Amy Eddings

New York, NY —

The New York State Senate should be in session again this Saturday and Sunday. Governor David Paterson says he's going to court to force a quorum of at least 32 senators to show up and he's taken their pork barrel spending requests off the table. ...

New York, NY —

The power struggle between Democrats and Republicans in New York's State Senate is brewing into a constitutional fight between Senate Democrats and their party leader, Governor Paterson. A special session that Paterson called today lasted just five minutes, after Republicans didn't show up, and Democrats ...

New York, NY —

Give bees a chance -- so says a group of renegade beekeepers. They want the city to legalize beekeeping instead of fining people up to $2,000 for tending a hive.

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer declared his support for beekeeping, which he says is a step ...

New York, NY —

Governor Paterson's attempt to force state senators into a special session has failed. Instead, Republicans and Democrats tried to hold simultaneous legislative sessions, with each party passing bills among themselves. Governor Paterson was asked if he would meet with leaders from both parties to try ...

New York, NY —

Governor Paterson has vetoed the extension of a law that allows new firefighters and police officers to retire with full benefits with 20 years of service. Unions and labor advocates are angry. Staten Island State Senator Diane Savino, chairwoman of the Civil Service Committee, says ...

Slain officer Omar Edwards

New York, NY —

Details continue to emerging about last night's fatal shooting of an off duty New York City police officer by a fellow member of the force. The officer killed, 25-year-old Omar Edwards, was shot in the arm and chest after a team of three other plain ...

New York, NY —

WNYC’s Amy Eddings speaks with Financial Times writer Gillian Tett about her book on the development of derivatives. It’s called Fool’s Gold, out now from the Free Press.

Imam Talib Abdur-Rahman and Amy Eddings

The four men accused of plotting to blow up two Riverdale synagogues and attack military targets upstate, have all been cast as Muslim extremists by federal and ...

New York, NY —

WNYC's Amy Eddings and Fred Mogul discuss the latest school closures because of swine flu, and the appointment of NYC Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden to head the CDC.

My talks with New Yorkers about their extraordinary efforts to compost made me look at what I was doing with my food scraps...and inspired me to stop throwing them out in the trash.  I've started collecting them so that someone ELSE can compost them.  I used to have a backyard, with a garden a small pond, and a black plastic compost bin when I lived in Boerum Hill. [sigh!  I miss it!]  My husband and I are now in a second-floor co-op apartment in Clinton Hill.  We put our coffee grounds, eggshells, and vegetable peelings in a plastic bag in one of our refrigerator storage bins.  I briefly considered worm composting, surreptitiously, in our storage area in our building's basement, but decided not to.  It's already hard enough to get someone to take care of our three cats when we go away; how do you ask the neighbor down the hall to look in on your worms? 

I heard a lot of great composting stories.  Courtenay Symonds wrote me to say she's been vermicomposting for two or three years, and now has so much compost, she doesn't know what to do with it.  "I have tried everything from giving compost away....to fashioning seed-bombs from flower seeds and compost for distribution to friends and others who like to bomb open, unused urban spaces with wildflowers come spring." 

Our own Fred Mogul e-mailed me about one of the people featured in my story, Dianne Debicella, who wants to use her compost in her planters.  "I hope your would-be container gardener knows about drainage," says Fred.  He suggests mixing the compost with good ol' potting soil. "Compost soaks up water like a sponge, and drainage is as or more important to plants as the nutrients they get from compost, especially in pots."  He says we shouldn't "romanticize" compost; "It's just one small part of growing stuff successfully."

David Calligeros, with Remains Lighting, wrote me to say his company recently opened a 25,000 square foot factory in Bushwick, and it's building a big garden in the side yeard.  "One of the features of it," he writes, "will be a compost pile!"  [Notice the exclamation point.  Yes, composting makes people happy.]  David also says he's experimented with "compostable" partyware -- corn-based cups, potato-based forks and knives, and sugar cane-based plats.  He reports the plates disappeared, but "the rest of that stuff is a bunch of hooey.  I've picked almost all of the cups out of my compost this spring, completely pristine and untransformed.  They are now in the recycling bin, awaiting plastic pick-up day."

New York, NY —

Most people who collect and compost food scraps have a backyard or a garden to dump them in. But in New York City residents without a pinch of earth are taking extreme measures to compost. As part of a collaboration with northeast stations, WNYC’s Amy ...

New York, NY —

Most people who collect and compost food scraps have a backyard or a garden to dump them in. But in New York City residents without a pinch of earth are taking extreme measures to compost. As part of a collaboration with northeast stations WNYC’s Amy ...

A White House aide has lost his job for his role in Air Force One's photo-op flyover of the Statue of Liberty. An administration official says Louis Caldera, director of the White House Military Office, submitted his resignation ...

New York, NY —

The captain of a cargo ship who was taken hostage by Somali pirates, and one of his crew members, were honored by Mayor Bloomberg at a ceremony at City Hall. The mayor gave Captain Richard Phillips, and William Rios, keys to the city. Rios lives ...

New York, NY —

The Tony nominations were announced today and leading the pack, a musical about a little boy who longs to dance. "Billy Elliot" got 15 Tony nominations, including best musical. It’s facing off against a musical about mental illness, “Next to Normal.” Elisabeth Vincentelli is theater ...

New York, NY —

The city's swine flu epidemic may be spreading. City health officials are currently investigating reports of flu symptoms at the School of the Ascension, a parochial elementary school in Manhattan, and P.S. 177, a public special ed school in Queens. P.S. 177 is just blocks ...

New York, NY —

The Brooklyn pastor, and Grammy-nominated gospel singer and composer, the Reverend Timothy Wright, has died, eight months after being critically injured in a car accident that killed his wife, and grandson, and put him on a respirator. He was 61. Wright, the pastor at the ...

New York, NY —

Mayor Bloomberg says he's cutting six programs, and keeping 11 others, in his anti-poverty initiative. In a speech before the Center for American Progress in Washington, the mayor says the programs being cut -- including a literacy program for returning inmates, and a program to ...

New York, NY —

Governor Paterson introduced legislation today that would make New York the fifth state to allow gay and lesbian to marry. The bill is the same one introduced by former Governor Eliot Spitzer in 2007 where it passed in the assembly but died in the senate, ...