Boston Marathon bombers' next target was Times Square, says Bloomberg

The Boston Marathon bombing suspects had Times Square in their sights before law enforcement authorities put an end to their bloody terror spree, according New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

"New York was next on their list of targets," Bloomberg said of brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Bloomberg said he received confirmation of the chilling second phase of their plot from the FBI. “The fact is, New York City remains a prime target for those who hate America and want to kill Americans.”

"New York was next on their list of targets."

- New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the brothers, Muslims from Dagestan, a breakaway republic in Russia, hatched their plot to attack Times Square while driving the streets of Cambridge last Thursday in a Mercedes SUV they had carjacked from a man who later escaped. Kelly called the New York plot "spontaneous," and said they had six bombs with them in the car, some of which they hurled at police cars hours later when they were being pursued in a chase that culminated in Tamerlan Tsarnaev's death.

One of the bombs the brothers had in the stolen car was a pressure cooker bomb, identical to one used in the marathon attack, and packed with gunpowder and shrapnel, Kelly said. Both Kelly and Bloomberg noted surveillance cameras, a contentious subject in New York, played a key role in solving the bombing in Boston, Bloomberg's hometown. Still, the mayor said there was no way of knowing if the brothers could have pulled off a second attack in America's largest city.

"We don’t know if we would have been able to stop the terrorists had they arrived here from Boston," Bloomberg said. He said he did not know of a specific target within Times Square.

Times Square was targeted by Muslim terrorist Faisal Shahzad in a failed 2010 plot. Kelly said at least one Tsarnaev brother was photographed in Times Square last year, first on April 18 and then later on an unspecified day in November.

Kelly said the plot was revealed in a bedside interrogation of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he remains in fair condition. Kelly said Tsarnaev told investigators during his first interrogation that they were headed to New York City to "party." Subsequent questioning, however, revealed that the two brothers decided spontaneously that they would travel to Manhattan to detonate their remaining explosives, Kelly said.  

The 19-year-old suspect spoke to FBI agents intermittently over a 16-hour period before a federal judge showed up at the hospital and read him his Miranda rights, after which he clammed up, according to law enforcement sources. But another senior law enforcement official, speaking to FoxNews.com, characterized the brothers' plans to go to New York as "aspirational, at best."

"I wouldn't say 'plot,' it was just talk," the source said.

The brothers are suspected of setting two bombs at the finish line of the race April 15. Three people were killed and more than 200 injured. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev could face the death penalty if convicted in the attacks, which he said were prompted by the brothers' religious beliefs and anger over the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

FoxNews.com's Cristina Corbin contributed to this report. 

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Has New York Mayor Bloomberg made Americans 'soda shy'?

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  March 8, 2013: A Coca-Cola poster about the city's new beverage ban is displayed at a pizza shop at New York's Penn Station.AP

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Has New York Mayor Bloomberg already made Americans soda shy?

The New York State Supreme Court wisely rejected New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ban on the sale of super-sized sodas, but people who once loved 32-ounce sodas may, wisely, be banning the drinks on their own.  

After all, ordering an extra-large drink of soda in New York with your sandwich or pizza, if you’re overweight, is now more likely to invite subtle shakes of the head and knowing glances exchanged a few tables away. 

Whatever money Mayor Bloomberg might think about spending to enforce a soda ban, it would be better be spent on billboards showing round people literally rolling down Broadway, filled with bubbly beverages.  

People may end up “soda shy,” despite the lack of a soda ban.

This brings up the very good question of whether more can be achieved by leaders who are willing to be bold and challenging of harmful behaviors, rather than trying to outlaw them. 

From a psychological perspective, Mayor Bloomberg may have already achieved what his failed law never could have:  he's already tapped into most people’s inherent desire to be accepted and respected by the community. 

It’s OK to say it publicly and make people feel it privately:  Killing yourself by being 50 or 60 pounds overweight while giving in to the marketing of 400-calorie sodas is being weak and foolish. Your behavior is embarrassing. You should be ashamed of yourself.

The same happens to be true, by the way, for people who get drunk a lot and screw up their relationships:  Your behavior is embarrassing.  You should be ashamed of yourself.

A law that bans 32-ounce sodas risks inviting people to exercise their autonomy by getting around the law (as in, ordering two 16-ounce sodas).  And that's a good thing. Many  adults, thankfully, still object to being treated like 5-year-olds.  

But a moral position that identifies purveyors of 32-ounce sodas as no better than drug pushers (which is also true, in my opinion) and consumers of 32-ounce sodas as no healthier than alcoholics (which is also true), invites people to exercise their autonomy and resolve by rejecting products that defeat their better intentions and make them no more than walking billboards advertising the power of marketing to overwhelm individual judgment.

