Members of the Church of Satan are grieving the destruction of a historic “Halloween House” north of New York City that authorities say was set ablaze by an unidentified arsonist.
Related: Hell freezes over: how the Church of Satan got cool
Continue reading...Centred on a sex-assault case involving former French presidential hopeful Dominique Strauss-Kahn, this docuseries reveals worryingly outdated attitudes
Most people will have only the haziest recollection of the fallout that occurred after the French presidential hopeful and then head of the International Monetary Fund Dominique Strauss-Kahn was accused of sexually assaulting a room attendant in a New York hotel in 2011. That allows the Netflix documentary Room 2806: The Accusation to possess all the qualities of a slick political thriller. Who will be believed? The immigrant, hotel cleaner, a single parent living in a flat in the Bronx or the globally powerful, immensely rich politician?
This tense, four-part documentary has astonishing material to work with. There is plenty of CCTV footage, filmed from the ceiling, of chambermaid Nafissatou Diallo making her way to the presidential suite, and later, visibly distressed, being shepherded by her supervisor to a subterranean network of shabby staff offices in the bowels of the building, away from the gilded foyer, where she wipes away tears and recounts how she has been assaulted by Strauss-Kahn as she cleaned his rooms.
Continue reading...A New York City bus was left hanging from an overpass after crashing off the Cross Bronx expressway, New York Emergency Management reported on Thursday night.
Seven people, who were said to have been travelling in the bus, reportedly sustained minor injuries in the crash
Continue reading...White House coronavirus taskforce reports advocate for ‘aggressive action’ amid 23m confirmed cases in US
As coronavirus continues to tear across the US without any sign of slowing down, officials have warned there is a “full resurgence” in most major population centers – and that the country could see an additional 92,000 deaths in less than a month.
There have been more than 23m confirmed Covid-19 cases in the US and 385,503 deaths, Johns Hopkins University’s most recent data revealed.
Continue reading...The horrific visions of the Spanish painter are about to go on display at New York’s Met. Americans should flock to this timely show – because no artist better captured collective delusion and mass fanaticism
The macabre art of Francisco Goya, the first truly modern artist, is due to be exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum in New York next month and there could hardly be a more urgent moment for Americans to look at his images. For, over 200 years ago, this Spanish artist perfectly captured the kind of collective delusion and mass fanaticism that swarmed the US Capitol last week. The mob of Trump supporters who assaulted the home of American democracy were as inflamed as the crowd who march with crazed eyes behind a manic musician in The Pilgrimage to San Isidoro, as dangerous as the hate-drunk crowd in The Second of May 1808, spellbound by their goat-headed charismatic idol.
And then there’s The Burial of the Sardine, in which a delirious crowd cavort around a huge banner of a madly grinning face. At first glance, it seems to be a joyous carnival scene, but look closer and the intensity of their rite becomes unsettling as you notice that face on the banner, their vacant lord of the dance. It has a definitive Trumpian air.
Continue reading...The pedestrian pace of Covid-19 vaccinations in the US came under new scrutiny on Sunday, as the pandemic death toll passed 350,000 and experts warned of another surge in infections and deaths arising from gatherings at Christmas and New Year.
Related: Larry King, TV chatshow veteran, in hospital with coronavirus – reports
Continue reading...New York attorney investigates incident in which black teenager was accused of trying to steal a white woman’s phone in a hotel lobby
A confrontation in which the jazz trumpeter Keyon Harrold said a woman tackled his 14-year-old son in a New York hotel lobby as she falsely accused the teen of stealing her phone is under investigation, prosecutors said.
Harrold posted a widely viewed video of the confrontation that took place at the Arlo hotel on Saturday. He alleged the unidentified woman scratched him and tackled and grabbed his son, Keyon Harrold Jr, who is black, at the lower Manhattan hotel where the pair were staying.
Continue reading...Visitors who have travelled from or through South Africa will be denied entry to England and all direct flights banned
A ban on all direct flights from South Africa to England came into force on Christmas Eve morning, while New York authorities announced they would visit arrivals from the UK to check they were quarantining, amid the spread of new variants of coronavirus in the UK and South Africa.
The UK health secretary, Matt Hancock, said the new mutation in South Africa was “highly concerning”, and was believed to be even more transmissible than the variant in the south-east of England that led to the introduction of tier 4 restrictions.
Continue reading...Reporter Christie Smythe calls the ‘Pharma Bro’ her life partner, saying relationship developed while he serves prison sentence
The internet was set ablaze on Sunday night by a viral interview in which a former reporter for Bloomberg News described how she upended her “perfect little Brooklyn life” by falling in love with Martin Shkreli, a maverick hedge funder who rose to infamy before being sentenced to seven years in prison for fraud.
