The banished-to-Queens statue that's been dubbed an eyesore and sexist is back in the news today. Apparently Rep. Anthony Weiner wants the city to sell the statue on Craigslist! According to the Daily News, the decaying statue, which depicts a naked man stepping on two women (sirens!), could better serve the community by earning it some cash. more ›

Officials are honing in on the health care reform opponent who caused the anthrax scare at Rep. Anthony Weiner's Kew Gardens office two weeks ago. According to the Post, the letter came from the 11235 zip code, which includes Sheepshead Bay and Manhattan Beach (and rules out Jon Stewart). The note was written in block letters and included threats related to Weiner's health care vote, and the white powder turned out to be antacid. more ›

Last week, Rep. Anthony Weiner called out Sarah Palin for using violent language on Twitter to rally her supporters, saying that some people may take her call for violence literally. Well, Palin, most famous for her upcoming reality TV show, certainly wasn't going to let some East Coast hopey changemonster tell her what to do! more ›

With his Kew Gardens office still closed after a white powder incident yesterday afternoon, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn/Queens) blasted Sarah Palin for sending out a Tweet that he says could be interpreted as a call for violence. The vocal health care reform supporter says the former Alaskan Governor and Republican Vice Presidential candidate shouldn't have sent out a message reading: "Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: "Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!" more ›

[UPDATE BELOW] A health care reform opponent sent a letter containing a suspicious white powder to outspoken health care reform supporter Rep. Anthony Weiner's Kew Gardens district office, according to police scanner reports. Wire dispatches indicate that nine people are being decontaminated after potential exposure to the substance, which was sent in a letter "making reference to President Obama's healthcare reform bill." more ›

There's an impressive effort to visually document the history of P.S. 99 in Kew Gardens, as pointed out by Boing Boing. The website hosting the archive of photos explains their project, saying: "The story of any community is mostly about its people, not its streets and buildings. The P.S. 99 class photographs taken over the years are one of the best records we have of the people who have grown up here over the past decades." Alumni are urged to share more photos—this is better than Facebook! more ›

A 19-year-old woman stabbed her 17-year-old friend in the heart with a steak knife in a Queens apartment building yesterday. Mary Herron is suspected of killing Starsheema Lynn after an argument over "some type of property," police sources told the Times. Cops arrived at Herron's building near the corner of 135th Street and 82nd Avenue at around 12:40 pm and found the victim in a fourth floor hallway with a single wound to her chest. Lynn was rushed to Queens General Hospital, where she died. According to the Post, Herron has been charged with manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon. This fatal stabbing comes just over a week after another Queens teenager fatally stabbed a man she claimed had forced himself upon her, though sources say the 16-year-old was the aggressor. more ›

This is why we can't have nice things, or dogs in bars: An elderly Queens man says his sex life was ruined (and so was his knee) after he tripped over an "unleashed and unrestrained" dog in a Kew Gardens pub in April. Irving Grossman, 81, is suing Austin's Steak and Ale House, which is popular with gamblers because it has its own Off-Track Betting window. That's exactly where Grossman was headed on that fateful spring day when his luck took a turn for the worse. more ›

A Kew Gardens man tried to get a bouncer arrested for roughing him up, but cops ended up booking the accuser when they discovered he was caught on camera inflicting the damage onto himself. The Post reports 34-year-old Khuram Murtaza had been thrown out of Rouge Gentlemen's Club in Maspeth around 1 a.m. Tuesday and called the cops to report he had been beaten up, showing them that his face was bloodied and bruised when they arrived. But bouncers simply showed police surveillance video that revealed Murtaza smashing his own face against a car, cutting his nose. Murtaza was charged with falsely reporting an incident; he had been arrested in Forest Park earlier in the summer for criminal mischief. Reviewers of the club had nothing but good thimgs to say about bouncers, that they remember your name and even look out for you when use the ATM. Regulars also note that Rouge is the spot to go to for "young Russian girls," though some have immigrated so recently that they're "not much in the way of witty conversation." more ›

"It's like being raped," 50-year-old Kevin Uhrin tells the Daily News, describing how he felt seeing a piece of paper on his apartment door with the word "fags" written on it. Uhrin says the paper, which was taped up to announce some impending repair work and insult him, was part of an ongoing anti-gay campaign by board members at his Kew Gardens Co-Op. He also heard his floor referred to as the "AIDS floor," because three units on the floor were each owned by a gay couple. So Uhrin and another tenant, Estelle Torino, filed a discrimination lawsuit; Uhrin settled out of court for an undisclosed sum, but Torino's case will go to court next month. She says the trouble started when a busted pipe caused a leak in her apartment, and management refused to repair the damage. Tensions escalated, and in the years since, the board has allegedly turned other hetero tenants against their homosexual neighbors. Now Torino is scared to go downstairs to do her laundry alone, but shouldn't she be more worried about finding an offensive note on her door? more ›

News that the tale of an adorable abandoned baby was only half-true has resulted in a number of arrests and many questions. And it's possible the baby's 14-year-old mother may not have known about the scheme. more ›

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a scaffolding collapse on Vernon Blvd. and 51st Ave. in Queens, an unstable building on East 102nd St. in Manhattan, and a homicide on Tompkins Ave. in Brooklyn. Probably one of the worst group of employees one should try to steal IDs from for bogus credit cards is cops. A civilian employee of the NYPD was arrested for doing just that at her second job as a clerk at... more ›

