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Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Expert: Poor guardrails on NY road where 7 died
A man is mourning the deaths of his wife, daughter and five other family members who were killed when their SUV plunged off an overpass near New York City's Bronx Zoo. NBC's Jeff Rossen reports.
By msnbc.com and news services
The section of highway where an accident sent seven members of a Bronx family flying over a guardrail and plummeting to their deaths has narrow lanes, steep hills, tight turns, inadequate guardrails and no breakdown lane, an auto safety group said Monday.
The Bronx River Parkway "lacks modern transportation engineering features," said Robert Sinclair, spokesman for the American Automobile Association's New York City affiliate. He said it was conceived in 1907 and opened in 1925 as "the first limited access multilane highway in the U.S."
Three sections of the parkway in the Bronx, including one at or near the accident site, are on the state Transportation Department's 5 Percent List, a federally mandated report of locations "exhibiting the most severe highway safety needs."
The driver, Maria Gonzalez, clipped a highway divider and damaged a tire Sunday afternoon before her SUV plunged off a highway and six stories down into a ravine on the grounds of the Bronx Zoo, killing three generations of a family, including three children, police said.
The overpass close to the Bronx Zoo has been the site of serious automobile accidents in recent years, although evidence of neglect stretches back into the 1970s, The New York Daily News reported.
Critics contend that city and state officials failed to act despite the string of deaths, according to the the newspaper.
"I've actually walked that parkway on foot. It is an amalgam of patchwork and Band-Aid repairs. You have plates, and it's like the roadway is in sections. One section doesn?t necessarily meet up with the other," lawyer Jeff Korek, who is suing the city after a 2006 wreck at the same spot that killed six people, told the Daily News.
'I don't want to live': Families mourn 7 killed in Bronx crash
"It?s really a section of roadway that has to be improved," he said. "A proper safety review of this roadway would have prevented many deaths, including these latest."
Family members of those killed on Sunday seemed inclined to agree with Korek's assessment.
Juan Gonzalez, the driver's husband, blamed the state, at least in part, for the crash.
"He says it's very careless of the state to let that happen," a relative said, translating Gonzalez's Spanish at a funeral home. "There's been several incidents before this. Accidents such as this and they haven't done anything to prevent this."
Louis Lanzano / AP
Police investigate the destroyed van that plunged over the Bronx River Parkway, Sunday April 29, 2012, in New York. Authorities say the out-of-control van plunged off a roadway near the Bronx Zoo, killing seven people, including three children. (AP Photo/ Louis Lanzano)
The state Department of Transportation's only comment was an email message that said, "We are working closely with all agencies involved to determine the cause of this tragic accident."
On the highway, just before the accident site, is a sign that warns of "Limited Sight Distance" on the six-lane parkway, which runs north-south between the south Bronx and central Westchester County.
Second in past year
The accident was the second in the past year where a car fell off the same stretch of the parkway; the earlier accident wasn't fatal. In 2006, six people were killed on the parkway when one car crossed the median into oncoming traffic.
Police said Maria Gonzalez of the Bronx was driving south at 68 mph when she bumped a concrete barrier separating the north- and southbound lanes. With one tire damaged, her Honda Pilot skittered across three lanes of traffic, hit a 2-foot-high concrete curb and went airborne, clearing a 4-foot-tall guardrail.
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"It is very strange that there is a curb there," Sinclair said. "You don't put curbs on high-speed roadways because they can serve as launching pads, which appears to be what happened here. A big Honda Pilot flew over a 4-foot guardrail."
He said the guardrail should be higher on an elevated roadway.
Gonzalez was driving well above the posted 50 mph limit, but speeding is common at that point and she may have been simply keeping up with traffic, said New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne. He said there was no evidence Gonzalez was texting, on a phone or had been drinking. Toxicology tests are pending.
"There's no evidence of a mechanical failure," he added.
The medical examiner's office on Monday ruled the deaths accidental. Autopsies showed that all seven died from blunt force trauma.
The NYPD's accident investigation squad found "yaw marks" on the road, he said. He said they indicate a vehicle going perpendicular to traffic.
