First Crop of Foreign Entrepreneurs Setting Up Shop at CUNY By LIZ ROBBINS DEC. 25, 2016

Gabor Tankovics was checking off the boxes for his tech start-up this past spring. Investors. Advisers. Users. But one box was still noticeably blank: Visa.

“I really felt like, ‘O.K., I am at the stage where things are starting to work out,’” said Mr. Tankovics, 33, a native of Hungary. “At the same time, I might have to leave.”

But then he heard about a new option, a program for international entrepreneurs created this year by New York City’s Economic Development Corporation with the City University of New York. By working at one of CUNY’s campuses, founders of start-up companies can obtain an 18-month United States visa to establish their businesses — with the aim of creating jobs and training aspiring innovators.

In October, Mr. Tankovics became the first of two visa recipients out of 144 applicants for the program, the International Innovators Initiative, known as IN2NYC.

“This was absolutely designed for me,” Mr. Tankovics said in an empty and echoing co-working space at LaGuardia Community College’s NYDesigns start-up studio. By next year, it will house Mr. Tankovics’s three-employee company, Dartboard, a web application to help manage student loans.

The IN2NYC program selected Namisha Bahl, 26, of , as its second participant. Ms. Bahl is a founder of Mogul, a website for women around the world that has 25 New York-based employees, she said, but is hoping to double in size by next year. Ms. Bahl, the company’s marketing director, will begin mentoring students at City College of New York’s Zahn Innovation Center, a start-up incubator promoting diversity in the tech world, next year.

By March, she and Mr. Tankovics will be joined by as many as 20 more participants in the program, working at five schools in the CUNY system, according to IN2NYC officials.

Ms. Bahl had been out of options. She had earned her master’s degree in integrated marketing from New York University in 2015 and twice applied for an H-1B visa. The visas, which go to skilled workers, are given out by lottery each year. The number of recipients is capped at 85,000, but more than three times as many people apply each year. And self-employed entrepreneurs are not eligible.

But in 2000, Congress allowed for exemptions to the cap, including people working at institutions of higher education or affiliated nonprofits.

“It is an amazing and crucial opportunity,” Ms. Bahl said in an email. “I would not have been able to expand Mogul further without work authorization.”

Or, as the program’s consulting lawyer, Peter F. Asaad, put it: “Without a program like this, she certainly would be out in the cold.”

Because of guidelines set by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, IN2NYC applicants must be sponsored for the visa by their company’s board of directors, all of whom are American citizens or permanent residents. The board members have the power to determine how much the applicant earns and other terms of employment.

The program does not just benefit the visa holder, its creators say.

“It’s not just about one person, but it’s about the larger ripple effect,” said Maria Torres-Springer, the president of New York City’s development corporation. “Both in terms of job creation for that company, and what it also means for the students and faculty, the local schools with which they partner.”

She added: “It’s an entire ecosystem.”

Dartboard and Mogul both are geared toward millennials. Mr. Tankovics explained that his web application, available only by invitation now but planned for public testing in January, helps people pay their student loans faster, saving money on interest payments.

Although he does not have any American student loans — he got a law degree and a master’s degree in business administration in Paris — when he came to New York for his master’s degree at Parsons School of Design, his friends in the United States all bemoaned their debt. A prototype of the app was the basis of his master’s thesis.

He has not thought about how he would find a way to stay once his visa expires.

“As a start-up founder, you do need to have a long-term vision, but at the same time you’re very into short-term fights. You’re struggling with every micro-decision,” Mr. Tankovics said.

Next semester, he is planning to teach a course at LaGuardia tentatively called “Designing for Financial Empowerment.” He hopes to teach students how to create opportunities for those New Yorkers who may not be served by traditional financial outlets, like banks. His short-term goals are simple. “To have more users and a better service at the end of January and then hire new people,” Mr. Tankovics said. Then, looking around at the harshly lit space, he smiled. “And to move to an office with a window.”

Correction: December 26, 2016

An earlier version of this article misidentified, in one instance, the institution that created the IN2NYC program with New York City’s Economic Development Corporation. It is the City University of New York, not City College. Because of an editing error, the mistake was repeated in an earlier version of a picture caption.

Hunter student wins college’s first Marshall Scholarship

Updated December 25, 2016 6:47 PM

By Maria Alvarez Special to Newsday

Born and raised in Queens, Faiza Masood felt like all the other kids in her school — an American whose parents came from another part of the world. That changed after Sept. 11, 2001.

One day, a student in Masood’s fourth-grade class blurted out: “Oh my God. She is going to bomb us.”

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Remembering the painful moment, Masood said recently: “I can’t forget it. I was crying and the teacher didn’t do anything. I was bullied a lot. . . . People would make fun of me and I didn’t even know why.”

Today, Masood, 21, is a senior at Hunter College and one of two New Yorkers awarded the prestigious Marshall Scholarship — an academic achievement that will enable her to earn graduate degrees in Islamic law and gender studies at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. The other New Yorker is a student at West Point.

Masood’s achievement was made possible through Hunter College’s Office of Prestigious Scholarships, which prepares students to apply for fellowships in the global arena. The office offers support, including interview training, to students interested in competing for scholarships, such as Rhodes and Fulbright, that usually go to Ivy League students.

Masood is the first Hunter student to receive a Marshall Scholarship. A religion major with a minor in Arabic, Masood attended Harvard Divinity School’s Diversity and Exploration program and won summer fellowships to study Arabic in Jordan and Morocco.

Masood is “focused. She is a visionary,” said Jennifer Raab, Hunter College president. The program gave “Faiza the support to compete for this life-changing opportunity,” she said.

In retrospect, Masood said the 9/11 backlash against Muslims and the bullying at school motivated her to become a scholar in Islam and gender studies. Learning Islam “strengthened my faith and has motivated me to undo a lot of the misinformation” about Muslims, she said.

At 12, she embraced her faith when her parents enrolled her in an Islamic school. Her parents were not religious when they arrived to New York from Pakistan in 1986. And her mother did not wear a hijab until she was in her 40s and became more observant while living in Middle Village, Queens. Masood said her travels to the Middle East and Africa showed her the different ways the head scarf is used to express modesty. “It is a personal choice and the culture of that country. . . . And it is not the government’s job to enforce these cultural laws.”

Masood’s goal is to be the fiery female voice within Islamic scholarly circles where, she said, men dominate interpretations of religious laws that minimize women’s rights. “Islamic law is empowering for women. But unfortunately the male scholars don’t talk about it.”

Masood’s religion professor, Bert Breiner at CUNY, said she will “widen the interpretation of Islamic practice. She is actually someone who can deal with the issues in a Western way. . . . She is a locust for dialogue. I expect great things from her.”

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After Masood receives her doctorate, she will teach at public colleges “where resources are lacking” to teach Islam. “People want to learn about Islam for a better understanding of the differences because we read about it [Islam] all the time.”

Flat Enrollment Overall Masks Wide Swings Among Programs Karen Sloan and Jeff Storey, New York Law Journal December 22, 2016

The number of first-year law students nationwide increased this fall—albeit slightly—for the first time since 2010, when word of a bleak entry-level job market and skyrocketing tuition turned off many potential applicants.

Some 36 additional law students showed up on American Bar Association-accredited campuses this year, for a total of 37,107, meaning new enrollment was essentially flat.

Statistics for New York's 15 law schools mirrored national results. The number of first-year students statewide grew by only 13 to 3,865.

However, the overall state result masked wide variations among individual schools. Three schools counted double-digit increases while enrollment slumped at three other schools.

The biggest decline—36.2 percent—was at Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center, where last year's 196 enrollees plummeted to 125.

"It is true that Touro, like many law schools, has experienced declining enrollment in the last few years," dean Harry Ballan said in a statement. "We have continued to recruit and admit students who we think are likely to succeed in our law school and in the profession, students who are both academically qualified and whose interests align well with our mission. The result is a smaller but stronger school, which we regard as an opportunity, not a crisis."

By contrast, 193 students signed up at the City University School of Law, up from 151 in the fall of 2015, good for a 27.8 percent increase.

"We think that the increase is connected to the increasing interest applicants have in looking for value and affordability, as well as increased outreach targeted to applicants most likely to be looking for what we deliver—an experientially-based curriculum culminating in our nationally ranked clinical program designed to prepare our students for public interest and social justice work," CUNY Law Dean Mary Lou Bilek stated.

While most law deans nationwide likely aren't breaking out the bubbly, a flat enrollment may sound pretty good to legal educators these days considering that first-year enrollment has plummeted 29 percent over the past six years. That decline has forced many law schools to pare down their faculties and make other painful budget cuts.

Derek Muller, a law professor at Pepperdine University School of Law who tracks enrollment trends on his blog Excess of Democracy, said the new data suggests that this is the new reality for legal education.

"Flat" is good in the sense of stability, Muller said, but he added, "I think it's bad for a lot of law schools that were hoping for growth, both in terms of quantity and quality. For schools that had been bracing for a short-term decline, with this bottoming out, I think they're going to have to expect that this is the new normal."

Muller predicted that the number of applicants this admissions cycle will remain stable, based on the fact that there has been no significant change in the number of people taking early administrations of the Law School Admission Test.

Alfred Brophy, a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law who also follows law school enrollment, isn't predicting a resurgence of law students in the coming years. "I think it's good that we're not losing students," he said. "But I think there's probably still too many law schools for this many students. My guess is some places will have to shut down or merge."

Overall, enrollment fell from 113,900 in 2015 to 110,951 in 2016—a nearly 3 percent decline that reflects the fact that each graduating class is slightly larger than the ones behind it. But it's first-year enrollment that legal educators watch most closely, as it has economic implications for the next three years. The first-year class that started in 2015 was more than 2 percent smaller than the previous one, according to the ABA.

This year, 110 of the 205 ABA-accredited law schools reported an increase in the size of their first- year classes, while 94 said their class decreased compared to last year.

Brooklyn Law School President and Dean Nicholas Allard said the school's year enrollment of 348 was right on the target of 350 it established last year. The school's enrollment fell 11.7 percent.

Allard said the school's first-year enrollment 10th in the nation. It experienced an almost 12 percent increase in applications in 2016 over 2015 students drawn by its academic and financial programs, flexible timetables and prime location.

"We made an informed decision to take advantage of this strong demand to be more selective in admissions and strategically 'right size' the entering class on a year-to-year basis relative to our resources and goals," Allard said in a statement, "We will continue to set incoming class size based on what is best for all current students in a given year."

Albany Law School enrollment grew by 15.9 percent, second only to CUNY among the state's law schools. "The improved size and quality of our entering class reflects positive growth across Albany Law School, including a 14.5 percentincrease in our bar passage rate and terrific job placement," president and dean Alicia Ouellette said in a statement. "These are early returns on a strategic plan that includes a robust affiliation with the University at Albany, and "Opportunity Pathways" that reshape how we recruit and educate our students."

Craig Bose, Syracuse College of Law Dean said that the school was "a little bit surprised" at its 14.4 percent increase in first-year students.

But Bose—like Ballan and Billek—a new dean said the school had built "strong momentum" from progressively improving national ranking and an "outstanding admissions team." He added the law school had benefitted from publicity garnered by the school's final-four basketball team. Now comes the hard part he said—making sure all those students succeed. "We're accountable for that," Bose said.

Karen Magee: Ending Public Education’s Groundhog Day

By KAREN MAGEE • DEC 23, 2016

In the classic movie Groundhog Day, the main character — played famously by actor and comedian Bill Murray — finds he is trapped in a time loop, repeating the same day over and over again. As this year’s legislative session nears, I can’t help but think that students — and public education — are having a Groundhog Day experience of their own.

This coming year … just like last year … and the year before that … and the year before that … the state’s public schools and colleges are under-funded.

While the Legislature has supported record aid increases the last few years, New York State still owes public schools $3-point-8 BILLION dollars in funding that was promised and never delivered. It’s called Foundation Aid. The state agreed way back in 2006 to invest this new money so that children — especially those in high-need communities — would have the programs, resources and opportunities they deserve.

Unfortunately, that bill is still due. We will be back at the Capitol next month to firmly but professionally seek collection. The union I lead as president — New York State United Teachers — is joining with other education stakeholders to again press the state to renew its commitment to Foundation Aid ... and the equity that’s at the essence of the state’s promise.

In addition, we want the state to invest more heavily in programs for English language Learners. The number of new Americans in our schools … students who are still learning English … has skyrocketed over the last decade to more than 218,000.

While most E-L-L students attend school in urban areas, our suburban and rural districts are seeing rising numbers of students who have not yet mastered English.

School districts are finding it a struggle to offer students the comprehensive, base services they are required to provide under the law.

That’s why NYSUT is strongly supporting the creation of a new school aid category for E-L-Ls, and the investment of $200 million in the next state budget to help school districts bridge the gaps until the state can fully fund Foundation Aid.

The Groundhog Day feel isn’t reserved for our K-12 students and schools.

Our SUNY and CUNY campuses are economic engines across the state, even as they deliver affordable, quality college educations to tens of thousands of students from middle class and working families.

This year … like last year … and the year before… (Well, you get the picture!) … New York’s public higher education systems are also woefully under- funded.

SUNY campuses are currently receiving about $100 million LESS from the state this year than they did in 2010, despite rising costs. CUNY campuses face a similar dire budget crunch. The state MUST do its part in 2017 and invest more heavily in SUNY, CUNY and its excellent network of community colleges.

Lawmakers have traditionally been supportive of investing in public education. As we enter the holiday season, I’m leaning towards optimism that, despite a state budget deficit, the Legislature and Governor will again work collaboratively with us to help students and public education.

In Groundhog Day, Phil Connors — he’s the stranded meteorologist played by Bill Murray — comes around to the notion that he must re-examine his life and his priorities, and make necessary changes.

Here’s to Albany re-examining its commitment to SUNY, CUNY and its more than 700 K-12 school districts… and making them more of a priority in 2017.

Time of Death? Check the Body's 'Necrobiome'

By Sara G. Miller, Staff Writer | December 22, 2016 02:55pm ET

It's a line you'll hear in almost any crime show after someone finds the body — the detective turns to the medical examiner and asks, "Time of death?" But in real life, medical examiners don't have a very precise method for figuring out how long ago someone died.

Now, researchers say they could use the bacteria found on the body to provide a more accurate way to pinpoint the time of death, according to a new study. In the study, published today (Dec. 22) in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers examined the "necrobiomes" of 21 cadavers. The necrobiome, or the community of bacteria found on a dead body, changes considerably as time passes after death and the body decomposes, according to the study. [The Science of Death: 10 Tales from the Crypt and Beyond] Currently, medical examiners estimate the time of death by physically inspecting the body for signs of early-phase decomposition and, in later stages of decomposition, by looking at the insects present on the body, the researchers wrote. But "these techniques are notoriously unreliable," thanks to factors such as temperature, weather conditions and geographic location, the researchers wrote. But "by knowing which microbes take over a dead body and how long it takes, forensic scientists might be able to use [the necrobiome] to determine time of death or other aspects of a crime scene," Robert DeSalle, curator of molecular systematics at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, said in a statement. DeSalle was not involved in the study.

