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    New York City Drought Warning Declared for First Time in Over 20 Years

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    The warning, which extends beyond the city to include 10 other counties in New York state, was announced as wildfires burned and residents continued to await meaningful rainfall.Mayor Eric Adams on Monday elevated New York City’s drought watch to a drought warning, the last step before declaring a drought emergency, which would come with mandatory water restrictions.The warning extends beyond the city to include 10 additional New York State counties, including much of the Hudson Valley. In the rest of the state, which is also experiencing abnormally dry conditions, Gov. Kathy Hochul has declared a drought watch.Although no restrictions are required under a drought warning, officials are urging residents to voluntarily conserve water, while water suppliers focus on contingency plans. The city’s reservoirs, which are usually around 79 percent full at this time of year, are down to about 60 percent of their total capacity, and the inch of rain forecast in the coming days will not be enough to replenish them, officials said. New York City has received less than a quarter-inch of rain since Oct. 1, according to the National Weather Service.One such contingency plan involves the pause of the Delaware Aqueduct repair project, a $2 billion, eight-month initiative, planned for decades, that required the shutdown of a crucial tunnel responsible for transporting about half the city’s water supply. Since repairs began in early October, access to four major reservoirs in the Catskill Mountains has been cut off.Now, the mayor plans to halt the construction project and reopen the aqueduct so the water from those four reservoirs can flow into New York again.“The ongoing and historic lack of rainfall, both in the city and in the upstate watershed where our reservoirs are located, has become more critical,” said Rohit T. Aggarwala, the city’s climate chief and the commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection, which oversees the city’s water supply system.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      N.Y.C. Helped Migrant Accused of Killing Laken Riley Move to Georgia, Witness Says

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      In other testimony, law enforcement witnesses placed the suspect, José Ibarra, at the scene of Ms. Riley’s killing, mainly through cellphone and GPS tracking data.Details of how the Venezuelan migrant charged with killing Laken Riley ended up in Athens, Ga., came into sharper focus on Monday, the second day of a trial that is being closely followed by supporters of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s planned immigration crackdown.The migrant, José Ibarra, was apprehended by the Border Patrol when he entered the country illegally in 2022 near El Paso. Like many migrants, he was released with temporary permission to stay in the country, and he headed to New York.A former roommate of Mr. Ibarra’s testified that she met Mr. Ibarra last year in New York City and traveled with him to Athens in September 2023 after Mr. Ibarra’s brother told them they could find jobs there.They lived for a while with Mr. Ibarra’s wife and mother-in-law at a Crowne Plaza hotel in Queens that had been converted to a migrant shelter, the roommate, Rosbeli Flores-Bello, said. And for a few weeks, she added, she and Mr. Ibarra lived in a car parked on the street by the hotel.Ms. Flores-Bello said that Mr. Ibarra’s brother Diego had constantly called him in New York, telling him to move to Athens because there were good work opportunities.Laken Riley was a nursing student at Augusta University in Georgia.Augusta University, via Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why Whoopi Goldberg Is Feuding With a Staten Island Bakery

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      The left-leaning host of “The View” said the business in a Republican stronghold declined to take an order under her name. The bakery said politics had nothing to do with it.A small sponge cake topped with whipped cream and a maraschino cherry is the crux of a political skirmish between Whoopi Goldberg and a 146-year-old Staten Island bakery.Ms. Goldberg said Holtermann’s Bakery, in the heart of New York City’s reddest borough, refused to fill an order placed under her name, perhaps because of her liberal politics.The bakery’s owner said it wasn’t personal and that politics had nothing to do with it.Now, the bakery’s phone is ringing off the hook, and customers are lining up to show their support for a Staten Island institution — and their opposition to Ms. Goldberg.In the final minutes of Wednesday’s episode of“The View,” Ms. Goldberg said she was celebrating her birthday with an old-fashioned pastry, charlotte russe, that had been a favorite of her mother’s.“I should tell you, charlotte russe has no political leanings,” she said. “And the place that made these refused to make them for me.”The live audience gasped. Ms. Goldberg’s co-hosts Sunny Hostin and Alyssa Farah Griffin paused, stricken, forks frozen halfway to their mouths. Another co-host, Sara Haines, spit a forkful of the dessert back onto her plate.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Emboldened by Re-election, Trump Renews Bid to Overturn His Conviction

