New Year's Baby Derby update: According to the Daily News, "The 7 pound 3 ounce daughter of a Brooklyn couple made her debut just as the clock ticked 2011, making her a favorite for the title of New York's First Baby of the Year." The nursing supervisor said, "As the ball dropped, the baby came out." The baby girl's father said that the tot arrived two days early, therefore she's nameless, "She's a New Year's princess. Right now we're calling her the New Year baby. We'll have to think of something non-traditional because of the special time she was born." A slight riff on George Costanza—how about Eleven (like Messier)? more ›

A Brooklyn woman is suing Coney Island Hospital, claiming that emergency-room personnel messed up a routine injection which led to her literally watching the skin peel off both her arms. Marie Louis-Jeune, 55, went to the hospital in April 2008 for treatment for her diabetes. The staff hooked her up to intravenous solutions, but missed her veins, leaving the calcium chloride solution to eat away the skin around her elbows and the underlying tissue. "It [the solution] ate away her skin as if it were a piranha," Jeune's lawyer Richard Mogg told the Post. more ›

Keiko DesJardins has no history of mental illness, but her visit to Coney Island Hospital Monday morning for a routine GYN exam resulted in her forced transfer to the hospital's psychiatric emergency room. When she told the GYN admissions nurse about her past treatment for mood swings caused by PMS, the nurse "misunderstood and panicked," DesJardins tells NY1. Despite protest from her and her husband, she was forcibly transferred over to the psych ward. more ›

The Daily News reports that two separate incidents of women being raped by strangers yesterday morning. One incident occurred around 7AM, when a NJ woman headed to a Spanish Harlem building where she works as a baby-sitter. The woman was "grabbed," "dragged" and raped in the elevator. Police are not sure if she was followed (she had taken the 6 train to 103rd Street). more ›

An early morning argument Saturday left a 19-year-old dead and a building on Ocean Parkway besieged with heavily armed police searching for the killer. Allen Tahiraj was shot on Ocean Parkway around 3:30am Saturday morning as he congregated with friends. One friend said, "There was a little argument and one of the kids pulled a gun." more ›

Alexander Properetchny was performing unlicensed oral surgery on 71-year-old Villimin Colleti Tuesday, when his patient "fell unconscious." The fake dentist called 911, but not before allegedly dragging the unresponsive woman out onto the stoop of his building where he propped her in the doorway. Paramedics found Colleti on the sidewalk outside of 47-year-old Properetchny's office in Brighton Beach without any identification and took her to Coney Island Hospital where she was admitted as Jane Doe. more ›

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a stabbing at Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn, another stabbing at 131st St. and 9th Ave. in Queens, and a third stabbing on West 167th St. in the Bronx.
• Three men sprayed mace in the face of a Diamond District jeweler at 1 p.m. last Wednesday in the Rockefeller Center subway station and grabbed his bag containing three spools of gold wire worth $115,000.
• Subwayblogger.com looks at MSNBC's list of the ten easiest airports to get to in the country and notices that according to the network, the AirTrain to JFK is free of charge to passengers. It's actually $5.
• NY1 looks at the progress being made on the new South Ferry Terminal being built for the 1 line. Riders will be able to transfer to the R/W lines at the new station, which will be cooled during the summer.
• The Bush administration declined to let New York expand its children's health insurance program to include an additional 70,000 kids, or families of four making up to $82,600.
• The Gowanus Lounge receives a picture and description of a rolling greenhouse in Park Slope.
• For the adventurous digital photographer, here's a short tutorial on the relatively simple process of how to do time-lapse photography.
• A cop's two pistols disappeared from a locker at Williamsburg's 90th Precinct house. Experiencing some problems at home, the officer had elected to have them vouchered at work to avoid any accusations of threatening someone with a firearm.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: A train derailed on Otto Rd. in Queens, a stabbing at Rockaway Blvd. and Broadway in Brooklyn, and a sexual assault at Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn.
• Visitors to the New York-New York hotel-casino in Las Vegas got an extra dose of big city verisimilitude last night, when shots rang out in the casino's mezzanine. Three people were struck, but none were seriously injured before the gunman was tackled.
• 20 newspapers around the country received letters postmarked from Queens and the Bronx that threatened investment firm Goldman Sachs. "Hundreds will die. We are inside. You cannot stop us."
• State Senator Marty Golden is proposing extending the Shore Parkway bike path over the Verrazano Bridge to Staten Island. Currently, Brooklyn riders who'd like to pedal around Staten Island have to cross the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan and then take the Staten Island Ferry.
• AM New York lists a variety of businesses around New York that are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including gyms, restaurants, spas, and the 5th Ave. Apple store.
• The New York Times reports on either one of the first, or the first Mr. Softee truck drivers ticketed under a new anti-noise ordinance for playing his jingle while parked at a curbside in Fort Totten, Queens.
• A six-month-old golden retriever puppy woke its sleeping owner by barking, alerting the man that his home was on fire after it got struck by lightning Thursday night in Garrison, a small town north of the city. The puppy named Ranger died in the fire after becoming lost in the smoke and flames, but he wound up saving the life of Richard Shafran, who escaped the burning home in time.
• A man is suing New York City after he was wrongfully imprisoned for 22 years after being convicted of rape. Alan Newton repeatedly asked for a review of DNA evidence from his alleged victim's rape kit, but was incorrectly told that the evidence had been lost, after the police conducted only a quick and cursory search for the exonerating items.

Untitled, by Raymond. more ›

Lonely Play, by McMost. Tag yours with "gothamist" on Flickr if you want us to use them. more ›

Mother of five Nabila Nazli was able to throw four of her children to safety during a vicious apartment fire. Nazli did not jump, as she stayed with a five year old daughter who had been scared to jump stayed on the second floor, and the two were overcome with smoke. Nazli and her daughter are in serious condition at Jacobi Medical Center, whereas the four other children, ages one month to 10 years old, are in stable condition at at Coney Island Hospital. more ›

As ever, it's a showdown between Manhattan and Brooklyn: The first babies born in the five boroughs in 2006 are split between two teeny, tiny babies born at 12:01 yesterday. Little Vicky Tang, weighing at 7 pounds, 12 ounces greeted the world at NY Downtown Hospital (the Post reports that a TV was on nearby) while 5 pound, 11 ounce Zahi Saher was born at Coney Island Hospital - 11 minutes after his mom was taken to the hospital! Newsday says that Saher's mother wasn't expecting for another three weeks, and apparently that when she arrived, people were telling her she could be the one to have the first baby of 2006. Well, that certainly beats Gothamist's New Year's celebrations - we just broke a noisemaker and avoided vomit on the way home. Hooray for babies, even though their strollers block too much of the sidewalk! more ›