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BRONX (WABC) -- What is drawing huge crowds in the Bronx, people lining up around the block, to get into a storefront that houses a tax preparation office, what's really going on? People who went to the storefront asked Eyewitness News to investigate after they claim they were promised thousands of dollars in government surplus money that would be put on pre-paid debit cards. Now, the bank that issues those debit cards has put out a warning. "I'd like to talk to the boss," Eyewitness News Investigative Reporter Sarah Wallace said. "He's not here," security at E &M Multi Service...

The New York City Housing Authority has extended the lease of a Bronx church that uses one of its facilities after the congregation accused authorities of trying to evict them in the context of an alleged clampdown on worship groups in government buildings. Infinity NY Church, a nondenominational ministry led by Pastor Dimas Salaberrios, has been fighting to keep its space at the Bronx River Community Center after it received a notification from NYCHA that its lease was going to expire, and that the church would need to move by February. A number of congregants staged a protest in front...

Mistrial declared in corruption trial of Bronx Councilman Larry SeabrookProsecutors plan to retry politician BY Robert Gearty & Corky Siemaszko NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Saturday, December 10 2011, 1:56 AM **SNIP** Seabrook is accused of steering City Council slush funds to nonprofits under his control to benefit himself, mistress Gloria Jones-Grant and family members, including a teenage granddaughter. Seabrook is also charged with shaking down a Bronx business that he helped to win a contract on the new Yankee Stadium. In his summation, prosecutor Brent Wible said Seabrook's family and friends got more than $600,000 in city funds from...

If the Zuccotti kids want to protest Wall Street bailouts, they should go occupy the Yankees’ luxury parking garages in The Bronx. Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. wants to give the garages’ private investors a fat-cat rescue at the expense of Gotham’s Main Street mice. Four years ago, the Yankees wanted a souped-up parking “system” for their new ballpark, and Mayor Bloomberg obliged. City Hall helped a previously unknown outfit, the Bronx Parking Development Co., borrow $238 million to build and run a $300 million parking paradise on city land under a long-term lease. (The state supplied the balance of...

A-Rod just stuck out swinging to give Detroit the series and a trip to the ALCS finals. Final score 3-2.

The same morning that radical Islamic terrorists destroyed the twin towers, the Islamic Leadership School in the Bronx opened its doors for the first time. "I don't remember much," said student Ameena Drammeh, 14, who was just 3 years old on Sept. 11, 2001. "I just remember everyone running around [the school]. I remember all the phones ringing." As New Yorkers mourn the 10th anniversary of 9/11, the only Islamic school in the Bronx will mark a decade of promoting goodwill between Muslims and non-Muslims. "Because we opened on 9/11, we know 100% that Allah wants us to be a...

Hello, 911? Hey, I got your thief right here! Bronx auto-store clerk Nelson Lozanda made the call of duty yesterday, chasing and tackling a suspected shoplifter, then holding him down with one hand while phoning cops with the other. "There are a lot of thieves coming in here. They are thinking just because it's not our store, we are not going to respond to it," said Lozada, 23, one of two workers who grabbed the alleged perp about a block from an AutoZone store on East 149th Street. The drama started in the store at about noon when a man...

BRONX, NY (PIX11)— "I asked them to lower their voices and then they started in on me, 'Shut the f--- up, white boy. We'll beat the s--t out of you, cracker.'" Jason Fordell, 29, of the Bronx, said that was the first exchange he had with three black men and a Hispanic man on the #4 subway train near Grand Central early Sunday morning, and by the time the train got to Fordham Road, Fordell says he was being beaten and stomped by other passengers who were egging the original group on. "Eventually, half the car" joined in, Fordell told...

Snakes alive! - the cobra has been found. The Bronx Zoo's escaped snake was snared in the House of Reptiles on Thursday, six days after she slithered out of her enclosure. "We found our snake and we're very happy," Jim Breheny, the zoo's director, told the Daily News. The fanged fugitive was spotted coiled in a corner around 9 a.m., during one of three daily sweeps by a half-dozen zoo workers. Using special tongs and hooks, they easily apprehended the deadly Egyptian cobra, which is now under observation. "We knew it was going to be a game of patience. We...

A highly venomous Egyptian cobra that went missing at the Bronx Zoo was found Thursday after nearly a week on the lam in the reptile house, zoo officials said. The approximately 24-inch snake was found coiled in a dark corner of the reptile house, about 200 feet from where it had escaped from a holding cage outside the exhibit into a space described by officials as a labyrinth of pipes and equipment.

