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NEW YORK (CNN) -- Ads promoting Islam are to be placed on New York subway cars in September, but a U.S. congressman finds people sponsoring the messages unacceptable. "I have no problem with the ad itself, but I have a very, very real problem with those behind it," Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican, said Tuesday. He is urging the Metropolitan Transit Authority to reject the ads. The campaign is to feature ads on 1,000 of the subway system's roughly 6,200 cars. The main sponsor is a grass-roots organization, Islamic Circle of North America. The ads, simple black-and-white panels,...

New York City subway to host Muslim recruit campaign Siraj Wahhaj has defended convicted would-be bombers and labeled FBI and CIA agents "real terrorists," according to a report by the New York Post. He is now attempting to convince New York City residents that Islam is a religion of peace by promoting advertisements for the Islamic Circle of North America. The campaign has been approved by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and is set to run four weeks in September during Ramadhan. Wahhaj, a former member of the Nation of Islam, was named by U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White as one...

NEW YORK — A Muslim group, in collaboration with a Brooklyn imam once investigated as a possible co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, paid $48,000 to run Islamic advertisements on the city's subway cars this September. The ad campaign — known as the "Subway Project" — was designed to inform people about Islam and dispel common misconceptions about the religion, a representative for the Islamic Circle of North America told FOXNews.com. The story was first reported Monday in the New York Post. But the effort to plaster 1,000 subway cars with pro-Islamic messages has given new life to...

MUSLIM SUBWAY ADS LINKED TO TERROR PLOTS - New York Post Jul 21, 2008 ... An Islamic group plans to blitz 1000 subway cars with advertisements this September in a campaign being promoted by a Brooklyn imam whom ...

Welcome to your Monday morning blood-boiler. The NY Post reports that a jihadi group in NYC planning on running a series of subway ads is led by a Muslim imam tied to the terror plot to bomb the city’s landmarks. Submission: Allah board!An Islamic group plans to blitz 1,000 subway cars with advertisements this September in a campaign being promoted by a Brooklyn imam whom federal officials have linked to a plot to blow up city landmarks.The group says its mission is to explain the true nature of Islam to non-Muslims who believe the religion is bent on acts of...

Utility asks Brooklyn residents to avoid air-conditioning use despite heat wave Consolidated Edison Inc. urged thousands of customers to stop all non-essential electricity use as parts of Brooklyn, N.Y., suffered a power outage Sunday in the midst of heat wave. Con Ed said the outage had affected about 2,100 customers but that it had restored power to approximately 600 of those as of 11 a.m. Eastern time. As a result, it issued an appeal to those in the New York City borough's Sunset Park, Bay Ridge, Borough Park, and Park Slope neighborhoods "to discontinue their use of non-essential electrical appliances,...

The tenets of suburban life are the oxygen in the economic bloodstream, and the nation is suffering hypoxia. The reason a lot of folks think we're just getting warmed up on an economic swoon is that the global economy has neatly garroted all the drivers that make suburbs flourish. ...America in the early 2000s was a frothy brew of low inflation and cheap houses financed by what we'd later find out were mortgages handed out like those little dum-dum lollipops at the dentist; everybody got one no matter how bad their teeth. Nothing percolates GDP like the need to fill...

(Porn star Alexia Moore performs on stage ... ... and hurries out of court Friday night.) (Louis Posner) Teams of vice cops swooped down and busted a posh midtown strip club that catered to stockbrokers and bankers - and featured porn stars who charged $5,000 for private trysts. Prominent tax lawyer Louis Posner; his wife, Betty; and 19 others were arrested on a variety of prostitution and money-laundering charges at The Hot Lap Dance Club, which the couple ran out of a velvet-heavy loft, police said. Cops said Posner raked in $1 million over the last 10 months from the...

