Lori Berenson, the New York native who spent over 15 years in a Peruvian prison after her 1996 conviction in a foiled terrorist plot, arrived at Newark Liberty Airport this morning as part of a sanctioned holiday visit. Before finally taking off in Peru with her 2-year-old son Salvador, she told an AP reporter, in reference to her mandated January 11 return date, "I just hope we don't get caught in a snow storm." more ›

After being inexplicably denied at the airport in Lima, Peru early Saturday morning, New York native and paroled terrorist collaborator Lori Berenson will be allowed to fly to NYC to visit her family until January 11. "She called and said, 'I've got the permission to leave' and the next step is for her to get on a plane and get here," Berenson's father Mark told the AP. "I'm just glad they finally resolved the thing." more ›

Lori Berenson, the New Yorker who served 15 years of a prison sentence in Peru as a convicted terrorist, said Peruvian immigration officials prevented her from visiting the US yesterday despite a court-order that allowed her to travel to New York City until January 11. "They said I needed a document for immigration and I didn't have it," she told the Times, "so they wouldn't let me leave the country. Berenson is currently on parole through November of 2015, and her attorney called the actions "an abuse of authority." more ›

[UPDATE] Berenson was stopped at the airport by Peruvian officials. "They didn't let me leave and they're putting out this version that I arrived late," Berenson told the AP earlier today. "An abuse of authority has been committed," her attorney said. "Administratively, you can't block a court order." On Wednesday, a three-judge panel agreed to allow the visit, and Peruvian officials denied to comment on why Berenson and her 2-year-old son Salvador, have been denied the trip to New York. more ›

Tonight, just before you drift off to sleep, as the breeze from your fan makes the sheets gently kiss your weary cheeks, that slight tingling sensation on your foot that you thought was restless leg syndrome may in fact be a VAMPIRE BAT. more ›

After winning parole in May, American citizen and New York native Lori Berenson was sent back to prison on a technicality in August. She's spent the last 15 years in prison for her participation in a foiled terrorist plot to take the Peruvian Congress hostage in the mid-'90s, and prosecutors claim she still has links to the Tupac Amaru rebel group that planned the attack. Yesterday her parole was restored, and the AP reports she "slipped out a prison's side door and back to freedom." Well, sort of. more ›

After winning parole in May, American citizen and New York native Lori Berenson was sent back to prison in Peru, where she's spent the last 15 years for her participation in a foiled terrorist plot to take the Peruvian Congress hostage in the mid-'90s. Prosecutors claim she still has links to the Tupac Amaru rebel group that planned the attack, and a three-judge panel agreed that errors in the parole ruling justified locking Berenson up again. But during an interview with CNN, Peruvian president Alan Garcia seemed inclined to commute her sentence. more ›

After almost three months of freedom following her nearly 15 years in Peruvian prisons, it looks like American citizen and New York native Lori Berenson is going back to prison. Today Deputy Justice Minister Luis Marill "ordered the capture of Berenson and her immediate imprisonment," and Bloomberg News reports that her re-arrest could come "in the coming hours." The urge to make a run for the border must be unbearable for Berenson right now, but her release outraged many Peruvians who perceived her as a terrorist for her participation in a foiled terrorist plot to take the Peruvian Congress hostage in the mid-'90s—and one assumes the Peruvian government has been watching her very closely. more ›

Joran van der Sloot, the Dutch national whose name became familiar during the disappearance of an American teen in Aruba in 2005, was charged with the murder of 21-year-old Stephany Flores in Lima, Peru yesterday. When van der Sloot emerged to be transported to the judicial building, he was pelted with tomatoes as onlookers yelled, "murderer!" and "disgrace!" more ›

