For six months, there were no hot dogs to be had on Coney Island.

When Hurricane Sandy forced the original Nathan’s Famous to shut down for repairs, it was the first time in nearly a century that the birthplace of the frankfurter-in-a-bun had closed. But it may have been just the push the Surf Avenue mainstay needed to re-imagine itself and gear up for another hundred years of business.

When Nathan’s opened its doors quietly on Tuesday ahead of a bigger grand re-opening on Thursday, hot dogs were still the staple of the menu. But the establishment has added a raw bar and expanded its beverage options to include wine and a bigger beer selection.

Customers who want more than the usual hot dog and crinkle-cut fries can get a dozen oysters for $17.50, according to the Daily News.

NY1 reports that the restaurant’s management also took the opportunity to build in precautions against future storms, moving all the utilities from down in the basement to above the flood line.

The post Sandy-battered Nathan’s Famous re-opens with raw bar appeared first on Metro.us.

An NYPD detective from Bronxville is facing a year in prison after spending upwards of $4,000 on email-hacking services to gain access to dozens of email accounts, including those belonging to several of his fellow police officers, federal authorities said on Tuesday.

Edwin Vargas, 42, was arrested for allegedly hacking into 43 personal e-mail accounts and one cellphone, in the process infiltrating accounts belonging to 19 active police officers, one retired cop and one administrative NYPD staffer. He is also accused of  illegally obtaining information about two officers from a federal database to which he had access based on his status as an NYPD detective.

“Of all places, the police department is not a workplace where one should have to be concerned about an unscrupulous fellow employee,” FBI Assistant Director in Charge George Venizelos said in a press release. ”Unlike the e-mail accounts, the defendant didn’t need to pay anyone to gain access to the [National Crime Information Center] database. But access is not authorization, and he had no authorization.”

Vargas has been charged with one count of conspiracy to commit computer hacking and one count of computer hacking. Each count carries a sentence of up to one year in prison.

Danielle Tcholakian contributed reporting.

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Associate Professor of Radiology Yudong Zhu and two researchers, Xin Lang and Ye Li, allegedly shared research funded by a $4 million grant from the National Institute of Health with a Chinese company called United Imaging Healthcare and a Chinese government-sponsored research insititute, the Shenzen Institute of Advanced Technology. NIH research is sponsored by the U.S. government.

When he was confronted by university officials earlier this month, Zhu apparently told them he joined a United Imaging research team in 2011 and a co-lead investigator for a grant from a Chinese government agency to develop MRI technology innovations. Prosecutors allege he traveled to China at least six times to assist with research.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Zachary Feingold reportedly said that after he was arrested, Zhu told federal agents that he had been paid $400,000 by United Imaging.

The trio are charged with commercial bribery conspiracy and could serve up to five years in prison. Zhu is facing additional charges for falsifying records because he allegedly neglected to disclose a related patent he had when applying for the NIH grant.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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Three people were seriously injured when a school bus collided with a car in Brooklyn on Tuesday morning, DNAinfo.com reports.

The crash, near East 5th Street and Avenue C in Kensington,  took place around 7 a.m. and left both the front of the bus and driver’s side of the car badly damaged.

Two of the injured were reportedly taken to Kings County Hospital while the third was taken to Maimonides Medical Center. The ages and identities of the patients have not been released.

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Yahoo Inc. announced on Monday that its New York employees would be moving into the old home of the New York Times on 43rd Street.

The California-based web giant currently employs a New York workforce of 500 people scattered across three different office spaces. As it consolidates and settles into the Grey Lady’s former headquarters, said CEO Marissa Mayer, it will seek to add some 200 more employees.

The move comes on the heels of the announcement that Yahoo, which has been struggling to reverse its flagging fortunes for years, is set to buy blogging platform Tumblr for $1.1 billion. The company also unveiled a reboot of photo hosting site Flickr that offers a free terabyte of space to all users.

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City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and other local officials joined with LGBT groups and other community members on Monday to march to the site of Friday night’s shooting of Marc Carson and to denounce hate violence.

Carson, 32, was killed in the West Village at about midnight Friday. The suspected gunman, Elliott Morales, allegedly shouted anti-gay slurs at Carson before pulling out a gun and shooting him in the face.

The march started at the LGBT Center at 208 W. 13^th St. and ended at the corner of Eighth Street and Sixth Avenue.

The post PHOTOS: City leaders, gay rights activists march against rise in NYC hate crimes appeared first on Metro.us.

New Yorkers hoping to make a little extra cash by renting out their apartments on a short-term basis may want to think twice: The city has ruled that Airbnb is illegal in New York City.

Metro reported last week that East Village resident Nigel Warren was in hot water after running afoul of a 2011 illegal hotel law by using the web-based service to rent out his apartment for three nights. The law bans anyone from renting out their property for less than 29 days.

Following the ruling, Warren owes the city $2,400 in fines.

But Business Insider reports that would-be black-market landlords only risk getting in trouble if a complaint is filed, which is good news for the people behind nearly 23,000 New York listings currently posted on Airbnb.

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UPDATE: Cops are looking into a beating in the East Village last night that might be another hate-motivated attack.