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: An overturned vehicle on the Triborough Bridge, which can't be good for all those getting away for the weekend; an escaped prisoner in The Bronx; and multiple pedestrians were struck Dyckman Street & Broadway.
• Early this morning in Bed-Stuy, a police officer sitting in a marked vehicle was shot in the arm. The officer was treated and released from Kings County Hospital but the NYPD is still searching for the shooter.
• A cat rescue group was formed to trap Roosevelt Island's feral cats (there are about 100, but many die during the winter)
• If you're going to shoot a Tylenol commercial that isn't site-specific, why film at the Hotel Chelsea?
• Still stuck at work or out of vacation days already? Perhaps you should try getting a job at IBM, a company that doesn't keep track of how many vacation days you take a year. While the policy sounds great, apparently it makes people work longer hours and work during vacations.
• PETA is crying foul over the Orthodox Jewish and Hasidic ritual kapparot, where sins are symbolically transfered to a chicken that is swung over ones head. PETA says the chickens are disposed of improperly and possibly mishandled, but a Hasidic activist says the tradition where as many as 50,000 chickens in Brooklyn are used, will continue.
• Kew Gardens residents are upset with the Department of Education for creating a transfer school for "older students who may have had difficulty at their previous schools" in their neighborhood without telling them.

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When a colleague at the Legal Aid Society discovered that Peter Barta had been secretly recording his co-workers changing clothes with the use of a hidden camera placed in their offices, police were called to investigate. The cops eventually searched the 32-year-old lawyer's apartment and collected boxes of material they considered possible evidence. The New York Post ferreted out the contents of these boxes from what it describes as "wacky court documents." more ›

City Councilman Dennis Gallagher gave a DNA sample as the NYPD investigates claims that the Queens Republican raped a woman at his Kew Gardens office on Sunday. more ›

The Post got varying opinions from neighbors of Peter Barta, the Legal Aid lawyer accused of secretly videotaping his female colleagues. Barta was charged with four counts of unlawful surveillance and six counts of attempted unlawful surveillance after he allegedly planted a Sharper Image Security Camcorder Clock in his colleagues' offices to film them while they changed in their offices for the gym or court appearances. more ›

The police continued to look for the robbers who shot a Queens bodega owner in the face on Monday night. Bolivar Cruz, a Dominican immigrant, is still on life support; the Post reports that two of his seven daughters were working in store at the time and that Cruz tried to protect them. According to Police Commissioner Kelly, Cruz did take out a gun (unlicensed) but did not get a chance to fire it. It's unclear whether the robbers saw Cruz's gun. Cruz is not expected to survive. more ›

Judge Rhea G. Friedman of Queens Family Court found probable cause for the city to charge the boy with third-degree assault with intent. more ›

What happens when you're an occupational therapist at PS 99 in Kew Gardens AND a Playgirl centerfold? Your story is told in the Daily News. more ›

Yesterday, there was an alert about a stolen red Toyota Scion in Queens. And the driver was no ordinary car thief - it was the 12 year old son of the car's owner, who apparently left with his 7 year old brother in the car! Luckily pre-teen Kenny Rodriguez and his little brother Miguel Pepin were safe and sound when the police found them. But why drive off? more ›

Queens County Farm. Begun in 1697, this is the only working historical farm in the city. All kinds of vegetables are grown on site, and animals like these piglets are raised here. Today there will also be a haunted house ($4 admission, from 1-7pm) as well as a children’s fall festival with hayrides, a petting zoo, and games like the original “trinkets-in-the-haystack.” Available at the shop are farm-produced honey and apples. (Did you know the Newtown Pippin, the “prince of apples” preferred by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, was first grown in Queens in the 1700s? It’s in season now, so seek it out.) more ›

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Daring subway theft: A thief managed to steal a purse at the Broadway Lafayette station and sneak away through an secret door. The Post says that the robber "wove through startled commuters to a narrow catwalk that extends beyond the platform" and then "vanished through a secret emergency door to the street." Secret emergency door to the street? The subways were actually shut down, in case he had run into the tunnels, but this sounds like someone with an intimate knowledge of the subways. more ›

The NYPD's test results on various pieces of evidence in the Imette St. Guillen murder case are starting to emerge - DNA evidence is inconclusive at this point but carpet fibers found in suspect Darryl Littlejohn's home match fibers found on packing tape used to bind St. Guillen. Littlejohn, who was a bouncer at The Falls, the bar St. Guillen was last seen on February 25, still has not been charged in connection to the murder and is being transported to a parole violation hearing today in Kew Gardens. The police are looking at three rapes that happened in Queens and Long Island last fall to see if Littlejohn could be connected to them as the attacker used a blue van and tied up one victim with tape and wire. more ›

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- 175,000 calls have come into 311 since midnightIs everyone ready for the fun commute home yet? Are your bosses letting you off early so you don't have to walk until 9? more ›

More and more bizarre details (even more than yesterday) trickle out about suspected fake-firefighter-rapist Peter Braunstein. The freelance writer is belived to have an apartment in Harlem, watching coverage of his crime from a midtown hotel. His father, Alberto Braunstein, continues to feel guilty and apologizes to the woman who was attacked by a man disguised as a firefighter; the police believe it was Braunstein since he worked with her at Women's Wear Daily and has a history of stalking and looking for the spotlight. And following up on yesterday's news that he'd fabricated a story about an ex stalking him to get in PAge Six, he also threatened other women that he'd plant unflattering items about them in Page Six if they turned on him. The Post adds that he lied about his lifestyle, saying he lived with a wealthy woman on Park Avenue but it was really his' mother's place in Kew Gardens: "'It's a two-bedroom, and it's prewar, so it does have oversized rooms, but they don't even have an eat-in kitchen,' a neighbor said." Gothamist hopes that the media attention on Braunstein will lead him to turn himself in sooner or others to alert the police to his whereabouts, because this story doesn't seem to be going anywhere good. more ›

- MTA riders will have to shoulder less of the MTA's already crippling debt more ›