An NYPD officer was in court yesterday, being charged with first-degree attempted murder for hiring a hitman to kill his ex-wife. Long Island native 42-year-old Anthony Battisti (pictured), a Queens cop who has been on the force for 17 years, is accused of paying his handyman $5,000 to kill his ex-wife Patricia. Timothy Gersbeck, the 37-year-old handyman from Levittown, was arrested in January for stabbing Patricia Battisti in the neck with a screwdriver multiple times, an attack outside the Battistis Franklin Square house that she survived. Prosecutors say that Anthony Battisti was jealous that his wife had begun dating a NYC firefighter. more ›

Yikes: Newsday reports that two Hofstra students found spy cameras hidden in smoke detectors in their Franklin Square apartment. The tenants had asked a friend to check the detectors, which were found to be non-working. "The friend brought one of the detectors to a local firehouse, where a volunteer firefighter realized 'the guts were removed from that smoke detector and in its place was a digital video camera and some sort of a transmitter.'" Nassau police arrested the landlord Michael Murartore, who claimed he just wanted to make sure his apartment wasn't being damaged, but the cops told Newsday, "It's against the law to do that. It's kind of obvious." more ›

This week in the Times, Bruni goes to the new Landmarc in the Time Warner Center, awards the restaurant one star. “It’s three times the size of the original Landmarc in Tribeca,” he says, “whose menu and competent cooking it replicates but whose warmth it largely lacks.” He compares the food to what you’d find at a Midwestern Marriot, but says that perhaps it’s just what the overly self-conscious Time Warner Center needs. more ›