The information at this time is limited, but a law enforcement source reported that both the victim and the suspect are residents in a homeless shelter in the East Village. The two reportedly were out for drinks and pizza together, and on the walk back to the shelter talked about the victim being gay. 

The victim reportedly told police that outside the shelter, the suspect mumbled anti-gay slurs and beat him up. The victim told police he was knocked unconscious and treated at a hospital.

The Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating the incident as a possible hate crime.

Yesterday, before a vigil and march in the West Village against hate crimes, it was announced that police presence will be increased in the areas in Manhattan that have seen a spate of hate crimes over the last few weeks.

While the total number of bias incidents in down by about 29 percent from last year, anti-gay attacks have nearly doubled, according to police data. There have so far been at least 25 anti-gay incidents, including this SoHo attack, compared to 14 anti-gay incidents by this time last year.

Metro’s original story is below.

Early Tuesday morning, another hate crime occurred in downtown Manhattan, just days after a man was shot in the head by another man shouting homophobic slurs in the West Village.

Two men were walking up Broadway in SoHo at 5:20 a.m. when two other men started shouting anti-gay slurs at them, police said.

They were reportedly shouting “pato” and “maricon,” Spanish slurs used against black and gay people. They also reportedly called them, in English, “f—ing faggots.”

The shouting developed into a physical confrontation, and the two aggressors punched one of the victims repeatedly in the face, causing swelling and cuts around his right eye.

Police arrested two suspects in the area shortly after. The suspects, Fabian Ortiz, 32, and Pedro Jimenez, 23, are being charged with assault as a hate crime, which is a felony.

While the total number of bias incidents in down by about 29 percent from last year, anti-gay attacks have nearly doubled. There have so far been at least 25 anti-gay incidents, including this SoHo attack, compared to 14 anti-gay incidents by this time last year.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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More than 1,000 people turned out Monday for a protest against hate crimes, ending their march at West Eighth Street and Sixth Avenue, where Mark Carson was killed in an apparent anti-gay bias attack last week.

Members of Carson’s family addressed the crowd, which included City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.

“The family would like to have justice be served, so that Mark’s death is not in vain,” said Carson’s aunt, Flourine Bompars.

Chilling reports emerged on Tuesday that the man charged with Carson’s murder, Elliot Morales, was laughing as he confessed to the killing.

Meanwhile, another assault against a gay man was reported in the East Village on Monday night.

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Emergency workers pulled more than 100 survivors from the rubble of homes, schools and a hospital in an Oklahoma town hit by a powerful tornado, and officials on Tuesday sharply lowered the number of deaths caused by the storm.

The 2-mile (3-km) wide tornado tore through Moore outside Oklahoma City on Monday afternoon, trapping victims beneath the rubble.

Seven children died at Plaza Towers Elementary School, which took a direct hit, but many more survived unhurt.

“They literally were lifting walls up and kids were coming out,” Oklahoma State Police Sergeant Jeremy Lewis said. “They pulled kids out from under cinder blocks without a scratch on them.”

The Oklahoma state medical examiner’s office said 24 bodies had been recovered from the wreckage, down from the 51 they had reported earlier. The earlier number likely reflected some double-counted deaths, said Amy Elliott, chief administrative officer for the medical examiner.

“There was a lot of chaos,” she said.

Thunderstorms and lightning slowed the rescue effort on Tuesday, but 101 people had been pulled from the debris alive, Oklahoma Highway Patrol spokeswoman Betsy Randolph said.

Firefighters from more than a dozen fire departments and rescuers from other states worked all night under bright spotlights trying to find survivors.

President Barack Obama declared a major disaster area in Oklahoma, ordering federal aid to supplement state and local efforts in Moore after the deadliest U.S. tornado since 161 people were killed in Joplin, Missouri, two years ago.

“The people of Moore should know that their country will remain on the ground, there for them, beside them, as long as it takes,” Obama said at the White House.

Glenn Lewis, the mayor of Moore, said the whole town looked like a debris field and there was a danger of electrocution and fire from downed power lines and broken natural gas lines.

“It looks like we have lost our hospital. I drove by there a while ago and it’s pretty much destroyed,” Lewis told NBC.

The National Weather Service assigned the twister a preliminary ranking of EF4 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, meaning the second most powerful category of tornado with winds up to 200 mph.

The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center warned the town 16 minutes before the tornado touched down at 3:01 p.m. (2001 GMT), which is more than the average eight to 10 minutes of warning, said Keli Pirtle, a spokeswoman for the center in Norman, Oklahoma.

SCHOOL TRAGEDY

U.S. Representative Tom Cole, who lives in Moore, said the Plaza Towers school was the most secure and structurally strong building in the area.

“And so people did the right thing, but if you’re in front of an F4 or an F5 there is no good thing to do if you’re above ground. It’s just tragic,” he said on MSNBC TV.

At least 60 of the 240 people injured were children, hospital officials said.

Witnesses said Monday’s tornado appeared more fierce than the giant twister that was among the dozens that tore up the area on May 3, 1999, killing more than 40 people and destroying thousands of homes. That tornado ranked as an EF5 tornado with wind speeds of more than 200 mph.

The 1999 tornado ranks as the third-costliest tornado in U.S. history, having caused more than $1 billion in damage at the time, or more than $1.3 billion in today’s dollars. Only the devastating Joplin and Tuscaloosa tornadoes in 2011 were more costly.

