Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara has announced a widespread review of New York restaurants to check their compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. In an effort to appear unbiased in the selection of restaurants to review, Mr. Bharara did what most New Yorkers do: he consulted his trusty Zagat guide. Read More
Senator Schumer and Congresswoman Velazquez are asking for the National Transportation Safety Board to expand their investigation into the fatal bus accident that killed 15 people after it rolled over and was sliced in half.
“We need more regulations,” said Velazquez, on the steps of City Hall.
Schumer said the need to look at Read More
Two of the city’s biggest general contractors have lied about their hiring of women-and-minority-owned subcontractors for some of New York’s biggest project, including the Fulton Stree Transit Center downtown and the Croton Water Treatment Plant in the Bronx, both multi-billion dollar undertakings.
According to The Times, prosecutors from Brooklyn are approaching a $20 million Read More
Giant bank Wells Fargo announced today that it’s paying $24 million “to eight states to enlist help in customer outreach, and to prevent or mitigate the impacts of foreclosures in these communities.” It’s doing this because the states in question — Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, Texas and Washington — are investigating Read More
Nearly 200 deceased city employees received pension checks between 2007 and 2009, potentially costing the city almost $2.3 million, city comptroller John Liu announced at a news conference today. Liu said that he has handed over the 14 most obviously criminal cases, totaling almost a half a million dollars in pension fraud, to the Department Read More
From the Real Estate Desk’s perch atop Observer HQ, there’s a pretty good view of the city. You can see just about everything, and not much escapes the Desk’s roving pink eye. Here-in is a weekly wrap of what we’ve seen, connecting the 8 million dots so you don’t have to.
On Monday, Department of Read More
You thought your apartment was bad.
It is pretty well-known that New Yorkers will do almost anything to live in the city, and there are plenty of landlords more than eager to take advantage of them. One trick is to rent out places–attics, basements, factories, garages… you name it–that are not legally inhabitable. The city Read More
The Financial Times is reporting that the Italian finance police have seized 23 million euros and begun investigating the Pope’s top two bankers in a money-laundering probe.
The Pope’s bank, called the Institute for Religious Works, is headed up by Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, formerly of Spain’s Banco Santander. Tedeschi is also a professor of Read More
Since Monday, three dead bodies were discovered floating in three different areas around New York. Around 12:45 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 9, at Cornell Avenue and Bronx River Avenue in the Bronx, police discovered the body of an unidentified white male in his 60s in the water. The next day, the Bronx Medical Examiners office Read More
In a 600-page report filed Monday, bankruptcy investigator Kenneth Klee expressed concerns about the late stages of the Tribune Company’s 2007 sale to Sam Zell. The $8.2 billion deal may have left the company too shaky to survive, Mr. Klee found. Mr. Klee’s findings could hamper the company’s attempt to get out of bankruptcy protection, Read More
