Free Republic

<p>A federal judgeon Wednesday backed the city's Department of Education, ruling that the display of the nativity scene, unlike Christmas trees and menorahs, was not secular and has no place in classrooms.</p> <p>Judge Charles Sifton in Brooklyn dismissed the lawsuit brought forth by Andrea Skoros, 34, of College Point, saying the city's holiday displays policy banning non-secular symbols from schools did not violate her right to free exercise of religion.</p>

Four people were killed and 63 injured when a Metro-North commuter train derailed Sunday morning in the Bronx, officials said. All of the train’s seven cars came off the curved track about 100 feet north of the Spuyten Duyvil station around 7:20 a.m., MTA officials said. One car came to rest feet from the water.

"...CBS New York, citing FDNY sources, is saying there are "several injuries." Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/metro-north-train-derails-in-the-bronx-2013-12#ixzz2mEOvVQNG ..."

A Connecticut man was stabbed to death in the Bronx early Saturday after he stepped into the middle of a vicious fight between two women, police and neighbors said. Ronis Garcia, 28, was winding down an all-night rager at his friend’s sixth-floor Bryant Ave. apartment in Hunts Point when one woman, believed to be Garcia’s ex-wife, began brawling with another woman, neighbors said.

In the Morrisania section of the Bronx street gangs are recruiting "boys as young as 9 or 10" to join their ranks as reported by WNYW. Similarly, a street gang in Suffolk County, NY is recruiting boys as young as nine years old as reported by Kevin Deutsch for Newsday: "police investigators believe that the gang's older members have sought out young neighborhood kids who 'show potential' for membership." Over the weekend a gun-toting 14-year-old gang banger in the Bronx was killed with a single shot by the NYPD after refusing to drop his weapon as reported by the Daily...

Just after 3 a.m. on Sunday, the pop of gunshots cut through the air. Two rookie police officers — barely a month out of the Police Academy, and now on foot patrol in the Bronx — hurried toward the sound. They headed east on East 151st Street to find a chase unfolding, one man running down the middle of the street, another following with a handgun. The officers ordered the second figure to drop his gun. Instead, another shot rang out. One of the officers fired a single shot. The bullet struck the gunman in his lower left jaw, killing...

Bloody end for gun kid: Cop shoots armed 14-year-old dead in Bronx By KIRSTAN CONLEY and C.J. SULLIVAN Last Updated: 6:08 AM, August 5, 2013 Posted: 1:56 AM, August 5, 2013 An armed 14-year-old with a violent rap sheet was shot dead in The Bronx yesterday by a cop who had been on the job for less than a month, officials said. Surveillance video shows Shaaliver Douse, a suspected gang member, chasing and shooting at a young rival on Courtlandt Avenue near East 151st Street just before 3 a.m., police said. Two rookie cops on patrol heard the gunfire and...

Horace Mann School, the elite Horace Mann prep school in the Bronx, has apologized for sexual abuse committed by its teachers and administrators between the years 1962 and 1996. But the school, which has said it will create an advisory panel on student safety, appoint one of the victims to the Head of School Committee that advises the board of trustees, and release the school's report of the sexual abuse committed by its employees, has refused to do one thing that the victims have asked for: support an independent investigation into the abuses. Joseph Cumming, a former victim, said, “The...

<p>NEW YORK — A company that promised sightseer tours to the Bronx that included a New York City "ghetto" has stopped the bus rides under protest from an outraged neighborhood.</p> <p>Real Bronx Tours, which took mostly European tourists from Manhattan to see life in the South Bronx "from a safe distance," issued a statement this week saying it would immediately cease all tours there.</p>

Live Action has just released a new investigative video project, titled Inhuman: Undercover in America’s Late-Term Abortion Industry. The newsroom has already published a piece with a description of the video, a portion of the press release, as well as the video of the investigation. The investigation took place at Dr. Emily’s Women’s Health Center in the Bronx, New York. The video involves a woman 23 weeks pregnant speaking to a clinic worker about a possible abortion, which will be a two-day procedure. The video, which is slightly over eight minutes, mostly is a conversation between this woman and a...

Democrat used trickery for gaining power, court papers show. Now resigned, state Assemblyman Nelson Castro---a Dominican Republic native---schemed to illegally register dozens of latino voters, and forged signatures on petitions to seek office earlier as a Democrat district leader. The revelations were spelled out in a deal in which feds agreed not to prosecute in return for Castro's wearing a wire to nail his shady Democrat colleagues. Castro admitted to lying about dozens of (illegals) registered to vote using his address.

