Puzo Family Fires Back at Studio in "Godfather" Suit

New York City - The estate of "The Godfather" author Mario Puzo has fired back at movie studio Paramount Pictures with a $10 million counterclaim over Paramount's attempts to block a new book in the Mafia saga.

Lawyers for the estate of Puzo also sought to end Paramount's rights to the 1969 best-seller, which went on to become an Oscar-winning movie released by the studio.

"Mario Puzo brought vast wealth to Paramount at a time when they desperately needed it. Now that he's gone, Paramount's trying to deprive his children of the rights he specifically reserved," Bertram Fields, an attorney for the Puzo family, said in a statement on Tuesday.

"I promised Mario I'd protect his kids from this kind of reprehensible conduct. Paramount wanted a war, and they're going to get one - only the stakes will be much higher than they thought," Fields added.

Paramount filed a lawsuit in Manhattan federal court in February that accused Puzo's heirs of approving sequels to "The Godfather" without the studio's permission and in violation of earlier agreements.

A third book "The Family Corleone" is due to be published in May. It is billed as an all-new prequel to "The Godfather" set in New York in 1933.

The counterclaim, filed on Monday, said Puzo's estate had informed Paramount several times of the upcoming publication of "The Family Corleone" and noted that the movie studio had not objected to the book "The Godfather's Revenge" in 2006.

Moreover, the estate said, Puzo received only "minimal payment" from Paramount for the rights to "The Godfather" and that the agreement at the time excluded rights to any further books that include the characters from "The Godfather" in new and different situations.

"The Puzo Estate, representing the children of Mario Puzo, needs no permission from Paramount to use the title of their father's novel or to publish a sequel novel or to use what Paramount claims are 'the Godfather works'," the counterclaim said.

Attorneys asked the court to terminate the rights of Paramount to the original "The Godfather" book and asked for $10 million in damages.

Paramount could not immediately be reached for comment on Tuesday.

Mario Puzo died in 1999. The two sequels to the story of the Corleone Mafia family that have been published since his death were written by U.S. author Mark Winegardner, and the forthcoming third novel is written by Ed Falco.

A New Species in New York Was Croaking in Plain Sight

By Lisa W. Foderaro

New York City - The croak gave it away.

On a foray into the wilds of Staten Island in 2009, Jeremy A. Feinberg, a doctoral candidate in ecology and evolution at Rutgers University, heard something strange as he listened for the distinctive mating call of the southern leopard frog — usually a repetitive chuckle. But this was a single cluck.

“I started hearing these calls, and I realized they were really distinct,” Mr. Feinberg said.

Three years later, Mr. Feinberg and four other scientists who joined him in multiple field and laboratory studies, are finally comfortable making their declaration: a new species of leopard frog — as yet unnamed — has been identified in New York City and a number of surrounding counties.

The find is surprising on a number of fronts, not least of which is that the new frog was hiding in plain sight in one of the most populated centers in the world. (Most new species are found in remote areas.) And it illustrates the power of genetic testing in parsing more finely those animals that may be nearly identical in appearance, but are, in fact, of different species.

There are more than a dozen leopard frogs, ranging from Canada to Central America. Medium in size, with dark spots on a tan, olive or green background, they gravitate toward grassy meadows and breed in ponds or pools. The researchers say that the new frog species was confused for a long time with the southern leopard frog, which it closely resembles.

Its known range is limited, more or less, to commuting distance from Midtown Manhattan, stretching from around Trenton, N.J., in the south, to Putnam County, N.Y., to the north.

“Here is a brand-new species, and it’s not a species of bacteria or a barely visible insect,” said H. Bradley Shaffer, a professor in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California at Los Angeles. “It’s a big amphibian, and kids have probably been catching and playing with it for years,” he said. “Even in an urban center like New York, where herpetologists have tromped all over for a century or more, there can be new species out there. That shows the importance of urban areas in terms of conservation and biodiversity.”

The findings are to be published in an issue of the journal Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, but are currently available online. Much of the genetic analysis was performed in Professor Shaffer’s laboratory at the University of California at Davis, where he worked until recently.

There, with his encouragement, Catherine E. Newman, an evolutionary biologist who had done her master’s thesis on the southern leopard frog, studied the frog’s DNA, taken from samples sent by Mr. Feinberg and others. She compared it with the DNA of southern and northern leopard frogs, which range widely north and south of New York City.

