I’m Not Going to Do This Every Day

Nothing to see here, folks; that low-flying plane downtown is one of ours. From the Wall Street Journal:

A low-flying commercial airplane escorted by military jets Monday morning sent workers worried about a repeat of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks fleeing their offices in the New York City area. A jet flew low over the Hudson River and circled several times, causing some evacuations of office buildings in Lower Manhattan and Jersey City, N.J.

Holy Crap, right? Workers were concerned:

At around 10 a.m. EDT, the plane was seen flying low over lower Manhattan and at one point was seen circling the Goldman Sachs Tower in nearby Jersey City, N.J. Several buildings in the area were evacuated although workers quickly returned after it became clear that the flyover was planned in advance. There were reports that employees in skyscrapers throughout the area fled without prompting as word spread.

But, not to worry:

A Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said it was part of a “photo op.” The U.S. Defense Department is conducting a “photo op” that involves deploying two F-16 fighter jets escorting a Boeing 747 in the vicinity of Lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty, said Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Jim Peters.

Still, my question is, what sort of thing is the defense dept. filming here? A recruiting video?

NYC Rondout-West Branch Water Tunnel

Honestly, this crying out for a film. From today’s Times:

All tunnels leak, but this one is a sieve. For most of the last two decades, the Rondout-West Branch tunnel — 45 miles long, 13.5 feet wide, up to 1,200 feet below ground and responsible for ferrying half of New York City’s water supply from reservoirs in the Catskill Mountains — has been leaking some 20 million gallons a day. Except recently, when on some days it has lost up to 36 million gallons.

After tiptoeing around the problem for many years, and amid mounting complaints of flooded homes in the Ulster County hamlet of Wawarsing, the city’s Department of Environmental Protection has embarked on a five-year, $240 million project to prepare to fix the tunnel — which includes figuring out how to keep water flowing through New Yorkers’ faucets during the repairs. The most immediate tasks are to fix a valve at the bottom of a 700-foot shaft in Dutchess County so pumps will eventually be able to drain the tunnel, and to ensure that the tunnel does not crack or collapse while it is empty.

For this, the city has enlisted six deep-sea divers who are living for more than a month in a sealed 24-foot tubular pressurized tank complete with showers, a television and a Nerf basketball hoop, breathing air that is 97.5 percent helium and 2.5 percent oxygen, so their high-pitched squeals are all but unintelligible to visitors. They leave the tank only to transfer to a diving bell that is lowered 70 stories into the earth, where they work 12-hour shifts, with each man taking a four-hour turn hacking away at concrete to expose the valve.

Sometimes, not. From the NYT:

Murder Suspect Has a Witness That Doesn’t Lie: His MetroCard

When Jason Jones was arrested in a fatal shooting in the Bronx in May, he told the police that he had been nowhere near the scene. He said he had left work, ridden the bus with some co-workers and cashed his paycheck, and later had taken a subway to see his girlfriend.

Federal prosecutors charged Mr. Jones and his older brother, Corey, in the shooting, saying they had killed the victim because he had been a government witness in drug and gun cases. Both men could face the death penalty if the government decides to seek it.

But in recent weeks, the case has taken an extraordinary turn — because of Jason Jones’s MetroCard.

Months after the arrests, a retired detective working for Mr. Jones’s lawyers drove to a city jail located on a barge moored in the East River in the South Bronx, where Mr. Jones had been held after his arrest, and retrieved his wallet. The MetroCard was still inside.

Mr. Jones’s lawyers then asked New York City Transit to use the card to trace his movements the night of the shooting. The results supported his account, showing that the card had been used on a bus, and later on a subway roughly five miles from the shooting, just as he had described.