from Stebic’s family.

Jacobson has reported at WMAQ for the last ten years.

The video of her at Craig Stebic’s home was either taken by or given to CBS 2 WBBM-TV Chicago, the CBS affiliate. The entire six minute video of Jacobson is available at cbs2chicago.com.

The WMAQ President and General Manager Larry Wert stated “Amy has been one of our most valued reporters for over ten years The decision to part ways has been a difficult one. We wish her the very best.”

Speaking with WGN Radio on Wednesday morning, Jacobson described WBBM-TV’s releasing of the video a “cheap shot”.

She told Spike O’Dell that she is sickened by the entire ordeal and may pursue legal action against the people who took the video of her at Craig Stebic’s house. Jacobson said her attorney told her it is illegal to videotape people on private property and she said she “is looking at all of her legal options.”

A press release was sent to the WMAQ-TV Newsroom staff on July 10, 2007.

Jacobson came to WMAQ-TV in 1996 from Fox affiliate WJBK located in Detroit. Jacobson is a native of Mount Prospect. She began her career at KSAX and also worked in El Paso and Tucson, AZ. She started at WMAQ as a freelance reporter and moved up to general assignment reporter. She and her husband have two children and live on the north side of Chicago.

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Critic Robert Fulford wrote of legendary civic preservationist Jane Jacobs that she “came down firmly on the side of spontaneous inventiveness of individuals, as against abstract plans imposed by governments and corporations.” With certain alterations, the same could be said of author and journalist Trisha Posner, who penned the popular Health Watch column in Miami’s Ocean Drive magazine.

Posner was fired for expressing her opinion on a YouTube video about regulations affecting her South Beach neighborhood. Like many rejuvenated communities in the United States, Posner’s historic south Fifth Street has become the Tribeca of Miami, a fashionable, trendy nightspot with a maelstrom of growth in hotels, restaurants and boutiques that have out-priced many long-term residents.

Local activist Frank Del Vecchio asked Posner if she would appear in the eight-minute Close the Loophole video, directed by Emmy award-winning documentarian Robyn Symon, to state her belief that a loophole that allows popular local restaurants such as Prime One Twelve and Devito South Beach to exist in her residential neighborhood should be amended to limit the amount of seats in the establishments in proportion to their number of rooms. Her segment began, “Hi, I’m Trisha Posner. I’m a journalist and columnist for Ocean Drive magazine. I am married to Gerald Posner, the author.” Within a few hours after her appearance, she was fired by Ocean Drive publisher Jerry Powers.

Posner was aghast and bewildered. Attractive and comely, as a health columnist she is an unlikely candidate as a civic instigator; but those qualities belie Posner’s buffalo stance on doing what she feels is right for her community. “I hate being in the public eye and I prefer to be low key,” Posner told Wikinews in an interview. “To do the video I was nervous. Only in person do I feel comfortable.” Wikinews reporter David Shankbone recently spoke with Posner.

DS: What were the circumstances surrounding your dismissal?

TP: In South Beach and in Miami there are neighborhood associations like South of Fifth Neighborhood Association, which [Posner’s husband] Gerald is President of, and they all try to work together to make living in the neighborhood synergized with the nightlife and the restaurants. This issue involved another, Frank Del Vecchio, President of 301 Ocean Drive condominium association. Frank asked me to be part of a video against a loophole where restaurants can have so many seats that they effectively become a nightclub. On the video there are five others besides me. An entertainer, a school teacher…and then I’m sitting there on a bench. At about 4:40 we wrapped up and I left. When I got home there was a phone message from [editor-in-chief] Glenn Albin saying, ‘Trisha, Trisha, Jerry is running around the place…’ and I thought it was a joke. I started laughing. Gerald said he didn’t think it was a joke, but I had not done anything. Then I received an anonymous e-mail: Jerry Powers had got a phone call from a hotel person that said ‘one of your representatives from the magazine is down here bad mouthing nightlife, hotels, etc.’ The magazine’s publicist panicked and called Powers, who then runs all the way down to City Hall and asks ex-Mayor Neisen Kasdin to let him speak before the City Council. He says that Trisha was not for him, and that Ocean Drive is for entertainment and hotels in South Beach. Then he said I was fired as he left.

DS: Did you receive a call from Jerry Powers?

