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NEW YORK (AP) — A woman who faced eviction from her Manhattan apartment over her three emotional support parrots will be paid $165,000 in damages plus $585,000 for her apartment under a consent decree announced by federal prosecutors. The consent decree announced Monday resolves a dispute between Meril Lesser and the board of the Rutherford, a 175-unit cooperative apartment building where Lesser lived with her parrots Layla, Ginger and Curtis. Lesser purchased an apartment at the Rutherford in Manhattan's Gramercy Park neighborhood in 1999 a...
NEW YORK (AP) — Several bronze plaques commemorating figures from New York City's rich history have been pried off the buildings they were affixed to this summer, apparently to be sold for scrap metal, part of a disturbing trend that includes the theft of a statue of Jackie Robinson from a park in Kansas. The losses include a plaque honoring writer Anaïs Nin and one marking the spot where the short-lived rock venue the Fillmore East hosted legendary acts including Jimi Hendrix and the Who. A third plaque that honored Elizabeth Blackwell, th...
NEW YORK (AP) — James Kane has used a powerful magnet to fish all manner of junk from New York City waterways, but he says the stacks of $100 bills he pulled from a safe were something else entirely. Kane's girlfriend, Barbi Agostini, was recording last Friday as he pulled a slimy safe out of a lake in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, famous as the location of the 1939 and 1964 World's Fairs, and extracted bags of waterlogged, gunk-covered Benjamins from inside it. "Oh, that's money," Kane said in the video of the discovery. "Oh, it is! Stacks o...
NEW YORK (AP) — The Israel-Hamas war protests creating friction at universities across the United States escalated Tuesday as some colleges encouraged students to attend classes remotely and dozens faced charges after setting up tents on campuses and ignoring official requests to leave. The protests had been bubbling for months but kicked into a higher gear after more than 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had camped out on Columbia University's upper Manhattan campus were arrested last week. With tensions at Columbia continuing to run h...
The village of Manlius in upstate New York is mourning the loss of Faye, a swan who was stolen from the town's pond over the weekend along with her four cygnets. The cygnets, or baby swans, were recovered, but officials say the mama swan was eaten. "The mother swan was consumed," Manlius Mayor Paul Whorrall said Wednesday. "Sad to say, but that's what they did." Three teenagers were arrested Tuesday on charges including grand larceny and criminal mischief in connection with the swan-napping, Manlius police Sgt. Ken Hatter said. Mute swans like... Full story
NEW YORK (AP) — Electronic cigarette-maker Juul Labs Inc. will pay $462 million to six states and the District of Columbia, marking the largest settlement the company has reached so far for its role in the youth vaping surge, the attorneys general in several states announced Wednesday. The agreement with New York, California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Mexico and Washington, D.C. is the latest in a string of recent legal agreements Juul has reached to settle lawsuits related to the way it marketed addictive nicotine products. C...
NEW YORK (AP) — A woman was stabbed to death inside her lower Manhattan apartment by a man who followed her from the street into her building, authorities said. Christina Yuna Lee, 35, was found fatally wounded in her bathtub at about 4:30 a.m. Sunday, police said. The suspected killer was taken into custody after he at first tried to flee down a fire escape and then barricaded himself inside the apartment, a police spokesperson said. Police announced Monday that Assamad Nash, 25, was arrested on charges of murder and burglary. It wasn't c...
NEW YORK (AP) — Author Alice Sebold apologized Tuesday to the man who was exonerated last week in the 1981 rape that was the basis for her memoir "Lucky" and said she was struggling with the role she played "within a system that sent an innocent man to jail." Anthony Broadwater, 61, was convicted in 1982 of raping Sebold when she was a student at Syracuse University. He served 16 years in prison. His conviction was overturned on Nov. 22 after prosecutors reexamined the case and determined there were serious flaws in his arrest and trial. In a...
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — An aide who accused New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo of groping her said in her first televised interview that she was initially afraid to identify herself because she worried the governor's "enablers" would destroy her if she spoke up. Brittany Commisso, an executive assistant on Cuomo's staff, detailed her interactions with the Democrat in a joint interview with CBS and The Times Union of Albany that was broadcast Monday as a key legislative committee met to discuss possible impeachment hearings. Commisso has spoken out b...
NEW YORK (AP) — A 61-year-old Chinese American man was attacked by a man who kicked him repeatedly in the head in East Harlem, police said. The man was collecting cans when he was attacked from behind, knocked to the ground and kicked in the head shortly after 8 p.m. Friday. He was taken to Harlem Hospital in critical but stable condition, police said. Surveillance video released by the police appears to show the attacker stomping on the victim's head. The police department's hate crimes task force is investigating the attack, the latest in a t...
NEW YORK (AP) — A vicious attack on an Asian American woman as she walked to church near New York City's Times Square is drawing widespread condemnation and raising alarms about the failure of bystanders to intervene amid a rash of anti-Asian violence across the U.S. A lone assailant was seen on surveillance video late Monday morning, kicking the 65-year-old woman in the stomach, knocking her to the ground and stomping on her face, all as police say he shouted anti-Asian slurs and told her, "you don't belong here." The attack happened o...
NEW YORK (AP) — The two top Democrats in New York’s legislature withdrew their support for Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Sunday amid mounting allegations of sexual harassment and undercounting COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes. Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins became the first senior Democrat in the state to say the three-term governor should resign. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie stopped short of demanding that Cuomo quit, but said in a statement that “it is time for the Governor to seriously consider whether he can effectively meet the n...
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo acknowledged for the first time Sunday that some of his behavior with women "may have been insensitive or too personal,” and said he would cooperate with a sexual harassment investigation led by the state’s attorney general. In a statement released amid mounting criticism from within his own party, the Democrat maintained he had never inappropriately touched or propositioned anyone. But he said he had teased people and made jokes about their personal lives in an attempt to be “playful.” “I now un...