In the study, the researchers took samples of bacteria from the ear and nasal canals of the cadavers, which were at the Anthropological Research Facility at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The cadavers were placed outdoors, in a temperate, deciduous forest, and were left to decompose naturally over the course of several weeks.

The researchers sequenced the DNA of the bacteria, and used their findings to construct a model that could predict a body's time of death to up to 55 "accumulated degree-days," which is equal to about two summer days.

Accumulated degree-days are a way to measure the passage of time and temperature simultaneously, said senior study author Nathan Lents, a professor of microbiology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at The City University of New York. Because human decomposition is strictly dependent on both time and temperature, scientists cannot consider the passage of time alone, Lents told Live Science. "When it comes to rates of decay, one day in summer time is like two weeks in winter time," he said.

A dynamic ecosystem

The bacterial communities found on a dead body change over time, Lents said.

"Think about a decomposing vertebrate as an ecosystem" teeming with various life-forms, Lents said. "The ecosystem is very dynamic because the environment of the decomposing host is in a state of wild changes."

For example, cycles of high and low oxygen levels play a role in which bacteria are present, as oxygen is consumed and carbon dioxide builds up in the body. But the body's tissues eventually rupture, and oxygen flows back in, changing the environment again. There are also cycles of high and low nutrient richness, Lents said; nutrient levels may be low until a tissue ruptures and nutrients spill out.

Ultimately, "the environment is a feeding frenzy for alternating groups of organisms, setting up a succession of bacteria that proliferate when their time comes," Lents said. [Ear Maggots and Brain Amoeba: 5 Creepy Flesh-Eating Critters]

But researchers still have a great deal to learn about this ecosystem, Lents added.

The new study is "a very promising proof of concept," Lents said in a statement. Still, the method could be improved by adding more data, from a larger study at multiple locations, and involving bacteria from additional parts of the body, they wrote in the study.

Originally published on Live Science.

Top Ten Stories of 2016 in New York Politics December 27, 2016 | by Ben Max

10. Bill Bratton Leaves ‘On Top’ In an extraordinary send-off -- his own mini-parade -- Bill Bratton departed 1 Police Plaza on September 16, 2016 for the final time as NYPD commissioner. For about two-and-a- half years Bratton was Mayor ’s police commissioner and the arrangement worked mostly well for both: Bratton had the job and power in it that he wanted, de Blasio had political cover on his most sensitive issue, and crime continued to trend downward, silencing (or at least quieting) some de Blasio critics.

When Bratton announced his departure, few were shocked. It created a new vulnerability for de Blasio, but also came with a silver lining -- while Bratton gave de Blasio key political cover and got some key results that de Blasio needed, he was himself a political figure, prone to speaking his mind no matter what the de Blasio company line may have been, perpetually battling with the City Council, and the embodiment of his controversial brand of Broken Windows policing.

De Blasio quickly replaced Bratton with then Chief of Department James O’Neill, who he attempted to label not as the broken windows commissioner, but the architect of the new neighborhood policing.

In most quarters, Bratton’s legacy is as a top policing leader, one who continued to oversee crime drops in New York City even as there were 2016 spikes in other cities around the country, and, for some, despite working for a mayor who doesn’t get “law and order.” In other quarters, Bratton is known as the purveyor of an antiquated, racially- biased system of over-policing who did little to change overall NYPD culture or hold badly- performing officers accountable. Though Bratton did continue to implement broken windows, with its focus on strict enforcement of low-level crimes in order to prevent disorder and more serious crime, he and de Blasio also oversaw several significant policing reforms from 2014 through 2016. These included reductions in street stops and arrests for low-level crimes, including possessing small amounts of marijuana, a new training regime focused on de-escalation, and more. Under Bratton, de Blasio and the City Council agreed to add about 1,300 additional officers to the NYPD force.

Bratton should also be remembered as the central figure who helped de Blasio get through his most challenging period thus far as mayor: the murder of two police officers in December 2014 and subsequent NYPD revolt, during which officers turned their backs on the mayor and then engaged in their own work slowdown. For several weeks Bratton was the voice and face of the administration, making a variety of local and national media appearances -- then and throughout his tenure, Bratton full-throatedly vouched for de Blasio.

9. Criminal Justice Reform Act & More at the City Council Under the leadership of Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, the New York City Council continued its progressive policy push in 2016. There’s perhaps no better example of this than the Criminal Justice Reform Act, which created an altered legal paradigm for enforcement of low-level nonviolent offenses like being in a park after dark, having an open container of alcohol, public urination, and more.

The CJRA was not the blanket decriminalization of some low-level offenses that Mark- Viverito and other Council members may have wanted, but it was, to them, a good compromise with Mayor de Blasio and Police Commissioner Bratton. The offenses included will now mostly be handled in civil court as opposed to criminal court, avoiding arrest and a criminal record for thousands of New Yorkers, while saving the city money, keeping people out of jail, reducing the criminal justice system’s backlog, and continuing to crack down on all the same behaviors. (NYPD guidance about carrying out the CJRA won’t be public until sometime in the first half of 2017, so there is more to be seen and judged here.)

Along with the CJRA, the City Council and de Blasio in 2016 moved through a variety of other policies that fit with their promise to create a more fair and just city. It is worth noting that on many fronts, including the CJRA, there are voices on the left saying they did not go far enough. But, in terms of moving city public policy leftward, there is the CJRA, along with other examples like new protections for freelancers and grocery store workers; expanding access to feminine hygiene products in city schools, shelters, and prisons; additional steps to make the city more environmentally-friendly; and more.

Also at the City Council in 2016, pay raises for city elected officials were passed. This included raises for Council members, but also major reforms to the position of Council member, formally making it a full-time position and banning outside income, as well as eliminating bonuses for chairing committees.

8. De Blasio Pushes Affordable Housing, Battles Homelessness Mayor de Blasio saw a major legacy achievement pass in 2016: mandatory inclusionary housing, which requires certain percentages of affordable housing within new residential developments where an upzoning occurs. De Blasio and his City Council partners call this the most progressive zoning for affordable housing in the country, and it is an important piece of the mayor’s larger affordable housing plan.

MIH, which passed in March, is only one piece of that plan, though, which is more focused on preserving affordable units (rental apartments with certain rent caps) than on building new ones. De Blasio’s administration continued to come to deals to preserve affordable units in 2016 and appears to be on pace for its goal of 200,000 units over 10 years. Neighborhood rezonings also come into play here, and the city passed the first under MIH and de Blasio’s bigger plan to rezone about 10 areas of the city with the East New York rezoning in April.

New housing units, especially at the lower end of the affordability spectrum, can’t come online fast enough. While de Blasio and his allies are moving ahead with new and preserved affordable housing, homelessness continues to reach record highs in the city and as 2016 ends the mayor is regularly admitting that his administration needs to do more to battle the crisis -- which now includes about 60,000 individuals, almost half of them children, living in homeless shelters.

De Blasio has promised more of a plan on homelessness early in 2017, but the issue has perhaps become his biggest policy failure. The mayor and his team are quick to point out that their rental assistance, eviction protection, and other measures have kept homeless numbers from reaching even higher heights. And, they correctly point to past and ongoing failures by others at the city and state levels on homelessness-prevention and affordable housing requirements that have contributed to an escalating crisis.

7. Cuomo’s Infrastructure Focus Governor has outlined a $100 billion infrastructure plan that dots the state in projects related to its roads, bridges, tunnels, airports, convention space, and so on. The governor ends 2016 on a victory lap for getting the first phase of the Second Avenue subway open (Cuomo will take an inaugural ride New Year’s Eve; it’s set to open to the public January 1), and tying it to his larger plan. When discussing his grand plans -- some of which don’t have full or transparent funding appropriations -- Cuomo talks of his ambition as a builder in grand, historic terms, claiming that he has led New York into a new era of thinking big after decades of small-mindedness.

Cuomo’s focus on infrastructure is smart, as long as he can pay for it responsibly. Some want to see him invest even more in the MTA, given the problematic state of New York City’s subway system, which is rife with delays and overcrowding. The state is investing tens of billions into the MTA, but for Cuomo there are also new and sexier things to build, and other parts of the state to attend to.

Cynics also see the governor’s infrastructure push as a helpful distraction from continued dysfunction in Albany and in state government, including Cuomo’s own administration (see more on these topics below). Regardless, Cuomo knows that his infrastructure push will leave him with a physical legacy that few elected officials can claim. He may need re-election to a third term in 2018 to make sure that several pieces of his plan get executed as intended.

6. Cuomo-De Blasio Feud Continues Yes, this is still happening. As New Yorkers know all too well, Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio barely speak to each other and don’t hold joint events, even when they should. They can’t bring themselves to appear at the same event unless absolutely necessary, and even then they go out of their way to avoid each other. While it makes for a few good jokes at the annual Al Smith Dinner (one of few occasions where they do share a dais), the two Democrats’ ongoing feud is not good for New Yorkers and makes both look petty and small.

Typing Speed Regained a Few Weeks After Carpal Tunnel Surgery, Study Notes Published on December 23, 2016

Patients who undergo surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome can regain their typing speed relatively quickly afterward—within about 2 to 3 weeks, according to a recent study.

The study was borne when a psychologist who studies the automatic response patterns involved in typing broke his shoulder in a household accident.

“I had to have my shoulder replaced,” says Gordon Logan, Centennial Professor of Psychology at Vanderbilt University, in a media release. “So I saw my orthopedic surgeon, Donald Lee, many times in the next few months.”

During Logan’s meetings with Lee, a professor of orthopedics and rehabilitation at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and an expert in hand and shoulder surgery, their conversations often turned to research.

“He was focused on practical questions and wondered why anyone would ask the abstract theoretical questions that I do,” Logan continues. “I managed to convince him that typing was an important practical problem.”

Logan and Lee then designed an experiment to determine how quickly patients retained their typing speed after undergoing carpal tunnel release surgery.

The study, performed by Vanderbilt University Medical Center orthopedic resident Justin Zumsteg (now at the Orlando Health Orthopedic Institute in Florida) and Logan’s former post-doctoral student Matthew Crump (now at the City University of New York), is published in The Journal of Hand Surgery. “We found that people recovered their pre-operative typing speed two to three weeks after surgery,” Logan explains in the release. “This provides a benchmark for recovery that prospective patients can consider in deciding whether to have surgery or when to have it.”

“Since we found that patients regain their typing ability relatively quickly, we now allow them to go back to typing relatively early,” Lee says. “They may not be able to type for several hours at a time, but we don’t necessarily restrict them from typing around two to three weeks post op.”

Harold Ehrlich Built Name on With ‘Fearless Forecasts’ Rutgers-trained economist always reserved ‘the right to be wrong’ By JAMES R. HAGERTY Dec. 23, 2016 10:00 a.m. ET

As a Wall Street economist and fund manager, Harold Ehrlich was known for sending out his Fearless Forecasts. He always closed with the same proviso: “I reserve the right to be wrong.”

Newspaper writers liked to quote his unhedged remarks. In October 1979, Dr. Ehrlich told he wasn’t ready to join his giddier colleagues in bidding up stocks. “The odds of being a loser in this foolishness have increased greatly,” he said. Caution was in order: U.S. stocks lurched through some deep ruts for the next couple of years before finally beginning a long-term rally in August 1982.

By 1983, times had clearly changed. “Once again, at luncheons and cocktail parties, people are bragging about their latest killing in the stock market,” and house prices were soaring in the Hamptons, he noted.

He continued offering economic insights in his late 80s. In June 2015, his Fearless Forecast assured readers (correctly) that no surge of inflation was imminent and interest rates would rise only gradually. Only a few months before his death, fund managers from J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. visited Dr. Ehrlich’s home to hear his views. “He was one of a kind in many ways,” said Paul Zummo, head of an alternative-asset unit at J.P. Morgan.

Dr. Ehrlich died Dec. 4 at a hospital in New York. He was 89 and had been suffering from pulmonary fibrosis. In recent years, his clients also included several wealthy families. He identified promising young investment managers, “many of whom went on to illustrious careers,” said Christopher Podoll, president of ClearLake Advisors LLC, some of whose clients were advised by Dr. Ehrlich.

Harold Bernard Ehrlich was born March 11, 1927, in Asbury Park, N.J. His father was an inventor and owned an auto-repair business. He earned his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in economics at Rutgers University and taught economics there and at Baruch College.

He began working on Wall Street in 1958 as a securities analyst at McDonnell & Co. and later held senior posts at Neuberger Berman, Loeb Rhoades and Shearson/ American Express. He headed Bernstein-Macaulay from 1972 through 1986. He also was a director of Primerica Corp. and ran his own consulting firm. He is survived by his wife, Judith, an author and literary agent, three daughters and four grandchildren.

• U.S. Bankruptcy Becomes an Option for Some Borrowers Burdened by Student Loans An argument that focuses on the legal definition of a student loan is at the crux of efforts to discharge the debt

By SARAH CHANEY Dec. 27, 2016 5:30 a.m. ET 48 COMMENTS Borrowers are beginning to win battles to erase some student loans in bankruptcy court, overcoming stiff obstacles that have generally blocked that path except in extreme cases of financial hardship.

Since March, several bankruptcy courts have allowed borrowers to cancel private student loans with a new legal argument that relies on vague wording about the legal definition of a student loan.

Bankruptcy law says that, without proving extreme hardship, a borrower can’t discharge a loan made for an “educational benefit.” This language has opened a window to cancel loans for students who argue their loans falls outside this category of debt. Such reasoning has been applied to loans obtained to attend schools without accreditation or to study for a bar exam.

The argument only applies to a slice of the private student-loan market, which makes up less than 10% of the more than $1.3 trillion in outstanding student debt. The federal government dominates the student-loan market and isn’t as vulnerable in bankruptcy proceedings. For years, bankruptcy wasn’t a realistic way for Americans to get help with student-loan debt. Now, lawsuits that offer a gateway to debt cancellation are “popping up all over the country,” said Austin Smith, a consumer-bankruptcy lawyer who has led the charge in courts. Although no one keeps statistics on how often such cases arise, bankruptcy experts say they expect the number of student-loan-related lawsuits to climb as the amount of student-loan debt increases. “Bankruptcies in and of themselves are on the decline,” said D.J. Rausa, a San Diego consumer- bankruptcy lawyer. “That may change if more and more people and bankruptcy lawyers get informed there are provisions in the bankruptcy code to manage student loans.”

The argument worked for Lesley Campbell, 37, who in 2014 filed for bankruptcy and later was able to discharge the unpaid portion of a $15,000 loan she took out from to study for a bar exam.

Judge Carla Craig of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Brooklyn, N.Y., ruled that loan debt for bar exams is akin to consumer debt and doesn’t fall into the category of a student loan that sticks with a borrower in bankruptcy.

In April, Judge Robert E. Grossman ruled in favor of Lorelei Decena, who borrowed $161,592 to attend St. Christopher Iba Mar Diop College of Medicine in Senegal.

The school “falsely represented to her that it was licensed and accredited,” providing her with a loan application from Citizens Bank that reflected a code for an accredited institution, court papers state. Because the school was in fact unaccredited, according to court papers, Ms. Decena, 43, was ineligible to sit for medical-board exams in multiple states.

