New York News

A new report found that two in every five children in New York City from kindergarten through eighth grade are either overweight or obese, according to The New York Times on Monday.

A whopping 22 percent have body mass indexes (BMI) high enough to be declared clinically obese, and another 18 percent are considered overweight. The study was based on the 2008-2009 data of 254,076 children gathered and analyzed by the City’s Departments of Education and Health.

The revival of an investigation into tabloid tactics at a London newspaper has turned into a new skirmish in a battle 3,000 miles away between rival New York broadsheets.

A lengthy New York Times report about allegations of phone hacking at the News of the World, a Sunday tabloid owned by News Corp, provoked a protest from Rupert Murdoch’s media group that the story had been “tainted by a vested interest in its outcome”.

Arrayed on the steps of City Hall, New York Muslim leaders Wednesday condemned the ugly rhetorical attacks aimed at Islam and its followers amid a national furor over a planned Islamic center two blocks from the site of the Sept. 11 attacks.

During a news conference, the Muslim leaders labeled the verbal attacks un-American, and a New York congressman described the vitriol as beneath New Yorkers.

New York City Muslims declared themselves just as American as opponents of an Islamic cultural center and mosque near the World Trade Center on Wednesday in a bid to seize control of a debate they appear to be losing.

Leaders of some 55 New York mosques and Islamic organizations gathered on the City Hall steps in the face of growing opposition to the proposed $100 million Islamic center that would stand two blocks from the site where the Twin Towers were destroyed on September 11, 2001.

New York, the nation’s third-most populous state, may begin collecting taxes as soon as tomorrow on cigarettes sold by Indians from their reservations to non- tribal buyers after a judge refused to block the levies.

The Seneca Nation of Indians has been fighting to bar the collections, which are set to begin Sept. 1 under a law passed in June. The levy is projected to produce $150 million by March, according to the state budget, and may help close a $9.2 billion gap in the $136 billion spending plan for fiscal 2011.

Late Friday, Dallas-based Southwest said it would lease 36 time slots at Newark Liberty International Airport from Continental Airlines giving the domestic budget carrier first-time access to the constrained and busy facility.

“This will help [Southwest] establish a pretty good presence in the Northeast, and it’s enough to have the Southwest effect: substantially lower airfare,” said Terry Trippler, travel advisor with the consultancy Rules to Know, in a Monday interview.

After all of the anti-Muslim rhetoric surrounding the debate about Park51, it didn’t come as a surprise to many that someone took it to the next level. As Michael Tomasky reported on his blog, a New York City cab driver, Ahmed Sharif, was stabbed yesterday after the perpetrator asked “Are you Muslim?”

Initial reports on Michael Enright, the young man who has been charged with attempted murder as a hate crime, among other things, show him as an untroubled young man who was working as a volunteer with an interfaith project and who had travelled to Afghanistan to film a documentary on US soldiers. His neighbours and colleagues have gone to the media to tell them Enright is “a nice boy”. Multiple reports have referred to him as “baby-faced”.

A coalition that includes relatives of victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks staged a demonstration Wednesday in support of a plan to build a mosque near the attack site in lower Manhattan.

The group, calling itself “New York Neighbors for American Values,” gathered Wednesday near “Ground Zero” and the site of the proposed Islamic center and mosque two blocks away.

A drunken passenger of a taxi in New York City has been arrested for assaulting the driver after finding out he is Muslim, police say.

Michael Enright, who slashed Ahmed Sharif with a folding knife, was detained by police on Tuesday night on charges including attempted murder as a hate crime.

New York has more unwanted nocturnal guests than other urban areas and has been named the most bedbug infested city in the United States.

It surpassed Philadelphia, Detroit, Cincinnati and Chicago, which rounded out the top five cities, according to extermination company Terminix, which compiled the list based on call volume to its offices around the country so far this year.