Free Republic

Migrants booted from Big Apple shelters have been setting up an illegal mini-tent city outside Randall’s Island’s housing site — despite the Adams administration’s best efforts to thwart them. “For the past month or so, we will come here, and there’ll be one or two tents set up, and we’ll ask them to take them down,” a city Parks Department enforcement officer told The Post at the site on Sunday. “But every day when we come back, there’s more.”

A male migrant was stabbed to death in a dispute at a shelter on Randall’s Island Saturday night, sources said. It was unclear what sparked the bloodshed, but the victim was 24 years old and the attacker 26, sources said. The attacker was taken into custody.

Officials have confirmed a migrant shelter will be built for 2,000 men on Randall’s Island’s kiddie soccer fields, with construction starting as early as Monday. The influx of migrants to New York City — including hundreds arriving daily — is “stretching our system to its breaking point and beyond,” Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement. “It has become more and more of a Herculean effort to find enough beds every night,” he said. Hizzoner said the state would be “covering the costs” of the shelter’s construction, maintenance and staffing, although officials have yet to say how much that will...

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- A couple of thieves are helping themselves to some high-end champagne. It may seem like small potatoes, but these thieves aren't just stocking the bar for a holiday party. Investigators believe they may be behind multiple thefts, and the brands they're taking are worth hundreds of dollars. **snip & edit** Thieves are going to the back of the store to the locked cabinets and picking out the most expensive stuff before leaving without paying a nickel. At a time when many are in the spirit of giving, others are acting more like the Grinch, especially at one...

Safeway, based in Pleasanton, Calif., said it will close 26 underperforming stores by year's end, including nine Tom Thumb stores in Dallas-Fort Worth. It will also shutter 16 Randalls stores in Houston and one in Austin. That will leave Safeway with 62 stores in Dallas-Fort Worth, 36 in Houston and 14 in Austin. It plans to remodel many of the remaining Texas stores to create so-called lifestyle centers, with higher-end products *** Analysts viewed the closings as a better alternative than exiting the market – an option never suggested by the company but repeatedly mulled by industry observers. They also...

Robert Onstead, founder and longtime chairman of Randalls Food Markets, died early Wednesday while on a family vacation in Italy. Onstead was in an airport in Sicily awaiting a flight to Rome when he suffered a heart attack. He was 73. Onstead's death shocked his family and Houston civic leaders, many of whom had considered him a personal friend for decades. "There are very few people who have ever worked as hard to promote, develop and to build Houston as Bob did," Drayton McLane, owner of the Houston Astros, said Wednesday. Onstead's son, Randall, had encouraged his father to run...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP)--Slumping supermarket giant Safeway Inc. reported a fourth-quarter loss Thursday of $1.05 billion, reflecting the grocer's continuing headaches with two major acquisitions in Texas and Illinois. The loss of $2.37 per share for the October-December period contrasted with a profit of $353.6 million, or 70 cents per share, the previous year. Fourth-quarter sales totaled $10.01 billion, up from $9.93 billion a year earlier. Safeway absorbed $1.5 billion in fourth-quarter charges to account for troubles at two grocers, Houston-based Randall's and Chicago-based Dominick's, that it bought for a total of $2.5 billion during the late 1990s. {snip} Besides sustaining...