By: Rusty Brooks

“An employee told me that he saw Prince Andrew on a balcony out at Little St. James groping girls right out in the open,” Denise George, the top prosecutor for the US Virgin Islands, told Vanity Fair.

“He said he remembered walking up to him and saying, ‘Good morning, your highness,’” George told the magazine of the royal who was dumped from royal duties in disgrace over his ties to the late pedophile.

Prince Andrew, also known as the Duke of York, and the second born son of Queen Elizabeth II, has been accused of saying some not nice things about Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who has accused him of sexual impropriety, TJV previously reported.

According to a report this weekend, the prince referred to her as “a very sick girl” and offered that he should “shrug and move on.”

According to reports, Andrew made those statements 9 years ago, after he was allegedly connected to a sex scandal surrounding his good friend, the late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. According to the Daily Mail, it was not the first time that Prince Andrew had made derogatory statements about Giuffre.

Those statements seemed to contradict his claims that he never remembered meeting her. She claims she was a victim of sex trafficking, starting when she was 17 years old. According to the report in the Daily Mail, Prince Andrew said “She is a very sick girl apparently. The innuendo is the problem. But there is nothing that one can do for that! Shrug and move on.”

The N.Y Post reported : “The island is also one of three places chief accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre says she was made to have sex with the royal, claiming in court docs, “Epstein, Andy, approximately eight other young girls and I had sex together.”

The attorney general was speaking out amid an ongoing legal battle with lawyers controlling Epstein’s estate — accusing them of using nondisclosure agreements to “conceal the criminal activity of Epstein and his associates who are still there”, the Post stated.

t was back in November that Prince Andrew said he would step back from public duties for the “foreseeable future,” in “the wake of his disastrous BBC interview about his relationship with the convicted sex offender and disgraced financier. Andrew first met Epstein in 1999 and they saw each other on several occasions after that. In 2010, Andrew was photographed walking with Epstein in New York’s Central Park – two years after the financier’s first conviction for child molestation,” TJV previously reported.

Recently, lawyer Gloria Allred, who is representing some of Epstein’s alleged victims but not Giuffre, told BBC Radio 4 that she would try to subpoena Andrew if he were to step foot in the United States. “Certainly, if he ever came back to the United States—that would be one of the first things that I’m sure a lot of lawyers, including me, would want to do,” she said. “If he has done nothing wrong, which appears to be what he has claimed, then why won’t he talk to law enforcement?” noted Vanity Fair.

By: Jared Evan

The dreaded squeegee men who used to approach your car at a red light, clean the window and demand payment after have returned to NYC, according to the NY Post

Many are blaming the new Bail Reform laws for setting the general tone of anything goes in New York.

“The panhandling window-washers, who became the face of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s quality-of-life crackdown in the 1990s, were back peddling their spotty services in Manhattan over the weekend,” reports the New York Post.

“A trio of the in-your-face glass swabbers were spotted plying their trade on 40th Street and Ninth Avenue on Sunday — figures from the annals of New York City history that some folks weren’t in the mood for,” adds the Post.

Meanwhile a man arrested 139 times publicly thanked Democrats and the new bail guidelines for his life of crime, mocking Cuomo and de Blasio.

“Bail reform, it’s lit!” yelled the suspect. “It’s the Democrats! The Democrats know me and the Republicans fear me. You can’t touch me! I can’t be stopped!”

Fox News Reported: “Charles Barry, 56, has been arrested six times since the start of this year. He’s been released each time without having to post bail under New York’s new bail reform law since his alleged offenses were nonviolent, the New York Daily News reported. In the past, Barry’s served several stints in state prison and has a lengthy record, including six felonies, 87 misdemeanors and 21 missed court hearings, the newspaper reported, citing court records.

“It’s the Democrats! The Democrats know me, and the Republicans fear me. You can’t touch me! I can’t be stopped!”

“I’m famous! I take $200, $300 a day of your money, cr——r! You can’t stop me!” Barry shouted to reporters. “It’s a great thing. It’s a beautiful thing. They punk’ed people out for bullsh— crimes.”

