The magnet, which attaches to the back of a truck, picked up more than 22 pounds of nails, screws, nuts and bolts during a recent trip down nine miles of county roads.

It was enough to fill a restaurant-sized pickle jar.

“This stuff is on the surface of road you’re traveling,” county Engineer Don Thomas said. “That’s all got potential to end up in your tires.”

Thomas had no idea the magnet would pick up that much metal. The worst offender was roofing nails. 

The plan is to buy three 8-foot magnets at $500 each to have one for each of the four county divisions. That way, every county road will get a once-over, Thomas said.

He said he learned about the magnet and another new tool at a recent conference.

The second, a menacing machine with discs along an extended arm called a retriever, will grab extra gravel and rocks from the sides of roads and spread it along the shoulders.

As roads get bladed during the winter, Thomas said, rock is pushed to the side, creating a ridge or lip there and creating water drainage problems.

The machine also helps save money because the county won’t have to buy as much rock to replace that which gets pushed to the side, he said.

The department has one retriever, which cost $8,000, but wants to buy three more, one for each district.

Article source: http://journalstar.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/huge-magnets-clean-metal-off-the-roads-save-tires/article_8975d406-289e-5d7f-be75-4cb3ab105a56.html

Another neighbor on the street had two tires slashed, while another backed their vehicle over a piece of wood with nails protruding from it, according to a resident on the street who wished to remain anonymous.

Vehicles on Blue Spruce Road and Wolcott Road were also discovered with their tires slashed, the resident said. The incidents occurred at 1 a.m. on Friday, July 20.

Five males are seen in the video. One takes a running jump and kicks the driver’s side view mirror, while another quickly slashed the back left tire. Two of them are riding skateboards.

The resident said that a police officer told her St. Bernard’s Church had swastikas painted on it the same night.  Police reports were filed by all alleged victims on the street.

“It me cost $197 to replace one tire,” one resident told Patch. “These teenagers left a lot of damage in their wake and they should be held accountable for their poor choices.”

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On July 6, two teenagers were caught on camera spray-painting Island Trees High School. Police are still investigating that incident. Additionally, on July 20 more than two dozen cars were vandalized in East Meadow.

Anyone with information on the incident can call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-244-TIPS. All callers will remain anonymous.

Article source: http://levittown-ny.patch.com/articles/video-teens-caught-kicking-car-window-slashing-tires-in-levittown

Meals on Wheels of Lehigh County has nominated one of its long-time volunteers in a contest that could net the local chapter $1,000 for meals for its low-income clients.

Betty Duffy, 85, of Whitehall, is one of 24 nominees in the Meals on Wheels Association of America’s annual American Volunteer Contest, which is held through Facebook.

Duffy has been volunteering with the local Meals on Wheels chapter for 41 years — ever since the program began in February 1971. She also volunteers with Meals on Wheels of Northampton County, her church and at IronPigs games. She also is a blood donor who has given gallons of blood. 

“Betty truly deserves this award,” said Michele Grasso, development director for Meals on Wheels of Lehigh County, in an e-mail.

If Duffy wins, the local chapter will receive $1,000 to provide meals for low-income clients.

To vote for Duffy, log into your Facebook account and paste: https://apps.facebook.com/americanvolunteer/entry/341221. You may be asked to log in again once you press vote for this entry. 

Duffy, in her entry video, talks about her involvement with Meals on Wheels.

The voting closes at 5 p.m. on Aug. 21.

In addition to the chapter receiving $1,000, the winner of the American Volunteer Contest will be presented with the annual Jody Tepedino Nicholo Award, which will be presented at a conference in Maryland. Second place is $750 for the winner’s chapter and third place is $500 for the winner’s chapter.

Article source: http://southwhitehall.patch.com/articles/betty-duffy

It will be held from 5 to 8 p.m. The rain date is Aug. 4.

Last year’s event attracted over 175 classic cars and street rods for display. Custom motorcycles are also welcome to be displayed.

This charitable event is free, for both exhibitors and spectators. Local DJ, Adam Riggin will be playing “oldies” courtesy of Tawes Insurance of Crisfield.

Dash plaques will be given to the first 150 vehicles registered, courtesy of Tawes Brothers Inc. Crisfield’s Buick GMC Truck dealership.

Exhibitors will receive an “Owner Welcome Packet” at the registration tent and will be eligible for door-prize drawings, courtesy of many local area businesses.

