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Ridgewood Library’s film fest inspires action

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Matthew VanDyke will speak on Oct. 24 at the showing of “Point and Shoot.”

Ridgewood Library’s film fest inspires action

OCTOBER 10, 2014    LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2014, 12:31 AM
BY JODI WEINBERGER
STAFF WRITER
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS

It’s a personal connection that was the spark for Matthew VanDyke to leave a comfortable life in Baltimore and fight among the rebels in the Libyan Revolution.

VanDyke had been looking for a change of pace, and a sense of purpose, when he began his travels on a motorcycle through Africa and the Middle East with a plan to make an adventure film along the way. His transformation to freedom fighter came after striking up a friendship with other Libyan rebels who were preparing to fight against the authoritarian rule of Muammar Gaddafi.

The footage he captured, including six months of solitary confinement, was compiled by award-winning documentary filmmaker Marshall Curry into a moving story about a young man who leaves his life unsure of his path to someone who develops what VanDyke said is a “calling” to make a contribution and effect change in a foreign region.

When asked during an interview this week about what would make him put his life on the line for another country, VanDyke said it was a “very personal mission for me.”

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/arts-and-entertainment/movies/film-fest-celebrates-calls-to-action-1.1106500#sthash.gnyPBK5m.dpuf

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Ridgewood housing hearings to continue as planned

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Ridgewood housing hearings to continue as planned

OCTOBER 9, 2014    LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2014, 5:06 PM
BY LAURA HERZOG
STAFF WRITER
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS

Planning Board hearings on multifamily housing will continue moving forward as they have been.

The board announced on Tuesday that it would not be taking the mayor’s suggestion to bifurcate a proposed amendment that would allow for multifamily housing in four downtown zones.

Creating multiple amendments out of the one currently proposed amendment – to allow the board to vote to approve or reject multifamily housing in some but not necessarily all zones – is not totally off the table, but the idea is set aside, since it could have rendered some already-delivered testimony unusable.

The board will again consider amendment modifications, like bifurcation and other ways to split the amendment, once the current process comes to a close, following the village planner’s testimony at the next hearing.

The suggestion that the Planning Board should split the amendment into two – one that would consider housing in the Central Business District’s (CBD) “core” (East Ridgewood Avenue and Franklin Avenue) and another that would consider housing in the CBD’s “periphery” (south of East Ridgewood Avenue and north of Franklin Avenue) – was raised by Mayor Paul Aronsohn at a board meeting last month.

Aronsohn also suggested that the board reduce the proposed allowable density.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/ridgewood-housing-hearings-to-continue-as-planned-1.1106340#sthash.H5OkK9kA.dpuf

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Panelists debate Common Core at forum in Ridgewood

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Panelists debate Common Core at forum in Ridgewood

OCTOBER 9, 2014    LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2014, 5:01 PM
BY BY JODI WEINBERGER
STAFF WRITER
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS

It’s not likely that a two-hour panel of experts both for and against the Common Core state standards and the standardized testing it’s linked to changed any minds of the hundreds of parents who watched the debate at the Ridgewood Library last Thursday.

Early in the event the fire department was brought in to handle the massive outpouring of interest, which significantly exceeded the 212-person capacity of the room. Some went home after being urged to do so by library staff, but most stayed packed tightly next to each other, leaning against the walls or sitting on the floor.

“It reinforced my positive view of the Common Core,” said Sara Erwin following the debate. “Knowing the teachers at the high school in Ridgewood, they’ll make it work.”

Kim Barron, of Mahwah, said “nothing changed my mind in my opposition.”

“I don’t think that the ‘pro’ people made their case,” Barron contended.

Resident-led advocacy group Ridgewood Cares About Schools (RCAS) joined with the Ridgewood League of Women Voters to host the panel of six experts representing both local, state and national voices on the topic.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/education/panelists-debate-common-core-at-forum-in-ridgewood-1.1106337#sthash.9h7kVRqP.dpuf

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Valley Hospital’s suit over rejected expansion plan could prove costly for Ridgewood

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Valley Hospital’s suit over rejected expansion plan could prove costly for Ridgewood

OCTOBER 10, 2014    LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2014, 1:21 AM
BY MARY JO LAYTON
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD

The Valley Hospital’s lawsuit against the Ridgewood Planning Board and Village Council is sparking fears of a costly, protracted legal battle and even some talk of a boycott of the hospital and its physicians.

The hospital, whose proposal to nearly double in size was rejected by the Planning Board in June, has turned to the courts to push the expansion through.

