Bill de Blasio says an investigation is continuing into the ‘very strange and very troubling’ helicopter crash-landing on a Manhattan skyscraper, but there is no ongoing threat. Investigators looking into the crash, which killed at least one person, said it was the result of an air space issue. Emergency services were called to the scene on Seventh Avenue shortly before 2pm on a rainy, foggy Monday
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Helicopter crash in New York leaves at least one person dead, officials say
- Fire department says one person reported killed in crash
- Police say incident was ‘hard landing on the roof’ of high-rise
A helicopter crashed on the roof of a skyscraper in midtown Manhattan early on Monday afternoon. One person, reportedly the pilot, was killed.
In a tweet around 2pm on a day of rain and low cloud that obscured the tops of many tall buildings in the city, the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) said: “FDNY members are operating on scene at 787 Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, helicopter crash landing.” The New York police department subsequently said the incident was a “hard landing on the roof” of the building.
Continue reading...New York’s Four Seasons Restaurant to close less than a year after reopening
Restaurant, which opened in in 1959 in the Seagram Building, will close the week of 10 June
The Four Seasons Restaurant in New York is to close, less than a year after it reopened away from the Seagram Building, the masterpiece of modern architecture which was its home for almost 60 years and which it came to complement as a high point of 20th-century art, style and design.
Related: A man for Four Seasons: my goodbye to New York's modernist cathedral
Continue reading...Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez serves pizza in solidarity with tipped workers – video
The New York congresswoman serves food and mixes drinks in a restaurant as part of an effort to promote increased wages for tipped staff. Ocasio-Cortez told cheering workers the federal tipped minimum wage of $2.13 an hour was equivalent to 'indentured servitude'. She worked as a bartender before getting elected to Congress last year.
Continue reading...Harvey Weinstein and accusers reach tentative $44m compensation deal
The agreement would resolve lawsuits and compensate the Hollywood producer’s alleged victims
Harvey Weinstein, women who accused him of sexual misconduct, his former film studio’s board members and the New York attorney general’s office have reached a tentative $44m deal to resolve lawsuits and compensate alleged victims of the Hollywood producer, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people it said were familiar with the matter.
The deal, if finalized, would resolve a civil rights lawsuit filed by the New York attorney general’s office last year that accuses Weinstein Co’s executives and board of failing to protect employees from a hostile work environment and Weinstein’s sexual misconduct, the Journal said.
Continue reading...Nxivm trial hears of debauchery and cruelty within alleged ‘sex cult’
- Keith Rainiere, 58, accused of sex trafficking and other charges
- ‘Slave master’ Lauren Salzman says: ‘He was my mentor’
A top “slave master” in the alleged sex cult Nxivm said in testimony on Friday she herself was sexually and psychologically enslaved by Keith Raniere, the sole defendant in a sex-trafficking trial that has produced a rolling tableau of alleged debauchery and cruelty.
Related: Nxivm trial: alleged sex cult leader tried to 'break' female followers, says witness
Continue reading...New York considers fining pedestrians for texting while crossing
Bill introduced to state senate would fine those caught using a ‘portable electronic device’ in crosswalks $25 to $250
In New York City, it seems no one can afford to miss an email or reply to a chat late, even if that means checking their phones when crossing the street. But soon these daredevils could get hit with a fine for their reckless behavior.
A bill banning texting while walking has been introduced to New York’s state senate. If the bill passes into law, New Yorkers can expect to be fined from $25 to $250 if police officers catch them “using a portable electronic device while crossing a roadway”. There are some people who would be exempted, including “an emergency response operator” and employees of a hospital, physician’s office or fire department, among others.
Continue reading...Where everybody knows your face: Woody Harrelson photo used to spot thief
The New York police department’s use of celebrity doppelgänger photos calls their use of a facial recognition system into question
The New York police department used a photo of Woody Harrelson in its facial recognition program in an attempt to identify a beer thief who looked like the actor, according to a report published on Thursday.
Georgetown University’s Center on Privacy and Technology highlighted the April 2017 episode in “Garbage In, Garbage Out”, a report on what it says are flawed practices in law enforcement’s use of facial recognition.
Continue reading...Bill de Blasio announces 2020 presidential bid
New York mayor has traveled to early primary states such as Iowa and Nevada with a message centered on economic inequality
New York’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, has jumped into the 2020 presidential race, joining at least 21 other declared Democratic candidates for the party’s nomination.
The mayor announced his run with a video released by his campaign.
Continue reading...‘Everything was just lies’: how alleged sex cult Nxivm deceived its victims
As the trial of the group’s founder, Keith Raniere, begins, experts say people attracted to change are vulnerable to manipulative ‘cultish group behavior’
The federal courthouse in Brooklyn provided a bland judicial setting for some startling testimony this week, as former members of Nxivm, a self-improvement and wellness group that was allegedly a sex cult, described how devotees were manipulated to the point of enslavement to the group’s founder, Keith Raniere.
