A 60-year-old man was killed Tuesday afternoon when a fallen tree struck the vehicle he was sitting in, police said.

Mario Siles was sitting in a 2014 Dodge van at 143-28 84 Drive in Briarwood at approximately 1 p.m. when a large tree fell onto the roof of the vehicle, causing it to be crushed downward, pinning Siles inside. Read more

It took a team effort to paint the new Black Lives Matter mural on Jamaica Avenue last Thursday.

At left, Rosin Spigner and Councilman Daneek Miller add their contributions to the sign, while above right, a Department of Transportation painter readies five gallons of premium yellow for community volunteers to roll down over pre-stenciled letters. Read more

When Tropical Storm Isaias swept through New York City on Tuesday afternoon, more than 49,000 Queens households lost power, more than any other borough.

The outages aren’t being restored immediately. As of 4 p.m. Wednesday afternoon, Queens still had 42,349 Con Edison customers without power. Read more

Hundreds of volunteers turned up on Jamaica Avenue last Thursday morning to paint the city’s newest Black Lives Matter mural.

The new work was put in place between 150th and 153rd streets with the Rufus King Manor Museum to the north. Read more

At around 11 a.m. on Monday, an outreach team from the city’s Department of Homeless Services pulled up on Whitney Avenue in Elmhurst where a group of homeless men had set up camp.

Workers from the Sanitation Department, responding to weeks of neighborhood complaints, were slated to come the next day and remove the makeshift village that had been built in recent months on the sidewalk between a shopping mall parking lot and the Long Island Rail Road tracks. The two-person outreach team was there to tell them what was coming. Read more

When Howard Beach science teacher and environmentalist Arcilia Derenzo began making trips to help clean the North Channel parking lot during her summer break, she found something far more fishy going on than mere littering.

Violations of the ban on shellfishing are on the rise in Jamaica Bay, she found. On a near-daily basis, dozens of people are illegally taking bags and buckets of clams from the water below the Joseph P. Addabbo Memorial Bridge, according to Derenzo’s observations. Read more

A familiar power dynamic between New York State and the Big Apple played out this week as Gov. Cuomo criticized Mayor de Blasio’s plan for reopening schools for not being substantial enough.

De Blasio announced early last month that schools will open with a hybrid model, staggering attendance for students, while giving parents the option to continue solely with remote learning. Then last Thursday, the city outlined its protocols for closing schools in response to COVID infections. Read more

The Census Bureau will stop outreach efforts to count the country’s population at the end of September — not the end of October as has been planned.

In-person counting will wrap up Sept. 30. The original date of July 31 had been pushed back to Oct. 31 because of the coronavirus crisis. Read more

Gov. Cuomo was nothing if not direct Monday when discussing the impasse in Congress over a new COVID-19 relief bill in an interview on MSNBC.

“You know, every past CARES Act bill was imperfect, grossly imperfect. They always said, well, don’t worry, there’s another one, there’s another one,” he said. “This is the last one. And if they don’t make this bill right, frankly, if they don’t get it right, they shouldn’t pass it, because it will be the last bill.” Read more

A Glendale priest was arrested by the FBI last Wednesday and charged with receiving images of child pornography from a 15-year-old.

The Rev. Francis Hughes, 65, of St. Pancras Church, allegedly communicated with the White Plains teenager on the Grindr website and then through texts. Read more

A new survey reinforces what has been known since Dutch settlers paid the native Lenape people for control of the island then called Mannahatta — real estate on that sliver of land between the East and Hudson rivers is pricier than it is on the far broader island to the east.

But some spots in Queens do make their mark in the study, which ranks the 100 priciest ZIP codes in New York City based on data from the first half of the year. Read more

There are countless reasons why you can benefit from using your personal my “Social Security” account. Here are five that highlight why opening an account today can help you and the people you love. Read more

The reconstruction effort at LaGuardia Airport passed another landmark this week, with the activation on Wednesday of seven gates in the new concourse in Terminal B.

Gov. Cuomo and others involved in the $8 billion redevelopment project touted the new concourse in a press release last week. Read more