This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

New Years' Issues in Malden

Recap of some of this week's highlights. The news cycle is ramping up. Just like the weather and the ocean tides, we go with the flow. We'll have some old and new Malden issues to talk about this year.

Welcome to the end of the first full week of 2014. recap of some of this week's highlights. The news cycle is ramping up. Just like the weather and the ocean tides, we go with the flow. Looks like some old and new issues to talk about this year.  See Youtube video.

Malden City Council Presidency
http://www.wickedlocal.com/malden/newsnow/x1597054541/Split-decision-on-Malden-council-presidency
I am pleased to see Neil Anderson elected by a vote of his peers to confidently move into the new year as the president of the Malden city council. Neil is a great choice. Neil has the confidence and experience to expertly manage the day to day business of the council and engage the difficult issues that always seem to come up, every year.

Stop & Shop Closing on Broadway
http://www.wickedlocal.com/malden/newsnow/x1903523645/Malden-Shop-and-Shop-closing

The closing of the Stop & Shop on Broadway is just another small sign of a trend emanating out of the part of Malden, where I live. If everyone looks back over the last few years and checks the migration of businesses in and out of the city, you will see that due to various factors such, as redistricting, major businesses have been slowly purging from Ward 6. I first noticed during my extensive walking last fall to boundaries of the ward. Between 2011 and 2013, large numbers of major businesses, like the Route 60 shopping plaza, got tossed from the ward, while land for the charter was added to the ward. Maybe someone has a credible explanation. It looks a little odd to me that ward 6 does not seem to be a business friendly environment.

School Discipline/America
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/08/22231509-obama-administration-takes-aim-at-cutting-racial...

The new guidelines from the Justice Department concerning school discipline is garbage. In case I wasn’t clear, this is an unprecedented overreach and blatant meddling in the school system. Why is this even originating from the Attorney General and not from the Secretary of Education? Zero tolerance policies have been hard to choke down over the years, due to overzealous application in some instances, but at least it has been mainly neutral and applied across the board by concerned educators. To insist on racial quotas, for disciplining our children in school, is ludicrous. I challenge anyone to make a case for this that doesn’t bring us to the edge of racial disharmony and strife. This policy is unfair to EVERYONE! I urge our mayor, city council, superintendent and school committee to ignore these proposed guidelines, regardless of how much money Washington D.C. sends our way.

Neiman Marcus/ Secret service involved
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/hackers-steal-credit-card-data-neiman-marcus-customers/story?id=21499...
The hacker breach of personal information at Neiman Marcus is sever enough to get the Secret Service involved. Whatever is going on in that situation, please cancel and renew whichever credit card that you may have used in that store chain last year.

Target Stores Hacked http://www.cnbc.com/id/101328613 The hacker breach of Target stores is much worse than previously known. The news media now implies that Target may not know how long that their security has been compromised. The system may have been open to hackers for years. If you haven’t done so yet, cancel and renew ant charge card used at Target stores.

Find out what's happening in Maldenwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

This is Joe Gray from Malden Talks.  Happy New Year.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?