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NEW YORK (WABC) -- Firefighters are battling a six-alarm fire in the Breezy Point section of the Rockaway peninsula in Queens. Officials say the fire was reported at about 11 p.m. Monday and involves about 50 houses situated in a flooded Zone A area. A fire department spokesman says nearly 200 firefighters are currently at the scene. He says two people have suffered minor injuries. The cause of the fire was not immediately known.

The four areas where organized crime reigns in America -- New York City, Dirty Jersey, Chicagoland and South Florida -- also account for the lion's share of corruption convictions by federal prosecutors against local officials as reported by Joe Palazzolo for The Wall Street Journal Law Blog. The U.S. Department of Justice has released the number of corruption convictions its prosecutors have won against public servants over the last ten years across the 93 federal judicial districts into which the country is divided, and at the top of the list is New Jersey with 429 convictions. Third on the list...

He picked the wrong guy to mess with. A drunken Queens man went berserk after he couldn’t get an ATM to work at a gas station early yesterday and was killed when he turned his rage to the attendant — a former competitive kickboxer. “I feel bad. I didn’t mean for the guy to die. He called me a Taliban,” said Jasjeet Walia, who was released from custody last night after being grilled by cops all day. “I feel like throwing up. I’m having a bad headache,” said Walia, an amateur kickboxer for seven years in his native Mumbai. Arzeno...

A speeding SUV flying down a Queens street at more than 85 mph smashed into a concrete stanchion yesterday — killing two children and three women and injuring three other passengers, law-enforcement sources said. The scene was so horrific, “one of the firemen cried as he looked at the children’s bodies,” said witness Ray Cortez, 52. None of the victims was identified, but all eight are related and have roots in the Nigerian town of Arondizuogu.

An MTA cop was clinging to life Wednesday after a violent confrontation with a man outside a Long Island Railroad station in Queens, sources said.

Geraldine Ferraro, the 1984 candidate for the vice presidency whose position on abortion repeatedly put her at odds with New York’s late John Cardinal O’Connor, will soon be memorialized at Fordham Law School, according to a report in Fordham magazine. Ferraro’s husband, John Zaccaro Sr., and their son, John Zaccaro Jr., who are pictured in the magazine, recently made a “leadership gift” to Fordham in honor the late Queens congresswoman who rose to national prominence. Ferraro died of multiple myeloma in 2011. The gift, whose amount is not disclosed in the article, reportedly will go to support a new Law...

Wow. On the heels of his possible congressional opponent, Rory Lancman, bowing out of a run for Congress, Queens/Long Island Rep. Gary Ackerman is now bowing out too, according to a press release I just got from Ackerman’s office. I am told the Queens Dems are meeting tomorrow to nominate congressional candidates, but two people I’ve spoken to close to the Queens Dems were unaware of Ackerman’s retirement. I also have heard rumors that Rep. Joe Crowley would be interested in this seat, since this would be a favorable district for him, but I have no idea if that’s actually...

Molotov cocktails made from Starbucks glass bottles were hurled at three sites in Queens last night, including a mosque with 100 people inside, a Hindu Temple and a bodega. Cops were investigating whether a nearby fire that caused major damage to a private home was also part of the frightening pattern. One attack damaged the front door of the Al-Khoei Benevolent Foundation on the Van Wyck Expressway in Jamaica at 8:45 p.m. “We were having a gathering tonight, spending some time with members of the mosque after a service, and someone alerted us that there was a fire outside,” said...

A Queens man is very upset after trying to put his trash out for collection and ending up with a ticket. He, and others, are getting snared in an enforcement of a law that few people even know exists. The scrooge award goes to the New York City Sanitation Department for the $100 tickets. Raymond Janson says he received the $100 fine for putting his garbage cans at the curb 30 minutes early. It is legal to put out the trash cans the day before pick-up but the time of the day matters. City sanitation rules say the cans can...

He preys on women with sick, vicious stealth. An armed serial rapist who has attacked three times in southeast Queens in the past two months has been caught on shocking video surveillance pouncing on his latest victim — a 22-year-old woman whom he grabbed from behind Wednesday and dragged by her neck down the street. But the hooded monster’s 2 a.m. strike near 154th Street in Jamaica was ultimately foiled by a pajama-and-slippers-clad single mom of six who lives nearby and ran to the aid of the screaming victim, authorities said. “[The victim] was saying, ‘Please stop! Please stop! Don’t...