Five years after being the main suspect in the Natalee Holloway disappearance, Dutch national Joran Van der Sloot has allegedly confessed to killing a 21-year-old Peruvian woman. Peruvian authorities say he confessed under police questioning to strangling Stephany Flores Ramirez in a Lima hotel room. ABC News adds, "The broadcaster America Television reported that Van der Sloot killed Flores in a rage after learning she had looked up information about his past on his laptop." This comes as Holloway's family is opening the Natalee Holloway Center in D.C., to counsel families whose loved ones go missing and to teach students about safe travel; Holloway went missing while vacationing in Aruba. more ›

NYC native Lori Berenson was set free Thursday after almost 15 years in Peruvian prisons on a conviction of aiding leftist rebels. Her release caused widespread controversy in Peru, where she's perceived by some as a terrorist for her participation in a foiled terrorist plot to take the Peruvian Congress hostage in the mid-'90s. As part of her parole, Berenson is required to stay in Peru for five more years, and she proceeded directly from prison to an apartment in the upscale Miraflores neighborhood in Lima, where she was greeted by neighbors shouting, "Go away, terrorist!" more ›

After being sentenced to life in prison in 1995, NYC native Lori Berenson has been freed in Peru. Her conditional parole (she must remain in the country for another five years) comes at the end of a long political and legal struggle, which transformed Berenson into a high profile left-wing symbol on par with Mumia Abu-Jamal. Berenson was arrested on a bus in Peru 15 years ago and convicted of collaborating with the Marxist rebel group MRTA in a foiled terrorist plot to take the Peruvian Congress hostage. Yesterday a judge in Lima ruled that she had "completed re-education, rehabilitation and re-socialization." more ›

Why wasn't this monkey in the care of a zoo or someone who was qualified to care for monkeys? The Feds are nothing but a bunch of incompetent buffoons more ›

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is the project that really encouraged his brilliant madness. It's one of the greatest potential disaster stories in film making and it won Herzog a best director prize at Cannes. more ›

THEATER: The fall theater season gets curiouser and curiouser with the start of The Alice in Wonderland Puppet Festival at HERE. (The festival, which is not recommended for children under twelve, will feature a tea party after every show.) Tonight curiouser & curiouser fuses text from Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll’s diary entries and his muse Alice Liddell’s memoirs to try to decipher what destroyed their unique friendship. - John Del Signore more ›

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a person under a train at Prospect Park and Windsor Pl. in Brooklyn, an attempted bank robbery on Jerome Ave. in the Bronx, and a successful bank robbery on East 23rd St. in Manhattan.
• The Fire Dept. is responding to a scaffolding fire that broke out at the Deutsche Bank building, which is being deconstructed on Liberty St. downtown. One firefighter has already been evacuated from the building and being given CPR.
• Nicole Richie and Joel Madden of the band Good Charlotte were spotted at Penn Station yesterday, hopping a train bound for Washington, DC's Union Station.
• New York's Peruvian community is worrying and organizing in the wake of a massive earthquake that killed hundreds of people in Peru. NY1 has contact information on how to donate to an earthquake relief fund established to aid survivors.
• A group of Brooklyn parrots have reportedly migrated (probably from Green-Wood Cemetary) to Park Slope's 8th Ave. and 14th St.
• Police arrested 24-year-old Rodolfo Godinez and a teenage companion in suburban Maryland today in connection to the execution-style killings of three young people in Newark, NJ.
• Dept. of Health inspectors are patrolling the Red Hook ballfields this weekend, making sure that food vendors possess the proper permits and checking food preparation methods.
• Today is the 50th anniversary of the death of Joe Gould, who died in a Long Island psychiatric facility. The NY Times' remembrance of the man includes a literary spoiler, so we recommend just picking up a copy of Joseph Mitchell's twin anthology of "Professor Sea Gull" and "Joe Gould's Secret" to read the story of two true New Yorkers.