All the victims were wearing seat belts.
They were identified as Jacob Nunez, 85, and Ana Julia Martinez, 81, who were visiting from the Dominican Republic; their daughters, Gonzalez, 45, and Maria Nunez, 39, and three grandchildren. The children were Jocelyn Gonzalez, 10, the daughter of the driver, and Niely Rosario, 7, and Marly Rosario, 3, both daughters of Nunez.
Msnbc.com staff and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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The stigma of being small | Ember Studio
Still, it?s a common complaint of small businesses working in advertising, design, or tech that the team might be too small to do the work. And it?s one that I find difficult to understand when we are inundated with examples of small businesses doing huge things on a daily basis. Here are a few examples of small businesses defying the stigma of their size:
TWiT (This Week in Tech)
In 2005, Leo Laporte and a few friends created a recording of them sitting around discussing technology. In that casual, low-budget homemade recording, a network was inadvertently launched. What began as a weekly internet broadcast distributed under the podcast system of content delivery quickly grew into multiple shows, daily live broadcasts, and big budget ad spots from the likes of Ford, Netflix, Audible, and Citrix. TWiT created an entirely online broadcasting network with a staff of less than 20 and on an operating budget that is a small fraction of their traditional TV broadcast counterparts.
Pinterest
Started in 2008, Pinterest has become a household name and while estimates vary, most put the value of the company at over $1 billion. And with just 7 employees.
Livid Lobster
Similar to TWiT, Livid Lobster is an Internet broadcasting company that produces a few recorded shows and a weekly live show, all distributed online and through podcasting systems. And like TWiT, Livid Lobster is doing things that the large TV broadcast networks simply can?t do. They run a lean business, employing about 10 people (although not all full-time) and produce their shows in a small studio space using relatively inexpensive equipment and techniques to create professional level video content and broadcasts.
Chase Jarvis Inc.
Photographer Chase Jarvis built a name for himself as one of the most sought-after commercial photographers in the business today. No small feat for anyone, especially a photographer working in one of the most competitive creative industries possible. Taking things a few steps further, Chase continued to grow his company and has developed a number of additional products under the Chase Jarvis Inc. name, including a wildly successful iPhone camera app, two books, an online creative education network called creativeLive, and a curator of an ambitious gallery project called?Dasein. He also produces a live web broadcast called Chase Jarvis Live in which he interviews well-known figures from photography, art, music, and entertainment. All on top of an already impressive client list that includes more name-brand companies than even need to be mentioned. Let?s just say you own products by these companies, probably several, including the computer you?re reading this on. And all of this has been done with a staff of 8.
Is there such a thing as ?too small? these days? If a group of people can build multi-million (or billion) dollar businesses with a few computers in a garage, and these success stories are so well-known today, how is it that we still have to struggle through this stigma that some small businesses are too small to deliver high-quality goods and services?
Personally, I?d take the opposite approach these days. I?d prefer to work with companies that are doing a lot with a little. I would rather not pay for the excessive overhead that big businesses are saddled with, and I know that I can get better work faster from a small, nimble, highly creative small business.
Can small businesses to the big jobs? Absolutely. And they can often do it better, faster, and for a lot less money. The question shouldn?t be whether a small business can do the job. It should be, ?What added value does a larger team bring to the table??
Photo by?Scott Beale / Laughing Squid
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Jessica Simpson Gives Birth To Daughter
Fashion mogul and fiancé, Eric Johnson welcome a baby girl, Maxwell, she announced on her website.
By Jocelyn Vena
Jessica Simpson
Photo: Peterson/BuzzFoto/FilmMagic
Jessica Simpson has added a new hyphenate to her resume: She's now a mom! The singer/actress/fashion mogul and her fiancé, Eric Johnson, welcomed a nine-pound-13-ounce baby girl named Maxwell Drew Johnson, she announced on her website.
It's the first child for the couple, who got engaged in November 2010. Simpson confirmed that she was going to be a mom in the punniest way around on Halloween 2011 when, after much speculation about her expanding waistline, she posted a photo of herself and her baby bump dressed up as a "mummy."
