A Burlington man faces attempted murder charges after allegedly attacking a woman with a machete.
“It’s pretty scary yes,” said Carl Mcmahon.
Mcmahon is staying at Harbor Place in Shelburne. Harbor Place provides temporary emergency housing with services, run by the Champlain Housing Trust. Early Friday, police responded to calls of a man with a knife smashing out car windows.
“On arrival we found that this person who was reported to have a knife, had actually attacked an elderly female,” said Corporal Jon Marcoux of Shelburne Police.
That female, was a 73-year-old Meals on Wheels volunteer who was dropping off meals on the regular route. It is unclear what provoked the attack, but police say 32-year-old Abukar Ibrahim was the one with a machete. He attacked the woman who sustained multiple injuries. She was sent to the hospital, and later released.
“He barricaded himself in the room. After two and a half hours, he came out on his own,” said Marcoux.
Corporal Marcoux says the Shelburne Police Department gets a fair number of calls, responding to Harbor Place.
“I think anytime you put a lot of people in a place, not necessarily Harbor Place, but any place, the more contact people have with others, especially under trying circumstances, I think generates more calls,” he said.
Just a couple of steps away from Harbor Place is the Natural Mattress Company. The owner says he sees police activity often, but says it hasn’t negatively affected his business.
“I don’t think most of my customers probably know that this is going on behind there, so I don’t really think it effects business, or that people are avoiding my store because it’s there,” said Michael Hassenberg; owner of the Natural Mattress Company.
When it comes to their safety, the reaction was mixed amongst the people we spoke with at the temporary housing facility.
“I’ve actually never felt safer, because this place has cameras all around the entire hotel and you could have someone knocking at your door and the office is calling you before you can even get to the door to answer it,” said Carol Van Wormer.
“I feel not safe,” said Mcmahon.
Ibrahim is scheduled to be arraigned on Monday, on the charge of attempted murder. He is being held at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility.
Why don’t Trey Gowdy talk to someone about getting these SOB’s locked up?
This damn government is so damn corrupt that it is not possible to have a proper investigation. How is it possible that no one is being indicted and locked up. This video proves the FBI and the DOJ is corrupt all the way up to Barack Obama.
Will anyone ever get locked up for all of this corrupt behavior.
This is what liberals do. They waste taxpayers damn money.
DeWitt, N.Y. — In 2014, the development arm of SUNY Polytechnic Institute agreed to build, with $90 million in state money, a factory in DeWitt for an LED light bulb manufacturer.
The company, California-based Soraa, agreed to create 250 full-time, high-tech jobs at Collamer Crossing Business Park and to encourage Soraa contractors and suppliers to create another 170 jobs in Central New York.
In return, the company would be allowed to lease the factory for $1 a month for 10 years.
But the deal with SUNY Poly’s Fort Schuyler Management Corp. did not require Soraa to spend any of its own money to build or equip the factory. And it contained no penalties if the company did not occupy the building or create the promised jobs. The company never even signed a lease.
So when Soraa recently said it no longer needed the factory and pulled out of the deal just as the state was completing construction of the 82,000-square-foot building, there was nothing the state could do about it.
The state was left with a factory, nearly fully equipped, but no company to use it.
One expert said using state money to custom-build a factory for a specific tenant is bad policy.
Obama did the same thing with Solyndra and liberals said nothing. Look at the beautiful facility that Socialist liberals built for nothing.
“You have a situation where the state could potentially wind up with a white elephant,” said John Bacheller, former head of policy and research for the state’s economic development office, Empire State Development. “I think it’s too much risk. When you provide a grant, the risk is limited to the amount of the grant.”
The state has found another company, but taxpayers will have to spend up to another $15 million to properly equip the building for the new company.
This time, state officials say they won’t repeat the mistake made in DeWitt again.
Empire State Development, a state economic development agency, took over the project from SUNY Poly a year ago after the college’s president, Alain Kaloyeros, was arrested on corruption charges and resigned from the university. ESD said a deal with a new tenant will include financial penalties if the company fails to meet its job commitments.
Alain Kaloyeros, seen here during a visit to Syracuse Media Group in 2015, was president of SUNY Polytechnic Institute when the college agreed to build a $90 million factory in DeWitt for Soraa, a California-based LED lighting manufacturer. He resigned in 2016 after he was arrested on corruption charges. (Ellen M. Blalock | syracuse.com)
Jason Conwall, a spokesman for ESD, said the penalties, or “clawbacks,” will be included in a grant disbursement agreement with NexGen Power Systems, a California start-up. ESD’s board of directors voted Dec. 21 to approve a grant of up to $15 million to NexGen for tooling and equipment for the factory.
