City Councilman Eric Gioia suggests that the city and the state should pay hardball with countries and diplomats who don't pay parking fines or property taxes. The Post reports the Queens pol's ideas include cutting off electricity, taking away driver's licenses and towing cars. The city is owed about $78 million in unpaid taxes--Egypt owes almost $2 million in diplomatic-related parking tickets and India owes upwards of $16 million in property taxes.......

Last week there was a shooting outside of a Starbucks on 56th Street, yesterday morning a man was robbed and killed on East 39th Street, and now the NYPD is reporting that three people were stabbed near 45th and 5th at lunchtime today. There are currently some conflicting reports; WNBC says that it all went down on a sidewalk and that two people suffered stab wounds to the hand while a third was cut in......

No, he's not blushing from all the attention. Mao Mi is a Red Panda and the newest addition to Prospect Park Zoo in Brooklyn. He arrived last week from Michigan's Binder Park Zoo as part of a Wildlife Conservation Society breeding project. Red Pandas are an endangered species with fewer than 2,500 adults thought to remain in the wild in Bhutan, China, India, Laos, Nepal and Burma. Mao Mi will probably be mated with this......

Sure Mongolia is a sparsely populated nation with a GDP just over 25% of what Wall St. alone pays out in bonuses, but this is New York City; and you gotta pay what you owe. So said a U.S. District Court judge Friday, when he ruled that India, Mongolia, and the Phillipines owed New York City tens of millions of dollars in back taxes. Generally consulates, missions, and embassies operate under the convention that they......

Professor, author and activist Robert Thurman is widely regarded as the leading American expert on Tibetan Buddhism, having been a major force in the widespread introduction of Tibetan culture and religion to the west. In 1962, Thurman became the first American ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist monk, but after a few years he shifted from strict monasticism to the more conventional lifestyle of an academic. Though currently on sabbatical to write another book, Thurman remains......

Photograph of Mayor Bloomberg speaking at the State of the City address by Mary Altaffer/AP Mayor Bloomberg sounded some broad themes in his seventh State of the City address. Held at the new ice skating rink at Flushing-Meadows Corona Park in Queens, his speech outlined initiatives the city and various city agencies will undertake (digital 911 so you can send the NYPD photos from cell phones by this summer! reforming the Board of Elections!......

Mention the word Kuta to a surfer or a globetrotter and the first thing that comes to mind is the Balinese fishing village turned beach resort. The folks behind Kuta Satay House & Wine Bar are looking to get the same name recognition from diners with their new spot on the Lower East Side. With a menu that gives shoutouts to various Indonesian locales and a dining room decked out with Balinese masks, it's clear......

Well, this is a curious problem for FedEx's tracking system. How do you track your valuable packages when the truck carrying them has been stolen!?! A FedEx express truck was stopped on Manhattan's west side this morning by gun-wielding carjackers, who made off with the 18-wheeler. The driver was forced into a car and found in Brooklyn at around 1:30 a.m. A FedEx spokesman said the driver, who is not a suspect, was uninjured. The......

Remember that cruel(la) couple from Long Island that enslaved two Indonesian women who worked in their mansion? After their million dollar bail plan was announced back in June we hadn't heard much about these two. Today, however, silence was broken after Varsha Mahender Sabhnani and her hubby Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani's trial has ended...and the latest is not good news for them! The terrible two-some "were each convicted of all charges in a 12-count federal indictment......

What’s worth watching on food-TV this week? We're definitely setting our DVR to record The Martha Stewart Show. She’s got a three great New York Italian chefs on today: Odetta Fada of San Domenico, Lidia Bastianich of Felidia and Del Posto, and pastry chef Gina DePalma of Babbo. On Tuesday she’s got cookbook editor Judith Jones, and on Wednesday, New Orleans chef Susan Spicer (Monday-Friday, 1pm, NBC). But the prime time highlight might be a......

