(TIMESUNION.COM) 22 April 2008:

Mail carrier Lisa Harrell of Albany, New York was in the right place at the right time this past week when she literally caught a baby that fell from the sky.

She doesn’t usually deliver to 306 Second Street in Albany until about 2 pm, but she happened to be at the address three hours early for a special delivery.

As she was delivering the package, she looked up and saw a baby in the window. As she rang the doorbell, something fell from the sky and struck her arm. Instinctively, she put out her arms and caught the projectile, which happened to be the baby she had just seen in the window.

“The baby fell right into my arms. Everything happened so quick,” said Harrell.

Her boss is hailing her as a hero but Harrell believes she was just in the right place at the right time.

(MSNBC.COM) 13 March 2008:

Governor of New York Eliot Spitzer resigned today after getting caught in a prostitution scandal. Politicians and scandals are nothing new, but this is the same guy that built a reputation on being scrupulously honest and railed against crime and corruption throughout his political career.

The scandal erupted only two days ago when allegations that the family man spent thousands of dollars on a hooker at a Washington hotel on February 13.

He’s not out of the woods, however. He is working on a plea deal in this public corruption scandal.

(NEW YORK DAILY NEWS) 15 February 2008:

Fourteen couples won the right to get married at the Empire State Building on Valentine’s Day. According to the New York Daily News, “The Empire State Building weddings were arranced by the magazine Web site Brides.com, which asked readers to write about their connection with the building.”

One bride, Marlo Del Toro said her and her husband used to sit in their apartment together and watch the colors changing on the buildings. “The building’s been central to our lives together,” she said.

(NEW YORK DAILY NEWS) 12 February 2008:

An unamed retired math teacher from Canada narrowly survived sex play at a bondage club in New York that he frequents. He was found blue, hanging in a dungeon at the Nutcracker Suite sex club. Dressed in a dog collar and stilletos, he was paying staff to check on him every hour. His wife was told that he was found unconscious on one of the streets of New York. She said, “I thought New York was safe.”

(NY DAILY NEWS) 11 November 2007:

New Yorkers were asked about their favorite place to propose marriage. Or, if you prefer, where they liked to have marriage proposed to them. What both men and women agreed upon was that Central Park was a great place.

After that it became a little different: for the men, the Empire State Building, Times Square, or the Love Statue. For women, the Rockefeller ice rink, Bryant Park or a five star restaurant are great places to hear the question popped.

So a little tip for any men thinking about popping the question. Try Central Park. At least you might both be there at the same time.

(Huffington Post) 8 November 2007:

It’s a commonly held belief that men are better athletes than women.

There are a few instances, however, where this doesn’t hold: fencing for example, or equestrian events. There’s also another couple of sports where it might be (as with Paula Radcliffe in the recent New York marathon) that pregnancy increases the subsequent performance of the woman.

Two reasons put forward are that pregnancy itself greatly boosts the blood volume and that as this shrinks post partum some of the beneficial effects of increased ability to absorb oxygen remains. The other is that in certain sports, like endurance swimming, subcutaneous body fat is a great boost: and as many women complain, pregnancy can certainly increase the presence of that.

Unfortunately, the population of world class female athletes who compete after childbirth is probably to small for us ever to be able to properly study this.

(REUTERS) 2 October 2007:

For Hillary Clinton, her tendency to burst out in a giggle during some public appearances has generated political tongue-wagging.

The New York senator, often seen as an overly serious candidate, has been showing some personality lately.

She laughed at times during questioning on Sunday morning television shows more than a week ago and then hooted with laughter when asked to respond to a critical comment from a rival candidate at a debate last Wednesday in New Hampshire.

It has become so frequent that Frank Rich, a liberal columnist for The New York Times, said the laugh seemed to be the Clinton campaign’s method of heeding complaints that she is “too calculating and controlled” and compared it to Democrat Al Gore’s long kiss with his wife Tipper during the Democratic National Convention in 2000.

(MSNBC.COM) 27 August 2007:

Condom giveaways are becoming part of an effort by New York City’s Department of Aging to educate older people about the risks of contracting the virus that causes AIDS. After the condom giveaway, free HIV testing was offered.

AIDS education of the elderly has become an important issue as antiretroviral drugs that can keep patients living into their golden years changes the face of AIDS. Experts warn that ignorance about HIV among seniors can lead to new infections.

And those infections are happening. A physician from Howard University Hospital in Washington recently diagnosed unsuspected HIV in an 82-year-old.

So HIV educators are taking their message of prevention to senior centers and other locales where older people meet. They also hope to create a welcoming environment for people who already have the virus.

(UNION TRIBUNE) 18 June 2007:

A New York woman has just accepted a $29,000 settlement from the New York City authorities. It’s a civil settlement arising out of her arrest and being held for 12 hours two years ago for appearing topless in public.

The award stems from a 1992 State Supreme Court ruling that insists that if men have the right to appear topless in public then so do women.

Opinion is still divided as to whether this is a welcome insistence of the equality of men and women under the law or a slight blindness to the differences between the sexes.

(REUTERS) 23 October 2006:

In modern dual earner household there is always that nagging worry about what the nanny is doing with the children. It’s easy enough to work out what she’s been feeding them and to check for any bruises and so on but how can you make sure she really is keeping an eye on them properly?

One New York company now has an answer: license plates for strollers. Customers place these on the child’s buggy and then passers by, if they see a nanny ignoring a child or doing something else dangerous, can log in to a website and report the behavior to the parents.

How long it will be before the nannies start smearing mud on the licence plates is as yet unknown.