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Jeffrey Epstein was denied bail on Thursday, and will remain at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan ahead of his criminal trial on federal sex trafficking charges. The decision comes after two court filings submitted by his legal team were shown to have false or misleading information. On Tuesday, Epstein's defense team appeared to be throwing down the gauntlet when they declared prosecutors had no proof Epstein had ever used an official Austrian passport with his photo and an assumed name that was found in a safe at his $77 million mansion. 'He never used the document to travel internationally...

A federal judge Wednesday confirmed federal prosecutors in New York City ended their investigation into Trump campaign finance violations, which focused on former Trump attorney Michael Cohen and the Trump Organization. Judge William Pauley confirmed the end of the probe in an order to release the remaining files in the case against Michael Cohen, the former Trump attorney who is serving a three-year prison term for several crimes. The end of the investigation indicates that no additional Trump Organization executives — a group that includes Donald Trump Jr. — will be charged in the investigation, which was led by attorneys...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the release of documents relating to hush-money payments by Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen to two women who said they had sexual encounters years ago with the U.S. president, declaring the matter of “national importance.” U.S. District Judge William Pauley in Manhattan ordered that the documents, used by federal prosecutors to obtain a search warrant for Cohen’s home and office last year, must be unsealed by 11 a.m. (1500 GMT) on Thursday. Cohen, 52, pleaded guilty in 2018 to directing payments of $130,000 to adult film star Stormy...

ABC host George Stephanopoulos said he regrets dining with Jeffrey Epstein about a year after the accused sex trafficker finished his first stint in jail for pleading guilty to soliciting an underage prostitute. “That dinner was the first and last time I’ve seen him,” Stephanopoulos said in an email to The New York Times. “I should have done more due diligence. It was a mistake to go.” Epstein hosted Stephanopoulos and a slew of other media insiders — including news anchors Katie Couric and Charlie Rose, comedian Chelsea Handler and director Woody Allen — at his Manhattan townhome in December...

Yesterday there was a power outage in Manhattan, I won't call it massive because some people had a problem with that word. Originally it was stated a transformer fire was the cause of the outage, now Con Ed says there is no evidence of a fire.....call me paranoid, but my ears perk up with I hear things like this...https://nypost.com/2019/07/14/con-ed-cant-explain-what-caused-the-manhattan-blackout/

In a statement released late Sunday morning, the power company said it “will be conducting a diligent and vigorous investigation to determine the root cause of the incident.” Con Ed spokesman Alfonso Quiroz blamed the blackout on a “disruption on the transmission side” of the company’s power grid. Officials initially suspected a manhole fire that affected an underground transformer, but Quiroz said there’s “no evidence of a fire at this point.” The blackout stranded people on subway trains and elevators, and forced the evacuation of Madison Square Garden and cancellation of Broadway shows. It struck on the 42nd anniversary of...

A massive power outage has been reported in NYC, it's probably nothing, but given the location, I would not want to be in Manhattan tonight, it could get interesting if the power is out for a significant length of time...

Five Manhattan lawmakers wrote to New York Attorney General Letitia James on Friday, urging her to probe Manhattan DA Cy Vance’s failed support eight years ago of more lenient sex offender monitoring for multi-millionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. The inexplicable, kid-glove treatment has already prompted outrage by one challenger for Vance’s office.

The Associated Press found that the wealthy financier's donations included $15,000 to the exclusive Hewitt School on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, $35,000 to the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, Maryland, and $25,000 to the Ecole du Bel-Air grade school in Haiti — all after he pleaded guilty in 2008 to charges of soliciting a minor for prostitution. Epstein's donations through his charitable foundations, though not in violation of his status as a sex offender, were nonetheless awkward for some recipients. They were also, at times, difficult to trace. It wasn't until later, when they realized a...

Two Middle East immigrants in the United States have been arrested in connection with terrorist activities after the FBI found out their chilling ties to the terrorist organization known as Hezbollah. This is a wake-up call to every American. According to a news release from United States Attorney’s Office, District of New York, “Ali Kourani and Samer El Debek, a/k/a ‘Samer Eldebek,’ were arrested on Thursday, June 1, 2017, on charges related to their alleged activities on behalf of Hizballah[sic], a designated foreign terrorist organization. “ Kourani was reportedly living in the Bronx in New York, while Eldebek was living...