The Brooklyn district attorney says a minister has been convicted of repeatedly sexually abusing an 11-year-old girl. DA Charles Hynes on Thursday announced the conviction of Dieuvais Surin, a pastor in the Original Church of God of Prophesy. Surin could face up to 56 years in prison when he is sentenced on July 9. The child, who attended Surin's church, was abused in 1998 and 1999. Sometimes, he waited outside her school and then abused her in his van. Surin, who is 72, was convicted on 13 counts of criminal sex act and nine counts of sexual abuse.

****It looks like Rep. Charlie Rangel is one of those "do as I say, not as I do" politicians. NAMES REDACTED Manhattan ****It is no wonder that all these politicos try so hard to get into office. Just see how it has benefited Rangel in rent and Chris Dodd in mortgages. It's sickening. Tequesta, Fla. **** If Rangel can't see anything wrong with a wealthy, high-ranking, pretend-friend-to-the-poor representative having four rent-stabilized apartments all to himself, then he is a clueless, phony and out-of-touch knucklehead who is unfit to govern and should resign his Ways and Means Committee Chair immediately. Manhattan

Since the late 1990s, more than 18 police commanders have left the New York City police department to run their own agencies elsewhere. This unprecedented migration has spread the Compstat revolution - the data-driven transformation of policing begun under New York police commissioner William Bratton in 1994 - across the nation. Some of the transplants are well-known: Bratton now heads the Los Angeles Police Department; and his former first deputy, John Timoney, has led both the Miami and the Philadelphia forces. But the diaspora also includes lesser-known young Turks who rose quickly through the NYPD's ranks during the paradigm-shattering 1990s....

New immigrants accounted for at least one-third of the increase in the number of New York City voters since 2004, while the number of Irish, Italian and Jewish voters, who together represent the traditional core of the city’s political establishment, decreased slightly, according to an analysis of voter registration records. The transformation of the voter rolls portends a momentous shift in the ethnic makeup of the city’s electorate that threatens to upend the balance of power that has governed local politics for decades. With so many seats coming open next year — term limits will force the mayor, comptroller, public...

Rep. Charles Rangel defiantly defended having four rent-stabilized apartments Friday as Republicans, critics and constituents railed against what they called a sweetheart deal. "I don't see anything unfair about it, and I didn't even know it was a deal," said Rangel, 78, who chairs the powerful House Ways and Means Committee and is the dean of the New York congressional delegation. "I did not negotiate or ask for a lower price, and I'm paying the legal rent." [Snip] Nellie Bailey, director of the Harlem Tenants Council, accused Rangel of "the height of hypocrisy." She said he has failed to help...

Rep. Charles Rangel defiantly defended having four rent-stabilized apartments Friday as Republicans, critics and constituents railed against what they called a sweetheart deal. "I don't see anything unfair about it, and I didn't even know it was a deal," said Rangel, 78, who chairs the powerful House Ways and Means Committee and is the dean of the New York congressional delegation. "I did not negotiate or ask for a lower price, and I'm paying the legal rent." That didn't satisfy Connie Kennedy, 52, who has been living in a rent-stabilized apartment in Rangel's luxury doorman building, Lenox Terrace, for more...

Getting an apartment in New York City can be an expensive affair — unless the renter is a Congressman apparently. Charles Rangel (D-NY) has four rent-controlled apartments in one building in Harlem, even though rent control should only apply to a primary residence. Rangel uses one of the rent-controlled apartments as a campaign office, which calls into question whether he has broken gift-acceptance and electoral regulations: While aggressive evictions are reducing the number of rent-stabilized apartments in New York, Representative Charles B. Rangel is enjoying four of them, including three adjacent units on the 16th floor overlooking Upper Manhattan in...

Updated, 5 p.m. | Representative Charles B. Rangel held a 20-minute news conference on Friday afternoon after The New York Times reported that he had four rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem at a time when the city is experiencing an affordable housing crisis. At one point angry residents accosted the congressman, the dean of Harlem politics, in an unusual sidewalk confrontation, as Mr. Rangel faced questions from reporters. Mr. Rangel, who is the powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said his living arrangements were fair and legal and that he was paying the maximum rent allowed on all...

