Who here speaks German? (Our knowledge is solely limited to the Die Hard line 'Schiess auf die fenster," which means "Shoot out the windows.") We ask because McDonald's in Germany are now offering a selection of four cupcakes inspired by different parts of NYC! They are named for Central Park, Soho, Chelsea, and the East Village. (There was supposed to be a Murray Hill one, but it moved back to Ohio, hey-oh.) So what does a German think the East Village tastes like, when distilled into cupcake form? BurgerBusiness.com did some paraphrasing: more ›

Someone has added some new theme music to the Diff'rent Strokes opening, and even he admits, "This has turned out far more creepy than I thought it would." Aside from the new music, the video is unedited except for some color hue alterations. more ›

A 29-year-old woman scheduled to testify in a kidnapping case today was possibly thrown from a Harlem building yesterday morning. Joy Blackman, who was a witness to a kidnapping and was also a witness against her accused rapist in a separate case, was found dead in an alleyway at 145 West 145th Street. more ›

• Today on the Gothamis Newsmap: a bank robbery on 40th St. and 7th Ave. in Manhattan, a stabbing on Morris Ave. and East 190th St. in the Bronx, and a sinkhole on 68th St. and Madison Ave. in Manhattan.
• The original and exisiting Coney Island boardwalk originated from wood chopped down from the Amazon rainforest. The new and improved CI boardwalk will be made of plastic, made from oil. Onwards and upwards!
• Queens Crap reports the Mayor's Community Affairs Unit "sent police to St. Saviour's today to make sure the developers' efforts to demolish the church were not impeded."
• That duct tape-homicide at the Best Western motel? The ME ruled it a suicide.
• The Park Slope Armory's $16 million renovation was revealed; the YMCA will operate the stunning facility.
• Bernard Kerik was back in court. Prosecutors are arguing his lawyer has to recuse himself because he's a likely witness.
• Parker Posey sells her East Village digs, joining the establishment at 30 Fifth Avenue.
• A Connecticut battalion chief firefighter was shot during a bank robbery. Cops shot another person by accident as the actual robber made his getaway.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a power outage on Cranford St. and Amboy Rd. on Staten Island, a bank robbery on East Gun Hill Rd. in the Bronx, and a carjacking on the Horace Harding Expressway and 108th St. in Queens.
• Update on the 14-year-old girl who was killed and stuffed into a boiler by her father: The ME's office found that she was pregnant - and they are testing the DNA to see if her father impregnated her.
• For those who read Maxim for the articles and believe in the lad mag's editorial integrity, it apparently published an album review of the new Black Crowes' release without listening to it. Maxim later explained it was an "educated guess preview."
• Subway delays are up by 31% from a year ago and are at 154% the level of delays in 2005. Capital improvements are being singled out as the cause of the dramatic increases.
• West Village speakeasy Chumley's may not be lost to the ages after all. Construction begins Monday and the owner hopes to reopen in May.
• A corner townhouse that has 100 feet of Park Avenue frontage may be undesirable because of its design. Or its $30-35 million price tag.
• Gossipmonger Baird Jones was discovered dead in his East 8th St. apartment yesterday evening. The 53-year-old purveyor of celebrity tidbits to multiple gossip columns reportedly died from natural causes.
• A Dallas police officer in Sen. Hillary Clinton's motorcade was killed in a crash today.
• Yesterday marked the 43rd anniversary of Malcolm X's assassination at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan.
• And get your Cosmopolitans ready: There's a new Sex & the City trailer that drops some big bombshells and a good joke about feminine grooming.