“There’s no educational benefit in this case because she couldn’t have a license that she could use,” said Darren Aronow, Ms. Decena’s lawyer.

St. Christopher referred requests for comment to a New York lawyer, who didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment. Citizens Bank appealed Judge Grossman’s ruling, and a district court recently sent the case back to bankruptcy court, finding that the bank wasn’t properly notified of the lawsuit.

A spokeswoman for Citizens Bank declined to comment.

Lauren Baez, 31 years old, who took out private and federal loans to attend a visual-arts school in 2008, also argued that she should be able to cancel her private debt without needing to prove extreme financial hardship. Her gross salary of $45,000 as a retail employee won’t cover the repayment costs, she says.

“If I was forced to pay back all my student loans at this moment in time, I wouldn’t have enough money to pay my rent,” Ms. Baez said. “I’m making more money than I ever have before, but I still can’t afford to make these payments.”

Ms. Baez owed private-loan servicer Navient Corp., formerly part of Sallie Mae, $158,400 as of Nov. 28. The case settled before a judge could rule. The terms of the settlement haven’t been disclosed. A Navient spokeswoman declined to comment on the case, but said the company “continues to support reform that would allow federal and private student loans to be dischargeable in bankruptcy for those who have made a good-faith effort to repay their student loans.”

New York Today: Lee Gabay, a New Yorker of the Year ALUM New York Today By ALEXANDRA S. LEVINE DEC. 27, 2016

Updated, 8:30 a.m.

Good morning on this warmer Tuesday.

This month, we asked our readers to nominate candidates for our New Yorker of the Year column. (We offered a few suggestions to get the ball rolling.) We received more than 100 submissions about model citizens who have made a difference — in ways big and small — during 2016.

This week, we are highlighting a few of the exemplary (noncelebrity) neighbors you nominated. We look forward to meeting more of them in 2017. And as always, if you would like to share a story, you can write to us at [email protected].

Lee Gabay, an Inspiring New Yorker

“Before we go on, I want to congratulate you on finishing a book,” Lee Gabay told his students. “That’s a beautiful thing you did today.”

Mr. Gabay, an English teacher at Brooklyn Democracy Academy in the Brownsville section of the borough, was finishing a lecture on John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.”

Also required reading in his class: “Holler if You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur,” by Michael Eric Dyson, about the history of hip-hop and race relations in the United States.

As far as teachers go, Mr. Gabay, 47, who has a Ph.D. in urban education, is somewhat unconventional.

“I loved to learn, but I hated school, always,” Mr. Gabay said, describing himself as having been a class clown. “I think that has inspired what I’ve become, what I wanted to do and the kind of classroom I wanted to create.”

He rides a motorcycle to school. He is fascinated with sneaker culture. He is a vocal Knicks fan. He sits with students during lunchtime to talk about music. And he winces at the thought of being called Dr. Gabay. Some students simply call him “G.”

A majority of his career has been spent in unconventional settings, teaching literature to students who had been locked up.

While an undergraduate at the University of Southern California, he worked at a group home for children who had been incarcerated. He went on to receive a master’s degree in education from New York University and his doctorate from the City University of New York, where he focused on juvenile offenders.

This led him to teach for more than a decade at Passages Academy, a juvenile detention school in the city, and at his current post at Brooklyn Democracy Academy, a transfer school for under-credited students whose education had been interrupted.

During his four years at the academy, Mr. Gabay has broadened his role to become like an older brother to these struggling teenagers — many of whom have spent time in foster care or in jail. He is as adamant about nurturing them socially and emotionally as he is about preparing them to take tests.

His motto: “Students need to know how much you care before they care how much you know.”

“Brownsville has the worst schools in the city, the worst health care, the most homicides, the worst food — there are no Starbucks here — and I want to give them access to all the good things that I was blessed to have,” said Mr. Gabay, who was born on the Lower East Side and grew up in Great Neck on Long Island.

He networks relentlessly to open doors for his students.

He brought in a spoken-word performer who inspired one young man to travel to Africa with the artist to study. After Mr. Gabay invited an Oscar- nominee, Jesse Eisenberg, to the school, the actor mentored a student who was passionate about the entertainment industry. When John Wallace, the former Knicks player, came to class, another student ended up with a job.

“People at school are like, ‘Gabay, how do you do that?’ And I’m like, ‘It’s simple. Just reach out and say thank you,’ ” he said. “It’s not a strategic thing; I think it comes from someone’s heart.”

It is not quite the same as the work done by large nonprofits; Mr. Gabay says he is much more informal, focusing on the little things — small deeds that can inspire one person, and have the potential to turn a life around. “When you go places, you’re always thinking: ‘What can benefit the students? What can benefit the school?’ ” he said.

“You don’t have an off switch when you teach.”

SCIENCE

Dogs can make you feel better MIND YOUR BODY By Willie T. Ong, MD (The Philippine Star) | Updated December 27, 2016 - 12:00am Daddy, I want a dog.” How often have we heard our kids tell us to get them a pet dog? And if you think that owning a dog is more of an inconvenience rather than a plus in your life, then think again.

According to noted pet expert Dr. Diane Pomerance, the benefits of owning a dog outweigh the inconvenience, “Pets can provide us with so many gifts. They can increase longevity and improve the quality of life.”

Dr. David J. Demko, a professor of Gerontology and Research Methodology from the University of Michigan, agrees with Dr. Pomerance. He estimates that a pet dog can add two years to the life of its owner. How is this possible, you ask?

Well, according to several scientific studies, pets, specifically dogs, can provide several health benefits for their owners. Let’s look at some of the evidence.

Close Ad X For one, dogs can contribute to a person’s happiness by causing the release of happy hormones called endorphins, the brain’s natural anti-depressant. Having a pet also releases other beneficial hormones like prolactin, dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin.

Having a pet also decreases our body’s stress hormones, called cortisol. In 2002, The British Market Research Bureau conducted an enlightening survey on pet owners which showed that pets made them laugh and feel happier.

Good For Kids And Elderly A study conducted at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Children’s Hospital showed that dog visits made hospitalized kids happier. This was attributed to the children’s eagerness in expecting dog visits and the happiness felt by petting the dogs. Tests show that when a person strokes a dog, within minutes, his body would release “feel-good” hormones like dopamine, prolactin, and oxytocin.

Dogs also provide many health benefits for the elderly. A study in The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine found that one month after acquiring a dog or cat, seniors had 50-percent fewer medical problems, such as painful joints, insomnia, constipation, anxiety, indigestion, flu, general tiredness, and headaches. The explanation is that pets give their owners an incentive to keep active.

Your Heart’s Best Friend In a study published in The American Journal of Cardiology in 2003, Dr. Erika Friedmann reported that pet owners have healthier hearts. Friedmann, a professor at the Department of Health and Nutrition Sciences at Brooklyn College, found that pet owners had better heart rate variability findings (a measure of heart attack risk) compared to non-owners.

Can dogs lower your blood pressure? Probably, yes. One study conducted by Dr. Karen Allen of the State University of New York at Buffalo found that when people with high blood pressure took care of a pet dog, their stress levels were reduced and so did their blood pressure. In fact, a number of patients were actually weaned off from their medications. Apparently, just the simple act of stroking a dog can actually reduce your blood pressure. Dog owners are happier, less stressed, and this contributed to better blood pressure control.

Walk With Your Dog A dog can help you exercise and lose weight. You have to buy his food, prepare his water, and clean out his poop. A study obviously found that people who acquired dogs increased their amount of physical activity by walking or playing with the dog.

For people with arthritis and body pains, one of the mainstays of therapy is to keep the limb moving. The medical adage, “Use it, or lose it,” applies here.

According to Dr. Jeff Burgess of the University of Washington Pain Center, “Pets may help people in two major ways. By initiating and maintaining the relaxation response, pets can take people’s focus off their pain and elevate their mood.”

Secondly, through touch or physical contact, they can block transmission of their pain from the periphery to the central nervous system, shutting the pain processing centers down.” In other words, pets help numb and reduce your pain.

Of course, owning a pet comes with additional work, expense, and responsibility, which can also be hard work. But on the positive side, the health benefits of getting a dog are real and documented by the above studies I mentioned.

Think about it, next time your kid asks you to get a dog.

A Dream That Survived Life in a War Zone and Life on the Streets The Neediest Cases By EMILY PALMER DEC. 25, 2016 ALUM

Idi Diallo started playing soccer when he was 5, living in a small Ivory Coast village, kicking a ball on his family farm through two rocks that served as the goal. Even as he played, he could see troops fighting in the distance and hear gunfire ringing out in the civil wars that raged through his childhood.

He practiced every day, dreaming of playing in professional European soccer leagues. He had never seen a soccer game on television — played on pristine fields with roaring fans — but at 11, he left his family for Abidjan, the country’s largest city, to play for a local team for the next three years. He also joined the Ivory Coast national team and traveled to Ghana, where the team made the semifinals in a tournament of African nations.

In 2010, he got a chance to play in Italy for the AC Milan Football Academy Camp, a youth program sponsored by the elite Italian football league. But when a relative in Milan was unable to house him, he decided to pursue his dream in the United States.

Then 15, Mr. Diallo boarded a plane with a friend of his brother’s and headed to New York. They settled in the Bronx, but when his companion returned to Africa a month later, Mr. Diallo found himself alone on the streets.

A practicing Muslim, Mr. Diallo found refuge at the Musa Mosque Islamic Center in the Bronx, where he often slept in the prayer hall. He also informally played soccer with the Fordham University team.

“He’d have played me, but I didn’t have a diploma,” Mr. Diallo said of the coach, recalling an interaction on the field. “He said, ‘Where do you come from?’ And I said, ‘You don’t want to know.’”

Then a friend at the university invited him to play in pickup games at Heritage Field, the site of the original Yankee Stadium. That is where Mr. Diallo met Fernando Rodriguez, a middle-age high school basketball coach battling advanced melanoma, who watched the games.

Mr. Rodriguez approached Mr. Diallo after a game to compliment his performance. Mr. Diallo spoke little English, but he recognized Mr. Rodriguez’s accent and responded in Spanish — the language he had chosen to learn at the soccer academy in Ivory Coast.

“So from then, we started talking,” Mr. Diallo said with a smile. “It was a good moment. As time went by, he asked me about my life. I don’t like talking about my problems; the past is in the past. But he’d take me to eat at a nearby cafeteria, and he’d ask small questions. He asked where I lived, and I said, ‘No house for me,’ and he invited me to stay with him.”

A month after their initial meeting, Mr. Diallo accepted an invitation for a home-cooked dinner and saw Mr. Rodriguez’s spare room. “There was no way I’d find something better than that,” he recalled thinking.

Mr. Diallo, then 17, moved in and enrolled at Urban Assembly Media High School in , starting as a 10th grader. He took classes to learn English and joined the soccer team, which won the championship in his first year.

Mr. Rodriguez became Mr. Diallo’s legal guardian and started filling out paperwork to adopt him. But his health continued to decline, and a year after taking in Mr. Diallo, he was admitted to a hospital. This time, it was Mr. Diallo’s turn to take care of the man who had taken him in. He took warm meals to him and visited him often, updating him on his success at school.

Mr. Rodriguez still managed to sponsor Mr. Diallo for his green card and help him apply for legal immigration status. Four months after Mr. Rodriguez died, Mr. Diallo learned that his immigration application had been approved.

“When he passed away, it was hard,” Mr. Diallo said, shaking his head. “He’d become my father.”

He played a game the day of Mr. Rodriguez’s funeral. And he continued classes.

“I had to stay in school,” he said. “I couldn’t give up on something he’d helped me work toward.”

On a cold November morning, Mr. Diallo sat inside Create Young Adult Residences, a transitional housing program serving men 18 to 25, where he has lived since February 2015. Create is affiliated with Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New York, one of eight organizations supported by Neediest Cases Fund.

Mr. Diallo, now 20, recalls with pride the life he has lived after his mentor’s death. He graduated from high school in June and was accepted to both the College of Staten Island and LaGuardia Community College. It is a far different future from the one he imagined in Ivory Coast, where he spent few years getting a formal education; schools were often closed during the wars. He received a $2,000 scholarship from the National Association for Education and Homeless Children and Youth. The New York Public Library awarded him a laptop for academic excellence, and Catholic Charities used $350 from The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund to pay for his schoolbooks. Financial aid will cover his academic costs for the first two years at both schools. It will not cover his room and board, but he qualifies for an $800 rental subsidy from the city.

In addition to working part time as a waiter, bringing in about $600 a month, he plays midfielder for Boca Juniors Academy-USA, affiliated with Argentina’s premier student soccer league. He travels to Long Island three days a week to practice, and has had tryouts with professional soccer clubs across the country, including the San Francisco Deltas and LA Galaxy II. Additional tryouts are scheduled for FC Miami City and Orlando City Soccer Club in January. He has also been invited for a return tryout in Los Angeles later in January but is unable to afford the plane fare.

He laughed and shook his head, reflecting on the future, hopeful yet unwilling to wish too much.

“If God gets me on a team — whatever team — this year, and I do well ...,” he said, his words trailing off. “With agents watching those games, you never know.”

He is waiting to choose a college until he hears back from professional soccer teams, and plans to start classes after tryouts conclude in February, studying business accounting or physical therapy. If he makes a team this year, he said, he plans to continue school in that city.

Regardless of where the next few months take him, Mr. Diallo said, he will keep working to become a professional soccer player.

“I could do without anything — live on the street — to play soccer,” he said. “And I’ve done that. I’ve been dreaming about this day since I was born.”

Home » InDepth » Op-Eds » ‘Safe Spaces’ For – Almost – Everyone

By: Tzipora Baitch

Published: December 23rd, 2016 Latest update: December 22nd, 2016

Walk onto a college campus today and you might be surprised to soon find yourself in a kindergarten-like room filled with napping students, bouncy balls, and cookies. You’ve just entered a “safe space,” the new phenomenon taking college campuses by storm.

These spaces are described as havens for students to gather when they have been subjected to upsetting ideas, speakers, or events. Safe spaces have become so popular in the college community that its definition has expanded from actual rooms on campuses to a general state of mind in which teachers and students must be careful not to utter certain “trigger words” or say anything that can be seen as offensive to others. Many universities have gone to extremes to ensure this.

A few months ago, two students from Bowdoin College hosted a tequila-themed party and handed out mini sombreros. This was met with outrage by students and the university because it could be interpreted as being offensive to Mexicans. Consequently, the hosts were kicked out of their dorms and faced impeachment trials from their student government. The college rushed to offer therapy to troubled students, who then demanded safe spaces for anyone who felt specifically targeted. The media got hold of the story and a number of scathing articles appeared concerning the “insensitivity” of the party-throwers.

To me, this all sounded like a major overreaction on the part of the university and the media to the slight “offense” of distributing sombreros. The first thought I had when reading about this was how fortunate Jews on college campuses would be if all they had to fear were students handing out yarmulkes as party favors.

Jews have been experiencing raging anti-Semitism on college campuses for some time now, but it has begun to escalate at an alarming pace. AMCHA, a non-profit organization dedicated to investigating and combating anti-Semitism on campus, has reported that nearly 100 more incidents of anti-Semitism occurred in college settings during the first six months of 2016 compared with the first six months of 2015. Yet for some reason this has hardly been publicized.