Local amphibian fans can be forgiven for not noticing the new frog’s unique nature. “I wouldn’t know which one I was holding because they all look so similar,” said Ms. Newman, who is now pursuing her Ph.D. at Louisiana State University. “But all of our results showed this one’s lineage is very clearly genetically distinct.”

So far, Mr. Feinberg has positively identified the new species on Staten Island, although he says it probably once inhabited Manhattan and the other boroughs. He has found specimens in the Meadowlands and the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in New Jersey, and Putnam and Orange Counties in New York. Some frogs were also collected in central Connecticut.

“It’s a very small range and even if we went back 400 to 500 years, it probably would have been considered a rare animal,” he said.

The dead center of the known range, oddly, is near Yankee Stadium, even though the frog has not yet been found in the Bronx.

“I think that at this point it’s very important to do additional surveys,” Professor Shaffer said. The frog’s range “may be no wider than we have found or it may be wider.”

Over the years, a few other scientists almost identified the new species, but fell short. In 1936, one esteemed herpetologist wrote that he suspected there was a third frog species in the general New York City area. But he did not investigate further.

In the early 1970s, another scientist went on a listening tour of the various leopard frogs’ mating calls while driving from Florida to the Northeast. “She missed this entire area,” Mr. Feinberg said. “She might have been driving on I-95 and just skipped over the weird call area.”

As the lead author on a second paper that is to explore the physical characteristics and call of the new frog, Mr. Feinberg will have the honor of naming rights, choosing a scientific and common name. For now he’s not letting the frog out of the bag.

“I’ve given it lots of thought,” he said. “Part of me has always wanted to call these New York leopard frogs, but I think people in New Jersey and Connecticut will protest. I have to balance the politics with the naming.”

Scientists See Rise in Tornado-creating Conditions

By Sharon Begley

Worldwide - When at least 80 tornadoes rampaged across the United States, from the Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico, last Friday, it was more than is typically observed during the entire month of March, tracking firm AccuWeather.com reported on Monday.

According to some climate scientists, such earlier-than-normal outbreaks of tornadoes, which typically peak in the spring, will become the norm as the planet warms.

"As spring moves up a week or two, tornado season will start in February instead of waiting for April," said climatologist Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Whether climate change will also affect the frequency or severity of tornadoes, however, remains very much an open question, and one that has received surprisingly little study.

"There are only a handful of papers, even to this day," said atmospheric scientist Robert Trapp of Purdue University, who led a pioneering 2007 study of tornadoes and climate change.

"Some of us think we should be paying more attention to it," said atmospheric physicist Anthony Del Genio of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, part of NASA.

The scientific challenge is this: the two conditions necessary to spawn a twister are expected to be affected in opposite ways. A warmer climate will likely boost the intensity of thunderstorms but could dampen wind shear, the increase of wind speed at higher altitudes, researchers say.

Tomorrow's thunderstorms will pack a bigger wallop, but may strike less frequently than they have historically, explained Del Genio.

"As we go to a warmer atmosphere, storms - which transfer energy from one region to another - somehow figure out how to do that more efficiently," he said. As a result, thunderstorms transfer more energy per outbreak, and so have to make such transfers less often.

In a 2011 paper, Del Genio calculated that, "especially in the central and eastern United States, we can expect a few more days per month with conditions favorable to severe thunderstorm occurrence" by the latter part of this century if the global climate grows warmer.

Indeed, the world has been experiencing more violent storms since 1970, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in its most recent assessment.

EXTENDING TORNADOES' PATH

Purdue's Trapp and colleagues got a similar result in their 2007 study, which they confirmed in research published in 2009 and 2011. "The number of days when conditions exist to form tornadoes is expected to increase" as the world warms, he said.

In addition, they found, regions near the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic coasts not normally associated with tornadoes will experience tornado-making weather more frequently. They projected a doubling in the number of days with such conditions in Atlanta and New York City, for instance.

More powerful thunderstorms would be expected to produce more tornadoes, but wind shear could prove a mitigating factor.

Because climate change is not uniform, Del Genio wrote in the 2011 paper, "in the lower troposphere, the temperature difference between low and high latitudes decreases as the planet warms, creating less wind shear."

Other scientists are not so sure, and they see a surge in tornadoes last year as ominous. April 2011 was the most active tornado month on record, with 753, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), compared to the previous record of 267 in April 1974.

