For many, New Year’s Day will include familiar festivities such as watching the Rose Bowl and recovering from the night before. But Jan. 1, 2010 is also New Haven’s inauguration ceremony.
The inauguration will be the ninth for Mayor John DeStefano Jr. but the first for Ward 1 Alderman-elect Mike Jones ’11. Jones, who is from Winston-Salem, N.C., said in an e-mail message that he will be in New Haven to attend the ceremony Friday.
Also slated to be sworn in are the city clerk and the rest of the Board of Aldermen, including Ward 10 Alderman-elect Justin Elicker SOM ’10 FES ’10 and Ward 22 Alderman Greg Morehead, who represents students in Ezra Stiles, Morse, Silliman and Timothy Dwight colleges and Swing Space.
The ceremony will take place at noon at the Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School on College Street, according to a press release issued by City Hall spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga. Students from the school will give performances.
Students could soon have a more luxurious ride from New Haven to New York on MTA Metro-North Railroad.
The Connecticut Department of Transportation has ordered 300 new rail cars from Kawasaki Railroad Inc. for the New Haven Line that state officials said will be a big upgrade from the current Metro-North trains, NBC Connecticut reported Thursday.
The new rail cars are currently being built, and the first completed models will be put on the tracks starting this fall. According to NBC Connecticut, Gov. M. Jodi Rell described the trains as “sleek, modern and high tech.” The cars offer increased legroom, larger bathrooms, two bicycle hooks per car, LED screens to display upcoming station stops and power outlets that will enable riders to charge laptops and cell phones during their commutes.
But the new trains are not without a price: the rail cars will cost $700 million in taxpayer dollars. In 2011, there will be a 1.25 percent cost increase for all Metro-North train tickets, and there will be an additional yearly 1 percent fare hike for six years after that, Jim Cameron, chairman of the CT Metro-North/Shoreline East Rail Commuter, told NBC Connecticut.
“That’s a small price to pay for a car like this,” Cameron said.
Watch WTNH’s footage of the new Kawasaki M-8 rail cars below.
Ten years ago, Y2K was the talk of the wired world. The World Wide Web was picking up speed, and the News joined in with an expanded online presence. Since then, terrorists attacked Washington, DC, and New York; Yale approved and then delayed its plans to build two new residential colleges; the endowment grew from $10 billion to $23 billion and then fell back to $17 billion; and the presidency passed from a Yalie to the first African American to hold the office. To look back, the News presents some of our most important, and most read, stories from the past 10 years.
SEPT. 9, 2000 Branford dining woes continue Two months into the school year, the Branford College dining hall was still not fully operational. With construction hang-ups all over the college, the second of the 12 to be renovated, students were up in arms.
SEPT. 12, 2001 Shock of nation’s worst terrorist attack ripples through stunned campus The Yale community held a series of vigils, drawing thousands of students trying to cope with the attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But many students remained stunned, as they had throughout a wrenching day.
FEB. 14, 2002 Former Saybrook master gets 15 years in federal prison Former Saybrook College Master and geology professor Antonio C. Lasaga was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Hartford to 15 years in federal prison on two child pornography counts.
SEPT. 18, 2003 Yale, unions reach accord; three-week strike to end After 19 months of negotiations and a 23-day strike, Yale and union leaders reached tentative agreements on eight-year contracts for nearly 4,000 workers.
NOV. 29, 2004 Elis outsmart Harvard with prank at Game When the Harvard students, faculty and alumni held up their pieces of paper — over and over again — they spelled out “We Suck” in giant block letters the whole stadium could read.
SEPT. 13, 2005 Big Easy students settle in In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Yale agreed to admit qualified students to non-degree and special student programs. Ten students from Tulane and one from the University of New Orleans took Yale classes free of charge.
APRIL 22, 2006 Hu ends U.S. trip with campus speech Chinese President Hu Jintao ended his first visit to the United States with a speech at Yale, where he spoke on China’s strategy for peaceful economic development, as more than 1,000 demonstrators gathered at sites across campus.
