This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters. New York City officials urged summer school programs to limit outdoor activity on Thursday as wildfire smoke wafted into the five boroughs. The Education Department’s guidance to principals also asked schools to reschedule outdoor trips. The city’s summer school program, known as Summer Rising, has slots […]

The post NYC Summer School Programs Are Urged To Stay Indoors Due to Wildfire Smoke appeared first on The City Reporter.

Hundreds of workers representing low-income defendants in Brooklyn and Queens walked off the job Thursday morning, after failing to reach a deal with management on wages and benefits before an 8 a.m. strike deadline. Approximately 500 lawyers, case managers and staff at Brooklyn Defender Services and Queens Defenders have been locked in negotiations on a […]

The post Walkout: Lawyers for Low-Income Clients Strike in Brooklyn and Queens appeared first on The City Reporter.

This story is part of Summer & The City, our weekly newsletter made to help you enjoy — and survive — the hottest time in the five boroughs. Sign up here. Anthony Reyes began his life’s work fishing the waters around New York City as a kid, when his dad would take him to the […]

The post Chasing Croakers With the Night Fishing Crews of Sheepshead Bay appeared first on The City Reporter.

This story was originally published by Healthbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at healthbeat.org/newsletters. Health officials have yet to identify the source of the Legionnaires’ outbreak on Manhattan’s Upper East Side as the number of infected individuals has climbed over the past two weeks. Sixty-three people have developed the severe form of pneumonia from the Legionella bacterium as […]

The post What You Need To Know About Legionnaires’ Disease as Upper East Side Outbreak Persists appeared first on The City Reporter.

A group of seven strangers sat in a 25-foot-long wooden boat on a recent clear-skied Wednesday evening, brows glistening with sweat as they rowed up and down the Hudson River. They were not trying out for a crew team but taking part in a free, twice-weekly community rowing program hosted by the nonprofit Village Community […]

The post ‘We’re Surrounded by Water’: How To Experience NYC on a Boat This Summer, For Free appeared first on The City Reporter.

The court-appointed remediation manager overseeing Rikers Island has ordered the city to overhaul key parts of the troubled jail system, calling for hiring new investigators to police officer misconduct, a $50 million expansion of educational and other programs for detainees and a pilot revamp of solitary confinement. In a 33-page action plan filed Wednesday — […]

The post Rikers Remediation Manager Unveils Blueprint for Overhauling City Jails appeared first on The City Reporter.

Trash cans overflowing with empty Modelo bottles. Weeknights spent hanging out with friends with no regard for work in the morning. Fireworks on Steinway Street. New York City has been outside all summer thanks to the World Cup, and on Sunday, the fun (and crowds) comes to a close, with Argentina and Spain facing off […]

The post Where in NYC to Watch the World Cup Final Between Argentina and Spain appeared first on The City Reporter.

As pressure mounts to end the city’s horse-drawn carriage rides once and for all, lawmakers are working to develop a jobs plan for the industry’s drivers — but the proposal on the table to retire the iconic tourist trade is light on specifics. That proposal was at the heart of hours of testimony at the […]

The post As Horse Carriage Ban Gains Allies, Lawmakers Promise New Jobs With Few Specifics appeared first on The City Reporter.

City Comptroller Mark Levine on Wednesday launched a comprehensive audit of nearly a quarter-billion dollars in no-bid migrant shelter contracts the city awarded to a non-profit group called BHRAGS Home Care whose leaders have been indicted on corruption charges. The group’s former president, Ronald Tirelus, and its former executive director, Roberto Samedy, were hit with […]

The post Levine to Audit $243 Million in Migrant Shelter Contracts After Bribery Charges appeared first on The City Reporter.

With smoke traveling in from wildfires burning in Minnesota and Ontario, New York is due for a week of hazy skies and possibly poorer air quality. When smoke from Canadian wildfires engulfed the city in June 2023, the boroughs turned suddenly orange, with air quality indices reaching 484 — the highest ever recorded. It may […]

The post Wildfire Smoke Is Back: A New Yorker’s Guide to Staying Safe appeared first on The City Reporter.

Elena Zerkal isn’t shy about tooting her own horn over the 11 years she spent behind the wheel as a for-hire vehicle driver. “Five-star ratings, professional, I never had any problems,” she said. “Best ratings, best customer service review, everything.” But the former Lyft driver says that track record didn’t spare her from being “dumped […]

The post App Drivers Protest Uber and Lyft’s Legal Fight Against Deactivation Law appeared first on The City Reporter.

More than 500 cooling towers across Manhattan are not in compliance with city regulations requiring monthly water sample tests to help combat the spread of the potentially deadly Legionella bacteria, records examined by The City Reporter show. All told there are 568 towers that records show haven’t submitted required tests to the Department of Health […]

The post Hundreds of Manhattan Cooling Towers Haven’t Submitted Tests to Detect Legionella appeared first on The City Reporter.

A line meant to bring hydropower from Canada to New York City has been out of service for 10 days with no end in sight as another heat wave sets in. The Champlain Hudson Power Express, a project that runs more than 300 miles below land and bodies of water from Québec to Astoria, can […]

The post In Heat Wave, Major Power Line Meant to Boost NYC Grid Is Still Not Working appeared first on The City Reporter.

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters. New York City officials are expanding a slew of the city’s highest-demand special education programs into preschool classrooms for the first time, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced Tuesday. The expansion this fall is meant to help address the city’s longstanding failure to provide classroom seats […]

The post Pre-K Special Education Is Expanding in 14 NYC School Districts appeared first on The City Reporter.

Summer’s high temperatures often bring electric bills to match — and this year New Yorkers are feeling the burn. The air conditioners keeping you cool guzzle electricity, which tends to cost more as demand spikes. Heat waves like the one New York City experienced in early July drive that demand and make your ACs work […]

The post New Yorkers Face Rising Electric Bills During ‘Especially Brutal’ Summer: What To Know appeared first on The City Reporter.

