Bob Hennelly

The City Council Education panel did not spare Schools Chancellor-appointee Dennis Walcott on his second day on the job, attacking Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plans to eliminate 6,000 teaching slots.

It was 11:30ish at City Hall. One of the rarest of rare - a Blue Room presser where Mayor Michael Bloomberg did a center stage about-face on something he cares intensely about: Who leads the New York City public schools.

But there Mayor Bloomberg was, the man who prides himself most 'on picking good people,' explaining the end game for one of his most high profile and unorthodox picks.

Nearly a decade the September 11 attack, much-needed rehab the city's 911 emergency call system rehab is several hundreds of millions of dollars more expensive than originally projected and years behind schedule.

New Jersey's legislative re-districting appears to have already prompted the retirement of at least one veteran Democratic state lawmaker. Passaic County State Senator John Girgenti will retire at the end of his current term.

This week, the City Council will offer a budget counter-proposal to Mayor Bloomberg. The proposal comes as the city faces cuts from both Albany and Washington. Between a possible $200 milllion dollar cut in Washington and a real $400 million dollar hit from Albany, the Mayor and Council have their work cut out for them.

Former New Jersey Democratic Congressman John Adler, 51 has died a month after he was hospitalized for heart surgery. Adler is survived by his wife Shirley and four sons.

Adler was defeated last year after just one term in office in a tough contest with Republican Jon Runyan, a Philadelphia Eagle football player in a race that attracted national attention.

Our population only grew by five percent over the last ten years, while the nation grew ten percent. What does that mean? It means New Jersey loses one of its thirteen members of Cong...

Bob Hennelly, WNYC senior reporter, talks about the newly drawn New Jersey legistlative district map and its implications for the political future of the state.

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Is this the "recovery" we purchased with hundreds of billions of dollars of borrowed federal dollars that will take generations to pay off? Will the President's re-election platform b...

In the past week officials have increased the evacuation zone around the six reactors in Fukushima, an effort being watched by disaster relief experts here who say there are important lessons to glean from the Japanese response.

This past weekend, Governor Chris Chrsitie's spontaneous appearance at the Heldrich Hotel in New Brunswick, and his reported presence in the marathon closed-door sessions of the Appor...

Last December in Tunisia, 26 year-old Mohammed Bouazizi set himself ablaze. He died from his injuries in the first week of January.

In a matter of weeks, the poignancy and despair of his personal narrative sparked a nation to rise in rebellion and throw off an autocratic ruler who had clung to power for decades thanks to U.S. patronage.ititit

 

For years, local unions have complained that outsourced contracts for the city's technology needs lacked oversight and wasted taxpayer money. But it was the indictment of several IT c...

Concerns about seismic activity at the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant are grabbing the headlines this week, but other issues have been raised in the debate over whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should renew the plant's license. WNYC’s Bob Hennelly looks at environmental concerns about 90-100 degree waste water coming out of the plant into the Hudson River.

The collapse of the World Trade Center towers, the failure of New Orleans' levies during hurricane Katrina, and the destruction of the half dozen Fukushima General Electric boiling water nuclear reactors are all monuments to "good enough" engineering.

In our free-market world, what gets built and how robust it is constructed is the result of a dynamic tension between profit and probability. What are the odds that "X" will happen versus the cost of preventing or anticipating it, otherwise known as the "Pinto principle."

For decades people have been trying to close Indian Point.

It became the focal point of the national tug-of-war over continued reliance on the "peace time atom." It is about to become that again.

Governor Andrew Cuomo said he's concerned over a report that one of the nuclear reactors at the Indian Point power plant along the Hudson River is on an earthquake fault line, and is checking into the matter.

Cuomo said it was a "surprise" to him that a federal study, first reported on MSNBC, finds Indian Point may be the nuclear plant most susceptible to possible damage from a massive earthquake in the nation.

One of the reactors is built very near an earthquake fault line.

As Japan struggles to contain the damage at the smoldering Fukushima nuclear complex, questions are being raised about nuclear power plants with the same design in the U.S.

WNYC senior reporter Bob Hennelly talks about the current state of the nuclear power industry in the tri-state area.