In return, the company has pledged to create 290 full-time, high-tech jobs for the production of semiconductors at the facility and agreed to invest $40 million of its own money into the building. It will pay rent of $1 the first year and increasing amounts up to full market value in the 10th year, ESD officials said.
Conwall said the grant will be contingent on the company meeting its job commitments. Details of the grant’s terms will not be available until the grant disbursement agreement is executed later this month, but they will follow ESD’s standard practice of requiring companies to return a grant, or portions of it, if they fail to meet hiring milestones, he said.
ESD’s agreements generally require a company to meet a certain minimum amount of their job commitments within a specified period or be required to return a grant. In some cases, a company is required to return only a portion of the money if it falls just a little short of its hiring commitments.
ESD officials said no such “clawbacks” were put into SUNY Poly’s deal with Soraa because none of the $90 million in state grants used to build the factory went directly to Soraa. All of the money went into the building, which is still owned by the state, so there was no money to take back from the company, they said.
Former state budget director Robert Megna, who was appointed president of the non-profit Fort Schuyler Management Corp. in February 2017 following Kaloyeros’s departure, said the fact that Fort Schuyler retained ownership of the building was a good thing.
“While we can’t speak to the reasoning behind all the terms of the agreement with Soraa, which were made by the previous leadership, the facility was constructed to accommodate Soraa’s gallium nitride lighting business and no funding was provided to Soraa,” he said in a statement.
“All state funds were provided to the not-for-profit Fort Schuyler Management Corporation, and the building and the equipment are all owned by FSMC on behalf of New York State,” he said. “This model enabled the state to quickly adjust to changes in a very dynamic industry and make the facility available to NexGen for its production of gallium nitride semiconductor devices, modules and systems.”
Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks at the Central New York Hub for Emerging Nano Technologies in DeWitt on Oct. 29, 2015, during his announcement LED lighting manufacturer Soraa would operate a state-built, $90 million factory in DeWitt. (Stephen D. Cannerelli | syracuse.com)
Conwall said Empire State Development takes a much different approach. It provides grants to assist companies with the cost of building facilities in the state, but it does not go the riskier route of building entire factories for them, he said.
He said ESD was fortunate to have found a new tenant to go into the DeWitt building. NexGen plans to make semiconductor power devices from gallium nitride, the same material that Soraa uses to make LED lighting. That means that NexGen can use much of the equipment already installed in the factory.
“It worked out because we owned the facility and found another tenant quickly that aligned really well,” the ESD spokesman said.
Though ESD has agreed to provide up to $15 million to NexGen for the purchase of tools and equipment, some of the $7 million not yet spent from the original $90 million in grants for the building could be used toward that $15 million commitment, he said. (The state had spent about $83 million of the $90 million on the factory and equipment by the time Soraa pulled out, officials said.)
NexGen was formed in California last year to make semiconductors for the electronics industry. It does not yet manufacture anything. The DeWitt facility will be its first manufacturing operation.
Dinesh Ramanathan, NexGen’s president and CEO and one of its founders, also was CEO of Avogy Inc., a Silicon Valley start-up that planned to make power sources for electronic devices such as computers.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced in 2016 that Avogy had committed to moving from California to a state-owned cleanroom facility in Rochester that the state agreed to upgrade with a $35 million investment of state money. The state never made the investment, however, and Avogy never made the move.
Avogy went out of business later in 2016. NexGen bought its technology and is starting up with new money from investors, according to Ramanathan.
NexGen has not publicly disclosed who its investors are.
Prior to Avogy, Ramanathan served as the executive vice president at Cypress Semiconductor for almost nine years, where he managed the company’s Programmable Systems Division and its Data Communications Division, according to NexGen’s website.
Prior to joining Cypress, Ramanathan held senior marketing and engineering positions at Raza Microelectronics; Raza Foundries, described as an “incubating venture capital company”; and Forte Design Systems, an electronic design automation company, according to the website.
ESD officials said they are confident that NexGen will succeed in DeWitt.
“NexGen is led by a management team and investors with a proven record and decades of combined experience building and operating high-tech businesses,” Empire State Development President, CEO and Commissioner Howard Zemsky said in a statement. “This gives us the confidence that the company will meet its commitment to bring hundreds of new, good-paying jobs to Central New York.”
The state may be fortunate in this case if NexGen is able to use the factory constructed for Soraa. But custom-built factories can be hard to sell or lease if a tenant walks away, Bacheller said.
The state should always require companies to invest more money into a project than the state does so they have a strong motivation to stick around and make the development work, he said.
“You always want the company to have skin in the game,” he said.