But Legal Aid Society, which represents Barry, argued the NYPD is using a few cases to spread fear over the new bail reform law, according to Fox News

“Mr. Barry’s case underscores the need for economic stability and meaningful social services, not a need to roll back bail reform,” the society said in a statement. “Locking up Mr. Barry on unaffordable bail or worse, remanding without bail, ultimately does nothing to protect the public and fails entirely to address his actual needs.”

By: Gregg Marcus

The Coronavirus has a lot of people concerned, even though health authorities here in the United States have said that the numbers of those infected thus far are negligible. Still, those concerns are translating into actions that some wish could have been avoided.

For example, taxi drivers across New York City are reportedly reluctant to pick up Chinese passengers for fear of coming into contact with the disease.

As one cab driver told the New York Post, “I feel bad about it, but when I see Chinese passengers, I just go. I don’t pick up any one Chinese. I’m scared. I don’t want to get the disease.” An Uber driver added, “If I drop off somebody in Flushing (a community with a large Chinese population), I deactivate the app. I don’t know who has it… I worry for myself, my family and my passengers.”

While caution is warranted, officials say, fear is not. Imported cases of COVID-19 in travelers have been detected in the U.S. Person-to-person spread of COVID-19 also has been seen among close contacts of returned travelers from Wuhan, “but at this time, this virus is NOT currently spreading in the community in the United States,” said the CDC in a statement. “The U.S. government has taken unprecedented steps related to travel in response to the growing public health threat posed by this new coronavirus, including suspending entry in the United States of foreign nationals who have visited China within the past 14 days. Measures monitor the health of those who are allowed entry into the United States (U.S. citizens, residents and family) who have been in China within 14 days also are being implemented.

Outbreaks of novel virus infections among people are always of public health concern, CDC officials pointed out. The risk from these outbreaks “depends on characteristics of the virus, including how well it spreads between people, the severity of resulting illness, and the medical or other measures available to control the impact of the virus (for example, vaccine or treatment medications).”

The potential public health threat posed by COVID-19 is high, both globally and to the United States, the organization said in a release. The fact that this disease has caused illness, including illness resulting in death, and sustained person-to-person spread in China is concerning. These factors meet two of the criteria of a pandemic. It’s unclear how the situation will unfold, but risk is dependent on exposure.

“At this time, some people will have an increased risk of infection, for example healthcare workers caring for patients with COVID-19 and other close contacts of patients with COVID-19. For the general American public, who are unlikely to be exposed to this virus, the immediate health risk from COVID-19 is considered low at this time.”

By Tom Roberts

The tragi-comedy that is the closing act of sleazy lawyer Michael Avenatti’s professional life is being commented on by nearly everyone, including Stormy Daniels.

“Sadly, it appears what Michael Avenatti did to me was just the tip of an iceberg of deceit,” wrote Daniels on Instagram. “I am not surprised his dishonesty has been revealed on a grand scale. His arrogant, fraudulent and overly aggressive behavior became so pervasive that the jury found his true character.”

Avenatti – the darling of CNN and MSNBC pundits and someone laughably eyed by the Democratic Party as a possible presidential contender, was recently found guilty Friday of trying to extort up to $25 million from Nike.

“Today a unanimous jury found Michael Avenatti guilty of misusing his client’s information in an effort to extort tens of millions of dollars from the athletic apparel company Nike,” U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said in a statement. “While the defendant may have tried to hide behind legal terms and a suit and tie, the jury clearly saw the defendant’s scheme for what it was — an old-fashioned shakedown.”

In a statement released to NBC, Avenatti attorney Scott Srebnick said his client “has been a fighter his entire life. The inhumane conditions of solitary confinement he has endured over the past month would break anyone but he remains strong. We are all obviously deeply disappointed by the jury’s verdict. We believe there are substantial legal grounds for the appeal that he plans to pursue.”

