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The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, located in Brooklyn, was on lockdown shortly after 4:00 p.m. Tuesday afternoon after an anthrax threat, a court official confirmed to TPM. A source in the courthouse passed along an email from the court clerk informing court personnel of the threat. “An envelope was received with an anthrax threat and a white power and was released in the main clerk’s office on the first floor. Only one staff member came into direct contact with the powder,” the email read. “At this time and until we get an all clear...

A New York state senator from Brooklyn was charged on Monday with stealing proceeds from sales of foreclosed properties to finance a failed run for district attorney, prosecutors said, making him the state’s latest politician to face federal criminal charges. John Sampson, 47, a Democrat who has represented southeastern Brooklyn since 1997, was charged with nine counts including embezzlement, obstruction of justice and making false statements to federal investigators, according to an indictment unsealed Monday. Sampson, a practicing attorney for more than two decades, turned himself in and was arraigned in Brooklyn federal court Monday afternoon. He pleaded not guilty,...

Graffiti artists The Yok and Sheryo swear they’re not on drugs. “It seems like we’re just taking acid and putting all this s--- together, but it really is a collection of what we’ve seen,” The Yok said. The duo, who now live in Brooklyn, just put up a city-commissioned mural along 16th and Morgan streets as part of 25th Ward Ald. Danny Solis’ public art initiative. The viaduct wall now sports a Vulcan-eared monkey eating deep-dish pizza along with a sunglasses-wearing skeleton head wearing a hat that says “Zap Rap.” The Yok and Sheryo won’t give their full names because...

Dennis Delucia faces 46 months when sentenced on an extortion conviction, and his lesbian daughter Donna has submitted a letter to Brooklyn federal judge Kiyo Matsumoto in an attempt to humanize the reputed Colombo capo who was supportive of her coming out process as reported by John Marzulli for the Daily News: "My dad accepted me, embraced me and has supported me. His love and acceptance helped me through the rough times and growing pains." Donna now lives in Kentucky with her partner and their 9-year-old boy, and she would like a light sentence for her gangster dad because "I...

Stephan Stowe, 17, was charged with harassment after telling Jewish rider ‘They should have killed all of you.’ Police also wrestled a woman to the ground and arrested her after angry onlookers swarmed the station's platform, snapping video and yelling at cops during the incident.

A man was killed in Brooklyn early today when he fell and cut his arm on a broken bottle during a fistfight, police sources said. Miguel Jiminez and a pal were thrown out of the La Cabana Rodriguez restaurant on Flatbush Avenue near Beverley Road shortly before 4 a.m. when they got into a clash over the bill, said police sources. Jiminez and the pal got into a fight on the sidewalk outside the Flatbush eatery, and he can be seen on surveillance video pulling out a machete, sources said.

An incident involving a teenager who was shot by police after he pointed a .38 at them has enraged Brooklynites and caused three straight nights of rioting. From NY Daily News: At least 46 demonstrators were arrested along Church Ave. in East Flatbush. Police struggled to control a hostile crowd that broke away from a planned peaceful vigil for Kimani (Kiki) Gray, 16, killed by police on Saturday night. Gray's sister Mahnefeh was among those arrested. A police officer suffered a gash in the face when a tossed brick hit him, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said, and a window was...

A bully tossed a disabled girl out of the back door of a moving school bus and straight into the path of oncoming traffic — an attack that easily could have ended in death. Two matrons were on the bus dealing with a ruckus, but neither was able to protect Amore-Virginia Peterson, 13, on Friday. She said that when she slammed into the pavement she thought she “was going to die” — but she managed to scramble out of the road before she was hit by the cars bearing down on her. The bipolar sixth-grader suffered a broken collarbone and...

