NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is worried that high U.S. unemployment could lead to the same kind of riots here that have swept through Europe and North Africa.
"You have a lot of kids graduating college, [who] can't find jobs," said Bloomberg, during his weekly radio show on Friday. "That's what happened in Cairo. That's what happened in Madrid. You don't want those kinds of riots here."
That was the mayor's response when asked about the poverty rate, which rose to 15.1% in 2010, its highest level since 1993, according to census data released Tuesday. About 46.2 million people are now living in poverty, 2.6 million more than last year.
"The public is not happy," he said. "The public knows there is something wrong in this country, and there is. The bottom line is that they're upset."
Riots have gripped various countries in European cities, including Athens and London, fueled by young people infuriated by high unemployment and austerity measures, which in some cases has led to looting. High unemployment among youth is also one of the driving forces behind the Arab Spring, as impoverished protestors in North Africa and the Middle East rose up against their heavy-handed governments.
“Two less obvious factors predated the recession. The first is the steepness of the rise in job scarcity during the previous recession in 2001, which rivaled that during the deep downturn of the early 1980s. The second is the failure between 2003 and 2007 of jobs per jobseeker to recover from the 2001 recession...Unemployment increased during the 2001 recession, but it subsequently fell almost to its previous low. In contrast, job openings plummeted—much more sharply than unemployment rose—and then failed to recover. In previous recoveries, openings eventually outnumbered job seekers (where a rising blue line crosses a falling green line), but during the last recovery a labor shortage never emerged.” — Brookings’ Scott Winship, in a post you should read.
Hurricane Irene: Lower Manhattan may lose power before Irene arrives, mayor says
August 27, 2011 8:14am
Even before Hurricane Irene arrives, Lower Manhattan and other low-lying areas of the city may lose power. In other words, not only will it be extraordinarily stormy in the big city over Saturday night, it could be extra dark.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg suggested that utility company Con Edison might shutdown critical facilities in Lower Manhattan as the storm approaches to prevent residents from getting trapped in elevators and water damage to power lines and other equipment.
“You can plan for a possibility of no power downtown,” Bloomberg said during a morning news conference in Coney Island where it was already drizzling. PHOTOS: In the path of Hurricane Irene The mayor again sternly advised New Yorkers who live in low-lying neighborhoods of the five boroughs to get moving. City officials issued an unprecedented order to more than 370,000 residents to evacuate these areas by 5 p.m.; the massive public transportation system is shutting down at noon.
“This is not a joke and let’s hope that it isn’t as bad as we’re preparing for. But your life could be in danger … You could be in [a] building that doesn’t have electricity or doesn’t have elevator service.”
He later added, "Staying behind is dangerous, staying behind is foolish and it's against the law."
Surging tides and high winds could bring salt water from the East River streaming through the streets of Lower Manhattan and other neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens, according to a Alfonzo Quiroz, a spokesman for Con Edison.
A decision would be made about turning off power as the storm moved in, he said.
“During an intense storm like this we have networks that serve tens of thousands of customers and they all may need to be deenergized due to flooding," Quiroz said. "Taking actions like this allows us to recover quicker. There’s salt in the water and that corrodes some of our wires and makes the damage much more intense. Once the water recedes, we’re able to let the equipment dry and safely reenergize.” http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/08/mayor-lower-manhattan-may-lose-power-even-before-irene-arrives.html
Hurricane Irene Hits North Carolina, Claims First Life
By OLIVIA KATRANDJIAN
Aug. 27, 2011
Hurricane Irene, the monster storm rolling up the East Coast, has claimed its first life, a North Carolina man killed outside his home by a tree limb that blew down this morning.
The man was hit while he was walking around his house this morning in a rural area of Nash County, where winds were roaring at more than 60 mph, county Emergency Management Director Brian Brantley told the Associated Press.
The center of Hurricane Irene hit the coast of North Carolina near Cape Lookout with Category 1-force winds of 85 mph.
Hurricane warnings for the next 48 hours have been issued for North Carolina, Virginia, Washington, D.C., Maryland, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, coastal Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
So far, eastern North Carolina has already seen three tornadoes in the past few days, and the majority of the state and areas of Maryland and Virginia are under tornado watches through Sunday.
Stacy township, on the coast of North Carolina, is seeing 93 mph wind gusts this morning.
The far end of the fishing pier in Atlantic Beach, N.C. collapsed overnight. The 100-foot long pier is still standing, but its end has disappeared into the ocean.
Nearly 200,000 homes in North Carolina are experiencing power outages, according to Power Energy.
Winds up to 85 mph ripped power lines from their poles, causing many of the shortages. The hardest hit areas were Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach, N.C.
"Our crews are restoring service as quickly as possible, where it is safe to do so," Power Energy tweeted.
All airports in the New York area will stop accepting arrivals at noon today. The airports expected to be impacted the most are in New York (Newark, John F. Kennedy and Laguardia), Philadelphia, Penn. and Charlotte, N.C.
The American Red Cross has opened 150 shelters across the northeast and is preparing to open dozens more as the storm moves north.
"We have operations in more than a dozen states. Our priority right now is sheltering," said Gail J. McGovern, the Head of American Red Cross in a press conference this morning.
"We're now in the middle of what could be one of the largest responses the Red Cross has had in recent memory," McGovern added.
McGovern encouraged people to register on "Safe and Well," a website that allows you to inform family members that you are okay.
