Sharpe James, the former five-time mayor of Newark, NJ who was convicted of corruption in April, was sentenced to 27 months in prison for "failing to disclose his romantic relationship with a woman whom he helped to get a lucrative deal on some city-owned land." U.S. District Judge William Martini said, "This is a sad day. A sad day for the citizens of Newark who are disappointed in the conduct of the mayor." Martini also......

Sharpe James, five-time former mayor of Newark, NJ, was convicted by federal jury this morning on charges he conspired to, per the Star-Ledger, "rig the sale of nine city lots to his mistress, who quickly resold them for hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit." The jury, which had deliberated for five days before returning a verdict today, found James guilty of 13 counts of corruption. James' ex-girlfriend, Tamika Riley, who bought South Ward properties......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting on West 24th St. and 7th Ave. in Manhattan, another shooting on Rockwell Place and Dekalb Ave. in Brooklyn, and yet another shooting at 92 -35 215th Place in Queens. Former Newark Mayor Sharpe James' female acquaintance made an amazing amount of money by buying properties from the city and then flipping them for huge profits. Phone records reveal that an upstate teenage driver may have been......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a missing child report at Fulton and Warwick Sts. in Brooklyn, a shooting on 143rd St. in the Bronx, and an overturned auto at Kent and Flushing Aves. in Brooklyn. Some high-profile bloggers are calling for an online code of conduct. Not us! Did you see that graphic of Sponge Bob and KY? "Dashing Diva" nail salons are inflicting NYC-homegrown retail standardization on the rest of the country for......

-- A Brooklyn marine - who was a NY State trooper - was killed in a Baghdad firefight last week; a Queens-born soldier was mortally wounded in the same fight -- Gawker hates itself and wants to die. And they hate fruit! Those bastards. -- Newark Mayor Cory Booker didn't waste any time: His spokesman says that debit and credit card records for former Mayor Sharpe James have been subpoenaed. -- According to Forgotten-NY,......

Cory Booker, who unsuccessfully ran for Mayor of Newark a few years ago in a bitter race against longtime mayor Sharpe James, was elected by a huge margin to lead the 64th biggest city in the country. His opponent, NJ State Senator Ronald Rice, (who was outspent and outmatched) conceded around 10PM; the Star-Ledger notes he didn't mention Booker by name. Booker will be only the third new Mayor of Newark in 36 years, and......

- Yikes: the City Housing Authority wants to raise the rent on some people in the projects by more than 40%! - Sharpe James shenanigans: the retiring Newark mayor wants to keep control of $80 million or so. - Villager follows up on the squatters from "The Cave" on 8th Street: they each got only $2500 to leave. - Not surprising: Jared Paul Stern got fired from the Post over those extortion allegations. Mildly......

How sad! Mayor Sharpe James of Newark has decided not to run for re-election this fall. It might have been the boring Senate race in New York, but his mayoral race was something that Gothamist was looking forward to. James, the clear-cut winner in the Newark-New York City mayoral bad-ass match-up, citied his dual status as Mayor of Newark and State Senator as the reason for his decision. Of course, this didn't seem to matter......

Gothamist has been mesmerized by the press circus Newark Mayor Sharpe James created when he dropped off petitions to be on the ballot for mayor this fall. He rode a bike to the city clerk's office, took off his jacket to reveal, in the imitable words of WNBC's Darlene Rodriguez this morning, "some guns," and carried a crate of petitions - all while wearing a straw hat! Just watch this CBS 2 video! And yes,......

Although we wouldn't want to drown ourselves too much in a gigantic lake of hyperbole, a peak at this weekend's local film offerings is enough to make any cinephile utterly giddy. The New York Film Festival will be wrapping up with a tremendous program including what is billed as Michelangelo Antonioni's "preferred cut" of his classic 1975 Jack Nicholson starrer The Passenger. (We'll have a final bit of NYFF coverage tomorrow.) Plus, two of our......