NEW YORK (AP) — Americans commemorated 9/11 on Friday as another national crisis, the coronavirus, reconfigured ceremonies and as a presidential campaign carved a path through the memorials. In New York, victims' relatives gathered Friday morning for split-screen remembrances at the World Trade Center's Sept. 11 memorial plaza and on a nearby corner, set up by separate organizations that differed on balancing tradition with virus safety. Standing on the plaza, with its serene waterfall pools and groves of trees, Jin Hee Cho said she couldn't e...
NEW YORK (AP) — Fast-moving Tropical Storm Fay made landfall in New Jersey on Friday amid heavy, lashing rains that closed beaches and flooded shore town streets. The storm system was weakening as it moved over New Jersey and was expected to continue doing so overnight, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in its 8 p.m. advisory. The storm is expected to bring 2 to 4 inches (5 to 10 centimeters) of rain, with the possibility of minor coastal flooding from New Jersey to Rhode Island as well as flash flooding. That's down from earlier f...
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge on Friday blocked New York state from enforcing coronavirus restrictions limiting indoor religious gatherings to 25% capacity when other types of gatherings are limited to 50%. Judge Gary Sharpe enjoined Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Attorney General Letitia James from enforcing some of the capacity restrictions put in place by executive order to contain the spread of the virus. The plaintiffs' religious activities "will be burdened and continue to be treated less favorably than c...
NEW YORK (AP) — New York City lawmakers voted Tuesday to ban flavored electronic cigarettes after a lawsuit halted a statewide ban. "We are acting to protect our kids by banning the e-cigarette flavors that have been hooking them for years," Democratic City Council member Mark Levine said before the Council voted 42-2 to adopt the ban on flavored vaping products. Advocates for the vaping industry jeered and threw dollar bills from the balcony after the vote, and industry supporters said the ban will hamper efforts to curb smoking. "All the N...
NEW YORK (AP) — People who were too young on 9/11 to even remember their lost loved ones, and others for whom the grief is still raw, paid tribute with wreath-layings and the solemn roll call of the dead Wednesday as America marked the 18th anniversary of the worst terror attack on U.S. soil. "Eighteen years. We will not forget. We cannot forget," Bud Salter, who lost his sister, Catherine, said at ground zero. President Donald Trump laid a wreath at the Pentagon, telling victims' relatives: "This is your anniversary of personal and p...
NEW YORK (AP) — The Statue of Liberty's original torch, which has been housed in the base of the statue since a replica replaced it in the 1980s, was moved across Liberty Island on Thursday to its new home in a museum that will open next year. Visitors watched as the base and the detached flame of the 3,600-pound (1,633-kilogram) torch were trucked slowly and carefully to the museum construction site about 100 yards (91 meters) from the statue. Officials with the National Park Service and the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation said t...
NEW YORK (AP) — One of the nation's most respected medical experts, who led the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, entered a courtroom on Friday in handcuffs, arrested on sexual-harassment charges after a woman accused him of grabbing her behind late one night last year. Dr. Thomas Frieden, who for years informed the public about dangers to their health, sat stone-faced as a judge warned him not to approach the woman, who accused him of groping her on Oct. 20, 2017, in his Brooklyn home. He was arrested earlier Friday on three c...
NEW YORK (AP) — New York City has settled a federal lawsuit filed in 2016 by public school parents who charged that school violence and bullying were not being adequately addressed. The settlement announced Wednesday will require the city Department of Education to report bullying incidents into an electronic system within one day. Parents will also be able to submit school bullying complaints electronically. "This settlement finally brings meaningful reform to a troubled and broken system that placed every New York City school student in d...
NEW YORK (AP) — Tech giants Facebook, Twitter and Google are taking steps to police terrorists and hate groups on their sites but more work needs to be done, the Simon Wiesenthal Center said Tuesday. The organization released its annual digital terrorism and hate report card and gave a B-plus to Facebook, a B-minus to Twitter and a C-plus to Google. Facebook spokeswoman Christine Chen said the company has no comment on the report. Representatives for Google and Twitter did not immediately return emails seeking comment. Rabbi Abraham Cooper, t...
NEW YORK (AP) — Army veteran Jose Belen says the horrors of the Iraq War left him with post-traumatic stress disorder, and the drug that helped him cope best with the symptoms was one his Veterans Affairs doctors could not legally prescribe: marijuana. "Once I did use cannabis, immediately I felt the relief," said Belen, who is now working with other medical marijuana users to mount a long-shot court challenge to federal laws criminalizing the drug. The 35-year-old, married father of two is one of five plaintiffs in a lawsuit claiming that t...
NEW YORK (AP) — New York subway riders shrugged off the city's latest attack Tuesday, a day after police say a would-be suicide attacker set off a pipe bomb. The underground passageway at the Times Square station where the homemade device went off Monday was crowded with commuters a day later. The only sign of Monday's explosion was in increased police presence, including a badge-wearing German shepherd named Omar. Riders said they had no qualms about returning to the station where authorities say Akayed Ullah set off the bomb. "I just feel lik...
NEW YORK (AP) — A painting of Christ by the Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci sold for a record $450 million (380 million euros) at auction on Wednesday, smashing previous records for artworks sold at auction or privately. The painting, "Salvator Mundi," Latin for "Savior of the World," is one of fewer than 20 paintings by Leonardo known to exist and the only one in private hands. It was sold by Christie's auction house, which didn't immediately identify the buyer. "'Salvator Mundi' is a painting of the most iconic figure in the world by t...