You’re just a vicious racist, a Manhattan judge said in sentencing a psychotic gunman to 240 years in prison for holding 15 white patrons of an East Village wine bar hostage 10 years ago. Steven Johnson — an AIDS-infected, unemployed Brooklyn barber — had burst into Bar Veloce on Second Avenue just before closing time on a June night in 2002, dousing everyone with kerosene and shouting, “White people are going to burn tonight!” One decade, one mistrial and one overturned verdict later, Johnson was up to his old tricks again at his sentencing yesterday — ranting about the economic...

A former shipping terminal operator has sued the International Longshoremen's Association on claims that President Harold Daggett and some other union officials and members are organized crime associates who forced the company off the Newark and Brooklyn docks after it refused to play their waterfront games as reported by Steve Strunsky for The Star-Ledger: "one of the allegations in the suit by American Stevedoring is that ILA leaders told the company's chairman, Sabato Catucci, in August 2011 that if he refused to pull up stakes and leave the port he would be carried out 'in a box.'" The Mafia allegedly...

NOTE The following text is a quote: Brooklyn Resident from Albania Sentenced to 15 YearsÂ’ Imprisonment for Attempting to Support Terrorism U.S. AttorneyÂ’s Office January 08, 2013 Eastern District of New York Earlier today, at the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn, New York, Agron Hasbajrami, an Albanian citizen and Brooklyn resident, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for attempting to provide material support to terrorists. Hasbajrami will be removed from the United States at the conclusion of his sentence. The sentence was announced by Loretta E. Lynch, United States Attorney for...

Living in this city your entire life gives one the opportunity to experience things you would not normally encounter in any other part of the country. Many of these experiences are deeply unpleasant and disturbing, including periodic attempts, with varying degrees of success, by terrorists to blow up large sections of it, along with its inhabitants. Putting aside the preternatural feeling that I’m living in a very bad Michael Bay film-as if there is any other kind-there aren’t many things that occur to or in New York that shake me out of the existential torpor which stems from spending most...

CARROLL GARDENS — An NYPD commander is using Twitter to distribute the names and mugshots of convicts recently returned to his neighborhood after serving prison sentences — and his actions could result in a lawsuit. Capt. Jeffrey Schiff, commanding officer of the 76th Precinct, which covers Red Hook, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill and part of Gowanus, said his goal is to protect his community and keep residents safe. But his actions, though praised by some local residents, have caused privacy concerns among others and provoked the threat of a lawsuit from Legal Aid. "Everyone can absorb this information and intelligently...

It’s fine to flash the neighbors — just don’t have the indecency to smoke. The condo board for one of Brooklyn’s most prestigious addresses has banned smoking throughout the glass-walled building — including in residents’ private apartments. Condo owners at tony 1 Grand Army Plaza — a k a 1 Prospect Park, where residents are famous for parading around in the buff, giving parkgoers an eyeful through their floor-to-ceiling windows — will now face fines if they dare to light up in their multimillion-dollar pads. The only area where residents can puff away is on their private terraces, which boast...

A Brooklyn mom of three was fatally gunned down this morning by a passerby as she stood right behind Brookdale Hospital -- where her 8-year-old daughter was undergoing treatment for an asthma attack. The apparently motiveless killing stunned the family of 32-year-old victim Shalema Gaskin -- and left them demanding answers about why someone targeted her. "This is a hospital!" said Tanya Gaskin, 50, the victim's mom. "We come here for help -- not to have our people killed right outside."

On August 23, 2011 the FBI arrested Imam Abu Taubah aka Marcus Dwayne Robertson. The charge was possession of a firearm by a previously convicted felon, Case Number: 6:11-mj-1380 Attached to Imam Abu Robertson’s case is a Notice of Intent To Use Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Information (FISA). The U.S. Government’s intention to use its FISA powers signals probable cause to charge Imam “Taubah” Robertson “the target of such search is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power”. The facts presented in these filed charges leads this reporter to suspect an element of foreign intrigue may be...

