Last week, as the NYPD brass struggled to contain the controversy over a xenophobic anti-Islam propaganda film that was screened for over 1,400 cops, we took a stroll down memory lane to recap the department's top ten lies. Many of these deceptions come straight from NYPD spokesman Paul Browne, who's been Commissioner Ray Kelly's spin doctor since the early '90s. New Yorkers currently pay Browne over $100,000 a year for the favor of supressing public information, and although he's joined to Kelly at the hip, there's a growing chorus demanding his head on a stick. more ›

This past week, Time Out London published their newest list of 'Lies to Tell Tourists', a backhanded love letter from residents to visitors, filled with misdirection and miseducation. And while we mostly try to play nice with tourists, even when they ask us where Central Perk is, we can't help but have some fun now and again, like with the Tourist Lane. In that spirit, what are some lies that you tell tourists? Here are our favorites: more ›

Back in 2007, former Harper Collins editor Judith Regan filed $100 million lawsuit against Harper Collins and its parent company, News Corp, for defamation. She accused a Fox News executive of telling her to lie to federal investigators while they investigated former Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik (who is now in prison) because news of her affair with Kerik would hurt Rudy Giuliani's presidential chances. And now it seems like the executive she was referring to was Fox News chairman Roger Ailes. more ›

The woman whose false rape accusations put an innocent man in prison for four years wouldn't have admitted her story was a lie if she knew she was pregnant at the time, according to court documents. Biurny Peguero Gonzalez told investigators she wouldn't have come forward during confessional with her priest if she knew she was going to have a child. "She said that had she been aware of her pregnancy, she probably would not have confessed when she did," the papers state. more ›

The woman whose false rape claims put an innocent man behind bars for nearly four years was sentenced to one to three years in prison on perjury charges. After pleading guilty to making up a story that she was gang raped in Upper Manhattan in 2005 to elicit sympathy from friends, Biurny Peguero Gonzalez was hit with jail time. "I question myself every day as to how I could have done this," she told the judge at her sentencing hearing. more ›

A Brooklyn federal judge declared that NYPD officers regularly fabricate criminal charges and lie under oath — and the city condones it. Judge Jack Weinstein said "there is some evidence of an attitude among officers that is sufficiently widespread to constitute a custom or policy by the city approving illegal conduct." more ›

New troubles are bubbling up for the NYPD: Internal Affairs and Prosecutors have identified "as many as two dozen cases in the past year in which cops allegedly made false statements involving routine arrests," according to the Post. This is a sharp increase over previous years, when one or two such cases would be discovered and prosecuted. more ›

With the days of the extravagant Power Lunch all but forgotten in these tough times, Midtown steak hotshots Maloney & Porcelli are resorting to blatant falsehoods to get their meat sold! Their new website, Expense-a-Steak, lets customers enter their bill total and download a sheet of false receipts for the amount. For example, a fake $231 bill is separated into seven receipts for places like "Office Supply Hut" and "The Panini Experience." They're even offering fake doggy bags with Chipotle logos on the front! The ruse didn't come a moment too soon, because as the press release reminds us, "one of the biggest casualties of the financial crisis is the expense account meal." And President Obama isn't do anything about it, so at least Maloney & Porcelli is stepping in. more ›

Ever since Bernard Madoff admitted to pulling off his $65 billion Ponzi scheme last December, numerous books have been published about his "investments." The Post looks at one new book, Madoff with the Money by Jerry Openheimer, and offers some shocking highlights: A high school classmate from Queens said he faked an oral book report on the fly and another added, "We'd carry on in school about how he was the dumbest white man we ever met in our lives -- excuse me for the pejorative. It's not fair to say he wasn't bright. The guy was a dummy in high school. If you said, 'Hey, Bernie, how are you?' his head would tilt to the side -- he had a nervous tick -- he'd squint, one eye would flutter, and he'd grunt, 'Hello.'" As for his later extracurricular activities at country clubs in Queens and Florida, "his golf scores were suspiciously and eerily as consistent as the returns he was promising." And because one of his employees would tell him, "Boss, you were nothing but a second lieutenant in the peacetime Army stationed stateside. When you spend a year in 'Nam as a grunt like I did, then tell me about hard times," Madoff even claimed he was a second sergeant in the finance division of the Army—but he really told the army he had an ulcer to get out of service. more ›

