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Five foreign men were arrested during a courthouse break-in early on Wednesday and police said they found photographs of public buildings, water systems and malls from various U.S. cities in their van. The men, at least three of whom were in their 20s, will be questioned by a joint terrorism task force including the FBI and immigration authorities, officials said. Bexar County spokeswoman Laura Jesse said three men were found inside the 120-year-old Bexar County Courthouse, a landmark in downtown San Antonio and two in a large recreational vehicle parked in front of the building. She said all five were...

Americans sweltered today in the scorching heat in what was officially the hottest day of the year in scores of cities across the country. The heatwave covered a million square miles, affecting 141million Americans. New York's Manhattan experienced the hottest ever July 22 recorded, with an overwhelming 104-degree temperature in Central Park. The Washington DC region continued to be smothered in heat and humidity with temperatures reaching 102 degrees but with a heat index of more than 120 - hotter than Death Valley at daybreak

NEW YORK, N.Y. (AP) -- Britain's Prince Harry says the bonds between British and American military veterans are strong but can be even stronger. Harry spoke Friday on the flight deck of the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City during a reception for U.S. and British veterans and their families. The third in line to the British throne said his country can learn from American advances in veterans' care and rehabilitation.....

Central Park is not just an oasis — it’s New York City’s sanctuary, the soul of Manhattan. Which also makes it a battleground, a 1.32 square mile symbol of how we’re doing. Police fight to maintain the perception that the park — and, by extension, the city that surrounds it — is safe. That image has taken a blow in recent weeks after a handful of headline-making attacks, including the sexual assault of a 23-year-old woman last Sunday just inside the park near Fifth Avenue and 85th Street, and the rape of an 18-year-old in April near the East 79th...

A memorial to a murderous socialist thug in the heart of the heart of capitalism: The base of the sculpture is inscribed with a Che quote that my ignorance of Spanish prohibited me from deciphering. But I’m pretty sure it wasn’t an apology for committing acts of terror and helping to derail a country for nearly half a century.I’ve never understood the left’s fascination with Che. I mean sure, he’s a socialist and that ostensibly means he’s a member of the people’s revolution or whatever euphemism the extremist proponents of government-run everything use for themselves. But the reality of Che...

NEW YORK - Knife-wielding muggers attacked a jogger running in Central Park to prepare for an Army physical fitness test, police and his family said. "I'm in a lot of pain," Johnny Reberon, 23, said as he returned from a hospital Friday to his Manhattan home. He was slashed in the arm and leg by two men who accosted him around 8:45 p.m. Thursday, police said. His mugging was near the park road where a 28-year-old investment banker was found after being attacked while jogging on April 19, 1989. She became known worldwide as "the Central Park jogger." Reberon's attackers...

NEW YORK (AP) - The horse-drawn carriages that clip clop around Central Park could be banned under City Council legislation to be introduced at the urging of animal advocates who say the horses are treated inhumanely. Councilman Tony Avella, who plans to introduce the bill next Wednesday, said the horses that have entertained tourists and New Yorkers for decades are exposed to cruel conditions and are at risk of injury or death as they weave through city traffic. In September, a horse died after it was spooked by street musicians with drums and bolted down Central Park South. It was...

Central Park Jogger: Oprah offended me THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 8:09 AM EST, November 15, 2007 The victim of an infamous 1989 sexual attack in Central Park was shocked at what Oprah Winfrey asked her when she broke her silence 13 years later, the victim said in a new interview. In a 2002 interview for O, the Oprah magazine, the talk show host asked victim Trisha Meili -- known as the "Central Park Jogger" -- why she was running alone in the park at night. At the time, Meili, whose name was withheld, told Winfrey she realized it was "not a...

Who: Cindy SheehanWhat: Gathering of faint Hearts Rally/ConcertWhere: Central Park, East Meadow, 5th Ave & East 97th Street, Opposite Mt. Sinai Medical CenterWhen: Sunday, July 29th, Noon to 6pm Plan: Gather at 5th Ave & East 97th Street at Noon. We will proceed into the park and stake out a prominent location. We will voice our Support for our Troops and disdain for Ms. Sheehan as loudly and vocally as possible. We will use our first amendment right to free speech to interrupt her traitorous bile. Remember, Casey was a Hero, Cindy is a Zero! Bring flags, signs, banners, cow...

A coyote's romp in Central Park ended yesterday with a tranquilizer dart and a nap, but only after a messy breakfast (hold the feathers), a dip in a chilly pond and a sprint past a skating rink-turned-movie set. There was also a final chase that had all the elements of a Road Runner cartoon, with the added spectacle of television news helicopters hovering overhead, trailing the coyote and the out-of-breath posse of police officers, park officials and reporters trailing it. The coyote's pursuers joked that it even tried to turn itself in. It was hunting for a place to sleep...

