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Artvoice Weekly Edition » Issue v8n13 (03/26/2009) » Section: The News, Briefly


Traffic light cameras capture different points of view

While both sides insist that public safety is paramount, it’d be hard to find an issue as divisive as the recent drive to install traffic light cameras at city intersections. Some city officials, including Mayor Byron Brown and Police Commissioner H. McCarthy Gipson, advocate the devices as much for their alleged effectiveness in decreasing red-light runners as for their potential to generate revenue from tickets automatically issued to violators.



UB plan to ban smoking on campus draws student protests

Come the fall semester, the University at Buffalo will join over 100 campuses nationwide by banning smoking completely on its campus. Designated smoking areas will be gone, forcing smokers to either trek off campus to light up or—what UB is hoping will happen—quit. Many believe the ban is aligned with the UB 2020 plan, which will spend millions of dollars to bolster UB’s reputation as a leading medical campus.



Free of Bashar Issa, the Statler offers its next savior tax incentives galore

On April 11, two weeks from Saturday, it will have been exactly one year since British developer Bashar Issa’s BSC Development last did any work to improve the historic Statler Towers. On March 3, the building was taken out of Issa’s hands, and Stephen Leous, a local businessman, was appointed as the receiver by State Supreme Court Justice John M. Curran.





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