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New York’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade will finally end its ban on gay groups marching in its annual Irish celebration, organizers said Wednesday. OUT@NBCUniversal—a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender affinity group at 30 Rock—will be flying its banner and marching up Fifth Avenue on March 17, officials said. That’ll be the only gay group marching in the 2015 version of the world’s largest St. Patrick’s Day Parade, but other LGBT groups can apply in future years, spokesman Bill O’Reilly said. …

Organizers of the world's largest St. Patrick's Day Parade say they're ending a ban and allowing a gay group to march under its own banner for the first time. The prohibition on identified gay groups in the centuries-old New York parade had made participation a political issue. Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio refused to march this year, and Guinness beer dropped its sponsorship.

A gay group will be able to march under its own banner in the city's St. Patrick's Day Parade for the first time on March 17, organizers said Wednesday. The nation’s oldest and biggest St. Pat's parade will lift the ban on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender groups that want to participate while identifying themselves as gay. “Those of us who are Irish and LGBT would watch this city celebrate and know we weren’t welcome,” former City Council speaker Christine Quinn, who boycotted the event for decades, told the Daily News. “To have that end, not only puts all of...

With recent waves of Central Americans seeking to reach the U.S., human smuggling along the Texas border has, at least for the moment, become more lucrative than smuggling illicit drugs for criminal organizations such as the Gulf and Zetas cartels, according to two U.S. intelligence officials. U.S. agents tracking the money flow as part of the anti-smuggling Operation Coyote say that in just over six months, human smuggling has generated nearly $50 million, mostly in the area around the Mexican border city of Reynosa. The revenue has helped sustain the Gulf cartel during a bloody internal split, the officials said....

There is a new chart-topper in Roll Call’s latest monthly ranking of the 10 most vulnerable senators. Montana’s appointed Sen. John Walsh was by far the most endangered incumbent in the chamber at the time of the previous installment in early August, but his decision last month to not seek a full term opened the top slot to a couple other worthy contenders. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., is still in a perilous political position, but Louisiana Sen. Mary L. Landrieu has leapfrogged him on the list to become the Senate’s most vulnerable incumbent. The Democrat is pushing hard to eclipse...

Full Title: Bedbugs spotted at least 21 times on subways in August, say sources — MTA hiring expert to review efforts “We’ve never had sightings to this magnitude,” said Joe Costales, a chairman with Transport Workers Union Local 100. “We’ve had isolated incidents in crew quarters, but it’s no longer an isolated scenario. It’s throughout the system.”

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Remember when President Obama touted the Affordable Care Act by claiming if you "liked your plan you could keep it"? He earnedPolitifact's 2013 "Lie of the Year" for that whopper. Amazingly, several other Democrats made the same false promise. Knowing what we know now, wouldn't you want to expose any politician who stood behind that misleading statement? Well, if someone uttered those words in the state of New York, you may now be forced to let it slide. A new law in the Empire State, which some are calling the ' shut up rule,' could allow such lofty claims...

The first suspect has been arrested in a pair of racially-motivated pellet-gun shootings earlier this month in Central Park.

Cops have charged a 20-year-old black man with hate crimes after he fired a pellet gun at two white joggers in Central Park, authorities said. --snip-- He faces charges of assault and reckless endangerment as hate crimes and weapons possession.

Three punks jumped an off-duty cop in Midtown, leaving him hospitalized with a head injury, authorities said Saturday. In what is believed to be an unprovoked assault, the three suspects ganged up on the 42-year-old cop on W. 49th St. near Ninth Ave. in Hell’s Kitchen early Friday morning, cops said. The incident began just after midnight when one of the three suspects jumped in front of the off-duty officer “in a fighting stance,” police said. The cop tried to walk past him, but the wacko’s two friends joined in and began to pummel the cop, leaving him with a...

Some homeowners in the Hamptons are puzzled and angry after finding recruitment pamphlets for the Ku Klux Klan at their homes. As CBS 2’s Jennifer McLogan reported Tuesday, Fernando Alvarez said he found the fliers under his Hampton Bays door. His family was left wondering if they were targets of the hate group, or if the leafleting was random. “We were really shocked that … in this area we can have KKK,” Alvarez said. […] The Loyal White Knights, a KKK branch based in the South, referred CBS 2 to its grand dragon, Robert Jones. He said he is unaware...

Cops are questioning two alleged ‘anti-white’ thugs who shot a woman in Central Park with a pellet gun and police sources said they have been linked to a few other pellet gun shootings around the city.

Genevieve Wood of the Heritage Foundation reports on a piece of news about the Empire State which came as a surprise even to me. (And it’s a subject near and dear to my heart, particularly in recent months, but more on that below.) If you had to guess which state in the US has the largest single chapter membership for the National Rifle Association and it’s associated groups, what would you say? Texas? Georgia? Good guesses, but actually it’s New York. (See update below) In just one year, the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association saw its membership...

many unaccompanied alien children (UAC) were set free in various counties across the country. More were released in Texas' Harris County--in which Houston is located--than any other county in the nation. ... Dallas County received the second most UAC in Texas ... Educating the foreign minors will not be cheap; David Anderson, the Texas Education Agency General Counsel, recently pointed out that due to cultural differences and language barriers, it will be more costly to education immigrant children than it is to educate students who are U.S. citizens. In Texas, more than $45 million will be spent educating the UAC...

BERNE - A 21st-century Albany County initiative that combines farmers markets with online shopping is receiving extra funds to continue growth. State Sens. Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and Rep. Paul Tonko announced Wednesday that FarmieMarket Online LLC, based in the town of Berne, is receiving $24,490 in federal funding. The SNAP’s monthly electronic benefit transfers (EBT) dollars, which 95,000 individuals and their families in the Capital Region currently receive, cannot be used in many online food stores, but only at authorized retail food stores. The new program will allow EBT users to order fresh food online with the benefit...

A plan for a luxury skyscraper with a so-called “poor door” is changing to extend more of a welcome to residents of its cluster of affordable apartments, officials and the developers said Friday. The retooled plan for 1 West End Ave. still involves separate entrances, but all residents will now have access to such building amenities as a courtyard and river-view roof deck, and the affordable segment’s lobby will be stylishly appointed and set facing a park. […] … (S)ome residents and officials see the divisions as discriminatory, and Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration has said it aims to bar...

EXCERPT The White House says Obama has changed his plans for Friday and will return to Washington late in the evening after fundraisers in Rhode Island and New York. He had planned to spend the night in New York. Presidential aides say the change in plans was not related to any current events and was the president's personal choice. Obama will spend Saturday morning in Washington, then return to New York later in the day for the wedding of his personal chef Sam Kass and MSNBC host Alex Wagner.

A Washington Post story headlined “Not Their Grandfather’s Protest” sought to depict the Ferguson riots, triggered by the fatal shooting of a black youth by a white police officer, as a new generation of the Civil Rights movement. Not so. As much as we mourn the tragic death of Michael Brown, we can’t help noticing that the mob in Ferguson was destructive, hateful, and only too eager to liquidate small businesses that provided a livelihood for people whose only sin was doing business in Ferguson, Mo. Watching the Ferguson riots on TV, I spotted a sign that said, “Begin the...

In her upcoming book “Off the Sidelines,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., reveals she was the subject of insensitive comments about her weight from male colleagues in the House and Senate. According to an excerpt posted by PEOPLE magazine, Gillibrand details an incident in her book where a male colleague  saw her in the gym said, “Good thing you’re working out, because you wouldn’t want to get porky!” According to the Huffington Post, Gillibrand responded, “”Thanks, a–hole.”