A wily coyote led sharpshooters armed with tranquilizer guns on a merry chase through Central Park for two days before it was finally captured Wednesday morning.At one point, the searchers had it cornered near the park's ice rink, but the clever creature jumped into the water, ducked under a bridge, then scampered through the rink grounds and ran off.The coyote was captured somewhere north of that area, Parks Department spokesman Ashe Reardon said.The hunt had been on since Tuesday afternoon when Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, among others, spotted the animal in the southeast corner of the park, not far from...

Coyote captured. New York City is safe lol.

A horse-drawn carriage driver was hospitalized in critical condition after the animal bolted for blocks through midtown Manhattan, crashing into a station wagon and leaving the man in a pool of blood, witnesses and police said. "It was horrifying,'' said Robyn Hussa, who saw the horse racing through traffic Monday night. "It was like a nightmare.'' The horse, which had no passengers in its carriage, smashed into the station wagon at 50th Street and Ninth Avenue around 9:30 p.m., injuring two men in the car, fire department Chief Jim Hodgens said. The carriage driver was thrown into the street, which...

Wiccans encircle an altar of fruit and bread as day turns to night in Central Park. The lush strains of a nearby performance of Puccini's "Turandot" blend with the prayers of an ancient Celtic harvest festival. Wicca is a modern reconstruction of the pre-Christian nature-based religions of Europe. "There is an exquisite, ecstatic sense of the sacred," said Phyllis Curott, lawyer, author and the priestess of the Temple of Ara. "You literally feel your heart open. Being in the circle is like being in the womb of the great Goddess."

There's something unusual floating in the waters off Manhattan. Thirty-five years after it was first thought of -- artist Robert Smithson's ``Floating Island'' is a barge covered with soil, trees, shrubs and rocks, led by a tugboat. It will along the Hudson and East rivers beginning today. Smithson was one of the most significant artists of the 1960s, who was very interested in exploring nature and landscapes, and how they were constructed. He came up with ``Floating Island'' in 1970 and unsuccessfully tried to bring it to life. He died in 1973 at age 35 after a plane crash. For...

Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Gates stir all kinds of associations, but perhaps the most important thing is that they became an occasion for the city of New York to unite. They spawned a grand, gala, inspirational event: Happy crowds came to witness the first unfurling, Mayor Bloomberg seemed uncommonly emotional, and they generated a good deal of business. It may seem cynical to mention the last—much touted as proof of Bloomberg’s business acumen—but it points to the fact that New York, which has been under economic siege since 9/11, once again was in the black. Thus art’s catalytic and rallying power,...

The Manhattan mom who was mugged with her baby in Central Park by a gun-toting thug accompanied cops around the crime scene yesterday in hopes of spotting the crook. Collins said she was appalled when some police yesterday raised doubts she was really mugged, even suggesting that some women who had affairs and accidentally lost engagement rings claimed they were robbed.

March 23, 2005 -- A lovestruck teenager who created a public spectacle by climbing 30 feet up a Central Park tree to canoodle naked with his transsexual sweetheart was sentenced yesterday to community service — most likely back in a city park.

NEW YORK (AP) - With flowing fabric the color of a sunrise, "The Gates" - a massive public art installation - was unfurled Saturday for the start of a 16-day stay transforming miles of footpaths in Central Park. The project opened with Mayor Michael Bloomberg dropping the first piece of saffron-colored fabric to the cheers of a huge crowd. He was joined by exhibit creators Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The crowd counted down the seconds before Bloomberg, a longtime backer of the project, opened the exhibition at 8:30 a.m. The weather was windy and cold as the first fabric dropped from...

November 4, 2004 -- The hero pooch who saved his ex-model owner from a vicious, knife-wielding would-be rapist in Central Park was honored yesterday, and rewarded with a medal and a gigantic stuffed toy bone. The gutsy pup took a chunk out of accused rapist Tito Rodriguez, 32, during the attack, say cops. DNA samples from some of Rodriguez's blood helped identify the Bronx resident when he was picked up a few days later on another sex-crime charge.

August 29, 2004 Is 'Keep Off the Grass' Elitist?By ALEX WILLIAMS S Central Park a serene "church" for reflective New Yorkers or a bustling "town square" for the masses? Is it a bucolic "oasis" for Wordsworthian rumination or a sterile "grass museum" serving first and foremost to enhance the view from the high windows of the finest buildings of Fifth Avenue and Central Park West, where some of the park's wealthier benefactors happen to live?In the fierce debate of the past weeks and months over whether more than 200,000 anti-Republican protesters should be allowed to congregate en masse on the...

Some protesters-in-waiting seem to think that their right to free expression can't be separated from the right to trash New York City's Central Park. The park's Great Lawn has been restored at great expense. And that's the reason why — the only reason why — the city won't let a group called United for Peace and Justice hold a mass rally there before the Republican National Convention.Central Park is a green oasis in the concrete chaos of Manhattan. The Great Lawn is a gem of the urban environment. Damaging it would be akin to drilling for oil in the Arctic...

