New Jersey girl wants gender-neutral Easy-Bake oven

  by MICHELLE R. SMITHPROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Some well-known male chefs are getting behind a New Jersey girl's call for Hasbro to make a gender-neutral Easy-Bake Oven.

Chefs including Manuel Trevino of TV's "Top Chef" and Michael Lomonaco of Porterhouse New York are featured in a YouTube video applauding McKenna Pope's online petition, which had reached about 40,000 signatures as of Tuesday on the website Change.org.

The 13-year-old 8th-grader from Garfield, N.J., started the petition when she went to buy an Easy-Bake Oven for her 4-year-old-brother, Gavyn Boscio, but discovered it comes only in purple and pink. She wants Pawtucket, R.I.-based Hasbro to feature boys on the box of the toy and to make it in gender-neutral colors.

Celebrity chef Bobby Flay said last week he agreed that Hasbro should make an oven in other colors to appeal to boys, and in the nearly 3-minute-long video posted online Tuesday by Flay's publicist, several chefs from around the country joined in on the call.

A spokesman for Hasbro did not comment.

Lomonaco is known for his TV appearances and was executive chef at Windows on the World atop the north tower of the World Trade Center at the time of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In the video, he and other chefs root for McKenna.

"We signed your petition McKenna! You get Hasbro to change that packaging! Little boys and little girls can all be chefs," he says to cheers from the rest of his kitchen.

Laurent Tourondel, who has started restaurants around the world, says cooking is for girls AND boys, while New York chef Spencer Rubin asks: "Hasbro, please make an Easy-Bake for dudes."

Joshua Whigham, of The Bazaar by Jose Andres in Los Angeles, says he supports making an Easy-Bake that's more friendly for boys.

"I can understand not wanting to cook on a pink oven," he says. "Ask Hasbro for a steel, or a black or a something really cool oven."

Brad Spence of Amis Trattoria in Philadelphia says he has young children at home.

"My son, I cook with him every Sunday, so I'd love to see something like that happen," he says.

McKenna's mother, Erica Boscio, told The Associated Press that McKenna is scheduled to meet with Hasbro on Monday.

Online:
http://bit.ly/ZbpkUU

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Official wants NJ Transit bus stops in New York City

One of New Jersey Transit's new multilevel trains arrives for the first time on a regularly scheduled run at Newark's Penn Station Monday, Dec. 11. 2006. (AP Photo/Mike Derer)

  Eyewitness NewsNEW JERSEY -- New Jersey Transit bus passengers might be able to avoid the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City.

New Jersey Transportation Commissioner Jim Simpson wants NJ Transit to explore picking up passengers on the streets of Manhattan and bypassing the congested terminal.

Simpson told NJ Transit's board on Wednesday passengers might be able to board on Manhattan's East Side or at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. Buses would make a series of stops before entering the Lincoln Tunnel and returning to New Jersey.

New York City Transportation Department spokesman Scott Gastel tells The Record newspaper the agency hasn't received a request from NJ Transit, but would closely review any.

NJ Transit pays $1.78 million a year to use the Port Authority and George Washington bridge bus terminals.

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ONLINE: njtransit.com

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Dharun Ravi wants hate crime convictions dismissed

  by GEOFF MULVIHILLNEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. -- A former Rutgers University student who was found guilty of hate crimes for using a webcam to view his roommate kissing another man has asked a judge to overturn the jury's conviction.

In a legal filing Tuesday, Dharun Ravi's lawyers said the jury convicted him in March despite evidence that he was not guilty of invading the privacy or intimidating roommate Tyler Clementi, who killed himself days after the webcam was used.

And on the most disputed and serious charges - bias intimidation - the lawyers say the law was misused. On some of those counts, the jury found that Ravi did not mean to intimidate Clementi or the other man, but that Clementi reasonably believed he did. Jurors said as much both in their findings in court and in comments afterward to journalists. Copies of some news articles were included with the brief to support Ravi's lawyers' position.

"To criminalize a defendant for a victim's mistaken belief about the defendant's motive would turn the bias intimidation statute into a mockery of itself," wrote the lawyers, Steven Altman and Philip Nettl. It is standard practice for lawyers to ask for a judge to overturn a conviction after a jury delivers it. In Ravi's case, the request is for the judge to acquit Ravi entirely - or at least grant him a new trial.

The lawyers said that the jury was wrong on invasion of privacy charges because the snippets video that Ravi and others saw did not show sexual acts or nudity.

Prosecutors had no immediate comment on the court filing. But they're sure to have more to say in coming weeks as they file papers to recommend a sentence for Ravi.

He could face 10 years in prison when he's sentenced on May 21. And because he's a citizen of India, where he was born, Ravi could also be deported eventually because of the conviction.

The case has enflamed passions.

Almost immediately after his suicide in September 2010, Clementi came to be seen as a symbol of the bullying young gays can face. President Barack Obama spoke out about the case and talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres made it a key cause of hers.

Some have come to see Ravi as a victim of an overzealous legal system, a man convicted not so much for what he did but what happened afterward. Last month, former Gov. Jim McGreevey, who left office in 2004 after announcing he was gay, wrote an opinion piece in The Star-Ledger newspaper arguing against a prison sentence for him.

While there is much dispute in court and elsewhere about how the law should be applied in the case, there is little disagreement over the facts.

Jurors heard that Clementi and Ravi, both 18-year-old freshmen from well-off New Jersey suburbs who were assigned at random to be roommates, did not speak much.

A few weeks into the school year, Clementi asked Ravi for the room when he was planning to have over a man he'd met online. Jurors heard that Ravi was nervous about the iPad he'd left in their room and wondered what was going on, so he and a friend turned on his webcam and saw seconds of, as Ravi described in a tweet, his roommate "making out with a dude."

Two nights later, when Clementi asked for privacy again, Ravi obliged. This time, he told friends through text messages, tweets and in-person conversations how they could connect with his webcam to see what happened between Clementi and his guest, who testified at the trial but was only identified by the initials M.B. because he's considered the victim of a sex crime.

But the webcam was off that night.

By the time of that second rendezvous, Clementi had learned that Ravi had watched him and he initiated a request for a room change.

The next night, Clementi, a violinist, made his way to the George Washington Bridge and jumped to his death, leaving behind a final Facebook status: "jumping off the GW bridge, sorry."

Jurors found Ravi guilty of all 15 counts he faced, including bias intimidation, invasion of privacy and tampering with evidence and a witness to try to cover up the other crimes.

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Group wants NJ town to remove 'Christ' banner

  Eyewitness NewsPITMAN -- A national group is asking officials in the southern New Jersey town of Pitman to take down a banner that says "Keep Christ in Christmas."

The Freedom From Religion Foundation says the banner violates the Constitution because it was put up by members of the local fire department and hangs from two town-owned light posts over a county-owned road.

The banner was paid for by a Knights of Columbus group.

Officials say a similar banner has hung over the town about a dozen miles south of Philadelphia for the past 50 years.

Freedom From Religion says the banner should be moved to private property.

The mayor says he's asked a town lawyer to look into the situation.

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State wants overtime pay back from officials

  Marjie Mohtashemi, Eyewitness NewsPATERSON, N.J. (WABC) -- The state of New Jersey is demanding the return of $82,000 in overtime pay to Paterson City department heads.

The controversy first arose when it was revealed that Mayor Jeffery Jones and three other officials were paid overtime for working during Hurricane Irene.

Now, the state Department of Community Affairs wants all overtime money back, that was paid to salaried officials since the start of the administration.

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