Monday’s tornado in Moore ranks among the most severe in the United States http://link.reuters.com/gec38t

Jeff Alger, 34, who works in the Kansas oil fields on a fracking crew, said his wife Sophia took their children out of school when she heard a tornado was coming and then fled Moore and watched it flatten the town from a few miles away.

“They didn’t even have time to grab their shoes,” said Alger, who has five children aged 4 to 11. The storm tore part of the roof off of his home. He was with his wife at Norman Regional Hospital to have glass and other debris removed from his wife’s bare feet.

Moore was devastated with debris everywhere, street signs gone, lights out, houses destroyed and vehicles tossed about as if they were toys.

The dangerous storm system threatened several southern Plains states with more twisters.

SAVED BY CELLPHONE

Speaking outside Norman Regional Hospital Ninia Lay, 48, said she huddled in a closet through two storm alerts and the tornado hit on the third.

“I was hiding in the closet and I heard something like a train coming,” she said under skies still flashing with lightning. The house was flattened and Lay was buried in the rubble for two hours until her husband Kevin, 50, and rescuers dug her out.

“I thank God for my cell phone, I called me husband for help.”

Her 7-year-old daughter Catherine, a first-grader at Plaza Towers Elementary School, took shelter with classmates and teachers in a bathroom when the tornado hit and destroyed the school. She escaped with scrapes and cuts.

Briarwood Elementary School, which also stood in the storm’s path, was all but destroyed. On the first floor, sections of walls had been peeled away, giving clear views into the building; while in other areas, cars hurled by the storm winds were lodged in the walls.

At Southmoore High School in Moore, about 15 students were in a field house when the tornado hit. Coaches sent them to an interior locker room and made them put on football helmets, and all survived, the Oklahoman newspaper said.

(Additional reporting by Alice Mannette, Lindsay Morris, Nick Carey, Brendan O’Brien and Greg McCune; Writing by Nick Carey and Jane Sutton; Editing by W Simon and Grant McCool)

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An analysis by New York City’s public advocate may indicate that racial profiling does not contribute to effective stops.

The report looked at public NYPD data on stop-and-frisk from 2012, and found that weapons and guns were more often found on white New Yorkers than African-Americans or Latinos.

The NYPD discovered a weapon in one of every 49 stops of white New Yorkers. They only found weapons on one of every 71 Latinos stopped and one in every 93 African-Americans stopped, the public advocate’s office said.

Contraband, including marijuana, was also found more frequently on white New Yorkers than minorities. One out of every 43 white people stopped had illegal substances on them, while illegal items were found on one out of every 57 Latinos and every 61 African-Americans.

The director of policy at Bronx Defenders, a holistic public defense organization, said the data align with “what we see representing clients every day in the Bronx.”

“Despite promised reforms a year ago, black and Latino New Yorkers — especially young people — are still stopped every day based on nothing more than the color of their skin or the neighborhood they hang out in,” said director Kate Rubin.

The report acknowledges an overall reduction in stops but found that the skewed proportion of stops of minorities is still the same. Minorities constitute 84 percent of all stops, but make up only 54 percent of all New Yorkers.

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio said there is “an ugly truth in these numbers” and said the inefficacy of the system puts communities and police officers in danger.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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The NYPD will increase its presence in the Manhattan neighborhoods where five anti-gay hate crimes have occurred in the past few weeks, officials announced Monday.

Following a rally for 32-year-old Marc Carson, who was shot and killed in the West Village this past weekend, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn announced an action plan to keep the city safe for all New Yorkers, which includes beefing up police patrol.

The NYPD has agreed to increase its presence in LGBT neighborhoods, including setting up temporary headquarter command vehicles, according to Quinn’s office. Neighborhoods include the West Village, Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen.

The deployments will continue through at least the end of June, which is LGBT Pride Month.

Carson was killed near the corner of West Eighth Street and Sixth Avenue late Friday night by alleged gunman Elliott Morales, 33, who shouted anti-gay slurs at Carson before shooting him to death.

Another recent anti-gay attack occurred earlier this month near Madison Square Garden, when two men were injured in an attack by a group of men yelling anti-gay remarks.

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A Queens teacher who was arrested in April for having sex with a 14-year-old girl has pleaded guilty to statutory rape charges.

Daniel Reilly, 36, pleaded guilty to second-degree rape in Queens Criminal Court on Monday.

Reilly, who was a sixth-grade English teacher at I.S. 237 in Flushing, admitted to having sexual intercourse with a former student at his Forest Hills residence in April, according to the Queens District Attorney’s office.

Sentencing is scheduled for July 22. Reilly will be sentenced to six months in jail and 10 years’ probation. He must also give up his teaching license and register on the state’s sex offender registry.

The relationship between Reilly and the girl was discovered by the girl’s sister, who found sexually explicit text messages from the former teacher on her sister’s phone. The two had an ongoing sexual relationship for seven months, the New York Post reports.

Reilly is married and has a 1-year-old daughter, according to the Post.

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As Vito Lopez resigned from the state assembly amid a sexual harassment scandal Monday, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver proposed sweeping changes to sexual harassment policies amid mounting criticism of the way he’d handled the affair.