A case which on the surface contained the compelling components of wellness, self-improvement, celebrity and wealth was quickly reduced to accusations of base criminality.
Continue reading...Anna Sorokin: fake German heiress sentenced to up to 12 years in prison
- Sorokin, 28, guilty of deception worth more than $200,000
- Judge: ‘She was blinded by the glitter and glamour of New York’
A judge has sentenced the fake German heiress Anna Sorokin to four to 12 years in prison for defrauding hotels, restaurants, a private jet operator and banks out of more than $200,000.
Related: Glitz, glamour, now guilty: spectacular fall of New York's socialite scammer
Continue reading...Footage from Anna Sorokin’s lavish trip to Morocco – video
Anna Sorokin will be sentenced in New York on Thursday for masquerading as Anna Delvey, an extravagant socialite. Sorokin bankrolled an implausibly lavish lifestyle with tens of thousands of dollars she swindled from banks, hotels and friends who believed she was a wealthy German heiress. Jesse Hawk, a photographer who was invited by Sorokin to shoot video on one of her trips, spoke to the Guardian's Today in Focus about what it was like to spend time with her
Continue reading...Corey Johnson ♥ NY (and even the city’s subway). Will he run for mayor?
The speaker of the city council, 37, who was diagnosed with HIV in 2004, has overcome addiction and is mulling a mayoral run
Corey Johnson got his first brush with fame when, as the captain of his high school football team in a small town in Massachusetts, he came out as gay.
Related: The thorn in Trump's side: New York attorney general leads barrage of investigations
Continue reading...Michael Cohen hints at more Trump revelations on way to prison – video
Donald Trump's former personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, began his three-year prison sentence on Monday. He is the third former Trump campaign aide to go to prison in the past 12 months. Outside his New York City apartment, Cohen promised: 'There still remains much to be told and I look forward to the day that I can share the truth'
Continue reading...Nxivm former members to break vow of silence by testifying against cult leader
Opening arguments are set for Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court as prosecutors have been tight-lipped about who will testify
It was called “collateral” – nude photos and other embarrassing material that female members of an upstate New York self-improvement group turned over to their “masters” to guarantee obedience, silence and sexual fealty to the organization’s spiritual leader, Keith Raniere.
Now some former members of the group, called Nxivm (pronounced nexium) are poised to break their vow of silence by testifying against Raniere, who has been compared to a cult leader. Opening arguments are set for Tuesday at a federal court in Brooklyn.
Continue reading...The Correspondent apologizes for US office ‘screw up’ after fundraising $2.6m
Netherlands-based crowdfunded news site posts public apology for misleading more than 45,000 donors about New York office
A Netherlands-based crowdfunded news site which raised $2.6m ahead of “launching in the US” has apologized and said it “screwed up”, after announcing its headquarters will actually be in Amsterdam.
In December 2018, the Correspondent, a planned English-language version of the Dutch De Correspondent, raised $2.6m from more than 45,000 donors in a widely publicized fundraising campaign. In March, however, it said it would not after all open a newsroom in New York.
Continue reading...Woodstock 50 thrown into doubt after backer ‘cancels’ festival
Lead investor pulls funding but organisers say event will go ahead and will be ‘a blast’
There are conflicting reports as to whether a planned three-day concert to mark the 50th anniversary of the Woodstock festival has been cancelled or not.
Woodstock 50 was scheduled to take place on 16 to 18 August in Watkins Glen in upstate New York state with a lineup including the rapper Jay-Z, the singer Miley Cyrus and the rockers the Killers.
Continue reading...The New York Easter parade and Bonnet festival – in pictures
Celebrants donned festive finery and showed off their very best headgear on Fifth Avenue
Continue reading...Seagram heiress Clare Bronfman pleads guilty in alleged sex cult case
- Bronfman, 40, admits credit card fraud and immigration charges
- Plea means Nxivm founder Keith Raniere will stand trial alone
The Seagram liquor heiress Clare Bronfman pleaded guilty on Friday to harboring an undocumented immigrant and enabling credit card fraud as part of an alleged sex cult based in upstate New York, where women have reported they were branded with the initials of the founder.
Bronfman, 40, entered her plea to the two criminal counts before Judge Nicholas Garaufis in federal court in Brooklyn, New York.
Continue reading...Yemeni bodegas boycott New York Post over attacks on Ilhan Omar
Murdoch-owned paper published front page that Yemeni American Merchants Association says ‘provoked hatred’
A group of New York corner-store owners has announced a boycott on the sale of the New York Post, arguing that the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper’s attacks on the congresswoman Ilhan Omar are making Muslim Americans less safe.
On Thursday, the Post published a front page featuring an image of the World Trade Center towers in flames on 11 September 2001 and a quote suggesting that Omar, a Somali American congresswoman from Minnesota who wears a hijab, had minimized the seriousness of the terror attacks in a speech last month.
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