Dingy LaGuardia Airport To Undergo $3.6 Billion Makeover

An aerial view of LaGuardia Airport (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

NEW YORK — Dark, dingy, cramped and sad. These are some of the ways travelers describe LaGuardia Airport, a bustling hub often ranked in customer satisfaction surveys as the worst in America.

“It does not represent what people think of when they think of New York and Broadway shows and glamour. It’s not very pretty,” said Layla House, a sales manager for a medical supply company who travels from her home in Bullard, Texas, to New York at least six times a year.

That’s about to change.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently announced the state is taking control of an ambitious $3.6 billion construction project that envisions a new central terminal at LaGuardia, with vast open spaces, restaurants, shopping plazas, new parking garages, free Wi-Fi and other amenities now common in other airports. Cuomo wants to develop a plan to upgrade cargo operations at nearby John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Read more: http://triblive.com/business/headlines/5448305-74/laguardia-york-airport#ixzz2qxotiKau
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Macabre Dumping Grounds Amid A Storm-Altered Landscape

English: Looking southeast on a sunny spring afternoon in western Forest_Park_(Queens) along abandoned Rockaway_Beach_Branch at Myrtle Avenue overpass. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A forester working for New York City’s parks department made a horrifying discovery last week, beside a huge pile of fallen trees destined for the wood chipper.

A dead man.

And with that discovery, add this to the huge list of troubles Hurricane Sandy has brought to the neighborhoods of the city hit hardest: wreckage from the storm seems to have created inviting spots for killers to dump bodies.

Hours after the discovery, in Forest Park in Queens, a second body was found on storm-ravaged Rockaway Beach. Workers cleaning up around O’Donohue Park heard a shriek of fright from one of their own, standing over a dune near the shoreline. There, a man’s elbow protruded from the cold sand.

Read more:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/24/nyregion/macabre-dumping-grounds-amid-a-storm-altered-landscape.html?hp&_r=0

Sherman Hemsley Of TV’s ‘The Jeffersons’ Dies

Editor’s note:  George has moved on up!

EL PASO, Texas — George Jefferson was a bigot.  A loudmouth.  Rude.  Obsessed with money. Arrogant. And yet he was one of the most enjoyable, beloved characters in television history.

The Jeffersons in 1984 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Much of that credit belongs to Sherman Hemsley, the gifted character actor who gave life to the blustering black Harlem businessman on “The Jeffersons,” one of TV’s longest running and most successful sitcoms — particularly noteworthy with its mostly black cast.

The Philadelphia-born Hemsley, who police said late Tuesday died at his home in El Paso, Texas, at age 74, first played George Jefferson on the CBS show “All in the Family” before he was spun off onto “The Jeffersons.” The sitcom ran for 11 seasons from 1975 to 1985.

With the gospel-style theme song of “Movin’ On Up,” the hit show depicted the wealthy former neighbors of Archie and Edith Bunker in Queens as they made their way on New York’s Upper East Side. Hemsley and the Jeffersons (Isabel Sanford played his wife) often dealt with contemporary issues of racism, but more frequently reveled in the sitcom archetype of a short-tempered, opinionated patriarch trying, often unsuccessfully, to control his family.

Read more: http://www.pottsmerc.com/article/20120725/ENTERTAINMENT01/120729573/sherman-hemsley-of-tv-s-the-jeffersons-dies&pager=full_story