Free Republic

<p>No link yet. Friend in area has told me. Firemen on roof of Trump Tower. TV should cover soon.</p>

New York City is using eminent domain to take an East Harlem businessman to the cleaners. Damon Bae, whose family success story embodies the American Dream, is about to lose the shirt off his back — after a 12-year battle with the city for control of his dry cleaning enterprise. Fancy Cleaners, a 6,000-square-foot facility at the corner of 126th St. and Third Ave., was supposed to be the cornerstone of a family empire built by a Korean couple who came to the U.S. in 1981, bringing their tailoring skills with them along with two young children and endless ambition....

Manhattan is set to get 3 inches of snow starting around 5 or 6 a.m. Thursday, but parts of Queens, Brooklyn and Long Island should brace for at least double that, experts warned.

Hundreds of new protective barriers will be permanently installed in Times Square and other locations around New York in an effort to block vehicles from hitting pedestrians after deadly attacks last year on crowds. The city is spending $50 million on protective measures including the installation of 1,500 metal barriers, or bollards, in key locations around the city, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday.

An Army solider died in the Bronx inferno Thursday night — while heroically rushing in and out of the apartment building to save several other lives, his grieving dad told The Post. “That’s his nature,” said Kwabena Mensah, 62, whose son Emmanuel died when the Belmont building went up in flames. “He was trying to help people out from the fire, and unfortunately he lost his life. He tried to do his best.

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — A soldier visiting New York City who had been reported missing following a deadly fire in the Bronx was among the 12 people killed in the massive blaze, sources tell CBS2. As smoke engulfed the building on Prospect Avenue just before 7 p.m. Thursday, family after family desperately ran out, barefoot and freezing, to try and get to safety. “When I wake up, all I see is the flames going up, kids are on the fire escape,” said neighbor Rafael Gonzalez. “It was one apartment and then it escalated to two apartments. It just kept going...

NEW YORK, NY — A child playing with a stove started a massive fire that killed a dozen people in the Bronx Thursday night, officials said Friday morning.

An accountant discovered the discrepancy while reviewing the budget for new train platforms under Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan. The budget showed that 900 workers were being paid to dig caverns for the platforms as part of a 3.5-mile tunnel connecting the historic station to the Long Island Rail Road. But the accountant could only identify about 700 jobs that needed to be done, according to three project supervisors. Officials could not find any reason for the other 200 people to be there. Show Full Article

BELMONT, the Bronx — Twelve people are dead and several others injured as a massive fire ripped through an apartment building in the Bronx on a frigid night, Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a press conference on Thursday. About 170 firefighters responded to the blaze at the five-story, walk-up apartment building at 2363 Prospect Ave., near East 187th Street around 7 p.m. It quickly escalated to a 5-alarm fire.

The oldest daughter of Eric Garner — who has become an advocate against police brutality since her dad’s death — suffered a heart attack Saturday night and was in critical condition on Christmas Eve, family members told the Daily News. Erica Garner, whose father died in 2014 when NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo placed him in a chokehold on Staten Island, was on life support in ICU in a Brooklyn hospital, the family said. The 27-year-old mother of two is unable to breathe on her own, family said. Esaw Snipes-Garner, Erica’s mother, told The News her daughter’s condition was grave but...

Back in early November, we talked about the little-noted demise of two of the weekly local papers in New York City, the Gothamist and DNAinfo. At the time, I noted that it was really a sad development because papers like that have the somewhat unique ability to focus all of their time and resources on covering local news which is often drowned out amidst all the national and global stories which eat up the front pages of the bigger papers. Those two outlets broke many stories about municipal corruption and waste, as well as keeping a finger on the pulse...

Anti-semitic, pro-Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour has been accused of allowing a woman who worked for her to be sexually assaulted and harassed. The woman also said Sarsour threatened her if she went public with the charges. The woman who made the claim, Asmi Fathelbab, worked at the time with Sarsour, who was executive director of the Arab American Association, the Daily Caller reported. Fathelbab said after she started working with the association as a contractor in 2009 she was groped and physically attacked by a man who also worked there. But her reports to leadership at the association were ignored...

