Student who was arrested for doodling on school desk sues city for excessive force

The 12-year-old schoolgirl handcuffed and arrested in February for doodling on her desk plans to sue the city. A lawyer for Alexa Gonzalez and her mother officially notified the city that they'll seek $1 million in damages for the alarming incident inside Junior High School 190 in Queens. The legal papers describe Alexa's ordeal as an excessive use of force and a violation of her rights. "We want to stop this from happening to other young children in the future," said the family's lawyer,...

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Guardians of the free Republics, which mailed ominous letters to governors, compare selves to Gandhi

Leave office now – peacefully. An anti-government group that recently sent letters to all 50 governors demanding they leave office within three days claims that their ideology is non-violent and inspired by the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi. The Guardians of the free Republics stated in a letter that they are a peaceful organization and stress faith over armed conflict, the Christian Science Monitor reported. "We would simply like to urge patriots everywhere to champion...

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Staten Island woman with heart defect dies trapped in elevator inches from floor when power failed

A Staten Island woman with a congenital heart defect died after she was trapped in an elevator  during a power failure in her apartment building Friday. Trapped in the darkness and just inches from her floor, Danielle Goldberg panicked - and suffered a fatal heart attack, her devastated family said. "She lived her life to the fullest until the elevator took her away from us," said her father Arthur Goldberg, 57. "She was just two seconds away (from home)," he said. "She was in the...

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Growth of Unpaid Internships May Be Illegal, Officials Say

With job openings scarce for young people, the number of unpaid internships has climbed in recent years, leading federal and state regulators to worry that more employers are illegally using such internships for free labor. Convinced that many unpaid internships violate minimum wage laws, officials in Oregon, California and other states have begun investigations and fined employers. Last year, M. Patricia Smith, then New York’s labor commissioner, ordered investigations into several firms’...

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Plane Crash in NJ 1 killed, 1 injured

One man was killed and another seriously injured when a small plane crashed Saturday in northern New Jersey. The two were the only people aboard the Cessna 172, a four-seat, fixed-wing propeller plane, said Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Holly Baker. According to West Milford police, the single-engine plane plane went down around 12:04 p.m. It ended up near a residential, wooded area in the Passaic County community of West Milford. One man was pronounced dead there a short...

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Need a Cab? New Analysis Shows Where to Find One

 It is a question that taxi-seekers in New York often ponder: Is there some kind of secret formula for where to find a cab in this town? Turns out, there is. The most popular corners to catch a yellow cab in Manhattan can now be pinpointed, at any hour of any day of the week, thanks to a record of 90 million actual taxi trips that have been silently tracked by the city. On a Saturday at 11 p.m., it is easier to hail a cab on the nightclub-and-bar-filled Lower East Side than at...

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Rabbits' Disappearance From Central Park A Mystery

Though abandoned pet rabbits perennially turn up after each Easter in what's affectionately called New York's backyard, a wild cottontail hasn't been spotted in the park for about four years. "I've been here for 17 years, and there were not many when I got here," Regina Alvarez, director of horticulture for the Central Park Conservancy, a nonprofit that manages the huge Manhattan park for the city, said in an e-mail. "But I would see them once in a while." Only time will tell if they are...

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MTA offers $20,000 to workers who leave voluntarily, retirees take advantage

Some MTA workers are cashing in on the authority's money problems. Several administrative workers slammed the brakes on their retirements after the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced it would give up to $20,000 to workers who voluntarily leave, the MTA confirmed. The nearly retired workers remained eligible for the windfalls because their retirement papers weren't fully processed, the authority says. MTA spokesman Jeremy Soffin said he believed only a "small number" of employees rescinded retirement papers to get the big payday,...

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Vatican waited years to defrock Arizona priest

The abuse cases of two priests in Arizona have cast further doubt on the Catholic church's insistence that Pope Benedict XVI played no role in shielding pedophiles before he became pope. Documents reviewed by The Associated Press show that as a Vatican cardinal, the future pope took over the abuse case of the Rev. Michael Teta of Tucson, Ariz., then let it languish at the Vatican for years despite repeated pleas from the bishop for the man to be removed from the priesthood. ...

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Residents of NJ city say cops worse than criminals

Josephine Skinner's grandson Dequan was 11 or 12 years old a few summers ago when she says he had a run-in with a Camden police officer who neighbors claim terrorized them for years. As the youth crossed the street to buy a soda at a store, she said Officer Jason Stetser — known on the streets as "Fat Face" — sprang from his cruiser. "He grabbed my grandson and said he had $100 of stuff on him," Skinner said. "They tried to lock him up." ...

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SKorea stops underwater search for missing sailors

South Korea's military ended its underwater search for dozens of sailors missing from a navy ship that sank following a mysterious blast eight days ago, an official said Saturday. Families of the sailors asked the military to suspend the operation for fear of additional casualties among divers after one died and as chances of finding survivors grew increasingly unlikely after the discovery of the body of one of the sailors. The decision came hours after divers...

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Afghan upper house backs Karzai election decree

The upper house of Afghanistan's parliament backed a decree by President Hamid Karzai on Saturday that limits foreigners' role in elections, giving him a victory in a dispute that has led to a quarrel with the White House. A complicated procedural row over how to run a September parliamentary election has emerged as a major bone of contention in the country, prompting an anti-Western tirade by Karzai on Thursday that drew a sharp rebuke from Washington. Karzai issued his...

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Suicide Bomber Hometown, rattled

When a 16-year-old girl married a militant Islamist separatist entangled in a long-running and bloody struggle against Russian government forces, her relatives in this dusty North Caucasus village say they disowned her immediately. They knew they could face torture from Russian security forces or even death for associating with the militants, and they knew their Dzhanet Abdurakhmanova, still just a schoolgirl, could easily be killed. But they never expected...

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