Silver announced plans to create an independent investigator to look into all sexual harassment complaints reported to the assembly, the New York Post reports.

Secret settlements — like the one Silver approved for two of Lopez’s accusers last year — would be banned, according to the proposed changes, and all sexual harassment complaints must be reported immediately.

The proposals come as women’s groups, government watchdog organizations and others have called for Silver’s resignation. According to a report by the Joint Commission on Public Ethics released last week, Silver’s staff failed to refer initial sexual harassment allegations against Lopez to an ethics committee.

A special prosecutor who cleared Lopez of criminal charges due to a lack of evidence said what he found in the investigation was “alarming,” and that the way the assembly’s leadership handled the allegations encouraged Lopez to continue with his inappropriate conduct.

Lopez resigned Monday morning after 28 years in the assembly.

Silver said on Monday, “I never gave any thought to resigning.”

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A 21-year-old man was found shot to death in the Fleetwood-Concourse Village section of the Bronx on Monday night, police said.

Police responded to a call about a person shot shortly after 10 p.m. in front of an apartment building located at 287 E. 162nd St., cops said. They discovered Marcos Cabral with two gunshot wounds to the head. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

No arrests have been made, and the investigation is ongoing. Cabral lived just a few blocks away from where he was killed.

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At least 91 people, including 20 children, were feared killed when a 2 mile wide tornado tore through an Oklahoma City suburb, trapping victims beneath the rubble as one elementary school took a direct hit and another was destroyed.

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  PHOTOS: Devastation caused by Oklahoma tornado

President Barack Obama declared a major disaster area in Oklahoma, ordering federal aid to supplement state and local efforts in Moore after the deadliest U.S. tornado since one killed 161 people in Joplin, Missouri, two years ago.

Emergency crews were desperately searching the wreckage of Plaza Towers Elementary School that took a direct hit from the tornado on Monday afternoon, Oklahoma Lieutenant Governor Todd Lamb told CNN.

There was an outpouring of grief on the school’s Facebook page, with messages from around the country including one pleading simply: “Please find those little children.”

Another elementary school, homes and a hospital were among the buildings leveled, leaving residents of the town of about 50,000 people stunned at the devastation and loss of life.

The Oklahoma medical examiner said 20 of the 91 expected to have been killed were children. The office had already confirmed 51 dead and had been told by emergency services to expect 40 more bodies found in the debris, but had not yet received them.

At least 60 of the 240 people injured were children, area hospitals said.

“We thought we died because we were inside the cellar door … It ripped open the door and just glass and debris started slamming on us and we thought we were dead to be honest,” Ricky Stover said while surveying the devastated remains of his home.

Moore was devastated with debris everywhere, street signs gone, lights out, houses destroyed and vehicles tossed about as if they were toys.

Rescuers were searching for survivors throughout the swath of devastation into the early hours of Tuesday, while the dangerous storm system threatened several southern Plains states with more twisters. Severe weather was expected through the night from the Great Lakes south to Texas.

STORM ALERTS

Speaking outside Norman Regional Hospital Ninia Lay, 48, said she huddled in a closet through two storm alerts and the tornado hit on the third.

“I was hiding in the closet and I heard something like a train coming,” she said under skies still flashing with lightning. The house was flattened and Lay was buried in the rubble for two hours until her husband Kevin, 50, and rescuers dug her out.

“I thank God for my cell phone, I called me husband for help.”

Her daughter Catherine, seven, a first-grader at Plaza Towers Elementary School, took shelter with classmates and teachers in a bathroom when the tornado hit and destroyed the school. She escaped with scrapes and cuts.

The National Weather Service assigned the twister a preliminary ranking of EF4 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, meaning the second most powerful category of tornado with winds up to 200 mph.

Witnesses said Monday’s tornado appeared more fierce than the giant twister that was among the dozens that tore up the area on May 3, 1999, killing more than 40 people and destroying thousands of homes. That tornado ranked as an EF5, meaning it had winds over 200 mph.

The 1999 event in Oklahoma ranks as the third-costliest tornado in U.S. history, having caused more than $1 billion in damage at the time, or more than $1.3 billion in today’s dollars. Only the devastating Joplin and Tuscaloosa tornadoes in 2011 were more costly.

SCHOOL DESTROYED

The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center provided the town with a warning 16 minutes before the tornado touched down at 3:01 p.m. (4.01 p.m. EDT), which is greater than the average eight to 10 minutes of warning, said Keli Pirtle, a spokeswoman for the center in Norman, Oklahoma.

The notice was upgraded to emergency warning with “heightened language” at 2:56 p.m., or five minutes before the tornado touched down, Pirtle said.

Television media measured the tornado at more than 2 miles wide, with images showing entire neighborhoods flattened.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) imposed a temporary flight restriction that allowed only relief aircraft in the area, saying it was at the request of police who needed quiet to search for buried survivors.

Oklahoma activated the National Guard, and the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency activated teams to support recovery operations and coordinate responses for multiple agencies.

Briarwood Elementary School, which also stood in the storm’s path, was all but destroyed. On the first floor, sections of walls had been peeled away, giving clear views into the building; while in other areas, cars hurled by the storm winds were lodged in the walls.

Across the street, people picked through the remains of their homes.