**SNIP** For the first time, many wealthy Manhattanites will finally feel the full burden that their state legislators and city leadership have put on them. De Blasio is actually trying to increase millionaire New York City taxpayers’ loads as Republicans put the finishing touches on their bill. The mayor is trying to levy a 14 percent tax increase on the city’s millionaires to pay for improvements to the city’s subway system. The governor-elect of New Jersey is looking to pull a similar tactic to raise money for public schools in the state.

Dr. Dean Lorich, a trauma surgeon, was found dead with a knife in his torso in his E. 96th St. apartment on Dec. 11, 2017. An acclaimed trauma surgeon was found dead, with a knife in his chest, by his 11-year-old daughter Sunday in his Park Ave. apartment, police said. Investigators were treating the death of Dr. Dean Lorich as an apparent suicide, sources said. “He was under some personal stress,” a police source said. The surgeon was home with his daughter, police said, adding there were no signs of forced entry at the tony Upper East Side apartment...

The failed New York City subway bomber reportedly attended a terrorist-linked mosque in Brooklyn that was once funded by the Saudi government. In an unsealed “confidential” report on counterterrorism issued by the NYPD’s intelligence unit, the agency designated five individuals linked to the Masjid Nur Al-Islam mosque attended by the NYC terrorist Akayed Ullah as “most dangerous.” Bangladeshi law enforcement learned from Ullah’s relatives that the 27-year-old terrorist “had shown no sign of being interested in extremism before [moving] to US [sic] with his family in 2011,” reports the Dhaka Tribune.

Pilot Yousef Dajah widely praised in Jordan after he told his passengers that their Amman-NY flight path would take them over “Jerusalem, capital of Palestine”; “He knew there were many Americans on the flight, but he did it anyway,” says co-pilot.The pilot of a Royal Jordanian fight enjoyed praise in his country after he announced to passengers on the in-flight PA system that the plane was flying over “Jerusalem, the capital of Palestine” and along the Palestine Mediterranean coast. His announcement on flight RJ216 from Amman to NYC was greeted with enthusiastic applause by the passengers and a recording of...

A flagship liberal Orthodox synagogue in New York will stop congratulating same-sex couples on their weddings following a complaint by the Orthodox Union. The Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in the Bronx will no longer announce the weddings of its LGBT members in its newsletters in accordance with a policy dictated by the OU, the largest association of Orthodox synagogues in the United States. The policy was set out this month in response to complaints from other member synagogues, which take a harder line on opposing same-sex marriage. Orthodox Jewish law, or halacha, prohibits same-sex marriage, and Orthodox rabbis are not...

A former inspector for the federal government now diagnosed with a terminal 9/11 illness is battling with the Labor Department for his workers’ compensation benefit.  Dale Henderson, 59, was a compliance inspector with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration on 9/11.  He’s been diagnosed by government doctors with interstitial lung disease — one of several illnesses linked to exposure to hazardous materials on 9/11 or at Ground Zero.  Henderson’s 9/11 illness was acknowledged by the World Trade Center Victims Compensation Fund — which awarded him a $300,000 payout when he first got sick.9/11 asbestos debris lawsuits cleared by N.Y....

A man who swiped an elderly woman’s house with phony documents did time for the crime — but an appellate court is letting the city off the hook for processing the paperwork that let the ex-con make himself at home.   A Brooklyn appeals court has ruled that a judge was right to toss a lawsuit brought against the city by Jennifer Merin — whose Queens abode was filched by a criminal who filed a fraudulent deed.   Merin, 74, had sued the city for not catching the forgery when the paperwork was first filed, but lost on appeal when the court...

A New York financier has been killed in a shark attack while scuba diving off the coast of Costa Rica, the country's Environment Ministry announced. Rohina Bhandari, 49, a senior director at WL Ross & Co. LL, was identified by friends as the American tourist who was fatally attacked last Thursday. She was dragged from the Pacific Ocean after sustaining severe bites to her legs but could not be saved. Her 26-year-old diving instructor was also badly injured.