Just a little over two weeks after his death, and as his family prepares to bury him, the NYC medical examiner has given the results of Heath Ledger's toxicology report. more ›

The NYC Medical Examiner's office says Heath Ledger's autopsy is inconclusive, citing the need to more tests. Spokeswoman Ellen Borakove said, "The autopsy is inconclusive and we have to do further testing which includes toxicology and tissue testing. We expect to have results in about 10 days to two weeks." more ›

Yesterday, the body of a man who had been stabbed to death was discovered on a handball court in the Little Neck section of Queens. The murder is the first in the neighborhood since 1994. more ›

A "rising star" in the Fire Department was found with three gunshot to the head in his Staten Island home Sunday morning. The ME's office said that Douglas J. Mercereau's death was a homicide. It's believed that his 38-year-old wife, Janet Redmond-Mercereau, is a suspect (the Daily News calls her the "prime suspect"). She called 911 around 8:25AM on Sunday, saying she found her husband's body. The Staten Island Advance says the couple had "started... more ›

The medical examiner's office said the autopsy of top long distance runner Ryan Shay is inconclusive. Shay collapsed during the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials on Saturday in Central Park and died shortly after. The ME's office said, "We want to take a closer look at the heart tissue," and will probably come to a conclusion in a week. His father had revealed his son was diagnosed with an enlarged heart at age 14, and Joe... more ›

The police are questioning a man who had been registered a room in a West 43rd Street hotel where a woman's body was found on Thursday. Clarence Dean, a 35-year-old "fugitive" sex offender from Alabama, had checked out of the room 608 at the Hotel Carter, an inexpensive hotel near 8th Avenue popular with tourists. He was not charged with any crime, but police picked him up after seeing him at Park Avenue and East 55th Street last night. more ›

On Sunday, a Brooklyn woman who took in homeless men was found dead in her apartment. The Post reported that neighbors, who had not seen Young since Thursday, noticed a foul smell and eventually Geraldine Young's son found her "bloated and naked" body in a locked room. The ME's office's autopsy was inconclusive, and the police have yet to classify the death as a murder. more ›

Some more details about the death of the man whose body was found at 6th Avenue and 10th Street in Greenwich Village early yesterday morning. Forty-five-year-old Eric Wishnie had been a producer at NBC News, but was fired last September for alcohol and pill addiction. Additionally, he had been recently estranged with his wife, NBC correspondent Dawn Fratangelo. more ›

A 21-year-old MIT student was found dead on a Union Square building rooftop on Sunday night. Police believe that James Albrecht fell from the 243 East 14th Street onto the roof of a neighboring building, but it's unclear whether Albrecht fell or was pushed. more ›

There was a strange unmapped incident on the Gothamist Newsmap yesterday afternoon: "Founded [sic] Bones" in the Bronx. It turns out that a contractor found some bones - and a rusted gun - "embedded in cement," according to WNBC 4. more ›

When the Fire Department responded to a two-alarm fire around 1:30AM yesterday in Bedford-Stuyvesant, they discovered that a 31-year-old woman and her 4-year-old daughter. And the woman, Wanette Douglas, had been strangled and stabbed 17 times. more ›

Carlton Ingleton, an artist who also taught at Medgar Evers Colleges, was beaten to death by his son in his Crown Heights apartment. His son Assawa Ingleton had held his father, mother, pregnant wife, and their two children hostage for six hours, during which the son beat his father. The Daily News reports that when someone would try to help the father, Assawa Ingleton would hit him again. The ME's office said that Carlton Ingleton suffered "blunt impact injuries on the head and torso, a fractured rib, cuts of his liver and a brain hemorrhage." His wife, who was also injured, was the one who called the police after a friend convinced Assawa to let her go. more ›

The police have charged a Harlem couple with their baby's murder. Teresa Flores and Rufino Bedoya-Flores were arrested after police interviews revealed they shook and hit baby Sebastian in an attempt to quiet him. more ›

Yesterday, a newborn baby girl with her umbilical cord still attached was found outside the Eastchester Gardens housing complex in the Bronx. A 911 caller tipped authorities, who questioned a 14 year old girl who may be the mother after dogs tracked the scent to a fifth floor apartment. more ›

