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Two winners were named for a scholarship honoring the memory of Bonnie Baha, a portfolio manager at Jeffrey Gundlach’s DoubleLine Capital. Estrellita Salazar and Crystal Guerrero are the 2019 recipients of the Bonnie Baha Memorial Scholarship, now in its second year. The scholarship was initiated last year to address the underrepresentation of women in financial fields — a cause dear to Baha, who served as a mentor to women both at DoubleLine and elsewhere. Baha passed away when she was 56 after she was struck by a car in August 2016 while out walking with her family. Salazar and Guerrero received scholarships of $10,000 and $5,000, respectively, to be used toward their graduate studies at the Gordon S. Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, where Baha was an alumna. The scholarship committee found Salazar and Guerrero were both “exceptionally qualified” for the award based on their academic and community merits. “These women have a commitment to helping ...

Pitching close to home is nothing new for Steven Matz. As the left-hander said after the Mets’ 7-2 win Wednesday over the Marlins at Citi Field, “I don’t know anything else at this point.’’ That won’t be the case for Marcus Stroman, who will make his first start in Queens since joining the Mets when they open their series against the Nationals on Friday. “It’s something to embrace,’’ said Matz, who, like Stroman, grew up on Long Island. “I don’t think it’s gonna be tough for him. He’s an All-Star who’s pitched in the playoffs in Toronto and it’s the same game. He’s an emotional pitcher, a competitor and he’ll bring that to the mound here. It’s gonna be fun to watch.’’ Stroman will be trying to help the Mets extend a six-game winning streak, thanks in part to Matz, who rebounded from a rough start in Pittsburgh to limit Miami to two runs in 6²/₃ innings on Wednesday. Matz gave up a run in the second and escaped further damage that inning due to some brutal base running by the Marl...

Is someone screwing around with the nation’s employment data? A seasonal adjustment change by the Labor Department made job growth in July look a lot worse than it would have been without the change. And, in case you don’t know it, seasonal adjustments aren’t supposed to change by a lot from year to year. In order to look into this, we have to do a little math. Pay attention: I’m not going over this again because I probably can’t figure it out a second time. The Labor Department announced last Friday that the US created 164,000 jobs in July. That’s the figure after seasonal adjustment. That is OK growth, in line with what the “experts” expected, but not exceptional. But let’s look at the raw numbers, which come before seasonal adjustment. They show that, before the Labor Department applied its seasonal adjustments, there was really a loss of 1.059 million jobs this July. So, the loss of 1.059 million jobs was seasonally adjusted into a gain of 164,000. The seasonal adjustment wa...

A Silicon Valley tech company backed by rapper Nas was hit by a security breach earlier this year that revealed it had been lax with users’ sensitive personal information, including bank account numbers, The Post has learned. Earnin, which is also backed by tech investor Andreesen Horowitz, discovered in February that a third-party security firm had accessed customers’ bank transactions — including all their debit card purchases and payment statements going back for months, the company confirmed to The Post. The incident prompted Earnin executives to shore up their security generally. They found major weaknesses, sources said. Prior to the breach, for example, the Palo Alto company kept customers’ unencrypted bank account and routing numbers, home and work addresses, phone ID numbers, and users’ GPS coordinates on an internal server, two ex-employees said. The former employees said the data had been left unprotected because of a practice by Earnin’s developers to copy-and-paste cus...

Elon Musk’s boasts about the safety of Tesla’s vehicles earned him a slap on the wrist from US regulators last year, newly released documents show. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration sent the Tesla chief executive a cease-and-desist letter last October asking him to stop saying Teslas are the safest cars in the world. The NHTSA letter, which was published by document website PlainSite on Wednesday, said that Tesla made “a number of misleading statements” on its company blog about the safety of its vehicles, including that the NHTSA’s tests of the Model 3 sedan showed that “it has the lowest probability of injury of all cars the safety agency has ever tested.” The NHTSA, which gave the Model 3 the top rating on the agency’s 5-Star Safety Ratings Program, called Tesla’s claims “inaccurate,” explaining in its letter that the nature of its crash tests makes it “impossible” to compare the results of vehicles that vary in weight by more than 250 pounds. “The guidelines w...

