New York won't stand still for a minute. Oscar Humphries offers a personal guide to the Big Apple.
Month: November 2007
Caught in the Double Act
Albert Hsu’s fall from grace was swift. The high-profile hedge fund manager returned to his mansion in toney New Cannan, Connecticut, one chilly Friday in March, was handcuffed and carted off to jail, where he has been held ever since on charges of attempted kidnapping and sexual assault. Word of Hsu’s arrest spread quickly through the financial community, with friends and acquaintances expressing shock that this seemingly upstanding citizen led what can only be called a double life: cub scout leader, philanthropist and successful financier by day, twisted, obsessed woman-hater by night.
Who’s Zooming Who?
Much of the technology that is now taken for granted has its origins in developments introduced in Northern Ireland three decades ago to monitor the activities of suspected terrorists. The remote number-plate recognition system, now a daily feature of life in the Congestion Charge Zone in London, has its origins in a classified project bench-tested in Ulster, wherein the requirement was to identify a car moving at 80 miles an hour at night in the rain, south of Belfast.