The would-be leader of the Democratic Party was dumb enough to let himself be captured on tape by the FBI as he spoke to Nike reps. “I’m not f—-ing around with this, and I’m not continuing to play games,” Avenatti told Nike officials, according to court papers. “You guys know enough now to know you’ve got a serious problem. And it’s worth more in exposure to me to just blow the lid on this thing. A few million dollars doesn’t move the needle for me.”

“This is what extortion sounds like,” noted Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Podolsky.

The man referred to as “the creepy porn lawyer” by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson “rose to fame almost two years ago when he brought a lawsuit on behalf of Stormy Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, saying her ‘hush agreement’ with President Trump was invalid because he never personally signed it. Daniels has said that she had an extramarital affair with the Trump prior to his candidacy, an affair the president has strenuously denied,” according to NBC News. “In the Nike case, prosecutors said Avenatti demanded that the sportswear behemoth pay a client of his $1.5 million and compensate him and his co-conspirator $15 million to $25 million to conduct an “internal investigation” for the company.”

By Ilana Siyance

Over half of all the hate crimes in New York City last year were attacks against Jewish people, the NY Times reported. As anti-Semitic attacks rise, orthodox Jews, or those who look visibly Jewish, are taking the brunt of most of these attacks. “We know there are over one million Jews in New York City alone, and a couple hundred thousand of those are Orthodox,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, referring to the Modern Orthodox and Hasidic Jews. “They are being singled out in disproportionate numbers to their percentage of the population.”

Mendel, 23, who has a beard and dresses in traditional Hasidic garbs, was targeted last winter in an attack in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. He was thrown to the ground by three thugs who punched his head and beat him, just to run away empty handed and be caught later. What’s more is they had pulled an almost identical attack to another Hasidic man, on the same block, just a few minutes earlier. That victim too was “very visibly Jewish”. Orthodox and Hasidic Jews are worried that just looking Jewish is yet again turning them into easy targets. “You could ask everyone if they’re Jewish,” said Mendel, “or you could just go after people who you don’t have to ask any questions about because you can just see that they dress like they’re Jewish.”

Of late, the Jewish communities in America have suffered from the deadly anti-Semitic attacks at synagogues in Poway, Calif., and in Pittsburgh. This year three more people were killed in a shooting at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City, N.J. Five others were injured in a knife attack in Monsey, N.Y. at a rabbi’s house.

As per a recent article in the NY Times, anti-Semitic violence in particular in the New York area, has peaked to a high from any time in recent memory. There were a total of 428 hate crimes last year in NYC, and more than half of those victims were Jewish people, according to the Police Department. Many of those crimes were perpetrated in heavily Orthodox neighborhoods. Community leaders have attested that a majority of the victims in the Monsey and Jersey City attacks were Orthodox. Worse yet, it seems the volume of attacks is increasing as just from Dec. 1 to Jan. 6, 2020 there have already been 43 incidents in New York State, as per the Anti-Defamation League. Community leaders say there are many more incidents, such as anti-Semitic comments, that do not even get reported. “We thought the things that happen in Europe would never happen in the United States and definitely not in New York City,” said Rabbi David Niederman, the president of United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and North Brooklyn. “But unfortunately, we were in dreamland.”

Nathan J. Diament, Executive Director of public policy for the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, told Congress “the most visible Jews,” including those who wear yarmulkes, hats, wigs or beards, “have been subject most to these physical and verbal assaults.”

“Anxiety about this new reality is present in Orthodox Jewish communities in all of your districts and across the entire country,” Mr. Diament testified last month. Residents of Crown Heights and Williamsburg are particularly fearful, even to walk in the streets. Many of the attacks have taken place in these neighborhoods, and statistically many of them were committed by young African-American men, said Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League. Local leaders are concerned that this may be an effect of the side by side African-American and Jewish communities that were squeezed together.

The neighboring communities were paired long ago as a result of gentrification. “You have this mixture of African-Americans and Hasidic people, and then you have gentrification,” said Gil Monrose, an African-American pastor at Mt. Zion Church of God 7th Day who lives in Crown Heights. “All of this is colliding in Crown Heights and it leads to young people committing crimes where they live.” To try to combat this hate, in November, the Anti-Defamation League expanded an anti-bias education program, which was first launched in 2018, hoping to add it to 40 more NYC schools.