Mayor Paul Aronsohn said the board’s decision should stand. As a member of the Planning Board, he voted against the proposal to change the village master plan to allow the project.

“I fear this lawsuit will not only be divisive, but also expensive,” Aronsohn said Thursday. “By forcing the village to spend scarce tax dollars on a legal defense, this lawsuit runs the risk of undermining important village services and programs.”

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/health-news/valley-suit-may-prove-costly-1.1106700#sthash.IM82mvH9.dpuf

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The ominous math of the Ebola epidemic

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The ominous math of the Ebola epidemic

By Joel Achenbach, Lena H. Sun and Brady Dennis October 9 at 2:15 PM    

When the experts describe the Ebola disaster, they do so with numbers. The statistics include not just the obvious ones, such as caseloads, deaths and the rate of infection, but also the ones that describe the speed of the global response.

Right now, the math still favors the virus.

Global health officials are looking closely at the “reproduction number,” which estimates how many people, on average, will catch the virus from each person stricken with Ebola. The epidemic will begin to decline when that number falls below one. A recent analysis estimated the number at 1.5 to 2.

The number of Ebola cases in West Africa has been doubling about every three weeks. There is little evidence so far that the epidemic is losing momentum.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/the-ominous-math-of-the-ebola-epidemic/2014/10/09/3cad9e76-4fb2-11e4-8c24-487e92bc997b_story.html

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Democratic Freeholders Put on Notice and fire back Alan C. Marcus over letter

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Democratic Freeholders Put on Notice and fire back Alan C. Marcus over letter

OCTOBER 9, 2014    LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2014, 1:21 AM
BY JOHN C. ENSSLIN
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD

The attorney for the Bergen County Freeholders has notified a lawyer for public relations consultant Alan C. Marcus that the freeholders won’t be “intimidated or restrained” by a letter warning them not to make any defamatory statements about Marcus during the current political campaign season or thereafter.

Freeholder Counsel Edward Florio wrote that the letter delivered last week from Marcus’ lawyer “appears to be a baseless preemptive strike designed to chill the free and open exchange of political expression which is germane to the exercise of the Board’s legitimate legislative function.”

Marcus is a former volunteer adviser to Bergen County Executive Kathleen Donovan who served as campaign strategist to her successful 2010 campaign. He also served as chairman of her transition committee.

He came under fire in April 2013 from several Democratic freeholders after the trustees of Bergen Community College awarded his firm a $7,500-a-month public relations contract. Two days later, Marcus turned down the contract and offered to have his firm do the work for free, saying he did not want the college to become “a political piñata.”

Florio was responding to a Sept. 26 letter sent by Joseph B. Fiorenzo, a lawyer representing Marcus, which was delivered to all the freeholders as well as the candidates for county office and the chairmen of the county Democratic and Republican parties.

Fiorenzo’s partner Leon Sokol said Wednesday that the letter was not intended to muzzle or inhibit anyone’s freedom of expression.

“The purpose of the letter that was sent to them was to put everyone on notice as to what the facts are so that if they’re going to be making any political statements that they are factual,” Sokol said.

“That was the only reason. Alan has no interest in any campaign. He’s not involved in any campaign,” Sokol added.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/freeholders-fire-back-over-letter-1.1105691#sthash.aE1NuZe9.dpuf

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Hikers warned not to walk in direction of bear before deadly West Milford attack

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file photo Ridgewood School bear

Hikers warned not to walk in direction of bear before deadly West Milford attack

OCTOBER 8, 2014, 5:14 PM    LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2014, 7:26 PM
BY MINJAE PARK
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD

WEST MILFORD — Shortly before a hiker was killed by a black bear in Apshawa Preserve, he and four companions had been warned by an oncoming couple that the bear had been shadowing them and the hikers should not proceed in that direction, township police  said Wednesday.

The five friends, all young men from Edison, discussed the warning but continued on the trail and came upon the bear, police said in a news release Wednesday. In the events that followed, one of the hikers was killed by the animal, authorities have said.

The latest account released by police is the first narrative of the moments leading up to the attack since the Sept. 21 death of Darsh Patel, a 22-year-old Rutgers student. The state Department of Environmental Protection says it’s the state’s first recorded fatality in a bear attack in more than 150 years.

