A sonic device designed to drive off troublesome youths has been installed in one Queens building known for vandalism and drug use. It's called The Mosquito, and is produced by a British company, where more than 3,500 units of the equipment are in use. As humans age, they naturally lose some of their hearing, beginning at the higher end of the audible spectrum detectable to man. The concept is actually turning an idea used by......

Times Square Shuffle, by ShhPeKo at flickrToday on the Gothamist Newsmap: shots fired and a large crowd at 98th St. and Rockaway Blvd. in Queens, a carjacking on Ave. Y and Nostrand Ave. in Brooklyn, and an overturned auto on 28th St. and 7th Ave. in Manhattan. The New York Post continues to discover the brave new world of "twisted sex play," commonly known as BDSM. The gentrification of Harlem is colorblind, to the......

Photograph of the crowd outside the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home by David Karp/AP Yesterday, over a hundred people - made up of "fans, reporters and photographers" - waited outside the Frank E. Campbell funeral home, where the body of actor Heath Ledger had been kept since ME's autopsy. Ledger had been found dead in a SoHo apartment by his masseuse and housekeeper on Tuesday afternoon. The cause of death is inconclusive, but he......

New Yorkers can walk the streets--and their pets--with renewed confidence this winter. Con Ed is reporting that one's chance of electrocution via stray voltage is down more than 20%, based upon their most recent survey. Of course, being electrocuted while walking around is a very remote possibility, although it does happen, especially in winter, when salt water and slushy water become simultaneously a corrosive agent and an effective conductor of electricity. The utility recorded only......

Mayor Bloomberg may be finding that coy flirtation can be cute at first, but quickly becomes old and aggravating if carried on for too long. The New York Times has a story today describing a growing backlash against a Mayor who seems preoccupied with something big, but it's something big that he won't discuss, or even acknowledge. With the City on the verge of a fiscal meltdown and several controversial proposals like congestion pricing in......

An assistant principal at P.S. 196 in East Williamsburg was arrested yesterday for slashing her live-in boyfriend with a pair of scissors. Danielle Capuano's boyfriend Alejandro Ruiz was also arrested in the domestic violence incident in East Elmhurst, Queens. Capuano was charged with assault and criminal possession of a weapon. Ruiz was charged with assault for hitting Capuano in the head. Neighbors of the couple described their seven-year relationship as troubled, with frequent screaming matches......

A nine-year-old girl remains in critical condition following surgery yesterday at Long Island Jewish Hospital after an unregistered van carrying school children was struck by a city bus. The accident occurred Friday morning allegedly after the passenger van cut off a Q46 bus in Fresh Meadows, Queens. The bus clipped the van, sending it into a spin, shattering its windows, and ejecting a bench seat into the street. The van was carrying seven children, six......

Retired football great Jim Brown is the president of a new snack food and beverage company and City Councilman Leroy Comrie is not happy about it. Brown's company is called OG Nation, which Comrie says stands for "original gangster." The company currently markets "King Pin" lager and a line of mixed drinks under the brand "Party Dogg." According to Newsday, Arizona-based OG Nation is also developing a line of potato chips, pretzels, pork rinds, and......

The Boston priest arrested for stalking "Late Night" talk-show host Conan O'Brien has been found fit for trial. A Manhattan judge declared the Reverend David Ajemian mentally fit for trial after a court-appointed psychologist examined him. Ajemian was arrested after issuing a number of threats to the host of the NBC talk show host and attempts to get into an O'Brien taping. Ajemian was relatively more unhinged than your average show biz stalker. He was......

A Columbia Law grad is suing a cabbie for grabbing her by the hair and bashing her head against his cab's partition after calling her and her friend "bitches." According to The New York Post and court papers filed by 25-year-old Mei Ying Lai, cab driver Fazal Wali picked up the young woman on West 51st St., but became impatient when asked to wait for her friend, Nancy Hon, at West 29th St. Hon reportedly......

Our friends from the Great White North are feeling flush from the strengthening of the Canadian dollar versus its US counterpart, and New York is apparently ready to relieve them of their excess cash. The Loonie, or Canadian dollar, is even with the US dollar for the first time since 1976. If you've ever wondered why the backs of paperback books usually have a second, more expensive, price printed on them them for Canadians,......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an unstable building at 37th Ave. and 31st St. in Queens, a stabbing on State St. and 3rd Ave. in Brooklyn, and an organ transport on the Cross Island Parkway in Queens. GrandOpening on the LES is following up its single-table storefront Ping Pong concept with another slice of Americana: the drive-in movie theater. $75 will secure all six passenger seats in a ragtop Ford Falcon. We recommend burning......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a child was found at 115th St. and Nicholas Ave. in Manhattan, an unusual incident at Columbus Circle in Manhattan with a man atop the globe in front of the Trump International, and a double shooting on Hegeman Ave. in Brooklyn. A worker fired from her job at the substance-abuse outreach organization Odyssey House said that her former supervisor would talk of his sexual exploits constantly. One of the......

It was only half of what Con Ed was asking for, but employees of the State Public Service Commission (PSC) recommended that the utility be allowed to raise rates by the highest amount in the company's history. ConEd wanted to raise rates by $1.2 billion and the PSC officials said that it recommended a hike of $618 million. The New York Times reports that the recommendation was made by members of the PSC's professional staff,......

