The Westchester Steelers semi-pro football team, entering our eighth season in the United Football League, will be conducting open tryouts every Sunday afternoon at 3:00 PM, beginning April 26. Our season begins July 27 and pre-season games begin in mid-June. Players should have college or high school experience but all athletes are welcome. Only hard working, disciplined, team oriented players will be considered. There are also a few coaching positons still available. For more information call us (914) 969-4136 or e-mail [email protected]. Register online at http://eteamz.com/mtvernonsteelers.
Adam In Albany:Tour of Northern West Hosp Demos Need to Restore Funding.
WPCNR’S ADAM IN ALBANY, By District 89 Assemblyman Adam T. Bradley. April 18, 2003:Recently I had the privilege to tour Northern Westchester Hospital’s brand new Interventional Radiology Suite and I was amazed with what I saw. This facility – which specializes in innovative diagnostic and angiography procedures – not only revolutionizes vascular surgery, but also proves Westchester is a leader in progressive, high-tech medical treatment.
But we can only remain a leader if we continue investing in our hospitals and health care system. The governor’s proposed $2 billion cut to health care jeopardizes hospitals – like Northern Westchester – and other health-related industries already burdened with new technology costs, disaster preparedness, caring for the uninsured, and workforce shortages.
The governor’s proposed $1.6 billion cut to Medicaid and his desire to impose a “sick tax” on hospitals and other health care providers will seriously jeopardize quality health care. Furthermore, hospitals and nursing homes will be forced to lay off workers to make ends meet. Additionally, the governor seeks to raise Elderly Pharmaceutical Insurance Coverage (EPIC) fees 10 percent and cut reimbursements to pharmacies by 5 percent. These initiatives, if enacted, will truly affect quality health care.
In Westchester County, the governor’s budget would cost public health services almost $9 million. This could lead to the elimination of vital services such as disease prevention, mosquito control, and air and water testing. What’s more, crucial health inspection programs – including the inspection of 1,200 x-ray units in local hospitals and doctor’s offices – will also be lost if the wrong budget choices are made.
Eliminating health care services, laying off hospital staff, and raising prescription drug costs are all wrong choices.
New York’s unprecedented fiscal crisis will call on everyone to make sacrifices. When it comes to our health and the health of our loved ones, we can’t afford to make wrong choices that compromise the medical care our families need.
Adam T. Bradley, Assemblyman, The 89th District
Week Two: The Dennis Alvarez-Hernandez Capital Punishment Murder Case
WPCNR WHITE PLAINS LAW JOURNAL. By WPCNR Legal Affairs Correspondent, S. Richard Blassberg. April 18, 2003: Week Two of the Dennis-Alvarez-Hernandez trial (which ended last week, the trial was in recess this week), brought no surprises, either in content or direction.
WPCNR LEGAL CORRESPONDENT
S. RICHARD BLASSBERG
Photo by WPCNR News
Prosecutors Patricia Murphy and George Bolen presented witnesses whose testimony firstly, confirmed what the Defense has stipulated from the start, that it was the Defendant who stabbed the victims, and secondly exposed the extent of the injuries and carnage encountered at the scene. To drive home the horror, for the benefit of the jurors, prosecutors employed a 4×8 foot model of Patricia Torres’ apartment. The model reportedly cost $6,000 and was admittedly not to scale.
Using the model, Yonkers Police Officer Elizabeth Wagner of the Criminal Identification Unit, a veteran of 18 years on the force, went from room to room describing for the jury what she found at the scene. Although she claimed to have examined “thousands of crime scenes” in her tenure with the department, she managed to become visibly choked-up before the intent jurors. Officer Wagner’s testimony on Friday morning followed two days of direct and cross-examination of Yonkers Police Detective Kraft.
Kraft, the lead detective in the case was questioned extensively by the Prosecution in an attempt to establish that the Defendant had sufficient presence of mind, several hours after the killings, to try to deny responsibility.
“The baby, she killed the baby. My wife she killed the baby,” Kraft quoted the Defendant as having told him upon their first contact. Additionally, prosecutors tried to elicit statements from the detective suggesting that the Defendant really wasn’t “out of it” following the incident.
The final witness of Week Two was Vincent Santiago, the 11-year-old who survived the stabbing, and whose eyewitness account placed the knife in Dennis Alvarez-Hernandez’ hand. However strategically timed before a one-week adjournment of the trial, and emotionally compelling as Vincent’s testimony may have been, nothing he said, in this observer’s opinion, cast any doubt on Defense assertions that the Defendant was simply too drunk to be capable of forming the intent necessary to have committed Murder One.
The role of the jury is to be the determiner of fact. The only real issue of fact to be determined is whether the Defendant was capable, in light of his intoxication, of forming the necessary intent. All of the evidence presented by the District Attorney’s Office through two weeks of trial has thus far failed, in this reporter’s analysis, to overturn the Defense position. However, that is not to say that the effort has failed to reach the emotions and sensibilities of the jury.
The Great Race: GAII Pushing to Keep Pace in The Heavies of Indian Ocean
WPCNR ADVENTURER’S LOG. From Cynthia Goss. April 16, 2003 28°46’S 39°32’E / Indian Ocean: The course of Great
American II, the 53-foot trimaran sailing from Hong Kong to New York to challenge a 154-year-old passage record, has mirrored that of her nemesis Sea Witchthis week. Although Sea Witchsailed this passage well over a century ago, the wake of the clipper ship is very present to modern adventurers Rich Wilson (Rockport, Mass.) and Westchester’s own Rich du Moulin (Larchmont,
N.Y.) on Great American II.