Surveillance video shows that two rookie police officers were not patrolling a Brooklyn housing complex where a 30-year-old woman was raped in a stairwell last week. The two officers were disciplined for lying about doing their jobs, when in fact they were not. The victim of the assault was trailed from the subway by a man she recognized from the neighborhood and he followed her into her building's elevator. After producing a knife as she stepped off the elevator, he dragged the woman into a stairwell and threatened to kill her if she resisted or didn't stop screaming. He then raped her on a stairwell landing. more ›

The video of City Councilman James Oddo letting the f-bombs drop on a Norwegian TV comedian is getting mixed reactions - and a fair number of chuckles - from New Yorkers, but now it turns out that he wasn't meant to be a poor sap duped into answering stupid questions about whether Barack Obama is an American citizen and "Hillary Clinton's incident with a cigar." more ›

It's no secret that we love the succulent Texas 'cue on offer at Hill Country. Like many folks we also love the rockin' live music, but sometimes we're just not in the mood for beef, or more likely there are some noncarnivores joining us who are more interested in music than meat. All of which make us very glad that seafood house Black Pearl lies directly across the street from Hill Country. more ›

Green Brooklyn (via Brownstoner) has a not-surprising-as-it-should-be post on, well, the Gowanus Canal having a touch of the gonohorrea. According to a Scienceline article, "a biologist at the New York City College of Technology, has her students analyze water samples and observe the oily substance that coats the water’s surface each afternoon. 'One group of students found gonohorrea in a water drop,' said Haque. She’s particularly interested in fluorescent white gauze that lies near the canal’s bottom, and thinks that the substance is a colonizing life form that adheres to the contaminated sediments." more ›

EVENT: Join Chief Jim Riches, 9/11 families, rescue and recovery workers in an effort to Tell Rudy Giuliani to "Stop Politicizing 9/11". Rudy will be at a fundraiser at the Waldorf later today, and will be greeted by those who believe he's no hero. Why? They say: "He failed the FDNY & uniformed & civilian victims. He gave us incompetent commissioners ( FD,PD, OEM). No integrated command. He abandoned us on 9/11. He gave the FDNY defective radios. He lied about the toxic air -- 70% of responders and many civilians are sick." More info here. more ›

There was very little else for Londonist to be concerned with when the threat of a Tube strike became a very unpleasant reality. The inconvenience was extreme: there aren't many alternatives to the Tube in London despite the best efforts of the Londonist team to get everyone from A to B. Brighter news came in the form of the first ever female Yeoman Warder, or Beefeater as the position is more commonly known, and several smiles as well as lots of cash were raised by some plucky urban ironing. London is apparently full of lies and whales: one of these things is true. We leave that up to you to figure out. more ›

A number of buildings with a possible connection to Brooklyn's abolitionist past and the Underground Railroad may be razed to make way for a public park and an underground parking garage. The commuter daily amNewYork reported yesterday that the Duffield Houses are slated for replacement by a public park along the lines of Manhattan's Bryant Park, mixed-use residential and commercial development, and the expansion of local colleges. Opponents to the plan include Lewis Greenstein, who owns the building at 233 Duffield St., which was built in 1847 and allegedly played a role in helping escaped slaves make their way to Canada. (Good coverage of the issue at Duffield St. Underground.) more ›

Generally, when one thinks of baseball game food, the usual suspects come to mind -- hot dogs, sausage and pepper sandwiches, Cracker Jacks, maybe some nachos, complete with day-glo cheez -- but tucked away in a corner of Shea stadium lies something that puts them all to shame. Mama's of Corona is squirreled away on the third base side on the Field Level of the stadium, and those of us with the cheap seats have to follow a winding path to get there (look for signs for the "Hot Corner"). But upon arrival, deliciousness awaits. In addition to antipasti plates, Mama's offers three varieties of Italian sub, all featuring fresh mozzarella from Leo's Latticini, which shares the same ownership. Our pick for the night was the "Mama's Special," pepper ham, genoa salami, and fresh mozzarella on an Italian roll, with small side containers of roasted peppers and marinated mushrooms. We added a splash of oil and vinegar for good measure. more ›