The Newark police arrested a third suspect in the murders of three young residents. The third suspect is 15 years old, and he will be arraigned in Family Court on charges of murder, felony murder, attempted murder and other counts, according to the Star-Ledger. He is the third suspect in custody; another 15-year-old is was arrested on Thursday and as was 28-year-old Jose Lachira Carranza, who pleaded not guilty to the crimes. The police are still looking for two other suspects. more ›

Souvenirs are usually inanimate doodads, so we must update the story of the man who smuggled a pygmy marmoset from Peru under his hat. The monkey attracted attention not from airport screeners in Lima or in Fort Lauderdale (where Spirit Airlines Flight 180 connected) but from passengers on the flight to Laguardia who noticed the monkey hanging from the man's ponytail. more ›

Emergency newswires are reporting that Port Authority cops requested that the Emergency Services Unit hustle over to Laguardia's main terminal this afternoon - and with a cage - because there was a monkey on the loose inside the airport. The animal apparently arrived at Gate B6 on Spirit Airlines' Flight 180. more ›

Starting at 7 PM tonight, the Housing Works Bookstore and Café will host the release party for the fourth issue of the New York-based Alimentum, a literary magazine focused exclusively on food and eating. Since issue #4 contains a special feature about bananas, free banana splits will be served after tonight’s readings from five writers: Diana Abu-Jabar, Gary Allen, Robin Hirsch, Joanne Jacobson, and Scott Seward Smith. Like much of what appears in the scholarly journal Gastronomica, the writing in Alimentum explores different kinds of food experiences, from a short story about eating a pet guinea pig in Peru, to poetry gleaned and reclaimed from recipe cards. One of tonight’s readers, Scott Seward Smith, will read from his piece in the current issue of Alimentum on a topic that’s a perennial thorn in the NYC food blogosphere- the plight of the solitary diner. An excerpt from his short story, The Art of Eating Alone:

I sat there waiting for my food and feeling quite proper in my loneliness, quite relaxed. I felt the propriety of my loneliness. It's all in the attitude: don't keep recrossing your ankles, don't bite your cuticles, don't twist your glass so much, but don't look catatonic either. Just look like you know something everyone else doesn't.

Any drink whose roots are founded in appealing to sailors is worth a second look. Pisco, the most widely consumed spirit in Peru, Chile and Boliva, is a brandy that was first made popular by sailors that transported products between the colonies and Spain. This liquor, distilled from grapes, may be a bone of contention between the aforementioned countries – all claiming it to be their national drink; however the one thing we can all agree on is it makes a damn good cocktail. more ›

Bruni starts off the new year by two-starring Drew Nieoporent's Vietnamese/Asian-influenced Mai House. He finds the menu "rife with surprises and out-and-out delights." Chef and co-partner is Michael Huynh, formerly of Bao 111. Bruni doesn't like the sides or desserts, but finds most appetizers and entrees pleasing. more ›

Peeing on the street won't just get you arrested or a summons - it may lead to your deportation. That is, you'll be deported if you weren't supposed to be in the country in the first place. When police found David Rivera Cruzado urinating on a Queens street, they happened to run his fingerprints in the system and found that he had been deported in 1999. The Daily News reports that Cruzado pleaded guilty to illegally coming to the U.S. through the Mexican border - and that he may have to serve four years in prison before being deported again. Cruzado says he came to the states to support his mentally disabled daughter in Peru. His lawyer also added, "He had been out drinking and needed to find a bathroom; that's how this whole nightmare started for him. Society would be best served by sending him back to his home country as fast as possible." more ›

Here at What’s Fresh the goal is to throw the spotlight onto ingredients that are at peak ripeness right now in the short window that is their local New York metro area existence. Sure, you can get yourself plums during most times of the year from somewhere in the world, or asparagus year-round as the sourcing moves from California to Mexico and finally to Peru just before it comes up fresh for us again in springtime, but it just seems to taste better when you know it is fresh, from a person you feel good supporting and without contributing to the petrol burn of air lifted food. More reading about the last topic can be found here. more ›

MOVIES: Seriously, like there is anything else to see this weekend besides Snakes on a Plane. C'mon, you know you wanna. more ›

Max Makowski, Writer/Director more ›

Cold? So are we. But never fear -- here are some booze-filled events coming up to warm your cockles, or whatever else needs warming: more ›