It's deadly, and it's out there, waiting. That might sound like the trailer for a campy monster flick, but it's a real concern at New York's Bronx Zoo, where officials and staff are scrambling to find a deadly Egyptian cobra that slithered away from its home last Friday and hasn't been seen since. The zoo's Reptile House remained closed Monday as a precaution while workers searched for the runaway reptile, a zoo spokeswoman confirmed to FoxNews.com. While the roughly 20-inch-long Egyptian cobra -- armed with a massive dose of lethal venom that it injects into its victims -- has been...

Fourteen people died on Saturday when a bus returning from a casino flipped onto its side on I-95 in the Bronx and was sliced in half by the support pole for a large sign. The bus driver told police he lost control after being clipped by a tractor trailer. Police began a search for the truck, which did not stop after the crash, according to New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne. There were at least 31 passengers aboard the bus and many of the injuries were the result of severe head trauma............

Students at Bronx high school pushed her to the ground A Bronx teacher suffered a miscarriage after breaking up a fight between two students over a chair, school officials said Thursday. Lissedia Batista, 27, was elbowed in the stomach, pushed, and fell to the floor as she tried to get in the middle of a fight between two students. Batista was four months pregnant and was taken by ambulance to North Centeral Bronx Hospital, where she miscarried her baby. The two students involved in the fight have been suspended.

Bronx teacher admits: I'm an ex-hookerBy KEVIN FASICK and YOAV GONEN Last Updated: 6:48 AM, September 27, 2010 Meet Melissa Petro -- the teacher who gives a new twist to "sex ed." The tattooed former hooker and stripper has been teaching art in a Bronx elementary school for three years, The Post has learned. Calling herself a "for mer sex worker," the well-liked teacher has been shockingly up front about her past -- posting online accounts of her sexcapades in Mexico and Lon don. But in her boldest move, the 30-year-old posted an essay this month claiming she also had...

Is it possible that the Bronx Four operated alone, without any connection to foreign terrorists. In an elaborate sting operation, four African-American Muslim men were arrested Wednesday night in New York City for attempting to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and for conspiring to shoot down military planes at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, NY. James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen were friends who had met while serving time in prison and it was there that they converted to Islam. The bombs in their possession were fake; supplied to them by an FBI informant...

NEW YORK — For nearly a year, Shahed Hussain would slip into his role as a wealthy Pakistani businessman and head for Newburgh. He was “Maqsood” when he arrived at local mosque Masjid Al-Ikhlas driving a BMW, or maybe Hummer depending on the day. He was there to listen for Islamic extremism and report back to the FBI, he said. Hussain testified on Friday in the federal trial of four Newburgh men accused of trying to shoot down planes at Stewart Air National Guard Base and blow up a synagogue and Jewish center in the Bronx. The men — James...

Twisted trees and downed power lines littered the streets of the Bronx and Long Island this morning after strong storms that broke a lengthy heat wave ripped through the region Sunday afternoon, bringing cooler weather but leaving scores without power. And on Monday afternoon, the National Weather Service confirmed what many Bronx residents already believed: A tornado touched down in the Riverdale neighborhood on Sunday. Officials said the twister struck at approximately 2:50 to 3 p.m., and cut a swath 100 yards wide and 0.6 miles long. The maximum wind speeds were around 100 mph, according to the weather service....

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.justice.gov/usao/mow/news2010/harrison.ind.htm JULY 9, 2010 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE BLACK MARKET TRAVEL AGENTS 38 DEFENDANTS INDICTED IN MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR FRAUD LOCAL INVESTIGATION EXPOSES NATIONWIDE NETWORK THAT USED STOLEN IDENTITIES, CREDIT CARDS TO PURCHASE AIRLINE TICKETS KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Beth Phillips, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced today that 38 defendants from across the United States have been charged in a series of indictments that allege an extensive network of black market travel agents who used the stolen identities of thousands of victims as part of a multi-million dollar fraud scheme...

MARK SERRANO says he spends 98 percent of his money on sneakers and the rest on food. He looks it. Thin as a skeleton, he sports spotless black Nikes — one of more than 200 pairs he owns. But collecting every new shoe he likes can pose a problem: how to make the rest of his outfit live up to his footwear, especially given new sneaker styles with hard-to-match metallic finishes in offbeat colors like cranberry and copper. Problem solved. For a growing number of sneaker fanatics, Da Bakery, a Bronx store specializing in graffiti-inspired clothing, cranks out custom-designed T-shirts,...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Federal authorities raided a government-funded clinic run by the state Senate's majority leader, one day after New York's attorney general accused him of siphoning $14 million from it. About a dozen FBI and IRS agents and investigators from the attorney general's office appeared Wednesday at the Soundview Healthcare Network in the Bronx, where a big canopy above the front door lists Sen. Pedro Espada Jr. as its president and CEO.....

