WARNING: Police officials in Queens are warning residents to be on the lookout for several teams of women who have conned victims out of more than $100,000 through a “Cursed Jewelry” scam. In each scam, two women approach another woman on the street and convince the victim to follow them to a nearby restaurant, police said. Once inside the restaurant, […]

Queens detectives are searching for two suspects in the brutal assault and murder of an elderly “neighborhood patriarch”, who was found bludgeoned to death inside his Corona home on March 26. Cops said the suspects were caught on surveillance video exiting a car near the home of Damaso Llano, 89, who owned El Mundo Supermarket in Corona. Llano had just […]

Police last week identified a man whose burning body was discovered in Forest Park on May 13, but they have not determined the circumstances behind the blaze. Firefighters who responded to a blaze in a wooded stretch of Forest Park found the still-flaming body of Zograb Avetisyam, 48, at about 6 a.m. on Mother’s Day. The body was located just […]

Police officials last week shut down a massage parlor in Long Island City where prostitutes did more than smile at their customers. Cops said the establishment operating as the Smile Dawn Spa was a house of prostitution – located in a storefront attached to an apartment building with 30-plus residential units. The spa is located at 34-05 37th Ave. (aka […]

At a breakfast meeting May 11 sponsored by the Queens Chamber of Commerce, Greg David, former editor of Crain’s New York Business, teacher at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and a frequent business and economics commentator on radio, gave a talk based on his recently published book, Modern New York: The Life and Economics of a City (Palgrave Macmillan). […]

For more than 70 years, a large advertising sign painted on the exterior wall of a four-story apartment house has looked out over the entrance ramp to the Robert F. Kennedy (Triborough) Bridge in Astoria. A permit was issued by the City Department of Buildings for the sign in 1941 and again in 1981. But in recent months, five summonses […]

A six-member panel consisting of Amanda Fung of Crain’s New York Business,  restaurateur Sara Obraitis, developer Doug Partrick of Heatherwood Communities, Bill Connor of FedEx, Flint McNaughton of Sun Cap Property and Amy Scherber, head of Amy’s Bread, spoke to a capacity crowd on the ground floor of the United Nations Federal Credit Union building at the Long Island City […]

At the April Long Island City Chamber of Commerce luncheon, Victor Clavie, a member of the chamber’s board of directors, questioned the wisdom of voting to approve bylaws before everyone could look them over, and was supported by a majority of the voting members. Brent O’Leary, board member and counsel to the chamber, opened the May meeting by reading the […]