Police Chief Tim Storbeck had previously said the hikers didn’t taunt the bear, but had not provided more detail.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/hikers-warned-not-to-walk-in-direction-of-bear-before-deadly-west-milford-attack-1.1104939#sthash.fvxEtvFf.dpuf

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Why welfare, minimum wage make it harder for poor Americans to succeed

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Why welfare, minimum wage make it harder for poor Americans to succeed

By John Stossel

Published October 08, 2014
FoxNews.com

Fifty years ago, President Lyndon Johnson declared “War on Poverty.” It sounded great to me.

I was taught at Princeton, “We’re a rich country. All we have to do is tax the rich, and then use that money to create programs that will lift the poor out of poverty.” Government created job-training programs for the strong and expanded social security for the weak.

It seemed to work. The poverty rate dropped from 17 percent to 12 percent in the programs’ first decade. Unfortunately, few people noticed that during the half-decade before the “War,” the rate dropped from 22 percent to 17 percent. Without big government, Americans were already lifting themselves out of poverty!

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/10/08/why-welfare-mimimum-wage-make-it-harder-for-poor-americans-to-succeed/

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No Global Warming for 18 Years

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No Global Warming for 18 Years
October 6, 2014

H. STERLING BURNETT

Climate Change Weekly #141

According to Professor John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama/Huntsville, October 1 marked the 18th anniversary of no warming as measured by Earth’s climate satellite system. Despite a continued and marked rise in emissions and atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, Earth’s temperature has plateaued for the past 18 years.

Christy told CNS News, “That’s basically a fact. There’s not much to comment on.”

Christy and former NASA scientist Roy Spencer compiled raw temperature data collected from 14 instruments aboard various weather satellites. The data show no warming. While all of the climate models used by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted steeply rising temperatures over the past two decades, the data show they were wrong.

The gap between the data and the model projections shows scientists have a very limited understanding of the complexity of the climate system and the factors that affect climate changes. And because the model projections were all wrong in one direction – all projecting ongoing, increasing warming – the assumptions were biased toward predicting warming.

Christy says it is “a fool’s errand” to base government policies affecting millions of Americans and billions of people around the world on these badly flawed models.

CNS News quotes Christy saying:

Our ignorance is simply enormous when it comes to the climate system, and our understanding is certainly not strong and solid enough to make policy about climate because we don’t even know what it’s going to do, so how can we make a policy that says ‘I want to make the climate do something’ when we don’t know what makes the climate do what it does?

https://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2014/10/06/no-global-warming-18-years

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Aides knew of possible White House link to Cartagena, Colombia, prostitution scandal

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Aides knew of possible White House link to Cartagena, Colombia, prostitution scandal
By Carol D. Leonnig and David Nakamura October 8 at 11:40 PM  

As nearly two dozen Secret Service agents and members of the military were punished or fired following a 2012 prostitution scandal in Colombia, Obama administration officials repeatedly denied that anyone from the White House was involved.

But new details drawn from government documents and interviews show that senior White House aides were given information at the time suggesting that a prostitute was an overnight guest in the hotel room of a presidential advance-team member — yet that information was never thoroughly investigated or publicly acknowledged.

The information that the Secret Service shared with the White House included hotel records and firsthand accounts — the same types of evidence the agency and military relied on to determine who in their ranks was involved.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/aides-despite-denials-knew-of-white-house-tie-to-cartagena-prostitution-scandal/2014/10/08/5b98dc90-4e7e-11e4-aa5e-7153e466a02d_story.html

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Swimming champ Charlotte Samuels honored by Ridgewood Village Council

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photo by Boyd Loving

Swimming champ Charlotte Samuels honored by Ridgewood Village Council

OCTOBER 8, 2014, 11:08 PM    LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2014, 11:13 PM
BY CHRIS HARRIS
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD

RIDGEWOOD — Swimming sensation Charlotte Samuels was honored Wednesday night by the Village Council.

The 16-year-old athlete set records recently by swimming across the English Channel, thus becoming the youngest person to complete the Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming that requires the Channel swim, Catalina Channel swim and Manhattan Island Marathon Swim.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/swimming-champ-charlotte-samuels-honored-by-ridgewood-village-council-1.1105011#sthash.rqCuaheh.dpuf

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Newly Vigilant, U.S. Will Screen Fliers for Ebola

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Newly Vigilant, U.S. Will Screen Fliers for Ebola

By SABRINA TAVERNISEOCT. 8, 2014

ATLANTA — Federal health officials will require temperature checks for the first time at five major American airports for people arriving from the three West African countries hardest hit by the deadly Ebolavirus. However, health experts said the measures were more likely to calm a worried public than to prevent many people with Ebola from entering the country.

