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MANHATTAN — The death of the pioneering judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam has been deemed "suspicious" by investigators who are seeking more information, NYPD officials said Wednesday. Abdus-Salaam, who was the first African-American woman to sit on New York state's highest court, was found dead in the Hudson River near West 132nd Street about 1:45 p.m. on April 12, officials said. “There's no apparent trauma to her body. We don't believe she was in the water a long time,” the NYPD's Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said at the time. But in the ensuing week, few answers emerged. Investigators said Wednesday morning...

Pedro Hernandez, the bodega clerk convicted for the 1979 murder of New York first-grader Etan Patz was sentenced on Tuesday to 25 years to life in prison, CNN reports. Hernandez, 56, was convicted of kidnapping and murder in February, nearly 40 years after the six-year-old disappeared on May 25, 1979. Etan left home to walk to a school bus stop and was not seen again. In the early 1980s, his photo appeared on milk cartons across the country, the first time the method was used to try to locate missing children. Hernandez was previously tried for the same charges in...

A student at a private Muslim school in Queens, New York called the Boston Marathon bombers Jews, a former teacher says. The New York Post reported Sunday that Nina Kossman, a former English teacher at the Razi School in Woodside, asked her students at one time: “Do you know what happens when people start hating each other for their differences?” One student replied, “My parents said they [the Boston bombers] were bad people. They were Jews.” […] “I was shocked,” said Koss­man. Kossman was removed from the private religious school last month after she told students the Adam and Eve...

A day after Mayor de Blasio criticized Wall Street’s Charging Bull statue as an ode to “unfettered capitalism,” Gov. Cuomo said “I never found it particularly offensive.” “I’ve gone past it many times,” Cuomo told reporters at the governor’s mansion, where he hosted an Easter egg roll Saturday.

A mob of Penn Station travelers fled the transit hub in hysteria after Amtrak police officers used a stun gun on a man. The busy Penn Station was already a mad house from a NJ Transit train that stalled in a tunnel, backing up service for more than two hours ahead of the Friday rush on a holiday weekend. By 6:30 p.m., shortly after the stalled train was taken to Penn Station, riders stampeded away from the site where the man was hit with the stun gun. Luggage food and clothes were strewn across the floor.

A pioneering judge, who became the first Muslim woman in US history to serve on the bench, was found dead Wednesday — washed up on the Manhattan side of the Hudson River, sources said. Sheila Abdus-Salaam, 65, was discovered floating in the water near 132nd Street and Hudson Parkway at around 1:45 p.m., according to police sources. Witnesses had spotted her fully clothed body and called 911, cops said.

New York City can destroy personal documents associated with its municipal identification program, a judge ruled Friday in a victory for city officials who have sought to protect cardholders from possible deportation. Republican state Assembly members Ronald Castorina Jr. and Nicole Malliotakis filed a lawsuit in December seeking to prevent the destruction of documents, such as copies of foreign passports, used to verify a person’s identity to obtain the IDNYC card. Justice Philip G. Minardo of State Supreme Court on Staten Island ruled against the lawmakers but issued a stay Friday until April 17, pending an appeal. …

New York, New York. So nice they say it twice. But it’s apparently not nice enough anymore for people to want to stick around. The NY Post highlights some recent population figures which indicate that a growing number of Gotham residents (that would be rapidly growing) either don’t want to live there anymore or simply can’t afford to. In either case, there’s a bit of an exodus going on and the Big Apple is losing residents faster than any other major metropolitan area in the country. More people are leaving the New York region than any other major metropolitan...

In the wake of an announcement by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions that he would cut off funding if so-called sanctuary cities did not begin cooperating with the federal government regarding illegal aliens, it has been reported that the New York City Police Department [NYPD] alerts Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE] agents if immigrants facing deportation are due to appear in Criminal Court, thereby making it easier for them to be detained by the federal government.Although many cities loudly proclaimed that they would not yield to these threats and yield even one inch on their sanctuary status, some observers, including...

Every inmate who leaves a Big Apple jail after serving a sentence will have a job waiting for him or her, under a new city-funded initiative, Mayor de Blasio announced Wednesday. When asked why ex-convicts were being guaranteed work over unemployed residents who haven’t broken the law — including city high-school and college graduates — Hizzoner insisted the initiative, which will cost taxpayers $10 million a year, is a “smart investment for everyone.”

