Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a water rescue at Emmons Ave. and Knapp St. in Brooklyn, a serious assault on West 37th St. and 11th Ave. in Manhattan, and a bank robbery on Flatlands Ave. in Queens. The body of the Ecuadorian man who was killed in a bar fight earlier this week will be returned home at the expense of a businessman, also from Ecuador, who appreciated the man's abbreviated attempt to support......

A note to anyone writing under a pseudonym: Don't let the pseudonym become larger than life. After deliberating for a couple hours, a jury came to a verdict in a film production company's lawsuit against Laura Albert, who wrote novels under the name JT Leroy. A tipster at the Federal Court just gave us the scoop:Jury verdict in: Laura Albert and Underdogs Inc. are both liable for fraud and for breach of contract. Damages: $110,000......

A Bill Cosby cartoon, Adidas sneakers and even mayor Ed Koch figured into the trial of Laura Albert, aka the author who created the literary sensation JT Leroy. Albert is being sued by a film production company; Antidote Films paid JT Leroy $45,000 for one of his novels, but now the company says that the contract is void because JT Leroy doesn't exist. Last week, Albert's mother gave wrenching testimony that mentioned hospitalizing her daughter......

Yesterday, a Manhattan jury heard testimony from the mother of the Brooklyn Heights woman who created JT Leroy, the supposed truck stop hooker's son turned literary sensation revealed to be a hoax last year. Under the persona of JT Leroy, Albert wrote novels about prostitution, sex abuse, and drugs; when Leroy became a hot commodity, she had her then-boyfriend's sister pose at Leroy. But now a film production company is suing Albert for money advanced......

The publishing world is in a tizzy over rising novelist's Kaavya Viswanathan's admission that she unintentionally copied passages from books by Megan McCafferty in order to write, How Opal Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life, about an ambitious NJ teen who wants to get into Harvard. Viswanathan, just featured earlier in a rather glowing NY Times article about being a Harvard student with a $500,000 two-book deal at Little, Brown, was exposed by......

This week’s new movie releases are all about men behaving badly, and of course the women who put up with their crap. Though if that's not what you're into there's always some good Irish beer or Korean kimchee to tempt your movie palate. In his newest fluffy romantic comedy, Failure to Launch, Matthew McConaughey plays a 35 year-old-man child still living at home with his parents (Kathy Bates and Terry Bradshaw) until they hire the......

Brian Van sent us this photograph of Nicole Richie delivering Dr. Diet Pepper at 6th Avenue and West 3rd Street. This is 99.9% Nicole Richie, but with this whole "sunglasses bigger than your head" trend, how can we be so sure that it isn't that chick who has been playing JT LeRoy?......

- A watchdog groups says the new Yankee Stadium will cost taxpayers $500 million, or the amount of money George Steinbrenner sleeps with - When you try to kill your lawyer and cause a mistrial, your judge probably doesn't want to deal with your crap - Kids like to choke themselves for a high? Kids are so weird! - Lower East Side synagogue may be rebuilding its roof - The "outing" of who JT......

Wow, Gothamist takes a break to re-read The Chronicle of Narnia and suddenly contemporary literature is rocked! The big stories: The Smoking Gun's expose on bestselling author James Frey's lie-laden memoir (and Oprah book), A Million Little Pieces, and the NY Times'investigation in JT Leroy, revealing he doesn't quite exist! Next, we'll find out JK Rowling is a marketing scheme cooked up by the British government! The Smoking Gun's article about Frey's lies seems so......