A Bronx charter school is under fire from parents who say a teacher bullied kids -- and even forced one child to tell his crush, a girl, that he was gay. According to court papers filed this week, the teacher, Jared Alessandroni, 29, threatened to "out" a straight 9-year-old boy, James Pastrana, to his class at the South Bronx Charter School for International Cultures and the Arts, unless James told his crush he was gay. "I was so humiliated," said Pastrana, who reluctantly scribbled the false confession in a note to the girl. "It started to spread around the whole...

High unemployment is spreading in New York City beyond the poorest neighborhoods to once-secure middle-class enclaves, where some residents are falling behind on rent and mortgage payments. Among the hardest-hit spots are the northern Bronx and southeastern Queens. Both areas have seen unemployment double since the third quarter of 2007, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. "The recovery in the labor market is a long way off and it will be a long time coming to middle-income neighborhoods," said James Parrott, the institute's deputy director and chief economist. Close to half of all New Yorkers work...

Bronx advocates said that the City Council vote on Monday to reject a $310 million project to build a mall inside the Kingsbridge Armory provided an opportunity to come up with a more community-oriented plan for the massive red-brick castle. City Council members who voted down the project 45 to 1, with one abstention, said that the plan, proposed by the Related Companies, would have created hundreds of jobs that would have paid at or around the state’s minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, pay that they called too low to support local families. They wanted Related to pledge that...

She went out with a bang, and it's left her Bronx family fuming. Glatha Byrd's final send-off was "apocalyptic" -- as the hearse carrying her body exploded and caught fire on the Major Deegan Expressway, says family lawyer James Franzetti. The family has filed suit in Bronx Supreme Court over the May 13, 2008, incident, accusing the Griffin Peters Funeral Home of causing some of Byrd's relatives "severe and serious" injuries. Valerie Davis, wife of the Harlem funeral home's owner, Keith Davis, called the suit "ridiculous." She said she had heard the relatives, who are also related to her...

In the Bronx, a Clash of Cultures Turns Violent Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times Community leaders organized meetings at Al Tawba mosque in Claremont to address fear and frustration expressed by many local West African immigrants who have experienced tensions with the local black American residents. Published: October 19, 2009 The storefronts on a stretch of Webster Avenue in the Claremont neighborhood in the South Bronx tell the story of local shifts as well as any census: a Senegalese-run 99-cent store, an African video store, an African-run fast-food spot, a mosque, several African restaurants. A Community Struggles The owner of...

It's the fried-chicken defense. A lawyer for one of four men accused of plotting to bomb Bronx synagogues complained on Thursday that a government informant plied the suspects with food. "You can't watch the tapes that you don't see eating going on," said Marilyn Reader, lawyer

SNIPPET: "The flames broke out around 11 p.m. in the mosque on East 166th Street in Morrisania and then spread. It took several hours to get it under control. Three firefighters were taken to the hospital with minor injuries. "The whole place was gone. The fire started inside the store and it was burning for like two hours and then everything started blowing, exploding," said local resident Lenroy Carr. The cause is still under investigation."

Workers at the Stella D'oro cookie factory in the Bronx were still in shock Thursday as the news sunk in that the business had been sold and was moving to Ohio. They wondered how they'd pay their rents and mortgages, how they'd find another job in today's recession and what they'd do without health insurance. "My family is going to suffer," said Evelyn Rivera, a packer at the plant for the past two years. "This is so sad. The company has been here for more than 70 years." Machine operator Juan Torres, 51, said he doesn't know if he'll have...

A decade ago, the idea of staging a gay pride event in the Bronx was unheard of. Today, organizers say a new day is dawning in the borough as neighbors and even some elected officials are supporting the LGBT (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender) community's fourth annual Bronx Pride Festival, to be held Saturday at Baretto Point Park in Hunts Point. Along with featured performers and information booths about HIV prevention and gay marriage, this year's Pride Festival will be more family oriented, with booths for cotton candy, clowns making balloon animals and other entertainment. "We are seeing this year's Pride...

A Bronx woman is under arrest in the fatal beating of a 90-year-old Holocaust survivor in his Upper East Side apartment, and a manhunt is on for her male accomplice, sources said yesterday.