The number of injured as reported by several hospitals rose rapidly throughout the afternoon.

Oklahoma University Medical Center alone was treating 65 patients, 45 of them children, though it was no longer expecting a further mass influx of casualties, spokesman Scott Coppenbarger said.

Moore Medical Center itself sustained significant damage.

“The whole city looks like a debris field,” Glenn Lewis, the mayor of Moore, told NBC.

“It looks like we have lost our hospital. I drove by there a while ago and it’s pretty much destroyed,” Lewis said.

The massive twister struck at the height of tornado season, and more were forecast. On Sunday, tornadoes killed two people and injured 39 in Oklahoma.

The post At least 20 children feared dead as Oklahoma tornado kills 91 appeared first on Metro.us.

If you drew a map of Manhattan, what would your landmarks be?

For one man, a smattering of dots marked six wives and three lovers. Notably, the third, fifth and sixth wives were plotted about a block apart.

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  Mapping Manhattan: A Love (and Sometimes Hate) Story in Maps

Another map-maker left his map nearly blank, but for a small “x” in the southeast corner of Central Park with the note: “met my wife.”

A third cartographer noted at the tip-top end of Manhattan: “ruined a kickball game by kicking ball into Hudson.” Slightly further south is the note: “FIRST CRUSH I was 27.”

These maps, and 72 others, are part of a collection by Becky Cooper, titled “Mapping Manhattan: A Love (and Sometimes Hate) Story in Maps by 75 New Yorkers,” out of a public art project Cooper started in 2009.

She handmade hundreds of blank maps using a letterpress at school, and initially hid 300 of them around the city, in the Waldorf and the backseats of taxis, hoping people would stumble across them. She printed her P.O. box number on the back, expecting people would fill them out and send them back to her.

But she said that none came back, until she had a conversation with a boutique owner downtown who caught her trying to stash a map in the store. Cooper explained the project and a week later received a map in the mail that she knew was from that woman.

“The conversation had invested her enough in the project to return the map,” Cooper said. After that, she and her roommate walked the length of Manhattan, from Marble Hill to Battery Park, with a shoebox of maps, and handed them out to strangers.

A contribution from New Yorker staff writer Patricia Marx, a twenty-year Manhattan resident who is apparently “still annoyed with Broadway for running on a diagonal.” Credit: Becky Cooper.

Her book chronicles that walk, recounting little stories about the people she encountered. The text of the book is, in fact, her own map of Manhattan.

When she first considered producing a collection of the maps, she spread them all out on the floor and tried to group them into categories. A lot of people used to maps to chronicle numerous lovers, and it was then that it occurred to her that the maps were little love stories.

She noted the lost or haunted feeling that can come after a breakup, the disorienting feeling of traveling through a city pockmarked with memories.

“You feel like you’re in a ghost town,” Cooper said.

Cooper recounted the words of a friend after the end of a five-year relationship: “She’s never lived in New York without being with him. She was like, ‘My whole map of the city is skewed. I don’t know the city without him.’”

Cooper hesitated when asked if she has a favorite map.

“I feel like it’s like picking your favorite child,” she said. “I definitely have maps whose circumstances I remember more than others.”

She said the second-to-last map in the book, which portrays a four-decade-long relationship with a late wife, broke her heart when she received it.

“There isn’t an overwhelming amount of emotion that would allow you to distance yourself from it, but you can feel his loss.”

One of the most memorable maps for Cooper, which she calls “Eve.” Credit: Becky Cooper.

That sender had put his own return address label on the map, so she searched his name online and discovered the eulogy he wrote for her in a local paper.

“He said, ‘She was the most wonderful person I’ve ever known,’” Cooper recalled. “I just lost it.”

Cooper had the chance to meet that mapmaker at a reading recently when he approached her to express his gratitude at seeing his map in her collection.

“I knew his name because I love his map so much,” she said.

He told her that making it had helped him to remember things about his wife as he was trying to cope with losing her.

“He thanked me for allowing him to capture that particular Manhattan,” Cooper said.

Cooper is still collecting maps. Blank ones can be accessed here, or found on the cover of Tuesday’s Metro New York. She will be giving a talk and signing books at BookCourt in Brooklyn on Thursday, June 6 at 7 p.m.

“Mapping Manhattan: A Love (and Sometimes Hate) Story in Maps by 75 New Yorkers”

Book Talk and Signing with Becky Cooper

Thursday June 6

7 p.m.

BookCourt 164 Court Street, Brooklyn

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

The post Handmade maps describe a city of loves and losses appeared first on Metro.us.

The post Mapping Manhattan: A Love (and Sometimes Hate) Story in Maps appeared first on Metro.us.

Metro has gained nearly 100,000 daily readers in the last year as well as strengthened its grip as the most read free daily newspaper in New York, according to new figures that were just released.

The market research company Scarborough said Metro reached an all-time record of 733,311 people over the age of 18 in the New York area, a whooping 15 percent increase to the same period in 2012. Every week, Metro reaches over 1.5 million adults in New York in print and online – that’s 124,000 more than its competitor amNewYork.

“Thanks to our readers for making us the most popular free newspaper in New York”, Yggers Mortensen, Metro US Publisher and CEO said, “we continue to grow, innovate and find new ways to engage New Yorkers and deliver impact to advertisers both in print and online.”