A 9-year-old boy was clinging to life after a callous teen neighbor chucked him off the roof of their five-story Bronx apartment building, cops said Saturday. The young boy, Freddy Martin, cried for his mother as soon as he landed on the cold concrete sidewalk in front of the Nelson Ave. building in Morris Heights about 8:30 p.m. Friday, neighbors said. “Mommy! Mommy!” the bloodied child wailed as he lay on the ground, unable to move.

A new apartment building is being constructed just 12 inches from a family’s home in The Bronx, and the house’s owners are fuming mad. “This is what I get to see. Nice,” scoffed Fernando Justiniano, 49, yesterday as he drew open his dining-room curtains to reveal the “monstrosity’’ of gray cinder blocks a foot from his home at 3525 Bruckner Blvd. Justiniano and his wife, Patty, 44, said that when they bought the Pelham Bay home for $200,000 about 13 years ago, it overlooked another residence with a pristine yard. “It’s preposterous. The fact that [the developer] can build that...

A 60-year-old New York man has been indicted on a murder charge in a cold case investigation. Lucius Crawford was charged with murder Tuesday in the 1993 stabbing death of Nella West. Crawford was arrested last month at his Mount Vernon, N.Y. home. Investigators made a shocking discovery when they went to his home: The body of another woman who had been stabbed to death.

Juan Gonzalez wrote a great piece in yesterday's Daily News on how the Young Leaders Elementary School, a school opened up by Uncle Mike in 2008, is now on the list of possible closures. Funny thing is, Young Leaders Elementary School replaced another closed school, PS 220 back in 2008. PS 220 was run by one of the classiest principals ever to work for the DOE, Michelle Kahn. I know Michelle is up above having the last laugh. She should. Again, students and their families education is going to again be uprooted and thrown into disarray. Will another school be...

The four areas where organized crime reigns in America -- New York City, Dirty Jersey, Chicagoland and South Florida -- also account for the lion's share of corruption convictions by federal prosecutors against local officials as reported by Joe Palazzolo for The Wall Street Journal Law Blog. The U.S. Department of Justice has released the number of corruption convictions its prosecutors have won against public servants over the last ten years across the 93 federal judicial districts into which the country is divided, and at the top of the list is New Jersey with 429 convictions. Third on the list...

A 4-year-old boy died after he took a bullet in the head during a wild shootout on a Bronx basketball court Sunday night, cops and witnesses said. Two men were also wounded in the gunfire that erupted during a hoops tournament at an E. 165th St. court in Morrisania about 9:40 p.m., police said. -snip- The crowd of people had been watching the “First Annual Ghetto Angels Basketball Tournament” at the court in the Forrest Houses. The game was part of an annual memorial for a 15-year-old girl that was stabbed to death one year ago, housing residents said.

It was the bell that first called to him. It was a Sunday afternoon in the mid-1920s, and his family was living in the Pelham Bay section of the Bronx. When his priest rang the bell during Mass, Gerald Ryan, then about 4, thought the beautiful sound was coming from the monstrance that held the host. At age 7, he was hit by a car, and lost his hearing in one ear. The bell remained in his memory, as if Jesus were calling him in stereo. Now, he is a monsignor, and he has been a priest for 67 years....

BRONX (WABC) -- What is drawing huge crowds in the Bronx, people lining up around the block, to get into a storefront that houses a tax preparation office, what's really going on? People who went to the storefront asked Eyewitness News to investigate after they claim they were promised thousands of dollars in government surplus money that would be put on pre-paid debit cards. Now, the bank that issues those debit cards has put out a warning. "I'd like to talk to the boss," Eyewitness News Investigative Reporter Sarah Wallace said. "He's not here," security at E &M Multi Service...

The New York City Housing Authority has extended the lease of a Bronx church that uses one of its facilities after the congregation accused authorities of trying to evict them in the context of an alleged clampdown on worship groups in government buildings. Infinity NY Church, a nondenominational ministry led by Pastor Dimas Salaberrios, has been fighting to keep its space at the Bronx River Community Center after it received a notification from NYCHA that its lease was going to expire, and that the church would need to move by February. A number of congregants staged a protest in front...