If irony is the ethos of our age — and it is — then the hipster is our archetype of ironic living. The hipster haunts every city street and university town. Manifesting a nostalgia for times he never lived himself, this contemporary urban harlequin appropriates outmoded fashions (the mustache, the tiny shorts), mechanisms (fixed-gear bicycles, portable record players) and hobbies (home brewing, playing trombone). He harvests awkwardness and self-consciousness. Before he makes any choice, he has proceeded through several stages of self-scrutiny. The hipster is a scholar of social forms, a student of cool. He studies relentlessly, foraging for what...

A Great Neck man was shot dead inside of his Brooklyn boutique last night — and cops matched the ballistics to a pair of murders this summer that sources believe were based on numbers in the business address, sources said. Vahidipour Rahmatollah, 78, was pronounced dead after cops discovered him in the back of She She Boutique on Flatbush Avenue after being shot in the head three times with a .22-caliber gun, as well as once in the torso, sources said.

By Laura Nahmias Fresh off winning election to the state Senate as a Brooklyn Democrat, Simcha Felder said Tuesday he planned to caucus with Republicans in Albany, further complicating a struggle for control of the chamber. Felder’s decision to vote with the GOP conference was first reported by political blog Capital Tonight and was confirmed by his campaign spokesman. Felder, who represents an Orthodox Jewish district in southern Brooklyn, will give the Republicans 31 seats in the Senate, where a party needs 32 votes to elect a majority leader. The Senate Democrats currently hold 30 seats in the chamber and...

Mayor Bloomberg has snubbed Borough President Markowitz’s impassioned plea to bring the National Guard to Hurricane Sandy-scarred Brooklyn — arguing that approving the Beep’s request would be a waste of federal manpower and turn the borough into a police state. “We don’t need it,” Mayor Bloomberg said on Wednesday during a press update on the city’s ongoing Hurricane Sandy cleanup. “The NYPD is the only people we want on the street with guns.” Markowitz demanded the National Guard’s help just an hour before Bloomberg’s press conference, claiming that the NYPD and FDNY are “brave — but overwhelmed” by all the...

@mrubin1971Two news stories from recent weeks, if true, should raise a red flag in the United States that Iran is preparing to use Hezbollah to strike at U.S. interests in Latin America, if not in the United States itself.First, this story from the Lebanese news portal Naharnet and sourced in part to Israeli radio. The Naharnet story was taken down shortly after it appeared: Hezbollah is using a training base established by Iran in northern Nicaragua near the border with Honduras, the Israeli radio reported on Thursday [September 6]. “The area is cordoned off and there are around 30 members...

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...

The candid interview that has shocked Democrats across the USA. Democrat Politician from New York Warns Jewish Voters.

A Democratic congresswoman from Brooklyn appears to believe that slavery existed in her district until 1898. Against the advice of her party’s leadership, Rep. Yvette Clarke appeared on “The Colbert Report” on Tuesday for one of host Stephen Colbert’s occasional “Better Know a District” segments. After getting in a few digs at Brooklyn, Colbert asked Clarke, who is currently serving her third term in the House, what she would say to her district if she could go back to 1898 in a time machine. “Set me free!” Clarke said. “From?” Colbert asked. “Slavery.” Trying to hold back his laughter, Colbert...

CONFIDENT Bob Furman suspects that up to 256 Revolutionary soldiers lie under this lot in Gowanus.Dave Sanders for The New York Times NOTHING is visible at the intersection of Third Avenue and Eighth Street in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn to indicate that anything extraordinary is there. The artisanal-pie place on one corner and the auto body shops across the way suggest it is merely another spot in the city where grit is giving way to gentrification. But if a small group of history enthusiasts are right, this particular corner of Kings County is hallowed ground. HEROIC Kim Maier,...

Cops had to use pepper spray to subdue brawling bathers as yet another fight shut down Williamsburg’s star-crossed McCarren Park Pool on Tuesday. A YouTube video of the incident shows a chaotic melee, with shouting, swearing youths surging and pushing towards a cluster of cops who have a suspect on the ground. One officer can be seen dispersing the increasingly aggressive crowd with pepper spray, sending people running and then shaking the can as if to ready another shot of spray. -snip- It was the fourth incident at the gleaming 37,950-foot WPA-era pool, which reopened June 28 sporting a $50...

