The narrator of the “documentary” The Third Jihad, is scheduled to speak at a rally at 1 Police Plaza to support the department’s sweeping surveillance of Muslims. “We feel the NYPD has been taking a lot of unfair hits,” Dr. Zuhdi Jasser told the AP. [ more › ]

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Peter King, Third Jihad Narrator Rally To Support NYPD "Spying"

While the Bloomberg Administration has successfully driven down the number of smokers overall in NYC by 35% since 2002 , the Department of Health is frustrated by the fact that the number of Asian smokers has stayed flat. So, the NY Times reports , “On Thursday, the department stepped up its appeals to Asian smokers, introducing graphic ads in Chinese for its annual campaign to distribute nicotine patches and gum, and offering Chinese speakers for those who call 311 to enroll in the program. The department will also seed the ethnic news media with translated versions of its antismoking campaign called ‘Pain,’ which depicts excruciating smoking-related cancers.” And it’s not pretty ! [ more › ]

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NYC’s Asians Won’t Stop Smoking, No Matter How Much Health Department Scares Them

Amidst charges of sexually abusive teachers , depressing teacher evaluations and high student arrest numbers , the Department of Education finally had some good news to report yesterday. After years of decline , the number of black and Latino students accepted into the city’s top specialized high schools went up 14 percent this year! [ more › ]

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14% Increase In Black, Latino Students At NYC’s Top High Schools

The New York Times rolled out a nifty interactive map cataloging restaurant sanitary inspections, putting all the dirty details at diner’s fingertips. The vast majority of restaurants in our fair city receive high marks from the Department of Health, a good chunk don’t—and now you can search through those by specific violation. Because you can still earn an A after evidence of rodents and roaches is detected. Would you be surprised to see that hundreds of restaurants across are home to furry frenemies? [ more › ]

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Interactive Map: Does Your Favorite Restaurant Have A Rat Infestation?

Since 2001 the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama have pumped $135 million into the NY/NJ region under the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program, a portion of which went into the NYPD’s controversial surveillance program targeting Muslims in the Northeast. According to the AP, it’s unclear how much of that money went towards surveillance “because the program has little oversight,” but cars used by the department’s plainclothes officers in keeping tabs on Muslim communities were paid for with federal money, as were the computers used to compile the reports for Commissioner Kelly. [ more › ]

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White House Drug War Program Gave Millions To NYPD For Muslim Surveillance

In November, the Bloomberg administration tried to swiftly implement a controversial policy requiring single homeless adults to prove they have nowhere else to stay before the city gives them shelter. The new rules would have reduced the shelter population by about 10 percent and save the city $4 million a year, according to the Department of Homeless Services. (In the fall, the city’s shelter population reached an all-time high of 40,000 people, the Times reports !) But yesterday a State Supreme Court judge blocked the new rules. Bloomberg is having a hard time dealing with it. [ more › ]

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Court Shoots Down Bloomberg’s Tough New Homeless Shelter Policy

Seems like just yesterday we were readying our cameras for the annual Manhattanhenge dates, and here we are again. This weekend, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson (and director of the Hayden Planetarium in the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History) posted the 2012 dates . If you somehow still haven’t heard of the event, here’s the deal: four times a year, “the setting sun aligns precisely with the Manhattan street grid, creating a radiant glow of light across Manhattan’s brick and steel canyons, simultaneously illuminating both the north and south sides of every cross street of the borough’s grid.” Two of these days you get the full sun, and the other two you get a half sun (both pictured above). [ more › ]

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Save The Dates For This Year’s Manhattanhenge

Another day, another damning revelation of the role that religion played in the NYPD’s extensive surveillance of the Muslim community. The AP reports that in addition to monitoring college students at schools in the New York City area, the department monitored Muslim students at Yale and University of Pennsylvania, and even sent an undercover officer on a whitewater rafting trip where he took detailed notes on the students and their activities. [ more › ]

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NYPD Spied On Muslims At Yale, Sent Undercover On Whitewater Rafting Trip

Four people were injured when a Department of Environmental Protection truck crashed into a building at 87th Street and First Avenue last night. And it turns out that truck had been stolen from a downtown lot—police say they arrested two people. [ more › ]

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Two Arrested For Stealing DEP Truck, Crashing It Into UES Building

Forget about the turbulent state of the Knicks, the underdog backstory and all the puns—last night, Jeremy Lin put on a true basketball show at MSG, besting Kobe Bryant with 38 points as he led the team to a 92-85 victory over the Lakers (see video highlights below). After the game, teammates, opposing players, fans and reporters were all in awe of what they just saw: “You don’t see many guys play like that in their whole career, let alone these past three or four games,” coach Mike D’Antoni said after the game . “Some of the stuff he’s doing is just amazing.” [ more › ]

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Lintense: Teammates, Opponents, Reporters Linmazed By Jeremy Lin