Evacuations began Friday in New York City with the sick and the elderly.
NYU Langone Medical Center and the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Manhattan, two campuses of Staten Island University Hospital, and Coney Island Hospital have moved hundreds of patients to higher ground.
Today, around 370,000 people in zones the city has labeled A (closest to the water) and in the Rockaways have been ordered to evacuate. It is the first time New York has ever evacuated its residents because of a hurricane. "It is better to take precautions and get out of the storm. Mother nature is much stronger than all of us," said Mayor Michael Bloomberg in a press conference Friday.
Hurricane Irene is lashing North Carolina, with the fiercest winds on the Outer Banks expected to hit about noon. Howling winds, rain and high waves hit the coastline as the large storm brought down trees throughout eastern North Carolina, knocking out power to tens of thousands.
Irene first struck land at 7:30 Saturday morning near Cape Lookout, N.C., on the southern tip of the Outer Banks, and threatened to wreak havoc along a densely populated corridor stretching from the Mid-Atlantic through New England.
Irene weakened to a Category 1 storm as it slammed into North Carolina, with maximum sustained winds around 85 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center. But forecasters said Irene remained a menacing hurricane that could topple trees and power lines, trigger heavy floods and set off storm surges as high as 11 feet. Though the storm has lost some of its strength, it is large, causing flooding and bringing down trees far inland.
Nearly 200,000 homes in North Carolina were without power Saturday morning. Hardest hit were Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach, where Progress Energy reported 190,000 customers, mostly residences, were affected, according to the Associated Press.
In New Bern, N.C., a small river-exposed city about 30 miles inland from where Irene made landfall, winds were picking up and waters were rising. Guests in ground-floor rooms of the Hilton Riverfront Hotel were told at 8:30 a.m. to move to higher floors after water flowed over the bank of the Neuse River, about 100 feet from the hotel.
Water was lapping about one foot below ground-floor rooms after roughly half a foot of rain fell in the area overnight. The National Hurricane Center warned of potential storm surges of four to eight feet in hurricane-affected areas.
About 100 miles north of Cape Lookout in Kitty Hawk, N.C., anxious guests at the Hilton Garden Inn passed the time watching The Weather Channel and taking advantage of the still-working power by firing up coffee makers, reading online news and working out at the gym.
By late morning the storm was already being felt to the north. On the eastern shore of Virginia—a thin, rural peninsula north of Norfolk—gusts of wind barreled across rippling soybean fields and an empty main highway. At times the heavy sheets of rain felt more like hail pellets than water, but the violent bursts alternated with lulls of gentle rain.
Government emergency-response units along the East Coast continued moving personnel and equipment to respond to Hurricane Irene.
The Coast Guard—which has been setting port conditions and warning mariners of the approaching storm—has also moved many of its vessels and aircraft out of Irene's direct path. In addition, six of the service's Disaster Assistance Response Teams, river-rescue units equipped with shallow-draft, flat-bottomed boats, awere staging in areas that are expected to be hit by flood waters.
Virginia Task Force 1, an urban search-and-rescue team that deployed to Japan earlier this year after a devastating earthquake and tsunami, has also been activated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The task force—which has its own search-and-rescue specialists, structural engineers, medical specialists, and search dogs—is staging near Fort Bragg, N.C.
In states further north airports, governments and residents continued to prepare for Irene's arrival.
In New York City, the largest city in the Irene's path, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Saturday that power might be shut off in Lower Manhattan until Monday as a precaution against storm surges.
Hurricane Irene, the monster storm rolling up the East Coast, has claimed its first life, a North Carolina man killed outside his home by a tree limb that blew down this morning.
The man was hit while he was walking around his house this morning in a rural area of Nash County, where winds were roaring at more than 60 mph, county Emergency Management Director Brian Brantley told the Associated Press.
The center of Hurricane Irene hit the coast of North Carolina near Cape Lookout with Category 1-force winds of 85 mph.
Hurricane warnings for the next 48 hours have been issued for North Carolina, Virginia, Washington, D.C., Maryland, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, coastal Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
So far, eastern North Carolina has already seen three tornadoes in the past few days, and the majority of the state and areas of Maryland and Virginia are under tornado watches through Sunday.
Stacy township, on the coast of North Carolina, is seeing 93 mph wind gusts this morning.
The far end of the fishing pier in Atlantic Beach, N.C. collapsed overnight. The 100-foot long pier is still standing, but its end has disappeared into the ocean.
The storm made landfall at 7:30 a.m. (4:30 a.m. Arizona time) ET. Wind and rain knocked out power to nearly 200,000 customers along the North Carolina coast, North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue said.
"Our plan is executed now, our shelters are open, our search and rescue teams are all over the state," Perdue said at a news briefing.
About 8,000 people already have checked in to 81 shelters. Thirty emergency teams are stationed around the state along with 285 members of the National Guard.
Flash flooding already is a problem and some areas have gotten up to 8 inches of rain the governor said. In a plea to residents Perdue said bluntly: "Please stay inside."
Perdue said there were still some people who opted to stay behind but "the good news is our tourists evacuated very quickly."
She said the storm may not be nearly as bad as anybody predicted, but "get ready, she's still a hurricane and people need to respect her."
More than 2 million people along the East Coast have been warned, or ordered, to flee the storm's path. Millions more as far north as Maine hunkered down for a weekend of historic wind and rain.
Charts above from 
