Victim, 45, hospitalized and in stable condition as police unable to say if attack was random or targeted
A 45-year-old man was set on fire in the middle of Times Square overnight on Sunday, according to police, three months after a woman was killed on a subway train in an arson attack.
Footage from the scene captured the moments the man, shirtless and severely burned, was rushed by authorities into an ambulance after the flames were extinguished.
Continue reading...Former talkshow host takes public her battle to remove her guardian, ordered by a court due to dementia and aphasia
The note dropped from the upper floor window of an assisted living facility in New York on the morning of 10 March contained a simple message: “Help! Wendy!!” it read.
For any patient inside, it would have been tragic. But, astonishingly, the writer of this note was Wendy Williams, a trailblazing television talkshow host and once one of the most recognisble daytime TV faces in America.
Continue reading...Demonstrators led by Jewish Voice for Peace demanding release of Palestinian activist stood in US president’s New York City building
Protesters organized by a progressive Jewish group occupied the lobby of Trump Tower in New York City on Thursday to demand the release of Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian Columbia University student held by US immigration authorities, and nearly 100 were arrested.
Chanted slogans included: “Free Mahmoud, free them all” and: “Fight Nazis, not students.”
Continue reading...Critics condemn arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, Columbia University graduate student who led protests over Gaza war
A judge has blocked the deportation of the prominent Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia University’s protests against Israel over the war in Gaza. Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia University until this past December who holds permanent US residency, is being detained by US immigration authorities at a facility in Louisiana after his arrest, according to information from officials.
A spokesperson for the US’s homeland security department – as well as the country’s top diplomat – confirmed the arrest. In a statement to the Associated Press, a homeland security department spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, said Khalil’s arrest was made to support Donald Trump’s presidential orders “prohibiting antisemitism”.
Continue reading...Premier Doug Ford says province ‘won’t back down’ until US president retracts duties on Canada
The Canadian province of Ontario is imposing a 25% surcharge on electricity exports to the states of New York, Michigan and Minnesota in protest against Donald Trump’s tariffs, the premier, Doug Ford, said on Monday.
“President Trump’s tariffs are a disaster for the US economy. They’re making life more expensive for American families and businesses,” Ford said in a statement.
Continue reading...Arrest of Mahmoud Khalil a ‘targeted, retaliatory’ attack on his first amendment rights, say civil rights groups
Free speech organizations and advocates are expressing outrage after a prominent Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian protests last year, was arrested and detained over the weekend.
Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent US resident with a green card, was taken into custody by federal immigration authorities on Saturday night, who reportedly said that they were acting on a state department order to revoke his green card.
Continue reading...Three of the fires are contained, while one is still burning in Westhampton, officials say
Firefighters in New York were continuing to battle at least one brush fire in a wooded stretch of Long Island on Sunday with the wealthy coastal enclave of the Hamptons vulnerable and officials warning that high wind gusts threatened to ignite further blazes.
The state’s Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, declared a state of emergency on Saturday after four separate fires broke out. The flames were spreading across large swaths of the narrow strip of barrier land that stretches for more than 100 miles east from New York City out towards the Atlantic Ocean.
Continue reading...State agencies responding around Pine Barrens, where homes, chemical factory and Amazon warehouse are at risk
Quick-moving brush fires burned through a large swath of land on New York’s Long Island on Saturday, fanned by high winds that spewed thick grey smoke into the sky and prompted the evacuation of a military base and the closure of a major highway.
Kathy Hochul, the state governor, declared a state of emergency and said state agencies were responding to the fires around the Pine Barrens, a wooded area that is home to commuter towns east of New York City.
Continue reading...President of the NAACP New York state chapter fought tirelessly for voting rights, fair housing and education
Hazel Dukes, the president of the New York state chapter of the NAACP and lifelong civil rights advocate, died Saturday at the age of 92.
Dukes peacefully passed away in her New York City home surrounded by family, her son, Ronald Dukes, said in a statement.
Continue reading...Democrat resigned as governor three years ago after being accused of sexual harassment and Covid mismanagement
Former New York state governor Andrew Cuomo on Saturday announced a run for mayor of New York City, an attempt to come back from a sexual harassment scandal that forced him to resign more than three years earlier.
Cuomo, 77, served as governor from 2011 to 2021, guiding the state through the worst, deadliest months of the Covid-19 crisis. But he was forced to resign in August of his final year as governor when an investigation commissioned by the New York attorney general, Letitia James, found he had sexually harassed at least 11 women during his time in office.
Continue reading...Born in 1912 in Poland, Girone was one of about 245,000 survivors living across more than 90 countries
Rose Girone, believed to be the oldest living Holocaust survivor and a strong advocate for sharing survivors’ stories, has died. She was 113.