He said SUNY Poly may also have made a mistake constructing a factory for an LED light bulb maker, given the fact that LED light bulb production is increasingly dominated by low-cost Chinese manufacturers who have brought the price of LED bulbs almost down to that of incandescents.
“Unless you’re in a niche that the Chinese aren’t in, it’s the kind of business that is very risky,” he said.
NexGen says its semiconductor devices can be used in a wide array of applications such as LED power supplies, solar inverters, data centers and automotive applications.
The company will be getting the use of a building with up to $105 million in state money invested in it. NexGen’s capital investment will be far less by comparison – $40 million.
Bacheller said the state appears to be taking a substantial risk with NexGen, given that the company is a start-up with no manufacturing or sales track record of its own. However, he said Empire State Development may be making the best deal it could after inheriting a bad situation from SUNY Poly.
“They’ve already got a building up and they’re stuck with it,” he said.
Soraa walks away from $90M factory that NY built; $15M more brings new tenant
Soraa said they would not come without “tens of millions” in additional money from NY state.
Liberals can’t stop calling Trump Crazy and and idiot but he is winning.
CNN’s Jake Tapper Cuts Off Stephen Miller: ‘I’ve Wasted Enough of My Viewers’ Time’
by PAM KEY7 Jan 2018
Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” White House adviser Stephen Miller had a heated interview with host Jake Tapper over Michael Wolff’s book “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.”
Miller said, “The book is best understood as a work of very poorly written fiction.”
Things got heated when Miller said, “Your network’s been going 24/7 with all the salacious coverage and I know it brings a lot of you guys a lot of joy to try to stick the knife in, but the reality is that page after page after page of the book is purely false. I see sections of the book where events I participated in are described and I have firsthand knowledge as they’re described they’re completely and utterly fraudulent.”
Tapper shot back, “Nobody at CNN is sticking knives in anybody.”
After several exchanges where the pair talked over each other, Tapper said, “The only person who has called themselves a genius in the last week is a president.”
Miller said, “Which happens to be a true statement. a self-made billionaire who revolutionized — ”
Tapper quipped, “I’m sure he’s watching and he’s happy you said that.”
Miller shot back “You can be as condescending as you want.”
At one point in the interview, Tapper hushed his guest: “Stephen, settle down, settle down. Calm down.”
Tapper ended the interview saying, “I think I’ve wasted enough of my viewers’ time.”
After the segment aired, President Trump tweeted that Miller “destroyed” Tapper.
Jake Tapper of Fake News CNN just got destroyed in his interview with Stephen Miller of the Trump Administration. Watch the hatred and unfairness of this CNN flunky!
According to Arab paper, former leader’s comments against Rouhani government amid rallies have led authorities to seek to place him under house arrest
Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been arrested by authorities for allegedly inciting unrest against the government, the London-based daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported Saturday, citing “reliable sources in Tehran.”
The newspaper said that Ahmadinejad, during a visit to the western city of Bushehr on December 28, said, “Some of the current leaders live detached from the problems and concerns of the people, and do not know anything about the reality of society.”
He supposedly added that Iran was suffering from “mismanagement” and that the government of President Hassan Rouhani “believes that they own the land and that the people are an ignorant society.”
According to Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Ahmadinejad’s comments, which came as anti-government protests over the economy were heating up, led to his arrest.
The newspaper said authorities now seek to impose house arrest on the former president.
The Times of Israel could not independently confirm the report.
Iran’s state TV on Saturday showed pro-government rallies in several cities, starting with Amol, in the northern province of Mazandaram, with hundreds of people waving the Iranian flag and chanting slogans against the US and Israel.
Iranian worshippers chant slogans during a rally against anti-government protestors after the Friday prayer ceremony in Tehran, Iran, on January 5, 2018. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
State TV described the rally as a “response to rioters and supporters of the riots.” Other pro-government demonstrations were held in Shahin Dezh, in West Azarbaijan province bordering Turkey; the city of Semnan, in the northern Semnan Province; and Shadegan, in the southern Khouzestan Province near Iraq.
The rallies are meant to be a show of force against anti-government protests that broke out in Mashhad, Iran’s second largest city, on December 28, and have since spread to several other cities and towns. The protests were sparked by a hike in food prices amid soaring unemployment. Some demonstrators have called for the government’s overthrow.
At least 21 people have been killed, and hundreds have been arrested. Large pro-government rallies have been held in response, and officials have blamed the anti-government unrest on foreign meddling.
BETHLEHEM (AFP) — Palestinians protesting church land sales to Israelis scuffled with Palestinian police in Bethlehem Saturday as they tried to block the arrival of the Holy Land’s Greek Orthodox patriarch for Christmas celebrations.