"I have no doubt that there will be many times when wind shear is plenty strong to create a tornado," said Trenberth.

That is what Trapp's team concluded in their 2007 study. "Over most of the United States," they wrote, the increase in the power of thunderstorms will "more than compensate for the relative decreases in shear."
As a result, "the environment would still be considered favorable for severe convection" of the kind that creates tornadoes.

From March to May the projected increase in severe storms is "largest over a 'tornado-alley'-like region extending northward from Texas," Trapp found. From June through August, the eastern half of the country is projected to experience such an increase.

If there are more days in the future when wind shear is too weak to produce a tornado from a thunderstorm, said Trenberth, then "the frequency of tornadoes may decrease but the average intensity might increase. You could have a doozy of an outbreak, and then they could go away for a while."

On average, about 800 tornados are reported annually in the United States. About 70 percent are "weak," finds NOAA, with winds less than 110 mph. Just under 29 percent are "strong," with winds between 110 and 205 mph. Only 2 percent of all tornadoes are what NOAA characterizes as "violent," with winds in excess of 205 mph, but they account for 70 percent of all twister deaths.

New York Serial Killer Sentenced to 200 years in Prison

New York City - Maksim Gelman, a native of Ukraine, was unapologetic and rude while receiving his sentence on January 17. The 24-year-old pled guilty in November of last year to killing four people and injuring four others.  He showed so impolite during his sentencing at one point he had to be removed from the courtroom.

Gelman's cackling, along with his insulting of Judge Vincent Del Giudice, led the official to comment to Gelman, "You are a violent predator and sociopath."

During the two-day murder spree that started February 11 in Brooklyn, an irate Gelman stabbed his stepfather after becoming angry he couldn't use his mother's car. After stealing the vehicle, Gelman drove to Yelena Bulchenko's home.

The knife Gelman used to stab his victims

Friends of Bulchenko's stated that Gelman was obsessed with his girlfriend and took the break-up badly. relationship. An enraged Gelman claimed Bulchenko was a heroin addict and set him up for a robbery.

When he reached the Bulchenkos' home, he discovered Yelena wasn't home, causing him to lash out at his mom and stabbed her to death. Nine hours later Yelena arrived home to find her mother's body and was then stabbed 11 times by Gelman, who had been waiting on her return.

Following the double-homicide Gelman drove away in his mother's car, rear-ended a vehicle, and non-fatally stabbed the driver. He then stole the driver's car and ran over Stephen Tanenbaum, who later died from his injuries.

Gelman abandoned the vehicle used to run over Tanenbaum, hailed a cab, and attacked the driver. Not long afterward, he ran to another car, attacked the driver, and took his car. Both victims survived the attacks.

While speaking at the sentencing of Gelman, the cab driver, Fitz Fullerton's voice box was still badly damaged, forcing the victim's words to be slightly more than a whisper.

While police were looking for him, Gelman was spotted on a subway train by passengers who recognized his face from news reports and newspaper articles. In an attempt to escape, Gelman switched trains and was arrested shortly after attacking his last victim, an unidentified subway passenger who survived.

Gelman's last victim before being captured by police

Initially Gelman insisted he was innocent, but following psychiatric evaluation and the seeing the overwhelming evidence against him, he Gelman pled guilty on November 30th.  He is currently serving a life sentence of approximately 200 years in prison.

Occupy Wall Street is Back

New York - For those who don't know, Zuccotti Park has been liberated again, once more falling into the hands of Occupy Wall Street.  Thanks to the lawyers at the New York Civil Liberties Union. the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the National Lawyers Guild’s New York City chapter, barricades meant to keep the protestors out were found to be unconstitutional as well a violation of zoning laws.  Here is the letter responsible for it.

Unfortunately erecting a tent is not allowed but thankfully the charges against two dozen of them were dropped. 

Bloomberg gives Tax $ to Private Tennis Club on Randall's Island By Juan Gonzalez

East Harlem - community leaders are furious about the proposed expansion of a $19 million private tennis center at Randall’s Island that is connected to tennis legend John McEnroe.

Those leaders want to know why Mayor Bloomberg keeps handing barrels of money to the Randall’s Island Sports Foundation, the public-private group that manages the 256-acre park.