By: Maria Jiminez

The NYPD subpoenaed a New York Post reporter’s Twitter data — after private crime scene photos were illegally released by the media. During that time, Post Police Bureau Chief Tina Moore obtained and shared crime scene photos from a dice-game shooting in Brooklyn that left four dead and three injured. Those photos appear to be at the center of the NYPD subpoena.

Days earlier, the department revised its patrol guide to crack down on videos and information allowed to be shared with the press. The new guidelines specifically note that cops can be disciplined if screenshots or videos of police footage leaks out — even unintentionally.

The subpoena to turn over documents, provided to The Post via Twitter, directs the social media company, Twitter, to produce all device and contact information associated with the user handle @Tinamoorereport, as well as the connection history between Oct. 9 and Oct. 14.

Legal experts called the NYPD’s subpoena of a journalist’s Twitter data an “abuse of authority” and “George Orwell-level shocking.”

The NYPD dropped the lawsuit that Wednesday after the Post’s lawyers contacted them. The legal maneuvering comes amid a push to stop the flow of sourced information, such as crime scene photos, to the press.

Coming to the Post’s aid were former Manhattan prosecutor Andrew Stengel, who inputted that “There are absolutely no grounds for a police department to subpoena the social media records of a journalist,” and Adam Scott Wandt, an assistant professor of public policy at John Jay College, who specializes in digital forensics and cybersecurity, who said the subpoena doesn’t appear to be focused on who communicated with Moore over Twitter — but rather “where she is and what equipment was used.”

The connection data requested by the NYPD could create a “network trail” of the reporter over the days requested, according to Wandt.

“By getting IP address history, they could geo-locate her,” he said.

The order could also reveal the reporter’s cell phone providers — which could point cops where to send additional subpoenas, Wandt said.

The subpoena order cites the city administrative code and, what lawyers called a strange move, The Patriot Act — a law passed by the US Congress, in the wake of 9/11, to “deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes.”

Eric Sanders, a retired NYPD cop-turned-attorney, told The Post the subpoena “has absolutely nothing to do with the Patriot Act.

“What are you trying to ferret out terrorism at a newspaper? This isn’t what the patriot act was intended for.”

By: Ilana Siyance

It seems judges too are looking for a loophole to get around the bail reform, which would allow most criminals back on the street.

Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge, John Hecht, took the law into his own hands, and used his knowledge of past statutes to get around the notorious new law. As reported by the NY Post, Justice Hecht used an overlooked 40-year-old state law to keep a repeat offender behind bars for up to 90 days. In the ruling published last week, recurrent burglar Casey Knight was kept jailed at the Otis Bantum Correctional Center in East Elmhurst.

Knight, 51, had seven prior convictions. He had another burglary charge pending currently, for stealing $3000 worth of jewelry from a Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment. He was freed to roam the streets in December, in anticipation of the bail reforms. He was arrested again though on Feb. 1, for allegedly committing three more thefts last month in more Bedford-Stuyvesant homes, and appeared before Justice Hecht.

Under the new law, burglary in the second degree is a nonviolent crime, for which there is no longer need to post bail. Hecht, however, ruled that the 1981 law was not changed when state lawmakers made their reforms, and should therefore still be applicable in this case. “The exclusion of burglary in the second degree simply isn’t there,” Hecht said, referring to the older law. “Accordingly, based on all these factors, the court concluded that the least restrictive condition to reasonably assure his return was remand for a period of 90 days.”

A spokesman for the Legal Aid Society, which represents Knight in the case, said the office is still studying Hecht’s ruling “to determine next steps.”

Bennett Gershman, a former Manhattan prosecutor, said the Brooklyn judge did the “right thing.” “The judge rescued a very bad situation using this statute,” said Gershman, who also said state legislators were the ones who overreached in the reform measure.

