NEWARK, N.J. - Matrimonial trials will soon resume in Essex County, several months after they were put on hold due to a shortage of judges.
The Star-Ledger (http://bit.ly/MLqC4d) reports that County Assignment Judge Patricia Costello notified the county Bar Association on Friday that she hopes to resume the cases, which include divorce proceedings, on Sept. 1. She said that can happen because state Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner has agreed to temporarily transfer three Superior Court judges to the county.
Costello suspended matrimonial trials last December, citing the judge shortage caused by a political standoff between Gov. Chris Christie and state Sen. Ronald Rice. "Complex" civil trials , such as product liability cases , were also suspended at that time, but resumed in March after court officials employed a patchwork of temporary measures.
Criminal trials and family court cases involving domestic violence, parental rights or juvenile cases were never affected by Costello's directives. But overall, the civil and matrimonial trials that were suspended account for about 15 percent of the court docket.
The dispute between Christie and Rice began about 19 months ago.
Citing reservations about Christie's approach to education reform, Rice used senatorial courtesy in a bid to block the permanent appointment of acting state Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf. Meanwhile, Christie refused to act on any of the proposed Essex judicial nominees.
Rabner's decision to transfer the three judges means there will now be 10 judicial vacancies among the county's 44 allotted positions.
Two of the judges being transferred , Wayne Forrest, who is now assigned to Mercer County, and Miguel de la Carrera from Passaic County , will serve in the family division, while the third , Michael Hubner from Morris County , will serve in the civil division.
In a related move, Judge Michelle Hollar-Gregory , who has been serving in the criminal division in Essex County , was reassigned to the civil division.
,,,
Information from: The Star-Ledger, http://www.nj.com/starledger
Source: www.philly.com
London 2012: Cadel Evans out and Fabian Cancellara a doubt for time trial - The Guardian
The 2011 Tour de France champion, Cadel Evans of Australia, has withdrawn from the Olympic time trial while Switzerland's Fabian Cancellara will have a health check before deciding whether to start Wednesday's event at Hampton Court.
The Australian Olympic Committee said Evans, who finished 79th in the road race, is too tired to compete in Wednesday's race against the clock. Evans struggled with his physical condition earlier this month, failing to defend his Tour de France title.
Cancellara's crash at Richmond's Star and Garter corner in Saturday's road race was a turning point in the race won by Alexander Vinokourov of Kazakhstan, and it has left the Swiss with heavy bruising to the right collarbone that he fractured in April.
The Swiss should start as one of the favourites on Wednesday, together with Great Britain's Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome, and the defending world champion Tony Martin, but he left the finish of Saturday's race with his arm in a sling having completed the course after piling into the barriers on the sharp right-hander. "Happy [nothing] is broken but the pain will be on! For the time trial nothing is sure yet," he said on Twitter. "Have no words left. The tears are stronger than the pain."
The Swiss broke his collarbone in the Tour of Flanders in early April but had returned to his best for the Tour de France, in which he won the opening prologue time trial and led the race for a week before Wiggins took over. He was unable to match the Londoner in the first long time trial of the race, however, although he showed searing form at the finish of the first road race stage in Seraing, finishing second to Peter Sagan.
On Saturday he had looked to be one of the strongest in the latter stages of the road race, which boded well for the time trial, until his crash. Evans, meanwhile, suffered from an unspecified illness in the final week of the Tour de France and rode the men's road race on Saturday in order to assist the Australian team, finishing 79th.
Wiggins is unbeaten in long time trials – as opposed to briefer prologues – this season, having taken single stages in the Tour of the Algarve, Paris-Nice, the Tour of Romandie, Dauphiné Libéré and two at the Tour de France. He is confident in his chances of adding a fourth gold medal to his tally of two individual pursuit golds and a team pursuit gold, in addition to the bronzes he won in Sydney in the team pursuit and Athens in the madison. That would give him a higher medal tally than any other British Olympian, moving ahead of Sir Steve Redgrave's six.