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      Donald J. Trump’s lawyers have moved in recent days to throw out his criminal case in Manhattan, underscoring his expansive view of presidential power and its supremacy over the rule of law.President-elect Donald J. Trump is mounting a resurgent bid to dismiss his criminal conviction in New York in the wake of his electoral victory, hoping to clear his record of 34 felonies before returning to the White House, court records unsealed on Tuesday show.Emboldened by the election results, Mr. Trump’s lawyers moved in recent days to throw out the case against the former and future president, who was convicted in May of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal.The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted Mr. Trump, asked to pause decisions in the case until Nov. 19 so it could weigh how to respond. And the judge overseeing the case, Juan M. Merchan, promptly granted the pause, effectively freezing any progress for the next week.Justice Merchan was set to rule on several crucial issues this month, including Mr. Trump’s sentence, but that schedule is now on hold.In requesting the pause, one of the Manhattan prosecutors emailed the judge on Sunday to acknowledge the “unprecedented circumstances” and the need to weigh the competing interests of the jury’s verdict against “the office of the president,” a copy of the email posted publicly on Tuesday shows.In reply, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Emil Bove, wrote that “the stay, and dismissal, are necessary to avoid unconstitutional impediments to President Trump’s ability to govern.”Mr. Trump — the nation’s first former president to become a felon, and its first felon to become a president-elect — has his election to thank for this reversal in his legal fortunes. After his victory, a judge paused all filing deadlines in his federal criminal case in Washington while prosecutors weighed whether to drop the charges now that Mr. Trump was returning to the White House.This is a developing story and will be updated. More

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      Smoky Smell Engulfs NYC After Fires in New Jersey and Brooklyn

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      New Yorkers encountered an unsettling smell on Saturday, a day after fires broke out in Prospect Park and across the Hudson River.The smell of acrid smoke spread throughout New York City on Saturday and persisted into the evening, a day after brush fires broke out on Friday in Brooklyn, the Bronx and nearby New Jersey. It was a surreal experience for a city that is rarely home to wildfires but is in the middle of a drought.On Saturday, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation placed the city, as well as Rockland and Westchester Counties, under an air quality alert until midnight. The smell of smoke woke Desi Yvette, 36, in her Williamsburg home in the middle of the night.“It was close to 2 and I just stayed up for a while,” Ms. Yvette said as she walked her Maltese mix, Midas, on Saturday. “I thought maybe there was a fire nearby, but I didn’t hear any sirens. So I was like, I don’t think it’s an emergency or we would have been alerted. But it does smell bad.”Ms. Yvette had not heard about the brush fire that broke out on Friday night in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, burning two acres in a heavily wooded area. “It’s crazy that it smells all the way over here,” she added. “It’s just been a week of, like, disaster.”

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement on Saturday that there were multiple wildfires burning across New York State, noting that Hudson Valley, Long Island and the Catskills region were at high risk.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Will NYC Revive Congestion Pricing After Trump’s Victory?

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul, facing pressure from supporters of the contentious tolling plan, is said to be exploring options for adopting it in some form.Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York is exploring options for reviving a congestion pricing plan for New York City before President-elect Donald J. Trump has a chance to kill it, according to four people familiar with the matter.Ms. Hochul’s move to salvage the contentious plan comes as she faces pressure from various corners, including a group that represents transit riders and is planning to start an advertising blitz on Monday in support of the tolling program.The plan that Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, is now exploring differs slightly from the one she halted in June. She is trying to satisfy opponents who had complained about the $15 congestion-pricing toll that most motorists would have had to pay as well as supporters who want to reduce car traffic and fund mass transit improvements.The governor has talked to federal officials about the possibility of a $9 toll and about whether such a change might require the lengthy, involved process of additional environmental review, according to a Metropolitan Transportation Authority board member familiar with the matter. The discussions were first reported by Politico.Mr. Trump, a Republican, has said he opposes congestion pricing, and his victory on Tuesday has apparently pushed Ms. Hochul to try to find a compromise.“The timing is everything,” said Danny Pearlstein, a spokesman for Riders Alliance, the riders’ group that is planning the ad blitz. If congestion pricing has not started by January, he added “it’s very unlikely it would start.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New York City Will Stop Giving Debit Cards to Migrants