A horrifying tragedy in Brooklyn: Sadier Jean Noel, who had jumped in front of a train on Monday as her 9 year old son's dead body was found in her apartment, admitted that "demons overtook her" and that she killed her son. Sadier Jean Noel said that son Knil was brooding about his birthday celebration from the day before - the family went to Junior's but Knil was upset an invited friend wasn't able to come. Noel told police that she reacted by smothering him with a pillow. more ›

Diego Pillco, the construction worker who confessed to killing actress Adrienne Shelly last week during a noise dispute, was arraigned in Criminal Court and held without bail yesterday. Pillco, a 19 year old illegal immigrant from Ecuador, told the police that he had punched Shelly and, fearing she was dead, staged a suicide scene by hanging her from a shower rod. The Manhattan assistant district attorney Marit DeLozier said that Shelly died from "compression to the neck," not the punch, meaning she was probably just unconscious when she was hanged. Pillco did not enter a plea and was placed under suicide watch when remanded. more ›

Yesterday, the police announced that the death of actress-director Adrienne Shelly was murder, not suicide. Shelly's husband had found her body hanging from a shower rod in the Greenwich Village apartment she used as an office last week, leading the police to initially suspect she committed suicide. But they did find an unknown shoeprint in the bathroom, and the shoeprint turned out to belong to a construction worker doing renovations on a downstairs apartment more ›

Adrienne Shelley, the actress of seminal independent movies Trust and The Unbelievable Truth, was found dead on Wednesday in her Greenwich Village office. Her husband Andrew Ostroy found her hanging from a shower rod in the bathroom in an Abingdon Square building. The Post reports that the police are "inclined" to beileve it was suicide (no signs of a struggle or forced entry at the door) but they are "investigating sneaker prints in the bathtub that did not match Shelley's shoes." The ME's office conducted an autopsy, but has not released the results. more ›

Preston Hertzog, the 4 month old baby whose brain suffered serious injuries possibly due to his parents's shaking, died Wednesday at Schneider Children's Hospital in New Hyde Park. Parents Antonio Patterson and Tamira Hertzog had been investigated by the Administration for Children's Services over the 2000 death of an infant and were currently meeting with ACS over abuse claims on another child, and the couple hid Hertzog's pregnancy from ACS workers. They were called "extremely evasive" by ACS commissioner John Mattingly. more ›

While excavating a manhole, Con Ed workers found more human remains from September 11. The manhole was in the northwest corner, near where the names of victims are reading during September 11 anniversary ceremonies. more ›

As we appreciate the fact that last week's heat wave was last week, the NY Times' Sewell Chan has an article about that the little-known fact that turned-off appliances that are still plugged-in still draw electricity. We mentioned the "standby mode" issue last week, noting that is why Con Ed asks people to actually unplug TVs, printers, computers, and the like when the power demand is high. (It probably isn't a bad idea to unplug them at other times, too.) Many people interviewed were surprised, saying they would have unplugged their various gadget chargers or shut down their computers, with one woman commenting, "The laptop is always connected to the source. I didn’t know that made a difference.” Well, it makes some difference - the Consumer Electronics Association spokesman says that gadgets don't compare to the electricity air-conditioining or lighting sucks out of the system. Which makes us wonder if you've changed your electrical consumption habits? Gothamist thinks we're going to be a little more cautious these days - we know that our little home might not represent much, but if other people unplug one more appliance or use a fan instead of AC during milder hot days, who knows what can happen? more ›

- And will it rain tonight? Either way, have a great, safe time! more ›

Police believe that drugs caused a 23 year old Brooklyn resident jumped out of a friend's 8th floor window in Midtown yesterday morning. Pitman and his girlfriend were hanging out with other friends in his girlfriend's cousins' apartment. Police say Pitman, who was already drunk, smoked pot and acted erractically. A 4th floor tenant went to the 8th floor, only to see Pitman "flipping out, banging the walls" and trying to attack others. Shortly after that, Pitman jumped out a window - through the glass and screen, hitting an AC unit on the way down - and landed on scaffolding outside the building. more ›

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There are three strange deaths - two murders, one maybe murder - from this weekend: more ›