However, some lawmakers disagree if Judge Hecht was right to rule as he did— based on an ambiguity. Jocelyn Simonson, a former public defender, said the lawmakers surely had not intended to leave the old law on the books , and said the judge used the case to broadcast his own disapproval for the new bail reforms. “This is not a result that should be happening,” Simonson said. “He’s going out of his way to make a ruling that he didn’t have to make.”

As per the Post, Hecht is not the first New York judge to try to circumvent bail reform. Last month, Nassau County District Judge David McAndrews ruled that accused serial bank robber Romell Nellis be held on $10,000 cash bond, despite the fact that the crime was no longer bail-eligible. Later, a different Nassau judge had to release Nellis without bail. After being freed, the criminal allegedly hacked off his court-ordered monitoring ankle bracelet, and swiftly pulled two more bank heists, according to police.

By Ellen Cans

A posh downtown school that Anthony Weiner’s son attends, has parents in a tizzy to learn that the school board is giving consideration to allowing the convicted sex offender back onto its grounds. As reported by the NY Post’s Page Six, disgraced former Rep. Weiner has been lobbying to be allowed past the school gates to pick up his son, Jordan, 8, and to attend parent-teacher conferences and similar events. The school, which was not identified by name, has a long-standing policy of not allowing Weiner to come in past the gates. Now, parents who are in-the-know are worried that the board may reverse the decision, and allow him to enter the grounds, due to his petitions. “Parents are very upset,” an insider told the Post. “The school has kids that are 16 and 17 — the same age as [the kid] that he was [sexting] with.”

It is generally true that sex offenders are barred from entering school grounds, but New York state regulations can at times, under certain settings, make an exception if the offender has a child attending the school. School boards too, however, have the power to decide in specific cases whether or not to allow the parent into school grounds.

Weiner was registered as a sex offender and sentenced to 21 months in prison in 2017, after pleading guilty to sending sexually explicit text messages to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina, also admitting that he knew she was underage. The 55-year-old former Democratic congressman, who represented New York’s 9th congressional district, had won election seven terms, to serve from January 1999 until June 2011. A Brooklyn native from the Park Slope neighborhood, he was also a member of the New York City Council from 1992 to 1998, and further he ran unsuccessfully for NYC mayor in 2005 and again in 2013.

He was released from jail last February, early for good behavior. Until May, he was living in a half-way house in the Bronx, as part of his sentence. He has since moved into the same apartment building, just across the hall, as his estranged wife and son, in the East Village. His wife, Huma Abedin, who had served as vice chair of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid, had filed for divorce in September 2017, after his misdeeds first became public. She has since, however abandoned plans for the divorce, for their son’s sake.

Both Weiner and the school declined to comment on the story.

By Hadassa Kalatizadeh

On March 1st, a new initiative will go into effect, barring NYS retailers from distributing single-use plastic bags. The new law bans many types of businesses from using the thin plastic bags, which have been attributing to clogged landfills, polluted seas and lakes, and even getting tangled up in trees. Single-use paper bags have not been banned, but counties have the option to imposing a 5 cent fee for these.

Despite the expected inconvenience to shoppers the new law will bring, many environmentalists feel the initiative isn’t enough. As reported by Crain’s NY, some conservationists are concerned that stores may find loopholes through which to still distribute bags. The state’s imminent regulation could allow for distribution of plastic bags that are thick enough to be fit for many uses. “It is a giant loophole which they should close in the future,” said Judith Enck, a former administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency who currently leads the environmental advocacy group, Beyond Plastics. “It’s not good for the environment if you go from thinner plastic bags to thicker plastic bags.”

The NYS regulations, which will soon be finalized, will allow stores to give plastic bags, only provided that they are washable, can carry 22 pounds over at least 175 feet, can be re-used more than 125 times, and have a strong attached carry strap that won’t stretch with regular use. Another proposed caveat is that any reusable plastic bags should be at least one-hundredth of an inch thick. This stipulation is even stricter than that imposed in the state of California in 2016, where plastic bags need to have a minimum thickness of 2.25 mil.