The biggest offenders in recent months have been hate groups at CUNY colleges all over New York. The Zionist Organization of America took notice and composed a letter to CUNY administrators detailing the troubling incidents of anti-Semitism. Some of those included: a professor who called Israelis assassins and baby killers; swastikas and Jewish slurs painted on bathroom walls; people pulling Israeli flags and pro-Israel signs out of students’ hands; and members of Student Justice for Palestine hosting “die ins” where they would lie on the floor with fake blood, yelling at Jewish passersby.

A particularly disturbing incident took place during a “Million Student March” rally. Originally created to protest student debt, the march spun out of control when members of SJP began shouting “Zionists out of CUNY, go back home, and get the [expletive] out of my country.” They also menacingly chanted “Death to Jews” and yelled other threats. After the rally at least two students reported they felt unsafe identifying as Jews on campus.

The reaction from the university was decidedly tepid. CUNY condemned the acts, but has done little else. CUNY did commission an investigation of the charges, and while the investigators’ report acknowledged there had been anti-Semitic occurrences that made students feel unsafe, the incidents came under the rubric of protected speech.

Leave aside the legal argument over whether death threats are protected under the first amendment. Leave aside the fact that colleges have had no trouble expelling students for hate speech, such as when the University of Oklahoma expelled two fraternity leaders for using the “n” word. Even leave aside the fact that the lawyers conducting the CUNY investigation admitted that some attacks went beyond free speech “and were tantamount to assaults.”

Let’s just focus on how CUNY admitted that Jewish students felt unsafe on its campuses – yet those students were not offered therapy or provided safe spaces. Nor were there recommendations for sensitivity training or probation for the many anti-Israel and anti- Jewish offenders.

Not surprisingly, the media couldn’t be bothered. The whole ordeal passed with only a few outlets even mentioning it. Why? Because we live in a world where safe spaces are demanded by enlightened society for students offended by sombreros but not for students confronted with death threats. A society where relatively benign insensitivity inspires marches and rallies but real aggression and hate barely merit a whimper.

I am fortunate to attend Yeshiva University, one of the only colleges completely devoid of any type of anti-Semitism, but when I hear about my peers experiencing unimaginably hostile environments on a daily basis simply due to their religion, I am horrified. And when those students’ concerns and fears are not validated in any way, I am outraged.

Safe spaces may be a silly way for students to hide from any antagonizing views, but at least they were created with the noble intent of protecting students from harm. Except, apparently, Jewish students.

You’d better believe that if any protestors would yell similarly hateful comments toward any other minority group, there would be major blowback from politicians, academia, and the media. Expulsions would be demanded, apologies would be extracted, and of course the safe spaces liberals love so much would grow apace.

But unless those so-called safe spaces are embraced for students belonging to every minority group, they aren’t safe spaces at all. They are just more spaces where Jews feel unwelcome – a feeling we are all too familiar with.

AG Schneiderman: Cuomo's prosecutor plan violates 'fundamental checks-and-balances' Attorney general says proposal is unconstitutional

By Chris Bragg

Published 8:58 pm, Thursday, December 22, 2016

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says Gov. Andrew Cuomo's plan to create a criminal special prosecutor to police procurement at state agencies is a distraction that violates the "fundamental checks-and-balances" in the state constitution. Cuomo's proposal, which came in the wake of the federal charges against a former top Cuomo aide and eight others in a major state bid-rigging scandal, would create the new appointed position in the Executive branch.

In a letter Wednesday to Cuomo and state legislative leaders, Schneiderman said that having such an appointee serving at the will of the governor was problematic.

"Such a scheme violates the fundamental checks-and-balances principle that underlies our State constitution, as it does not establish the independence required of a procurement watchdog and therefore will not achieve the real accountability and reform our State desperately needs," Schneiderman wrote. "It is also likely unconstitutional." Instead, Schneiderman wrote that the governor needs to strengthen the abilities of independently elected officials, including his own office. The letter notes that when Cuomo was attorney general, he called for the AG's office to have jurisdiction to prosecute public corruption cases without first obtaining a specific referral from the governor, comptroller or another state agency.

As governor, however, Cuomo has not granted Schneiderman those powers. Schneiderman noted the recent upstate bidding scandal involving SUNY Polytechnic in calling for strengthening independent watchdogs. "Indeed, while several executive agencies have subpoena power and could have probed into questions of impropriety at SUNY, they did not," Schneiderman wrote. "Instead, independent law enforcement agencies uncovered the alleged systemic abuses at SUNY Polytechnic Institute and brought criminal charges."

Schneiderman also noted that Comptroller Tom DiNapoli's office was stripped of certain key powers to oversee SUNY procurement in 2011. As a result, Schneiderman said, that office now lacks the ability to review large portions of the state budget, including CUNY and SUNY construction projects like those at-issue in the SUNY Poly prosecutions. In 2015 alone, $6.8 billion in state contracts were not subject to the comptroller's review, Schneiderman said, calling on lawmakers to restore that office's power to review all large state contracts.

"In short, [Cuomo's] proposal to create a special prosecutor for procurement should be rejected as a distraction from real and necessary reforms," Schneiderman wrote. Schneiderman says Cuomo's proposal is also likely unconstitutional because the state constitution vests prosecutorial authority exclusively with the attorney general and county district attorneys. The state Justice Center, a state agency, does have a special prosecutor that can prosecute people that neglect or abuse people with special needs. Schneiderman argues in his letter, however, the constitutionality of that arrangement remains far from certain.

Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi said the proposal under discussion is modeled after the special prosecutor established in the Justice Center, which he said has withstood legal challenge.

"This would be in addition to all other efforts and can only be a positive," Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi. "We saw just yesterday another example of the failure of the current system with corruption in the Comptroller's office, which was missed by both the comptroller and the attorney general's office. This was despite the fact there were obvious warning signs in this employee's background and the attorney general should have known there were issues as revealed by then Attorney General Cuomo's convictions in the Comptroller's office."

DiNapoli's own office was itself the subject of scandal this week when Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara -— who also brought the upstate bid-rigging case that rocked the Cuomo administration — charged a former portfolio manager of the state pension fund in an a "pay-for-play" scandal. In response, Cuomo yesterday suggested changing the law so that DiNapoli is no longer sole trustee of the state pension fund.

DiNapoli's office says it fully cooperated with the probe after dismissing the portfolio manager in February 2016.

Four government reform groups released a statement Thursday afternoon saying they vigorously oppose the creation of the executive branch special prosecutor position and "call again for increasing the oversight authority of offices that are outside and independent of the executive branch."

While de Blasio has made his mistakes in navigating the relationship, Cuomo continues to deserve more of the blame for the situation and appears to play a dangerous game in which he regularly leverages his governmental power to undermine de Blasio.

The two have warred over a long-list of issues including funding for the MTA, CUNY, Medicaid, and affordable housing; homelessness policy; responses to Ebola and Legionnaires’ Disease; and much more. They even took their feud to the Democratic National Convention, where they called for party unity behind Hillary Clinton, while displaying none such unity themselves (again, this was more on Cuomo than de Blasio).

Cuomo and de Blasio managed to take a joint tour of the site of a bombing in Chelsea earlier this year (pictured), but couldn't manage to hold a joint press briefing.

Is there any hope for peace and reconciliation -- not to mention good, collaborative city- state governing -- in 2017? In a word: no. But, as 2016 ends the two have mostly settled into a ceasefire of sorts (their spokespeople continue to trade public barbs, but the electeds themselves have largely holstered their guns of late). Two key potential turning points loom on the horizon, though: the governor’s upcoming executive budget, which he’ll release in January, and the mayor’s re-election campaign.

5. New Leaders, Same Albany 2016 was the first full year in power for Assembly Speaker , a Bronx Democrat, and Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan, a Long Island Republican. In 2015 they became two of the “three men in a room” in Albany, negotiating major budget and policy deals with Gov. Cuomo. Despite the new leadership -- Heastie and Flanagan took over for disgraced predecessors who are headed to jail -- state government continued to function in its typical fashion: minimal transparency, questionable budgeting, and major spending and policy packages passed in the middle of the night with little public review, even by rank-and-file legislators.

Meanwhile, the two legislative chambers continue to disagree about how to address lawmakers’ ethics and campaign finance reform, with Senate Republicans unwilling to limit legislators’ outside income, close the infamous LLC loophole, or institute a public- matching campaign finance system like New York City has. Assembly Democrats, for their part, are against term limits and have done little to push budget and legislative negotiations into the light of day.

4. Election Results Boost GOP Clinton Loses, Trump Presidency Looms Over New York; State Senate Stays Republican New York was the center of the political universe in 2016, with both major party presidential candidates calling the state home, hosting their campaign kick-off events in New York City, and, as it all came to an end, holding their election night gatherings in the city as well. The result was not what most New Yorkers wanted, of course, as won the presidency despite losing his home state to Hillary Clinton, largely due to an especially wide margin in New York City.

As New York Democrats continue to reckon with Clinton’s loss, they are also facing Trump’s win. Both Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio (each being discussed as a possible 2020 presidential candidate) have promised to fight Trump if he attempts to follow through on some of his most extreme campaign promises, each reasserting their version of New York values since Election Day.

The president-elect has promised to freeze federal funding to so-called sanctuary cities, which are more immigrant-friendly, including welcoming undocumented immigrants, which could cost New York City about $7 billion in the next budget. However, it is not clear whether Trump would actually try to enact such a freeze or if he would be able to if he tried (legally, he would have to take different budget appropriations individually).

Budgeting and policy tie together, of course, and as de Blasio has repeated regularly, it’s not really clear where Trump and his top cabinet officials will try to take the country, though they are likely going to attempt significant reconfiguring of health care, tax, immigration, and other major policy areas, all with significant impact on New York. Right now it’s both wait-and-see and try-to-influence Trump and other federal officials, with much hope residing in New York’s Charles Schumer, who will become Senate Minority Leader.

Democrats not only thought this would be their year to win another presidential race, but to take over the state Senate here in New York, and thus all of statewide government. While we won’t know for sure until the new state Senate is seated and its rules adopted in early January, it is looking almost certain the Republicans will continue to control the 63-seat chamber, offsetting Democrats’ control of the Assembly.

If the GOP does indeed control the Senate, it promises to continue to keep the brakes on some of the more liberal policies that Gov. Cuomo and other Democrats may be seeking in 2017, some of which are long-standing priorities that the GOP has blocked: the DREAM Act, Raise the Age, codifying Roe v Wade in state law.

Others, perhaps even Cuomo if you gave him truth serum, argue that GOP control of the Senate helps keep balance to state government, including fiscal responsibility. As always, there’s a lengthy agenda for state lawmakers in the new year, including things like legalizing and regulating app-based car services like Uber, but the governor’s State of the State and executive budget will give more form to the initial negotiations.

3. State Minimum Wage, Paid Family Leave Programs The state budget passed on April 1, 2016 included a $15 per hour minimum wage program with different phase-ins by region and paid family leave mandates, placing New York among the national leaders on both. While some conservatives balk at the potential damage of the minimum wage plan to businesses and overall employment, Cuomo made it his signature issue of early 2016 and sees it as a major legacy accomplishment. The wage is about to make one jump as the year ends.

Meanwhile, the paid family leave program will begin to be phased in during 2018 and is seen as another leading progressive victory for Cuomo and his partners in government and beyond. More so than the minimum wage, Republicans are also celebrating the paid family leave policy.

2. Albany Corruption Scandal again rocked state government this year. But in 2016 it was less the state Legislature and more the Executive Chamber: top associates of and donors to Gov. Cuomo were indicted in an alleged scheme involving bid-rigging, bribes, and kickbacks largely centered on the governor’s economic development program.

Among those charged are longtime Cuomo friend, aide, and enforcer Joe Percoco; the longtime head of SUNY Polytechnic Alain Kaloyeros, whom Cuomo worked closely with and heaped praise and power upon; and several major donors to Cuomo’s campaigns who won large state contracts. Cuomo has denied any knowledge of wrongdoing and has not been charged with any crimes. He has also made some changes to state practices and promised other reforms. They are moves that watchdogs call insufficient. Cuomo hasn’t announced support for restoring contracting oversight powers stripped from the state Comptroller or giving the Attorney General blanket power to investigate and prosecute public corruption (something Cuomo called for when he was AG).

1. City Hall Scandals People close to Mayor Bill de Blasio just want 2016 over with. What started out a promising third year in office for the mayor quickly turned sour -- and largely stayed that way -- when a series of law enforcement investigations into the mayor and his allies came to light. While a couple of controversial items, like the Rivington House saga, appear to be behind de Blasio and company without charges of criminal wrongdoing, 2017 does not at this point appear to offer much respite from controversy.

The New York Times recently reported that there are two different grand juries hearing evidence related to actions by de Blasio and his allies, one related to their involvement in 2014 state Senate elections and another related to whether donors to the Campaign for One New York were promised or received favorable government action. It is not clear whether de Blasio himself could be indicted, but anything short of no charges being filed against anyone will be extremely problematic for the mayor, and the city, given the distraction. Any time de Blasio and his aides are focused on legal issues and not their government work, the city suffers. De Blasio has maintained that he and his allies are innocent, that they not only followed the law, but also ethical guidance. Still, investigators appear to have at least found enough to assemble the grand juries (one state, one federal), and de Blasio and his team clearly at least blurred some ethical lines.

Much of 2016 was dominated by the Rivington House mess, questions about the Campaign for One New York, which took in millions from entities with city business, and decisions made by de Blasio and his political and governmental teams. Those teams have also had blurred lines, with the now-infamous “agents of the city” designation coming to light this year, followed by many questions around de Blasio’s relationships with private sector consultants who regularly advise him while they work for clients with city business.

How those grand juries and any other ongoing investigations turn out will have immense impact on de Blasio’s 2017, re-election bid, and life and career beyond. If the mayor can survive the proceedings, he’ll be a heavy favorite to be re-elected.

That raises one other key story of 2016, not listed above: ongoing rumblings about who may challenge de Blasio. As 2017 begins, several big names (Scott Stringer, Ruben Diaz Jr., Hakeem Jeffries, ) are still on the sidelines.

Who Founded Christianity? The Answer Might Surprise You by Bernard Starr

Nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus or Paul say that he is rejecting Judaism and starting a new religion. In fact, the term “Christian” doesn’t appear at all in the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), which chronicle Jesus’ spiritual mission; and it only appears later, three times in the rest of the New Testament. The first utterance of the word “Christian” occurs when Paul is preaching in Antioch more than a decade after the crucifixion. But the word “Jew” appears 202 times in the New Testament, with 82 of those mentions in the Gospels.

The evidence in the New Testament persuasively suggests that both Jesus and Paul viewed their teachings as Jewish revisionism — not a rejection of Judaism or the proposal for a new religion. If this is true, as it seems to be according to the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles (Book 5 of the New Testament), then we must ask: Who launched Christianity?

While the question presumes that someone had to fill that role, the answer may be that no one officially founded Christianity; it just happened.