Metro’s success can be attributed to 400 new newspaper boxes throughout the city as well as a concentrated focus on a re-launched website, metro.us, a redesign of the print edition and interactive features such as Blippar, a new augmented reality app.

The Scarborough data also shows that Metro has the highest proportion of adults between 18-49 years old, a demographic regarded as highly desirable by advertisers. In addition, the data says that 76 percent of readers are employed and that 1 in 10 are planning to buy a house or condo this year.

FUN FACTS ABOUT METRO READERS

1 in 5 plan to look for a new job this year

1 in 20 plan to get married this year.

25% belong to a gym/fitness club

67% own a smartphone

Your favorite beers are Corona, Bud Light and Heineken.

29% drank vodka in the past month, compared to 11%  which drank tequila.

39% attended a professional sports event in the last year

18% went to a Yankees game vs. 15% went to a Mets game

33%watched live theater in the past year

29% plan a trip outside of the United States this year

Metro readers spend $2,367 on vacation on average

45 percent visited a casino in the last year.

Source: Scarborough R1 2013

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A 34-year-old man who was robbed of his phone early Sunday morning was able to access his phone’s camera using his computer and provided the police with a photo of a “person of interest.”

At 4:45 a.m. Sunday morning, the victim passed three other men in the pedestrian tunnel at West 190th Street. One of the men grabbed the victim from behind and covered his eyes, while the others went through his pockets and stole cash and his cell phone. The three suspects fled through the Broadway exit of the tunnel.

The victim went home to call 911 and then accessed his cell phone from his computer using an app installed on his phone. He was able to access the camera and take a photo, which he then provided to the police.

Cops are looking to question the man in the photo, and have asked anyone with information about the robbery or the man pictured to call 1-800-577-TIPS (8477). All calls are confidential.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

The post Victim uses app to take photo with stolen phone appeared first on Metro.us.

Following a Daily News report of a Brooklyn narcotics officer receiving a promotion after costing the city more than $1.5 million in settlements, NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly blasted the city for opting for settlements too frequently.

“The city is too willing to settle the case,” Kelly said to the Daily News. “We need a lot more trials and efforts to determine the true facts in many of these allegations.”

Some of the nearly 60 cases involving the narcotics officer involved racial profiling and slurs.

One of the lawsuits involved the beating of a man whose son was watching.

The City Council has been discussing legislation that would great more stringent anti-profiling laws, which opponents say could open up the NYPD to frivolous lawsuits.

In a public safety address to NYPD captains recently, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said these lawsuits would result in officers spending time in courtrooms when they could be out on the streets keeping the city safe.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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Vito Lopez may no longer be Sheldon Silver’s colleague as of this morning, but it seems he may still be the Speaker’s problem.

Calls for investigation into Silver have developed into calls for a coup, as women’s groups, government watchdog organizations, and newspaper editorial boards across the state rail against the Speak.

Thursday’s New York Post covered featured the Speaker with Lopez under the headline “Dirty Old Men.” Silver is being criticized for arranging a confidential settlement with staffers who filed sexual harassment complaints against Lopez.

Assemblyman Micah Kellner, running for City Council, told the New York Times the investigation into the confidentiality agreement needs to include “who proposed it, who wrote it, and who required it.”

Lopez was cleared of criminal charges, but a 68-page report by the New York State Joint Commission on Public Ethics detailed shocking behavior.

Lopez reportedly pushed his hand “all the way up” the inner thigh of an employee, and two others contracted pink eye after consenting to apply eye drops to Lopez’s infected eyes. At a bar in Brooklyn he apparently grabbed the hand of an employee, and squeezed harder when she tried to pull away. She began to cry and he forced her to count to sixty before releasing her.

He also made a staffer massage his hand after asking her if she “felt guilty” about being a victim of sexual assault in college. While she cried, he said, “I like that you’re holding my hand.”

A recent New York Post report stated that state government corruptions costs taxpayers at least $49,710,630.64. According to The Post, that amount of money could fund two new schools, 100 new fire trucks, or the New York Islanders.

The Post noted that the Lopez settlement cost taxpayers $103,000.

Past attacks against Silver have not been successful. Over a decade ago, Syracuse Assemblyman Michael Bragman attempted to overthrow Silver as Assembly Speaker, and Silver immediately took away Bragman’s title as majority leader. Silver’s allies crushed Bragman without Silver ever emerging from his office to come to the floor to defend himself.

A source apparently told the Daily News that Governor Andrew Cuomo is leaving Lopez’s seat vacant until a primary can be held in September, in order to prevent Lopez from being able to exert any control over his replacement in a special election.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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Three men were indicted today on drug trafficking charges after investigators New York State Police Special Investigations Unit traced a drug trail from a handoff in the Bronx on April 9, to a stash house in Corona, Queens.

The investigation yielded approximately 10 pounds of heroin and nine pounds of crystal meth.

The meth is valued at about $960,000, and that amount of heroin could be sold for more than $1 million on the street.

New York State Police Superintendent Joseph D’Amico said the drug trafficking ring “poured literally pounds of deadly, illicit drugs into the streets of Queens and beyond.”

