Sign up for our COVID-19 newsletter to stay up-to-date on the latest coronavirus news throughout New York Nikitas MargiellosTwo more suspected members of an alleged burglary crew accused of stealing $10 million worth of cash and property across Long Island over a two-year span have been rounded up, authorities said.Nassau, Suffolk and federal investigators said the suspects—one of whom is an ex-NYPD detective—are now believed to have broken into more than 50 homes and businesses after stalking their victims online, in-person and with GPS tracking devices.“This was a highly organized, systematic, professional team of criminals,” Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice said Thursday, adding that the alleged crew spoke of burglary in code as “going fishing.”The alleged ringleader, 33-year-old Nikitas “Nicky” Margiellos of West Babylon, who previously pleaded not guilty to federal charges, has been indicted in Nassau County court on added counts of burglary and possession of burglars’ tools.Also indicted on the same charges were the two newly named suspects, 54-year-old Gerard Camarano of Valley Stream and 32-year-old Trung Lu of Ridgewood, prosecutors said. All three pleaded not guilty Thursday. Another pair of suspects was also charged in Nassau, but their names were not immediately released because they have yet to be apprehended, investigators said.The new charges stem from two alleged burglaries—at DSW Shoe Warehouse in Carle Place and Scents Forever in Hicksville—that led investigators to Omega Storage in Amityville, where the suspects allegedly stored burglar’s tools such as a cell phone jammer, jack hammer, acetylene torch, a hydraulic floor jack, bolt cutter, dog catcher pole and masks.FBI agents, Nassau and Suffolk detectives allegedly caught the ex-New York City detective, Rafael Astacio of Copiague, driving the getaway car for two of his co-defendants, Joseph Alacqua and Michael Brown, as all three fled a June 2012 burglary, authorities said.The investigators had used wiretaps to listen to the suspect plan that break in—despite the crew using disposable phones, walkie-talkies and police scanners to evade detection—before authorities staked out the location to catch them in the act, prosecutors said.Brown had pleaded guilty in Suffolk court last year to attempted burglary. Alacqua pleaded not guilty to burglary. Astacio pleaded not guilty to charges announced last fall.Authorities said the suspects were linked to the break-ins after distinct patterns emerged, such as the crew cutting phone lines to disable alarms, cutting through the wall of a neighboring business to get at their targets and then burglarizing victimized business owners’ homes.The crew has been accused of 28 Suffolk burglaries, 21 Nassau break ins, one case in Queens and another in Westchester so far, although the investigation is continuing and more charges are expected. Businesses they hit include doctor’s offices, perfume warehouses, cigarette warehouses, leather goods stores, restaurants a meat warehouse and a coin store.Three suspects facing previously announced federal charges include 50-year-old Leonard Repka of Lindenhurst, 52-year-old Michael Figueroa of Mount Vernon and 37-year-old Victor Arias of Copiague.Bail for Camarano and Lu on the latest charges was set at $100,000 cash or $200,000 bond. Margiellos’ bail was set at $50,000 cash or $100,000 bond. They each face up to 16 years in prison on the new counts.