When the McCarren Park Pool in Williamsburg reopened last month after 28 years of dormancy, it was hailed as a civic achievement and summer oasis for Brooklynites. But the city’s largest public pool has been plagued by violent brawls that pit teens against lifeguards and even forced the NYPD to shut it down on June 29. Lifeguards are forbidden to talk to the media, but one spoke to the The Post’s Annie Karni about life in the aquatic war zone. Every morning when I wake up, I pray for rain. Because if it’s sunny and 90 degrees at 11 a.m.,...

Things are getting so rough in the Big Apple that even toddlers are getting mugged. A cruel thug ripped a $400 gold chain off the neck of a 3-year-old boy who was sitting in his stroller and being pushed by his mom in Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn on Tuesday, law-enforcement sources said. The crook and an accomplice attacked tot Harvey Hernandez in the lobby of his family’s Malcolm X Boulevard apartment building at 11:45 p.m. after following him, his teenage brother and mom Riyana Guerrero home from a Laundromat. “I was screaming ‘Let go of my baby! Let go of my...

A 3-year-old boy was shot in the leg after getting caught in the middle of a shootout in Brooklyn in broad daylight today, police sources said. The child was playing with his mother in the courtyard of 383 Pulaski St. in Bedford-Stuyvesant around 4 p.m. when he was caught in the crossfire between two gunmen, cops said.

In less than a week, the city’s $50 million “crown jewel’’ pool in Brooklyn’s McCarren Park has turned into a mini-war zone, where frightening melees have injured two cops and a lifeguard. The Greenpoint pool reopened last week with a splashy ribbon-cutting ceremony featuring Mayor Bloomberg speaking of its “illustrious past and bright future.’’ But yesterday, hundreds of frustrated people were forced to stand in lines that stretched around the block as they waited to be searched by members of a force of 30 security officers that included 20 cops. With temperatures flirting with 90 degrees yesterday, many got hot...

When Jihad Came to America by Andrew C. McCarthy On May 2 and 3, 1990, the U.S. embassy in Cairo alerted its counterpart in Khartoum that Egypt’s “leading radical,” Omar Abdel Rahman, was on his way to Sudan. Warning that his ultimate plan might be to seek exile in the United States, the Cairo embassy asked its colleagues to pass along any information they might learn about his activities on Sudanese soil. What did U.S. officials already know about Abdel Rahman in 1990? As the 9/11 Commission would later determine, they knew that he had been arrested repeatedly in Egypt...

A group of Brooklyn students on a school trip to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum were booted from the hallowed site after they callously hurled trash into its fountains. The vile vandals from Junior High School 292 in East New York treated the solemn memorial — its reflecting pools honoring the nearly 3,000 people killed in the terror attacks — like a garbage dump.

After a Brooklyn principal's controversial ban on "God Bless The USA" from a graduation ceremony in favor of Justin Bieber's song "Baby," several New York Republicans are blasting the decision as anti-American and offensive. Congressman Bob Turner-- who last year replaced disgraced Congressman Anthony Weiner-- even staged a bizarre press conference adjacent to Hawkins' Public School No. 90, where he and several elementary school children camped outside on Monday waving American flags and belting out "Proud To Be An American." The press conference, however, took a turn when several hecklers showed up to protest Turner's sing-a-long. Amidst the uncomfortable singing,...

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – How would you like to not pay your rent, year after year, and get away with it? A Brooklyn woman has done just that for the past six years. Artist Margaret Maugenest, 60, stopped paying rent for several years, but instead of getting evicted, the state’s highest court said she was justified, CBS 2′s John Slattery reported. “Yeah, I feel very good about that, John. I feel very relieved,” Maugenest told Slattery. Since 1984, Maugenest has lived in a loft — a converted manufacturing building on Nevins Street in Gowanus – with rent of less than...

