Instead of courting New York City voters with a ballot initiative or City Council with legislature to overturn term limits, Mayor Bloomberg first pitched the idea to another group: the owners of the three largest newspapers in New York. In what sounds like a storyline from The West Wing, the NY Times reports that Bloomberg has had private discussions with Rupert Murdoch (NY Post), Mortimer Zuckerman (NY Daily News), and Arthur Sulzberger Jr. (NY Times)......

Rallies aren’t just for grassroots activists – moneyed developers can hold them too, as Bruce Ratner proved yesterday by financing an afternoon rally in downtown Brooklyn to support his beleaguered Atlantic Yards project. Organizers of the so-called “Brooklyn Day” event handed out free hot dogs and T-shirts to passersby in an attempt to drum up enthusiasm for the $4.2 billion project, though there were no free turkeys to fully evoke the Tammany Hall spirit.......

Rendering courtesy of Municipal Art Society; original aerial photo by Jonathan Barkey. As a counterpoint to the new renderings of Frank Gehry's redesign for the Atlantic Yards flagship tower, here's a different perspective on the project's future look. The Municipal Art Society [MAS] has assembled a compelling slideshow that serves as a sort of dystopian crystal ball, depicting what could come come if Bruce Ratner moves forward with his development on 22-acres of land in......

Developer Bruce Ratner and architect Frank Gehry have announced that ‘Miss Brooklyn,’ the 620-foot residential and commercial tower planned for the 22-acre Atlantic Yards project, has been scrapped. In its place they’re proposing a building called ‘B1’: a 511 foot tall structure that will now house commercial tenants only. If they can be found – Forest City Ratner has yet to secure an anchor tenant for what will now be 650,000 of commercial space. B1’s......

Rumors of the Atlantic Yards mega-development's demise have been greatly exaggerated...at least according to the Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner. He may have been gloomy about the mega-project's prospects last month, but now Ratner has an opinion piece in today's Daily News, pledging to forge ahead with his eminent domain plans to take over Atlantic Ave. He writes:Yes, it's true that construction hasn't happened as fast as we would have liked...[but] Finally, the delays have......

The charges have been dropped against the two men who were arrested for trying to cash a dead man’s $355 social security check. Back in January, David Daloia and James O'Hare made headlines with their foiled scheme to capitalize on O’Hare’s roommate’s death by pushing his corpse in an office chair up to a Pay-O-Matic check cashing joint in Hell’s Kitchen. They were arrested en route after a detective spotted the visibly deceased third man.......

State Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell 4th, Democrat and son of the trailblazing Harlem politician Adam Clayton Powell Jr., was arrested for drunk driving on the upper West Side at 2:30 a.m. this morning. According to the Daily News, an unidentified woman passed out in the back of the car was so intoxicated she had to be taken to a local hospital. Powell failed a breath test at the scene by a small margin and, while......

You'll only be getting babes, not booze, when you go to Scores West: The State Liquor Authority has taken away the strip club's liquor license after police found prostitution at the Chelsea joint (the Upper East Side location is not affected). An SLA administrative judge wrote that prostitution was "open and notorious such that the licensee knew or should have known of its occurrence." Back in 2007, a manager told police they could receive sexual......

Brooklyn College is joining the ranks of other New York academic establishments by adding a dorm next spring (something they've already started, and stopped, work on). The school has a little over 15,000 grads and undergrads, with about 99% hailing from New York and 77% from Brooklyn. The school hopes that by adding a dorm, some out-of-staters will flock to Midwood. The Daily News reports the eight-story Farragut Road building will house about 214 students......

The owners of four Manhattan Burger King franchises are locked in a nasty legal battle with their royal overlord. Luan Sadik and his sister, Elizabeth Sadik, rebelled against the mandatory 99-cent menu and the recent dollar Value Menu because the prices couldn’t cover the obscene Manhattan rent and the fast food monarch roared. According to the Daily News, their rent at a Fifth Avenue restaurant is $9,000/month and $18,000.month at a 47th Street location. The......

Police are looking for a man suspected of assaulting two women in separate early Sunday morning incidents and released a surveillance video of him. One of the victims said after getting thrown to the ground she got away and called 911 - only for the attacker to try again as she walked on Bleecker Street. She told the Daily News, "I started walking and calling 911 on my cell ... and he attacked me again...I......

Photograph of Clinton, holding the hands of Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones and Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland and celebrating in Ohio, by Mark Duncan/AP Fresh off her big night of wins in Ohio and Texas, Hillary Clinton spoke on CBS's Early Show and mentioned the words "dream ticket" in relation to the heated Democratic presidential race. Harry Smith told Clinton, "We talked to a lot of people in Ohio who said there really isn't that......

Another twist in the murder case of Queens dentist Daniel Malakov: The sister of his ex-wife - who remains in jail for plotting to kill Malakov - was arrested for threatening Malakov's brother. Natella Natanova was arrested yesterday after apparently approaching Gavriel Malakov in Queens and saying, "You do know if you talk, you will be the next to go," on Monday morning. The brother is a potential prosecution witness and Queens DA Richard Brown......

Undercover detective Hispolito Sanchez testified for a second day, with prosecutors playing the 911 call he made on November 25, 2006, the night police fatally fired at Sean Bell 50 times. Sanchez's colleagues detectives Michael Oliver and Gescard face manslaughter charges while detective Marc Cooper faces reckless endangerment charges in the bench trial at the Queens courthouse. Sanchez, who did not fire any of the 50 shots at Sean Bell or his friends, heard but......

After his $500,000 donation to NY State Republicans was revealed, Mayor Bloomberg explained why he did it to reporters while attending a Mayors Against Illegal Guns conference, "I've said repeatedly, I will help those who help us. They have stood up for the city a number of times — when we needed to have a voice in Albany and we didn't have that voice from the Assembly or from the governor, whether it was the......