While aggressive evictions are making rent-stabilized apartments increasingly scarce in New York, Representative Charles B. Rangel is enjoying four of them, including three adjacent apartments in a sprawling penthouse overlooking Upper Manhattan, courtesy of one of New York’s premier real estate developers. Mr. Rangel, the powerful Democrat who is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, uses his fourth apartment, six floors below, as a campaign office, despite state and city regulations that require rent-stabilized apartments to be used as a primary residence. Mr. Rangel, who has a net worth of $566,000 to $1.2 million, according to Congressional disclosure...

NEW YORK (CBS) ― New York City taxi cab drivers say soaring gas prices are threatening to drive them out of business, causing many to demand a $1 gas surcharge to be mandated. Some drivers are saying their cooking pots are empty and their incomes are falling as gas prices continue to rise. They want a surcharge immediately, and additional increases if pump prices continue to go up. "Why is it that taxi drivers are always treated as second-class citizens?" asked Bhairavi Desai, the Executive Director Taxi Workers Alliance. "Is it because the majority of drivers are people of color?...

To the Bukharian Jews of Central Asia, a big house is an essential tradition: a place to shelter multiple generations, to hold large parties, memorials and holiday dinners, to reaffirm a community’s unity. So wherever they have put down roots, Bukharians — or, as they are sometimes called, Bukharans — have built aggressively, including in central Queens, where tens of thousands have settled since the early 1990s and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Nowhere has their love of big homes been on more opulent display than in a section of Forest Hills known as Cord Meyer, an upper middle...

Car Thief Finds Bomb-Packed Van in New York City Saturday , July 05, 2008 A car thief on Thursday night found a bomb-laden van wired to detonate by remote control that likely had been sitting there for more than five months, sources said. Investigators believe the homemade explosives found on a Brooklyn street in the Ford Econoline belonged to Yung Tang, 39, a Chinese national. He has been behind bars since he was caught Jan. 29 in Wallingford, Conn., with nearly identical bombs in his Mazda MPV minivan.

He's a criminal, but he "did the right thing" when it mattered - alerting cops to what he feared was a terror plot the day before the Fourth of July. At about 5 p.m. yesterday, an unidentified thief with a police record broke into a red van that had been parked at 53rd Street and Second Avenue in Brooklyn's Sunset Park for about a month, a source told The Post.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former New York Stock Exchange chief Richard Grasso won a knockout victory on Tuesday in his four-year fight to keep every last penny of his $187.5 million pay package, as an appeals court threw out the state's remaining claims against him. The ruling, Grasso's second court victory in the past week, prompted New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to throw in the towel. The New York Supreme Court's appellate division, in a 3-1 vote, dismissed two legal claims against Grasso brought by former Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in 2004. The ruling follows a decision last week...

MASSIVE WTC COST OVERRUNS LOOK 'GRIM'FREDRIC U. DICKER State Editor June 28, 2008 Last updated: 5:00 am ALBANY - New Yorkers will be told the "grim truth" Monday about new delays and cost overruns at the World Trade Center redevelopment site by Port Authority executive director Christopher Ward, state officials and real-estate industry sources said yesterday. Ward, in what one source called "the coming grim truth," is expected to outline for Gov. Paterson and the PA more than 20 major problem areas facing the $16 billion redevelopment efforts, including massive cost overruns and unrealistic construction timetables. At least one project,...

Brooklyn teen Quashon Burton thought bringing a laxative-laced cake to school would be "funny" - but he's not laughing now.   After two teachers were sickened and he was hit with an assault charge, the senior is worried his whole future is collapsing like a half-baked souffle. "I'm pretty scared," Burton told the Daily News Thursday outside his home in Brownsville.  "I didn't mean to have this whole thing blow out of proportion. I thought it would be a senior prank that everyone would think is funny." Burton, 17, and pals Tiara Peoples and Kenny Ramirez got the idea to...