Thousands more public school students will receive free swim lessons next year under new City Council funding, part of a long-term effort to teach every second grader in New York City how to swim. The Council has allocated $1.5 million to the nonprofit group Wave Makers, which was first launched more than two years ago […]

The post From The Bronx to the Battery, More Funding for Free Swim Lessons appeared first on The City Reporter.

New York will impose a yearlong moratorium on new energy-intensive data centers, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Tuesday — the first such ban in the country as officials scrutinize the burgeoning sites’ impact on local environments. Under an executive order, the state will not grant environmental permits for data centers of at least 50 megawatts for […]

The post Hochul Temporarily Bans New Data Centers in NY Amid Scrutiny of Climate Impacts appeared first on The City Reporter.

The parents of a teenager who tumbled to his death from a breakaway horse carriage in Central Park last month will this week plead with the City Council to banish the tourist trade from the park. A Wednesday hearing on the future of horse-drawn rides that have been Central Park fixtures since the 1860s follows […]

The post Last Roundup? Council Hearing Set Over Central Park Horse Ban. appeared first on The City Reporter.

Some people are always going to have a bad-faith reaction to this mayor… Instead of “look at this online map that he made an error on,” it’s “he’s a communist who wants to take over our city, and this is just the beginning.” Mayor Mamdani this week blamed the previous administration for a map of […]

The post LISTEN: Mamdani’s ‘Mapgate’ Is a Tempest in a Teapot appeared first on The City Reporter.

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters. Of Staten Island Technical High School’s nearly 300 offers, just one went to a Black student. At Stuyvesant, that number was three — the lowest number since at least 2014, which is as far back as the city’s public data goes. And at the High School […]

The post NYC’s Elite Specialized High Schools Admit Disproportionately Few Black Students appeared first on The City Reporter.

ICE has been holding a child in an ICE detention center meant for adults for nearly two months due to a clerical error, the boy’s attorneys allege in a federal lawsuit filed in May.  Federal Judge Marilyn J. Horan in Pennsylvania on Thursday ordered ICE to transfer the individual, known as A.D. in legal filings, […]

The post ICE Held a Minor in Adult Detention for Nearly Two Months, Attorneys Allege appeared first on The City Reporter.

Situated in prime Midtown locations near Grand Central, the boutique Fitzpatrick hotels were perfectly positioned to take advantage of a surge of tourists flooding into New York for the World Cup. But with seven of the eight World Cup matches to be played at MetLife Stadium across the Hudson completed, revenue increased only about 15% […]

The post NYC Hotels Missed Promised World Cup Boom, While Sports Bars Cashed In appeared first on The City Reporter.

The City Council will vote this week on a bill to boost underpaid para-professionals in the city school system with a $10,000 payment that’s separate from their negotiated salary – even though it sparked concerns from the mayor’s office over whether it’s legal. The bill, which was re-introduced in February by Councilmember Carmen De La […]

The post Can They Do That? Council Sets Vote on $10k Perk for Paraprofessionals appeared first on The City Reporter.

“Would they cheer so loudly if it was a white kid shot? I don’t think so. Would he have shot four white kids? I don’t think so.…  Is there a racial edge to this? That’s all there is. Somebody asked me, ‘Is it beneath the surface a racial thing?’ Beneath the surface?! I mean, it’s […]

The post LISTEN: The Subway Vigilante Who Never Left appeared first on The City Reporter.

Diana Ruiz Cabrera was several hours into her shift at the massive office-to-residential conversion at the former Pfizer headquarters in Midtown in mid-February when she slipped from a step ladder and fell on her back about five feet below, tearing several ligaments in her ankle in the process. She left the structure in tears, descending […]

The post More Worker Injuries Revealed at Evacuated Midtown Tower appeared first on The City Reporter.

The nearly-Olympic-sized Red Hook Pool in Brooklyn can hold more than 4,400 people, but only one would-be bather turned out for a meeting Thursday night where Parks officials explained why the neighborhood’s summer lifeline has failed to open on time.  “This is not something you can foresee — this building is 90 years old, and […]

The post Red Hook Pool Fails to Surface, Again appeared first on The City Reporter.

Two years ago, Jessica Kaplan had about three months to move her entire theatrical scenery shop. The building where Sightline Fabrication had operated since 2008 had been sold, she said, and the landlord needed Kaplan and her partner out. In a frenzy to find a new place, Kaplan toured 30 alternative spaces, but none were […]

The post NYC Manufacturers Fear Losing Lifeline as Budget Cut Imperils Industrial Business Support appeared first on The City Reporter.

This story was originally published by Healthbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at https://www.healthbeat.org/newsletters. As the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene tries to identify the source of the Legionnaires’ outbreak on the Upper East Side, elected officials and residents are raising questions about the enforcement of a new law seeking to curb the spread […]

The post Upper East Side Legionnaires’ Outbreak Poses Test for Cooling Tower Inspection Rules appeared first on The City Reporter.

The second largest bank in the country. The biggest cosmetics company in the world. Two of the top 50 U.S. law firms. And a score of AI companies ranging from industry leader Anthropic to small startups. What they all have in common is that in the last three months they signed long-term leases for office […]

The post Big Business is Leasing Record Office Space in Mamdani’s New York appeared first on The City Reporter.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested at least five people inside New York City immigration courts in recent weeks, despite two federal court orders banning the practice in most cases.  Advocates are asking a federal judge to step in, saying the arrests may violate those orders. In response, in court filings this week, ICE justified […]

The post ICE Finds New Justification for Immigration Courthouse Arrests, Despite Court Orders appeared first on The City Reporter.