A Coney Island [Brooklyn, New York] principal has pulled Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” from a kindergarten “moving up” ceremony, out of concern that Greenwood’s patriotic song was age-inappropriate and potentially offensive. “We don’t want to offend other cultures,” teachers quoted Greta Hawkins, the principal of the Edna Cohen School, as saying to defend her decision to nix “God Bless the USA” from the ceremony, the New York Post reports. Greenwood’s song had been sung at previous school functions, and students in five classes reportedly spent months rehearsing for the moving up ceremony. Department of Education spokeswoman Jessica Scaperotti...

A uniformed NYPD sergeant was caught on video unleashing a vulgar tirade against a group of Brooklyn men — threatening them with his gun even while condoning their criminal behavior, The Post has learned. * * * “I have the long [expletive]. You don’t,” the cop bragged. “Your pretty face — I like it very much. My [expletive] will go in your mouth and come out your ear. Don’t [expletive] with me. All right?”

533 Nostrand Avenue (between Atlantic Avenue and Herkimer Street), Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn; (718) 789-1155.“Pastrami, baby!” whooped a dreadlocked diner recently at David’s Brisket House. “As salaam alaikum, pastrami!” This Bedford-Stuyvesant institution inspires vocal exuberance, the subtext of which seems to be: Thank goodness for Brooklyn, where Yemeni Muslim guys serve exemplary Jewish deli sandwiches to a predominantly African-American crowd. The cultural mashup of David’s only adds to the charm of its pastrami. Such personality! So hot and sweet and sassy. It’s irresistible piled on rye with spicy brown mustard, or even with mayonnaise, as some here prefer (all beef sandwiches are...

"They are sitting on the corners like pirates," says Tony Gentile The vendors and their fans blame racism for the heat as more Arabs and Asians move into the South Brooklyn neighborhood, once an Italian enclave... Falafel sellers Sammy Kassen, 21, manger of Middle Eastern Halal Food which sits about 50 feet from Lone Star and Islam Baiuomy, owner of Halal Express Food which is across the street, cash in on running a cheap business on the pavement. The vendors and their fans blame racism for the heat as more Arabs and Asians move into the South Brooklyn neighborhood, once...

A move by Hooters to open near the new Nets arena has gone bust so far — but brownstone Brooklyn is melting down at the very thought of the risque restaurant invading their neighborhood. Hooters reps have been trolling through the stroller-friendly neighborhoods of Prospect Heights and Park Slope for a possible storefront — but local moms say they are ready for battle.

Four members of the NYPD’s elite Emergency Service Unit were shot early today during a wild shootout with an ex-con barricaded inside his Brooklyn apartment, police said. Detective Michael Keenan, 52, was struck in his left calf while Detective Kenneth Ayala, 49, was hit in the thigh and left ankle during a 12:30 a.m. firefight with Nakwon Foxworth, 33, inside the suspect’s apartment building at 3301 Nostrand Ave. in Sheepshead Bay, said NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly.

NEW YORK (AFP) – A dual US-Lebanese citizen has been extradited from Paraguay and charged with supporting Lebanon's Hezbollah militant force, US officials said Friday. Moussa Ali Hamdan, 38, appeared in court in Philadelphia following his extradition and has been charged with providing "material support to Hezbollah, a designated foreign terrorist organization," the federal prosecutor's office in Pennsylvania said in a statement. Hamdan was arrested by Paraguayan authorities June 15 on suspicion of supporting terrorism and was subsequently handed over to US custody. He is accused in the United States on 28 counts including conspiring to supply Hezbollah with proceeds...

Ruby was a knishman who I remember in Bayview Projects, Canarsie, in the early-mid sixties. Everyone remembered his most famous quote, spoken with a BOOMING voice: "GET YOUR HOT POTATO KNISHES, I WANT TO SEND MY WIFE TO FLORIDA! My other recollections of Ruby as a kid not yet 10 years old are: -Ruby was always in the best of spirits (I do not recall EVER seeing such a serious face as in the picture). -We often did not have the 12 cents for the knish. Ruby would still let us hang out by his wagon. He would give us...