The Great Britain men's road race team dispersed on Saturday evening, with only Froome and Wiggins remaining in their Surrey hotel. Mark Cavendish has a packed racing schedule over the next few days, with criteriums – appearance races of about 100km in Belgium on Sunday, France on Monday and Holland on Tuesday. He will then line up at the start of the Eneco Tour in the Low Countries next week, with rumours persisting that he may start the Tour of Britain in early September. His priority this year has been to honour the world champion's jersey by wearing it in as many races as possible and that is set to continue for five more weeks.
David Millar packed his personal effects – luggage from the Tour de France, Olympic kit and all – in to a taxi after Saturday's race finished on The Mall and headed straight for his mother's house in west London. He will enjoy a brief holiday with his wife Nicole and their daughter in Somerset before joining Cavendish at the Eneco Tour. He will also race the GP Ouest France in Plouay, Brittany, and is expected to lead the Garmin team in the inaugural world championship time trial on 15 September.
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
London 2012 Olympics: Lizzie Armitstead's tough choice to compete in road race vindicated - Daily Telegraph
“I have always loved riding both track and road,” says Armitstead, “and to be honest I would love to have tried doing both but the omnium has become such a specific event that the training does not really coincide with what I have done today. Maybe I can do both in Rio [de Janeiro].”
That is not a threat to be taken lightly. Armitstead is one of that select group of riders in the world who could genuinely contemplate winning medals in both and that list would be headed by yesterday’s winner, Marianne Vos herself, who is a former world and Olympics points champion as well as a world road champion and five time runner-up. Remarkably, Vos is also the reigning world cyclo-cross champion, a title she has won on four other occasions.
In many ways Armitstead is Vos Mark II. The Dutch woman is still only 25, despite having a cupboard full of medals, so clashes between the two great all-rounders of women’s cycling can only become more and more frequent.
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
London 2012: how the Olympics suckered the Left - Daily Telegraph Blogs
The London Olympics are the most Right-wing major event in Britain’s modern history. Billions of pounds are taken from poor and middle-income taxpayers and service users to build temples to a corporate and sporting elite. Democratic, grassroots sport is stripped of money to fund the most rarefied sport imaginable. The police and the state are turned into the enforcement arm of Coca-Cola. How did this event suddenly become the toast of the Left?
Corporations who make people fat and sick – or, in one case, actually maimed and killed them – are allowed to launder their images; the London Paralympics, in a detail you simply could not make up, are sponsored by Atos, the firm repeatedly accused of bullying disabled people off benefits. Meanwhile, the main sponsors – the people of Britain – are largely excluded from the event they paid for.
Not just the Games itself, but many other parts of their own city, are sealed off from them. Some of them are evicted and their houses destroyed; others find overnight and without warning that their homes are to be converted into military missile sites, so terrorist planes can be made to kill ordinary Londoners instead of Olympic luminaries. Protestors against any of this are arrested and detained on the flimsiest of pretexts. Almost every promise ever made by the organisers – from the budget to the ‘greenest games ever,’ from the number of jobs that will be created to the number of new houses that will be built – turns out to be false.
The Left should be up in arms about the Olympics, as should any democrat. But as it turns out, all it takes is a few nurses dancing round beds, some coloured lights spelling out the words NHS and we all go weak at the knees and collapse into the IOC’s embrace. Worse, actually: any criticism of the opening ceremony was described by one left-wing newspaper today as “extremist!”
My favourite line was from the Guardian columnist Richard Williams who wrote: “Cameron and his gang will surely not dare to continue the dismemberment of the NHS after this.” Hmm. If dismemberment is indeed their intention, are they really going to be stopped by a sound and light show? This isn’t a new dawn for Britain. It’s a night’s entertainment.
I can’t quite decide whether this is a genuine Diana moment – when the public hysteria is real – or whether it is confined largely to the media. I’ve been there myself – I covered the Beijing Olympics and I know how contagious and seductive the cossetted, enclosed media atmosphere can be. That's how you get reality drifts like Williams'. I’ve been out and about today outside the Olympic bubble and most people I’ve been talking to seem to be taking it a lot more calmly than the papers.
I’ve also had disappointingly few hate emails and tweets after my mixed review yesterday of the great event. One person objected to my gentle mockery of Shami Chakrabarti’s participation. I like Shami a lot, but someone who campaigns for human rights should never have allowed herself to be used to polish the image of an event with such a long record of trampling on human rights. The abuses in London, of course, are comparatively small – but only four years ago in Beijing, thousands of people were made homeless and entire areas starved of water for the duration of the Games so that the Olympic areas could look fresh and green.