It used to be that taking a 10-minute walk around SoHo meant passing by at least a dozen upstart, trendy fashion retailers eager to sell you a $500 hoodie or $1,000 pair of sneakers.  But these days you're much more likely to see a whole bunch of this: As Bloomberg points out this morning, in the wake of Manhattan's retail drought, commercial landlords, who have seen retail occupancy levels plummet over the past 12 months, are doing everything possible to avoid big price cuts.  Instead, like residential landlords, commercial real estate owners are providing massive rent concessions through things like...

A former hedge fund manager on Friday fought for a chance to get former Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara on the witness stand. David Ganek, founder of Level Global, asked a federal appeals court to keep alive his 2015 lawsuit charging Bharara and the FBI with “fabricating evidence” to raid his $4 billion hedge fund in 2010. Bharara already tried once filed to kill the suit, which a trial judge denied in March. The prosecutor then appealed the ruling. “The notion there is no remedy when an officer of the United States [lies] in an affidavit is extraordinary,” Ganek’s lawyer...

Mayor Breaks Silence on 'Agents of the City' Ruling During Weekly Radio Show By Grace Rauh Friday, March 24, 2017 at 11:25 AM EDT NEW YORK - Mayor Bill de Blasio on Friday spoke out for the first time about his loss in court to NY1 over his emails with a so-called "Agent of the City." The mayor on Thursday refused to answer our questions about the lawsuit and the emails he exchanged with an outside advisor - emails a state Supreme Court judge ruled that the city must turn over to NY1 and the New York Post. • READ...

Tim Keller founded one of the most influential urban churches in America, Redeemer Presbyterian, which is theologically conservative, racially diverse and growing across its three New York City congregations. He was set to receive an award from Princeton Theological Seminary, also a Presbyterian institution in the Reformed tradition, for his contributions to the “Neo-Calvinist vision of religious engagement.”

Now that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio no longer has Preet Bharara to worry about he can get back to the important work of doing what he likes best. That would be opposing the Trump administration at every turn. This week he announced his latest initiative on that front, informing the public that New York City schools are being trained on how to “resist” Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. But as our colleagues at Townhall revealed, most of this so-called training is far more show than substance. At a press conference in front of New York’s Tweed...

<p>Another group of kids attempting to take a selfie on top of some ice at The Pond in Central Park plunged into its icy waters, officials said.</p> <p>Two teenage boys, ages 15 and 13, were attempting to take a selfie on top of the frozen body of water when they fell through the ice at around 7 p.m. Sunday.</p>

They spent decades on the sidelines every March 17 loudly protesting their exclusion from the New York City St. Patrick’s Day parade, and proclaimed victory last year with the inclusion of the first Irish gay group, the Lavender and Green Alliance, but the protest group called Irish Queers appears to have had enough of the Fifth Avenue march after only a year and won’t take part in 2017. In a new post on its blog titled “Sorry not sorry! Join us this St. Patrick’s Day!,” a message from Irish Queers says the group will be “repping Irish America at a...

Hillary Clinton was at a small gathering recently with some politically connected people in NYC, and it seems she's noodling the idea of running for mayor. A source who was at the gathering last month says Hillary brought up the topic of running and made it clear she was honestly considering it.

Before the inauguration, Donald Trump and Preet Bharara met and an agreement was struck that would keep US Attorney Bharara in his current position in New York under a new Trump administration. New York Senator Charles Schumer was instrumental in getting Bharara appointed to that position and in return was asked from time to time to do favors for the senator and his allies. Up until recently, President Trump had no idea what was really going on. Once President Trump’s staff understood the quid pro quo, they had no choice but to ask for Bharara’s resignation.

A man is in critical condition after being savagely beaten by four men inside a Flatbush fried chicken spot — and then robbed by a fifth as he lay helpless on the floor, cops say. The 37-year-old victim told police that an argument began when he offered to help two men pay for their meal, which they were a few dollars short of paying for, inside Texas Chicken and Burgers in Brooklyn on March 1.