Pipes and Drums of FreeRepublic Tartan Day 2009?

NEW YORK (AFP) - The iconic Chrysler and Flatiron skycrapers may soon join New York's GM Building as landmarks sold in part to Arab or European investors as the weak dollar spurs property grabs in the Big Apple, reports said Friday. The 50-story General Motors Building, constructed in 1968 and which includes the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue, has already been sold -- for a record-breaking 2.8 billion dollars -- to US real estate firm Boston Properties, backed by investors from Dubai, Kuwait and Qatar. The deal, concluded on Tuesday, makes the GM Building the most expensive skyscraper in the...

Calling her actions “an outrageous breach of trust,” a judge sentenced Diane M. Gordon, a former state assemblywoman from Brooklyn, to two to six years in prison on Thursday for offering to help a developer acquire city land if he would build her a house free. Ms. Gordon, a four-term Democrat from East New York, will be eligible for parole after 20 months. Prosecutors had sought a longer sentence — the maximum was 10 years — arguing that not only had Ms. Gordon tried to get a free house, not even in her district, but that even after her indictment,...

So starting Thursday, one-tenth of NYPD cops will be carrying Tasers — the notorious, but delightful electric weapons that can paralyze people from up to 30 feet away. The cops have had them for over 20 years, but kept them in their cars because they're so heavy. The reason for this new option? Bureaucratic concerns over the use of guns. Guns generally stop criminals dead and we know how politically inconvenient that can be, especially for the criminal. If you're shot and killed, you can't vote or march in a parade — and that sucks.

The latest Big Apple trophy being coveted by oil-rich sovereign wealth funds is the landmark Chrysler Building. Sources say the super-rich Abu Dhabi Investment Council is negotiating an $800 million deal for a 75 percent stake in the Art Deco treasure that has defined the Midtown skyline since 1930. The Chrysler assets would be purchased from TMW - the German arm of an Atlanta-based investment fund that's been eager to cash out of its Chrysler stake. The deal follows last month's sale of the GM Building and three other Macklowe/Equity Portfolio properties for $3.95 billion to a group of investors...

A city Health Department study finds that more than a fourth of adult New Yorkers are infected with the virus that causes genital herpes. The study, released Monday, says about 26 percent of New York City adults have genital herpes, compared to about 19 percent nationwide.

NEW YORK (AP) - A city Health Department study finds that more than a fourth of adult New Yorkers are infected with the virus that causes genital herpes. The study, released Monday, says about 26 percent of New York City adults have genital herpes, compared to about 19 percent nationwide. Snip

Rev. Al Sharpton plans Bell protest at Yankee Stadium for All-Star Game BY JOTHAM SEDERSTROM DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Monday, June 9th 2008, 4:00 AM The Rev. Al Sharpton threatened Sunday to disrupt baseball's historic All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium next month unless the state passes new laws to curb police misconduct.A month after protesters blocked bridges and tunnels during rush hour, Sharpton said he wants to bring the outrage over the Sean Bell shooting to the national stage July 15 by targeting the midsummer classic. "We have plans to do the same at the All-Star Game," Sharpton said. "We...

NEW YORK — Two hundred and eighty tons of American history were on the move Saturday in Harlem. The home of Alexander Hamilton, who conceived the country's banking system and was killed in a duel with a political rival, rolled inch by inch down a Harlem hillside to its new location overlooking a park. "This was the only home Hamilton ever owned," said Steve Laise, a National Park Service official dressed in a vest, tie and pants typical of the 1800's. "It represented the consummation of Hamilton's lifelong dream — a successful social position for a man who came to...

