First Creepy-People-In-The-City Story. The First of Many, Apparently.

"False Livery Cab Driver Arrested on Rape Charge"
by Vivekananda Nemana
for the Washington Square News, published February 25, 2008.

Note: When reporting this I realized for the first time exactly how competitive New York news can be. I had nothing against the Daily News, the New York Post, the Gothamist, and the New York Times. Ah, the frustrations of an inexperienced WSN journalist!

Thanks to two women, New Yorkers now have one less thing to worry about. 

Monica Maneiro, a 23-year-old employee at Scores West, a gentleman's bar in Chelsea, was partly responsible for last Sunday's arrest of Torkieh Sadageh, a 28-year-old man who allegedly posed as a livery cab driver and attempted to rape Maneiro and another woman outside nightspots in Chelsea. His arrest is now thought to be related to two similar incidences in the Lower East Side last September and October. Both neighborhoods are frequented by NYU students. 

Sadageh has been charged with the rape of the other woman on the same night. 

Maneiro alleged that after she had gotten into the fake livery cab after work, around 4 a.m. on Sunday morning, Sadageh pulled over and forced himself on top of her. She escaped from the vehicle and called 911 to report his license plate number. 

"I didn't really fight back too much because if I would have he probably would have gotten more upset," Maneiro said in a statement to the press. 

The other woman was not so lucky. According to press reports, he picked her and her three friends up minutes after the first incident. She said that after he had dropped her friends off, he raped her in the back seat. She also took down his plate number, which connected the two attacks. 

According to news sources, Sadageh admitted to assaulting Maneiro but denied raping the other woman. He was arrested Sunday night outside his home in Brooklyn. 

"They were drunk women. This was an accusation. Nothing is rape," he shouted to reporters while being escorted to a police vehicle in East Harlem. 

Sadageh is currently in the custody of the New York City Department of Corrections. 

Police also suspect Sadageh is connected to the livery cab sexual assaults of women outside of The Box bar in the Lower East Side last fall. Sadageh initially admitted to those attacks but later recanted his statement. 

NYU Public Safety Vice President Jules Martin said there are measures students can take to help avoid situations like these. 

"At NYU we strongly suggest to all students to use the 'buddy system' when navigating the streets of New York - regardless of the neighborhood, especially late at night or early morning," he wrote in an e-mail. 

Martin noted the importance of traveling on well-lit streets, using yellow taxis when possible and calling Public Safety and the Wellness Exchange in addition to 911 when victimized in an attack. 

But NYU students said that they aren't too concerned with safety. 

"I kind of just assume I'm safe," CAS sophomore Meg Coslett said. "If you go out, you're not really worrying about being safe, you just care about getting home."

Missing NYU Alum

"Alum missing from ski town" 
By Vivekananda Nemana
For the Washington Square News, published February 19, 2008 

People are still on the lookout for Alphonse "Mike" Barbiere, a former NYU student who went missing last week in the ski resort town of Breckenridge, Colo. 

Barbiere, a New Jersey native, was last seen with his friends at Cecilia's Martini bar on Feb. 8. He left at 1:18 a.m. and has not been seen since. Police reports say that Barbiere walked in the opposite direction from his rented condominium, despite a warning from a friend that he was going in the wrong direction.? 

The Barbiere family and the Breckenridge Police initiated an exhaustive search the next day. Assistant police chief Greg Morrison said up to 60 members of the search and rescue team with three trained dogs searched the area on Feb. 9 and Feb. 10. 

Barbiere did not tell his friends or anyone else where he was going, and no evidence was found on his trail. To further complicate matters, Barbiere left his phone at the condo, family members said. 

Large amounts of snow and freezing weather in the Breckenridge area could make returning home difficult. 

"People forget that if you step off the beaten path, you can be waist deep in snow," said Jeff Cox, owner of Cecila's Martini bar. "And if you don't know how to handle yourself in those conditions, you can be in trouble." 

According to experts, a person dressed as lightly as Barbiere was can barely last an hour before turning hypothermic. 

But Barbiere's relatives think it is unlikely that he is lost in the cold. 

"We believe that Mike is resourceful; he's smart, he's bright, he's any one of those things," said Annie Madigan, who has been friends with Barbiere since childhood. "We don't think he would just sit in the snow and give up. He's a fighter."? 

Barbiere transferred from Wake Forest University to the Paul McGhee division of SCPS. He graduated last May with an honors degree in economics and worked as a commodities trader afterwards. 

Although search and rescue operations have been stopped, the family has offered a $10,000 reward to anyone with information leading to his discovery. 

The family has hired a private investigator to look into the case and is focusing on getting the word out about Barbiere. Friends have created a website devoted to the cause, as well as Facebook and MySpace groups. 

"The best way to find Mike is for people to be talking about it," said Barbiere's mother, Chris. 

Madigan said friends and family are hopeful about Barbiere's return. 

"He's 23 and very capable," she said. "This isn't the type of challenge he couldn't do."

End of the Electoral College? (Picked up by CBS News!)

"ELECTION 2008: States Reject the Electoral College"
By Vivekananda Nemana and Todd Sloves
For the Washington Square News, published on February 14, 2008. 