One word best describes Tiger Woods’ history at Liberty National, where the Northern Trust begins Thursday as the first of the three-leg FedExCup Playoffs: complicated. Woods has played two previous tournaments at Liberty National — the golf course that represents the gold standard in television eye candy with majestic views of the Manhattan skyline and Statue of Liberty — and finished second in both, in 2009 and 2013. That might suggest that there’s a simpatico between Woods and the golf course. Except that hasn’t necessarily always been the case. Liberty National’s par-5 13th hole became one of the most harrowing places of his career when he fell to his knees writhing in back pain after trying to reach the green with a 3-wood in the final round in 2013. Four years later, with his career in peril after a fourth back surgery, Woods, as a non-playing vice captain for the U.S. in the Presidents Cup at Liberty National, told reporters, “I don’t know what my future holds for me.’’ Wh...

In my last column, I reported that the IRS is going after people who trade bitcoin and other virtual currencies — and didn’t bother to pay tax on their gains. In fact, I’m told the IRS sent out 10,000 letters to people who could be tax scofflaws because of virtual currency transactions and not reporting gains on those trades. The IRS got these individuals’ names from Coinbase, an online platform that allows people to buy and sell bitcoin, ethereum and other cyber coins. And since Coinbase brags that it has 13 million users, a lot of other people could soon expect letters. So what happens next? I spoke with Timothy Speiss, a partner at the accounting firm EisnerAmper who is aware of the IRS letters. Speiss says that if someone can prove that they are “investors” in virtual currencies and they held onto their positions for more than a year, they will be taxed at the capital gains rate of 20 percent for federal tax purposes. But if they are deemed to be “traders” — meaning they got ...

Popular dating app Tinder is only getting hotter — thanks to its growing popularity overseas. Shares of Tinder parent company Match Group soared to record heights on Wednesday after it told investors that Tinder added 503,000 new subscribers in the second quarter — blowing past estimates. Analysts had expected the app — known for letting users swipe right to indicate they find a profile attractive — to add only 392,000 new users during the quarter. The company’s shares soared as much as 29 percent in intraday trading before ending the day up 24 percent, at $91.77 a share. On an earnings call, Match Chief Executive Mandy Ginsberg cited Tinder’s strong performance in Japan, where downloads of the app increased 60 percent. She said Tinder is poised to grow even more as the popularity of online dating catches on elsewhere. “We firmly believe this trend is poised to sweep Asian and Middle Eastern markets also,” she said, referring to data showing 40 percent of American relationship n...

A furious Chris Davis was restrained by teammates and coaches in the Orioles’ dugout as his team trailed the Yankees during Wednesday night’s game in Baltimore. The struggling infielder appeared to go after manager Brandon Hyde in the middle of the fifth inning. After a few tense seconds, Davis sat on the bench and collected himself. Davis was immediately pinch hit for by Jace Peterson, though the cause of the kerfuffle has yet to be revealed. Hyde could be seen saying something in Davis’ direction, which appeared to set off the 33-year-old veteran. Davis finished the game 0-for-1 with a strikeout and is hitting .182 this season. The Orioles are 38-75, which has them in the basement of the American League East. Here’s what the MASN cameras caught of the Chris Davis-Brandon Hyde interaction: Appears Hyde said something Davis didn’t appreciate, then Davis had to be held back by hitting coach Don Long and Mark Trumbo. pic.twitter.com/4GTaePor2Y — Zachary Silver (@zachsilver) Au...

A made-for-TV drama about the Clinton-Lewinsky sex scandal couldn’t debut at a worse possible time — just weeks before the 2020 presidential election. FX has announced that “American Crime Story: Impeachment” will chronicle former President Bill Clinton’s encounter with then-White House intern Monica Lewinsky and the impeachment proceedings that followed. The release date, Sept. 27, 2020 — could be a political pain for Democrats. Election Day is on Nov. 3. “Timing is everything and the timing they chose couldn’t be worse for the Democrats,” said political consultant Hank Sheinkopf, whose clients have included Clinton and former Mayor Mike Bloomberg. “It’ll be a great day for Donald Trump.” Veteran TV reporter Mark Harris tweeted , “Airing this during the final six weeks of the 2020 election is an abysmal idea … I hope FX reconsiders the timing.” Filmmaker April Wolfe added, “I’m sure this new American Crime Story will be interesting and good but am also sure I won’t be able to ha...