Demonstrators scuffled with club-wielding Palestinian security forces and banged on the sides of police escort vehicles but patriarch Theophilos III passed safely in his black limousine to the Church of the Nativity for the traditional Orthodox Christmas eve observance.]
Official Palestinian news agency WAFA said he joined heads of the Syrian and Coptic Orthodox churches in the ancient church, which Christians believe marks the birthplace of Jesus.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s office told AFP he would attend midnight mass celebrated by Theophilos at the church on Saturday and would present him with a model of Jerusalem’s Holy Sepulchre church as a Christmas gift.
The Bethlehem, Beit Sahour, and Beit Jala municipalities in the West Bank had called for a boycott over the Greek Orthodox church allegedly allowing controversial sales of its property in mainly Palestinian East Jerusalem to groups aiding Jewish settlement there.
They had urged the public to stay away but it was not immediately known if there was a significant drop in attendance compared to previous days or what effect driving rain in Bethlehem may have had.
At least some official invitees were at the church to welcome Theophilos, WAFA said on its English-language website.
Palestinian policemen push away protesters from the convoy of Jerusalem’s Greek Orthodox patriarch Theophilos III in the West Bank town of Bethlehem on January 6, 2018 ahead of a Christmas service according to the Eastern Orthodox calendar. (AFP PHOTO / Musa AL SHAER)
“He was received by Palestinian officials, including the governor of Bethlehem Jibrin Bakri and Minister of Tourism Rola Mayaya among others,” it wrote.
The mayor of the Christian town of Beit Jala, near Bethlehem, earlier said he wanted Theophilos removed from his post over the controversial land sales.
“Our move today is a protest against the patriarch over the sale of land of the Orthodox,” mayor Nicola Khamis told AFP.
The church elected Theophilos in 2005 after dismissing his predecessor Irineos over an alleged multi-million-dollar sale of church land to Jewish buyers.
But Khamis says the practice continues.
“Theophilos ignored all the demands and continued selling this land even if the [Christian] majority is against it,” he said.
“Today we are taking a stand to say the patriarch must stop the selling of the land.”
Property transactions with Jewish buyers anger Palestinians, who see East Jerusalem as the capital of their promised state.
In August, Theophilos himself denounced an Israeli court ruling upholding deals made before his appointment between the church and Israeli pro-settlement organization Ateret Cohanim for two hotel properties near the Jaffa Gate entrance to the Old City of Jerusalem.
Palestinian protesters shout slogans as the convoy of Jerusalem’s Greek Orthodox patriarch Theophilos III arrives in the West Bank town of Bethlehem on January 6, 2018 ahead of a Christmas service according to the Eastern Orthodox calendar. (AFP PHOTO / Musa AL SHAER
He said the church would appeal to Israel’s supreme court over the ruling.
According to Hebrew media, the 2004 agreements were for 99-year leases on hotel properties near Jaffa Gate.
The church went to court against Ateret Cohanim, claiming the deals were signed illegally and without its authorization.
The Greek Orthodox Church is the largest and wealthiest Christian Church in Israel.
Its Jerusalem patriarchate commands massive wealth, largely in land portfolios in Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan.
Most Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas on January 7, while those in the West observe it on December 25 because of differences between the Julian and Gregorian calendars.
Grappling with tens of millions of dollars of debt, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem has managed to balance its books by selling and leasing plots to a number of overseas companies all headed by Jewish investors, senior figures in the Greek Orthodox Church told The Times of Israel recently.
Liberals are the most racist and violent in the country.
Ajit Pai, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, canceled a speaking engagement at a major technology industry event days before it was scheduled to place because of death threats, according to a report Thursday.
Two unnamed agency sources told Recode why Pai pulled the appearance at the annual Consumer Electronics Show Las Vegas on Jan. 9 one day after it was reported he had canceled.
Entrepreneur Elevator Pitch Ep12: Glamping, Stress Relievers, Burgers and More!
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The report said that federal law enforcement had looked into the situation and other FCC offices would be briefed.
While the FBI did not immediately respond to Recode, a spokesperson for the Consumer Technology Association, which hosts the event, declined to comment, and an FCC spokesman for Pai said the agency does “not comment on security measures or concerns.”
The nature of the threats are unclear, but it is the second time in recent weeks Pai has dealt with imminent security concerns.
The FCC briefly halted its meeting in December and evacuated the room in response to a security scare as the commissioners were about to vote to repeal the Obama-era net neutrality rules.
Within minutes the meeting reconvened and the agency successfully killed the Internet regulations on a party-line vote, despite a great deal of opposition from Democrats, consumers, and technology giants.
Pai, who spearheaded the repeal effort, also received death threats during the public comment period.