The New York Post details a story today of two Manhattan women who elevated a barroom incident of name-calling that got physical into lawsuit territory. The article describes how real estate agent Julie Dwyer was at Ferro's on East 50th St. in February, discussing some of the neighbors in her building and ridiculing a blonde woman who regularly walked her dogs wearing stiletto heels. She characterized the woman as "a hooker" who was "always drunk."......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a police-involved shooting at 149th St. and 3rd Ave. in the Bronx, an attempted sexual assault on 55th St. in Brooklyn, and a bank robbery on West 52nd St. between 7th and 8th Aves. Kenneth Eng, noted earlier this year for his controversial essay "Why I Hate Blacks", was arrested again by the Feds shortly after pleading guilty to harrassing his neighbors and threatening them with a hammer. The......

A Queens bus driver got into a brawl on his bus with a 22-year-old passenger after the younger man refused to surrender his seat at the front of the bus to an elderly woman with a cane. The New York Post reports that Larry Woods, who is 44, smashed passenger Christian Custis over the head with the bus's onboard phone after the man half his age wouldn't get out of a seat marked reserved for......

Last August, Viola Goodman found her son Robert dead on the bathroom floor of his apartment, which was stiflingly hot. Despite the August heat, the heating system in the building was blasting. Robert Goodman had called his mother earlier to report the blasting radiators and flooding. As his mother waited downstairs in the building's basement waiting for the fire department to arrive and find a steam shut-off valve, her son was upstairs frantically trying to......

The New York Post has a story today on the seizure of an old checkered cab from its owner, who uses it to give free rides to people around the city. 80-year-old Ray Kottner had his hack seized when Taxi and Limousine Commission investigators spotted him accepting a $10 gratuity from a grateful rider. Kottner's been driving a cab for 64 years but decided to quit "working for the man" a few years ago. A......

A budding Manhattan pot dealer named Peter Dagostino was arrested last year and police found a refrigerator in his apartment stuffed with 88 pounds of marijuana. They also found a list of specific "dos and don'ts" on how to succeed in the drug business. Apparently, a "don't" he forgot to add to his list was "Don't leave a written outline of your criminal enterprise for police to find." Dagostino also had some helpful advice from......

A barking pit bull named Bleu (or Blue) was a hero yesterday, as his barking alerted a neighbor to the cries of a young girl who was being molested between two houses on 171st St. in Flushing, Queens. The Daily News writes that a young man had been sitting on the steps of a house, across the street from where the attack would take place, watching a seven-year-old girl and her friend ride their scooters.......

The New York Post is loving the NJ beauty pageant story, which includes allegations that a fellow contestant may have been behind the blackmail plot to get Miss New Jersey to relinquish her crown. Someone sent pageant winner Amy Polumbo a package of photos that were lifted from Polumbo's Facebook account and doctored to include sexually suggestive captions. The Daily News says that there is no breast-baring or drug-taking in any of the photos, but......

WCBS is offing Jack FM, the station format it abrubtly switched to two years ago, and turning back the clock to its former oldies format. The 2005 switch upset a lot of listeners, who were outraged both at the loss of a long-beloved source of classics and the abruptness of the change, which occurred with only an hour's notice. It also led to the immediate dismissal of well-liked on air personalities like Cousin Brucie, Don......

The head of a firemens' union is pledging to end any hope of Giuliani's campaign for President. Rudolph Giuliani has emphasized his leadership in crisis as the centerpiece of his campaign for the Presidency. His primary set piece in this narrative are FDNY firefighters, who accumulated an enormous reservoir of goodwill during and after the 9/11 attacks, during which 343 firemen and parademics were killed. Perhaps it's a good strategy heading into a Republican nomination......

A new noise code will go into effect tonight/tomorrow morning when the clock strikes midnight, and that clock better have muffled bells. It's the first comprehensive overhaul of noise ordinances in about 30 years and was proposed by Mayor Bloomberg three and a half years ago. It's mostly oriented towards bars and clubs, where a growing nightlife presence in neighborhoods like the Lower East Side has left many residents sleepless. The New York Times notes......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a partial collapse at Fleet Court and Woodhaven Blvd. in Queens, two pedestrians were struck on the westbound Grand Central Parkway at Queens Boulevard in Queens, and a stabbing on West 21st St. in Manhattan. All three area airports: Newark, JFK, and Laguardia, were thrown into chaos yesterday after a computer malfunction in the air traffic control system resulted in multi-hour delays, missed connections, and many unhappy passengers. Gov.......

There's a fantastic look at a cross-section of Queens residents in the Times today. There's a feature about a Wednesday night class at the James A. Bland Houses in Flushing, where a group of curious and determined residents are learning Mandarin. There's an Italian-American woman who explains, "Kind of like, ‘If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,'" a few people who simply want to communicate with their neighbors, and an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor who......

The New York Post tells a slice-of-life story of Queens homeowners who neighbor a golf course today, employing the maximum number of golf puns possible. In its story, it tells the un-"fore"-tunate tale of neighbors who live next to the Douglaston Golf Course. The residents were "teed-off" and "taking a swing" at the city for owning a golf course that subjected them to a barrage of incoming balls and broken windows. They said that the......

A look at some noteworthy television this week: 7th Heaven (Sunday, 9:00 p.m., WPIX 11) Last year when the show was on the WB it had a series finale, but was brought back by the new CW. This time the show is over, finally. Funniest Mom in America 3 (Sunday, 9:00 p.m., Nickelodeon) Despite sounding like a sequel to a bad summer comedy, this is actually a Mother's Day special of a search for a......

Rupert Murdoch did not become a media tycoon by turning tail at the first sign of resistance in his business dealings. New York Times media columnist David Carr examines Rupert Murdoch's past successes in wooing reluctant sellers into folding their companies into the News Corp. family with promises of benign oversight and marginal interference at best, only to run roughshod over the company and imprint it with Murdoch's style before the ink is dry on......