Rather than announcing a ban on sodas (which the courts will,  I hope, reject again, if it is ever reintroduced), Mayor Bloomberg would have a lot more success calling on people to stop being patsies for the corporate profits of soda kings. If he urged people to stop demonstrating to other people at the table next to theirs, that they obviously think it’s OK to drink themselves into oblivion, whether with vodka or orange soda. 

Whatever money Mayor Bloomberg might think about spending to enforce a soda ban, it would be better be spent—in terms of psychological bang for the buck—on billboards showing round people literally rolling down Broadway, filled with bubbly beverages.  

Even better:  Spend a total of $5,000 or $10,000 on two massive, portly, blow-up "people-balls" and roll them through Central Park now and then. The mayor could get lots of media coverage of the “Soda Morons’” big night out on the town, rolling down the sidewalks of Fifth Avenue. 

Those images might just guilt people into buying a smaller, 12-ounce glass of soda.  

And guilt is sometimes OK.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team. Dr. Ablow can be reached at info@keithablow.com.

Dr. Keith Ablow

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Mayor Defends Struck Down NYC Soda Ban

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State judge halts Bloomberg ban on large sugary drinks in New York City

A New York judge is forcing the Bloomberg administration to take a big gulp -- striking down its groundbreaking and controversial limit on the size of sugary drinks in New York City shortly before it was set to take effect. 

Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Milton Tingling wrote in his opinion that the rules are "arbitrary and capricious," applying to only certain beverages and only certain stores. 

"The loopholes in this rule effectively defeat the stated purpose of this rule," he wrote, complaining of "uneven enforcement even within a particular City block, much less the City as a whole." 

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg plans to appeal, his office said on Twitter shortly after the ruling. 

"We believe (the city) has the legal authority and responsibility to tackle causes of the obesity epidemic, which kills 5,000 NYers a year," his office said, voicing confidence that the measure would be upheld. 

But Tingling said the city's Board of Health went beyond its authority, and effectively would be "limited by its own imagination" if left unchecked. 

"The portion cap rule, if upheld, would create an administrative Leviathan and violate the separation of powers doctrine," by straying into territory that should belong to the elected City Council, not the board appointed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Tingling wrote. 

That, he wrote, "has the potential to be more troubling than sweetened beverages. 

In the wake of the ruling, the American Beverage Association said the decision provided a "sigh of relief to New Yorkers and thousands of small businesses in New York City that would have been harmed by this arbitrary and unpopular ban." 

The city Board of Health approved the measure in September. Championed by Bloomberg, it follows on other efforts his administration has made to improve New Yorkers' eating habits, from compelling chain restaurants to post calorie counts on their menus to barring artificial trans fats in restaurant food to prodding food manufacturers to use less salt. 

The city has said that while restaurant inspectors would start enforcing the soda size rule in March, they wouldn't seek fines -- $200 for a violation -- until June. 

Soda makers, restaurateurs, movie theater owners and other business groups sued, asking a judge to declare the measure invalid. In February, they asked Tingling to bar the city from enforcing the regulation while the suit played out. 

City officials have called the size limit a pioneering move for public health. They point to the city's rising obesity rate -- about 24 percent of adults, up from 18 percent in 2002 -- and to studies tying sugary drinks to weight gain. Care for obesity-related illnesses costs government health programs about $2.8 billion a year in New York City alone, according to city Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley. 

The supersize-drink crackdown will "have significant public health effects, and the sooner that happens, the better," city lawyer Mark W. Muschenheim said in court in February. 

Critics said the measure is too limited to make a meaningful impact on New Yorkers' waistlines. But they said it would take a bite out of business for the eateries that have to comply, while other establishments still will get sell sugary drinks in 2-liter bottles and supersize cups. 

Beverage makers had expected to spend about $600,000 changing bottles and labels, movie theater owners feared losing soda sales that account for 20 percent of their profits, and delis and restaurants would have had to change inventory, reprint menus and make other adjustments, according to court papers. 

"These are costs which these businesses are not going to be compensated for," and the money will be wasted if the court ultimately nixes the law, James E. Brandt, a lawyer for the American Beverage Association and other opponents, told the judge in February. 

Critics also said the restriction should have gone before the elected City Council instead of the Bloomberg-appointed health board. The city says the panel of doctors and other health professionals had both the authority and expertise to make the decision. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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State judge halts Bloomberg ban on large sugary drinks in New York City

A state judge on Monday stopped Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration from banning New York City restaurants and other venues from selling large sugary drinks, a major defeat for the mayor who has made public a health initiatives a cornerstone of his tenure at City Hall. 

The city is "enjoined and permanently restrained from implementing or enforcing the new regulations," New York Supreme Court Judge Milton Tingling decided Monday. 

The regulations are "fraught with arbitrary and capricious consequences," the judge wrote. "The simple reading of the rule leads to the earlier acknowledged uneven enforcement even within a particular city block, much less the city as a whole....the loopholes in this rule effectively defeat the state purpose of the rule." 

Click for more from The Wall Street Journal. 

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