Authorities are on the hunt for a dangerous inmate who broke out of a Tennessee prison on his birthday Wednesday — and may have killed a state Department of Corrections employee. Dept. of Corrections administrator Debra Johnson, 64, was found dead around 11:20 a.m. Wednesday in her home across from the West Tennessee State Prison in Henning, authorities said. As officials investigated, they found that convicted kidnapper Curtis Ray Watson, 44, was missing from his prison work assignment as a farm laborer. The inmate fled on a tractor and then dumped it and continued on foot, said Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director David Rausch. Police say Watson is a person of interest in Johnson’s death and has been added to their “Most Wanted” list. He’s been behind bars since a 2012 conviction for aggravated kidnapping. Police said at the time that he knocked a woman out by hitting her on the head with a baseball bat and then raped her multiple times. Before that conviction, he’d bee...

It is now illegal to cop a squat on Rome’s famous Spanish Steps — with violators facing a fine of up to $280. Locals, however, aren’t taking the ban sitting down. “It seems to me to be a fascist-style provision that the municipality will be forced to review,” said Vittorio Sgarbi, an Italian art critic and former deputy minister of culture. “Protecting a monument is fine, and obviously you shouldn’t eat on the steps, but the ban on sitting down is really excessive,” he told the ­AdnKronos news agency. Tommaso Tanzilli, director of the Rome branch of the Italian hotels association, agreed. “Criminalizing people for sitting down, especially if they are elderly, is a little exaggerated,” he said. Police began enforcing the Spanish Steps ban Tuesday, using whistles and verbal commands to deter people. The steps leading up to the Trinità dei Monti church have long been a popular spot for residents and tourists. “It’s about time that the Municipality of Rome starts providing seating ...

A zebra got loose in a city near San Antonio, Texas, on Wednesday and was galloping through the streets as police tried to corral it, authorities said. The animal was spotted running through the streets of New Braunfels soon after 5 p.m., according to police. “NBPD is currently assisting Animal Control in corralling a zebra that somehow got loose this afternoon and has been making its way across the city,” the local police department wrote on Twitter with a video of the animal galloping down a street. “The zebra is currently in the area of N. Grape Ave.” It’s not clear where the animal came from, but police added it did not escape from a local zoo called Snake Farm. “The missing zebra is NOT from the Snake Farm. And NBPD is also being assisted by a helicopter team that specializes in safely trapping animals, so you may see a helicopter flying low over the area,” New Braunfels wrote in another tweet. Credit: Source link The post Zebra escapes, gallops through streets of Texas...

LAGOS – Blessing was only six years old when her mother arranged for her to become an unpaid housemaid for a family in the Nigerian city of Abuja, on the promise they would put her through school. In her home town in southwest Nigeria, her mother had trouble making enough money to feed her three children. But when Blessing arrived in Abuja, instead of going to school, the family worked her round-the-clock, beat her with an electrical wire if she forgot one of her chores and fed her rotten leftovers. When her mother later moved to the city to be closer to her daughter, Blessing was unable to be alone with her when she came to visit. “They would tell me that my mother was coming, that I should not tell her what was happening to me, that I should not even say anything,” she says of the family. “If she asks me how am I doing I should say I am doing fine, they said.” As the world marks 400 years since the first recorded African slaves arrived in North America, slavery remains a modern...

A Florida cop was charged with battery after he got caught on police station surveillance video shoving a handcuffed prisoner face-first into a concrete wall, the Miami Herald is reporting. Homestead Police Officer Lester Brown could be seen in the December 2018 video escorting a cuffed migrant worker, Jose Trinidad Garcia Alvarado, with three other officers. As they enter what appears to be an interrogation room, Brown shoves the prisoner, who is knocked to the ground. Blood can be seen on Alvarado’s face when he turns around. The 51-year-old Brown, who has been the Homestead police booking officer since November 2017, surrendered on Wednesday. He is just the latest in a series of officers in Miami-Dade County who are accused of using excessive force on prisoners. In a report he filed of the incident, Brown wrote that Garcia was poised to attack the officers and “fell forward,” hitting the wall. The cop’s lawyer, C. Michael Cornely, told the Herald that Alvarado, who was char...