Since 2003, City Hall has provided an astonishing $155 million for 65 new ballfields, new bike and hiking paths, comfort stations, and shoreline reconstruction at Randalls, and plans to spend another $22 million by 2013, according to the Independent Budget Office.

All that investment has steadily turned the island into an idyllic and isolated playground for affluent New Yorkers who flock to the golf range and the tennis courts, and for private schools that bus their students to the park each weekday to use the sparkling new fields.

Court fees at the two-year-old Sportime tennis center, for example, run from $72 to $102 per hour. And that’s on top of annual fees of $500 to $750.

Meanwhile, improvements for an adjacent East Harlem park languish.

“The East River esplanade in this neighborhood has giant holes in the pavement where residents stare at river swirling below,” said George Sarkissian, district manager of Community Board 11. “As for the E. 107th St. Pier, it is completely dilapidated, yet we’re told there’s no money to fix it.”

Randalls Island Foundation even benefits from special allocations Bloomberg occasionally slips into the budget.

Since 2005, for example, the mayor, a one-time member of Randall’s Island’s high-powered board of directors, has quietly earmarked $8.9 million to the foundation from his discretionary city capital budget allocations.

The mayor’s earmarks have been done so discreetly that even East Harlem City Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito, who chairs the Council’s Parks Department Committee, did not know about them until the Daily News alerted her last week.

“This reaffirms to me the murky element to these private-public partnerships,” Mark-Viverito said.

Over the years, Randall’s Island Foundation has devised an array of privatization schemes — all without meaningful input from the park’s neighborhoods.

Several years ago, the foundation’s effort to lure a private aquatic theme park to Randall’s collapsed. Then its pay-to-play plan, which would have handed 20 Manhattan private schools exclusive use of the park’s renovated ballfields during weekdays — in exchange for $2 million annual payments — was struck down by the courts. Judges ruled twice that Bloomberg failed to give the City Council a chance to vote on the plan.

In 2009, Sportime was granted a 20-year concession for the tennis center, though critics claim that plan, too, should have required City Council approval.

The John McEnroe Tennis Academy, which operates there, charges thousands of dollars for enrollees. McEnroe’s brother Mark McEnroe, the general manager, notes that scholarships and free court time are provided to the community.

“Thanks to Sportime, more tennis instruction, more tennis courts, and more tennis hours are made available to children of the surrounding communities than ever before,” Parks Department spokeswoman Vickie Karp said.

You would expect some benefits for the community from a public park.

Mark McEnroe admitted recently his center wants to do a better job of public relations. He and the Randall’s Foundations could start, says Mark-Viverito, by revealing how much money the center is making, and exactly how it will better serve the community.

Randall’s Island, after all, is still a public park, not a private playground.

FBI Fails to Follow-up on Lead, Media Focus is Elsewhere

New York – The Federal Bureau of Investigations failed to follow up on a plot to blow up New YorkCity according to police officers knowledgeable about the case.

Since they started keeping tabs on him in May 2009, the city's police force tried twice to get the FBI to take on the case, but decided Jose Pimentel, the suspect, didn't have the “predisposition or the ability to carry out the plot.” He is thought of plotting to blow up police and post offices around the city as well as attack soldiers who returned from overseas.

Police say Pimentel was building bombs in his apartment based off instructions from recently deceased cleric Anwar al-Awlaki's website. They say he was due to finish his bomb, made as retaliation to the cleric's death from a military drone, in an hour's time when they arrested him.

Pimentel is currently being held on domestic terrorism charges without bail.

Cops Win NYSE Battle, But Will Lose War

New York City - The police won a fight against Occupy Wall Street when they prevented the group from shutting down the New York Stock Exchange.

By barricading “the narrow streets around Wall Street” and using “batons to push protesters onto the sidewalk as they marched through the area,” they prevented the general strike from occurring as planned. With their identification and police on their side, they walked into the building as protesters, separated from them with barricades, chanted “We are the 99 percent.” To the police were the chants "You're sexy, you're blue, now take off that riot suit."

The real winner is all of this however is the people who work at the NYSE. While police fight protesters, they are flaunting the fact they are getting way with their crimes to our faces. The police are clearly paid by someone to do all of these things. When the cops stop arresting and abusing people in the OWS movement this will not go away.

Philly Retired Police Captain Arrested at Occupy Wall Street

More will be written later.  Here's the video.