Members of the Wheels That Heal Car Club will be accepting donations and selling 50/50 charity raffle tickets, with all proceeds from this year’s event to be given to the Wounded Warrior Project. American Legion Stanley Cochrane Post 16 is a supporter and is helping to promote the event.

Major Gen. James A. Adkins, the adjutant general of Maryland, will be the guest speaker at this year’s event and as the ranking military officer of Maryland’s National Guard, he will ceremoniously accept a check from the Crisfield Area Chamber of Commerce and the Wheels That Heal Car Club for the proceeds.

Food and drinks will be available from on-site vendors and from nearby local establishments.

For more information call 410-968-2968 or visit www.wheelsonthewaterfront.eventbrite.com, www.crisfieldevents.com or www.wheelsthatheal.com.

Article source: http://www.delmarvanow.com/article/20120725/SH01/207250312

Article source: http://www.ktul.com/story/19106068/meals-on-wheels-needs-volunteers

And that if you are brilliant at climbing endless, vertical, alpine hills, and
can cope with gallons of lactic acid, you get to be called the King of the
Mountains. There cannot be a cooler moniker in sport.

Nor could the timing be any sweeter for the cycling fraternity – with the
school holidays beginning, as enticing as stretched toffee, and the sun
emerging from wherever it has been for the last four months.

Wiggins,
Le Gentleman to the French, a team-man in an individual event, who stopped
for Cadel Evans, and worked for Cavendish in Paris, wins over the heart as
well as the mind. And with British cyclists about to win more medals at the
Olympics, every child should be out on two wheels, pedalling furiously. If
you unwrap your first bike at five, you win your freedom 12 years before you
can get a driving licence. You win 12 bonus years of adventure, of falling
off and climbing back on, battered, bruised and wiser, of independence, of
road sense, of fitness.

The omnipresence of the car has driven kids off their bikes. Residential
streets are treated by some as rat-runs and you have to be brave to let
young children out by themselves.

Sustrans, the sustainable transport charity, spearheads Free-Range kids, a
campaign which calls parents to arms. It challenges us to let our children
off the leash a bit, to encourage them out onto their bikes. And it calls on
the wider world, local and national governments, NGOs, to think about the
environment that they are creating.

“I think [the bicycle] has done more to emancipate women than any one thing in
the world,” American civil rights leader Susan B  Anthony said in 1896. “It
gives a woman a feeling of freedom.” It would be wonderful if the machine
that helped women win their rightful freedoms in the late 19th and early
20th centuries could help children reclaim theirs in the 21st century.

If it is possible for Wiggins to have a legacy greater than the one he already
has, it would be that.

Article source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/cycling/bradley-wiggins/9425100/Bradley-Wigginss-legacy-could-see-a-new-generation-growing-up-on-two-wheels-after-his-Tour-de-France-win.html

It’s the people who ride them I’m not so crazy about.

So the fact that there are going to be even more bicycles snarling traffic in the city is not exactly happy news for anyone who has drive an automobile here.

But Mumbles feels differently. He loves bicycles almost as much as he dislikes Chick-fil-A. He wants to make Boston “one of the most bike-friendly places in the country.”

Spoken exactly like somebody who hasn’t had to drive himself in, what, 19 years now?

I know, it’s only troglodytes without armed, city-paid chauffeurs who are concerned about all the vanishing parking spaces, not to mention the vanishing lanes. A while back, on a Sunday morning, I was driving on Comm. Ave from Kenmore Square toward the Public Garden. I went under that bridge, I think it’s under Mass. Ave., and suddenly I noticed that something that had always been there was missing.

One of the two traffic lanes had been replaced by a bicycle lane, which by the way, Mumbles, your dear friends, the new Bostonians, seldom use.

They’d rather drive in our lanes, and if we motorists (also known as taxpayers) get too close to them, they bang on the side of our cars.

Apparently they never heard the old saying: Never bring a bike to a car fight.

This plague isn’t just slowing traffic to a gridlock pace in Boston. How much money have they spent on all those bicycle paths down on Cape Cod? Yet Route 6-A is still clogged with clods on two wheels, attired in that hideous form-fitting Spandex with all the labels on them.

Who do these people think they are, John Kerry?

Last night, I had to go to a wake in Brookline. I was driving on North Beacon Street in Allston when suddenly a blond girl attempted to commit suicide — by swerving directly in front of my SUV on her bike. I know she saw me because she gave me the finger.

I continued down Brighton Avenue, turned right on Harvard Street and got behind an overweight woman on a bike in a print dress with a lot of tattoos. I passed her and then got caught at a red light on Beacon Street. She blew through the red light.