As the Mets, suddenly contenders for an NL wild card, prepare to play host to the Nationals this weekend in a key test, they won’t have to face Washington’s best pitcher, Max Scherzer. There was hope that the three-time Cy Young winner, who spent most of last month on the injured list with a back strain, returned for one start July 25 and went back on the IL, would be able to face the Mets this weekend. Now, Scherzer’s return date is uncertain, and the Nationals have said they won’t bring him back until he’s 100 percent. “We don’t want this to be an ongoing issue for him,” manager Dave Martinez said Wednesday. The Nationals, who hold the first wild-card spot, shifted their rotation to ensure their top guys are lined up to pitch against the Mets. Stephen Strasburg will open up Friday, facing Marcus Stroman, who will make his first Mets start at Citi Field. Patrick Corbin will take on Noah Syndergaard on Saturday and Anibal Sanchez will move up a day to pitch against Jacob deGrom o...

A $1.4 billion deal to buy USA Today owner Gannett Co. has been so poorly received since it was announced on Monday that executives from both Gannett and its wannabe buyer — New Media Investment — are hitting the road next week in bid to garner support, The Post has learned. If they don’t succeed, the deal could be derailed, sources told The Post. On Monday, New Media said it planned to buy Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper publisher, in a cash-and-stock deal valued at $1.4 billion at the time. The deal would create the nation’s largest newspaper conglomerate by combining Gannett, currently the nation’s largest newspaper publisher, with New Media’s Gatehouse Media, which owns nearly 700 papers across 39 states, including 156 dailies like the Columbus Dispatch in Ohio. Only, instead of cheering the deal, investors sent shares of New Media plummeting in a selloff that has lasted three days. The now sagging New Media shares will be used as currency to pay Gannett shareholders fo...

Iran has been using GPS jammers to try and “spoof” commercial vessels into traveling through Iranian waters so they can seize them, according to federal officials The US Maritime Administration issued a new warning Wednesday for vessels operating in the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman — urging them to be wary. “Heightened military activity and increased political tensions in this region continue to pose serious threats to commercial vessels,” said MARAD officials. “Associated with these threats is a potential for miscalculation or misidentification that could lead to aggressive actions. Vessels operating in the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, and Gulf of Oman may also encounter GPS interference, bridge-to-bridge communications spoofing, and/or other communications jamming with little to no warning.” At least two incidents of GPS interference were reported recently — with one vessel shutting off its Automatic Identification System (AIS) before it was seized, “complic...

BALTIMORE — Brett Gardner and CC Sabathia re-signed with the Yankees within a week of each other last November, one-year deals and pay cuts for both, and the dual transactions carried the feel of the movie “Last Vegas,” a couple of baseball geezers going on one last joy ride together. One problem existed with that narrative, however: While Sabathia immediately declared this season to be his swan song, Gardner never signed off on the script. And with the way he has played for the Yankees in 2019, exactly why shouldn’t they bring him back for 2020? “At this point in the season, I expect to be playing next year. Hopefully it’s here,” Gardner told The Post on Wednesday, before the Yankees concluded this Oriole Park at Camden Yards series with the lowly O’s. “I feel like I’m definitely still capable.” He has seemed particularly capable as of late. The 35-year-old went deep in each of the first two games of this series, giving him 17 homers and putting him on a pace to top his personal b...

Disney, take note: This is how to do a winning live-action update of a cartoon. “Dora and the Lost City of Gold” is spun off from the popular “Dora the Explorer” Nickelodeon cartoon, which debuted in 2000. This update boasts a terrific comic pedigree, with director James Bobin (“Flight of the Conchords,” “The Muppets”) and co-writer Nicholas Stoller (director of “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”), and it’s having a lot of good-natured fun. “Dora” references the educational show in a tone aimed at its now-teen fan base: “Can YOU say ‘ delicioso ’?” the endlessly cheerful Dora (Isabela Moner) says to the camera while dining with her parents (Eva Longoria and Michael Peña) — who look at each other like their daughter might be certifiable. And the jokes snowball from there; I can’t remember when I’ve laughed out loud this much in a kids’ movie. The plot, which takes 16-year-old Dora, her cousin Diego (Jeff Wahlberg) and their pals (Nicholas Coombe and Madeleine Madden) on an archaeological c...