“It just happened” doesn’t mean that it mysteriously materialized out of nowhere. A firm foundation was needed to enable it to “just happen.” While Jesus and Paul established the foundation for the new religion, neither of them officially initiated Christianity as a religion separate from Judaism. On the contrary, both remained dedicated to Judaism throughout their lives, as documented in the New Testament.

So why are so many people convinced that Jesus or Paul created a new religion?

Many who believe that Jesus wanted a new religion cite his pronouncement in Matthew 16:18: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.” They jumped to the conclusion that “church” in this statement means a Christian or Catholic church, as we know it today — a building housing a new religion. But that doesn’t make much sense. The term “church” was derived from the Greek and merely meant assembly; some scholars say it was an error in translation and had nothing to do with a place of worship. Moreover, at the time of Jesus, there was no concept of a new religion. If Jesus had proposed a new religion, he would have had few if any followers. Remember, all of his followers were Jews — and first-century Jews were fanatically dedicated to Judaism. Whichever way you cut it, Jesus’ church was more likely the new synagogue, which would represent spiritual Judaism — a spiritual core that Jesus charged was corrupted by the Sanhedrin, the ruling body of Judaism.

If Jesus conceived of a new church, then why did he spend his life religiously celebrating the major Jewish holidays in the Temple in Jerusalem? And we must remember that throughout the years, Jesus prayed, preached and read from the Torah in a synagogue on the Sabbath: “And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up : and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up for to read” (Luke 4:16). Christian theologian Jean Guitton, in his book Great Heresies and Church Councils, states explicitly:

Jesus did not mean to found a new religion. In his historical humanity, Jesus was a devout Israelite, practicing the law to the full, from circumcision to Pesach, paying the half-shekel for the Temple. Jerusalem, the capital of his nation, was the city he loved: Jesus wept over it. Jesus had spiritually realized the germinal aspiration of his people, which was to raise the God of Israel…

Further evidence that Jesus did not envision a new religion was that he didn’t claim one at his trial. Had he said he was no longer a Jew and had launched a new religion. the Sanhedrin wouldn’t have had jurisdiction over him. The Romans had given the Sanhedrin the authority to rule only over Jews. Even if the Sanhedrin had rejected Jesus’ denial of being Jewish, it would have set off a ferocious legal debate among the Jewish rabbis and scholars — a type of debate for which Jews are famous. But that didn’t happen.

Still, there are “experts” who insist that Jesus rejected Judaism and launched a new religion. But if that were true, how do they explain why Jesus’ disciples didn’t follow along? Why, after the crucifixion, did the disciples continue to worship at the Temple in Jerusalem — not in a new church edifice? ReligiousTolerance.org points out that: Jesus’ disciples and other followers who fled to the Galilee after Jesus’ execution appear to have regrouped in Jerusalem under the leadership of James, one of Jesus’ brothers. The group viewed themselves as a reform movement within Judaism. They organized a synagogue, worshiped and brought animals for ritual sacrifice at the Jerusalem Temple. They observed the Jewish holy days, practiced circumcision of their male children, strictly followed Kosher dietary laws, and practiced the teachings of Jesus as they interpreted them to be.

There is ample evidence that Jesus didn’t found the new religion. But what about Paul?

Thirty years after the crucifixion of Jesus, when Paul made his third visit to the disciples at the Temple in Jerusalem, he still appealed to James, the brother of Jesus, and the other disciples, to drop orthodox Jewish practices to allow Gentiles into the new Judaism. But Paul made no declaration of a new religion. Consider also, had the disciples even hinted that they were launching a new religion they wouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near the Temple.

The issue of declaring a new religion comes up again for Paul, when doing so would have saved his life. That he didn’t declare a new religion at that time poses a formidable challenge to those who say “if Jesus didn’t officially launch Christianity then Paul certainly did.” But did he?

On that third visit to Jerusalem, Paul was arrested after creating a disturbance at the Jerusalem Temple, where he incited a group of Asian Jews who attacked him for blasphemy (Acts 21:27-31). When he was brought before the Roman Governor, it was determined that the matter of blasphemy was strictly a Jewish affair and therefore should be adjudicated before the Sanhedrin. Fearful of his fate if he were judged by the Sanhedrin, Paul invoked his status as a Roman citizen and demanded that his case be heard before the emperor in Rome. His demand was granted (Acts 25:10-12), verifying the power and respect for Roman citizenship.

But if Paul believed that he had departed from Judaism and had launched the new religion of Christianity why didn’t he say so, with his life at stake? Why didn’t he say “I’m a Christian, not a Jew. I believe in Jesus Christ, who the Sanhedrin has rejected. As a Christian they have no Jurisdiction over me. You must release me.”

And surely, given his status as a Roman citizen, he would have been released. But he didn’t use that obvious defense. Only one explanation can account for Paul’s puzzling behavior: He believed that he was a Jew proposing a valid revision that embraced Jesus as fulfilling the Jewish Messiah prophesy. In a sense, he may have even felt more Jewish than the Sanhedrin in embracing the Messiah Jesus.

So, instead of freedom, Paul squanders five years, at the peak of his ministry, which included imprisonment in Caesarea, a lengthy treacherous journey to Rome and then house arrest in Rome Punctuating Paul’s persistent dedication to Judaism and his Jewish identity, when arriving in Rome he summoned the Jewish leadership (Acts 28:17-20). He bitterly complained to them that the Romans had no argument with him but that the Sanhedrin had charged him with blasphemy, when he had committed none — still believing that his form of Judaism was the right one. He was clinging to his Jewish identity. Note, too, that there is no mention in the New Testament narrative of any consideration of the argument that would have given Paul his freedom: “I’m not a Jew any longer, I’m a Christian.” Paul goes to his death as a Jew.

At that point in the development of Jewish Christianity, the converts were predominantly Gentiles. With Paul gone and Gentile conversions accelerating, many different sects sprang up. Irenaeus, an early Church leader, counted twenty forms of Christianity. And these Gentile/pagan dominant sects became increasingly distant from Judaism, taking on an independent Christian identity. Paul Flesher, University of Wyoming Professor of Religious Studies names numerous sects that the fledgling Christianity generated: Donatists, Gnostics, Arians, Adoptionists, Modalists, Manicheans, Montanists, Marcionites, Ebionites, Nestorians and Meletians, among others. These disparate sects, says Flesher, had disagreements about fundamental theological doctrines, choice of scriptures and religious practices. By the fourth century competing sects still flourished. That’s why the Emperor Constantine initiated the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, to sanction a unified Christian Church.

This broad-stroke sweeping history sketch documents how Christianity “just happened.” But the newly established unified Catholic Church was still uncomfortable that its authenticity was tied to Jewish lineage and Jewish messianic prophecy. Thus, the church sought to sever the Christian/Jewish connection by stepping up vilification of Jews and Judaism. In this campaign the most devastating blow was the charge of “Christ Killers,” with its lethal consequences for Jews. The fatal distancing of Christians and Jews that followed has only recently begun the process of reconciliation and healing, strengthened by Pope Francis’ bold statement: “Inside every Christian is a Jew.” In 2016, in a rare occurrence, the first night of Hanukkah and Christmas Eve fell on the same date, December 24th. Since 1900, that convergence has happened only three times (1902, 1940, and 1978). 2016 was the fourth time. Perhaps this rare event signals a prophetic time for Christians and Jews to celebrate the common foundation of the two faiths.

Bernard Starr, PhD, is Professor Emeritus at the City University of New York (Brooklyn College). His latest book (expanded edition) is “Jesus, Jews, and Anti- Semitism in Art: How Renaissance Art Erased Jesus’ Jewish Identity and How Today’s Artists Are Restoring It.” He is also organizer of the art exhibit “Putting Judaism Back in the Picture: Toward Healing the Christian/Jewish Divide.”

The American Dream Needs Diverse People: Lessons from a STEM Pioneer Who Helped Send Men to the Moon By Suzette DuncanDec 22, 2016

Editor’s Note: ‘Tis the season of giving, eating and reflecting, a time to look back on 2016 and to make bold predictions about what next year may hold. In our fourth year- end personal statement roundup, we’ve again asked thought leaders to share their outlooks on education, but with a twist. They have to frame their thoughts as a response to some of the finest college application essay prompts, inspired by the very same ones that high school seniors are feverishly working on now!

Here’s what Suzette Duncan, lower school teacher at AltSchool, had to say.

If you could take a class taught by anyone in the world, from history or present day, who would it be and why? (Baruch College, CUNY) Do you know Katherine Johnson? She was an essential part of our space program. She helped Alan Shepard and John Glenn shoot into space and orbit the globe. She is a wife, mother, and former teacher. She is a gifted mathematician. She's a recipient of the 2015 National Medal of Freedom. She is a STEM pioneer. She is a woman. She is black. She's one of my heroes. I would love to learn at her feet.

She's a recipient of the 2015 National Medal of Freedom. She is a STEM pioneer. She is a woman. She is black. She's one of my heroes. I would love to learn at her feet. The things I would want to learn from Katherine Johnson have more to do with life than math. I would want to learn from her what it was like to be born in 1918 and to grow up in the segregated American South. I would like find out who the teachers were that pushed her to explore her interests and pursue her education such that she graduated from college at the age of 18. I would want to know about how she was supported by her loving parents. I would also want her class to teach me about her work at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and then NASA—in a segregated world. And I would like to understand how she sustained longevity in her career, working at NASA from 1953 to 1986! Before our class got started, I would thank Katherine Johnson for her work teaching children math and as well as helping to send a person into space. Both of these jobs did so much to make the lives that we now lead in this nation possible. Teachers inspire all of the change makers who alter the course of a school, a community or a nation. Johnson taught children how to express complex ideas and to persevere when learning difficult topics. She was also one of the women known as human computers during the early days of the space program. As a part of NACA and NASA, she worked alongside fellow brilliant and motivated people to make what seemed impossible possible—to help a national dream come true. Katherine Johnson was a visionary; I would hope that she would teach about optimism and the pioneering spirit.

Katherine helped to build and create a program that excited Americans of all backgrounds and experiences. But could have been excluded for any number of reasons: having been out of the workforce while she raised her children, or being a black woman in America in the 50's. Some sixty years later, the life and contributions of Katherine Johnson remind me about the power that resides in including diverse people in the American Dream.

Republicans’ Simple Recipe for Beating de Blasio: a ‘Seismic’ Event Strategists say short of a criminal indictment or some other calamity, it will be nearly impossible for a Republican to unseat the Democratic mayor

By MARA GAY Updated Dec. 26, 2016 8:38 p.m. ET 9 COMMENTS Good luck with that.

That is the advice some political veterans are giving Republicans hoping to unseat New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat up for re-election next year.

“Obviously, you never say never in politics,” said George Arzt, a former aide to Mayor Ed Koch, a centrist Democrat. “But it would take a seismic catastrophe for a Republican to get elected here.”

Though Republicans won the White House and scored victories across the country in November, strategists in both parties say the tide is unlikely to translate into wins in New York City, where Democrats hold a 6-to-1 advantage.

Mr. de Blasio, who took office in January 2014, is the first Democrat to run the city in two decades. But former mayors Rudy Giuliani, a Republican, and Michael Bloomberg, who ran as the GOP nominee three times, were elected under different circumstances. Mr. Giuliani’s 1993 win came during a period of high crime in the city, while Mr. Bloomberg’s 2001 victory followed the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Short of some kind of calamity, many Republicans say the dream of unseating Mr. de Blasio is likely to remain elusive.

“A pure Republican in New York has a 5 in 100 chance of winning,” said John Catsimatidis, a billionaire businessman and Republican who unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 2013.

Mr. Catsimatidis, who is widely expected to run in the Republican primary next year, described himself as having a blend of liberal and conservative views. “I was a Bill Clinton Democrat,” he said.

Some of the mayor’s most outspoken critics have aligned themselves with Democratic efforts to challenge Mr. de Blasio, like the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the police union and a group whose leader has been sharply critical of the mayor. Union officials believe the best chance of beating Mr. de Blasio is the Democratic primary, people familiar with the matter said.

Some Republicans see the mayor as beatable in the general election, with the right candidate. While Mr. de Blasio’s approval rating has been inching upward in recent months, the city’s rising rate of homelessness has become a political headache for the mayor. State and federal investigations into the fundraising operations of the mayor and his allies have weakened him. In a Dec. 12 NY1/Baruch College City Poll, 43% of voters said the mayor should be re-elected, while 42% said he should not.

“It looks winnable,” said Adele Malpass, chairwoman of the Manhattan Republican Party. “For 20 years we had a Republican mayor.”

But Joe Lhota, a Republican who lost the mayor’s race to Mr. de Blasio in 2013 by nearly 50 percentage points, said it would take a criminal indictment to return a Republican to Gracie Mansion. Two grand juries are hearing evidence in fundraising investigations surrounding Mr. de Blasio’s administration. The mayor has said he and his allies have done nothing wrong.

“The stars and the moon could be perfectly aligned to allow such a confluence of events,” Mr. Lhota said. He added that Mr. de Blasio’s “incoherent management skills, his severe lack of honest transparency, and his overall demeanor of indolence and slothfulness” could help. A spokesman for Mr. de Blasio’s campaign said voters would see things differently. “Under Mayor de Blasio, crime just hit another all-time low, jobs are at record highs, the city is building and preserving affordable housing at a record pace, while graduation rates and test scores continue to improve,” said Dan Levitan, the spokesman. “We are happy to match that record against anyone.”

The Republican Party’s poor showing among black and Latino voters makes the task of defeating Mr. de Blasio difficult in a city where minority voters hold wide political sway. In the 2013 mayoral race, Mr. de Blasio won the support of 96% of black voters and 85% of Latino voters, according to an Edison Research exit poll at the time.

“We absolutely have to make inroads with the African-American community to win,” said Robert Turner, a former congressman and head of the Republican Party in Queens.

Corrections & Amplifications: Michael Bloomberg ran for mayor of New York City as the Republican nominee three times. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said he ran as an independent after first running as a Republican. (Dec. 26, 2016)

My Parents Were Undocumented Immigrants. But You Haven’t Heard Their Story. My parents were pursuing the American dream, even though it seemed to evade them at every turn. 12/26/2016 09:01 am ET

I come from a family of survivors.

My ancestors survived the Armenian genocide, watching as their family was torn apart in a wave of ethnic cleansing in 1915. My mother jumped out of a crumbling building during the Armenian earthquake of 1988 and lived in a tent during the cold winter as the city rebuilt its infrastructure. As the Soviet regime began to decline, my parents endured food shortages and power outages. Armenia and Azerbaijan were at war, adding to the region’s instability.

Then, in 1992, my parents boarded a plane and came to the United States. As she had once jumped from that building, my mother — this time with my father by her side — took a blind leap into the future, not quite sure where she would land.

Initially, my parents came on a visitor visa. After learning that my mother was pregnant with me, they legally extended their visa. However, they ended up staying past the return date. They applied for political asylum, which led to a series of court date extensions, rejections and appeals. In 2004, they were ordered deported. Their lawyer advised them to stay in the country and wait until I turned 21 to apply for sponsorship. In the meantime, they became undocumented immigrants.

