It has people, and its people call it Big. And doesn’t everyone who is fawned over and photographed like a celebrity have people? Not Mr. Big, as in “Sex and the City,” or Big Daddy or Big Mama, as in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” And not Biggie, like Biggie Smalls, the Notorious B.I.G. Just Big.

North Brother Island has a long history that's checkered with disease, death, and decay.

Two years after law enforcement arrested 120 gang members in the Bronx, the community is still debating whether it made them safer. By Mirela Iverac.

A man is being held after an attempted terror attack at New York City's main bus terminal, officials say. "Terrorists won't win," Mayor Bill de Blasio said after a blast at the Port Authority terminal in Manhattan during the morning rush hour on Monday. The suspect, named as Akayed Ullah, 27, was wounded when a "low-tech explosive device" strapped to his body blew up in an underpass, officials say. They say four other people suffered minor injuries.

At least 12 people, including a child, were killed in a fire Thursday night at an apartment building in the Bronx, one of New York City's boroughs, officials said.

How excessive staffing, little competition, generous contracts and archaic rules dramatically inflate capital costs for transit in New York.

She became a prominent figure calling for an end to police brutality after New York City officers put her father in a fatal chokehold. She suffered brain damage following a heart attack.

The Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, the largest labor union representing NYPD cops, has slashed the number of "get out of jail free" cards it hands out to 20 from 30 for current cops and to 10 from 20 for retired police officers, the New York Post reports. The cards are reportedly given to police officers, who distribute them among friends or family — or sell them on eBay. Holders can present them to the police in hopes getting out of minor infractions and avoiding legal trouble. Current and former NYPD members are reportedly furious about the change.

At least two people have died and three are in hospital after a helicopter carrying six people crashed in New York City’s East river. A Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman said the Eurocopter AS350 went down just after 7pm on Sunday in the waterway just north of Roosevelt Island and was “reportedly inverted in the water”. Eric Phillips, a spokesman for mayor Bill de Blasio, confirmed the fatalities in a Twitter post and one person had been rescued. New York Police said three people were hospitalized.

A firefighter was killed battling a five-alarm blaze late Thursday night in Harlem, reports CBS New York. The fire broke out around 11 p.m. on a movie set in the basement of an unoccupied residential building, New York Fire Department Commissioner Daniel Nigro told reporters in an early morning briefing. It was in a long-closed club, the St. Nick's Jazz Pub, in a building designated as a landmark by New York City, CBS New York says.

Internal New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority documents show everything we thought we knew about subway delays was wrong. By Aaron Gordon.

London's monthly murder rate has overtaken that of New York City for the first time, after the worrying surge of stabbings continued across the capital.

More people have been murdered in London than in New York for the first time in history amid a spate of fatal stabbings in the capital. Fifteen people were murdered in London in February, compared to 14 in the Big Apple. London murders for March also topped the number in New York, with 23 and 21 carried out respectively. A stabbing in the capital in the early hours of Easter Sunday brought the number of murders in London to 46 so far this year. And 31 of them were knife attacks.

When Brooklyn teens Julian Alexander and Natejhia Lopez first spotted a new vegan eatery in their neighborhood of Bushwick recently, they were skeptical. A proliferation of pricey cafés, restaurants, and stores had started popping up around them — making the two often feel out of place in an area that they had once considered home.

More than a third of mice examined in a new report contained potentially harmful bacteria.

Long-forgotten pictures capture escape and discovery in the city’s parks.

Writer Philippe Ungar and photographer Franck Bohbot travelled across the Big Apple to meet 50 indie booksellers in their habitats

Alex Carozza has been building and repairing accordions in New York City since 1960. The last craftsman of his kind in the city, Alex is the living memory of a once vibrant musical culture that has all but disappeared from New York. This is the story of a true classic.

Long ago, the region lay under an ice sheet thousands of feet thick. It terminated abruptly in what are now the boroughs, leaving the city with a unique landscape.

A few of them have already tested positive for a specific, deadly virus. By Josie Rhodes Cook.

Fatal accidents, off-the-books workers, a union once run by a mobster. The rogue world of one of New York’s major trash haulers. By Kiera Feldman.

Meet the Cabbie and Photographer David Bradford on a film journey that explores the unexpected moments that add up to the world's greatest city.

Declawing involves amputating the first segment of a cat's toes. New York might the next state to ban it.

The Henley Vaporium, is the latest manifestation of the emerging e-cigarette trend. A 2,700-square-foot space nestled on the border of NoLita and SoHo, among pop-up art galleries and boutique clothiers, the Vaporium caters not only to e-cig users — "vapers" — but also to hardcore smokers looking for a healthy way out and casual curiosos eager to taste test vaporized gummy bears.

British street artist virtually 'gives away' works sold at non-descript looking market stall - and just three people buy.

Murder took a holiday last week. There were no murders in the five boroughs in the seven days ending last Sunday, the mayor’s office said on Monday.

Has Banksy finally been photographed? This is allegedly a photograph of the graffiti artist at work.

Photojournalist Bolivar Arellano's documentation of Latino life in the '70s is now on display.

Buying cigarettes in New York City is about to become a lot harder for young people, as lawmakers on Wednesday adopted the strictest limits on tobacco purchases of any major American city.

It’s a place where few living New Yorkers have ever set foot, but nearly a million dead ones reside: Hart Island, the United States’ largest mass grave, which has been closed to the public for 35 years. It is difficult to visit and off-limits to photographers. But that may be about to change, as a debate roils over the city’s treatment of the unclaimed dead. Never heard of Hart? You’re not alone--and that’s part of the problem.

Lower Manhattan residents were awestruck Friday night as the bright lights atop 1 World Trade Center were switched on in a test for the first time.

One World Trade Center in New York will be the United States' tallest building when completed, beating out Chicago's Willis Tower, according to an announcement Tuesday by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.

New York’s controversial stop-and-frisk policy, hailed by the city’s mayor and police chief as crucial in fighting crime, could boast only a 3% conviction rate between 2009 and 2012, according to a report by the state attorney general released on Thursday.

Nearly one million people are buried in mass graves off of the Bronx. But the city prefers you know nothing about it.