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Thursday night was no celebration for Ithaca Police, who responded to multiple reports of violence throughout the city. At around 12:06 a.m. Friday, Ithaca Police responded to a report of a 25-year-old Ithaca man who was severely beaten with a baseball bat in the city.... At around 12:15 a.m. that same night, police were called to the Holiday Inn on Cayuga Street to respond to a physical dispute... Later that night, just after 1:30 a.m., Ithaca Police got a report of shots fired in the 600 block of Chestnut Street. Police say two people were driving when a person shot...

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s press office announced this morning a dinner he is hosting at Gracie Mansion tonight for Muslims will be closed press, despite initially being listed as open. The Ramadan Iftar dinner, according to de Blasio spokesman Phil Walzak, “was always designed to be closed but was erroneously listed as open” on the mayor’s schedule last night “due to an internal miscommunication.” Walzak also said, "Tonight's event is closed press because it is a sit-down dinner and there also is a praying portion. Last year and the year before this event was closed press — it historically has...

Supporters of the police tactic stop, question and frisk are getting ready to say “I told you so,” now that new statistics show a spike in shooting incidents. According to the NYPD, shootings jumped 11 percent compared to the same time last year and this past weekend, there were 21 shootings alone, causing some to second-guess Mayor de Blasio’s decision to drop the city’s appeal against amendments added to stop and frisk. “No question about it, this was the biggest mistake the city has ever made,” Councilman Eric Ulrich (R-Ozone Park) said. Even Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said he would...

Jamaican native shares name with a Founding Father. They share little — except the American dreamMost Americans will be taking it easy on the Fourth of July — but Benjamin Franklin will be hard at work like he always is. Franklin - a 45-year-old Jamaican who just happens to share a name with the fabled “First American” — will sell DVDs and records at his unnamed Harlem storefront, a hard-working spirit that the inventor of bifocals and the editor of the Declaration of Independence would appreciate. “I’m a workaholic,” said the living Franklin, a father of five, ages 8 to...

Obamacare advocates in New York have had good reason to celebrate. In contrast to Oregon’s and other state-based exchanges, New York’s exchange rollout was a relatively smooth, successful affair. Now for some cold water: New York still has a long way to go. New York State’s Medicaid program, already among the nation’s largest and most expensive, just grew by 10%. And 87% of the new Medicaid enrollees were eligible under New York’s generous, old rules. This means the state will be picking up 50% of the cost for much of this population—not the 10% headline rate for the newly eligible,...

Insurance companies operating in New York State's marketplace are expected to ask for double-digit premium hikes next year, according to new filings from the companies. Capital New York reports the average requested increase was 13%. The New York Post reports that number at about 12%. But the bigger insurers are seeking a bigger premium hike — according to Capital, the six most popular plans in New York are requesting an average increase of almost 15%. The Post reports that Excellus Health Plan, which has about 24,000 customers, is requesting a 19.7% hike. MVP Health Plan, which has nearly 33,000 customers,...

Insurance companies that feed into New York’s health exchange system for Obamacare are requesting hikes to patient premiums that are in the double-digits, a New York Post investigation found. The average increase that insurers are considering for 2015 is 12 percent, the newspaper reported. But a large number of these insurers actually want to boost premium payment costs on patients by 20 percent. The rate hikes are curious, the New York Post noted, given the stated goal of Obamacare to rein in runaway medical costs. Insurers, however, blamed the premium increases directly on Obamacare.

It was nice to get back into the groove of Freeping today as about 4 dozen Freepers/Tea Partiers got together to tell hillary what we think of her during a book signing in her "hometown" of Chappaqua. A large crowd was expected- boy were they wrong. Yesterday my nephew, who works at a well known bakery a quarter-mile from the Chappaqua Library where the signing was held, informed me dozens of businesses in the area, including the one where he works, were warned of large crowds on Sunday due to the event. Here are the highlights:

New York state's top court ruled on Monday that towns have the authority to ban gas drilling within their borders, giving a boost to opponents of the drilling method known as fracking. The Court of Appeals in a 5-2 decision upheld drilling bans in the Ithaca suburb of Dryden and in Middlefield, near Cooperstown, saying the laws were extensions of the towns' zoning authority. Drilling company Norse Energy USA and an upstate dairy farmer separately sued the towns, claiming the bans violated a law designed to create uniform statewide regulations on the oil and gas industry. The court disagreed, saying...

