Free Republic

Three brutes bashed a Manhattan newsstand owner in the head and left him “covered in blood” during an afternoon robbery where they snagged lottery tickets and cash, the vendor said. The masked men stormed inside Abul Hossain’s Upper East Side newsstand at around 2:30 p.m. and unloaded punches on the unassuming 67-year-old vendor. “I was eating my lunch when they came in and just started punching me,” Hossain told The Post. “They punched me in the head over and over. “There was no time to fight back,” he added. “I didn’t say anything to them, I just yelled ‘help, help!’”...

A violent crew terrorized newsstand vendors — dragging them out of their booths and making off with as much as $15,000 — during a brazen two-week spree in the shadow of some of the Big Apple’s most recognizable landmarks, according to police. Cops are hunting four brutes who are part of a gang that has robbed sidewalk clerks nine times since Jan. 1, including in attacks near Carnegie Hall and the Ed Sullivan Theater in Midtown, the NYPD said.

The community is rallying behind a longtime Chinatown newsstand operator who the city wants to displace over a technicality. Community Board 3 members, state and city officials and local residents joined together last week to ask the city’s Department of Transportation to cease its efforts to boot the newsstand from its current location on the southwest corner of Bowery and Pell St. The newsstand’s owner, Marilyn Louie, inherited the stand at 18 Bowery from her father in 1982, after the World War II vet passed away. Louie said she was recently told by D.O.T. officials that her stand is a...