Arun Venugopal

Fill in the blank? They'd started whitewashing the message before I had a chance to read it in full. When I returned a few days later... all gone.

New York, NY —

Those dark, hulking structures known as sidewalk sheds are set to become a lot more stylish. WNYC's Arun Venugopal has more on the results of a city design competition.

REPORTER: Sidewalk sheds are meant to protect pedestrians from falling debris whenever a building is being renovated. ...

New York, NY —

Mayor Michael Bloomberg continues to speak out against what he claims is a double standard in the state's budget cuts. He says the governor is making the city take a much bigger hit than other parts of the state.

"I do not see that ...

New York, NY —

Undocumented Haitians in New York and the rest of the country may get a break when it comes to immigration. The federal government is about to confer Temporary Protected Status (TPS) on qualified Haitian nationals who have been in the U.S. since the day of ...

New York, NY —

A search and rescue team from New York City's police and fire departments will be helping with disaster relief in Haiti.

Eighty New York City police officers and fire fighters are due to arrive in Haiti tonight. Joe Bruno, commissioner of the city's Office of Emergency ...

New York, NY —

New York City is being sued by a tobacco giant. The U.S. Smokeless Tobacco company, whose parent company owns Philip Morris, claims New York's ban on flavored tobacco is illegal.

But the city is fighting back. Today, Council Speaker Christine Quinn stood with health advocates, ...

New York, NY —

Credit card holders should keep an eye on their mailboxes this week.

REPORTER: According to Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, any last-minute interest-rate hikes on existing credit card balances should've gone out by January 7, at the latest. That's because of the new CARD Act, which goes into ...

New York, NY —

WNYC’s Arun Venugopal discusses the city’s new $3,200 fee for filiming in certain buildings, which has some producers antsy.

New York, NY —

The City Council has chosen Christine Quinn to continue in her role as Speaker, but not without some controversy.

At a swearing-in event for the council and its new members, Brooklyn Councilman Charles Barron argued that he should be speaker. He said with the new council, ...

The city's Board of Elections appears to be moving into the 21st Century.

New York, NY —

The city's Board of Elections appears to be moving into the 21st Century. It's picked a company to supply electronic voting machines, which means New York City voters will be saying goodbye to those old lever machines. But elected officials and voting-rights advocates want the ...

New York, NY —

Converts to Islam and other Muslims gathered in midtown this weekend for the first annual Winter Dowra.

REPORTER: The three-day immersion in Muslim theology and jurisprudence was aimed at those who may have been raised as Catholics or Hindus but who turned to Islam in recent ...

New York, NY —

The city's new public advocate, Bill de Blasio, is looking to raise the profile of his office by empowering average New Yorkers. His new Community Organizing and Constituent Services Department is meant to train community organizers on how to create petition drives and other means ...

With just a few days to go, 2009 is on pace to be New York City's safest - at least since 1962 when the city started keeping reliable records.

The New York Police Department has told the federal government that it will need more money to protect the city during the trial of alleged terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

New York, NY —

The NYPD has told the federal government it'll need more money to protect the city during the trial of alleged terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Police commissioner Ray Kelly says the department has sent in a request for federal funding but wouldn't specify how much. He simply ...

New York, NY —

With just a few days to go, 2009 is on pace to be the safest year in city history -- at least since reliable records were kept. Overall, crime has dropped by 11 percent since last year. Mayor Michael Bloomberg says that, since 2002, the ...

Good cheer was in the air in Brooklyn today as an estimated 2,000 New Yorkers in need showed up for a free hot lunch at an event billed as the city's largest Christmas-day feast.

In addition to hot turkey meals and desert, attendees at the annual lunch at the Prospect ...

New York, NY —

As the state's Congressional delegation celebrates the Senate's passage of healthcare reform, Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Paterson continue to voice concerns. They say the bill as it's currently written will hurt the state by depriving it of hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicaid funds. ...

New York, NY —

It's billed as the largest Christmas-day meal in town -- a hot turkey dinner with fixings and dessert, served at the YMCA in Park Slope. Organizers say they expect 2,000 hungry New Yorkers -- far more than previous years -- but they also saw a ...