NEW YORK - Two young women have been named best couple at their Bronx high school. Seniors Vikky Cruz and Deoine Scott beat out two opposite-sex couples for the honor at Mott Haven Village Preparatory High School.

Schwartz for News Rabbi Avi Weiss speaking at an earlier event in support of Israel. He told congregants at the the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale Saturday not to blame Islam for the recent plot to bomb synagogues. In the Bronx neighborhood targeted by a terror plot, a prominent rabbi cautioned Sabbath worshippers Saturday against condemning the Muslim religion. "We dare not condemn Islam over this one act," Rabbi Avi Weiss told congregants at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale. Weiss' temple was not targeted in the alleged conpsiracy, but two other Riverdale synagogues were. The four Jew-hating suspects were homegrown...

President Obama has done a lot of speechifying in recent days about America's "responsibilities" in fighting terror. So you'd think he'd have a word of encouragement for the team of crack FBI agents and NYPD officers that foiled a real-life terror attack against two Bronx synagogues on Wednesday. Alas, not a peep. Obama yesterday spoke at commencement ceremonies at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. -- largely rehashing the themes of his address the day before on terror detainees currently held at Guantanamo Bay. "As Americans, we reject the false choice between our security and our ideals," he said....

They were like a million other petty criminals -- until they embraced radical Islam behind bars, launching a terrifying march to a planned mass murder that ended only when authorities sabotaged their sinister plot. "He was not born Muslim. He's an institutional Muslim," said Richard Williams, uncle of Onta Williams, one of the four Bronx terror suspects. "He wasn't raised that way." Richard Williams said that his 32-year-old nephew fell under the sway of dangerously radical Islamo-fascists while serving time on drug charges -- and that he became "brainwashed" after his mother died and his ex-wife fought him for custody...

EXCLUSIVE: Four New York City men were arrested Wednesday in connection with an alleged plot to blow up New York City synagogues and other city locations, WNBC's Jonathan Dienst has learned. Raids by the FBI-NYPD Joint Terrorist Task Force in the Bronx captured the suspected ringleader and three followers in what law enforcement sources are calling a homegrown terrorist plot. Investigators stress the suspects' meetings had been infiltrated early on and there was "no chance" the alleged plot could succeed. Investigators said several of the suspects are Muslims who allegedly talked about destroying two Jewish temples, including at least one...

Despite his high approval ratings, President Obama still has a lot to prove as far as appointments go, given the scandals that have surrounding many of his cabinet appointments. And this is on top of the loose-cannon known as Vice President Biden. The success and smoothness of President Obama’s next few significant decisions are vital. Somewhat serendipitously, the most important decision for him yet, both politically and personally, has just landed on his desk. Just a week ago, and ironically on Obama’s 100th day in office, Supreme Court Justice David Souter, sent a letter informing the president of his decision...

after a teacher made a bomb threat, ... The teacher was reported to have been barricaded inside a classroom... The school, Junior High School 145, the Arturo Toscanini School, is at 1000 Teller Avenue, near East 165th Street, in the Morrisania section of the Bronx.

A woman with "a heart for Jesus" was shot in the stomach Sunday by an errant arrow that came flying out of the Bronx sky as she was dropping off churchgoers at a nursing home. Denise Delgado-Brown, 50, of Yonkers, clutched the shaft of the 30-inch long arrow that pierced her 2 inches above her bellybutton and screamed for her friends to call 911. "They shot me with an arrow," Delgado-Brown moaned incredulously as she staggered behind her maroon Kia SUV and collapsed. -snip- As night fell, the phantom archer remained on the loose.

A week ago, 19-year-old Sydney Rector of the Bronx went to a music store in Midtown Manhattan with her boyfriend, Stevin Tyska. When they left, they were playing around in a tunnel between 48th and 47th streets — and that's where they stumbled across a 66-year-old dog tag. "It's a plastic tunnel and above you there's a waterfall," Rector tells NPR's Robert Siegel. "So you see the water falling on you; it's pretty cool. We were walking through, dancing around, being stupid, and my boyfriend saw something sticking out. And we always just mess with stuff, you know. We saw...

Larry Kudlow, "Obama Inauguration Speech Received one hell of a Bronx Cheer from Wall Street!" Background, Dow Drops below 8000 level in reaction to what wasn't said and the undercurrent of a threat to nationalize banks in what was said. "Shared Sacrifice"...... Larry said further, "..the verdict is in, this speech will go down in history as one of the worst Inauguration Speeches in History."

Turn up the sound and groove.