With the election of Donald Trump, there are now millions of people who fear they will be deported. Whatever their views on immigration policy, most Americans probably assume this is an issue that will affect only certain communities — namely, Latinos. Indeed, for years, our immigration debate has had an extremely narrow narrative, nearly always referring to undocumented immigrants from Mexico or Central America. Occasionally, the broader discussion of who we should welcome into this country turns to the question of Syrian refugees. But regardless of whether we are talking about building a wall, “bad hombres,” ISIS fears or refugee vetting, people like my parents — who came from other parts of the world — are usually left out.

Although the majority of undocumented immigrants are from Mexico or Central America, the population of undocumented immigrants is, in fact, very diverse. As of 2012, there were hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants from India, Korea and China living in the United States. Since 2000, unauthorized immigration from Asia has tripled, while the amount from Africa has doubled. And between 2009 and 2014, though the number of undocumented immigrants from Central America increased, the number from Mexico actually declined.

As I grew up, my parents were barred from privileges that were readily available to citizens. They were unable to start a business or purchase a home. They couldn’t go to college to help them obtain better jobs with stability and benefits. Voting was not a method they could use to voice their concerns. They were unable to travel abroad or visit their family, despite the births and deaths of their loved ones. Yet they paid federal taxes each year. They worked hard at the jobs that were open to them — cashier, customer service representative, receptionist, driver and insulation installer, among others. They were not “lazy,” “drug lords” or “stealing anyone’s jobs.” They were people pursuing the American dream, despite the way it seemed to evade them at every turn.

As my sister and I grew up, we worried about the uncertain legal status of our parents. We strived to have the typical American childhood, but there were aspects that we could not share with others. We watched CNN nightly, tuning in to pundits like and , holding our breath as they spoke about the border, the likelihood of amnesty and the never-ending debate in Congress. We watched C-SPAN during congressional hearings, hoping that these politicians would properly represent us. Every church candle I lit and every birthday candle I blew out was a wish for a green card for my parents. I constantly pictured the terrorizing knock on the door that would signal immigration authorities coming to take my parents away.

Despite these struggles, my parents’ priority was to survive, and to ensure their children would have a better life — a chance that was not possible in Armenia. They emphasized the importance of education in a country where hard work opens doors and dreams are attainable. The idea of rising up the ladder was ingrained in me as a child, so I started the climb. In school, I won spelling bees and regional essay contests, joined student government and model U.N., took Advanced Placement classes and participated in as many leadership opportunities as possible.

I grew up with gratitude for the country I had the privilege to be born in. I graduated from with a major in political science and a minor in peace and justice studies. I am pursuing my Master of Public Administration at Baruch College. I’ve worked for elected officials and nonprofits, cementing my desire to have an impact on the world. In 2013, I turned 21 and applied for sponsorship of my parents. Two and a half years later, our request was granted. My parents received their green card and became legalized permanent residents.

Our battle was finally over. But the war over immigration will continue with the start of the Trump administration. As Trump’s policies begin to unfold, politicians in Washington should remember that the immigration debate isn’t just about a few particular groups. The rhetoric of Donald Trump over the past year may have focused on Mexicans and Muslims, but my parents are Christian, and they are from a country that was devastated by a totalitarian left-wing ideology. Their story makes clear just how broad an impact the immigration decisions made in Washington will have on diverse communities nationwide. We are a nation built by immigrants — our politicians should work to represent them. All of them.

Soccer Star Soars On Stage on: December 22, 2016In: Sport

Very often, behind the numbers and the statistics, fans fail to see the lives held by players off the field. For Queens College men’s soccer player Nikolas Touros, this could not be any truer. Touros, a junior and midfielder on the Knights, is also an avid musical theater performer, who enjoys the stage as much as he enjoys the pitch.

Coming from a family of soccer players, with two older brothers who also played for Queens, Touros has racked up quite a few recognitions on the field. His team won the NJCAA National Championship during his time at Nassau Community College and was ranked as one of the top 22 players at the USL Super-Y League ODP National Camp at IMG Academy. In his first season at Queens this past fall, he played in 15 games and registered 13 shots.

“I’ve been playing soccer pretty much since I was out of the womb. Up until high school, it was pretty much my entire life,” said Touros. “But all through elementary school and middle school, I had always had a thing for acting. Once I got into my sophomore year of high school, I started singing. So acting was a passion that I found for myself instead of one that was handed down to me by my family.”

His talent in soccer, however, does often cause some friction with his life in the theater, resulting in a juggling act between his two passions.

“In high school, my parents thought that theater would just be a hobby of mine. So it would always cause some friction between us if I ended up coming late to a practice or game because of a show,” he said.

Though he has been doing theater since his sophomore year of high school, the prospects of the stage becoming an actual career path did not come until the second semester of his freshman year of college. Having come from a high school in Queens, funding was not always the best. Even though there were many talented kids, the shows were not always the best. But after arriving in college and getting a taste of what professionalism in the theater industry is, Touros wanted to devote himself to it.

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BRAIN WASTE The US pays a price for keeping immigrants underemployed

US president-elect Donald Trump pledged to get America’s economy growing by 4% a year. Legalizing unauthorized immigrants would take him a long way toward that goal. Undocumented workers generate 3% of US GDP, or $5 trillion over 10 years, according to a new analysis from two economists at Queens College in New York. If the US government granted them permission to legally work in the country, they would be able to land better jobs and boost the economy by another .6%. The US could extract another bump in growth from the untapped earning potential of highly educated immigrants, both undocumented and otherwise. One out of four immigrants with a college degree is in a low-skill job, or has no job at all, according to another study by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI). That’s $39 billion a year in squandered wages, and more than $10 billion in missed tax revenues. Together, the two studies underscore the often-overlooked complexity of the US immigration picture. Dealing with that picture will require far more nuanced policy than mass deportations or building a 55-foot wall border wall.

Not a monolith

Queens College economists Ryan Edwards and Francesc Ortega analyzed data from the Center of Migration Studies, which calculated the legal status of millions of immigrants using Census data on country of origin, year of arrival, education, and occupation. The figures show that unauthorized immigrants come from dozens of nations and work in hundreds of professions.

“They are not monolithic, they are not all uneducated folks from Mexico,” Edwards says. “They are from all over the world, they are from all education backgrounds, and they are in every state.”

As a group, unauthorized immigrants are more likely to accept lower paid work, and are less likely to seek other, higher paying opportunities, because of the risk their status will be discovered, Edwards says. Despite those concerns, 60% of unauthorized immigrants are in middle- to high-skill jobs, according to MPI. The deportation of 11 million unauthorized immigrants—a proposal Trump laid out early in his campaign but has since backed away from—would cost the US about $435 billion annually, and ultimately about 2.6% of GDP. Granting them permission to stay, on the other hand, would benefit the economy. Documented immigrants are almost 30% more productive than undocumented counterparts, because they’re able to take jobs at the maximum of their ability, according to Edwards and Ortega. One study found that wages increased 20% for formerly undocumented workers a year after legalization. That doesn’t mean workers in the US legally—about 75% of the total immigrant population—are earning their full potential, even if they are highly skilled. Nearly a quarter of immigrants with a college degree who have become US citizens, and about a third of those who are legal permanent residents, are under or unemployed, per the MPI analysis. (The rate for unauthorized college graduates is 40%.)

Wasted brains

The loss of immigrant contributions is only growing as their educational level rises, a phenomenon MPI has dubbed “brain waste.” Over the past couple of decades, the share of immigrants with a college degree, both with and without papers, has been steadily expanding.

While the proportion of college graduates is about the same for all immigrants and the US-born population, more recent arrivals—those who came within the past five years—are considerably more educated, per MPI.

The shift in immigrants’ education profile has to do with a variety of factors, none of them US visa policy, says MPI president Michael Fix. Fewer Mexicans are entering the US due to improved economic opportunities and a falling birth rate in Mexico, as well as stepped up patrolling along the border. Those Mexicans who are coming tend to be better-educated than in the past. More women are also entering the US with college degrees, and Indian and Chinese immigrants have surpassed their Mexican counterparts in numbers. All of this should be great news for the US, which faces labor shortages as baby boomers retire. “If you have an immigrant flow that’s highly educated, they’re going to be more productive,” Fix says. Yet nearly 2 million college-educated immigrants, a quarter of all of those who hold a degree, suffer from “brain waste.” MPI’s analysis found many causes for this, ranging from lack of English proficiency to the difficulty of getting foreign degrees validated, to racism. Hispanic and black immigrants were more likely to be in low-skill jobs than their equally educated white counterparts, the study showed. Getting rid of employer bias might be hard, but officials in the US could adopt relatively simple policies, such as offering language courses or making professional licensing easier, to better profit from the country’s immigrant population, MPI suggests.

Immigrant costs

While undocumented immigrants unquestionably contribute to the US economy, analysts who favor tougher restrictions say their gains don’t outweigh the larger costs to the economy. By accepting lower wages, they drive down the pay for the lowest-skilled US workers, and cost more in social benefits than they contribute in taxes, says Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies. Households headed by immigrants—documented or undocumented— cost $6,234 on average in federal cash, food, housing, or medical benefits, 41% more than the $4,431 used by native-born households, according to a CIS analysis. While legalization may boost incomes, and therefore yield more tax revenue, it also makes it more likely that the newly-documented immigrant population will access those benefits, as they no longer risk deportation, Camarota said. “Theres no possibility that people, who on average have a 10th- and 11th-grade education, come close enough to contributing enough in tax to make up for what they consume,” Camarota says. But this simple equation—taxes vs. benefits—glosses over other important elements in the balance of immigrants’ impact on the US. While low-skill foreign workers depress wages for certain groups, such as prior immigrants and high-school dropouts, skilled immigrants can increase both pay and employment for natives by sharing their knowledge, and through innovation, according to a comprehensive analysis (pdf) published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine earlier this year. The study, dubbed “The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration,” also found that immigrants help the economy in other ways—by lowering the costs of products and services through cheaper labor, for example, and by buying those products and services as consumers. And while immigrants tend to be a fiscal drag for local and state governments, they have a positive effect on federal finances. As is often the case with immigration, reality is more complicated than it seems. MOST POPULAR

Massive Bank Settlements Fueled Spending Spree by Electeds December 23, 2016 | by Ben Jurney

In the wake of the financial collapse and the Great Recession, New York City and State officials began to rake in enormous sums of money from settlements with major banking institutions.

Because New York is the major financial industry hub of the world, local officials have jurisdiction over these institutions, and thus related fines, forfeitures, and restitutions. In deals made outside of the budgetary process, New York officials like the Attorney General, Comptroller, and Manhattan District Attorney, and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York have accrued billions of dollars from settlements.

Where this money goes and how it gets spent are often mysteries. The procedure for allocating settlement money is opaque, and inconsistent across government entities. When asked, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli's office declined to explain how the money is distributed after settlements are reached. The same is true for U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara's office. The offices of Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance did provide some details to Gotham Gazette.

In the early stages of a typical process, parties involved in the investigation confer to determine possible settlement terms. Negotiations take place behind closed doors, with ample room for flexibility.

When settlements are reached, there are often many vagaries. A 2013 J.P. Morgan settlement with the Department of Justice, for example, used broad language like “permissible purposes for allocation of the funds include, but are not limited to" and funds can be spent "to otherwise promote the interests of the investing public." Settlement terms typically stipulate direct consumer relief—offered by the banks themselves to affected parties—along with a cash component for investigators. This money is then usually used at the discretion of the settling investigator, such as the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. It can be used to fulfill political promises, bolster pet initiatives, or create new priorities. It can also give an unfunded agenda new life.

Cash is, of course, highly prized, and officials may contest who has jurisdiction over settlement money, which is often split among parties. In the past, Shneiderman and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo have sparred over such collections.

Government entities at times hire their own third-party monitors to oversee usage and efficacy of settlement spending, bringing into question whether there are sufficient, independent checks to prevent settlement sums from becoming political slush funds.

Using settlement funds, prominent officials have recently invested in specific sectors: Vance has invested in criminal justice reform, Schneiderman in housing programs, and Cuomo in infrastructure.

Cuomo's has been the most contested of officials who have had settlement monies to spend. The money at Cuomo’s disposal has come from a combination of settlements with the Department of Financial Services, which Cuomo established in 2011, and some see as an effort to supercede work typically done by other government entities, like the Attorney General (while Cuomo is a former Attorney General, he is known to be territorial and has not had a terribly cooperative working relationship with Schneiderman).

With billions of dollars at his disposal, Cuomo created the Dedicated Infrastructure Investment Fund (DIIF) in the fiscal year 2015-16 Enacted Budget. The DIIF is a capital projects fund for nonrecurring expenditures, residing in the broader General Fund.

The DIIF has allowed the governor to bolster weaker tax collections and reallocate money at will, spending on both capital and noncapital purposes. The DIIF is structured to allow maximum flexibility with minimal oversight, garnering criticism from State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, among others.

Settlement money has been a huge boon to Cuomo’s ambitions for the state. He has spent billions toward his $100 billion infrastructure agenda, which includes a new Tappan Zee Bridge, airport upgrades, and much more. Billion-dollar investments in the Thruway Stabilization Program, Upstate Revitalization Initiative, and Javits Convention Center Expansion have also provoked questions, especially as the governor’s oversight of his Buffalo Billion economic development project has been inadequate, leading to multiple indictments of parties involved.

Each major official who has secured significant settlement funds has charted his own path, investing in a chosen agenda.

Manhattan DA Vance From 2009 to 2016, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office has collected roughly $12 billion in settlements, with $3 billion going to city and state treasuries, and around $807 million remaining under the DA office’s control, according to an October Citizens Budget Committee report.

Settlement terms have stipulated that this money go to criminal justice projects, leading Vance to form the Criminal Justice Investment Fund. He has used money to both plug budget gaps and fund new projects like a John Jay College of Criminal Justice institute designed to educate prosecutors.

"It's a once in a generation opportunity," Vance said at an October Citizen's Budget Committee event.

According to Vance's office, all funds have been deposited into accounts registered with the city Department of Finance, subject to audit by the city Comptroller. Some are directed by federal guidelines through the Equitable Sharing Program, by which the Department of Justice distributes forfeitures to the law enforcement agency involved in the investigation.

The DA has chosen the CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance to develop funding recommendations and monitor progress.

Vance’s office says settlement resources are funding transformative initiatives. Maggie Wolk, director of planning and management for Vance, told Gotham Gazette that the money will support a “21st century crime-fighting” agenda. Rather than innovative projects, initial settlement money was used to cover existing needs, such as NYCHA security, like exterior lighting upgrades, which are seen as key to fighting crime. Other funds from Vance have strengthened safety nets: in-prison education, at-risk youth diversion programs, and the Mayor's Task Force On Behavioral Health and Criminal Justice. Vance’s office is also funding a national program to reduce the sexual assault backlog by testing rape kits across the country.

The DA’s most innovative project is the Global Cyber Alliance (GCA). Created in 2015, the GCA is a coalition of more than 120 global partners who collaborate to develop risk solutions for reducing terror, cyber, and financial crimes. Vance is in regular contact with the commissioner of the London police for this project. A November symposium at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York––hosted by Vance––included the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, and former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton.