They’re occupying his home. Occupy Wall Street protesters announced with great fanfare last month that they moved a homeless family into a “foreclosed” Brooklyn, N.Y., home — even though they knew the house belonged to a struggling single father desperately trying to renegotiate his mortgage, The Post has learned. “They’re trying to take a house and say the bank is robbing the people because the mortgage is too high — so contact the owner!” fumed Wise Ahadzi, 28, who owns the home at 702 Vermont St. in East New York. Occupiers “reclaimed” the row house on Dec. 6 and ceremoniously...

A cheap jewellery shop in a Brooklyn, New York, neighbourhood has found itself at the centre of an impassioned controversy because of a pair of $5.99 earrings. Bejeweled, an accessories retailer in the predominantly Polish neighbourhood north of Williamsburg, was caught selling studs in the shape of a swastika by a shocked customer. According to the tipster, who recounted the discovery on Gothamist, the manager's justification for the offensive merchandise was simply, 'business.' Though bloggers and reviewers on popular search engine, Yelp, damned the store for selling the earrings, some pointed out that on closer inspection the swastika was in...

A belated Merry Christmas to my fellow FReepers.

Brooklyn Senator Expected to Plead Guilty in Corruption CaseBy WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM and BENJAMIN WEISER Published: December 19, 2011 State Senator Carl Kruger was expected to plead guilty on Tuesday to federal corruption charges that he accepted at least $1 million in bribes to finance a lavish lifestyle, including a large home in Mill Basin, Brooklyn, where he lived with two gynecologist brothers and their mother, according to several people briefed on the case. One of the brothers, Michael Turano, who was also charged in the corruption case unveiled in the spring, was expected to plead guilty along with Mr....

A Brooklyn fiend repaid the kindness of an elderly woman who hired him for odd jobs by first stealing from her — and then burning her alive when she fired him, police said yesterday. “I hope he burns in hell!” the victim’s stricken daughter, Sheila Gillespie Hillsman, 49, fumed to pals on Facebook. DA CALLS FIEND'S ACTION 'BRUTAL MURDER' Accused sadistic killer Jerome “Jerry’’ Isaac, 47, was reeking of gasoline when he turned himself in to cops more than eight hours after the horrific torching of tragic 73--year-old churchgoer Delores Gillespie. Cops said Isaac was furious that the postal clerk...

The operation to occupy a vacant foreclosed home in Brooklyn on behalf of a homeless family from New York City appears to be a success. The front door of the two-story brick house on Vermont Street apparently was unlocked when the marchers arrived. Alfredo Carrasquillo, the father of the homeless family, thanked the marchers for at least temporarily providing them with a home. **** Police who escorted the marchers through Brooklyn stopped when the marchers arrived at the home and remained a distance away as the celebration of the “liberation” of the foreclosed home began. A brass band played, people...

SNIPPET: "In July, the British government warned that Al Qaeda’s exploitation of social networking websites is on the rise." SNIPPET: "The massive and multifarious network of websites and social media has presented a challenge to authorities in trying to combat it. Additionally, civil liberty concerns have conflicted with government efforts to spy on communications. Reducing terrorist activity on social media sites has been particularly difficult because users have adopted new forms of communication to conform with the new formats. Many Arabic speakers on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other sites use Arabizi, a form of colloquial Arabic written in the Latin...

A gunman perched on a Brooklyn rooftop opened fire Friday, grazing an 11-year-old girl and killing a pregnant woman who was shielding several of her kids. A second woman was wounded when the the gunman unleashed a hail of bullets from atop a building near Public School 298 in Brownsville about 2:30 p.m., police said. Zurana Horton, the 33-year-old pregnant woman, was hit in the head in front of the Lucky Supermarket at Pitkin Ave. and Watkins St. after she threw herself over a group of children, cops and witnesses said. "Moments before, she was seen hovering over several children...