I had to pass her once more, just in time to arrive at another light, which she ran. Same thing happened a third time.

It’s amazing. These bicyclists are full-fledged motorists, demanding an entire lane of traffic, until they reach a red light. Then they all morph into pedestrians, crossing against the light, I might add.

You could change my mind about this whole bicycle thing, Mumbles. Just lend me your cop driver and your car — for the next five years or so.

Article source: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1061148291

Here are a few of the offbeat and/or consequential rulings rendered in recent weeks.

The town of St. Nazaire will have to pay more than $600,000 in compensation after a woman was badly injured when scaffolding borrowed from the municipality collapsed in 2005.

The woman was in the process of painting her home when the scaffolding collapsed on her, fracturing her spine.

She and her husband sued the town, claiming it provided – free of charge to citizens – defective equipment. Their expert said some of the supporting pieces had been reworked and badly soldered.

The town, which had no policy governing the borrowing of equipment before the accident, argued the husband assembled it the wrong way.

Superior Court Judge Martin Dallaire ruled that, in making available to its citizens pieces that should have been scrapped instead of welded, the town had an obligation to warn the borrower of hidden defects.

But he conceded there was a possibility the scaffolding had been erected unevenly, contributing to the collapse, so he attributed 50 per cent responsibility to both parties, halving the claim.

That still will cost St. Nazaire more than $600,000 for the woman’s lost income (past and future) and ongoing physical problems, plus $35,000 for her husband’s loss of wages and enjoyment.

Having insurance doesn’t guarantee you’ll be compensated if your car gets stolen, a local couple has learned.

They sued their insurance company for $18,228 in replacement costs, expenses and damages after a 2002 Honda Civic they owned disappeared from the Galeries Laval one afternoon in August 2009.

The insurance company wouldn’t pay because it said they’d been untruthful in their claim, among other things failing to mention the car had been damaged in an accident a few weeks before, and Quebec Court Judge Alain Breault sided with the insurer.

Among the red flags for the insurance company had been the husband’s inability to remember the colour of a laptop computer he said he’d bought for his wife at a local store the previous month and left in the car.

The insurance company could find no evidence of the sale when it contacted the store, at which point the couple claimed it had been purchased from a friend they wouldn’t identify.

It also was skeptical about the husband’s claim that he’d replaced the vehicle’s hood himself after the accident a few weeks earlier when his 18-year-old daughter – who didn’t have a driver’s licence – took the car without their permission. He had no receipt to support that explanation.

The burden of proof in such cases is on the plaintiffs, Judge Breault said, and in this instance, they failed to back up their claims or refute the insurer’s contention of bad faith.

Chalk up another win for the insurance companies in what we’ll call the case of the “disappearing� tractor.

In 2009, a John Deere tractor was reported missing from a field by the man who’d leased it four years earlier.

The vehicle, initially valued at $175,000, was insured, with John Deere named on the policy as the lessor.

An insurance investigator dispatched to elucidate the reported theft got something unexpected: an admission from the man that he wasn’t sure the tractor had been stolen, he’d been “poorly advised� and he’d get it back himself.

That put a halt to any prospective indemnity from the insurance company. It said “wilful fault� was behind the disappearance.

Shortly afterward, the man’s agricultural business went bankrupt.

He admitted in court that he’d been led to believe the insurer would pay him if the vehicle disappeared, which would have helped pay his bills.

Unable to recoup the cost of the vehicle (which was never recovered) from the bankruptcy trustee, John Deere Ltd. sued the insurer for its current value, $92,160, claiming it was, in fact, an insured party.

Superior Court Judge Louis Lacoursière disagreed, saying the fact it was named as lessor/owner on the policy made it a beneficiary, but not the insured.

And the lessee’s false reporting of a theft nullified the coverage.

A man who tried to give his brother his share of a $203,000 co-property while insolvent had the sale overruled by the courts at the instigation of his soon-to-be-ex-wife.

The man still owed her $28,000 at the time, part of $271,010 in accumulated debts, and the real estate was his only asset.

Superior Court Judge Stéphane Sansfaçon said the man’s action “clearly favoured his brother to the detriment of his other creditors, among them the plaintiff,� voided the donation and placed a lien on the property, co-owned by the man’s mother and nephew.

pdelean@montrealgazette.com

Article source: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/montreal/Wheels+Justice+Town+liable+injury+scaffold+lent/6984347/story.html

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