Mohit Singh with his host family member Glennis Zimmerman.by Tracy McCue, Sumner Newscow — Mohit Singh, a 23-year-old farmer from India, spent three weeks with Jay and Glennis Zimmerman of South Haven this past month as part of an exchange program through IFYE – formerly known as International 4-H Youth Exchange.Singh was here to learn about farming – American style and figure out ways to make his family farm back in India more profitable. His first trip to the United States included visits to Kansas farms in Sumner, Scott, Allen and Ness Counties before heading to Virginia for a similar tour there. He will be in Kansas through the State Fair in early September.“I decided against the tourist destinations in California, so I can study farms in Kansas in the heart of the country,†Singh said. “Kansas is the heart of America and that is what I’m most interested in.â€Singh is part of a farming family in Agra, India which is the home of the iconic Taj Mahal. He comes from a family that owns about 200 acres or 80 Hectares.While that is modest for a small American farming family, it is huge in India, where individual farmers can no longer own more than 13 hectares which equate to 32 acres. So huge, that his multi-generational family, is considered one of the most wealthy farming operations in India. So much so that when President Bill Clinton came to visit India during his time in office, governmental officials would showcase the family farm.Before India started a land allotment program that limited the size of farms, the Singh family had already procured its sizable 200-acre farm. They were able to keep these acres by allocating ownership through several family members. The uncle would own some, the aunt, the father, etc. They then farmed together.Mohit’s family also have traveling abroad experience, which is unusual for farmers in India. His grandfather came to the United States in 1966. It was here that his grandfather learned the American way of life in farming and told stories to his family. Mohit wanted to come to the U.S. to see for himself. The Zimmerman farm was the first of his many stops at different U.S. farms.As always, the size of the farms of America impress the foreigners. We have bigger tractors, bigger combines, bigger plots of land. Singh came in time for the tail end of wheat harvest and got to ride on Jay’s combine.While we have agriculture issues in the U.S., it is not nearly as severe as in India where farmers are incurring such high debt and poor crop conditions, that they can’t pay back loans and feed their families. The limited size of the farms contributes to the problem. Suicides amongst farmers in India have reached epidemic proportions with nearly 300,000 farmers ending their lives in the past 20 years.Although the Singh family is not close to the economic devastation of many India farmers, times are tight for the family as well. And that requires them to look at new forms of revenue. This is why observing American farms was so much more important to Singh than say visiting Disneyland. Singh hopes his trip here brings him knowledge that will help the economic opportunity of his family farm back home.The Singh family has recently started a fish growing operation. In India the demand for fish is high. But the rivers are so polluted that the fish out of the river are not edible. So his family’s fresh fish will be in high demand there.Singh was here through July 10 where he then left for Scott City. He was here through the Kansas Wheat Festival and ended up being a judge at the quilt show held at the First United Methodist Church in Wellington.The American culture is most certainly different, Singh said. For example, he is struck at how multi-generational families don’t live together.“The first thing he asked us is if Jay and I were lonely living in a big house by ourselves,†Glennis said. “I said ‘heck, no.’ I love my kids but I sure in the heck don’t want them living with me.â€Singh is a Hindu and Hindus don’t eat beef.“We’ve learned to eat a lot of chicken and fish over the last couple of weeks,†Glennis said.Singh is part of the IFYE program that links young adults with host families in other countries. About 4,000 Americans have lived in 116 countries and a like number of young people from those countries have come here.Follow us on Facebook.Follow us on Twitter. Close Forgot password? Please put in your email: Send me my password! 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Thank you for your input. +2 Vote up Vote down mom2mykids · 210 weeks ago I met him while he was here, such a great guy… Report Reply 0 replies · active 210 weeks ago +2 Vote up Vote down Paula Tatum · 210 weeks ago Thanks so much for a terrific story. Report Reply 0 replies · active 210 weeks ago Post a new comment Enter text right here! Comment as a Guest, or login: Login to IntenseDebate Login to WordPress.com Login to Twitter Go back Tweet this comment Connected as (Logout) Email (optional) Not displayed publicly. Name Email Website (optional) Displayed next to your comments. Not displayed publicly. If you have a website, link to it here. Posting anonymously. Tweet this comment Submit Comment Subscribe to None Replies All new comments Comments by IntenseDebate Enter text right here! Reply as a Guest, or login: Login to IntenseDebate Login to WordPress.com Login to Twitter Go back Tweet this comment Connected as (Logout) Email (optional) Not displayed publicly. 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1 Leighton Baines has made 15 appearances for Everton this season Leighton Baines has claimed Everton’s players lack chemistry following a third successive Premier League defeat at the weekend.The Toffees fell to a 1-0 loss at Manchester United on Sunday and were booed off by the travelling fans, whose side are 12th in the table and level on points with Bournemouth.Although Roberto Martinez’s side have an FA Cup semi-final to contest later this month, their league form has frustrated supporters that believe a squad featuring John Stones, Ross Barkley and 25-goal striker Romelu Lukaku should be higher up the division.And Baines insists Everton’s current team are not gelling together as they should.He told the Liverpool Echo: “I just don’t feel as though the chemistry is quite there with the team on the pitch at the moment, and it hasn’t been for a while.“We are maybe leaning too heavily on individuals to come up with something.“We’re in games; we were in the game on Sunday and had a couple of chances, but we’re not performing as a team to the level we know we can or we should be.“Results have an impact on that because chemistry and confidence go hand in hand. Look at the teams who are having success this year and you’d say they have chemistry. “If I had to say one thing, I just don’t know if it’s there with us at the moment, for whatever reason.”With 13 points separating the Toffees and sixth-placed West Ham, European qualification through the league is now seemingly out of reach.Baines has therefore urged his team-mates to put things right ahead of their semi-final date at Wembley to try and salvage what is turning out to be a disappointing campaign.“We’re not where we should be,” the 31-year-old added.“We haven’t won enough games to make excuses. You get judged at the end of the season and we’re getting towards the end of the season, and we’re not near a position we should be in given what we’ve got.“We’re all accountable. We try and put it right but we’ve not been able to. That’s the third loss on the bounce in the league which is disappointing to us all.“We want to win every time we go out to play and we’d like to go into that cup game with a few wins behind us. That’s our season in some respects now, it certainly is from the fans’ point of view and we’ve let them down a lot, it’s our only way of making it up to them.”
