Keith Whamond

HARTFORD — Tougher penalties for drivers who violate Connecticut’s cell phone ban and streamlined environmental permitting for development projects are among the new state laws set to kick in Friday that were passed by the General Assembly.

Connecticut currently bans using hand-held mobile telephones and other devices while driving. This latest law eliminates a one-time exemption from a state fine for first-time violators who provide proof they acquired a hands-free device for the phone between the time the violation occurred and the fine was imposed.

The new law also makes it clear that the ban also applies to texting while driving.

“There can be no more ‘grace period’ for a motorist caught using a hand-held phone in their car, and if you get caught texting, you pay,” said Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell, who advocated for the changes during the session. “There is nothing that urgent that is worth a life.”

Read more here.

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After many months of preparation, our new commenting platform on CTPost.com, NewsTimes.com, StamfordAdvocate.com and GreenwichTime.com is now live!

If you already had an account to leave a comment on our sites, don’t worry. You’ll be able to log in and post using your existing account.

But you’ll also now be able to do way more than just post comments on stories.

Users can now comment on individual photos, set up a profile page, they can give a “thumbs up” to posts, they can dislike posts, ignore users, flag comments, reply to comment replies, post comments to Twitter and Facebook and much, much more.

Here’s a screenshot of the new commenting platform in action:

A typical comment thread

Start clicking around and explore! And if you aren’t already registered, sign up for an account. We hope soon our sites will become an even better representation of the community.

Have any suggestions or problems? Leave a comment on the blog post below.

The Times-Tribune in Scranton, Pennsylvania is reporting that Danbury Hospital CFO William Roe was arrested on federal wire fraud and interstate transport of stolen funds charges on Aug. 17 – and has since been arrested on still more charges.

The government alleges that Roe was in contact with Danbury Hospital CEO Dr. John Murphy just hours after his arrest on federal wire fraud and interstate transport of stolen funds charges.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Rahul Kale told The Times-Tribune that prosecutors believe Roe’s communication with Muphy amounts to witness tampering and obstruction of justice.

More from The Times-Tribune:

Despite the warnings, Mr. Roe placed hourly phone calls to Dr. Murphy and fired off a series of e-mails, including one saying he wanted the case against him to “go away,” prosecutors said.

In one e-mail sent four hours after his arraignment, Mr. Roe wrote to Dr. Murphy, “Let’s talk, if you don’t believe we can work something out. I’d really like to get the prison option out of the way.”

The e-mail refers to money Mr. Roe apparently owes the hospital and suggests the hospital garnish his salary to “pay back Danbury.”

Click here for their full story.

Roe was appointed CFO at Danbury Hospital in March 2009, according to The Times-Tribune.

Expect more soon on NewsTimes.com.

Sean P. Quail, the husband of the suspect police say received stolen beer from Omar Thornton, the shooter who killed eight people in Manchester earlier this month assaulted two Fox television reporters outside of a Hartford court room earlier this morning.

According to Courant.com, Reporter George Colli and photographer Alan Chaniewski were sprayed with wasp and hornet spray about 9:45 a.m.

Read the full story here.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we’re hard at work to bring you a brand new way to leave comments on stories and photos!

Here’s a quick update:

If you’ve registered an account on more than one of our sites, you may be receiving an e-mail from us in the very near future regarding your account. We’re going to be consolidating multiple accounts registered to the same e-mail address. If this sounds like you, we’ll be letting you know which account you’ll be using going forward.

Also, if your screenname is the same as someone else’s, we’ll be sending you a note letting you know what your new screenname will be.

Of course, if you’re unhappy with any of the changes, you’re welcome to create a new account or opt-out altogether by e-mailing us here.

We’re excited to pull back the curtain and show off some of the new features you can expect in the weeks ahead. Thanks for your patience!

I haven’t seen any news stories about this yet, but a video on YouTube shows an unidentified woman laying down on subway tracks recently somewhere in New York. An equally unidentified man eventually climbs onto the tracks, with the train approaching, and convinces her to hop back onto the platform.

A horrifying situation, one that probably resonates with all you commuters out there. Pretty dramatic stuff.

Reader beware, the language in the video is not safe for work:

[AnimalNY]

A quick note on two changes to our sites as of this morning:

• After relaunching the sites several  months ago, we’re out of beta! We’ve moved dozens of enhancements to the sites over the past months and improved our stability. We’re pretty thrilled with the sites, and judging by the tremendous increase in traffic we’ve seen, so are our users.
• One of the big reasons we’re out of beta: We now have RSS feeds for our most popular headline lists, from breaking news to headlines about your town to high school sports stories. You may have already noticed little RSS icons dotting our pages. You’ll see more in the future.
• We moved our search box into our header, giving us more area to promote some of our great content and making it easier for our users to quickly find what they’re looking for. Behold:

Our new search module

More new stuff is coming. Stay tuned!

Well, despite the threat of rain and pretty significant storm just to the east in Bridgeport, the first Alive @ Five concert of 2010 went off without a hitch last night.

Soul Asylum and Gin Blossoms played to a huge crowd, and at least one downtown restaurant owner told me that business was very good last night.

Did you go to Alive @ Five? What was your experience? Are you planning on going to the other concerts? Were you able to spot yourself in any of the photos we shot?

Share your experience below! And don’t forget to send us your photos!