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Lenore Bilger, RN and Care Coordinator, VNS Health  By Lenore Bilger  RN and Care Coordinator VNS Health   HEALTH - February is American Heart Month—but the truth is that heart health is an issue we all need to stay on top of every month of the year. Our hearts are the powerhouses of our bodies, keeping everything running and functioning. And if we ignore our hearts, the consequences can be high.  As a skilled home care nurse at VNS Health, one thing I am especially passionate about is educating my patients on the importance of heart health. I can relate to how scary heart disease can be—I had my own heart scare when I was giving birth, an experience that put into clear perspective just how important it is to stay vigilant in monitoring our health. Getting into a heart-healthy lifestyle might seem overwhelming at first: “eat this, don’t eat that—exercise,” but there’s no reason to fear taking care of our hearts. In fact, there are many simple steps you can begin taking right n

New York City Mayor Eric Adams and New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY) Commissioner Jessica Tisch announce a roadmap to implement the nation's largest composting program at City Hall on February 1, 2023. -Photo by Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office   By Mayor Eric Adams Community Op-Ed February 6, 2023 NEW YORK - New Yorkers know that rats love trash bags full of food waste. And they know that I hate rats. This week, our Administration declared that Restaurant Week for rats in this City is finally over.    For too long, New Yorkers have had to bring their compost to neighborhood drop off sites, or deal with one-off collection programs that weren’t designed to reach everyone. This meant mountains of trash bags on our sidewalks, attracting rats day and night.     New Yorkers have been saying loudly that they want a compost program across the City – they want the rat food out of the black bags and out of the landfills once and for all. For over 20 years,

Dozens of migrants camped out in front of the Watson Hotel before being cleared out, Feb. 1, 2023. | Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY By Gabriel Poblete, The City This article was originally published on Feb 1 9:57pm EST by THE CITY NEW YORK - Police and sanitation crews swept asylum seekers from the sidewalk in front of a Hell’s Kitchen hotel Wednesday night, seeking to end a standoff with men who had refused to move to a new city-run shelter in Brooklyn.  Working with grassroots community organizers, the migrants had rallied earlier in the day for work permits to help them become self-sufficient. In the meantime, they sought a place to stay with better conditions than available at the barracks-like Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red Hook, which some had inspected on a reconnaissance mission. At about 4 p.m, staffers from the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs arrived at the Watson Hotel on West 57th Street to ask the migrants to relocate to the Brooklyn shelter, and several proceede

The entrance to Penn Station at West 31st Street, Jan. 6, 2020. | Jose Martinez/THE CITY By Jose Martinez, The City This article was originally published on Jan 30 2:20pm EST by THE CITY NEW YORK - The MTA’s plans  to bring Metro-North trains to Penn Station and build four new stations in The Bronx are expected to be delayed by at least six to nine months, agency officials said Monday — blaming Amtrak, again. The slowdown on the $2.8 billion Penn Access mega-project was revealed just days after a mammoth Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) hub opened deep beneath Grand Central Terminal. The MTA also partially blamed that project’s delays and cost overruns on the federally funded national rail service. “This is the dynamic that got East Side Access [the LIRR project] into the hole,” Janno Lieber, MTA chairperson and CEO said Monday during a meeting of the transit agency’s board members. “There’s probably a billion dollars of extra costs in East Side Access, maybe more

Mayor Eric Adams delivers his first State of the City address at Queens Theater on Thursday, January 26, 2023. Photo by Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office   By Mayor Eric Adams Community Op Ed January 30, 2023 NEW YORK - Last week, in Queens — the borough I grew up in — I reported to New Yorkers on the state of our city. I outlined what we’ve accomplished in the year since I took office, and my vision for the future. We are going to build a city for working people, one that is more affordable, safer, cleaner, and more livable. We focused on four essential pillars: jobs, safety, housing, and care. Because without a strong working class, this city cannot survive. Working people need good jobs and pathways to get those jobs. And those jobs need to be able to support a home for New Yorkers and their families. That is why we are reimagining our workforce system, connecting 30,000 New Yorkers to apprenticeships through a new Apprenticeship Accelerator. It’

A cannabis shop advertised its goods in the Financial District, Jan. 12, 2023. | Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY By Stephon Johnson, The City This article was  originally published  on  Jan 18 8:37pm EST  by  THE CITY NEW YORK - Smoke shop robberies in New York City went up more than four times between the first and second years of cannabis legalization in New York state, NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell testified at a City Council hearing Wednesday on the spread of the stores selling unlicensed cannabis or untaxed tobacco products. Since New York legalized recreational marijuana in March 2021, unlicensed and untaxed operations have openly sold the product while the state lagged in opening licensed storefronts. Chell reported 593 such smoke-shop robberies in 2022, way up from 137 in 2021. That comes to nearly one robbery for every two smoke shops, according to the NYPD’s count. The police department reports finding 428 of them in Brooklyn, 373 in Manhattan, 226 in Que

Police are searching for this man in connection with a sex assault near the Empire State Building. By Dan Gesslein Manhattan Voice January 18, 2023 MANHATTAN - Cops are searching for a perv who sexually assaulted a woman on the street around the corner from the Empire State Building.  At around 7 pm on December 30, a 24-year-old woman was standing in the vicinity of 5th Avenue and West 32 Street around the corner from the Empire State Building. Unbeknownst to her, a man standing near her began masturbating on the street. He then walked up to her, grabbed her and ejaculated on her back. He then ran off.  Cops said the suspect was last spotted inside the Herald Square subway station. Subway surveillance cameras captured an image of the suspect. The suspect is described as a man with a dark complexion who is 5 foot 10 and weighs 165 pounds. He was last seen wearing a green hat, dark blue jacket, gray colored jeans and gray sneakers.   Anyone with information