Last week, the Daily News trumpeted the plight of Amarjit Singh. Singh was injured after a mentally disturbed man's stabbing rampage on Second Avenue in October, and hasn't worked since the incident. Lee Coleman stormed into the kitchen of the Texas BBQ Smokehouse, where Singh worked as a chef, and grabbed a bunch of knives. Singh tried to stop him, but Coleman ended up slashing his left side, almost taking off his ear. In spite......

On the front page of the NY Times section A, there was a photograph of some workers in Haoro, India and an article titled "New York Manhole Covers, Forged Barefoot in India." And in fact, the workers are barefoot, bare-chested, bare-handed, and bare-headed as they work in an iron foundry, making manhole covers for Con Ed and other cities. The Times explains that a photographer, J. Adam Huggins, who works with the newspaper brought......

Today, the Daily News put Amarjit Singh on its cover and asks New Yorkers to help him. Who is Singh? He was the cook at the Texas Smokehouse BBQ in Murray Hill until October 6, when a mentally ill man, Lee Coleman, stormed into the kitchen and grabbed four knives. Singh tried to stop Coleman, but Coleman slashed him in the head before heading outside to repeatedly stab pedestrian Susan Barron. Coleman only stopped when......

Former vice president Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today. The Nobel committee said the shared award is "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change." The award is worth $1.5 million and will be split equally between the two winners. According to......

Tonight marks the beginning of the Film Society at Lincoln Center's 45th annual New York Film Festival and oh what a jam-packed fest it is. A panel of film critics chose 30 of the best new international movies to show to New York's discerning audiences and they picked hometown director Wes Anderson's newest, The Darjeeling Limited (which also comes out in theaters this weekend) to open the festival. Gothamist was pleasantly surprised at how much......

Lust, Caution (directed by Ang Lee) For fans of Hong Kong cinema, it's a bit of a surprise that a wonderfully expressive and nuanced actor like Tony Leung hadn't worked before with the Oscar-winning, Taiwanese turned New Yorker director Ang Lee. But the two artists have been united now in Lee's new thriller set in World War II Shanghai, Lust, Caution which comes out this weekend. An erotically charged film with such explicit scenes that......

The New York Film Festival doesn't begin until Friday but you can get your first taste of what will be unspooling on screens at Lincoln Center tonight at the Soho Apple Store. Director Wes Anderson and stars Natalie Portman and Jason Schwartzman will be on hand for a screening of Anderson's new 12 minute short film Hotel Chevalier at 9 pm. The short was shot entirely in a Paris hotel room and serves as a......

A look at some noteworthy television this week: America at a Crossroads: Anti-Americans (A Hate/Love Relationship) (Monday, 10:00 P.M., WNET 13) A look at the Europeans love/hate relationship with the United States. Live From New York: The First 5 Years of Saturday Night Live (Tuesday, 8:00 P.M., WNBC 4) Two hours of classic SNL sketches and interviews with the performers who created them in this rebroadcast of this retrospective. Wide Angle: The Dying Fields (Tuesday,......

Maybe it’s the weather, but lately Gothamist has been craving Indian food. Rather than go to one of the numerous steam-table joints in Jackson Heights, we decided to give Hyderabadi, a new restaurant in Woodside down the street from the much-acclaimed Spicy Mina’s a try. The scuttlebutt on Chowhound was that this spot serves cuisine from the South Indian city of Hyderabad, renowned for its myriad biryanis and the mysterious Chicken 65, among other things.......

This afternoon's temperature has been bouncing up and down as the sun struggles to come out behind the cruddy clouds. This morning's clouds were leftover from a bit of convective activity to our south last night. A line of showers is approaching the city from the west. Some of those showers may be intense, as they hit the city later this afternoon and into the evening. A high pressure system behind today's cold front will......