JUNE 6, 2007 Feds arrest dozens of illegal immigrants in New Haven raids The Department of Homeland Security conducted an early morning raid of undocumented immigrants in New Haven, arresting dozens and prompting city officials to decry what they believed to be federal retaliation for the city’s approval of the first-in-the-nation municipal ID program.
APRIL 17, 2008 For senior, abortion a medium for art, political discourse Aliza Shvarts ’08 claimed her senior art project documented a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself “as often as possible” while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages.
SEPT. 14, 2009 Female body found at 10 Amistad St. Five days after Annie Le GRD ’13 was last seen, authorities found what they believed to be her body behind a basement wall in the Yale research facility at 10 Amistad St.
The Yale Political Union has a new blog — and the online forum already has 13 posts since its launch last Monday.
The YPU e-mailed all its members Thursday to announce the launch of yalepoliticalunion.blogspot.com, which blog manager Sandy Zhu ’12 said was created to serve as an open forum for inter-party political discourse on topics beyond those chosen at YPU debates.
Two men were shot outside Alpha Delta Pizza on 371 Elm St. early Saturday morning, according to the New Haven Police Department.
Emergency services found 32-year-old Sherman Marks outside the restaurant at 2:34 a.m. with a gunshot wound to his left foot. Paramedics, who reported to the scene after receiving reports that gunshots had been fired in the area, transported Marks to Yale-New Haven Hospital.
Shortly afterward, at 2:40 a.m., 24-year-old Marquis Moore walked into Yale-New Haven Hospital with multiple gunshot wounds to his left thigh area. Moore told authorities that he, like Marks, had sustained his injuries outside Alpha Delta Pizza. Moore had been transported to the hospital by female friends.
Both men’s injuries were non-life threatening, and they are listed in stable condition.
Marks and Moore were not able to identify or describe the shooter. According to the account of one witness, the perpetrator was a 5-foot-11 black male wearing a black-and-gray long-sleeved shirt and a black baseball cap. As of Saturday afternoon, the NHPD had not made any arrests in the shooting.
In the spirit of the season, scene dug up a piece of holiday cheer from the archives. Enjoy.
How could you not love Christmas after this?
By Nick Baldock
Originally published Friday, December 5, 2003
I love Christmas. I love Christmas like a child loves Christmas — more, probably, because my happiness no longer depends on my chances of getting a Digimon Assault Zoid, or whatever the craze is this year. I love the anticipation of Christmas. I love the fact that the line “lo, he comes with clouds descending” extends to 16 syllables and the whole hymn takes half an hour to sing. I love the baffling secrets of Advent calendars, in which each carefully prised-open door reveals an anticlimax indicative of the fact that the creators clearly said, “Sod it, it’s only the eighth of December, let’s put a sock in it.”
I love hearing the same songs over and over. I love the contrived rhymes in “Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!” I love “Silver Bells” so much it makes me want to learn how to waltz. I love forgetting the words to “The 12 Days of Christmas.” I love dreaming of a “white Christmas with every Christmas card I write.” I can’t stand the Jackson Five singing “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.”
I love the mental strain of Christmas shopping. I love working out which of my friends can safely be sent cards with an explicitly religious message. I love the stern regret of Marley’s ghost that “mankind was my business.” I love reading the hideously smug letters sent by desiccated friends of my parents extolling the dubious virtues of their renegade progeny. (My mother, bless her heart, can never bring herself not to write such a letter, but this year we’re going to compose it in heroic couplets.)
I love carol services, especially those in which you’re given a candle and the light symbolically spreads from person to person whilst molten wax dribbles onto your trousers. I love “Silent Night,” with the mysterious character misidentified by an anonymous schoolboy as “Round John Virgin.” I love “Angels from the Realms of Glory” and “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” when they don’t use the modern version. I love the readings in the traditional service of Nine Lessons and Carols, from the prophecies of Isaiah to the tolling of John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the word; and the word was God, and the word was with God.”
