Free Republic

An Upper West Side philanthropist who was nearly killed by a shopping cart that was tossed by teens from an overpass won a $45.2 million jury award Friday — and said she plans to donate a portion of the money to a local youth center. Victim Marion Hedges, 53, shook with emotion when the verdict was announced — but she didn’t shed a tear because a side effect of her brain damage is the inability to cry. She then stood and applauded the jurors before they left Manhattan Supreme Court. “It’s been a long, long road,” Hedges said. Hedges and...

The conference room in the Mountain View, Calif., headquarters of LinkedIn was packed with the stars of Silicon Valley. Top executives of Facebook, Google and Twitter gathered around a table; the billionaire Sean Parker looked on from a back row. The guest of honor: Cory A. Booker, the mayor of Newark. "He's part of this tide," said Gina Bianchini, an entrepreneur who was at the meeting, in May 2009. "It feels like he's one of us." Mr. Booker personally has obtained money for the start-up, called Waywire, from influential investors, including Eric E. Schmidt, Google's executive chairman. A year after...

NEW YORK (AP) -- A 12-year-old who sent a shopping cart hurtling onto a woman from a fourth-floor New York City mall walkway is being sent to a therapeutic foster home. A Manhattan Family Court judge sentenced the boy Thursday to at least six and up to 16 months in the residential program.