Still, they constitute the first large-scale attempt to improve security at American ports of entry since the virus arrived on American soil last month.

They are also a notable policy shift at a time of rising concern about the disease. Public health officials had initially resisted the move, saying such checks would be an unnecessary use of thinly stretched resources. But pressure for tougher action mounted. Republicans sharply criticized President Obama for what they called a lax response. Many, including Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, have suggested looking at air travel restrictions from West Africa, something the administration has rejected.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/09/us/newly-vigilant-us-is-to-screen-fliers-for-ebola.html?src=twr&_r=0

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Rutherford industrial tract getting 2 hotels, 500 apartments, retail space

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file photo of “Jim” McGreevey’s Xanadu

Rutherford industrial tract getting 2 hotels, 500 apartments, retail space

OCTOBER 7, 2014, 7:26 PM    LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2014, 10:46 PM
BY LINDA MOSS
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD

North Jersey’s Meadowlands, once home mainly to warehouses and industrial sites, will be getting a new mixed-use redevelopment with two hotels, 500 apartments and retail space in Rutherford.

The New Jersey Meadowlands Commission has approved amendments that Lincoln Equities Group LLC sought to the roughly decade-old redevelopment plan for its Highland Cross project.

Lincoln Equities is ready to proceed with the project, set for 26 acres near the intersection of Routes 17 and 3, said Joel Bergstein, president of the East Rutherford-based real estate firm. The property, a former “brownfield” site, fronts on Veterans Boulevard and is behind the Meadows office complex on Route 17.

Construction is likely to start in about 18 months, Bergstein said.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/rutherford-industrial-tract-getting-2-hotels-500-apartments-retail-space-1.1104204#sthash.utuenaVg.dpuf

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Drones Could Be Next Tool for Ridgewood Real Estate Agents

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file photo of the Ridgewood blog Drone

Drones Could Be Next Tool for Ridgewood Real Estate Agents
Real Estate News 
Jan 2, 2014 
By: Erik Gunther

Scott Gerami says he’s always “had a passion for gadgets and technology,” and after 26 years in real estate, he’s still looking for an edge to make his listings stand out in a crowded marketplace.

Over the past year, the REALTOR® and managing broker of RE/MAX in Naperville, IL, has been tinkering with a camera-equipped drone aircraft to make his real estate photography really soar.

Folks in the Chicago suburb shouldn’t be alarmed if they see Gerami standing outside a home with a control panel, piloting one of his do-it-yourself flying machines overhead.

The intrepid Gerami is not alone. According to The New York Times and Chicago Tribune, the next trend in real estate photography is being deployed in increasing numbers to capture new angles on high-end homes for sale.

While regulatory issues on these unmanned aircraft are still being sorted out, the birds-eye views are enticing to agents such as Gerami. “I’m looking for unique ideas to set myself apart,” he said.

After watching one of Gerami’s drone-driven videos, you’ll get a sense of how the next wave in real estate photography is taking flight. He first built a couple of “rough and crude” devices “from the ground up,” but he’s continued to make refinements that have allowed him to explore new ways of deploying his flying machine.

He said his latest model, his fourth, cost him about $1,200 to build.

https://www.realtor.com/news/bring-in-the-drones-real-estate-from-above/#.UsuDEWRDuMQ

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Confidence in Obama on economy hits new low

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Confidence in Obama on economy hits new low

Confidence in President Obama’s economic policies has reached an all-time low.

Just 24 percent of Americans say they are extremely or quite confident in Obama’s plan for the economy, according to the CNBC All-America Economic survey released Tuesday. In June 2013, 33 percent gave Obama’s economic policies a thumbs-up, which was the previous record low.

Forty-four percent of Americans say they have no confidence in Obama’s economic policies, tying a previous record set in August 2012.

The lingering economic pessimism comes despite signs that the economy is growing at a solid rate and with the unemployment rate at its lowest level in six years. However, wage growth remains muted at best, leaving many Americans feeling as if the economy has not improved much at all since the recession hit.

The persistent discontent is also complicating Obama’s attempts to tout the economic gains under his watch in an effort to help Democrats hold off Republican challengers at the polls. At the same time, he acknowledges much of the lingering concern, pushing for initiatives like increasing the minimum wage and equal pay for women to further bolster Democratic campaigns.

Obama is facing broad concern about his economic policies from all groups. Just 45 percent of Democrats say they have confidence in his policies.

https://thehill.com/policy/finance/219978-confidence-in-obamas-economic-plan-hits-new-low