Related: Martin Shkreli pays price for arrogance – and 'egregious multitude of lies'
Continue reading...Exodus that started after 9/11 has accelerated — and many fear New York’s financial district will not recover
“They used to stand at the bar three deep,” says John Moran, surveying the long, empty counter at Killarney Rose, a Wall Street bar that would, in another era, have been stuffed with early-shift construction workers and, at lunch and late into the evening, suited bankers.
The world’s pre-eminent financial thoroughfare – at least throughout the 20th century – is a ghost of what it once was. The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq are still located here, but dozens of financial institutions have emptied out from New York’s financial district in an exodus that started in the wake of 9/11 and has been hastened by Covid.
Continue reading...Hazardous conditions reported in multiple states as regions in Pennsylvania and New York saw accumulations in double digits
The first major snowstorm of the season left the north-east blanketed in snow, setting records in some areas.
“Williamsport regional airport made history,” the National Weather Service in State College said, reporting 24.7in of snow. Forecasters said that was the most snow in that location from a single storm on record, breaking the previous record of 24.1in set there in January 1964.
Continue reading...An intensive care unit nurse is believed to have become the first person in the US to receive the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine on Monday. Sandra Lindsay, who has treated some of the sickest coronavirus patients for months, was given the vaccine at Long Island Jewish medical centre in New York City, receiving applause on a livestream with the New York governor, Andrew Cuomo
Continue reading...Lindsey Boylan tweeted that Cuomo ‘sexually harassed me for years. Many saw it, and watched’
A former aide to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo now running for Manhattan borough president accused him of sexual harassment in a series of tweets on Sunday, saying he made inappropriate comments about her appearance.
The allegation comes as the 63-year-old Democrat is reported to be under consideration for attorney general under Joe Biden.
Continue reading...Gunman died in hospital after shooting at Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine
A man has been shot dead by police after opening fire from the steps of New York City’s Cathedral Church of St John the Divine just after an outdoor choir performance.
New York police department spokesman, Sergeant Edward Riley, said the gunman had fired on police, but no officers or bystanders were believed to have been injured in the late-afternoon violence on Manhattan’s upper west side.
Continue reading...Police say six people were injured when a car plowed into Black Lives Matter demonstrators in Manhattan
One woman was arrested after allegedly driving her car into a crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters in Manhattan Friday afternoon, injuring six, the New York police department (NYPD) said.
Continue reading...Footage shows a vehicle driving into a crowd of about 50 people at a protest on Friday afternoon in the middle of Manhattan, injuring multiple people. The incident happened after 4pm at the corner of 39th Street and Third Avenue in midtown east, police said, adding that the woman behind the wheel of the BMW sedan who drove into the crowd was detained for questioning by law enforcement.
Continue reading...Six people were taken by ambulance to local hospitals, the New York fire department said
A vehicle plowed into a crowd of about 50 people at a protest on Friday afternoon in the middle of Manhattan, injuring multiple people, the New York City police department said.
The incident happened after 4pm at the corner of 39th Street and Third Avenue in midtown east, police said, adding that the woman behind the wheel of the BMW sedan who drove into the crowd was detained for questioning by law enforcement.
Continue reading...Rodents were so brazen that the Upper West Side location closed after the wiring systems were chewed through
As columnist Mary Schmich once said, in life, there are certain inalienable truths: prices will rise, politicians will philander, and – I’m going to add one – you can always count on New York for a good old rat story.
Today that story is of the Upper Manhattan Chipotle food chain rats, who have been feasting on avocados and burritos – and, by the sounds of it – disturbed staff.
Continue reading...They grew up in a ‘nowhere’ suburb in the 70s, smoking skunk, going for rides and dating girls. The photographer reveals why he decided to capture the ravages of time on his old childhood gang
Rick Schatzberg had a dark epiphany a few years back, when two of his friends died in quick succession, one from a heart attack, the other from an overdose. “When two people you know and love die within six weeks of each other,” says the photographer quietly, “you realise that death is not just something that happens to other people, to the unlucky people. It’s something that is suddenly very present.”
Schatzberg’s response was to undertake a project about encroaching mortality – his friends’ and by extension his own. The result, several years in the making, is The Boys, a photobook that is both nostalgic and brutally realistic: a visual evocation of youth in all its instinctive carefreeness; and old age in all its debilitating inevitability. Composed of casual colour snapshots of his male friends in the 1970s, and large-format contemporary portraits of their ageing bodies, it lays bare what the novelist Rick Moody, in his accompanying essay, calls “the sobering action of time”.
Continue reading...Firefighters in New York battled a large blaze in the early hours of Saturday morning that gutted a historic church in lower Manhattan. The Middle Collegiate Church in the East Village caught fire before dawn after a blaze spread from an adjacent five-storey vacant building about 5am. Video posted on Twitter showed flames shooting from the roof and the church’s stately front window glowing from the conflagration inside. The church houses New York’s Liberty Bell and its congregation dates from the earliest days of the city’s settlement.
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