A spokesman for Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who signed the bill last year, brushed off complaints that the law may be too lenient. “These groups should stop promoting baseless conspiracy theories and focus their efforts on helping New Yorkers transition to re-usable bags,” said spokesman Jason Conwall.

Some NY retailers, particularly major chains, have already started dropping the bags in anticipation of the upcoming requirement. Consumers are being encouraged to start using durable reusable bags, made of canvas or polyester, says Basil Seggos, commissioner of the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation. According to his agency, at least for the time being, the plastic industry probably will not have the machinery to produce plastic bags think enough to meet the standards of New York’s proposed law while still being cost effective. “There’s always a period of transition where there’s resistance or uncertainty,” Seggos said.

The ban makes allowances for some thin plastic bags “for which there is no reasonable or practicable alternative.” It allows for bags used for restaurant takeout food, plastic bags used to wrap meat, and bags used for prepared food. Also pet stores and art stores will have certain leniencies. Convenience store owners are feeling nervous about the upcoming law, and want to be exempt from the ban, before it is finalized. Seggos said regulators are not expected to make any major changes.

Jim Calvin, president of the state Association of Convenience Stores, said small business owners are feeling “anxiety” about having enough paper bags to meet their needs by March 1. Matthew Hamory, a managing director in the retail practice at AlixPartners LLP, said the impact that the ban will have on the market for paper bags has yet to be seen. Certainly, “New York will be adding an enormous amount of retail outlets who are using paper bags.”

As per Crain’s, Seggos said his agency is mindful of the possibility that there may be a paper bag shortage early on after the bill is implemented, and said the agency has bought more than a quarter million reusable bags which the state will distribute to food pantries and shelters.

By: Veronica Kordmany

A 92-year-old Queens woman, who came to the United States from the Dominican Republic, was raped and murdered last month, allegedly by an illegal immigrant. She was revived by her granddaughter, who spoke at the White House one Friday — and slammed New York’s City’s “sanctuary city” policy.

Daria Ortiz, 19, one of victim Maria Fuertes’ grandchildren, spoke at the behest of President Trump during an event focusing on border security with members of the Border Patrol agents union.

“Unfortunately, my grandmother had to be example of why something like this, [these] horrific crimes should never happen,” an emotional Ortiz said in the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

“The tragedy is that this could have been avoided had there been no sanctuary law,” she continued. “The system not only failed our family, but they failed our city.”

Trump mentioned the tragedy in his State of the Union Address, and also ripped Gotham’s sanctuary city policy. He assured his audience that Fuertes would still be alive if her alleged assailant, Reeaz Khan— a 21-year-old from Guyana who had been protected from deportation — had been turned over to the feds after earlier busts. Guyana has plead guilty after Fuertes was reportedly found at 2 a.m., on the verge of death, where she died from injuries including a broken spine.

During his speech, Trump explained how this crime had been conducted. “I asked for the criminal to be taken in, but he was released under New York sanctuary laws,” the president said.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is deploying special tactical officers from US Customs and Border Protection to sanctuary cities, including New York, in order to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement with cracking down on illegal immigrants, officials said Friday. This comes after the issue of the jurisdiction law. According to Fox News, “sanctuary jurisdiction forbids local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities when they issue a detainer”

Acting ICE Director Matthew Albence said in a statement that ICE “…is utilizing CBP to supplement enforcement activity in response to the resource challenges stemming from sanctuary city policies.”

“As we have noted for years, in jurisdiction where we are not allowed to assume custody of aliens from jails, our officers are forced to make at-large arrests of criminal aliens who have been released into communities,” said Albence.

Since his State of the Union Address, Trump has become dependent on Congress to pass the legislation that says victims of illegal immigrants should be allowed to sue sanctuary cities and states, to hold criminals responsible.

By: Brantley Stevens

A Palestinian-born NYU professor, Amin Husain, is one of the co-founders of Decolonize This Place, the group that vandalized New York City’s subways last month, Jerusalem Post reported.