TP: I never heard from Jerry Powers; he never phoned me, e-mailed. I still have never heard from him. I phoned the office the next day, and [Managing Editor] Eric Newill tells me my services would no longer be required. I had one piece ready, and one piece in the issue. The saddest thing is that I lost my friendship with Eric. Eric was my friend before he was my editor. He is friends with Jerry Powers. Eric wrote me an e-mail that it had played out too publicly and that he wished me good luck in my future endeavors. What kind of friendship is that?

DS: Had you informed the magazine of your appearance beforehand?

TP: Eric knew I was doing a video, and I did it in my friend’s hotel. I don’t remember if I told them what it was for. But the video wasn’t a secret. In the future I will ask permission. But it’s childish. I can’t believe Jerry Powers took this and made it an issue. Nobody would have known about it, and now I’m all over the place. He made Trisha Posner a star. I can’t go anywhere without people saying, ‘Yay, good for you!’ And they still have not paid me for my last piece. I sent them another e-mail on the 17th. They owe me $1,000. They have not written back to me, they have not phoned me. Why are they being so childish?

DS: Did you ever have any other problems at the magazine?

TP: No, I never had an issue and I had the best working relationship with this magazine. I have nothing bad to say about the magazine. I had a fabulous relationship—a unique relationship with my editor. I had never worked so well with an editor of a magazine my entire career. It was so easy, he is so smart, cerebral…it’s unbelievable. But they also got a lot out of me. They got Tina Brown through me. Bill Maher. I have an incredible track record. It was not hard for me to phone people and get them for the magazine. And I never used them for my advantage at all; I never used the magazine to get into restaurants or events. People say you never went to the parties, but I’m over that. I used to be a Studio 54 girl. I just really enjoyed my health column. They allowed me to write in my own voice.

DS: Why do you think Powers fired you?

TP: It’s all advertising driven, but I’m interviewing people for a new book who have advertised in his magazine. It wasn’t a big deal for anybody. The very next day Miami Magazine picked me up. He had a knee-jerk reaction. He didn’t even phone me. Wouldn’t you think he would phone me and say, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ and I would have been like, ‘Oh, I didn’t realize.’ Besides, I was crazy about my editor! Why would I try to hurt him? I hope one day I can work with Eric again.

DS: Has any other employee of Ocean Drive appeared publicly before and been identified as such?

TP: As far as I know I’m the first one, that’s why I made history. But I wasn’t talking about Ocean Drive. I hadn’t thought that under my name were the words ‘Columnist for Ocean Drive’. I didn’t see anything. Later I had e-mails from Tina Brown, everybody…they were really supportive.

DS: Your husband, author Gerald Posner, wrote a piece in The Huffington Post about your dismissal. Several of the comments to it state that since Ocean Drive is a large glossy magazine dependent upon advertising from the entertainment industry, that you bit the hand that fed you. How do you respond to such criticism?

TP: That’s the stupidest thing I have ever heard, because it had nothing to do with Ocean Drive. There is another world. I’m not against development; if you listen to my statement I talk about how much I love the nightlife, how I love entertainment. But we all have to learn to live together. I know South Beach is party town, but we can live together. Let’s clean up our shit, take our garbage out, be respectful to our neighbors and also to the entertainment industry.

DS: Some of the comments that were made in HuffPo were that even though it was despicable that you were fired for expressing your opinion on a civic matter, that you should have expected it. Do you think comments like that are par for the course of apathy in the United States today, where people disagree with something, but shrug their shoulders instead?

TP: I think we live in dangerous times because of corporate America—people are really scared to speak out about anything; it is really dangerous. Freedom of speech. I came to live here in this country because it was for freedom of speech. I love America, and it has everything I could have dreamed of: the most incredible husband, friends, everything. But they are chipping away at it. One company is one company, but it shows how dangerous it is. What happens when the Rupert Murdochs own everything? They are trying to gag us. It is very dangerous. Whether it is the film industry, the music industry, D.C., they are trying to strangle all of us. All these regulations of what we can or can’t do. Does it mean if I have an opinion that I have to be gagged or not say who I am or what I think? What can and can’t I say? Maybe I’m just too black and white. I think we need to just chill out here. It wasn’t about Ocean Drive or Jerry Powers. It was about my home and my friends. I was helping out Frank. It was about the loophole and the Bijou [hotel]. I think what really freaked them out was that the video was professionally done.

DS: Another comment said, “The magazine itself sounds like a total contribution of everything that [is] wrong with America right now. Instead of promoting smart growth and longevity, it prostitutes itself to every new development, even at the cost of other developments (advertisers) who will lose out when this new one opens.” What are your thoughts on the magazine?

