In a stunning blow to capitalist principles/principals this country was founded on, a Brooklyn high school principal who instilled the virtues of hard work and making an honest living by taking students on a furniture-moving field trip last month is no longer a principal. Altagracia Liciaga was removed from her post at Multicultural High School in Cypress Hills by the DOE a day before fall classes started, after it was revealed that Liciaga forced the students to ride unrestrained in the back of a U-Haul after an enlightening day of hauling filing cabinets. The Post reports that Liciaga even taught one student self-reliance, by letting them drive the U-Haul just a year after getting a driver's license. more ›

A cocktail waitress is suing for sexual harassment, claiming that back in 2007 her slimy boss cornered her and demanded to sniff coke off her rear. When that failed, he forcibly used her shoulder! According to court papers, Nicole Slama yelled “No!” when Quo co-owner Gary Malhotra pushed into a closet and made his request. OK, off your [breast] then," he said. Again, the former Applebees waitress and full-time student declined. Recently she’d been warned that the exclusive club’s owners used the manager’s office as their personal den of iniquity. more ›

A few months back the city confirmed its plans to turn its central post office into an extension of Penn Station, and now Sen. Charles Schumer says it's got a backer. The federal government is putting up $83.3 million for the conversion from mail center to rail center, which has been in the works for more than 15 years. According to the AP, the funds for Moynihan Station, as it's to be called, come from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. Schumer expects the project to create thousands of jobs and rev up the economy on Manhattan's west side. more ›

A huge aquarium with sharks, rays, penguins and more may be coming to Times Square. More animals for the a zoo! The developer, Toronto resident Jerry Shefsky says he’s signed preliminary papers to rent an office building on the west side of the square. Though the agreement isn’t final yet, he hopes the $100 million project will get underway by April. An aquarium in a skyscraper? Whatever! Shefksy, who’s built aquariums and shopping centers worldwide agrees: "It's anything but an aquarium in the format you might imagine," he said. more ›

after 911 was called, an ambluance appeared... from Staten Island. more ›

A pregnant woman driving an SUV in Midtown went into labor and drove the car into a crowd at Rockefeller Center, near West 49th Street, yesterday afternoon around 2:30 p.m. Most of the crowd managed to get out of the way, but at least one pedestrian was hit (some reports say four were injured) and the guard rail was damaged. more ›

The FDNY found high carbon monoxide levels near the building, and residents may be out of their homes for many hours. It's unclear what caused the explosion, but they are not uncommon. Of course, this incident took place just blocks from where a steam pipe exploded last year, killing one woman, critically injuring two people, and injuring many more. more ›

Last weekend, reader RGP saw two people dressed as Bugs Bunny and Elmo walking around 42nd Street in Manhattan. While the pair could have been out to bring Easter cheer to crowds, it seems unlikely since they were carrying Christmas stockings. more ›

Date : Sunday Feb. 3rd / Location : Lexington and E 48th, Manhattan The video is pretty nuts. We've put in a call to the NYPD to see if an investigation was opened. more ›

Now that former mayor Rudy Giuliani is getting ready to officially throw in the presidential nomination race towel after his third place finish in the Florida primary, Giuliani watchers seem to be enjoying the chance to analyze his campaign's stunning collapse. more ›

A Brookings Institution study reveals that New York is a great place for walking, with 21 out of 21 walkable urban places. But Washington D.C. is the most walkable on a per capita basis while New York is ranked 10th, because New York is measured as the NYC metro area, including NJ, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. The study's author, Christopher B. Leinberger, admits there are issues with the methodology, namely that walkable places are weighted the... more ›

This week ended with the launch of the seventh and final Harry Potter installation. But while the world was consumed with Pottermania, it's important to remember that there were more serious things going on in the world, too - two of them in -Ist cities. more ›

Williamsburg's state park sort of opened back in May, with weekend-only entry times. The park will go full time starting July 3rd, just in time for the following days fireworks. There will be plenty of time to stake out some precious real estate for the extravaganza too, as the park will open at 10am on Wednesday. more ›

Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore and his distributor, Harvey Weinstein, appeared at a press conference yesterday to question why the government is investigating Moore's trip to Cuba for his upcoming film, Sicko. The film, which premiered at Cannes and is scheduled to open in a few weeks, questions the American health care system and, at one point, Moore takes three September 11 rescue workers to Cuba to get health care treatment for them there. more ›

Last night, a Staten Island resident was critically injured when a 19-year-old driver hit him on Mosel Avenue (it's the Staten Island incident on the newsmap). The SI Advance says that the driver, Leon Wilson, had been fleeing undercover police when he crushed 47-year-old Juan-Han Guan with the car. A source says that Wilson was driving around 100mph at one point. Guan's bike was described as being "embedded in the hood of Wilson's car, the frame contorted and the front tire and handlebars broken off." more ›

Woe to the Segway commuter: A Brooklyn man who commutes from Brighton Beach to Midtown Manhattan has failed in his attempts to fight a $90 ticket he received while riding the contraption. Jonathan Gleich told the Post, "New York City wants to be green, but to me they're being mean. For me to get to work costs 15 cents instead of two bucks to take the subway. There are never delays, there are never strikes. There's nothing to stop me but rain and snow." more ›