Whatever the truth about the mood is, it will pass. I attended the Beijing opening ceremony, as it happens. I wrote some of the same sort of faintly overawed copy that we're seeing in this weekend's newspapers. I can’t remember very much about that night now.
Source: blogs.telegraph.co.uk
Woman dies before Crawley Hospital charity abseil - BBC News
A woman in her 90s has died moments before she was due to take part in a charity abseil in West Sussex.
The woman, who has not been named, collapsed on the roof of Crawley Hospital on Saturday.
Paramedics were called to the scene but they could not resuscitate her. The event was cancelled after the incident.
The woman was one of about 50 people due to take part in the 70ft (21.3m) abseil in aid of 4SIGHT, also known as West Sussex Association for the Blind.
A Sussex Police spokesman said: "She hadn't started the abseil but she was up on the roof when she appears to have suffered some sort of medical episode."
A spokeswoman for West Sussex Fire and Rescue Service, which sent three crews to the scene, said: "We were called to reports of a person who had collapsed from a suspected cardiac arrest at the hospital.
"It was to do with an abseil team for a charity event."
The charity 4SIGHT said the woman had previously taken part in other similar events.
A spokesperson said they were extremely saddened and their thoughts were with her family.
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
London police warn tourists over fake officers - Reuters UK
LONDON |
LONDON (Reuters) - Police on Sunday warned tourists in London to beware of people pretending to be plain-clothes officers and stealing credit cards and cash during the Olympics, and said they arrested more touts for illegally reselling Games tickets.
The capital's Metropolitan Police Service said it arrested three men aged between 27 and 35 years on Saturday on charges of impersonating a police officer and conspiracy to steal.
"There have been a number of incidents where criminals have impersonated police officers to take money off unsuspecting tourists," said Detective Superintendent Steve Osborn.
"Officers would never take money from you, they would never take you to a cashpoint and ask you for money. They are unlikely to ask to see your bank cards and would never need to ask you for your pin number," he added.
Saturday's arrests were made in central London's Russell Square, where London 2012 organisers are running a transport service for media covering the Games.
Police said there was no direct connection between the arrests and the Olympics, but noted such con-men could be attracted to London by the lure of extra tourists during the Games.
The London force also said it had arrested another three people for illegally reselling Olympic tickets, known as touting in Britain and scalping in the United States, after nabbing 16 on Friday and Saturday.
Two of those held on Sunday were arrested outside Horse Guards Parade in central London, site of the beach volleyball tournament.
Three more people have been charged with various offences in connection with a mass alternative cycle ride that officers stopped near the Olympic stadium in east London on Friday evening, the police said.
Officers arrested 182 cyclists taking part in the "Critical Mass" ride for ignoring an order to stay away from the Olympic Park while the opening ceremony was underway.
All but four of those arrested have been released on bail pending further inquiries.
(Reporting by Tim Castle; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
Source: uk.reuters.com
Swimmer airlifted to hospital and three rescuers treated for injuries after she was pulled unconscious from sea - Daily Mail
|
A woman was airlifted to hospital and three others were also injured in a desperate struggle to save her.
The woman was pulled unconscious from the water after getting into difficulties at Camber Sands, near Rye, East Sussex, just before 5pm yesterday.
It appears that during the struggle to help the woman, the three people who were with her waded in but swallowed seawater themselves.
Sea rescue: The woman was pulled unconscious from the sea after getting into difficulties at Camber Sands, East Sussex, just before 5pm yesterday. File picture
The woman was treated on the beach and then airlifted by air ambulance to hospital in Brighton, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) said.
The three other people, whose ages and sex have not been disclosed, were rushed by road ambulance to hospital but their conditions were not thought to be serious.
An MCA spokesman said: 'At 4.41pm, Dover Coastguard was called by a member of the public to say that a lady appeared to be in difficulty.
'She had been pulled unconscious from the water which was thigh-deep at Camber Sands. There was a doctor on the beach.
