Now that Pope Benedict XVI has left NYC, it's time to pay the NYPD overtime bills. According to the NYPD, the State Department will reimburse the city for 50-60% of the costs associated with making sure the pope was safe throughout his 3 days in the city. While the exact total will be released soon (Pope John Paul II's 1995 visit cost $4 million in overtime), Mayor Bloomberg emphasized, "This is one of those things......

As the Stuyvesant community remains concerned over the health of two students and a coach who were seriously injured after a track team van crash, it now seems that the trip was not authorized by the school. The girls' junior varsity track team was headed to New Hampshire for the Dartmouth relays when their van hit a median and rolled over. Drivers passing by helped to hold the van so it would stop rolling......

Crews are working to remove oil from Long Island shoreline that spilled into the ocean sometime on Thanksgiving Day and started washing ashore. Surfers called the Coast Guard to report "tar-like balls of oil." A number of agencies, including the Coast Guard and NY State DEP, are working on the cleanup. The spill seems to be about 500 gallons of no. 6 oil, an unrefined bunker oil, and Newsday reports the samples from the spill......

Governor Spitzer said that the NY State Department of Health's response regarding the Nassau County doctor exposed over 600 patients to hepatitis C and HIV was "unacceptably slow" and ordered an investigation. Dr. Harvey Finkelstein, an anesthesiologist, reused syringes and multiple-dose medicine vials between January 2000 and January 2005; some patients learned they had contracted hepatitis in 2005, but the state and Nassau County officials waited 34 months to contact other patients. It turns out......

The NY State Department of Taxation and Finance is pretty sneaky. After years of observing the Yankee captain's comments, lawyers are saying that DJ owes hundreds of thousands in back taxes. Though Jeter's Yankees salary is partially taxed by NY State, he has claimed that his primary residence is in Florida, which has no state tax. The argument from tax officials is that Jeter has made statements "professing his love for New York" and that......

The hunting season only started on Saturday, but one New Yorker is already in a lot of trouble after some pretty stupid moves. Rosebank resident Alfons Ndokaj was charged with unlawfully hunting a bear cub amongst a number of other violations. Ndokaj shot and killed a 40-pound bear that was less than a year old in Sullivan County. The Department of Environmental Conservation was tipped off and later tracked Ndokaj at a Middletown taxidermist, where......

A school in Aberdeen, NJ, was locked down yesterday after a deer jumped through a classroom window. More specifically, it was a buck that joined a fifth grade class that was finishing up a vocabulary lesson. The Asbury Park Press says the animal "burst through the double-paned lower window of the classroom...charged straight through the room and left through an already open door, dashing into the hallway." The Lloyd Road School, about 38 miles......

Early Sunday morning, an 86-year-old man was found driving in the opposite direction as traffic on the Belt Parkway. Luckily no one was hurt, but the highway patrol had to divert traffic in order to stop Bernard Hummel. The Connecticut resident had been reported missing from his home the day before. The Post reports that Hummell suffers from Alzheimer's and "wanted to drive his wife, Anna, to the Connecticut shore." He left home - without......

Yesterday morning, Secretary of State Condolezza Rice visited Community School 154 in Harlem. Accompanied by Representative Charles Rangel, Rice, former Provost at Stanford, encouraged the students to dream big, “One thing that I want you to promise me is that you won't let anybody else tell you what it is you ought to be interested in. You'll find what you are interested in and you'll pursue it and you won't let anyone say 'Why......

The NY Times has a slide show of assorted items that could be perfect wedding gifts for book lovers. Suggestions range from whimsical bookshelves to personalized book plates. We were most intrigued by Levenger's Thai Book Rest - we suppose you could get a pair of two for a wedding couple. Or one, plus some massage oils and a copy of the Kama Sutra as a cheeky bridal/bachelorette party shower gift. Anyway, on with this......

Earlier this week, Governor Spitzer said that a quick review of the state's bridges showed that all are basically safe, including ones with similar designs to Minneapolis' I-35. However, some bridges, such as the Brooklyn Bridge, rated low on a 7 point scale (7 being the safest) for safety. Still, Spitzer touted the fact that this year's budget added another $900 million to the $18.8 billion infrastructure plan. But now that the NTSB are investigating......

It appears that the iPhone day incident between a television news producer and a charity mascot seems to be more than that it appears. The mascot, from a group that calls itself Hungrr was involved in a verbal altercation with the producer and was then asked to move along by the police. Watch the video for yourself, here. Here is what we know: WNBC released a statement yesterday afternoon saying: "We looked into this serious......

The city's Health Department is investigating three hepatitis C infection in people who "received intravenous (IV) anesthesia from the same NYC-based anesthesiologist." Oh, dear. The incidents occurred in August of last year, and it seems like the anesthesia was given in an out-patient (not a hospital) facility. The DOH is contacting about 4,500 patients who received IV anesthesia between December 1, 2003 and May 1, 2007 at the 10 outpatient facilities the doctor worked in......

Yesterday, a suicidal man on he George Washington Bridge caused traffic delays up to two hours. Newsday reported that the man was "armed with a box-cutter razor climbed a bridge cable, slashed his arms and wrists repeatedly and threatened to jump," but police officers were able to talk him down. We wrote about New York bridge jumpers last month. Interesting, Newsday was also the one to tell the NY State Department of Transportation about the......

Gothamist is hoping for an inch of rain today. It's not going to happen, but we're hoping anyway. Why? An inch of rain would make this the wettest April ever, topping the 14.01 inches that dumped on Central Park in 1983. The rain from the nor'easter a couple of weeks ago alone was enough to make the current month the fifth wettest on record. Add to that Friday's two inches and we were within striking......