AP has called the race for Turner

So a Catholic priest walks onto a tennis court. Seriously. It happens, for Father Paul Arinze, every day at the United States Open. Often, Arinze climbs into the chair, as a certified bronze badge umpire. There, he officiates serves, not church services, matches instead of Mass. Below, players cross themselves and pray for victory or take the Lord’s name in vain. They do not know that while God may not be interested in their tennis match, a clergyman is watching from close range. “Sometimes, I’m tempted to say, ‘You know, you have a Catholic priest sitting here,’ ” Arinze said, reclining...

A Queens party advertised on Facebook and Twitter as "Drama Free" turned into a shooting gallery early Saturday. Eleven young people were shot, including a teenage girl left paralyzed, when a gunman opened fire into the crowd. About 100 people were packed into the backyard of the single-family home on Inwood St. in South Jamaica shortly before 1 a.m., when the shooter sneaked up a back alleyway and opened fire into the yard through a chain link fence. Police said six males ages 15 to 23, and five women, ages 15 to 21, were shot, with bullets hitting them in...

FULL TITLE: Moving on and out: Anthony Weiner and pregnant wife Huma finally sell Queens apartment as they prepare for first child As the Weiners try to put the year's events behind them, it was only natural their marital home - Anthony Weiner's former sexting headquarters - should be one of the first to go. Thankfully for the couple, after putting their Queen's two-bedroom apartment back on the market - after quietly taking it off during the scandal - they have finally found a buyer. Their 875-square-foot home on Ascan Avenue was listed at $449,000 in June.

Much of the attention being paid to Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., is focused on the salacious - whether he sent the lewd picture to a college undergrad or whether he was the victim of a grand hoax. Few are talking about the possibility that Republicans could pick up Weiner's seat. If the scandal snowballs, however, there could be some serious political implications for Democrats from the incident. While Weiner represents a New York City district that's conventionally thought to be safely Democratic, in reality it has trended sharply in a Republican direction in recent years. If Weiner stepped down from...

File this one under: Imagine If The Partisan Tables Were Turned. On her MSNBC show this evening, Rachel Maddow repeatedly mocked the Republican Senate leader as "little Mitch, the rodeo queen." Maddow was miffed over McConnell's arranging a Senate vote on the raising of the debt ceiling, and by extension the Republican position on Medicare reform. And so, for about ten--interminable--minutes, Maddow beat into the ground a labored metaphor, somehow analogizing McConnell to the little girls in Utah who were forced to compete on stick ponies because the real horses had been sidelined by illness. View video here.

A New York assemblyman says he wants the state to require hotels to provide their housekeepers with an emergency "panic button" that would help protect them from sexual assaults on the job. Assemblyman Rory Lancman, a Democrat from Queens, said he will introduce the bill Monday. The move comes a week after former International Monetary Fund Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was charged with sexually assaulting a Manhattan hotel maid. "We send hotel workers, housekeepers into rooms by themselves without any other staff, without any other security," Lancman said at a news conference Sunday outside the Sofitel Hotel, the site of Strauss-Kahn's...

Dawn Flemming is counting her blessings.   Just six months ago, the Queens woman's unborn daughter Jade was given no chance of survival because a mango-sized tumor stretched across the baby's neck.  "I could tell something was wrong by the doctors' body language," says Flemming, a 35-year-old nurse from South Ozone Park. "I noticed people coming in, passing looks at each other but not saying anything."  They doomed Jade to die because the tumor blocked her pencil-thin airways, making it impossible for her to breathe once detached from the placenta.At 24 weeks, it was too late to have a legal abortion, so...

Senior citizens are furious with officials at the Queens Botanical Garden, saying they are being pushed out of the spots they helped cultivate for decades. The cash-strapped organization increased fees for use of its Senior Garden to $150 this year - too steep say many retirees living on a fixed income. It also plans to transform the site to a "Family Garden" next year and open it up to gardeners of all ages. "What they are doing is an act of desperation," said Lola McLinden, a 91-year-old Flushing resident who has grown vegetables at the Senior Garden for 15 years....

A 265-pound Queens man was arrested by the ASPCA Friday for fatally beating his 8-pound Chihuahua. The tiny pooch, named Spotye, was so severely injured he had to be euthanized. Jerry Melendez, 33, was charged with felony animal cruelty after ASPCA investigators determined the pup suffered a fractured skull caused by blunt force impact and a hemorrhage in his left eye. A necropsy also showed the dog had blood in his abdominal cavity. The 5-year-old Chihuahua was brought to a veterinarian on Feb. 10 and was treated for seizures and head trauma, according to ASPCA Assistant Director Joseph Pentangelo. The...