Howard, Tyler, and Trip begin the final puzzle, by activitystory at flickrToday on the Gothamist Newsmap: a person trapped under an automobile at 9th Ave. and 55th St. in Brooklyn, a missing delivery man at De Kruif Pl. and Dreiser Loop in the Bronx, and a scaffolding incident on 7th Ave. and 25th St. in Manhattan. NYC's Dept. of Health wants pharmacists to be allowed to administer flu shots, citing the death toll of......

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......

License ID scanners aren't just keeping underage drinkers out of New York bars, they're now assisting police in arresting patrons who become involved in criminal activity both inside and outside of city clubs. The New York Post reports that the electronic scanners which help filter out fake IDs also supply cops with detailed records of every patron who entered a bar or club on any given evening. Most recently, the NYPD used the turned-over records......

Frank Nardi, Jr. (pictured), who appeared as a surprise guest on Fox reality show Moment of Truth to ask his married ex-girlfriend Lauren Cleari if she believes she should have married him instead, has come forward to tell the New York Post that he “really just wants all of this to be over.” The Post’s weekly circulation is usually in the neighborhood of 650,000. Cleari, an aspiring actress who works part-time at a hair salon,......

A 30-year-old man lost his life last night after locking himself out of his apartment. Sometime between 8:15 p.m. and 8:40 p.m., Paul Reilly fell five stories, landing on his back in the courtyard behind the building where he lived on 65th St. and 1st Ave. in Manhattan. Reilly, who had apparently gained entrance to the building but was locked out of his apartment, attempted to climb out a hallway window, over to a window......

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......

The NYPD's recruiting woes appear to be continuing through 2008, with a sharp drop-off in the number of candidates applying to sit for the Police Officer Exam, which is the first step to qualifying to enter the Police Academy. According to the New York Post, the number of test takers is down 20% from number of people who took the exam at the same time last year. "Slightly fewer than 20,000 have applied for the......

Partial cover of the New York Post What would Norman Mailer make of a boxer cavorting in high heels, fishnet stockings, and a fur-trimmed tutu? "I respect most boxers because they're violent people who learned to discipline themselves," opined the late writer. Mailer may be dead, but it's doubtable whether the embarrassment that Oscar De La Hoya faces will ever die. The New York Times framed the situation ably, noting the media alert notifying......

Michael McGhee, Thomas Wimmer, Patrick Tully, Stella Ibanez, and Jeffrey Alicea A fight outside a Yonkers bar that cost a man his vision in one eye, may cost a number of NYPD members professionally. One of the participants in the brawl on the border of the Westchester city and the Bronx, Thomas Wimmer, has already resigned from the force. Three other officers are suspended without pay after their arraignment Friday on misdemeanor charges related......

Illustration of of the BMT from north and south vantage points, via the NYC Economic Development Corp. Plans to construct a glass addition to the top of the Battery Maritime Building moved a little closer to fruition this week with the approval of Community Board 1. The New York Post reports that the Board was a little concerned about the scale of the glass addition that will be added to the century-old structure, but......

Demonstrating just how valuable free parking in New York City is, a rash of smash and grab thefts has struck areas in Washington Heights and the Bronx, where firefighters have had their car windows broken and parking placards stolen. Most of the thefts have occurred right outside of firehouses, usually when members are called out to a fire, according to the New York Post. The recent increase in placard jacking began shortly after Mayor Bloomberg......

Imecca Burton, her mother, and civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel held a press conference in front of Police Headquarters yesterday to decry the handcuffing of 10-year-old Imecca, who was handcuffed by police in front of PS 25 where she attends elementary school. Police officers witnessed a fight on her school bus and in the ensuing events Imecca was handcuffed. Witnesses said that Imecca was swearing, kicking, and screaming, which is why the cops cuffed her.......

Given that ridership is at record highs, the MTA and police are proud that subway crime is down from a year ago, according to statistics obtained by the New York Post. Overall, crime is down almost 13% due to a drop in rapes, robberies, and grand larceny. Murders doubled from two in 2006 to four last year. Assaults also increased, up 9% from the same period a year ago. This is likely attributed to increased......

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......

