An abandoned newborn girl was found in a shoebox outside an Astoria building this morning. A next-door neighbor spotted the baby, along with a white and red rose, on the stoop of a home on 28th Street, near Ditmars Boulevard. "[She] saw all the toys in the yard, and decided to leave her with the family with the babies," speculated resident Stephen Katehis. more ›

Nassau County police and prosecutor offered grim details behind a 24-year-old woman's abandonment of her days old baby. According to Newsday, Xiomara Gamez "has six other children, ages 8 and younger, and admitted to being addicted to cocaine during her latest pregnancy." Detective Lt. Ray Cote said that Gamez gave birth to the baby girl in the basement of an abandoned building, cared for her for two days, and then decided to leave the baby—wrapped in a blanket and tucked into a shoebox— in a Hempstead apartment building because she knew other Hispanic families lived there. He added, "She was down on her luck. She supported herself by selling herself." A relative called the police with a tip about Gamez, an illegal immigrant, who previously worked in a factory; her lawyer said the other children with her with ex-husband. A judge ordered her held on $250,000 cash bail/$500,000 bond on "first-degree reckless endangerment, abandonment of a child and endangering the welfare of a child." more ›

What with all the bank mergers and closing, some people are pretty freaked and are cashing out their accounts. Or, as the Post puts it, "they're depositing their cash into Shoebox Bank and Trust." And there's even a picture of a guy with a shoebox full of cash: Richard Cruz did consider putting the money in his mattress but said it was "too last century...No one hides their money under a mattress any more. That's the first place people would look." Beside shoeboxes, safes are being more popular. more ›