East Village residents packed a community forum Wednesday night to vent about a surge in the local rat population. City Councilmember Rosie Mendez, who co-hosted the meeting, declared that rats were "the largest growing population in the East Village." And Community Board 3 manager Susan Stetzer deemed the rat boom a "crisis...This year we didn’t even have the little Halloween parade in Tompkins Square Park for the kids because of all the rats." According to......

For decades, residents of low-income neighborhoods under-served by supermarket chains have been getting their hands on produce the old fashioned way: By growing it in their own gardens. In recent years, outer-borough farmers have taken urban agriculture a step further by selling their mostly organic haul at well-organized community markets. An article in the Times Dining & Wine section notes that the trend is proving to be healthy and lucrative. Groups such as GreenThumb and......