The Marcellus Shale play is the latest huge thing in natural gas, considered by some to be a "super giant" gas field. Read more here http://www.petroleumnews.com/pntruncate/246893563.shtml The edge of the Marcellus Shale in Northeast PA and NY is about 100 miles from NYC, which means the gas needs only a very short trip by pipeline to the major metropolitan centers. Natural gas is the cleanest of the fossil fuels and also is a source for hydrogen for hydrogen powered vehicles. So here are a bunch of "concerned citizens" planning to oppose it with all their might. "The Damascus group has...

A Columbia journalism student will tell jurors on Friday how a sadist turned her Manhattan apartment into a "torture chamber" where she was raped, disfigured and nearly blinded. "He ordered her to stab out her eyes," Assistant District Attorney Ann Prunty said Thursday as she opened the trial of 31-year-old Robert Williams with a horrific account of the alleged assault on April 13, 2007. Standing naked in the bathtub with her lips glued and taped shut, her hands and ankles bound, the 23-year-old victim "couldn't do it," Prunty said. "The next thing she heard was the kettle whistling," the prosecutor...

"Hell hath no fury like a pundit ignored."NOW, the gloves are coming off. But it's not Obama-Clinton or McCain-Obama. It's Amalgamated Punditry vs. Hillary Clinton. The pundit-acracy is pissed that the former first lady ignored their advice to pack it in and just go home last night. A herd of commentators declared that Clinton would be announcing her exit from the race in her NYC speech--especially after many had proclaimed Barack Obama had clinched the Democrat nomination. Then, Clinton's speech chain-sawed the limb off. And after they all climbed out on it so confidently. The following video had some pundits...

Four New RFAs Issued Governor Paterson on May 8, 2008 announced the availability of $109 million in funding for stem cell research initiatives, with the issuance of four new Requests for Applications. excerpt http://stemcell.ny.gov/about_NYSTEM_staff.html

You know liberals are feeling emboldened when lawmakers gleefully plot new ways to soak the rich. New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is the latest example, as she tests the waters for an income tax surcharge for those making more than $1 million a year. Speaker Quinn joins a growing chorus of the left: Senator Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has suggested raising workers' top combined federal tax rate from 36.2 to 54.8 percent. Chairman Charlie Rangel of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee has legislation raising the top rate to 45.4 percent. The House of Representatives recently...

A spurt of violence in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn has left residents wondering if the racial tensions of the past are making a return to the neighborhood, which saw anti-Semitic riots by blacks in August 1991. Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood has seen more cops on the street recently. The first incident in the recent upswing, in which a young black man was badly beaten by Jewish youths, was followed by an attack on a Jewish teenager as he rode his bike a few weeks later. Angry Jewish residents have since taken to the streets with signs reading: "Jewish...

NEW YORK — A string of shootings in a New York City neighborhood left eight people, including half a dozen teenagers, with gunshot wounds, police said Tuesday. All of the victims were expected to recover from their injuries. The six teens were found near Harlem's Marcus Garvey Park, where a crowd had gathered. It was not immediately clear whether they were wounded at the park or as they fled when gunfire erupted about 10:15 p.m. Monday, police said. The victims — between the ages of 13 and 18 — were found on several blocks along Lenox Avenue, from 125th...

Harlem erupted in mayhem last night when bullets began flying on jampacked streets across the neighborhood, sending panicked residents running for their lives. Seven victims, all youths in their teens or early 20s, were wounded - including one who was in critical condition. The other victims were stable. The trouble began just after 10 p.m. at a Memorial Day barbecue in Marcus Garvey Park. A witness said a fight over girls broke out and violence spread like wildfire. People were shot at four or more locations. "First thing, I heard six shots, then I heard about another 12 shots another...

"We're the only local news/talk station here in NYC in the morning," said John Gambling. Alluding to Imus and WABC's 5 a.m. host Curtis Sliwa, he cracked, "The guy with the cowboy hat and the guy with the beret are going to have to watch their backs." Gambling said, not for the first time, that he has little use for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama and that John McCain is "not the candidate I would put together if it were up to me." Gambling spent the last eight years at WABC (770 AM), after WOR startled him in 2000 by...

