According to Saudi Arabia’s royal palace, King Abdullah is doing fine after two successful back surgeries and has left New York Presbyterian Hospital. The palace announces that King Abdullah will remain in New York while he recuperates from surgery for slipped disk and a blood clot pressing on the nerves in his back, as his 85-year-old half brother Crown Prince Sultan runs the country in his absence. It's unclear how long it will take King Abdullah to recover, but we assume he is nice and comfy in his bogarted Waldorf-Astoria suite. more ›

Saudi King Abdullah had a second surgery yesterday at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and his royal palace says it was a success. The 86-year-old leader of the world's top oil-producing country will now start physical therapy... which means he'll be sticking around the VIP section of the hospital a little while longer. more ›

The family of a man who received a heart transplant at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in 2006 has filed a lawsuit against the hospital, claiming they may have lied about knowing the transplanted heart was "diseased." Ronald Bello got a new heart after the hospital found a donor match for him in Florida, but a week after the surgery the heart hemorrhaged and he died. The family's lawyer told the Post, "It is outrageous that a hospital harvested a heart that on a [later] autopsy was proven to have vascular disease...They either knew, or should have known that this was a diseased heart." more ›

Yikes: The police are investigating whether a visitor sexually abused a 72-year-old patient yesterday afternoon at New York Presbyterian Hospital in Washington Heights. The Daily News reports that a nurse allegedly saw 27-year-old Yakov Kramer "standing over the elderly man's bed." Kramer was arrested last night and a "cloth Kramer allegedly used to clean up the evidence was seized by the NYPD for testing" (a police source said, "He didn't know the victim - it looks like he just wandered into a room and took advantage"). The News called the home of Kramer's father, and a women said, "The whole story is wrong and stupid... He was in the hospital with his wife. She had an appointment. Something is very wrong if someone could be arrested at a hospital." The hospital's spokesperson told WCBS 2, "We cannot confirm any details. But we did receive the report and we are investigating." more ›

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a bank robbery on Amboy Rd. in Staten Island, another bank robbery on 5th Ave. in Manhattan, and a scaffolding collapse on Grand Concourse and 149th St. in the Bronx.
• A building slated for destruction on Governors Island will become a lab for the FDNY to examine the dynamics of high-rise fires and how best to defeat them. Fire crews from cities around the country will be on hand to observe.
• Someone crunched the numbers and found that The New York Times Fashion Magazine is almost as white as the arctic in February, pre-global warming. The 55% of New Yorkers who aren't white are probably not the targeted demographic the Times Fashion Mag is looking for anyway.
• A New York Presbyterian Hospital official in charge of the Women, Infants, and Children program--which was designed to provide food for impoverished women and children--is accused of siphoning off a few hundred thousand dollars for vacations and comfortable living.
• City Councilman Eric Gioia is running a "carbon neutral" campaign for public advocate, that involves the use of more emails than flyers, the purchase of carbon offsets, and the use of hybrid vehicles.
• The International House of Pancakes downtown Brooklyn location is doing so well that plans are in the works for locations in Bed-Stuy, East New York, and Williamsburg.
• The family of a 25-year-old, who allegedly had his jaw broken by an EMT, is suing the city for $2 million. They accuse the EMT of punching the young man in the face after the patient accidentally drooled on him as he was giving him oxygen.
• Summertime probably seems far off today, but the organizers of the Movies With a View program are looking for submissions of short films to be shown before features in July and August amidst the moonlit shadows of the Brooklyn Bridge.

A doctor who practices in NJ with admitting privileges at New York Presbyterian Hospital. His 94-year-old mother. Her $832,453 savings. And a wall collapse in Upper Manhattan. In a case Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau called "a mini-Astor case," Dr. Robin Motz was accused of stealing his mother's savings since 2003. more ›

A 38-year-old construction worker from Brooklyn is suing New York Presbyterian Hospital for giving him more medical attention than he cared for, and then having him arrested. Brian Persaud went to the ER at NY Presbyterian after a plank hit him on the head at a work site, causing a head laceration that required eight stitches. Although Persaud walked into the ER and was fully mobile, doctors told him that he should get an anal exam to check for a spinal injury (apparently this is not unheard of). more ›

Iin yet another story of a con artist duping an elderly person, an 81 year old astronomer was bilked by a 31 year old scammer out of over $200,000. The fact that Joseph Gossner is a prominent city philanthropist lands him on the cover of the Daily News - he was taken in by Janet Costello, who told him she suffered from breast cancer and needed money to pay the bills, but actually used the money to buy a Hummer among other things. more ›

Eager to show New York - and the nation - that he can still get up around, Governor Pataki "crashed" a press conference that his doctors held today at New York Presbyterian Hospital uptown. The 2008 presidential hopeful said, "Rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated." Oh, darn... wait, did we say that aloud? A big reason why Pataki appeared on TV was to allay his mother's fears who has probably been reading between the lines of recent articles that essentially said Pataki might be dying, he might have cancer, blah blah. Anyway, Pataki also said, "I've seen the press reports and heard the concerns of New Yorkers. Everyday I'm feeling a little bit better." Uh oh - the Gothamist conspiracy think tank wonders if the governor deliberately tried to get life-threatening infections post-surgery in order to gain our sympathies... well, just because Gothamist is fascinated with GI mishaps, we're not budging from hating your unhelpful ways, Geroge. Pataki says he's eager to have a beer and some pizza. Hmm, do we smell a press op at Lombardi's? Or should we call some pizza orders to the hospital? more ›

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Yesterday we mentioned that Governor Pataki was having, er, difficulties after his appendectomy last week. We just wanted to share with the Governor's staff a new study from the Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital in California. Apparently chewing gum after intestinal surgery can help get one's bowels moving and can get them home from the hospital sooner. After any abdominal surgery, especially one in which the bowels are disturbed, the intestines can slow down or simply stop moving, a condition known as paralytic ileus. The study, published in the Archives of Surgery, shows that chewing gum three times a day could stimulate nerves and release hormones that can get the pipes moving again. Maybe the Governor can get some gum and then get back to work. more ›

Gersh Kuntzman and Marc Dinkin, Creators of SUV: The Musical! more ›