$1M SLAP AT SPITZER DAD OVER RACIAL BIASBy PILAR CONCI and TODD VENEZIA Last updated: 2:28 am December 6, 2008 The father of disgraced former Gov. Eliot Spitzer suffered his own disgrace yesterday, when a Bronx jury found he discriminated against four black employees and ordered him to pay more than $1 million in penalties. The jurors took about four hours to decide that racism prompted Bernard Spitzer, 84, to improperly fire a doorman and three porters in 1999 from a building he owned at 150 E. 57th St. in Manhattan. The jurors ordered him to pay a total of...

The New York City health department plans to announce on Thursday an ambitious three-year effort to give an H.I.V. test to every adult living in the Bronx, which has a far higher death rate from AIDS than any other borough. The campaign will begin with a push to make the voluntary testing routine in emergency rooms and storefront clinics, where city officials say that cumbersome consent procedures required by state law have deterred doctors from offering the tests. “Routine would mean if you came into the emergency room for asthma or a broken leg, we test everyone for H.I.V., if...

A principal in the infamous Las Vegas shooting involving NFL star Adam "Pacman" Jones has died under mysterious circumstances in the Bronx - and now authorities are trying to determine if she was murdered. Sadia Morrison, a 26-year-old celebrity stylist, was found dead last Friday behind 1065 University Ave., a building in High Bridge where she may have gone to visit a friend or boyfriend, police said. At first, investigators thought she had jumped to her death, police sources said, but it now appears that is not the case. An autopsy was inconclusive, and the medical examiner is conducting further...

Over several nights this month, a graffiti vandal stared into the face of Firefighter Peter Bielfeld, who lost his life rushing into the World Trade Center - and coldly spray-painted right over it. Now the Olinville community where Bielfeld lived, the South Bronx community where he worked and Bielfeld's family are raging, and out to punish whoever defaced the memorial wall mural of Bielfeld. "It's ridiculous. It is very personal," said Bielfeld's father, Ernest, 73, who held memorial services at the mural in memory of his son on Olinville Ave., before his son's remains were found. "It's such an emotional...

Junior High School 22, in the South Bronx, had run through six principals in just over two years when Shimon Waronker was named the seventh. On his first visit, in October 2004, he found a police officer arresting a student and calling for backup to handle the swelling crowd. Students roamed the hallways with abandon; in one class of 30, only 5 students had bothered to show up. “It was chaos,” Mr. Waronker recalled. “I was like, this can’t be real.” Teachers, parents and students at the school, which is mostly Hispanic and black, were equally taken aback by the...

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. today announced that the City has released a Request for Proposals (RFP) for the design and management of construction services of a golf course at Ferry Point Park in the Bronx. The golf course, to be a world-class 18-hole links-style layout for use as a public course, will be built as a City-funded capital project. Once a designer has been selected and construction work is underway, the City will release a separate RFP for an operator to run the course as a concession. If an acceptable proposal is selected,...

Hero cops save 12 from fire in 2 Bronx homes BY PETER KADUSHIN, TINA MOORE and ETHAN ROUEN DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERSMonday, October 29th 2007, 4:00 AM Police Officers Christopher Scott (left) and Michael Welsh from the 12th Precinct As fiery debris rained down on them, two city cops rushed through a pair of Bronx homes engulfed in flames Sunday and helped rescue 12 people, including two infants.Officers Michael Welsh and Christopher Scott kicked down doors and screamed to wake people as the blaze devoured 374 Bronx Park Ave. in West Farms. After they emerged from the inferno, they...

Asian-American groups don't like the increased public scrutiny that Hillary Clinton's mysterious Chinese dishwasher donors are getting. To which I say, in words that should be universally understood: Boo-hoo. In the wake of eye-opening investigations by the New York Post and Los Angeles Times of more dubious foreign funny money flowing into Hillary's coffers, ethnic grievance organizations are stepping forward to condemn these stories as examples of "negligent journalism." Yep. The newspapers are guilty of "negligence" because they actually broke news instead of covering it up. Both papers uncovered dishwashers, cooks and other suspect Hillary campaign contributors in New York's...

(AP) NEW YORK -- An officer shot a man who ran after he was spotted carrying a gun, marking the city's second police shooting in two days, police said. The latest shooting came after plainclothes officers noticed the 19-year-old man and his gun early Saturday in the South Bronx, according to police. After a short chase, one of the officers fired at him. Witness Veronica Corchado told WCBS-TV she saw two officers run after the man and later heard two shots. Police said the man was hit once in the leg and was in stable condition at a local hospital....