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Good Morning, Brooklyn: Friday, July 23, 2021

July 23, 2021 Brooklyn Eagle Staff
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NO MORE CHILD MARRIAGES: Governor Andrew M. Cuomo on Thursday signed legislation (S.3086/A.3891) raising the age of consent to be married in New York State to 18. This new measure builds upon legislation eliminating child marriage that the Governor signed in 2017 by removing the ability for 17-year-olds to be married with parental and judicial consent. This legislation takes effect 30 days after becoming law and will apply to licenses issued after that date and marriages that had not been solemnized prior to that date.

State Senator Julia Salazar (D-18th District: Williamsburg, Greenpoint) and Assemblymember Phil Ramos (Nassau County) sponsored the bill, named Nalia’s Law after one brave survivor of forced child marriage. Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon co-sponsored the Assembly’s version of the legislation.

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NEW LAW EXPANDS WAYS TO OBTAIN PHONE INSURANCE: Another new law that Gov. Cuomo signed on Thursday will allow New Yorkers a new, less-expensive way to obtain insurance protection for their cell phones through their credit card, debit card or checking account. Prior to the legislation’s passage, state law did not allow credit or debit card issuers and banks to insure their customers’ wireless communication devices from damage, loss or theft. The law specifically authorizes coverage to protect a cell phone and other wireless communication equipment if it is damaged, lost, stolen, or incurs a breakdown.

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“Cell phones are obviously a vital, necessary—and expensive—reality of modern life and losing or breaking one can create real financial burdens, disrupt schedules and otherwise inflict undo aggravation on New Yorkers,” Governor Cuomo said. 

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FORUM ON DEMYSTIFYING MENTAL HEALTH: Assemblymember Mathylde Frontus will lead a three-part virtual forum on “Demystifying Mental Health in Communities of Color” on Monday, July 26. Honoring Black, Indigenous and People of Color Mental Health Awareness Month, the forum, running from 3:30 to 5 p.m. will address barriers to care, breaking through stigma and demystifying mental health. Registration website is: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIuduGtpj0rEtfXOsQJX_yAhisvEa6ZNHr0?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=a9b4365f-19c7-4424-96bd-44867d9f6447

Part 2 will be in panel-discussion format, focusing on “Demystifying Therapy – It’s OK Not to be OK” and Part 3 will be a community conversation dealing with

“Demystifying Supportive Housing — We Are Neighbors.” 

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CURBSIDE COMPOSTSING RETURNS THIS FALL: Brooklyn Community Board 7 (Sunset Park and Windsor Terrace) announces that the NYC Department of Sanitation is preparing to bring back curbside composting this fall. Residents will need to sign up for service starting the first week of August at nyc.gov/curbsidecomposting or by calling 311.

Collections in eligible community districts will start in October on a rolling basis, based on the number of sign-ups, with service expanding each month citywide as demand grows.

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GOLDEN ENDORSES COUNCIL CANDIDATE. New York City Council candidate Inna Vernikov (R-C, 48th District) this week secured the endorsement of former State Senator Marty Golden, who before his 16 years in the New York State Senate was a decorated New York City Police Officer, small business owner, and City Councilmember.  Golden endorsed Ms. Vernikov outside the 61st Precinct on Coney Island Avenue.

Born in the Ukraine and raised in Brooklyn, Ms. Vernikov is now a business owner, attorney, and board member and chair of the Women’s Committee of Americans Against Antisemitism. She previously served as a Special Assistant for former Assemblymember Dov Hikind.

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BOY SCOUT TROOP VOLUNTEERS AT CLINTON ST. GARDEN: A big thank-you to Boy Scout Troop 815 of Cobble Hill-Brooklyn Heights, for volunteering to improve St. Ann’s Peace Garden on Clinton Street.  Paul and Matthew Malefyt, whose parents are members of the parish, earned their Eagle Badge requirement for this project, which is the pinnacle of scouting. Their Eagle Scout project is intended to deliver a tangible benefit to the local community: hence, building benches for social use, and reinforcing the structure of the garden, were two approved projects. 