NEW YORK - The city's decision to deny a permit to protesters for a rally on Central Park's Great Lawn on the weekend before the Republican National Convention is about preserving the lawn, not suppressing speech, lawyers for the city said in federal court Friday. The lawn would be ruined if 75,000 people gathered there for a rally on Aug. 28 and then 250,000 people used the lawn for another rally the next day, said Gail Donoghue, representing the city. "I think two is too many back to back. The lawn would have no time to recover," Donoghue told U.S....

NEW YORK (AFP) - An Arab-American organization and a group opposed to war and racism filed suit charging they were unconstitutionally denied a permit to hold a protest in Central Park during the upcoming Republican National Convention. Attorneys for the National Council of Arab Americans (NCA) and ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), filed suit in US District Court in Manhattan accusing Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the New York Police Department and others of violating their right to a permit for the park's Great Lawn. The groups want to hold a civil rights rally on Central Park's Great...

The band members wore uniforms and did some synchronized moves. Their songs had snappy little hooks and robotic drumbeats. They even started their set with an introductory video. But Devo was hardly a boy band when it played on Friday night at Central Park SummerStage, in its first public New York concert since the 1980's. Just in time for the current new-wave revival, Devo, which got started in Ohio in 1972 and released its first album in 1978, returned to prove that its songs still have some bite. Paradoxes have always collected around Devo. It started as an art project,...

A British student who was sexually assaulted by a gang in New York and then ignored by police when she begged for help has received £80,000 in compensation. The 22-year-old accepted the out-of-court settlement even though she could have received millions if she had taken the case to a jury. The woman was attacked near the gates of Central Park by about 15 men after the Puerto Rican Day Parade in June 2000. She was among dozens of women who were attacked by roving gangs during the day, suffering the worst assault. Many of the victims were doused with water,...

"Why Are You Running?" Support Run Against Bush's First TV Ad Campaign *POSTPONED DUE TO RAIN!* New Filming Date - Next Tuesday June 29th We have said from the beginning that Run Against Bush is about each individual member’s reasons for running. Now we have a chance to showcase some of those reasons. We have been given the opportunity to make a TV ad to take our members’ voices to key battleground states. But we need your help to do it. A production crew has donated the time and equipment to make the ad, but we still need to pay...

April 25, 2004 2 Who Climbed Tree in Central Park Are Charged With MisdemeanorsBy MARC SANTORA wo nearly naked men who drew crowds and kept rescue workers at bay for hours on Thursday when they climbed a tree in Central Park were charged yesterday with a series of misdemeanors, the police said.The charges included reckless endangerment, resisting arrest, criminal mischief, public lewdness and disorderly conduct, all misdemeanors that the police said were unlikely to result in jail time.The police identified the men as William Rund, a 32-year-old preoperative transsexual, and Christopher Montero, 17, both of the Bronx. They were spotted...

The so-called "baby-face butcher" has been released on parole after serving six years of a 10-year sentence. Daphne Abdela, now 21, was released Friday from Albion Correctional Facility. Her accomplice and boyfriend at the time, 22-year-old Christopher Vasquez, was also paroled, on Wednesday. They were convicted of manslaughter after killing and gutting 44-year-old real estate broker Michael McMorrow in Central Park in May 1997 after a night of binge drinking together. Abdela was only 15 years old at the time and looked even younger, earning her the nickname ?baby-face butcher? in the tabloids. Abdela is now living in the New...

<p>So reasons Gerry Olin Greengrass, whose two Labradors have given her a new leash on exercise.</p> <p>Their stretches, leaps and rolls - and their doggedly high spirits in the face of old age and arthritis - inspired the 65-year-old Manhattan artist to hit the mat.</p>

As New Yorkers mark the 150th anniversary of Central Park, it's worth noting how that 843-acre jewel influenced the rest of the country. For it launched the career of Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of American landscape architecture. It's hard today to imagine New York City without Central Park, Boston without the Emerald Necklace, Washington without the National Zoo or Rock Creek Park - all the work of Olmsted, or (in the case of Rock Creek Park) his son, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., who carried on his work. Central Park's serene beauty is not the original landscape of Manhattan. That...

Artist Christo Gets Nod to Do Up NYC Central Park Wed Jan 22, 4:31 PM ET Add By Alden BentleyNEW YORK (Reuters) - Artistic duo Christo and Jeanne-Claude have finally won permission to snake a fluttering orange sculpture through 23 miles of New York's Central Park, ending a decades-old debate, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Wednesday. Reuters Photo The exhibit -- "The Gates, Central Park, New York, 1979-2005" -- will be erected in February 2005 and stand for two weeks. Christo is famous for his giant temporary works of art, such as wrapping the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art...

On December 5, I sent the following letter to the New York Times. You can bet the ranch the newspaper, which stopped printing my letters five years ago, will never publish it. To the Editor: In your December 6 editorial ("Injustice in the Jogger Case") supporting Manhattan D.A. Robert Morgenthau's call to exonerate the five men convicted in the 1989 Central Park Jogger case, you write, "Fair-minded people are appalled by the prosecutorial missteps and overreaching that led to the faulty convictions of five teenagers..." I submit that fair-minded people who have followed the case since its bloody inception, are...