Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a person fatally injured under a train at 77th St. in Manhattan, a shooting at Neptune Ave and West 35th St. in Brooklyn, and a shooting on 133rd Ave. in Queens. A 24-year-old man killed his mother and brother and then dumped them in the Harlem River. Young teenagers are clamoring to learn about sex. Mayor Bloomberg feels that city parking placards are being abused and will start cracking......

Volatile Dutch actor Youssef Sjoerd Idilbi did two things that are almost unheard of during a Sunday performance of the play Is.Man at St. Ann’s Warehouse. The first warms our heart: He stopped his performance to confront an audience member about a ringing cell phone. His second move brazenly defied the theatrical tradition of ‘the show must go on’. Technical problems with the sound board had caused the cancellation of the previous night's performance; when......

EVENTS: Both Open House NY and The New Yorker Festival are upon us. You can check out more of OHNY's event here, and The New Yorker Festival here. Some picks: The New Yorker Festival hosts a conversation with Errol Morris tonight. He'll be talking with staff writer Philip Gourevitch about Abu Ghraib, with clips shown from Standard Operating Procedure -- his new film is a study of the prison-abuse scandal. Friday // 8pm // Directors......

Representatives Anthony Weiner and Jerrold Nadler announced that they are introducing legislation to block a $20 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia. The Sun reports the pair stood in front of the Saudi Consulate, questioning the logic of the Bush administration's plan. Nadler said, "The folly of this arms deal is beyond belief. Saudi Arabia is the no. 1 exporter of terrorism in the world today." Supporters of the deal, which includes advanced weaponry, "say......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an EMT was assaulted on Hazen St. at Rikers Island, a dead body in the water off Emmons and Ocean Aves. in Brooklyn, and another dead body in the water off Manhattan's Pier 11. The doctor taped swearing allegiance to Al Qaeda claims that his trip to Saudi Arabia to treat injured terrorists was actually just a ruse. He wanted to go to the Middle East to find out......

There are few birthdays we look towards with dread (ok, maybe our 30th). But as AIDS hits its 25th year since being discovered in the 1980s, detection, treatment, and understanding of the disease has come a long way yet has miles to go. There were 25 million new infections in the past 5 years with 15 million deaths over the same period. Currently 38.6 million people worldwide are infected (which is up from 37.3......

As you may or may not know, we love the show How I Met Your Mother (one character even has a blog - not an entirely new idea, but we like it). Last week two of the characters on the show went to a lazer tag park and declared that the game was totally making a comeback within 2 months. So we wanted to get prepared, because we actually think lazer tag could be fun!......

Before he was even sworn in, the FDNY's newest muslim chaplain resigned yesterday amid concerns over a statement he made to Newsday reporter. When asked for his thoughts on 9/11 Imam Intikab Habib, 30, remarked that he doubted that hijackers could have brought about that kind of destruction that quickly and implied a larger conspiracy. Habib, who was born in Guyana, trained in Saudi Arabia and until recently taught in Queens, was due to......

If any of you were worried that the world might actually be getting to be a safer place now that we've laid down the law in Iraq, have fear. Apparently, there are still at least three al Qaeda cells operating in Saudi Arabia. We know this because they managed to pull off three simultaneous suicide bombings. But wait, there's more: as of today, the State Department is closing our embassies in Saudi Arabia due to......

Creative Commons is a public domain content project that is launching in the next two weeks. I've always felt strongly that US copyright laws are way too restrictive, and are generally unfair to both the artist and the consumer. Some people out there are trying to change this, before the super-powered media conglomerates pass laws making downloading mp3s punishable by death. Just like in Saudi Arabia. Creative Commons » Home......