We also thank Scott Little and Bill McVicar of Kamco Supply Corp. in Brooklyn, for generously donating all lumber and building materials for the Boy Scout project. The day after the benches were completed, they were put to good use during coffee hour. 

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BRINGING THE G TRAIN TO SEA:  MTA New York City Transit on Thursday announced that service changes during a pair of August weekends on the C, E, F and G lines will bring “the G to the Sea” by extending the line more than 5 miles, to Coney Island. The temporary service change will take place during the weekends of August 6-9 and 13-16 and is being made to support the final portion of critical post-Superstorm Sandy work to rehabilitate the F train tunnel between Manhattan and Brooklyn. During these outages, crews will also install cables in the vicinity of Jay Street in order to support the ongoing signal modernization work between Church Avenue and Coney Island.

The G train normally terminates at Church Av in Kensington, ever since the line was extended there from Smith-9 Streets. in July 2009.

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MOBILE VACCINE SITE IN BENSONHURST :The NYC Vaccine Command Center aiming to better meet New Yorkers where they live, work, attend school or play, has deployed temporary, mobile and pop-up vaccination sites citywide. The sites are fully equipped with intake personnel and nurses to safely and conveniently administer the vaccine and observe patients. Appointments are not required, but can be booked in advance here or by calling 877-VAX-4NYC. 

Community Board 11, serving Bath Beach, Bensonhurst and Gravesend, announced that the NYC Mobile Bus will visit this part of Brooklyn, stationed at 70 Avenue O (between Bay Parkway and 65th St.) in zip code 11204 on Saturday and Sunday, July 24 and 25, from noon to 8 p.m. The Pfizer vaccine will be offered to those ages 12 and up.

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Dr. Caroline Rochon, new surgical director of kidney transplantation at University Hospital of Brooklyn.
Photo courtesy of University Hospital

NEW KIDNEY TRANSPLANTATION DIRECTOR: University Hospital of Brooklyn Appoints Dr. Caroline Rochon as its new Surgical Director of Kidney Transplantation, the only such program of its kind in Brooklyn. Dr. Rochon returns to SUNY Downstate after most recently serving as the Kidney Transplantation Surgical Director at Connecticut’s Hartford Hospital. In her new role, Dr. Rochon will lead a re-invigorated Kidney Transplantation Department to improve access to kidney transplantation, increase awareness for living and deceased kidney donation, and enhance successful transplantation rates for patients with chronic kidney disease and end-stage renal disease. 

Dr. Rochon has twice received the National Kidney Registry Teamwork Award and the National Kidney Foundation, Hartford Hospital Kidney Transplant, Excellence in Care Award, and the Hartford Hospital Medical Executive Committee Education Award. She was also recognized with the Connecticut Women of Influence 2020 Award by the Boy Scouts of America.

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PROPOSES NEW WAY TO PRIORITIZE POWER REPAIRS: Recognizing that power failures can be life-threatening events to some New Yorkers, a professor at NYU-Tandon School of Engineering is offering what he believes is a better approach to the utility companies’ current prioritizing areas with the greatest density of customers. Yury Dvorkin, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering and a faculty member of NYU’s Center for Urban Science and Progress, has worked with a group on developing a Power Outage Dashboard for New York City to assist Con Edison and other power companies in prioritizing repairs in those areas with a greater share of customers whose health is immediately endangered by the outage helps visualize power outages in New York City. The NYU Power Outage Dashboard, created with funding from the National Science Foundation, collects data from Con Edison about power outages in the city and integrates that data with open-source socio-demographic and environmental data, such as senior housing, to evaluate the severity of each outage for electricity-vulnerable groups.

Prof. Dvorkin’s research on the Power Outage Dashboard is featured in IEEE Spectrum newsletter, linked from NYU Tandon.


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