Bloomberg Aims to Take NYC Green

Tolls for high-traffic areas had been mayor's pet project

(NEWSER) - New York state legislators today killed a plan that would have brought congestion pricing—higher fees at peak traffic hours—to parts of Manhattan, a major defeat for Mike Bloomberg, the Times reports. The mayor and a coalition of environmental groups backed the idea, but legislators from the city's outer boroughs and elsewhere opposed the fees, which would have been as high as $8, as regressive. More»

'Lone wolf' Jose Pimentel was 'hour away' from finishing first bomb: Cops

(NEWSER) - A suspected lone wolf terrorist has been charged with plotting to kill US soldiers and police with bombs he was building in his Manhattan apartment, according to law enforcement authorities. Jose Pimentel, 27, who goes by the name Muhammad Yusuf, intended to test three bombs in mailboxes before using explosives on soldiers returning home from Afghanistan and Iraq, said New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly at a press conference yesterday. He also planned to target NYPD cruisers, postal facilities, and a New Jersey police station, said Kelly. Pimentel allegedly told an informant that the bombings would show the public “there was mujahedeen in the city ready to wage Jihad," reports the New York Daily News. More»

To replace the tunnel Chris Christie called off

(NEWSER) - Michael Bloomberg is hatching a plan to build a subway tunnel under the Hudson River linking Manhattan to Secaucus, NJ. The plan is designed to replace the long-planned tunnel from New Jersey that Chris Christie killed when he came into office, and according to a secret memorandum obtained by the New York Times , it would cost about half as much as that project, because the city is already extending a tunnel near the waterfront. More»

Polling guru gives a post-mortem on last night's elections

(NEWSER) - The numbers are in, now it's time to make sense of them. Nate Silver breaks down last night's election results:

• Don’t blame Obama; Creigh Deeds and Jon Corzine were probably just weak candidates. In New Jersey, 57% of voters approved of Obama, but 27% of those supporters voted Republican anyway. In Virginia 20% of those who approved of Obama voted GOP.
• Democrats had turnout problems in Virginia; the voters who came out last night supported McCain 51-43 in 2008, a mirror image of that year's margin.

Space-guzzling homeowners in countryside exact bigger toll

(NEWSER) - Vermont has been hailed as the greenest place in America but its residents need to look to Manhattan for some real low-impact living, argues David Owen. Vermonters might feel green with all that countryside around, but they lack the public transport and low energy use that makes New York City the greenest place in the US, Owen writes at Yale Environment 360. More»