Now making picnics better for mankind: ants, no; algorithms, yes. Instead of people bringing computers to dinner, a man named Conrad Barski hopes that computers will soon be bringing people to picnics. Enter Picnic Mob, a multi-city, “non-commercial art experiment” created and curated by the computer programmer and thinker. Through its website, Picnic Mob organizes aspiring picnickers into small groups based on similarly reported interests and dispositions; those groups are then fitted cohesively into huge, basket-toting crowds, hence the “mob.” At noon on an appointed Sunday, (and weather permitting), a map generated by Barski’s program (here's a sample) directs each participant to set their gingham blanket down at specific spot in a public park. In theory, Picnic Mob’s algorithm gleans a rough set of seating arrangements for picknickers with the intention that people sitting near others with common interests will have a lot to talk about, and that a meal might even be shared in the process. It’s a very sweet idea: a lunchbox filled with fuzzy navel peaches meets up with fuzzy logic. more ›

The cold front that visited us several times this week has been pulled out to sea by a developing low pressure system over Maine. During it's many crossings the front managed to squeeze a couple of inches of rain out over western portions of the city and three inches or more over Queens and Long Island. Wednesday morning's storm even spawned a weak tornado over Islip. more ›

Albany seemed to be its usual stagnant self, as the legislative sessions closed on notes of rancor, versus happiness and optimism on the job well done. Many issues were left unresolved, and Governor Spitzer and Senate Majority seem to be rarin' for a fight. more ›

MUSIC: You know summer is just around the corner when the Seaport Music Festival has their first show of the season. Tonight Animal Collective, Danielson and XXXChange (Spank Rock) will all be on Pier 17 for a FREE show! Come, drink, listen. more ›

In a city that has everything, there are always a few things that we can use more of. For starters, maybe one or two more cheese shops, an extra beer garden wouldn’t hurt and who wouldn’t like another Trader Joe’s? Just saying. The same rule applies to wine bars. Sure we have a bunch, but after a while, the circuit gets old. Luckily, we have a new stop to add to our list. more ›

THEATER: Len Jenkin's Kraken imagines the details of an actual 1856 encounter between Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Melville, his Moby-Dick long since met with a critical “meh”, was in the midst of a spiritual journey to Jerusalem – a trip that would, two decades later, yield the back-breaking, 2 Volume, 18,000 line Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land. En route he stopped to visit his old Berkshire homey Hawthorne, now the American consul in Liverpool. In Jenkin’s dramatization, the two literary legends – neither one legendary in their day – spend the evening together confronting their “fears, failures, things of this world and the next”, etc. According to Hawthorne’s diary, ol’ Hermy may have droned on a bit: “Melville, as he always does, began to reason of Providence and futurity, and of everything that lies beyond human ken, and informed me that he had pretty much made up his mind to be annihilated; but still he does not seem to rest in that anticipation; and, I think, will never rest until he gets hold of a definite belief.” Garrett Eisler, who reviewed Kraken for the Voice, writes that the voyage does “dock at a satisfying port.” - John Del Signore more ›

A religious schism that's been ongoing for 34 years(!) recently elevated to charges of theft and looting at a Harlem synagogue. The congregation is made up of Orthodox Ethiopian Jews, and one faction in a legal holy war is suing 200 members. The filers of the suit allege that an unelected official of the synagogue misrepresented himself as the temple's owner and sold the building for $1.6 million. It also alleges that the defendant, Julian Wormley, then plundered the building of $575,000 worth of religious artificats, including four Torahs. more ›

Last month we posted on our special relationship with Britain. With the British pound recently topping $2 in exchange for an American dollar, England is maybe entertaining a slow and gradual do-over of 1776: suggesting that a slice of the West Village be renamed Little Britain. Damn the Britons if they didn't do it in a fashion that we didn't find encouraging. The video above is fairly persuasive. more ›

The Hamptons may reek of money, but Coney Island is getting its very own scent, courtesy of downtown fragrance company Bond No. 9. Inspired by all the recent development along Brooklyn's bayshore, parfumeur Richard Harpin designed a location-based scent that is the borough's first from the company. It will retail for $40 an ounce, $125 for 1.7 ounces or $180 for 3.4 ounces, indicating to us that the value lies in the increasing size of the bottle, rather than the contents inside. more ›

SCIENCE: The UnCoolKids always know about all the best science events. Tonight is The Revolution in Physics at the Turn of the 20th Century, featuring “a presentation by Richard Liboff, Distinguished Professor of Physics, University of Central Florida, formerly Professor of applied physics, applied mathematics, and electrical engineering at Cornell University, author of the best- selling college text book, Introductory Quantum Mechanics, featured in “Spider-Man 2" movie.” more ›