Urban Outfitters to Bring Freshman-Dorm Furniture to Cobble HillCobble Hill: Urban Outfitters is “coming soon!” [BK11201]
Downtown Brooklyn: After endless outrage, the city will spare the little Duffield Street house believed to have been a stop on the Underground Railroad. [DDDB via Gowanus Lounge]
Financial District: Maybe, in time, all the pretty old buildings in Manhattan will be reduced, like this one, to Hollywood-set-style façades for the big new buildings behind them. [Curbed]
it just happened
Breaking: Man With Bomb Takes Hostages at Clinton’s N.H. HQ
Remember how we told you two hours ago that Clinton’s camp is “circling the wagons” around New Hampshire, because, unlike Iowa, the state is a safe bet for Hill? Yeah, pretty much — except for the maniac with a bomb. A man allegedly holding an explosive device has taken hostages at Hillary Clinton’s campaign headquarters in Rochester, New Hampshire. The candidate herself is not there, but the bomb threat is apparently credible; a nearby school has been evacuated and negotiators are being brought in — along with a group of officers with guns drawn. CNN says two people are inside, although it’s unclear whether this means two hostages or a hostage and the perp. Stay tuned, obviously. —Michael Idov
Update: CNN is reporting that the suspect is asking to speak to Senator Clinton; security has been tightened at Obama and Edwards’s HQs.
Update, 3:34 PM: There are no more hostages inside, but the suspect is still in the building with a bomb-like device strapped to his chest. The Clinton campaign has released a terse statement (“We are in close contact with state and local authorities”). SWAT members have been able to contact the perp and “calm him down,” although he remains inside.
Police responding to incident at Clinton campaign office [CNN]
in other news
Giuliani’s Terror Shame, Our Blog ShameSo we’ve been feeling guilty all week because we missed picking up on Wayne Barrett’s super-duper Village Voice report about Rudy Giuliani’s ties to Qatar, which in turn tie him to terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. It was a big story that we even read but then got caught up in other things and didn’t end up covering it. And then today, Joe Conason at Salon.com totally called us out on it.
Occasionally, as in the case of Rudolph Giuliani during this past week, the sudden appearance of not one but two juicy investigations overwhelms the system’s capacity to absorb and regurgitate. But when the nation’s news executives decided which of two highly embarrassing Giuliani stories to feature, nearly all of them made the wrong choice. While they lavished enormous attention upon a Politico story dealing with adultery and bureaucracy, they should be devoting at least as much time to yet another in the long series of Wayne Barrett scoops in the Village Voice, because this one involves business and terrorism.
Conason is right. Barrett is a little obsessed and maybe does push pins into dolls of Giuliani every night, but his reporting is accurate, smart, and in this case, important. Conason even comes up with ten questions that reporters can ask Giuliani about his Qatar connections so they don’t have to read the whole Voice story. So readers, go read the article. And Conason, thanks for giving us a bloggily self-referential way to assuage our own guilt.
Giuliani’s Terrorist Ties [Salon]
Rudy’s Ties to a Terror Sheikh [VV]
company town
John Mack Gives Zoe Cruz the Heave-hoFINANCE
• John Mack decided to can Zoe Cruz just three weeks after naming her as a strong potential successor at Morgan Stanley. Two execs, Walid Chammah and James Gorman, will take Cruz’s place as overseeing the firm’s trading and risk operations. [NYT]
• Eddie Lampert has lost quite a bit of his luster: The star investor sometimes mentioned as the heir to Warren Buffett lost millions on a big investment in Citigroup, and the earnings debacle at Sears is only making things worse. [Deal Journal/WSJ]
• A small local council in Scotland managed to trump the Donald’s $2 billion plan to build “the world’s greatest golf course.” It was just never clear on where Trump’s hair would fit in the course. [NYP]