A public school is facing a mini-crisis because students and a teacher went to Cuba for spring break. The Beacon School on West 61st Street has had a tradition of "extravagant overseas trips with complementary semester-long classes," involving places like France, South Africa, and Venezula, but a trip headed by history teacher Nathan Turner may have violated travel restrictions - the group of kids was detained by customs officials on the return! The Post reports......

The Mayor touted the news that NYC's unemployment rate dropped to 4.3% last month, saying, "News that our average unemployment rate in 2006 was the lowest on record is yet another example how New York's recovery from 9/11 is exceeding our wildest dreams." The unemployment rate has been below 5% September through December, which Crain's says is the "first below-5% performance since the 1980's." (The record low was in October, when the rate was 4.1%.)......

Last week, the virtues of organ donation were extolled with news that actor Jerry Orbach had made sure to donate his eyes to two New Yorkers. But making sure that people know you would be a willing organ donor is not so easy. The Daily News points out the license format is not very donation-permission friendly. The surface quality of the licenses which is meant to prevent counterfeiting does a good job of not registering......

The intersection of 94th Street and Ditmars Boulevard in Queens became the scene of a violent confrontation last night. An off-duty corrections officer shot another man during a struggle that stemmed from road rage. Officer Emilio Maldonado, who works at a correctional facility in Bedford Hills, honked his car's horn when the SUV in front of him didn't move during the green light. The SUV's driver and passenger, brothers Chris and Leroy Kenner, got out......

The murder of beloved Bronx pediatrician Leandro Lozado may be solved: Police arrested Bronx resident Samuel Sanders for the crime. Lozado's body was found on Wednesday in his Yonkers home, with Lozado shot in the head multiple times. Police looked into Lozado's finances and found that he bought his house from Saunders - and the house had been in foreclosure. Police suspect Saunders was upset about needing to sell the house. WNBC 4 reported that......

Sometimes Gothamist comes across a news story that makes our head hurt. Such is the story of the excess security doors the city bought six years ago, which were never installed, and now have been given to the State Department. The doors were purchased by the Corrections Department, under then-commissioner Bernie Kerik, in 2000 to prevent visitors from sneaking contraband and weapons into the city's jails. However, the inmate population began decreasing in the late-90s,......

Towards the end of the year, it becomes sport to wonder who Time's Person of the Year will be. It's sort of like wondering who will be on the cover of Sports Illustrated or who People's Sexiest Man Alive is (both are also Time Inc. publications, as it were). Time tried to get its readers excited, asking them to vote online for who they thought should be the Person of the Year, with choices being......

Hoorah! Leo, the snow leopard found abandoned in Pakistan, is now officially in the public eye at the Bronx Zoo. Last month, the State Department touted a very special arrangement with the Pakistani government, which allowed the 14 month old snow leopard to be sent to the Bronx Zoo temporarily, because Pakistan does not have snow leopard facilities. (Leo could not be relased into the wild because he never learned survival skills - he......

Since the e. coli scare began, our spinach and leafy green consumption has gone from zero servings a day to, well, zero servings a day. But our more herbivorous readers may be sad to see that officials still haven't found how a bacteria that normally romps around our bowels made its way to our favorite iron-filled flora. The Times reports that the outbreak of the past few weeks, which may have killed as many as......

One part of last week's NY State Department of Environmental Conservation press release about the Greenpoint oil spill was "information on planned vapor and indoor air sampling will be discussed" during next Wednesday's meeting. And it looks like it means sampling in homes, as the Daily News reports that Greenpoint homeowners are being urged to sign up for emergency gas testing. The fear is that toxic gases have been affecting people's health. While ExxonMobil says,......

Critics of red light cameras, take note. A woman was given a $50 ticket after the camera didn't catch her license. Yes, didn't! Lisa Sims of Ohio who has never been to New York City was issued the ticket when, somehow, her license plate which starts with DQN was mistaken for a car with DON that ran a red light on West Houston in June. Sims offered pitch perfect quotes to the Daily News, "I......

But not in someone's apartment - to the Bronx Zoo! An endangered snow leopard cub that was found in Pakistan will join the Bronx Zoo's snow leopard habitat this year. From the State Department:Originally from the Naltar Valley high in the Karakorum Mountains of northern Pakistan, the snow leopard cub, now approximately 13 months old and 60 pounds, was turned over to Government of Pakistan authorities in July 2005 by the local goat herder......

You posted about finding a vet for my sick pet, but what about a doctor for me? You're under the weather, and New York is a big place, with tons of doctors. Again, as with finding a vet, we would start by asking around for referrals. But that still doesn't always get you what you need, especially if you need a specialist. You should consider talking to any doctors you already have a relationship with.......

- Cops caught a man on the terror watch list yesterday after writing him a fine for smoking on an elevated train platform. - Mark Green, clear! - A State Department worker "cruising down 34th Street with three scantily clad women" in a government car smashed into a taxi after ignoring a red light yesterday. - Silly NJTransit, running double-decker cars without making sure they'll fit. - Bartha Bartha might be dead and buried,......

After a van from the Brooklyn Manor group home crashed on Wednesday, killing five residents and injuring five others, attention is now being turned to the driver, Guy Telemaque and the van operator, Altima. Patients at the Brooklyn Manor tell the Daily News that Thelemaque was "very clumsy. He was always winking at the girls and yelling at them. He didn't keep his eyes on the road." The NY Times looks at how van company......