When a safety measure turns into a safety hazard, and other notes on the ubiquitous urban building feature.

Lawyer Alex Spiro helped Thabo Sefolosha turn the tables on the cops. Now he’s trying to do the same for Bobby Shmurda. “I don’t need this,” Alex Spiro says. “I could try bond trader cases where the bank pays you a million dollars, no one’s gonna argue with you, there’s no drama, no screaming, you try the case, you win, you move on. Or you lose and that’s unfortunate. You get a plea deal — they either take it or [they] don’t.”

When Sharif leaves his home in Flushing, Queens, it’s too early to say goodbye to his wife and three kids. Long before sunrise, he drives 15 minutes to a cold, brightly lit garage in Long Island City that smells of spent fuel, cleaning fluid and food that’s about to turn. There, Sharif, an Afghan native in his mid-40s, stocks the front window of his food cart with muffins and bagels from a wholesale bakery in Queens, sold to him at a markup by the garage’s owners.

Albany has agreed to push first call up to 10 a.m.

As you might have heard, New York City recently launched one of the biggest free Wi-Fi initiatives ever conceived. Under the program, some 7,500 Wi-Fi kiosks will provide gigabit Wi-Fi, free phone calls to anywhere in the country (via Vonage), as well as access to a device recharging station, 311, 911, 411 and city services (via an integrated Android tablet). The city is installing ten a day -- most at old payphone locations -- and hopes to have 500 of the kiosks in place by July.

The explosive that severely injured a man in New York's Central Park today was likely "an experiment with fireworks or explosives," but did not seem like a device made deliberately to hurt anyone, officials said. It was still not clear exactly what the explosive was, but police said they did not believe it was connected to terrorism. Mark Torre, commanding officer of the NYPD bomb squad, added that investigators are leaning toward considering this the work of an explosive "hobbyist," an amateur or someone who knows chemistry.

It's a bright spring day in New York, with sunlight dancing on the East River and robins singing Broadway tunes. I'm walking along the sea wall on the Lower East Side of Manhattan with Daniel Zarrilli, 41, the head of New York's Office of Resilience and Recovery – basically Mayor Bill de Blasio's point man for preparing the city for the coming decades of storms and sea-level rise. Zarrilli is dressed in his usual City Hall attire: white shirt and tie, polished black shoes. He has short-cropped gray hair, dark eyes and an edgy I've-got-a-job-to-do manner.

New York City is the center of capitalism and financial markets

Streets are both New York City’s circulatory system and its skin. Commerce and commuters crisscross more than 6,300 miles of roadway in the five boroughs. Heavy traffic and the passage of time take their toll. But roads are also uniquely vulnerable to the elements. Water, especially during the freeze-and-thaw cycle between fall and spring, is another major irritant. And just below the surface, there is another complication to their well-being: a labyrinth of aging infrastructure.

By the time Rachel was hospitalized at New York City's Cornell Weill Psychiatry Specialty Center in July 2014, she was almost too exhausted to speak. For years, she had been traveling the same cloistered, unrelenting path on which many female members of her branch of ultra-Orthodox Judaism find themselves: arranged marriage at 18, a domineering, sometimes abusive husband with whom she would have a bevy of kids. Duty, family, duty, duty. She was breaking slowly under that weight, and worst of all, she had no one to talk to.

Zaida Pugh, 21, says she just wanted her message “spread across the world” when she brought live crickets and worms on a crowded New York City subway train. Pugh pretended to be a deranged woman and brought 300 crickets and at least 200 worms in containers onto the D train, asking busy commuters if they would buy some.

The New York Emergency Management Department encourages New Yorkers to get ready for possible impacts of Tropical Storm Hermine. The National Weather Service has issued a Tropical Storm Watch for the Nyc region until further notice. A Storm Surge Watch has been issued for New York coastal regions until further notice.

An explosion during a bustling night in NYC's Chelsea neighborhood Saturday that resulted in 29 people being injured was "obviously an act of terrorism" although no links to international groups has been discovered, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said of investigator's findings the day after the attack. Twenty-nine people were hospitalized overnight and released by Sunday afternoon due to an explosion around 8:30 p.m. Saturday in front of 135 W. 23rd St. between Sixth and Seventh avenues.

A suspicious device found near a New Jersey railway station exploded as a bomb squad was attempting to disarm it with a robot, officials say. It was one of up to five devices found in a backpack inside a rubbish bin near the station in Elizabeth, according to the city's mayor. No-one was hurt. The discovery came after three attacks at the weekend - bombs in New York and New Jersey, and stabbings in Minnesota. The explosion in New York's Chelsea area injured 29 people.

Uber's subscription plans are rolling out across the United States for flat rate or even free rides.

On July 23 1991, construction workers near the Henry Hudson Parkway in Manhattan found an Igloo cooler with the partially decomposed remains of a toddler-aged girl inside. According to the chief NYC medical examiner, the cause of death was asphyxia, and further testing revealed that the young girl had semen in her rectum when she died. No one reported the girl missing, and for over two decades, police had no real leads.

New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission has launched a new website with images of artifacts from its archaeological collections. The site supplements a new physical respository of archaeological finds, located in Midtown. The bones, shards, and bottles in the Archaeological Repository aren't on display for the general public to see (just researchers and scholars, by appointment), so the website is a good way to view the range of artifacts that archaeologists have collected in the city over the years.

A powdery substance a man sprinkled into the orchestra pit at New York's Metropolitan Opera may have been an opera lover's ashes, police said Saturday. The freakish incident during an afternoon performance of Rossini's "Guillaume Tell" forced Met officials to cancel the rest of the show as well as an evening performance of a second opera.

A woman was shoved to her death in front of a moving train at Times Square station Monday afternoon, authorities said. The 49-year-old victim was standing on the platform waiting for the 1 train when a 30-year-old woman wearing a pink shirt and scarf shoved her onto the tracks around 1:20 p.m., authorities said. She was struck by an oncoming train and died at the scene, police said. The suspect, who has a history of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, was taken into custody, according to police.

Colbert Nembhard looked more like a traveling salesman than a librarian in his dark suit with his rolling suitcase on a recent Wednesday morning in the Bronx. He had strolled 10 minutes to the Crotona Inn homeless shelter from the Morrisania Branch Library, where he has been the manager for 25 years. As he dug through the dozens of books stuffed inside the suitcase, an announcement crackled over the intercom inside the shelter, where 87 families live: “Mr. Nembhard is here to read stories and sing songs to your children.”