By JAKE SEINER | The Associated PressSAN DIEGO — The baseballs weren’t juiced during a record-setting 2019 regular season, according to a study commissioned by Major League Baseball.They were just flying farther. A four-person committee of scientists found that baseballs this year had less drag on average than in previous seasons, contributing to a power surge that resulted in a record number of home runs. Their report released Wednesday blamed the spike on inconsistencies in the seam …
SharePrint RelatedLatest addition to the Dashboard and Profile makes this project a wrapDecember 19, 2017In “News”Updates to Profile and Dashboard: FAQsMay 16, 2017In “News”Make friends with the updated Profile and DashboardMay 16, 2017In “News” It’s been a little over a month since we released the first versions of the new Profile and Dashboard on Geocaching.com. We shared the reason we were making changes with you and that we want to do things differently.Instead of releasing big changes every few months we want to be agile and update features quickly to get them ready for you to play with. We listen to your feedback so we can tweak and adjust pages until they are just right.Based on your response, we know that you want your Profile and Dashboard to be more customizable. With our latest releases we’ve done just that.Filter recent logs. You can now choose if you want to show only your activity, or your and your friends’ recent activity on the Dashboard.Focus on what’s important. Like onions, geocaching has many layers. If you want to get to the core of what is important to you, you can now ‘peel’ back what you don’t need to see by collapsing sections on the Dashboard. Or expand them for an overview of everything that is happening in your geocaching world.And coming soon: The About tab on your public profile will return to its former position as the default tab. It’s a place to share something about yourself and what you love about geocaching. Add content in the Bio field of your profile settings or head on over to Project-GC to get a custom stats for your profile.With these options, you can truly make the Profile and Dashboard your own.But we are not done improving. We’re just getting started and we’ll continue to adjust the Profile and Dashboard based on your feedback. On top of this we are excited to add another feature soon, that will help you to become even more connected with your geocaching friends. Stay tuned!Share with your Friends:More
A Web Developer’s New Best Friend is the AI Wai… Related Posts Why Tech Companies Need Simpler Terms of Servic… Twenty-year PR veteran Sean Garrett just announced that he’s leaving the communications startup he helped found five years ago and taking a new position as vice president of communications at Twitter. Garrett says he’s been consulting for Twitter for the past few months, via 463 Communications. Twitter has been hiring fast lately, often picking up smart people working at partner companies. Garrett is a UCLA grad in Political Science and first worked in the office of California Governor Pete Wilson in 1990. He went on to do PR with many of the biggest tech companies in Silicon Valley.Garrett created an account on Twitter on March 8th, 2007 (co-incidentally, one day after I joined, so our anniversaries are coming soon, Sean!) and pays attention on Twitter to people like Mike Masnick of the tech blog TechDirt and maverick PR guy Jeremy Pepper.Twitter desperately needs communications help. The company has grown in importance faster than it’s been able to keep up with. Garrett’s phone will no doubt be ringing off the hook.He’ll be working in the Communications Department with Jenna Sampson, who came from Yahoo!, former CNN correspondent Alexa Lee and Emily Pinkerton, among others. You can follow all four on Twitter via this list. Top Reasons to Go With Managed WordPress Hosting
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With the impending launch of the Apple iPad, the Cupertino-based company’s shunning of Adobe Flash technology has been brought to the forefront of technological discussions. While it was one thing to forgo Flash on a small, mobile device such as the iPhone or iPod Touch, some are questioning whether lack of Flash support is going to be a make-it-or-break it feature for the new slate devices arriving next month – devices which, if you believe Apple CEO Steve Jobs – are “better than netbooks.” On the flip side, Apple supporters echo the company’s sentiments that “Flash is a CPU hog” and including support for the technology in Apple’s mobile line-up would