I love erecting the Christmas tree and showering pine needles across the carpet. I love identifying the one bulb that causes the fairy lights not to work. I love expending yards of tape attempting to wrap irregularly shaped presents. I love seeing the cat screech into the kitchen after having upset the miniature tree on himself. I love unearthing peculiar decorations we made at school that inexplicably haven’t been thrown away. I love draping tinsel in places so outlandish that it’s only rediscovered in August.
I love eating chocolates so clearly named after Bond girls of the future: Hazel Whirl, Nutty Log, Golden Barrel, Chunky Truffle, Country Fudge, Caramel Velvet and the immortal Praline Moment.
I love Midnight Mass, hallooing “O Come All Ye Faithful!” and hugging everybody “Happy Christmas!” at the end of the service. I love calling a friend in New Zealand when I get home at 1 a.m. I love the letter from Father Christmas, even though two years ago he called me “serious and earnest,” which suggested the onset of senility; his handwriting certainly points that way, although to be fair he is 1,600 years old. (Clearly he needs more assistance from his little helpers — or subordinate clauses, as they’re more accurately known).
I love Christmas dinner. I love wearing a paper hat. I love 15 different types of vegetable. I love eating turkey for the entire following week. I love New Year’s Eve parties. I love the promise of another year and the futility of making resolutions — and the knowledge that it’s only 11 months until it all starts again, and that I’ll be wandering round with a loopy grin singing “Silver Bells” and listening to hear those sleigh bells in the snow.
God rest you merry, gentlemen — and ladies too, this being the season of goodwill.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. See you in 2004.
At the New Haven Superior Court on Monday, the state prosecutor handling the murder of Annie Le GRD ’13 said one of the reasons the case needed a continuance was because of a backlog at the state forensics laboratory.
But Connecticut State Police spokesman Lt. Paul Vance said the Le case is top priority and that all of the DNA evidence needed for the case to proceed has been examined.
“All the materials for the hearings to go forward have been made available,” Vance said.
Vance said the prosecutor, John Waddock, may be waiting for additional reports but that those reports would be on evidence for “elimination purposes,” meaning additional evidence to be checked for DNA matches. Vance said he does not know how long it will take to complete those reports.
Waddock declined to comment on Vance’s remarks but said the state lab has been “terrific in trying to expedite” the examination of materials in the Le case.
Waddock said there is a backlog in the state lab because of the “sheer volume” of materials the lab receives.
“They simply don’t have the resources and manpower,” Waddock said.
Vance acknowledged there is a backlog “to a certain extent.”
Waddock declined to comment further on why he cited the backlog in asking to postpone the hearing. The accused, Raymond Clark III, is due back in court Jan. 26.
Gov. M. Jodi Rell on Wednesday asked Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal LAW ’73 to “immediately pursue legal action” against the federal government after Senate Democrats included a contentious provision in the health care reform bill that would fully reimburse the state of Nebraska for the cost of Medicaid expansion.
In a letter to Blumenthal, Rell said she was appalled by what she called the inequity of the provision — Connecticut is only reimbursed for 50 percent of the cost of Medicaid, the state-administered government healthcare program for the poor — and that she thinks Democrats, who needed Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson’s support for the bill to achieve a filibuster-proof majority, bought his vote.
“Our 50 states should be treated equally,” Rell said. “No preference should be given to one state over another.”
In the letter, Rell estimated that if the Nebraska agreement were applied to Connecticut, the state could receive up to $262 million annually in Medicaid reimbursements. She urged Blumenthal to take action if the bill passes in its current form to ensure that Connecticut receives full reimbursement for the cost of Medicaid expansion.
Blumenthal said in a statement that his office would review the governor’s request but maintained that legal action was premature.
“A lawsuit to stop or modify a pending bill is legally impossible,” the statement said.