There's been a flurry of activity on the openings front recently. Even if spring hasn't quite made it to town, these new spots are starting to bloom and shake off the winter blahs: more ›

After Sunday night's melee that started at a high school basketball game at Madison Square Garden and spilled into Midtown Manhattan streets, MSG and Department of Education officials are examining the incident. The Garden may no longer host the Public School Athletic League's events, especially due to previous incidents of violence during PSAL games. The NY Times reminds us that there was a chair-throwing incident during a 1994 game (200 people were involved) and a whiskey-bottle-throwing fight in 1964, which led MSG to ban the tournament for 20 years. more ›

The NY State Commission on Healthcare facilities recommended closing nine hospitals in the state in order to save $1.5 billion. Five are in New York City: St. Vincent's Midtown and Cabrini Medical Center in Manhattan; Victory Memorial in Brooklyn; New York Westchester Square Medical in the Bronx; and Pakway Hospital in Queens. more ›

High humidity and rain showers are more likely than nuclear explosions for the next few days. Early this afternoon doesn't look too bad, but showers and perhaps a thunderstorm may pop up later in the day. We are oh-so-close to displacing 1887 as the fifth rainiest June since records began in Central Park. One good rain shower between now and Friday night will do it. The wettest June on record occurred only three years ago, when 10.27 inches of rain fell. more ›

AppleInsider reports that Apple is building a giant glass structure reminiscent of the discontinued G4 Cube as the entrance to its new store at the GM building: more ›

Well, New Yorkers definitely said something after they saw something: There were two scares in Midtown Manhattan yesterday, and luckily, they were false alarms. First, a Bronx man claimed to have a bomb in his belongings at Penn Station, leading other people to alert authorities. While Raul Claudio did not have actually have a bomb, there is some speculation his anger over the Amtrak ticket representative's failure to find his reservation (he was heading upstate to a drug treatment center) could have fueled some suspicion. That and going up to the counter and saying he had a bomb. Claudio is being held on $15,000 bail; his lawyer claims only in this paranoid time would his client be jailed for saying something like that, but Gothamist doesn't really think about bombs as bragging rights. No one really wants to question whether or not a bank robber has a gun in a hold up, so if someone said he had a bomb, we'd definitely try to get the hell away and tell a police officer about the person. more ›

Hey, Upper East Siders, plan on waiting for the Second Avenue Subway a little longer! Because the MTA only received about $21 billion of the almost $28 billion they had requested from the state, construction plans for the Second Avenue Subway, downtown rail link to JFK, and LIRR link to Grand Central will be delayed, as will the planned uprades for various subway stations. The NY Times has the skinny on the stations:

The 12 stations where repairs would be delayed include Lawrence Street on the M and R lines in Brooklyn; 47th-50th Streets at Rockefeller Center on the B, D, F and V lines in Midtown Manhattan; 71st and Continental Avenues on the E, F, G, R and V lines in Forest Hills, Queens; and five stations along the N line in Brooklyn. more ›

Teterboro Airport was originally a World War I airplane manufacturing site.
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, the New York Daily News notes that The Prime Grill, will serve a prix fixe kosher Rosh Hashanah dinner on Wednesday at 7:45 p.m. and Thursday at 8:45 p.m. For $95 per person ($175 for both nights), you and your family can enjoy some of the highest-Zagat-rated kosher cuisine in the city (none of that crappy, boxed honey cake nonsense that seems to pop up at Jewish holiday meals around this time of year, we hope). The service will be led by Rabbi Metzger of Chabad of Midtown Manhattan. Call (212) 692-9292 for reservations and information. more ›

Elsewhere, the NYPD is pretty happy that crime has been down the past week - except where there are protesters involved - noting that there were only 8 shootings on Monday and Tuesday whereas there had been 18 during the same period last year. The Mayor said:

One of the things I'm most proud of is if you take a look at the rest of the city, we've kept crime down. We're doing our job throughout all five boroughs, at the same time as we have this extra job of providing security here around Madison Square Garden.

Ha ha ha - the NY Times reporter Michael Wilson investigates those crazy processions of police cars, sirens a-blazing we've been seeing lately, writing:

Since its debut about a month ago, it has quickly become one of New York City's hottest acts for those lucky enough to catch a free, unannounced performance. Call it "The Police Drive Fast! And Park!"

It goes something like this: On a typical block in, say, Midtown Manhattan, as many as 80 police cars quickly stream in out of nowhere, in neat rows, their lights and sirens going. The drills seem to take place on blocks with restricted parking, and each car executes a fast back-in parking job against the curb. Sometimes, depending on the block, they park perpendicular to the curb; sometimes at a slant. The officers - scores of them - get out of the cars. They do not rush into a building. They do not draw their guns. They pretty much just stand around for half an hour or so. Then, officers pile back into their cars and, again in perfect formation, the cars pull away from the curb and drive off.