Of little Maxwell, she told Elle that she had the baby's name picked out for some time and wanted it to be personal to her. "It's nothing shocking and nothing you'll have to add to the dictionary," she said about her daughter. "Still, when people hear it, they'll know ... why."
As for marrying Johnson, she shared with Jay Leno that she wants to wait until she can wear a properly pretty wedding dress again in a svelte frame. "I want him to be my husband so bad. I do still want to wear the pretty gown and everything, and I have to wait till after the baby. Now she'll just be in the wedding," she said about her plans to marry the former football player and including their baby girl in the wedding ceremony.
Currently, Simpson is one of the mentors on NBC's fashion reality show, "Fashion Star," where she appears alongside fellow fashion entrepreneurs and designers Nicole Richie and John Varvatos. Now, it seems that she has a new mentee in Maxwell.
During promo for the show, shortly before she gave birth, she joked about her very, very large size to Ellen DeGeneres on her talk show, placing all the blame on her fiancé. "Believe it or not, there is only one girl, but I did get knocked up by a baller," she laughed. "A big football player. That's what I get. He's like 6'4"."
In March, Simpson celebrated her impending motherhood with a celeb-attended baby shower. "Grey's Anatomy" star Ellen Pompeo, Jessica Alba and little sister Ashlee all turned up at the baby-friendly fete to bestow her with all the gifts she'll need now that she's added "mom" to her already busy resume.
In the weeks leading up to the birth, it felt like Simpson had long-extended her due date. She even joked about the highly--anticipated birth on her Twitter, writing, "To everyone who keeps congratulating me on the birth of my baby girl...I'm still pregnant!! Don't believe what you read ladies and gents."
Days later she added, "I just woke up from a dream that I wore a leopard caftan in the hospital. Fabulous!! Now I need to find one!" No confirmation if a leopard caftan was worn in the hospital at the time of the birth, but given Simpson's love for style MTV News is sure she looked perfectly stylish.
In the lead-up to the baby's birth, Simpson had many people, including Katy Perry, wondering when she might give birth. Perry joked, "Has Jessica Simpson had that baby yet?! I'm getting anxious."
Weeks later, Perry's anxiety should have gone away, when Simpson's family was spotted entering an L.A.-area hospital on May 1.
Share your well wishes for Jessica and Maxwell in the comments!
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Will 'Bridesmaids' Get Last Laugh At MTV Movie Awards?
Comedy ties with 'Hunger Games' for most nominations, with eight.
By Kevin P. Sullivan
"Bridesmaids" cast
Photo: Universal Pictures
The story of "Bridesmaids" was that of a surprise success that really was anything but surprising.
Based on a hilarious script by star Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo (you know her as the flick's freaked-out airplane passenger), the comedy had a strong showing at South by Southwest and Judd Apatow's producer credit to slap on every poster. A modest hit seemed all but guaranteed, but what it became was a pop-culture phenomenon.
Can women be funny? It was the dumb question that every 24-hour media outlet wanted to ask when "Bridesmaids" premiered, but all anyone had to do for an answer was sit down and watch the movie. Yes, women are funny, and there are few clearer examples than "Bridesmaids."
The movie tells the story of Annie Walker (Wiig), a failed baker who suffers a complete and hilarious breakdown when her best friend Lillian, played by fellow "SNL" alum Maya Rudolph, asks her to be the maid of honor at her wedding.
Wiig stood out as the writer and the fearless leader of a cast that included Rose Byrne, Wendi McLendon-Covey, "The Office" actress Ellie Kemper and scene-stealer Melissa McCarthy. Together, they formed a band of sisters, ready to push the boundaries and do just about anything for a laugh.
So many scenes come to mind: the wedding dress boutique, Wiig's drugged-out and short-lived airplane ride, one of the least-sexy sex scenes you can imagine (co-starring Jon Hamm), Wilson Phillips. It all added up to sore sides and tears of laughter.