TP: I have an opinion about Ocean Drive. I used to say I don’t know who reads my columns, but I know they look good and I have an excellent following because people would stop me on the street or give me tons of e-mails. I understand what they are saying, but it is South Beach and that magazine works for South Beach. It’s been around for 13/14 years. I think that it’s healthy there is competition coming in. But the demographics for the magazine are people in their mid-twenties and early thirties. I didn’t realize that.

DS: What are your feelings about Jerry Powers?

TP: This man is a bully, and he wanted to bully me. He is not going to scare me. I’ve been in this business 20 years, and there is only one man who scares me: my husband.

Monday, June 12, 2017

On Friday, Japan’s parliament, the National Diet, passed a law to allow Emperor Akihito to abdicate. The law gives Akihito three years to become the first emperor to abdicate since Emperor Kokaku in 1817, two hundred years ago.

The newly passed law, made in response to the country’s Imperial Household Law’s lack of abdication provisions, applies to only Akihito, aged 83. It prohibits Akihito’s successors from abdicating.

Akihito ascended to the 2,000-year-old Chrysanthemum Throne when his father Emperor Hirohito died in 1989. Having a cardiac surgery and treatment for prostate cancer, Akihito in a televised address last year said age and health were interfering with his duties. Per Japan’s current constitution, an emperor cannot make political statements, so Akihito did not explicitly mention abdication.

When abdication happens, under new law, Akihito’s son and heir apparent Naruhito will ascend the throne, becoming the country’s 126th emperor. Besides Naruhito, Akihito has another son and a daughter.

Emperor Akihito’s heir apparent Naruhito, born in 1960, graduated from Oxford University and married a Harvard University graduate Masako Owada in 1993. Portland State University professor Kenneth Ruoff told the BBC that, while Akihito and his wife have been active in social causes, Naruhito and Masako have done little in this regard. A Kyoto Sangyo University emeritus professor Isao Tokoro said Naruhito “has been educated,” is born, and is qualified “to be emperor[.]”

In 2006, the National Diet debated on allowing female ascendance, as the emperor lacked grandsons at the time, due to the current male-only royal ascendance laws. Then Hisahito, now 10, was born, and the debate lapsed.

Naruhito has only one child Aiki, 15, while his brother Prince Akishino, 51, has three children, including his only son Hisahito. Per current law, Hisahito is qualified to ascend after his uncle Naruhito and his father.

The royal family has 19 living members, including seven unmarried princesses and five males. Female royals, if marrying a commoner, would have to give up their royal status, leaving the royal family, while males would still be allowed to retain their royal status after marrying a commoner. Akishino’s daughter Princess Mako announced her plans last month to relinquish her royal status and leave the royal family in order marry a commoner Kei Komuro, a graduate student and law firm worker, both of them aged 25. In 2005, Mako’s aunt and Naruhito’s sister Sayako, formerly Princess Nori, married a commoner Yoshiki Kuroda, a town planner, and was forced to relinquish her status and leave the family.

A Temple University Japan professor Jeff Kingston said a national succession crisis has people raising concerns about female princesses leaving the royal family when getting married. Kingston added the family “[has] a shortage of male heirs.” Kingston also said ousting a female royal for marrying a commoner is “a very old-fashioned approach, totally out of sync with 21st-century norms” to many people around the world, including in Japan.

In a survey by Kyodo News conducted in May of about 3000 people at least 18 years old, 68 percent said the Imperial Household Law should be amended to allow future emperors to abdicate. 25 percent favored separately legislating each abdication. Four percent said abdication of emperors should never be allowed.

On questions involving female royals, 86 percent said to allow empresses; 59 percent supported both empresses and established branches of female lineages. 62 percent supported establishment of separate branches for princesses retaining their roles while marrying commoners; 35 percent opposed. 61 percent said female ascendance should be debated only after the abdication, while 28 percent said it shouldn’t wait for the abdication.

Early this year, the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe considered giving imperial status to branches of those who left the royal family. In the survey, 22 percent supported the idea; 72 percent opposed.

The Abe government has avoided the debate of female ascendance but recently passed a non-binding resolution attached to the newly passed abdication law to consider how to strengthen female royal status, possibly including allowing them to retain their royal titles and continue their duties, to compensate for the declining royal population.

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