The GCA is the type of initiative that might not exist without settlement funds, but that Vance is able to invest in significantly. Because of the autonomy of district attorney offices and Vance’s Manhattan jurisdiction, he has been in prime position to recover funds and determine how he wants to spend them.

In November 2015, The New York Times reported on Vance’s windfall, highlighting his investments in reducing the sexual assault backlog, the GCA, and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The piece also raised the question of the amount of oversight involved in these expenditures -- a common theme among top officials who all-of-a-sudden came to control billions of discretionary dollars.

Attorney General Schneiderman Attorney General Schneiderman’s office says it has collected $5 billion since the financial crisis, using available cash to create programs to support those affected by the mortgage crisis.

“These programs have already provided unprecedented assistance to homeowners and communities across the state,” Schneiderman said in a statement to Gotham Gazette, referring to programs protecting homeowners at risk of foreclosure and communities struggling with vacant and blighted homes.

Schneiderman’s first settlement was in 2012, when 49 states, along with the federal government, reached a $25 billion agreement with some of the nation's biggest mortgage servicers: Ally/GMAC, , Citi JPMorgan Chase, and . From the settlement, the Attorney General's office received $135 million -- a sum, according to Citizens Budget Commission's David Friedfel, "relatively small in comparison to overall amounts." Schneiderman has faced challenges in getting or keeping settlement money as Cuomo has encroached.

One of Schneiderman's first ventures using settlement funds was the 2012 launch of the Homeowner Protection Program, which provides homeowners with mortgage assistance, including housing counseling and legal services. A December press release details that the Attorney General planned to add another $20 million to his existing $100 million investment in the program.

Another initiative, the Mortgage Assistance Program, created in 2014, provides loans to homeowners at risk of foreclosure. A May 2016 press release reported that the Attorney General has distributed $18 million in loans to preserve $153 million of property value.

Schneiderman has also funded a series of long-ignored land banks: nonprofit organizations that acquire, rebuild, or demolish vacant, abandoned, or foreclosed properties. This investment came in the wake of a 27% increase in vacant and distressed properties between 2000 and 2010, according to the AG's office. Schneiderman initially allocated $12.5 million, and later another $33 million.

A November 2016 report from the AG’s office says that in the past three years, ten land banks have reclaimed approximately 2,000 properties, returned 700, and demolished 400, saving $19 million in property value. That month, the AG announced an additional $20 million in funding.

Like Vance, Schneiderman selected his own oversight committee, tapping Enterprise Community Partners to conduct regular reporting on his uses of settlement monies.

Questions remain about the process of dividing funds among parties relevant to an investigation. Schneiderman's office provided a vague picture of negotiations with settling parties, Cuomo’s office, and other offices like the Department of Justice.

Once terms are determined, money is sent back to the state where it becomes the decision-making jurisdiction of the Legislature and Governor. At this point, the Attorney General is removed from proceedings. The early stage of negotiations can prove contentious; in January 2014, New Yorkers caught a glimpse of this infighting.

In a landmark $13 billion deal with JPMorgan Chase, Schneiderman negotiated terms that gave him control over a $613 million sum. Cuomo argued that all the money should go into the state treasury. After a public feud, the two reached a deal where Schneiderman diverted $81.5 million to Cuomo, to be used specifically for housing programs.

A New York Times editorial placed blame on Cuomo, calling the exchange an “unnecessary fight.”

Governor Cuomo According to a November update from state Comptroller DiNapoli, New York has received or is expected to receive approximately $9 billion in settlement funds from the beginning of state fiscal year 2014-15 through the middle of state fiscal year 2016-17, which is the current one and ends March 31.

According to the same update, in fiscal year 2015-16, settlement revenues were 3.7% of State Operating Funds.

Then there’s Cuomo’s Dedicated Infrastructure Investment Fund (DIIF), which, as of the fiscal 2016-17 enacted state budget, was appropriated almost $7.4 billion. The DIIF is an opaque capital projects fund for nonrecurring expenditures.

In his update, the comptroller said appropriation language is "broadly worded" to provide "significant flexibility.” These “mostly unrestricted” funds can be used for non-capital expenses and even transferred back into the General Fund in case of economic downturn or other needs.

Through the middle of fiscal 2016-17, roughly $1.6 billion has been used for noncapital expenses, according to the comptroller’s update.

“The public at large doesn’t know what the government is spending their money on,” said David Friedfel of Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan, nonprofit watchdog. "The appropriations language essentially says that they can use the money for whatever they want.” E.J. McMahon, research director at the Empire Center for Public Policy, feels the same. "It's basically a grab-bag of different projects that are meant to be politically appealing as much as anything."

Governor Cuomo is using settlement dollars to compensate for tax collections that have seen a decline of $1.3 billion in fiscal 2016-17 over the year before, with personal income tax collections down 3% in the same period year-over-year, according to the comptroller’s update. The state fiscal year begins April 1. Cuomo will be outlining his proposed fiscal 2017-18 budget in January.

In a November press release, DiNapoli further questioned Cuomo's actions. "The use of settlement resources for ongoing spending and to boost the state's bottom line may be obscuring New York's true fiscal position, and leaving uncertainty for the commitments already made,” DiNapoli said.

Both Friedfel and McMahon noted that settlement funds could have been used to pay down long-term debt, which is $63 billion, according to a March 2016 Comptroller report. "One of the other acceptable uses other than debt reduction would've been to take another big chunk of it and put it in reserve. But he didn't do that either," McMahon said of Cuomo. "He's having his cake and eating it too."

Projects The fiscal 2016-2017 Enacted Budget Financial Plan details that $2 billion is going to the Thruway Stabilization Program. According to the governor's office, around one third of this money will go to supporting core infrastructure, and two thirds to the construction of the new Tappan Zee Bridge.

The Tappan Zee replacement (the New NY Bridge) has been a longstanding Cuomo initiative that the governor is, in part, staking his legacy on. Some believe more of the Thruway money should have been spent on less-sexy existing infrastructure.

Friedfel and McMahon took issue with this allocation, which each called a "blank check" to the Thruway Authority. The governor's office denied this was the case.

McMahon argues that the Thruway should not have been the highest priority, citing that the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) only received $250 million to open a Metro-North link in Penn Station. "The Thruway is not to the rest of the state as the MTA is to downstate," McMahon explained. "There's no comparison."

The governor has also dedicated $1.7 billion of settlement funds to the Upstate Revitalization Initiative (URI) to incentivize economic development.

In this initiative, Regional Economic Development Councils––public-private partnerships made up of local experts and stakeholders––submit development plans to a committee including the New York Secretary of State. Those deemed to have the strongest plans receive a total of $500 million to enact their projects.

In supporting the investment, a representative of the governor's office cited a drop in unemployment since URI’s institution.

“New York’s fiscal discipline under Governor Cuomo has made it possible to dedicate these unplanned settlement dollars to capital projects that will have a huge economic impact,” said Morris Peters at the State Division of the Budget. Cuomo has staked much of his tenure on restoring fiscal sanity to the capital, including a 2 percent cap on annual spending increases in the operating budget.

Experts have concerns about the potential return for taxpayers from URI and other economic development investments made by Cuomo, and recent corruption indictments of eight Cuomo aides, associates, and donors have raised additional oversight questions.

The governor's website states that the URI is "modeled after the success of the Buffalo Billion Initiative,” which is at the center of the corruption scheme including bid-rigging and kickbacks.

The third largest DIIF investment is a high-profile Jacob Javits Center expansion on Manhattan’s west side, to be reimbursed by bond proceeds issued in fiscal years 2020 and 2021. The governor claims that the expansion will generate 4,000 full-time jobs, 2,000 part-time jobs, and $393 million in new economic activity, annually.

A January 2016 press release stated that the center will be paid for "within existing resources." According to Friedfel of CBC, the expansion loan did not even exist in Cuomo’s executive budget, but later appeared in the adopted budget, raising more questions about how windfall dollars are distributed behind closed doors.

*** by Benjamin Jurney for Gotham Gazette

Ex-Bronx teacher who lost job after getting pregnant by student found dead along with 4-year-old son in NYC apartment

A former city schoolteacher fired in 2012 after she was impregnated by an 18- year-old student was found dead in her Harlem apartment Monday along with her 4-year-old son, authorities said.

Cops found Felicia Barahona, 36, lying on the living room floor of her apartment on W.153rd St. near Riverside Drive with an electrical cord wrapped around her neck at 8:15 a.m., police sources said.

Her son Miguel, believed to be the child she had with the student, was found drowned in the bathtub, sources said.

“The death of the baby is very, very, very sad,” said the victim’s friend Bierca Rodriguez, 44. She recalled that little Miguel was “very intelligent.”

The building’s super called 911 after a resident reported a foul odor coming from the apartment, police said. The super last saw her alive this past Wednesday.

Cops have yet to determine if it was a murder-suicide or whether Barahona and her son were the victims of foul play.

The city medical examiner will conduct autopsies to determine the cause of their deaths.

Barahona, an Afghanistan war vet, was a science teacher at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx when she had a four-month affair with a student that began on his 18th birthday in the fall of 2011, according to the city’s Special Commissioner of Investigation, which released a report on the relationship in 2013.

The couple had sexual liaisons about five times a week. When the student asked if he could use condoms, she told him she “didn’t like” them and “not to worry,” the report said.

When Barahona found out she was pregnant, her young lover — who was not identified — went with her to doctors’ appointments, the report said.

The report at the time also said that she was so in love with him, Barahona even bought wedding rings for both of them in the hope that they would marry. arahona gave birth to a baby boy in August 2012 and was fired, officials said.

On her Facebook page, she said she was studying forensic science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and is divorced.

She posted a range of cute photos of little Miguel — including one of him holding a stuffed animal.

In an online résumé she posted after her firing, Barahona included her 12 years of teaching experience, but did not refer to why she was fired. In a statement Monday, the Administration for Children’s Services said, “We are deeply committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of our city’s children. We understand the NYPD is currently investigating this matter.”

Left in trash as a newborn, man reunites with trio who saved him By Susan Edelman

December 25, 2016 | 6:30am | Updated

Marcus Wallace was 20 when he first saw his birth certificate. It named a woman he never met as “mother.” Curious, he stepped into the New York Public Library to look for clues — and got the shock of his life.

A library worker found a 1985 newspaper story on Dorothea Ballas, a 21-year-old student at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, NJ. Ballas had given birth in her dorm room, put the newborn in a trash bag, knotted the top and dropped it in a dumpster behind a gas station, leaving the boy to suffocate or freeze in 20-degree temperatures.

“I broke down. I got on the subway and cried all the way from 42nd Street to Flatbush Avenue,” said Wallace, now 31 and living in Brooklyn.

“I had a lot of whys. What was wrong with me? Why me?”

The discovery spurred years of roller-coaster emotions. After two debilitating strokes in one year, he struggled to regain his health and his self-esteem.

“My mother threw me in a dumpster. It took me a very long time to deal with that, but I’ve gotten past it,” Wallace said.

Still, he never stopped searching for answers.

Wallace’s journey led him to find this reporter, formerly with The Record of Hackensack newspaper, who covered the baby’s abandonment and miraculous survival. “Nobody told me anything until I found your story,” he said.

The Post arranged a reunion, three decades later, between Wallace and the three people who rescued him.

On a December day just as frigid as Wallace’s birthday on Jan. 19, 1985, they gathered on a now-empty lot next to FDU dorms where the dumpster stood, exchanging bear hugs and weeping with joy.

“You’re my hero,” Wallace told Michael Randelman, a musician and painting contractor who came from Florida for the occasion.

On that morning in 1985, Randelman, then 25, was driving home from a girlfriend’s house at about 3 a.m. He stopped to inflate his tires at a gas station near his Hackensack home, but the air pump was broken.

So he headed a few miles to a Teaneck Shell station. The restroom was “filthy,” so he went behind the dumpster to urinate.

“I heard a crying noise. I kept hearing it,” Randelman said. “I lifted the lid, but all I saw was garbage.”

He called over station attendant Lo Kuo-Raya. They agreed a baby was inside, but they couldn’t see it. Randelman used a pay phone to call the Teaneck police.

Officers Phillip Lavigne and Sheridan Ogden pulled up a minute later. “We figured it was a cat,” Ogden recalled.

Lavigne climbed in, careful not to step on a black bag that differed from the other trash. He ripped it open and found the naked newborn, along with the umbilical cord and placenta.

“I was in a state of disbelief — to have someone just discard a living being like that,” said Lavigne, whose wife was pregnant at the time with their first child.

Lavigne held the baby close to his chest, while Ogden raced at 80 mph with lights and sirens toward Holy Name Hospital. “I think I had wings on the car,” Ogden said.

Doctors whisked the infant inside. “You got here just in time,” one told the cops.

The baby, dubbed “Johnny Doe,” would have died of exposure had he not been found quickly, they said.

During their meeting, Lavigne presented Wallace with a Teaneck police cap and his shield — No. 187 — as mementos.

For Lavigne, the gift was knowing he made a difference.

“It’s the best Christmas gift you could ever give a cop,” Lavigne sobbed.

Randelman, who has no kids, is thrilled he helped give Wallace life. They plan to meet again so Randelman can teach him to play the drums.

“I love you, Marcus,” Randelman told him. “You are special, and you were meant to be here. Don’t let that incident tell you otherwise.”

As the reporter kept digging and the two ex-cops searched their memories, Wallace learned more of his origins.

Investigators had quickly identified his mother as Ballas because her name was on papers and other debris in the trash bag.

The bag also had a handwritten note or poem in Greek, with words to the effect: “I love you. I don’t want to do this,” the cops recalled. A Greek woman who translated the note for police at the time described it last week as “enigmatic” and “confused.”

Wallace never knew about the note.

“I’ve never seen my mother,” he said. One yellowed news clipping gave a first glimpse — a photo taken in court of a beautiful brunette in a high-necked white blouse. Wallace bears a striking resemblance to her. At the time, Ballas told police she hid her pregnancy from family, friends and her former boyfriend, the baby’s father. Alone when she went into labor, she delivered the baby herself. She then discarded the boy in “sheer panic,” authorities said.

Ballas and the father, Ruthven Prithwie, then a 22-year-old student from Trinidad, had recently split up, he told the reporter in an interview two months after the birth. He had asked if Ballas was pregnant, but she said, “I’m just gaining weight.”

He believed Ballas feared the disapproval of her strict Greek Orthodox parents.

“I am the bad guy,” Prithwie said. “Number one, I am foreign. Number two, I am black.”

But he felt no ill will. “I don’t hold it against her for doing what she did,” he said. “Somehow or other, I understand.”

Ballas pleaded guilty to attempted murder. “I gave birth to a child. I placed the child in a bag,” she told the court in a near-whisper. She said the baby lay in the bin about 90 minutes before he was found. She was sentenced to probation and did no jail time.

While Ballas’ parents wanted to put the baby up for adoption, Prithwie fought to keep him. “I want to make a good home for my son,” he said, naming him Marcus. Finally, the child was placed in his custody and sent to live with Prithwie’s family in Trinidad while he finished his studies.