negatively impact battery life. However, recent tests have put Flash up against HTML5, the new web markup language that eliminates the need for the Adobe plugin. The results of these tests show that this is not a simple black-and-white issue. Is Flash really a CPU hog? Yes, in some cases. But, surprisingly, not all the time. In fact, sometimes HTML5 actually performed worse.Testing Flash and HTML5Jan Ozer is an expert in video encoding technologies, has worked in digital video since 1990 and is the author of 13 books related to the subject [Editor’s Note: some people have pointed out that Ozer has done seminars and written books featuring Adobe products, so therefore he makes money from the success of Adobe Flash. We don’t think that has any effect on the test outcomes, but we thought it was worth updating the post to note it.] Recently, he put HTML5 up against Flash in a series of tests that pitted the two technologies against each other on both the Mac and PC and in different web browsers including Internet Explorer 8, Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox.The results of the tests in their entirety are published here on StreamingLearningCenter.com. The summary in a nutshell? Flash isn’t always a CPU hog, sometimes that honor goes to HTML5. Some of the highlights of Ozer’s findings are below, broken up into both Mac and Windows test results. Mac Tests Tags:#Adobe#Analysis#Apple#mobile#NYT#Video Services#web sarah perez What it Takes to Build a Highly Secure FinTech … With Safari, HTML5 was the most efficient and consumed less CPU than Flash using only 12.39% CPU. With Flash 10.0, CPU utilization was at 37.41% and with Flash 10.1, it dropped to 32.07%With Google Chrome, Flash and HTML5 were both equally inefficient (both are around 50%)With Firefox, Flash was only slightly less efficient than in Safari, but better than in ChromeWindows Tests Related Posts 
Why IoT Apps are Eating Device Interfaces Safari wouldn’t play HTML5 videos, so there was no way to test that. However, Flash 10.0 used 23.22% CPU but Flash 10.1 only used 7.43% CPUGoogle Chrome was more efficient on Windows than Mac. Playback with Flash Player 10.0 was about 24% more efficient than HTML5, while Flash Player 10.1 was 58% more efficient than HTML5.On Firefox, Flash 10.1 dropped CPU utilization to 6% from 22% in Flash 10.0In IE8, Flash 10.0 used 22.41% CPU and Flash 10.1 used 14.62% CPUHardware Acceleration Key to Flash PerformanceIn analyzing the results of the tests, Ozer determined that the key to better Flash performance was dependent upon whether or not it could access hardware acceleration. This feature, launched in Flash 10.1, allows the plugin to use the graphics processing unit (GPU) on some computers to decode video. Depending on the video card and drivers, (NVIDIA, AMD/ATI and Intel offer products that support this), the video decoding process in Flash 10.1 can now work for all video playback, not just full-screen playback as was available in Flash 10.0. According to Adobe, hardware acceleration is not supported under either Linux or Mac OS X, the latter because Mac OS X does not expose access to the required APIs. Adobe goes on to say “The Flash Player team will continue to evaluate adding hardware acceleration to Linux and Mac OS X in future releases.” Here’s what this all means in layman’s terms: Apple isn’t allowing Flash to become more efficient on their Mac OS X/Safari platform (or their iPod/iPhone/iPad one, either) by not providing the access to the hardware it needs to reduce its CPU load. Adobe is waiting and watching to see if they do, but, as Ozer says “the ball is in Apple’s court.”Will Apple budge? At this point, it’s unlikely. In blocking Flash on Apple devices, the company can easily claim that it’s simply not an efficient technology…and that’s true for now, considering how it’s set up. But if the company wanted to allow it and make it work, it seems reasonable to believe that they could. This is what leads some insiders to believe that the decision to block Flash is less of a technological one and more of a business-minded one. After all, if you could easily visit Hulu.com to stream TV shows and movies, then why would you need to buy them from the iTunes Store? So while Flash’s “CPU hogging” may be a contributing factor in Apple’s decision to not support the technology on their mobile devices, that’s probably not the only reason behind the block.Thank you to Dan Rayburn, who pointed us to Jan Ozer’s article. Role of Mobile App Analytics In-App Engagement The Rise and Rise of Mobile Payment Technology