A federal judge is allowing a NYC bus driver to sue the New York City Transit over harassment he received at the hands of fellow workers. Mathen George, a bus driver since 1987 and was born in India, claims that after September 11, 2001, colleagues called him "Bin Laden," "Saddam Hussein," "caveman" and "camel jockey." And all this allegedly took place at a depot in Queens. Judge Raymond Dearie wrote that George had shown "he......

A look at some noteworthy television this week: 2007 ESPY Awards (Sunday, 9:00 p.m., ESPN) Jimmy Kimmel co-hosts with basketballer LeBron James this sports awards show which only exists to give ESPN some programming and some overpaid athletes another trophy. Victoria Beckham: Coming to America (Monday, 8:00 p.m., WNBC 4) Thankfully this is a one shot deal since the 6 episode fakeality show deal fell through. The show itself chronicles the Victoria Beckham's move to......

Last week everyone nerded out by creating their Simpsons characters. This week have some Springfield-style 3-dimensional fun by visiting the Kwik-E-Mart! A dozen 7-Eleven's nationwide have transformed in to Springfield's favorite convenience store for the month. New York's is on 42nd Street between 8th and 9th Avenues. What you'll find: a Radioactive Man comic, Buzz Cola, KrustyO's cereal, Squishees, Sprinklicious donuts, and a ton of references to past episodes (check out the old man in......

Staten Island needs some cheerleaders every once in a while, especially after their ice cream flavor was named after their landfill. The NY Times has a piece on the borough's historian, "Brooklyn has Walt Whitman to sing praises of its 'ample hills.' Manhattan has Woody Allen to capture its outsize style and neuroses. And Staten Island? Well, Staten Island has Thomas W. Matteo for a borough historian to chronicle its glories, its goofs and, yes,......

The New York Times has a story today on the required unveiling of NY Sen. Hillary Clinton's investments, which were previously held in a blind trust jointly owned with her husband and former President Bill Clinton, but needed to be disclosed as Sen. Clinton is now running for President herself. The trust was liquidated in April after the Clintons learned that their holdings included potentially politically damaging investments in military contractors, oil, pharmaceutical companies, and......

You may know Bob McClure as "Jed" on The Burg, but off screen he's an integral part of the family biz: McClure's Pickles. They're serious about their spicy garlic dills, which are now available in their two hometowns: Brooklyn and Detroit. We asked Bob a few questions recently about pickle flavors, what drink goes best with a dill, and more. How did you two get in to the pickle business? Lots of bad temp jobs.......

ART: Artist Adrienne Leban (artwork pictured) has been a professor at the School of Visual Arts for almost four decades; her new work is done entirely free-hand, without sketches or instruments, in India ink on wood, watercolor paper, or canvas. (It’s terrific; check it out.) This weekend’s three-day exhibit inaugurates the new Corey Gallery; part of the proceeds will benefit the Susan G. Komen Foundation, the world’s largest grassroots network of breast cancer survivors and......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a large theft(?) at Waterview Ct. on Saten Island, a capsized boat in Central Park's lake with passengers in the water (around 74th St. and 5th Ave.), and a shooting on Brooklyn's W 31st St. The Red Hook Ikea is topped out and a Gowanus Lounge reader is there to capture the magic of retail superstructures. Eleven soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division stationed at Fort Drum allegedly broke......

When we hear about the city's scuffles with foreign countries, it usually involves diplomats and scofflaw parking. Well, this time, the scuffle does involve diplomats, but now the city will be arguing why foreign countries should pay real estate taxes in front of the Supreme Court. The NY Sun sheds light on the city's case versus the Department of Justice: The city wants India and Mongolia to pay millions in real estate taxes because their......

Jeremy Piven won't be going back to Nobu anytime soon. Entourage's Ari Gold was told he better keep away from Nobu Matsuhisa's restaurant empire after his behavior in the Aspen during the recent Comedy Arts Festival there. How does one get banned from Nobu? After a rude comment to the manager on his way out of the restaurant he left a DVD of the first season of Entourage...AS A TIP. Allegedly an employee ran up......