Dramatic: The Kent Air Ambulance rushed the victim to hospital, while the three who pulled her from the water were taken by road for treatment. File picture
'She was treated on the beach and taken by Kent Air Ambulance at 5.37pm to hospital in Brighton.
'Three other people who were with her were taken to hospital by road ambulance.'
The sea state was described as good and there were no warning flags in place at the time of incident, the spokesman added.
Source: www.dailymail.co.uk
London 2012's Eric the Eel uncovered: Niger rower finishes last (but he was only 90 seconds behind the winner) - Daily Mail
- 35-year-old only took up rowing three months ago
- Sir Steve Redgrave criticises decision to give him wild card entry
By Ian Garland
|
A 35-year-old African rower has stolen the hearts of the London 2012 crowd, after battling to a last place finish in the single sculls - just three months after he took up the sport.
The crowd at Eton Dorney roared Niger's Hamadou Djibo Issaka across the finish line, 100 seconds behind the repecharge winner.
His achievement has made him London Games' answer to Eric the Eel, the swimmer from Equatorial Guinea who made headlines when he finished last in the 100 metres freestyle at the Sydney Games in 2000.
Hamadou Djibo Issaka of Niger has become an early hero of the London 2012 Olympics - this Games' answer to Eric the Eel
Issaka charges across the finish line at Eton Dorney, 100 seconds behind the heat winner - just three months after he took up rowing
Issaka is at the Games courtesy of a wild card from the IOC Tripartite Commission, which allows each National Olympic Committee up to five athletes to participate at a summer games.
Previously a swimmer, he was handpicked by the Niger Swimming Federation, who sent him to Egypt to try rowing.
After finding his feet, he then went for more training at the International Rowing Development Centre in Tunisia for two months.
His achievements in the past 12 weeks have earned him the status of the landlocked Saharan nation's national rowing champion.
The crowd roared as the grinning 35-year-old crossed the line and then slumped, exhausted in his boat
A giant screen tracked Issaka's performance as he tried in vain to catch the other rowers
His early success faded fast on Saturday as he was quickly outclassed by the other rowers in his heat.
But Issaka was thrilled with his performance.
MEET JENNET THE JELLYFISH
First there was Eric the eel — now meet Jennet the Jellyfish, competing in the same event as Britain's Rebecca Adlington.
Jennet Saryyeva of Turkmenistan finished a minute and 18 seconds behind the rest of the competitors in her 400m freestyle heat.
Her time of 5min 40.29sec is two seconds outside her personal best. Eric ‘the eel’ Moussambani shot to fame at the 2000 Games in sydney when he swam the 100m freestyle in 1min 52.72sec — more than twice the time of the faster competitors and even outside the 200m world record.
It was, however, a new personal best and a national record for Equatorial Guinea.
Grinning ear-to-ear as he climbed out of his boat, he told reporters: 'It went well. I passed the finish line, it was great.'
'There were so many people encouraging me.'
'I was happy to finish under their applause. Really, I'm happy for the whole country.'
Not everyone was happy to see Djibo Issaka at the Olympics, however.
Steve Redgrave, a five-time Olympic rowing gold medalist, is a critic of the decision to allow him to row.
He said: 'There are better scullers from different countries who are not allowed to compete because of the different countries you've got.'
But Matt Smith, general secretary of world governing body FISA, insists he was added to the program and didn't take the place of another rower.
And he's proud of the way the crowd took to the underdog, adding: 'We are so proud. It's given us a new country, and a big boost. As far as rowing is concerned it's fantastic. And we are really happy about the response from the spectators.'
Issaka, meanwhile has had the experience of a lifetime.
On Friday, instead of being tucked up in bed before his early-morning heat the next day, he was inside the Olympic Stadium attending the opening ceremony. He had been advised not to but he couldn't resist.
'It was magnificent,' he said. 'I had never seen fireworks before in my life!'
He certainly didn't produce any fireworks in Sunday's race. But it will probably go down as one of the moments of the London Games.
'I'm preparing for the next competition,' he said. 'I'm happy with how things have gone.'
Source: www.dailymail.co.uk
Was alcohol involved by any chance?
- the Hulks little sister, MK, 29/7/2012 19:07
Report abuse