Palestinian-born, Husain is a founding member of NYC Solidarity with Palestine, which describes itself as “seeking to broaden the work being done on Palestine by opening up more expansive spaces of resistances.”

He also has spoken publicly about attacking Israeli soldiers during the first Palestinian Intifada. “I was throwing rocks, Molotov cocktails, the like,” he said at a pro-Palestinian rally in Times Square in July 2016 captured on a YouTube video, The New York Post reported.

Masked anti-police Antifa protestors staged violent protests during the Friday public transit commute in New York City, calling for a cop-free New York, TJV previously reported

Protesters across the city vandalized turnstiles, trains and stations with anti-cop messages, according to a NY Post report.

The Police Benevolent Association of New York City issued a strong warning ahead of Friday’s Antifa demonstration, urging New Yorkers to “pay close attention.”

“This is [the] true endgame of the anti-police movement, an end of all policing & destruction of public order,” the group said in a tweet. “Our members have spent their careers — and in some cases given their lives — to bring public safety back to NYC. We can’t go backwards.”

Last week, an Antifa-backed social media account shared a video of three masked individuals accompanied by a tweet that read: “The streets are ours. The trains our ours. The walls are ours. This moment is ours,” according to a report on FOX News.

The minute-long video showing individuals vandalizing public property and jumping subway turnstiles, calls for supporters of the group to “meet up” and rally against law enforcement and transit fares, as was reported by Fox.

“We encourage you to link up with your friends, your family, and think of the ways you can move in affinity to build and f— s— up on J31 all day long,” an unidentified individual said, referencing Friday’s date.

Husain has also directed and produced the documentary film On This Land that “weaves together the Palestinian landscape with a multitude of voices from the Occupied Territories in order to understand Israeli domination and look with the Palestinians at the future of their struggle,” according to the film’s website.

By: Veronica Kordmany

The supposed tallest building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan may not be coming any time soon. The State Supreme Court ruled that New York City would have to trim off an undetermined number of floors, while also revoking the city’s building permit. As of last August, the building stood at an astonishing 51 stories.

Located at 200 Amsterdam Avenue, the currently-55-story condo was determined to be in violation of zoning limits, according to a lawsuit filed by the nonprofits. The judge that delivered the ruling is Justice W. Franc Perry, who argued that the “668-foot tower was constructed on an oddly shaped, “gerrymandered” lot that abused zoning rules to maximize its height”, according to an article published by The New York Post. Attorney Richard Emery guesses, “It’s probably about half the building that has to come down. That’s the best estimate so far”.

The developers of the property, identified as SJP Properties and Mitsui Fudosan America, two major real estate companies, have decided to appeal the judge’s decision. “It defies more than 40 years of precedent in the city’s zoning laws,” the developers said. “It also ignores the thoughtful decision of the DOB to grant the permit, which was upheld by the [New York Board of Standards and Appeals] following exhaustive document review and testimony over a two-year period.”

Opponents of the real estate deal, namely the Municipal Art Society and the Committee for Environmentally Sound Development, have voiced their strong criticisms, citing that the building is “grossly out of scale with the neighborhood” and a “…radical and wildly inaccurate interpretation of the Zoning Resolution”. Other critics have projected their support for the two groups by insisting that the permit should be revoked, on the grounds that the aforementioned DOB memo was misconstrued. The memo was designed to lay the ground rules for “…assembling air rights from adjoining zoning lots to allow taller buildings”, according to The New York Post.

Eventually, the construction site has been declared illegal, making its enemies delighted. The real estate developers consider it “a shocking loss for New York City.”

According to the company website, 200amsterdam.com, the building is prepared to serve as a residency, furnished with penthouse and apartment spaces available for rent. It is located at the intersection of Lincoln Center and Central Park, with prices ranging from approximately 3 to 8 million dollars. It is stocked with a spa, a 75’ saltwater swimming pool, locker rooms with gender-specific saunas and steam rooms, as well as a state-of-the-art fitness center, not including the separate yoga and pilates center.