Untitled photo of dancers, by Raymond Haddad at flickr Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an escaped patient on the Van Wyck Expressway in Queens, a homicide on Bruner and Burke Aves. in the Bronx, and shots fired on Bainbridge St. and Lewis Ave. in Brooklyn. Jurors in the Nixzmary Brown murder trial were sent home for the second consecutive day Thursday as the defense, prosecution, and judge met in secret to discuss potentially bombshell......

Rose Morat, the 101-year-old victim of a vicious mugging caught on surveillance tape last year, testified at a special videotaped hearing in a Queens courtroom yesterday. Morat will turn 102 next month and Queens prosecutors thought it would be prudent to make sure her testimony was recorded, as the actual case probably won't go to trial for another year. Morat didn't seem to take the precaution personally. Upon taking the stand, Morat described the events......

Mayor Bloomberg's continued insistence that he is not currently running for President is bordering on the absurd, as even attempts to ascertain where his aide Kevin Sheekey is spending his vacation time turns up blacked out in official requests. Sheekey is Bloomberg's chief political deputy, and the man most closely identified with pushing the Mayor forward in a Presidential bid. The New York Times filed a Freedom of Information request with the Mayor's office to......

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......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an unstable building on 41st Ave. in Queens, a pedestrian struck on 33rd St. and 8th Ave. in Manhattan, and a double stabbing on East 188th St. and Webster Ave. in the Bronx. The New York Post flew a Jessica Simpson lookalike to Dallas and got her seats behind the Cowboys' bench in an effort to distract Dallas quarterback Tony Romo. Has anyone lost a camera in a cab......

A 37-year-old man ended his train trip atop a Metro-North car at the Pelham station, where he fell or was pulled from the train's roof, while on fire and suffering from burns after coming into contact with a high voltage power cable. Accounts of the incident differ, but do agree on the fact that the adventurer was named Eric Chavez, he suffered burns on his body, and that it was somewhat of a miracle that......

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......

Eight separate unions representing Amtrak workers are threatening to go on strike as early as January 30th if they are not presented with new contracts, which they've worked without for years. A strike would hurt more than people taking the Acela between Washington D.C. and Boston. If Amtrak workers strike, it would close Penn Station and hundreds off thousands of daily commuters on the Long Island Rail Road, NJ Transit, and Amtrak would be seriously......

In what was probably an end-of-year house cleaning, the e-mails related to the Troopergate re-investigation were obliterated and thus made unavailable to Albany County District Attorney David Soares. The Spitzer administration has been stalling for weeks to make e-mail records available to Soares and state computer recovery experts are now saying that servers and hard drives were deliberately purged and scrubbed. Troopergate was initially about Gov. Spitzer or his aides using State Police to effectually......

The man who allegedly shot and killed Carol Simon-Hayes last week, as she was walking towards her nine-year-old son and talking to a friend on the phone, has been arrested. Darius Dubarry was arrested at a motel in Augusta, Georgia, where the 27-year-old fled town after Simon-Hayes's death. Simon-Hayes was killed in Crown Heights when an argument between Dubarry and another man devolved to gunplay, and Simon was struck by a stray bullet. “I got......

New York City's Conflict of Interest Board ruled that there was no problem in Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff continuing to work with real estate developers on multi-billion dollar real estate projects while a city employee, even though he'll be shortly negotiating with these same developers as a private citizen and President of Bloomberg LP, the Mayor's media corporation. According to the New York Post, the board cited "extraordinary circumstances" and said that Doctoroff's negotiations on......

The story of Philadelphia anchorwoman Alycia Lane gets stranger and stranger. Her first call upon release from custody after punching a NYPD officer was, according to the Philadelphia Daily News, to Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell. A spokesman for the Pennsylvania governor told the paper, she did it to "make sure he knew her side of the story because he is an opinion-maker and runs around in influential circles." And "I think she knew better than......

Peter Braunstein really loves the New York Post. The fashion industry reporter-turned-prison inmate, after being recently convicted of the kidnapping, sex assault, armed robbery and burglary of a former co-worker on Halloween in 2005, gives his first interview since being locked up this past summer to the tabloid. He gives a number of choice quotes to the Post, who calls him "still-crazy." And how! Not only does he regret not killing his ex-girlfriend Jane......

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......