Attorneys general from Alabama, Michigan, North Dakota, South Carolina, Texas, Washington and Colorado have discussed court challenges to Nebraska’s special treatment.
The Senate is expected to vote on the bill at 8 a.m. Thursday. If passed, the bill will still have to be reconciled with the version approved in November by the House of Representatives.
Smith, who taught at Yale between 1952 and 1991, focused his research on the role of religion in the American consciousness. His most prominent books included “Experience and God” and “America’s Philosophical Vision.”
Smith continued to live in New Haven after he retired from teaching at Yale, though he died in Arlington, Va. He is survived by his two daughters, Diana Smith and Robin Smith Swanberg, along with one grandchild, according to The New York Times.
Smith’s former student Thomas P. Kasulis wrote the editorial introduction for Smith’s 1997 book “The Recovery of Philosophy in America,” and said that he always admired Smith not only as a scholar but also as a person.
“If I could become someone like John Smith,” Kasulis recalled thinking as a student, “that would not be a bad thing.”
The widening probe into Mayor John DeStefano Jr.’s 2009 campaign finances may soon involve a state agency.
The New Haven Democracy Fund board voted at its Monday meeting to file a complaint with the State Elections Enforcement Commission, asking the state to investigate connections DeStefano’s 2009 reelection campaign may have had with the Elm & Oak political action committee, according to the unofficial minutes of the board’s meeting.
The Democracy Fund was created nearly three years ago to provide public funding for candidates who qualify and agree to abide by the Fund’s rules. So far, the only candidate who has received money from the Fund is DeStefano.
The Fund is looking into whether DeStefano’s campaign was inappropriately involved with the Elm & Oak PAC given that the PAC paid DeStefano’s 2009 campaign manager, Keya Jayaram, and possibly paid for campaign expenses.
Jayaram acknowledged the board’s right to file a complaint with the SEEC but said that she does not think the state will find any “evidence of wrongdoing.”
Democracy Fund Administrator Robert Wechsler said the board decided to go to the state because the state has jurisdiction over both the political action committee and the campaign committee, whereas the board only has jurisdiction over the campaign committee. The Elm & Oak PAC has refused to provide information to the Democracy Fund board.
“The important thing really for the board was they wanted a full investigation and they couldn’t do it,” Wechsler said.
At the meeting, according to the minutes, the attorney for the 2009 DeStefano campaign, Elia Alexiades, said the Democracy Fund did not have the authority to file the complaint given their “rules, bylaws and regulations.” But, the Democracy Fund voted unanimously to send the complaint.
Ben Shaffer ’09, DeStefano’s deputy campaign manager, said he does not think there were any violations committed in DeStefano’s relationship with the political action committee.
“If there is something improper it should be corrected,” Shaffer said. “I think if the state opens an investigation, we’ll finally get to the bottom of this.”
Wechsler said the state’s main form of penalties is fines.
Ducks have taken the battle of the sexes to a whole new level.
To impregnate female ducks as quickly as possible, a certain species of male ducks has evolved corkscrew-shaped penises that shoot out of the ducks’ bodies in less than half a second, Yale researchers have found. To thwart the males, female duck vaginas have evolved to spiral the other way — an adaptation the researchers say is one of the most dramatic examples of the conflict between the sexes to control fertilization.
The finding was officially announced today by Yale researcher Patricia Brennan, who worked with fellow Yale researchers Christopher Clark and Richard Prum on the study. They published their results in the Dec. 23 issue of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B.
Male ducks evolved their quick-ejecting penises — some of which are up to eight inches long — to mate forcibly with females, Brennan said in a press release. But female ducks’ convoluted vaginas, Brennan said, should make it difficult for a male duck to force its way in if the female duck isn’t interested.
Using a set of glass tubes with different shapes to test her hypothesis, Brennan found that male duck penises, which spiral in a counter-clockwise direction, could not extend into a glass tube that spun clockwise like a female duck vagina.
This finding, Brennan said, will give scientists new insights into how sexual conflict could lead to evolution.