Earlier this year Bravo announced their "Real Housewives" series would be moving from Orange County to The Big Apple. The show premieres tonight, and critics have already gone sour on it. The NY Post describes the five women chosen to represent NYC as "status-hungry, money-mad matrons" (a real life Cashmere Mafia living in a Lipstick Jungle?). Appalled that out of "8 million residents representing every known corner of the globe" the network picked five who......

The father who wanted to give up his 6-month-old baby out of desperation has told the police he wants to surrender. Carlos Rodas, 27, was overwhelmed when his 14-year-old girlfriend and the mother of the baby left him to care for their daughter, so he, his sister, and her boyfriend, a livery cab driver, worked out a plan for the driver to leave the baby at a Queens fire house. The story of the......

The police released a sketch of a man suspected of attacking two women early Sunday in the West Village. In both incidents, the women were exiting cabs when he attacked. Around 2:15 a.m., a 30-year-old woman got out of her cab at 240 Bleecker Street, near Our Lady of Pompeii school. According to the Post, the "hooded thug lunged from behind, threw her to the ground and smashed her head on the ground." Though the......

Release the hounds. The latest innovation in bedbug eradication is being brought to you by Advanced K9 Detectives, a company using man’s best friend to sniff out the bloodsucking pests plaguing New York City. Since 2004, complaints about bedbugs to the Department of Housing have soared to 6,889 (up from 537 a year) and 2,008 building owners issued summonses (compared to 82 in ’04). Carl Massicott, the owner of the six-dog team, says he’s been......

As details continue to emerge about the plot to fake a baby's abandonment in Queens, the fate of the baby has remained questionable. Now the Administration for Children's Services say the 14-year-old mother, who may not have known about the plot, may get the 6-month-old baby back. An ACS spokeswoman said, "The child has the right to be raised by the parent." The Post reports the mother, Yelemer Cosme Perez, is in ACS custody while......

The MTA's various fare hikes for the NYC subways and buses, as well as its railroads, went into effect this weekend. Today, subway and bus base fares still cost $2, but higher-value pay-per-ride Metrocards have less of a bonus discount while weekly and monthly unlimited ride Metrocards are more expensive. You can read more about the fare hikes here, but two important notes: (1)Unlimited ride Metrocards purchased before March 2 are still valid as......

News that the tale of an adorable abandoned baby was only half-true has resulted in a number of arrests and many questions. And it's possible the baby's 14-year-old mother may not have known about the scheme. Livery car driver Klever Sailema, who dropped off the baby at a Queens firehouse claiming she was abandoned in his cab, was charged with criminal facilitation and filing a false police report. He told the Post in an exclusive......

And the winner is. . .Despite having ancient looking graphics that can be seen from across the street, a set that looks like it is from a station in Iowa, and a love of sprinkling kicker stories throughout the newscast, WABC’s Eyewitness News and the station overall is yet again at the top of the ratings among the big three for February. Most notably, WNBC has lost almost half of its viewership in the early......

The police are continuing to look for James Gonzalez, who is suspected of fatally stabbing his ex-girlfriend at a grocery store as well as stabbing her co-worker. The attack occurred Friday afternoon at the East Village Key Foods location. Gonzalez, 42, who had done some part-time work at the Key Foods where he met 24-year-old Tina Negron and dated her on-and-off for a year up until a few months ago, fled the store on foot.......

"The Blue Wall of Violence" courtesy of MoCADA Yesterday, The Daily News printed an article that began, "A cop-bashing art exhibit at a taxpayer-funded museum in Brooklyn portrays the city's Finest as trigger-happy racists who have put bull's-eyes on the backs of black New Yorkers." The exhibit is a retrospective of the artist Dread Scott's work called "Welcome to America," and the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA) is calling the paper out......

After the city was moved by the story of a baby abandoned in the backseat of a livery cab and how the driver dropped off the baby at a fire house, prompting the police and media to look for the baby's relatives, it turns out the livery cab driver was involved in the abandonment scheme. Driver Klever Sailema was arrested today, as were another man and woman. Oh, no. According to the police, "Sailema was......

Images from WNBC and WABC The police are looking for a man suspected of stabbing two Key Food employees, one of whom died at a hospital two hours after the afternoon attack. Other employees at the East Village store say James Gonzalez, a part-time maintenance worker, stabbed ex-girlfriend Tina Negron with a 10-inch knife, because he was upset over their breakup. Negron had been in the elevated manager's booth when Gonzalez apparently attacked. Bookkeeper......

Nothing says romance like a public proposal in The Daily News. Marina Maiuri stood atop the Empire State Building (which is so "Sleepless in Seattle") to have her photo snapped by the paper on the observation deck; but she wasn't looking for love, she was looking to propose. The photo and article ran this morning, titled "Hey, Sean: Will you marry me?" Sean is her boyfriend of 18 months, and Marina "wouldn't trade him for......

The MTA's various fare hikes are starting to go into effect next month (aka tomorrow). Tomorrow, Long Island Railroad and Metro-North fares are going up. Bridge and tunnel tolls are going up on March 16. And the doozy will be the NYC Transit subway and bus fare hikes which go into effect on Sunday, March 2. Expect tons of confused riders and weary MTA workers on Monday and for the next few weeks. The......

What is it about people who abuse their significant others' pets? A 24-year-old construction worker David Wrigley was charged with aggravated cruelty to animals after crushing and squeezing the cats. The cats, tabby Madeline and black cat Jynx, belonged to his girlfriend Sara Sabol, whose Selden, Long Island home Wrigley moved into at the beginning of the month. According to police lieutenant Michael Murphy, "The cats didn't take to him. They didn't like him, wouldn't......