She died on Monday in New York, according to the Claims Conference, a New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
Continue reading...Hunter College faculty and staff union condemns Kathy Hochul’s order to take down listing, calling it ‘overreach of authority’
The New York governor, Kathy Hochul ordered the City University of New York (Cuny) to immediately remove a job posting advertising a Palestinian studies professor role at the state university system’s Hunter College.
In the job listing, Hunter College wrote that the institution is seeking “a historically grounded scholar who takes a critical lens to issues pertaining to Palestine including but not limited to: settler colonialism, genocide, human rights, apartheid, migration, climate and infrastructure devastation, health, race, gender, and sexuality”.
Continue reading...As the US upends decades of foreign policy, those watching the war unfold from miles away resolve to stand strong
Members of New York’s large Ukrainian community expressed a mix of disillusionment, betrayal, defiance and acute uncertainty about what the future holds for Ukraine after tensions escalated this week between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Geopolitical events in the last week have shocked Ukrainians at home and overseas as well as US lawmakers and allies, as the US president appeared to heavily favor the Russian president Vladimir Putin to dictate peace terms on the eve of the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Continue reading...Five people charged with murder in Sam Nordquist’s death in upstate New York also identified as LGBTQ+, say officials
Authorities investigating the alleged torture and murder of Sam Nordquist in upstate New York say they have found no evidence the transgender man’s killing was a hate crime, pointing out that five people recently charged in connection with the slaying also identified as LGBTQ+.
“We urge the community not to speculate into the motive behind the murder as we work to find justice for Sam,” authorities said over the weekend in a joint press release from the Ontario county district attorney’s office and New York state police. “At this time, we have no indication that Sam’s murder was a hate crime.”
Continue reading...Departures follow justice department shelving charges widely seen as reward for Eric Adams helping Trump administration
Four deputies to New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, resigned on Monday as the growing chaos following a justice department request to drop corruption charges against him, widely seen as a reward for his help with Donald Trump’s immigration agenda, engulfs his three-year-old administration.
According to reports, four of Adams’ deputies – first deputy mayor Maria Torres Springer, deputy mayor for operations Meera Joshi, deputy mayor for health and human services Anne Williams-Isom, and deputy mayor for public safety Chauncey Parker – said they were stepping down.
Continue reading...Attorney general Pam Bondi targets state law allowing people to get driver’s licenses without legal residency
The US attorney general announced on Wednesday that the Trump administration is suing New York state over its immigration policies, accusing state officials of choosing “to prioritize illegal aliens over American citizens”.
Standing in front of federal agents who have been tasked with helping in Trump’s immigration crackdown, Pam Bondi echoed the president’s rhetoric as she vowed the justice department would take on communities that thwart federal immigration efforts.
Continue reading...Proceeds from sale of 1714 instrument will be used to fund scholarships for violinists at New England Conservatory
A Stradivarius violin crafted in 1714 sold for $11.25m (£9.1m) at a New York auction on Friday, missing the world record for a musical instrument that some predicted it might break, but still securing a solid financial future for a new generation of performers.
The 311-year-old instrument, listed by Sotheby’s of Manhattan as “a masterpiece of sound”, once belonged to the celebrated 19th-century Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim, a close friend of the composer Johannes Brahms. It was gifted to the New England Conservatory in 2015 following the death of its most recent owner, a former student, Si-Hon Ma, with the understanding it would one day be sold to fund musical scholarships.
Continue reading...Hadi Matar, 26, accused of stabbing author 10 times in case likely to draw world’s media to tiny upstate New York town
A man accused of attacking Salman Rushdie as he was being introduced at a literary lecture in New York state in 2022 is going on trial this week in a case likely to create global headlines.
The trial could upend life in the tiny upstate New York village of Mayville, whose population of less than 1,500 is not accustomed to finding itself at the center of a media circus covering the attempted assassination of one of the world’s most famous writers.
Continue reading...Disgraced producer wants extra charge involving allegation from woman who was not in original case throw out
A judge on Wednesday set a 15 April trial date for Harvey Weinstein’s retrial, as the disgraced movie mogul pleaded in court to move the trial date sooner citing health conditions.
Weinstein appeared in court in New York on Wednesday morning, seated in a wheelchair. He addressed the court and begged the Manhattan criminal court judge Curtis Farber to move up the trial date to before 15 April, expressing he “can’t hold on anymore”.
The Associated Press contributed reporting.
Continue reading...First full-scale replica of Frank’s attic annexe goes on show next week on International Holocaust Remembrance Day
The first-ever full-scale replica of Anne Frank’s attic annex goes on show in New York next week, part of an ongoing effort to maintain awareness of – and combat – antisemitism in the midst of conflict in the Middle East and political tensions in the US.
Eighty years on from Frank’s death, aged 15, in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, the exhibition at the Center for Jewish History in downtown Manhattan aims to introduce new audiences to one of the most famous victims of Adolf Hitler’s “final solution”.
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