New York News Alert

Jeff McNeil officially received his contract extension from the Mets on Tuesday, but now awaits an important accessory that would complete his offseason. Promised a car by teammate Francisco Lindor if McNeil won the batting title last season, the Mets second baseman still hasn’t received his prize after leading the National League with a .326 batting average in 2022. McNeil recently sent Lindor a video of cars that had caught his attention and received acknowledgment from the shortstop. “He said they were nice cars,” McNeil said at a Citi Field press conference. “They were one brand of a very nice [car].” McNeil’s car may have to wait until spring training, which officially opens in two weeks. Already his is a four-year contract extension worth $50 million that bought out at least McNeil’s final two seasons of arbitration eligibility. The deal also includes a fifth-year option that could increase the value to $63.75 million. Jeff McNeil puts on his jersey and hat at a...

NEW CITY − What did Wayne Ballard know when he filed Spring Valley inspection reports with New York state before a fire at an adult home that left two people dead? Attorneys put that question to Judge Kevin Russo on Tuesday during opening statements in the case against the former chief of the Spring Valley building and public works departments. Ballard is accused of filing a false inspection report in 2020 with New York state that claimed the Evergreen Court Home for Adults had been inspected. In March 2021, a Spring Valley firefighter and an adult home resident died in a fire at the Lafayette Street adult home. A grand jury charged Ballard with offering a false instrument for filing in the first and second degrees. This is the first trial resulting from the deadly blaze, which killed Spring Valley Fire Department Second Lt. Jared Lloyd, 35, and resident Oliver Hueston, 79. Prosecutor Ryan Sweeney argued Tuesday that the former chief building inspector knowingly filed ...

WASHINGTON (WABC) — Rep. George Santos told House Republicans during a closed door meeting Tuesday morning that he would recuse himself from sitting on any committees. Santos was recently assigned two committees — the House Small Business Committee and the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. The news comes as he faces mounting controversies over his past falsehoods, scrutiny of his finances and investigations in the U.S. and in Brazil. ALSO READ | The saga of Rep. George Santos: Inside his many fabrications, exaggerations, and embellishments In a chaotic scrum, reporters chased Santos from his office Tuesday, down the stairs and outside the Capitol to his car. Reporters asked if he made the decision to step away from the committees on his own or if he was asked to by the House speaker. “Nobody tells me to do anything, I made the decision on my own that I thought best represented- in interest of the voters,” Santos said. New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik,...

In 2011, Karen Levy, a doctoral candidate in Princeton’s sociology department, spent the summer as a research intern at Intel’s offices near Portland, Oregon. Her official remit was fuzzy and open-ended, but the company had at one point emphasized its resolve to find use cases for its chips in vehicles. Levy hadn’t thought much about vehicles per se, but her mixed academic background—she was also trained as a lawyer—predisposed her to reflect on situations that dramatized the peculiar relationship between formal codes (the realm of the law) and practical expediency (the realm of the ethnographer). The road, it occurred to her, was the site of our most common and thoroughgoing encounter with rules; it was also the scene of our most routine and matter-of-fact disregard for them. Take, as an example, jaywalking. It remains technically criminal in many places, but the enforcement of the prohibition is typically neither expected nor desired. Levy’s work is often about the wiggle room...

Jalen Pickett has gone from Aquinas to John R. Wooden Award semifinalist. The Penn State guard’s sizzling season now includes recognition as one of the top 20 college basketball players in the country. Pickett, a 6 foot-4 inch guard for the Nittany Lions, is on the Wooden Award “Late Season” Top 20 list released Monday. The winner of the college basketball player of the year award is announced in April. Sunday, Pickett finished with 25 points in a runaway 83-61 win at home over Michigan. That increased his season average to 17.6 points, with 8 rebounds and 7 assists a game. His performance led CBS studio analysts Seth Davis and Clark Kellogg to smile about the two-time Democrat and Chronicle All-Greater Rochester high school player’s “old-school” style of play. “Jalen Pickett of Penn State, scores, rebounds, assists and doesn’t turn it over. He’s a legit stud,” ESPN analyst Jay Bilas said back in December in a Tweet. This is Pickett’s fifth season in NCAA basketball, se...

What to Know The New York Road Runners unveiled key dates ahead of the 2023 TCS New York City Marathon. Although the big event is scheduled to take place on Nov. 5, the application for the 2023 TCS New York City Marathon entry drawing includes dates that are fast approaching. The TCS New York City Marathon is one of the city’s most iconic sporting events, attracting runners and spectators from around the world. Last year, the marathon made its triumphant return to full capacity with nearly 50,000 runners after a pandemic pause. The New York Road Runners unveiled key dates for the 2023 TCS New York City Marathon on Monday. Although the big event is scheduled to take place on Nov. 5, the application for the 2023 TCS New York City Marathon entry drawing includes dates that are fast approaching. The application for the 2023 TCS New York City Marathon entry drawing includes the following dates: Important Dates for Runners February 8 : Application for the entry drawing ...

CYPRESS, Texas — Archer Calder, a teenager from Cypress, Texas, grew up unable to have a conversation with his younger sister Della. She has a rare genetic disorder called Bainbridge-Ropers syndrome that leaves her unable to speak. “Even though she wasn’t able to talk back to me, I would still want to talk to her and tell her that I loved her and that she meant a lot to me,” said Archer. After the family tried several expensive augmentative and alternative communication (or AAC) apps to help Della communicate, Archer decided to use his coding skills and develop an app on his own called Freespeech. The app allows people to choose buttons that represent words. “Freespeech is different from many other pieces of AAC software. Number one, it’s free.” said Archer. “Freespeech is also different than any other AAC apps in that it’s open source.” The Freespeech website is free for anyone to use, and other coders can also add their own features to the app. Archer has worked with ot...

Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer Let’s say you’re a regular Amazon shopper in need of a spatula. You might start your journey by typing the word “spatula” into the search box with a qualifier or two (“silicone,” “fish,” “magenta”). In response, Amazon will produce a very large list presented in a large paginated grid or, on a phone, a bottomless scroll. You have, it is implied, thousands of options within immediate reach; Amazon presents them to you in a particular but mostly unexplained order. Some of the spatulas you encounter first will carry brand names you’ve heard of before, like KitchenAid or Rubbermaid, while others will have names like IOCBYHZ, BANKKY, or KLAQQED. Some of them will appear identical to one another or even share the same product photos with different names and prices. Other listings will disclose, usually in small gray text, that they’re “sponsored.” (Of the 81 clickable, buyable products on my first page of search results for “spatula” — product ...