A search of the Queens stash house uncovered a ledger pertaining to “ice” transaction, $2,000 hidden inside a vent, and supplies for making meth, including masks, grinders, a kilo-press and a scale.

Investigators believe the meth originated from “megalabs” in Mexico. One of the types of heroin they found os known as “black tar” and apparently comes from Mexico as well.

According to State Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan, the bust and seizure are “typical of a pattern” in narcotics investigations throughout the city.

Brennan believes that the presence of meth in the city is an indication that Mexican cartels are trying to “promote the use and addiction to crystal meth” here.

According to the Department of Health, emergency room visited related to meth more than doubled between 2004 and 2011, jumping from 214 to 576.

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A judge last week ruled that a Newark, N.J., hospital could be liable for the escape of inmate David Goodell, who received treatment there after allegedly faking a seizure and who police said went on to kill 21-year-old Viviana Tulli in Garfield.

Tulli’s sister and estate administrator Estella Tulli-Makowski in September of 2012 filed a suit in Essex County Superior Court against the state of New Jersey, the state Department of Corrections and parole board, the Department of Public Safety, Newark halfway house Logan Hall and its for-profit operator Community Education Centers.

The suit also names the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and the UMDNJ-Hospital, where Goodell was treated in 2010 after allegedly faking a seizure at Logan Hall, part of a CEC-operated halfway house system the complaint claims is “horribly mismanaged and has experienced an ‘inordinate’ number of prisoner escapes.”

A federal judge last Monday dismissed the claims against the state defendants, ruling they sufficiently proved they are public entities and therefore can’t be held liable for injuries sustained as a result of inmate escapes.

But the UMDNJ-Hospital could still face penalties for the escape of Goodell, who was on Aug. 29, 2010, escorted to the hospital by an unarmed CEC employee after “faking” a seizure at Logan Hall, where he was transferred in February after pleading guilty two years prior to assaulting his girlfriend and receiving a four-year prison term.

Goodell escaped from the hospital the night of Aug. 29. Tulli was dead within 24 hours.

Police said witnesses in a high school parking lot reported seeing Goodell, disoriented and covered in blood.

When officers arrived, he allegedly jumped into a car – later determined to belong to Tulli – and led police on a chase that only ended when he rammed their cars.

Investigators allegedly found Goodell inside the vehicle bleeding from the wrists due to an apparent suicide attempt.

Tulli’s lifeless body was in the passenger seat.

Prosecutors claim Goodell suffocated Tulli because she rejected his romantic advances, according to court filings.

A Bergen County grand jury in 2011 indicted Goodell for Tulli’s murder.

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Following the murder of a 32-year-old man on Friday night in Manhattan, local officials and gay rights groups will rally Monday night to demand an end to hate crimes.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and other elected officials will join LGBT groups and other community members to march to the site of Friday’s shooting and denounce hate violence.

Marc Carson, 32, was shot and killed in the West Village at about midnight on Friday. The suspected gunman, 33-year-old Elliott Morales, allegedly shouted anti-gay slurs at Carson before pulling out a gun and shooting him in the face near the corner of West Eighth Street and Sixth Avenue.

Friday’s shooting follows a recent uptick in anti-gay hate crimes in the city. Two men were attacked by a group of men who hurled anti-gay remarks at them near Madison Square Garden earlier this month.

A march will begin Monday at 5:30 p.m. at the LGBT Center located at 208 W. 13th St. and end at the corner of Eighth Street and Sixth Avenue. A rally will follow at 6 p.m.

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State Assemblyman Vito Lopez is set to resign Monday morning after an ethics report detailing sexual harassment allegations against him led Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to take steps to expel the assemblyman. But as Lopez prepares to leave office, Silver is facing mounting scrutiny for secretly approving a settlement with two women who accused Lopez, the New York Times reports.

The report released last week by the Joint Commission on Public Ethics found that Silver and his staff failed to refer the initial allegations against Lopez to the ethics committee. And a separate report by Staten Island District Attorney Dan Donovan suggested that the way Silver’s staff handled the allegations encouraged Lopez to continue with his inappropriate conduct.

The state Republican Party and several Assembly Republicans have called for Silver’s resignation, the Times reports. Women’s groups and government watchdog organizations have also criticized the speaker. No prominent Democratic elected officials have called for Silver to step down.

“The speaker has said from the start that we have made serious mistakes in the way this was handled, although we believed at the time we were acting according to the wishes of the victims,” a spokesman for Silver wrote in an email to the Times. “We will be discussing with members important changes so these mistakes will not be repeated.”

The allegations against Lopez first became public last August. Anger towards the assemblyman intensified after last week’s report, which contained graphic details of how Lopez sexually harassed at least eight female staffers. He told the women to massage him, wear low-cut blouses and miniskirts, stay overnight with him to “cuddle” and other requests. Gov. Andrew Cuomo stated that Lopez should be expelled if he does not resign.

Lopez said Friday that he would resign on June 20 and then focus on his run for City Council, but he announced on Saturday that he would resign effective Monday at 9 a.m.

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Thousands of Connecticut commuters should brace for travel chaos on Monday as Metro-North workers repair damage on the United States’ busiest rail line caused by the collision of two trains, officials warned on Sunday.

