Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a bank robbery at 1 Broadway in Manhattan, a person under a train at the Queensboro Plaza station in Queens, and a child struck by a city bus on Parkside Ave. in Brooklyn. Thieves are targeting open houses across the Upper West Side--stealing personal possessions after gaining access to homes. Oddly, one of the two woman thieves is suspected to actually be a man in drag. Chants of "No......

Gothamist friend and occasional Opinionist Andrew Bast has recently pulled off a nice relaunch of his site, The New York Inquirer ("We don't break the news; we put it back together") and in the process put back together some interesting stuff worth checking out. This week, for instance, has focused pretty much exclusively on the diamond trade including a five-part series on the darker side of 47th Street, one of the many hearts of......

Various federal officials want to take back $169 million in 9/11 funds because they went unused. Now Gothamist understands that the government is looking for money all over the place, but trying to take $169 million from NYC just seems wrong. Especially when the money was earmarked for victims. Which is not to say that the NY city and state governments aren't at fault for not figuring out how to distribute the money in a......