“GAII and Sea Witch have been winding through each others’ wakes the past two weeks,” said crewmember du Moulin. “Imagine if we were here at the same time: we probably would have sighted each other. It’s a real race to the Cape (of Good Hope, Africa)!”
The Relentless Seas
But the path these two vessels have cut across the Indian Ocean is the only thing they have in common: thirty-two days out from Hong Kong, Great American II is reporting sea conditions unlike anything Sea Witch had encountered thus far.
For much of the week, GAII has been sailing in large, confused seas–and this boat and her crew have been getting thrashed.
“How can a boat survive such a beating?” queried Wilson in a satellite email. “GAII is all heart and incredible strength, but even she must have a limit. The forces that have been exerted on her since Saturday are overwhelming. Waves that shock the pontoon, that then shocks the rig: you wonder how could it possibly be still standing? How could that pontoon not have caved in yet?”
Sea Witch Passage Benign in Comparison
In stark contrast, in Sea Witch’s logs of January 1849, Captain Robert “Bully” Waterman recounted a string of pleasant days at this point in the journey, with lighter winds and clear weather.
The trimaran’s course is north of the clipper ship’s, but both vessels are neck-and-neck. The logged positions for day 32 are approximately
equidistant from the Cape of Good Hope.
Sea Water in the Oatmeal
This week’s reports from the GAII crew don’t focus as much on the horse race taking place over the span of thousands of ocean miles: Wilson and du Moulin are pushing as hard as they dare, trying to preserve their boat, and reporting on the rigors of daily life inside what Wilson has dubbed “a washing machine.”
Not the Place for Tender Technology
GAII has had a GPS failure, so they switched to the backup GPS antenna and were able to calculate their position. But every time a wave hits, the jarring motion causes them to lose their position.
“Of course, if you had a new stereo system, and every 60 seconds or so, hit the shelf it was on from the underside with a sledgehammer to make it jump off the shelf, after a while you wouldn’t expect it to work,” explains Wilson. “That is exactly what we have here. The GPS transceiver is next to my bunk. When these waves hit the underside of the cross beam, it lifts me right off the bunk, and it hurts: make no mistake, it hurts. So how could electronics possibly survive?”
Seepage and Seasoning
Even provisions are not safe from the conditions. When he went to get a snack, Skipper Rich Wilson found 1 inch of water in their snack bin; then found soup and oatmeal in 4 inches of water in another bin. Wilson went on deck to learn that water was forcing its way through the sealed port-side solar panel cable hole that comes in through the side of the boat.
“Every wave that was crashing tons of water into that side of the boat was forcing a drop through there,” he said. The drops accumulated until some provisions and pots and pans were swimming in seawater.
The Heavies
The crew on GAII did not expect to find these sea conditions so soon in
their passage. The size of the waves–reported from 10 to 18 feet, with
some waves swelling to 25 feet with crests–is not the sole problem: it is the waves’ confused patterns. Earlier in the week, Wilson reported seas that seemed to arise out of nowhere and descend on the boat.
The Cruel Capes
But the crew’s concern is not just focused on the present tumult onboard: they are wondering what lies ahead.
“It is known that off the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Agulhas that the
appalling seas can break ships in half,” reported Wilson earlier this week. “We are 1300 miles from there, but from our satellite imagery, we know that we are in an eddy of current that must be contributing to this confusion. If this is what it is like off Madagascar, what can it be possibly like off the Cape if we get the wrong weather?”
GAII’s next waypoint is the Cape of Good Hope, where she’ll turn north into the Atlantic Ocean and head for the finish line at New York’s Statue of Liberty.
Follow the Adventurers
Some 360,000 schoolchildren are following this adventure on a daily basis through the sitesALIVE! educational program–and the students are learning about math, weather, problem-solving, and other disciplines in the context of GAII’s live drama. Some of these students hope to be in New York when the vessel reaches its final destination. If GAII can beat Sea Witch’s pace, the boat will arrive in New York sometime the week of May 26.
* * *Tacks and Jibs
HOW THE PUBLIC CAN FOLLOW GREAT AMERICAN II: The website tracking the voyage of Great American II is http://www.sitesalive.com. Daily position reports and a Captain’s Log are posted on the site so classrooms, students, and families who purchase licenses can follow the progress of the boat. For
information, go to http://www.sitesalive.com/oceanchallengelive/.
The saga of GAII will also be published in a number of national, regional, and local papers, in the Newspaper In Education supplements, and tracked on the AOL@SCHOOL program (keyword: sitesalive).
Great American II’s Newspaper In Education participation is supported by the sitesALIVE Foundation. Established in 2002, the Foundation addresses teacher training in computer technology and funding for budget-constrained schools. The mission of the foundation is to enhance K-12 education by promoting the use of technology with real-world, real-time content from around the globe.
Some 360,000 students are expected to follow the voyage of Great American II.
For a chart showing the relative positions of Great American II and Sea
Witch, go to http://www.sitesalive.com/ocl/private/03s/pos/ocl3position.html