Lengthy detours and hours of traffic backups were likely as many train commuters take to the road, officials said. The Friday derailment of a Metro-North passenger train that struck a commuter train between Fairfield and Bridgeport, Conn., injured more than 70 people and halted full service on the line indefinitely.

The Monday commute will be “extremely challenging and I am activating the state’s Emergency Management System. There will be serious disruptions all week, and I would encourage anyone who can, to stay home, if possible,” Governor Dannel Malloy told a news conference.

The Connecticut Department of Transportation was preparing a plan to assist commuters. The agency, Malloy and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, urged people to make alternate plans.

“I’m really in the same boat as everyone else, as I plan to head down to Washington to make it clear to the White House that I am deeply concerned about our nation’s railway infrastructure,” Blumenthal said.

“This accident shows that safety cannot be compromised, and is going to cost tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue. We need to find the problems before they lead to accidents like this one.”

Malloy said 30,000 daily commuters will be seriously affected on Monday and likely the entire week.

The site of the crash is about 50 miles northeast of New York. Metro-North train service between New Haven and South Norwalk is indefinitely suspended.

Service by Amtrak, the U.S. passenger rail service, also has been suspended indefinitely. Officials reiterated on Sunday that they did not know when service would be restored.

The New York-New Haven line is the busiest rail line in the country, serving 125,000 commuters a day, said Judd Everhart, a spokesman for the Connecticut Department of Transportation.

Regular service will run from the Stamford station and South Norwalk station to Grand Central Terminal in New York. Limited service will run from Westport.

Morning commuter train service would run every 20 minutes from New Haven to Bridgeport on the New Haven commuter line, the state Department of Transportation said.

Two buses will run from Bridgeport to Stamford Station, bypassing the site of the accident.

Earl Weener, a board member for the National Transportation Safety Board, told the news conference the agency was finishing its probe of the crash site and would turn it over to Metro-North on Sunday.

All the train cars have been removed, recording devices recovered and crews were being interviewed, he said.

Weener said hundreds of pounds of track had been sent to the NTSB laboratory in Washington. The track includes a section of fractured rail that may have caused the accident or been damaged by it.

“But it will take a significant amount of time to repair the tracks,” he said.

State transportation officials said that more than 2,000 feet of track must be repaired and replaced.

Of the more than 70 passengers and crew members injured, eight remained hospitalized on Sunday. Three were in critical condition, officials said.

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A man fell out of a window at Broadway’s Lyceum Theater on West 45th Street on Sunday and landed on the theater’s marquee, according to news reports.

The man was leaning on the window at approximately 2:50 p.m. when he fell, The Daily News reports.

“He went over the windowsill and out,” an FDNY source told the News. “He lost his balance.”

He is said to be in his 60s. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital with minor chest and back injuries, officials said.

The incident occurred shortly before the start of a matinee performance of “The Nance,” starring Nathan Lane.

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Wanda Hernandez is one of many New Yorkers with HIV struggling to pay rent and for basic needs. Bess Adler, Metro

Every month, Wanda Hernandez considers whether to use her cash for bills, rent or possibly medical care.

Having lived for 15 years with HIV, Hernandez, 50, has chronic pain blocking her from work. But the largest chunk of her disability assistance goes toward the $1,000 rent for her 1-bedroom in the Bronx, near Arthur Avenue.

“I have to choose between paying my Con Ed or my rent, basically,” she told Metro.

She is one of many HIV patients who use have to use more than 70 percent of their disability income on rent, according to a new study by VOCAL-NY, which helps people with HIV/AIDS, and the Urban Justice Center’s Community Development Project.

As a result, thousands become homeless, unable to afford rent checks, the Friday report said.

Study organizers say that a state bill would protect them by ensuring they pay no more than 30 percent of their disability income toward affordable housing rent.

In the study, more than two-thirds of people said they decided between rent and necessities like medical care in the six months before losing their apartment.

And one in three struggled to pay medical expenses, the study revealed.

“Those living with HIV/AIDS should not have to choose between their medication and housing,” Assemblyman Robert Rodriguez said.

After rent, Hernandez has about $340 monthly, she said, or about $12 a day — scraped together for food, utilities and unexpected expenses like recently dropping her phone in the toilet.

She can’t get to her medical appointments sometimes because she can’t afford the Metrocard.

Con Ed shut off her lights last week, she said, and she faces a hearing Tuesday about possible eviction.

“I am very petrified,” she said. “I don’t know what the outcome is going to be.”

Before, she worked two places, going from an administrative assistant position to a bar job at night. Now, she is not sure how to move forward.

“I haven’t broken down yet,” she said. “It doesn’t mean that I’m superwoman, but I do have my point, when I break down.”

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A Hofstra student who was tragically killed by a police bullet in a hostage standoff was honored with a moment of silence at the Long Island university’s commencement on Sunday.

According to NBC New York, graduates wore white ribbons in memory of Andrea Rebello, 21, a public relations major.

Rebello was killed at her Uniondale home Friday night after an intruder put a gun to her head, forcing a Nassau County police officer to make a harrowing choice. The officer fired eight shots. Seven of them struck the intruder, 30-year-old Dalton Smith, killing him. A single shot struck Rebello in the head.

Rebello’s twin sister Jessica, also a hostage, survived the invasion.

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