Back in 2006, an agreement signed the day construction started for the new Yankee Stadium promised the team would pay $1.2 million a year in cash and in kind to a fund benefiting Bronx residents for 40 years. It was a gesture to make up for the inconvenience during construction and loss of parkland the new stadium was costing the neighborhood. After a year and half, none of the money has been distributed - and......

Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg presented PlaNYC: A Greener, Greater New York, his administration's thinking about what the city needs to do by the year 2030 in order meet sustainability goals. The plan involves 127 initiatives under the areas of Brownfield Remediation, Housing, Open Space, Transportation, Energy, the Water Network, Water Quality, Air Quality and Climate Change, but the big topic was congestion pricing. After much speculation, Mayor Bloomberg even acknowledged that congestion pricing was the......

Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, Jr. wants Germany to apologize for an army instructor telling a trainee, "You're in the Bronx, a black van pulls up in front of you and three African-Americans get out and start really insulting your mother… act!" Carrion calls the video "inaccurate and bigoted," and says, "The Bronx and the African-American community are owed an apology." Since the video of the incident has made it to the Internet recently,......

The Drum Major Institute released a study titled "Saving Our Middle Class," which suggests that NYC's middle class continues to be under more and more strain. DMI surveyed a number of city leaders and found: It's harder to enter the middle class: 92% "agree that it is harder to enter the middle class today than it was ten years ago." - They believe middle-class income is now between $75,000 and $135,000 for families of......

The next mayoral election may be more than two years off, but it's never too soon to start courting the union vote, especially when it's the Transit Workers Union. The men and women who make sure the trains run on time have the ability to derail any politician's campaign, so Democratic hopefuls took turns addressing the rank and file at a TWU "Save Our Union" meeting yesterday. City Council Speaker Christine Quinn spoke of her......

Mamadou Somare, the Malian immigrant cab driver whose wife and four children were killed after last week's devastating Bronx fire, will be able to bury his family in Mali and return to the U.S. Soumare's status was unclear: Though an illegal immigrant, he had applied for asylum many years ago; earlier reports suggested he either missed a court date or did not file the necessary paperwork. Many politicians, including Senator Charles Schumer, Senator Hillary Clinton,......

At Our Lady of Refuge Roman Catholic Church in the Bedford Park section of the Bronx, where for decades parishioners have rallied to denounce neighborhood drug dealers, people gathered last summer to demonstrate against an enemy that deals in digital cameras, toasters, shower curtains and thousands of other products. Where's Reverend Billy? That quote is from today's NY Times article about people trying to stop a Wal-Mart from coming to the Bronx. Nevermind that......

Did you see the crazy Post article about baseball groupies in the city? We say crazy because it gives readers tips on developing on MO to have a fling with players:This, [Melody] says, is how it works: She'll get a call or a text (sometimes from one of her players, sometimes from a go-between) to tell her that the team is in town and does she want to party? Other times, she has to......

Hundreds of thousands of revelers enjoyed the beautiful weather and celebrated during yesterday's Puerto Rican Day Parade. And this year's theme was, "Boricuas...We count, We Vote!" Though Marc Anthony was the Grand Marshal, the real attraction was his wife, Jennifer Lopez. Mayor Bloomberg, who marched with the couple, said, "In the pictures tomorrow, I will be lucky if I am noticed at all." Anthony and Lopez ultimately needed the help of Guardian Angels to......

After reading our umpteenth post dreaming about pandas in our own backyard, a reader who was at the National Zoo sent us some exciting news:Just thought you'd like to know, that when I was there, one of the pandakeepers said the Bronx Zoo had already filled out its paperwork for "borrowing" some pandas from China. So pandas might be closer to NY than you think. Of course the NY Times article on how pandas don't......

May is the 14th annual Bike Month NYC, but there are activities that start before May is officially here. The events, sponsored by Tra nsportation Alternatives and Department of Transportation, can be seen on this calendar, and they range from viewing an exhibit of bike paintings at the Brooklyn Brewery to a blessing of bicycles at St. John the Divine, or a bike repair workshops and bike celebrations with Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion and......

With just over half a year to the party primaries, there are rumblings in both parties about what'll happen with their NYC mayoral candidate. NY1 reports the biggest news, that the Queens GOP may consider backing Thomas Ognibene, a former City Councilman, instead of Mayor Bloomberg. This comes after Ognibene's claims that the Mayor tried to give him a job to deter him from running against him. Mayor Bloomberg's campaign manager, "We hope that the......

The Big Apple isn't just phat - we're also fat. The City's Department of Hygiene and Mental Health says one out of six New Yorkers is obsese and half are overweight. There are socio-economic correlations (African-Americans, Hispanics, and those making under $25,000 skewed towards obesity) and the figures are also broken down by borough: Bronx had an obesity rate of 24%, Brooklyn 20%, Staten Island 18%, Queens 16%, and Manhattan 13%. (The national obesity rate......