The joke’s on you! A baby in a photo chosen by Nazis as the perfect Aryan baby has been revealed to in fact be Jewish, not German. Hessy Taft, who was 6 months old when the picture was taken, found out about the photograph after an aunt recognized her on a postcard, the Telegraph reports. But apparently the Nazis had no idea that the precious baby they deemed the “perfect Aryan” was actually a descendant of the House of David. Taft lived with her parents, Jacob and Pauline Levinsons, in Berlin during the height of the Nazis’ takeover in 1935....

The theft of an American flag from the family of a firefighter killed in September 11 is causing heartache as they desperately plead for its return... The flag stolen from the front of Melissa Brengel's Long Island property was flown over the World Trade Center during the recovery and cleanup and was later gifted to her from the September 11 Families Association. ...His father is also a firefighter and is a co-founder of Tribute WTC, which pays homage to the victims of the attack....

"Crisis" may be a little hyperbolic. But shale production of oil and gas in America suddenly got a lot riskier this week. That's because of a landmark decision from one of the highest state courts in the land. Upholding the right of individual towns to regulate shale drilling, trumping state or federal regulatory regimes. The ruling came down yesterday in New York. Where the State Court of Appeals voted 5-2 to reject challenges to fracking rules imposed on the oil and gas industry by two municipalities in the state: Dryden and Middlefield. The saga started in 2011. When the two...

JPMorgan Chase boss Jamie Dimon said Tuesday that he has been diagnosed with a curable throat cancer, but will remain working while undergoing treatment. The prognosis from doctors is "excellent" and it was caught quickly, he wrote in a memo to colleagues and shareholders. Dimon, 58, will receive radiation and chemotherapy treatment over the next eight weeks at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York. Although he will curtail his traveling, the bank CEO expects to be actively working during that period. He made the announcement just before he was about to leave on a previously scheduled trip to five...

A pizza delivery driver was severely beaten with a baseball bat while making a delivery Tuesday morning in the former B.W. Cooper housing project, according to the NOPD. The driver got out of the car in the 1300 block of South Prieur Street around 2 a.m. After asking a man waiting outside if he placed the order, the driver was beaten with a baseball bat. Nothing was taken, which has authorities wondering if the incident was a pizza delivery version of the ‘knockout game.’ The victim had to have staples put into his head and Domino’s has said it won’t...

It took just four days after the resignation of State Assemblywoman Gabriela Rosa for another New York lawmaker to be accused of corruption. This time, it's Thomas Libous, the State Senate's second-highest-ranking Republican and a close ally of Governor Cuomo. The New York Times reports that Libous and his lawyer son, Matthew, were charged in separate indictments on Tuesday. Senator Libous, who represents Broome, Chenango, Delaware, and Tioga Counties, allegedly lied to the FBI about promising to direct business to a law firm in exchange for the firm giving Matthew a job. He also allegedly instructed a lobbying firm to...

New York's highest court said on Tuesday that a law designed to criminalize cyberbullying was so broad that it violated the First Amendment, marking the first time a U.S. court weighed the constitutionality of such a law. . . . The Court of Appeals in a 5-2 decision said it was possible to pass a law outlawing bullying via social media or text message that respected free speech rights, but the county's statute went too far. . . . “The problem is, it’s going to be really tricky to write a law that is comprehensive in its coverage of bullying...

In a stunning reversal, infamous Cannibal Cop Gilberto Valle will likely have his conviction for a bizarre kidnapping conspiracy scheme overturned on Tuesday after a judge decided to revoke the guilty verdict in the flesh-eating fetish plot, a source said. The disgraced NYPD veteran, who was convicted of hatching a “heinous” plan to cook, kill, and eat several women — including his own wife — was facing life in prison for the crime. But Valle will likely have the major charge of conspiracy overturned and the sentence vacated with only a misdemeanor charge of using police computers to track down...

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New York’s top court handed a victory to opponents of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas Monday by affirming the right of municipalities to ban the practice within their borders. The state Court of Appeals affirmed a midlevel appeals court ruling from last year that said the state oil and gas law doesn’t trump the authority of local governments to control land use through zoning. […] The court in a 5-2 decision stressed that it did not consider the merits of fracking, but only the “home rule” authority of municipalities to regulate their land use. The court said the towns of...

According to CompStat figures, 129 people were shot last month — a 43 percent increase over the same period last year.