In recent years, Hezbollah has stepped up its activities beyond Lebanon’s borders. This uptick has been clearest in the Middle East—in Iraq, Yemen, and especially Syria—but plots have also been thwarted in South America, Asia, Europe, and now, possibly, the United States. Reports of Hezbollah activity in North America are not new, though such reporting tends to focus on the group’s fundraising, money laundering, procurement, or other logistical activities from Vancouver to Miami. But last month, the criminal prosecution and conviction in New York of the Hezbollah operative Ali Kourani revealed disturbing new information about the extent of Hezbollah’s operations...

A helicopter crashed into a building in Manhattan on Monday, sparking a massive emergency response, officials said.

Key Points A helicopter crashed in midtown Manhattan on Monday afternoon. The crash occurred near West 51st Street and Seventh Avenue, on the north end of Times Square. A spokeswoman for the New York Police Department told CNBC the number of possible injuries is unknown.

Most people don't quite know what to make of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's alarm about Manhattan prosecutors' decision to throw President Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, into Rikers Island prison. It was an unprecedented move. Yet she's hardly a supporter of people connected to President Trump - she actually wants the president impeached. But she's right about what she's reading:

President Trump may get the chance to turn the federal courts in Manhattan conservative. Last week, he added two more judges to the 13-judge US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit — making the balance seven liberals to six conservatives. Soon, he will get to add two more. Circuit Judges Christopher Droney and Dennis Jacobs have announced they would be retiring in June, thus allowing Trump — who has vowed to nominate only conservative judges — to add two more of his own picks to the court. The Manhattan appeals court took the first step toward a conservative takeover...

When a retired New York woman left her $424,000 cashier’s check at a local pizzeria, she said she felt her “world just collapsed." That is, until an unlikely hero came to save the day: the very waiter she burned with no tip and a sassy note. After looking at a condo she hoped to buy, Karen Vinacour, her daughter and a real estate broker went to the historic Patsy’s Pizzeria in Manhattan to grab a slice of their signature brick-oven pizza — the same pizza enjoyed by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Al Pacino and even Justin Bieber. Tucked in...

NEW YORK — Six female corrections officers have been charged with illegally strip searching women who visited the Manhattan Detention Center, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office announced Monday. According to court documents, the corrections officers routinely strip searched female visitors without their consent. This included forcing the visitors to remove their pants and underwear, touching the visitors’ breasts, and examining the visitors’ private areas. Leslie-Ann Absalom 53, a former DOC captain, and DOC officers Daphne Farmer, 49, Jennifer George, 32, Lisette Rodriguez, 51, Alifa Waiters, 45, and Latoya Shuford, 36, have been all charged with official misconduct, unlawful imprisonment, conspiracy...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s surging national profile has inspired a trio of Republican opponents from her home district — along with a multimillionaire mystery donor who could help close the gap in her foes’ long-shot race against her. Just three months after taking office, the Democratic socialist congresswoman’s challengers include an Egyptian American journalist, who has already tossed her hat in the ring, and an NYPD cop-turned-high-school-civics teacher and conservative talk-radio producer, both of whom are seriously exploring a run against her. And the fledgling challengers could get help from a wealthy New Yorker committed to backing an Ocasio-Cortez opponent, a GOP...

New York woke Sunday to learn that state lawmakers had agreed to a budget that aims to spend a whopping $175 billion in the next fiscal year, while imposing a boatload of new taxes and fees in the name of funding the MTA. More hits to your pocket, and more spending, are still to come: The budget also sets up “independent” commissions to settle the details of both public funding of state political campaigns and “congestion” tolls in Manhattan. Plus, lawmakers this year may yet legalize online sports betting and the sale of pot, each of which will come with...

An elderly federal judge presiding over a key lawsuit relating to financier pedophile Jeffrey Epstein died Sunday, adding another twist to the drawn-out legal saga and to efforts to unseal still-secret details about the conduct of Epstein, his enablers and one of his accusers. Manhattan-based U.S. District Court Judge Robert Sweet passed away Sunday at age 96, the court announced. Sweet was appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1978, confirmed that same year and continued to hear and rule on cases through the last few months.