Note: I worked on this article about the National Popular Vote together with Todd, who is an excellent writer and reporter...certainly much better than I am. It's an interesting topic, good enough for CBSNews.com to put it on their website (via U-Wire)! Made me month, that did. Also, this was Debbie Chung's national news debut. 

The way we elect our president may be changing. 

State legislators around the country are introducing the National Popular Vote law to change how their states allocate votes in the Electoral College. Currently, this is done by a winner-take-all system, in which the candidate with the most votes in a state takes all that state's electoral votes. But in states that adopt the NPV law, those votes will go to the candidate who wins the most popular votes nationally, regardless of his or her success at the state level. 

Supporters of the NPV say the winner-take-all system grants an unfair advantage to voters in larger states with more electoral votes. 

"A citizen in California has about three times the influence of a citizen in Wyoming, or some other smaller state, in impacting the election of the president," said Steven Brams, a professor of politics at NYU and a supporter of the NPV. 

If the winner-take-all system is replaced by the NPV law, the influence of every voter would be equal. 

"All voters would be treated the same, wherever they lived," he said. "It nullifies this bias [and] supports the egalitarian principle of one-person, one-vote." 

According to the Constitution, the Electoral College officially chooses the president. Each state, however, has the power to pass laws that decide on what basis its electors will cast their votes. Because the law encourages states to allot their votes based on the national majority, it becomes effective once states with a collective majority of electoral votes pass the law. 

Last month, New Jersey Gov. John Corzine signed the NPV into law, making it the second state to adopt the new system. 

The other NPV state, Maryland, enacted the bill last April. Illinois and Hawaii are the next states in which the bill will be decided, and in both states the bills are awaiting the respective governor's signature. 

In New York, the NPV bill is making its way up the ranks. A spokesman for New York State Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, who co-sponsored the bill, said it is still in committee. "People have been looking to circumvent the Electoral College ever since the 1800s," the spokesman said. He cited the 2000 presidential election as the crucial factor in reforming the current system. A spokeswoman for Maryland's Speaker of the House Michael E. Busch also said that the controversial election was the catalyst in the bill's success. 

There is, however, opposition to the bill's passage. In 2006, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill after it passed in both Houses of the California legislature. Schwarzenegger said that the bill "disregards the will of the majority of people voting for the office of President," specifically citing the will of most Californians. 

Students at NYU said they were optimistic about the NPV. 

Debbie Chung, a New Jersey sophomore majoring in politics, thinks it'll be best for both her home state and the rest of the country. 

"Because New Jersey is considered a Democratic state, [its] issues tend to get ignored," she said. "I think this is good because it brings the candidates' focus back to where it affects the most people, instead of small state-specific interests."

Chapter Two: Enter the College Newspaper of Dreams

"Scientists unravel DNA's role in life" 
By Vivekananda Nemana
For the Washington Square News, published on February 5, 2008.

Note: This was the first article I wrote for the Washington Square News before I started staffing there. It got edited the shit out of, but it was my first real journalism experience. Sorry if this is terribly self-indulgent and painful to read. I'll write something a little more interesting as soon as I finish documenting everything I've published. 

Scientists first began mapping DNA in the 1980s to learn more about life's inner workings. 

But to unravel DNA's role in creating life, scientists need to understand how genes help form living organisms - a task undertaken by NYU professors Richard Bonneau and Nitin Baliga. 

The two researchers have mapped the regulatory circuit that controls a tiny organism that can survive in extreme environments, Halobacterium salinarum. The study is part of an emerging field called systems biology, which studies the complex interactions within entire biological systems. 

NYU Professors Richard Bonneau and Nitin Baliga collaborated with
researchers to create a systems biology model (WSN File Photo).

Bonneau is an assistant professor of biology at NYU's Center for Genomics and Systems Biology and the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and Baliga is a researcher from the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle. 

Along with researchers from the University of Maryland, Vanderbilt University and the University of Washington, Bonneau and Baliga studied the control circuit of Halobacterium for over four years. 

They created a model that maps how the organism would adapt when forced into a new environment. In the end, their model accurately predicted how over 85 percent of the genome responded to changes over time, a milestone level of accuracy in predicting cellular changes. 

Unlike older studies that only focus on one gene at a time, systems biology experiments simultaneously monitor all the genes in the genome, an organism's genetic material. This allows researchers to examine the connections between biological control circuits: the interactions among genes that form an organism's biological processes. 

Systems biology is currently examining how genetic building blocks are combined to make the final product - life. 

According to Bonneau, the practical advantage of understanding biological systems is that it opens doors for new forms of bioengineering, such as the biosynthesis of pharmaceuticals and the bioremediation of wastes. 

"In the end, understanding the circuits which control the cell systems and subsystems is a prerequisite for bioengineering," Bonneau said. "Once you figure out the circuit, you can move on to engineer the circuit to produce new things." 

Bonneau is assembling a team of students to work with him during the summer. 

"It's just the beginning," he said. "Working with [Dr. Baliga] has been a great collaboration, and we're going to continue it well into the future."