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      Mayor Eric Adams is ending a contentious pilot program that gave 2,600 migrant families debit cards to purchase food.New York City will end a contentious program that provided debit cards to migrant families to purchase food, city officials announced on Thursday.The pilot program came under fire from the moment it was announced in February, with critics concerned that the cards could be misused and questioning whether it was fair to give preferential treatment to migrants over others in need.Mayor Eric Adams has defended it, arguing that the program would bring down the costs of feeding migrants and give them a wider array of healthier options at supermarkets and bodegas.But his administration has decided not to renew the one-year contract, which had been given to Mobility Capital Finance, known as MoCaFi, on a no-bid emergency basis.The city’s Department of Investigation is investigating the contract with MoCaFi, The New York Daily News reported in October.In explaining the city’s decision on Thursday, Mr. Adams made no mention of the investigation. He said that given the city’s “constant decrease in our population” of migrants, there was no need to renew an emergency contract.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Daniel Romanchuk’s Pre-Marathon Routine Includes Sandpaper

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      Many of the 50,000 entrants in the New York City Marathon have pre-race routines — carbo-loading, plenty of liquids and so on — but only a few of these routines include wrenches, Allen keys and sandpaper.Daniel Romanchuk checks the contents of his utility pouch in Central Park ahead of the NYC Marathon, Manhattan, 2024.Clark Hodgin for The New York TimesThose are just a few of the tools that the 40 or so professional wheelchair racers rely on to prepare for New York’s hilly and rough roads.Before every race, they tighten the various nuts and bolts on their chairs to make sure nothing rattles lose on the city’s streets and bridges. Tires are doubled checked to ensure they are properly inflated. Adhesives are applied to customized racing gloves.Clark Hodgin for The New York Times“I have a nice long list of everything I need,” said Daniel Romanchuk, who became in 2018 the first American and youngest athlete ever to win the men’s wheelchair division in New York. “I travel with every tool that I could possibly need.”Clark Hodgin for The New York TimesClark Hodgin for The New York TimesUnlike at the Olympics, where there are fix-it shops to help Paralympians in a pinch, there is no dedicated wheelchair repair shop at the New York City Marathon. But by necessity, the racers and their coaches have an intimate knowledge of their wheelchairs and come prepared with an array of tools to allow them to make fixes on the fly.Clark Hodgin for The New York TimesIn addition to wrenches and screwdrivers, racers pay close attention to their tires, making sure they are ready for New York’s potholes and bridges. The organizers provide cans of pressurized CO2 because racers cannot bring them on planes when they travel to New York. Mr. Romanchuk recently switched to tubeless tires, but other racers carry sealant to repair any punctures.Clark Hodgin for The New York TimesRacers also apply adhesive to their gloves, but there is a balance between adding too much and too little, especially if it rains and grips become slippery.Clark Hodgin for The New York Times“I did that in one race when I was expecting it to rain a lot and it barely did, and my glove would stick to the wheel,” Mr. Romanchuk said.The night before the race, officials meet in the athletes’ hotel to inspect every chair to ensure it meets race standards for things like wheel size.Clark Hodgin for The New York TimesRomanchuk inspects the bottom of his racing bikeClark Hodgin for The New York TimesClark Hodgin for The New York TimesThe next morning, the chairs are brought to the hotel lobby and loaded onto trucks and taken to start line. The racers then travel by bus to Staten Island, where they do their final preparations, including packing a few essential tools like an Allen key and small CO2 can to carry during the race.Daniel Romanchuk poses for a photo for his mother at the finish line on Friday before the race.Clark Hodgin for The New York Times More

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      As Election Nears, Republicans Blame Child’s Rape on Immigration Crisis

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      Wilson Castillo Diaz was arrested in New York in connection with the rape of a 5-year-old girl. On Friday, local Republicans blamed Democratic immigration policies.A Long Island man who was charged with raping a 5-year-old girl last month was in the country illegally, the police said Friday as local Republican officials sought to connect the disturbing case to the bitter debate over immigration just days before the presidential vote.The man, Wilson Castillo Diaz, 27, is a Honduran migrant who crossed into the United States via the Rio Grande Valley in 2014 before Border Patrol agents detained him, the police said. Mr. Castillo Diaz skipped an immigration hearing and was last living in Westbury, N.Y., the authorities said.Mr. Castillo Diaz was arrested on Oct. 22, but local officials did not publicize the case until Friday, days before the end of an election season in which immigration has played a central role.Former President Donald J. Trump has sought to stir nativist sentiment from the campaign trail, and the large influx of migrants in New York City has stoked fears of a surge in crime, though that largely has not been reflected by crime statistics.At a news conference on Friday, Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County Executive, said that the arrest of Mr. Castillo Diaz was the latest “illustration and evidence” of why authorities in his county closely watch for undocumented migrants.Mr. Blakeman, a Republican, said that the police waited more than a week to announce the arrest in order to protect the identities of the victim and her family.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More