His father vowed to keep his abandonment a secret. “I don’t want my son to know,” he said in the 1985 interview. “If he ever does find out, I guess I’ll have to explain it to him, but I don’t know how.”

Wallace grew up in Trinidad with his father’s sister and a grandma. “I called her Mommy,” he said of his aunt. “I still love her as a mother. She took care of me as if I were her own.”

The sister’s own son was “my brother,” he said. Wallace’s dad visited him in Trinidad several times a year. At age 7 or so, the family began referring to the woman who raised him as his aunt. He was confused but too young to understand. “I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what it was.”

Wallace returned to the United States at age 16 to live with his dad, who owns a concierge service, and his dad’s wife, another FDU classmate, in Uniondale, LI. He calls her Mom. He has two younger sisters.

Like his dad, who attended FDU on a track scholarship, Wallace excelled on the Uniondale High School track team.

But despite a life full of love and laughter, he said, “I always felt a void.”

After Wallace graduated from high school, he began seeking the truth about his roots and found the headline that jolted his soul.

Over the years, Wallace has tried to reach Ballas, now 53. He phoned a florist business run by her parents and asked politely, “Please tell her that Marcus called.”

The next time he tried, he was told, “Don’t call back.”

He also messaged Ballas’ two brothers on Facebook. They never replied. Ballas’ parents have since died. Wallace has learned only that Ballas married a fellow Greek, had two other kids and moved to Rhode Island.

The Post reached Ballas on her cellphone and started to explain.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she blurted, and hung up. She did not respond to a letter.

“I honestly believe she doesn’t want anything to do with me,” Wallace said. “She doesn’t want any part of her past.”

After attending Kingsborough Community College, Wallace left to follow a girlfriend to Atlanta. They married. He landed jobs managing a Walmart and a Roadrunner trucking company

He was in the delivery room at the birth of his daughter, Addison, now age 3. “I watched her come out,” he said. At that moment, he couldn’t help wondering what Ballas went through at his own birth. But after reading the news articles, Wallace feels less resentment than concern.

“She’s still my mother. She carried me full term,” he said. “I have nothing but love for the woman. I’m very grateful that I’m able to be a loving father to my own little girl. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to be alive.”

Wallace said he still hopes to meet his birth mom someday. He is determined to deliver one message: “I forgive you.”

All Students Can Succeed With Social and Emotional Support, Principal Says

BUSHWICK — A new principal who grew up poor to an immigrant family from Ecuador — and was the first generation in his family to go to college — is now working to bring the same opportunities to his students at a local high school that's long struggled with flagging enrollment and poor attendance.

Jorge Sandoval, 40, took over as principal of the Academy of Urban Planning at 400 Irving Ave. on the Bushwick Educational Campus this fall, though he's worked for nearly a decade there, first as a substitute teacher, then a U.S. history teacher, then assistant principal, and now this fall as principal.

Two years ago, the school was designated a renewal school by the city, one of 86 low-performing schools to get extra funding and support. And their efforts have quickly paid off, statistics show.

Attendance was up from 70 percent two years ago to 86 percent, and the four- year graduation rate last year 70 percent last year, up from 56 percent in 2011.

While there's a constant fight to bring the most challenged students up to speed, Sandoval said, the new principal isn't shy about providing the more advanced students with stimulating opportunities, like pathways to internships with local organizations. And starting this year, thanks to a partnership with Medgar Evers College, students can get college credits in history, English, Spanish, biology and U.S. history.

The school boasts a hydroponics lab that opened this fall and they're in the planning phases of getting a girls soccer team and working on a swim team for the recently refurbished Olympic-sized swimming pool they share with other schools on campus.

Sandoval sat down with DNAinfo and talked about some of the challenges and exciting new elements headed to the Academy of Urban Planning.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What have you done to get such a dramatic bump in attendance at the school?

The method is traditional work. There's making phone calls, meeting with students, giving them mentors, assigning them mentors, not just teachers but staff members. My secretaries serve as success mentors. We have our own attendance team, we do home visits: guidance counselors do home visits, attendance teachers go on home visits, teachers' assistants, no one is above anyone on the attendance team. Everyone has their own responsibilities to get those kids in. We call home twice a day in the morning and the afternoon. Any kid that's not there by the end of the day, whoever's not here gets a phone call. It's time consuming, but it works.

Has the changing neighborhood impacted the climate inside the school in any way?

One of the things that plagued us the most about recruitment is the old stereotypes about Bushwick. We know it's being gentrified, yes we get it, but those students aren't here right now. They're not old enough, and if their kids were going to our schools, then that's different, but right now we don't see that. So what do we do? How do we change people's mindset about Bushwick? We compete. So our next step is to compete — compete with other schools. So we're adding sports like swimming and girls soccer.

Has anything changed for about the school's teaching philosophy post-election?

We still have work to do, we can't just sit here and be sad about how the hell did it happen? We all know how it happened. We discuss it as students bring it up, especially social studies. They try to synthesize it with the past, what happened when the Chinese immigrants were treated in such ways, we talk about quotas and the civil rights movement. I try to push the humanities classes to really face some of the issues that occur today.

What's the aspect of your school are you most proud of?

Our biggest asset is our social-emotional support. We have mental health clinicians brought in through our community school program. We have a Saturday academy, and every Saturday, kids come in for tutoring in math, science, ELA, whatever they need to get caught up. Not only get caught up, but to advance.

In the past people would say, "It's the kids — look at the kids we're getting." I was around as a teacher and I heard teachers complain, "Look at the kids we're getting — what do you expect from us?"

Now, that's not even in the vocabulary. We've created a culture where every student is a learner and we take any kid. I don't say no to them. I know we have the services, our biggest push to have that social and emotional support.

Reviving ‘The Mikado’ in a Balancing Act of Taste By MICHAEL COOPER DEC. 25, 2016

One of the most passionately debated stage works of our time is a 131-year- old operetta.

Is Gilbert and Sullivan’s enduringly popular “The Mikado” a droll satire of Victorian England? A racist caricature of Japan? Some amalgam of the two? Recent revivals have ended up in the cross hairs of these questions, sparking protests across the nation, along with earnest wondering about how — and even if — this 1885 piece should be staged in the 21st century.

When an outcry arose last year over a planned revival of the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players’ old production — which had featured a mostly white cast in yellowface makeup, and employed some ugly stereotypes to evoke the imaginary Japanese town of Titipu — the company initially responded by saying that it would scrap the makeup. Then, realizing that the complications were more than skin deep, it decided to scrap the entire staging and take a year to rethink its approach, diversify its cast and create a new show. The result will open on Wednesday at Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College in Manhattan.

Finding the right balance is not easy: Some of the most severe critics of “The Mikado” find it too inherently offensive to be performed, while some ardent fans view any changes as bows to excessive political correctness. Shortly after the New York company announced it was replacing last year’s “Mikado” with “The Pirates of Penzance,” David Wannen, its executive director, received a letter from a self-described pirate who complained that he was offended that the troupe did not plan to cast real pirates.

David Auxier, the director of the new “Mikado” production, recalled that “Sometimes the conversation got to be: ‘You’re never going to please everybody, so why try?’”

Continue reading the main story He added: “I said, ‘We’re starting from the understanding that we’re never going to please everybody. But we’re still going to try.’”

As the use of yellowface — which can refer not only to makeup, but to broader attempts at racial impersonation or caricature — has drawn protests at “Mikado” revivals from Seattle to New York, companies presenting it have responded with a variety of approaches.

A topsy-turvy 2013 staging by Skylark Opera and Mu Performing Arts in St. Paul inverted the libretto, setting the piece in England and casting Asian- American actors in key roles. This year, the Lamplighters Music Theater in San Francisco decided not to set its new production in Japan after local Asian-American performers threatened protests. Instead it moved the action to Renaissance Italy and changed the opening line from “If you want to know who we are, we are gentlemen of Japan” to “If you want to know who we are, we are gentlemen of Milan.” A production by the Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert and Sullivan Players this fall was set in a 1960s Oriental-theme hotel in Las Vegas to, as the organizers put it, “recontextualize the origins of the show in Japonisme and commodity racism.” It still drew protests.

In New York, emotions have run high on all sides. A Save the Mikado NYC Facebook page sprang up, calling for the operetta “to be performed exactly as conceived by Gilbert and Sullivan, with only a very small number of minor alterations that have been standard for over half a century.” Another Facebook group, Artists Against The Mikado, was “dedicated to the controversial idea that minstrel shows where white people dress up as fake Japanese is a little out of date.”

The old “Mikado” production had used yellowface, and the troupe had invented a minor role, played by a child, that was credited as a “coolie,” which company officials said they had not realized was a slur. A 2004 version of the staging included “a man with a Fu Manchu mustache and impossibly long fingernails,” Josephine Lee, a professor of English and Asian-American Studies at the University of Minnesota, writes in her influential 2010 book, “The Japan of Pure Invention: Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘The Mikado,’” which traces the work’s long, complex racial history.

In an interview, Ms. Lee questioned the commonly heard defense that “The Mikado” should not be considered racist because it is meant in fun. “There are lots of instances in blackface minstrelsy that are lighthearted and funny — and also offensive,” she said.

Before mounting their new “Mikado,” the New Yorkers sought advice, listened to critics and sent out casting calls that stressed a desire for diversity. At a forum held in November at the Kaye Playhouse, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa, a professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia who has performed in Gilbert and Sullivan works, noted that many of the most offensive elements of recent productions were invented by stage directors.

“You don’t need to do a lot of violence to the work to not tape actor’s eyes back to make their eyes look ‘slanty,’” he said, recalling productions he had appeared in that did just that. So the New York company set about trying to strip away those elements. Like Mike Leigh’s 1999 film “Topsy-Turvy,” which told the story of Gilbert and Sullivan as they created “The Mikado,” the new production will firmly establish the operetta as a work of the Victorian imagination. A new prologue features the composer and librettist planning their next opera and admiring some Japanese objects. When a sword falls, knocking Gilbert unconscious, he dreams “The Mikado” proper, set in an imaginary Japan as conceived by a 19th-century Englishman.

The production will emphasize the work’s satire of Victorian mores, and do away with racially charged performance tics and excessive bowing and shuffling in its choreography. While the ensemble would never be mistaken for, say, the multicultural cast of “Hamilton,” it is the troupe’s most diverse yet.

Erin Quill, an Asian-American actress, wrote about the controversy last year on her lively blog, The Fairy Princess Diaries. Ms. Quill, who spoke at the company’s forum in November, said in an interview that she was “cautiously optimistic” about the new production.

“Am I glad this conversation is happening?” she asked. “Absolutely. Do I wish this conversation had been 20 years ago? Of course.”

Campaign finance proposals emerge in special session talks By JIMMY VIELKIND

12/23/16 05:05 PM EST

ALBANY — In a special session to raise pay for state lawmakers, legislators may also create a system of public financing for judicial elections and restrict their ability to solicit campaign contributions from entities with business before the state, sources told POLITICO New York.

Details of the legislative package began trickling out of the Legislature on Friday, as talks about whether to hold a special session — which would also include the first increase in legislators’ $79,500 base pay since 1998 — reached a crescendo.

Multiple legislative sources said the emerging passel of bills would include a three-year pilot program to publicly finance campaigns for the state Supreme Court. Local elected officials who make more than $50,000 a year would be required to file financial disclosure statements with the state, the sources said.

Two sources also indicated state legislators would need to have outside incomes, which are currently unlimited, pre-approved by the Legislative Ethics Commission — whose members are appointed by the majority conference in the state Senate and Assembly. A third source said this provision was "in and out," and might not be part of the eventual package.

There would also be a “pay-to- play” bill that forbids elected officials from accepting campaign contributions from anyone bidding on a public project — and prohibits the winner from donating to campaigns for six months after securing a contract.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed many of these measures in recent months, as his administration grappled with a bid-rigging and bribery scandal that ensnared former SUNY Polytechnic Institute President Alain Kaloyeros and Joe Percoco, a political adviser and surrogate brother to the governor. Even as some legislators were learning the outlines of the proposals, legislative language was still circulating — out of public view — among a small circle of people close to the governor, Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan, Senate Independent Democratic Conference Leader Jeff Klein and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie.

Spokespeople for each declined to comment, but the legislative sources indicated there still no final deal. Indeed, while a top lawmaker on Thursday said the “goal” was to convene a session at the Capitol on Tuesday, there was still no official word on timing, and people involved in the talks acknowledged they could still fall apart. Republican senators had yet to be briefed on the deal as of Friday afternoon, several said.

One person involved in the talks described things as “super fluid."

But news of the additional reform measures emerged as good- government advocacy groups blasted other gubernatorial proposals to create Cuomo- appointed inspectors general overseeing state agencies, the SUNY and CUNY systems, the Port Authority of New York and and the State Education Department.

Good-government groups blasted drafts of the reforms as “backwards,” saying “internal oversight is no substitute for real independent oversight.” Attorney General Eric Schneiderman called Cuomo’s proposal for a special inspector general “likely unconstitutional” and “a distraction.” Comptroller Tom DiNapoli has been calling for the re-expansion of his authority to pre-audit contracts at SUNY. People who follow the Port Authority, including elected officials in New Jersey, said Cuomo’s proposed changes were an affront to the independence of its directors.

A gubernatorial spokesman, Rich Azzopardi, responded on Friday in a statement that accused Cuomo’s own appointees of “protecting” John Degnan, the New Jersey- appointed chairman of bi-state authority, in an “abuse” of his position. Azzopardi did not specify what he was talking about, but a New Jersey ethics plan recently said he had no conflict of interest in pushing to fund a replacement to the authority’s Midtown bus terminal, a priority that Cuomo thinks clashes with his plans for construction at New York’s airports.

“The new inspector general functions would be purely additive: on top of all existing offices such as the attorney general and state comptroller. Therefore, the new enforcement capacity could only help to improve the situation,” Azzopardi stated. “Anyone who thinks we don’t need additional enforcement capacity is living in the state of denial and not the state of New York.”

Azzopardi also attacked DiNapoli over the arrest this week of an official in his office, and further called out the state Education Department saying there is “no real oversight function and handles more than one third of the entire state budget.”

SED and school districts are regularly audited by DiNapoli’s office. Though the funding comes from the state, Cuomo has little influence over education policy in New York other than through legislation — policy is crafted by the Board of Regents, appointed through a legislative process dominated by Assembly Democrats.

Talks were also ongoing regarding legislation to legalize ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft and distribute roughly $1 billion in funds for affordable housing.

The ride-hailing measure was still being discussed Friday, sources said, and has prompted a public back-and-forth involving upstate legislators upset that the emerging proposal would direct a 50-cent fee toward public transit systems. (There is no fee in New York City, but ride-hail trips are captured by sales tax.)

“I have serious concerns,” Sen. Joe Griffo, a Republican from Oneida County, said. “I believe it is wrong and unfair to impose essentially a new tax on upstate New Yorkers without doing the same for anyone in New York City.”

The New York Public Transit Association, which represents systems outside of New York City, wrote Cuomo a letter declaring support for the fee “to help offset the loss of riders and revenue on existing public transit systems from [ride-hailing companies’] operation.”