"Bridesmaids" might never have reached the top spot at the box office, but helped by strong reviews and even stronger word-of-mouth, it went on to gross $288 million worldwide and finish with the 14th-highest domestic total of the year.
As Apatow's biggest hit yet, the financials for the film secured its status as a bona fide hit, but it wasn't until January of this year that the big picture came into view: "Bridesmaids" scored two Oscar nominations, an impressive achievement for the typically drama-minded Academy. The awards show honored both the screenplay and McCarthy's breakout performance.
With the 2012 MTV Movie Awards ahead, "Bridesmaids" will face new challenges. Competing against the likes of "The Hunger Games," "Harry Potter" and "Twilight," "Bridesmaids" is a comedy in a field full of dramas, but that didn't stop it from racking up eight nods, tying with "Hunger Games" for the most nominations. "Bridesmaids" is up for the top prizes — Movie of the Year and Best Cast — and individual nominations for Wiig for Female Performance and McCarthy for Breakthrough. The two actresses will also compete against each other for Best Comedic Performance.
Originally heralded as a film that shows off the power of women in comedy, "Bridesmaids" refused to be pinned down and instead displayed the new possibilities of comedy as a whole.
Head over to MovieAwards.MTV.com to vote for your favorite flicks now! The 21st annual MTV Movie Awards air live Sunday, June 3, at 9 p.m. ET.
How will "Bridesmaids" fare at the MTV Movie Awards? Share your predictions below!
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Tuesday, May 1, 2012
What Everyone Investing In Stocks And Shares Should Know ...
Towards the inexperienced, the notion of being involved in the stock exchange can be quite intimidating and overwhelming. There is certainly a whole lot to learn and alsoo, obviously, a fear of shedding funds. The guidelines in the following paragraphs will assist you to spend smartly making a profit.
Damaged stocks can also work, yet not damaged organizations. A downturn that?s short term is a good time to purchase at the great value. Some quick-word declines in the buying price of a company?s inventory could be on account of transient troubles past the company?s control, like a lack of fabric or possibly a labor lack. But, businesses that have been through an economic scandal may well never recuperate.
If your company includes a good shock, you need to realize that a different one will probably follow. This too keeps real for terrible surprises. Bear in mind this when you buy an organization. Do not forget that events are linked which patterns could keep on reiterating their selves.
Before agreeing to your specific brokerage, make sure you be aware of the service fees involved. Search for exiting along with access costs. As time passes, these items may add up, so verify to become safe.
You may also desire to experiment with quick selling. This is when you bank loan your gives to other investors. In other words, a trader will obtain offers and key in in commitment to supply an equal quantity of gives at the establish date down the road. The investor can use the loaned shares right away, after which (hopefully) re-get them later on the cheap.
Committing into stocks and shares through pension strategies such as your 401k strategy may well be an intelligent action to take. Though, you won?t gain access to these cash without having charges until finally pension, the plus is you help save a lot of money on taxation in these kinds of profiles In addition, getting your retirement resources on the market will help you expand a home egg cell for the future.
An over-all rule for novices is to create an income quantity instead of a marginal account. Funds accounts tend to be much less dangerous because you could manage the amount of it you get rid of and they are generally excellent in mastering the fundamentals linked to stock market trading.
Just before dipping your toe in stocks and shares, study it very carefully. Studying the stock exchange at size is usually recommended just before acquiring the first purchase. If it?s feasible, you should keep close track of the motion tendencies more than an a few-12 months periods, making use of historical details for prior yrs as you can see in shape. Should you hang on long enough, you will understand just how the marketplace functions and you may be making the best judgements.
Grasp the skill of chance identification. There may be generally some chance if you make investments. Ties most often have the lowest level of chance, accompanied by mutual resources and then shares. It makes no difference the kind of expense, all types have some kind of threat concerned. Ensure you are able to see simply how much threat is associated with your expense.
That?s all it takes! You might have figured out the fundamental concepts of successful investing, and also you know why it is advisable to invest your cash. When you could have not planned forward the maximum amount of on your youth, sometimes organizing is important. Now escape there, utilize what you?ve acquired and initiate creating wealth.
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