Author: rpnadmin

NEW YORK — People who buy luxurious second homes in New York City, but live most of the year elsewhere, would have to pay a new tax on the properties under a tentative agreement – an initiative to appease Mayor Zohran Mamdani and liberal voters who launched him into office with chants of “tax the rich.” But the deal, part of a sprawling budget plan announced Thursday by Gov. Kathy Hochul, would stop short of a major priority for the mayor: a broad tax increase on the state’s wealthiest residents. The proposed tax on multimillion-dollar second homes, known as pied-à-terres,…

LOS ANGELES — A jury Thursday found the city of Los Angeles was not liable in the killing of a 14-year-old girl who was hit by a police officer’s stray bullet during a shootout while Christmas shopping in 2021 with her mother. The ruling came after a nearly monthlong trial in the wrongful death lawsuit filed against the LA Police Department by the parents of Valentina Orellana-Peralta. She was at a Burlington store in the North Hollywood neighborhood on Dec. 23, 2021, when she was struck by a bullet that had gone through the dressing room wall. The jury sided…

BOULDER, Colo. — A judge sentenced a man to life in prison without the possibility of parole Thursday after he pleaded guilty to killing one person and injuring a dozen others in a 2025 firebombing attack on a demonstration in Boulder, Colorado, in support of Israeli hostages in Gaza. Speaking to the court through an interpreter, Mohamed Sabry Soliman apologized to the victims and expressed regret for the attack last June as not in line with Islamic teaching. Yet Soliman, an Egyptian national who federal authorities say was living in the U.S. illegally, targeted the victims because they were Jewish,…

NEW YORK — The bitter public feud between actors Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni may outlive their court fight after all. Three days after announcing a settlement of the lawsuit brought by Lively over the 2024 film “It Ends With Us,” her lawyers put out a statement Thursday calling the deal a “resounding victory.” “By agreeing to this settlement, and waiving their right to appeal, Justin Baldoni and every individual defendant now face personal liability for abusing the legal system to silence and intimidate Ms. Lively,” attorneys Michael Gottlieb and Esra Hudson said. They were alluding to the tens of…

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. — Scientists specializing in human decomposition and soil took samples from the ground Thursday outside a home connected to the man convicted of killing 19-year-old college student Kristin Smart in 1996. Her body was never found. The San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office served a search warrant Wednesday on the home of Susan Flores, whose son Paul Flores was convicted in 2022 of killing Smart. Authorities have not answered questions about what prompted the search. Tim Nelligan, an expert in soil vapor testing, confirmed by phone Thursday that he was on the premises, gathering samples from the…

Weeks before Jeffrey Epstein killed himself in a decrepit Manhattan jail in 2019, he was found on the floor of his cell, alive but with marks on his neck. He was placed on suicide watch, but later made a startling allegation to the guard watching over him: Epstein said his cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglione, had tried to kill him. Tartaglione – a former police officer then awaiting trial and a possible death sentence in a quadruple murder case – had a different version of events. He told his lawyer Epstein had tucked a suicide note inside one of the former officer’s…

Brooklyn, N.Y.When Reihan Salam was 19, someone held a knife to his throat in front of his parents’ house in Brooklyn’s Kensington neighborhood. “The mugger stole my Harvard library card, an issue of Granta, and approximately $11,” he recalls. The police—“incredible, compassionate, competent”—were there within minutes. “There wasn’t much they could do, but they were responsive, and reassuring.” It was a “defining experience” for Mr. Salam, now 46: “It’s not quite right to say I was mugged by reality. I wasn’t a bleeding-heart liberal before it happened. But it certainly made me recoil from the antipolice left.” It made him…

SAN FRANCISCO — An intrepid sea lion nicknamed Chonkers is waddling his way into the hearts of tourists and locals who have flocked to San Francisco’s Pier 39 for a glimpse of the massive pinniped. On Thursday morning, visitors snapped photos as the Steller sea lion flopped on the pier, surrounded by dozens of much smaller California sea lions that call the docks home. “He’s like a Volkswagen! He’s so huge!” said Oluwaseyi Akinbobola, a visitor from Los Angeles who had an extra half hour so she ran down to the pier for a hopeful peek of the elusive sea…

AUSTIN, Texas — The Onion’s plan to take over the Infowars platforms that Alex Jones built into a bullhorn of conspiracy theories and turn them into parody sites was in limbo again Thursday, after a Texas court paused a proposed deal involving the satirical news outlet. Austin-based Infowars is facing liquidation because of the more than $1 billion in defamation lawsuit judgments Jones owes relatives of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting for calling the Connecticut massacre a hoax. The proposed licensing deal would give The Onion temporary authority to use Infowars’ trademarks, copyrights and intellectual property…

A half-dozen transgender Idaho residents sued the state over its newly approved law banning opposite-sex use of public restrooms in government buildings and public accommodations, arguing that the “vague” and “discriminatory” law violates their constitutional rights. The American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal filed the federal lawsuit on Wednesday, a month after Republican Gov. Brad Little signed into law House Bill 752, which makes it a criminal offense to “knowingly and willingly” enter opposite-sex facilities such as public restrooms and changing rooms. “H.B. 752 has a clear discriminatory intent, but its prohibitions and exceptions are vague, forcing Idahoans and…