Finally, the Army Corps of Engineers pulled up the single engine plane involved in Saturday’s mid-air collision. The remaining two bodies were recovered from the plane, according to the NYPD. Nine people died in Saturday’s crash when a Liberty Tours helicopter collided with a single engine plane.

Mid Air Collision Recovery Efforts

Photos taken at 1540EDT from Hoboken, New Jersey
Recovery efforts continued today to bring up the single engine plane and its two remaining occupants from the Hudson River. This morning recovery crews were unable to bring up the plane because of traitorous currents. Officials hoped to try again in the afternoon but that has not happened.
On Saturday, a Liberty Tour helicopter carrying five Italian tourists collided with a single engine Piper, carrying three members of the same family over the Hudson River killing nine.

Mid Air Collision Recovery Effort

Recovery efforts continued today to bring up the single engine plane and its two remaining occupants from the Hudson River. On Sunday, divers brought up the remains of the helicopter that crashed with a single engine plane in the crowded New York skies over the weekend. Nine people died in Saturday’s tragedy with seven bodies recovered to date. Five Italian tourists and the helicopter pilot from Liberty Tours died along with three family members in the plane. There are calls today for change to the air traffic rules around New York City. Under the Visual Flight Rules around New York, aircraft flying under 1100 ft. are required to communicate with each other on a delegated radio frequency. Current speculation favors one of aircraft involved in Saturdays collision, was not tuned into the right radio frequency.

Helicopter and Plane Collide Over Hudson

The Coast Guard is searching the Hudson River for bodies from a mid-air collision between a helicopter and a small plane near Hoboken, New Jersey. The accident was reported to have occurred around noon today.
Three people were reportedly onboard the small airplane, a Piper Saratoga that took off from Teterboro Airport, N.Y. and the helicopter, which was later confirmed to be a Liberty Tours helicopter, was reportedly carrying six to seven people.
Two bodies have been recovered from the Hudson River.

Dawn Zimmer is Sworn in as Interim Hoboken Mayor

Dawn Zimmer became the first female Mayor of Hoboken after Peter Cammarano, the youngest Mayor of Hoboken, stepped down after his arrest in a federal corruption probe.

Mourning Michael Jackson

There was an eerie silence at the cross roads of the world today as scores of fans, tourists and the curious gathered in Times Square to watch the public memorial for Michael Jackson in Los Angeles, on the JumboTron. Men women and even some children sat in plastic deck chairs, looking up at the screen with strained necks. Spectator, Juan Vasquez, 47, regretted not being able to hear the memorial. "I wish I could hear what they were saying," he said to no one in particular. Spectators could watch the memorial on the big screen but there was no sound. The NYPD blocked off half the road between 43rd and 44th Street so people could watch the memorial.

There was a genuine honesty, dignity or maybe it was respect, emanating from those who stopped in Times Square today; something Jackson was not afforded in life. It was as if those who were there for the memorial or those who stopped by, while on a lunch break, genuinely felt a sense of remorse when they saw Jackson's gold casket on the screen. There was a distinct lack of commercialism and exploitation that I found front and center at the public memorial in Harlem, last week.

Ashton Jones, a native New Yorker, flew in from Los Angeles last night, so he could come to Times Square and watch the memorial on the big screen with fellow New Yorkers. “I wanted to come to Times Square to be with other people,” Ashton said. He admitted to being in shock when he heard Jackson died. “He was brilliant. He had ‘it',” Ashton, a former back up singer for the famous gospel family, the Winans, said. He described Jackson as an inspiration both as a singer. and dancer. "They can’t take that away from him," he said. Emily Waelder, a 27-year-old teacher in Carnaise, Brooklyn, was able to separate Jackson’s personal failings from his public persona, as she watched the memorial in silence with a friend. Allegations of child abuse never swayed her opinion of the star. “All celebrities are messed up,” she said. Walder went on to say, she celebrated with friends when Jackson was acquitted of child molestation charges in 2003. Waelder told me she first heard Jackson’s music when her sister, who was 10-years older than her, introduced her to 'Thriller' when she was in 8th grade, the same grade she now teaches in high school.

Memorial for Michael Jackson, Apollo Theater, Harlem

It was hot and humid if you were one of the tens of thousands of Michael Jackson fans standing in-line outside the Apollo Theater in Harlem today, for a chance to pay your respects to the pop legend Michael Jackson. In fact, there were two lines outside the Apollo; one for fans and a second line for ambulances to carry those from the first line to the hospital when they fell from dehydration. And they did.

At one point, the line stretched down 125th Street around the corner, past 126th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Blvd. beyond 128th Street. Adriane Anderson, 27, was standing in line for 45 minutes clutching her two prized possessions, her 1998 Michael Jackson doll and the album cover from Thriller. Anderson credited Jackson as an inspiration in her life and described herself as hysterical when she heard Jackson had died. Anderson said she spent last night crying and felt she had to come today to pay her respects. She called in sick to her internet job in downtown Manhattan.

Phillip and Elaine Ward from Richlands, Virginia were celebrating their 14th wedding anniversary in New York, when they felt they had to come up to Harlem to see the place where Jackson got his first break. “It made our trip to New York more memorable,” Elaine Ward said. “I loved his music, he was the King of Pop and I had to come and see where he performed,” Phillips husband chimed in. His wife went on to say, “Jackson’s music crossed all barriers, all racial divides.” Phillip and Elaine Ward were two of the few white fans who waited in line, today.

There was a mixture of commerce, grief but mostly celebration in Harlem today, as fans and the just the plain curious, got an opportunity to show their affection for the King of Pop one last time.

Vendors along 125th Street opposite the Apollo Theater made a killing selling Jackson tee shirts, posters, and pins covering every decade of Jackson’s life - from his boyhood appearance on amateur night at the Apollo, with his brothers in 1967, right up to what seemed like the very end. One vendor was trying to sell a 25-year-old mint condition Michael Jackson doll for $1000. He had no takers today.

Six hundred people were allowed into the theater at one time for 45 minutes to view videos of Jackson and listen to live music, but because of the huge crowds, that time was reduced to 30 minutes.

Iranian Protesters Outside U.N. Headquarters, NYC

As protesters faced baton-wielding police and live ammunition in Tehran on Sunday, in defiance of Saturday’s warning by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei against public demonstrations, approximately 100 protesters gathered outside the United Nations in New York in a show of solidarity.

The protesters held up signs showing bloodied photographs of protesters beaten or killed in Iran and chanted ‘United Nations pay attention.’ The mostly young crowd was vocal but peaceful. Most wore some form of green clothing in a show of support for their defeated candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. On woman painted a green X over her mouth.
There were similar protests held in Washington, Germany and Belgium

NYC Rally in Support of Same-Sex Marriage, NYC.

Gay’s and their supporters turned out in their hundreds on Tuesday night in the West Village, after California upheld a same-sex marriage ban. . Gay rights activists and their supporters, gathered at the corner of Stonewall Place in the West village, before the start of a rally that would take them to Union Square in the West Village. Some carried signs calling for equal rights, while others carried more outlandish signs like ‘Screw You.’ The Californian Supreme Court in a 6-to-1 majority upheld a ban on same-sex marriage brought in by Proposition 8 in November of last year.