NEW YORK (CBS) ― Police are mobilizing a massive presence in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn in the wake of increased tension between black and Jewish communities. Leaders from both communities have come together recently to preach cooperation among residents of the neighborhood where blacks and Hassidic Jews live side by side. But recent violence has showed that religion and race don't always mix. "I definitely feel [like there's unrest] because I see it everyday. I'm around here a lot and that's what I'm hearing," said Crown Heights resident Anthony Rios. Another resident, Joe Morgenstein, agreed, saying he hears...

In my experience, many people believe that New Yorkers are smarter than other Americans, and this may actually be true. The majority of people who live in New York City were not born here. Indeed, more than a third were not born in the United States. New Yorkers, then, are people who left another place and came here, looking for something, which suggests that the population is preselected for higher energy and ambition. Also for a willingness to forgo basic comforts. I grew up in California, where even middle-income people have a patio on which they can eat breakfast and...

......the feds likely won't be looking into disbursements from the $4.5M "discretionary fund" in Bloomberg's 2008 city budget.....while a memo notes the disbursements "can create a mistaken impression that the Mayor's Office is funding its own 'member items' " ....... a Quinnipiac poll found that more than half of the public believe Bloomberg was somehow involved in the City Council's $200M slush-fund follies. One more reason not to trust City Hall.

Why the same things that attract millions of happy visitors to New York—the glamour, the skyline, the anonymity—also draw people from around the world to kill themselves here. Stephen was no stranger to New York. He’d been to the city as a boy, and regularly came here for work now that he was in his twenties. A consultant, he’d take the train from his hometown several hours south of the city, stay from Monday to Friday, then return on the weekends. He loved New York, his mother, Judith, says. The energy, the people, figuring out the streets and subways. He...

NEW YORK - The Brooklyn Bridge is 125 years old this month and New York City is getting ready to celebrate. The city on Monday announced an array of activities including a special bridge lighting, concerts, lectures, film series and family events. The five-day festivities will kick off on May 22 with a performance by the Brooklyn Philharmonic at the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park in Brooklyn, and a Grucci fireworks presentation. The bridge connects Brooklyn and Manhattan across the East River, and is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the country. It will be lit up in an array...

You bet your babushka, baby. But now, the red menace is kind of green. NEW YORK - The decor inside the national headquarters of the Communist Party USA, or CPUSA, is more Macy's than Marx. Glass walls rise from the floor to form state-of-the-art work spaces, nontoxic linseed oil burnishes the work surfaces, and biodegradable blue carpet is underfoot. Colorful paintings by the renowned artists Boris Taslitzky and Alejandro Romero, depicting the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps and working-class struggle, dot the walls of the expansive open-plan office. Inside their transparent cubicles, the 21-strong staff tap away on Apple...

Lawyers for Mayor Bloomberg are asking a judge to ban any reference to the Second Amendment during the upcoming trial of a gun shop owner who was sued by the city. While trials are often tightly choreographed, with lawyers routinely instructed to not tell certain facts to a jury, a gag order on a section of the Constitution would be an oddity. “Apparently Mayor Bloomberg has a problem with both the First and the Second amendments,” Lawrence Keane, the general counsel of a firearms industry association, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, said. The trial, set to begin May 27, involves...

The once-formidable fund-raising machine of Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton has begun to sputter at the worst possible moment for Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign, Clinton advisers and donors said Thursday, with spending curtailed on political events and advertising as Mrs. Clinton seeks to compete in the last six nominating contests. Mrs. Clinton’s diminished political momentum, following Tuesday’s loss in the North Carolina primary and her narrow victory in Indiana, appears to have had a dampening effect on her fund-raising, aides said, increasing the likelihood that Mrs. Clinton will lend her campaign more of her own money beyond the $11 million...