From New York, the greatest city in the world, and now in technicolor for the new Spring season, it's The Update with Brandon Julien! Spring draws closer and closer, which brings us one step closer to the true favorite season: summer. 

Some stories talked about on today's show were:

1. Defense lawyers for a man charged with killing eight people in a New York City terrorist attack say the U.S. surveilled their client surreptitiously and perhaps illegally for years. The lawyers said in a court filing that they think Sayfullo Saipov's electronic communications may have been vacuumed up through bulk surveillance or by targeting individuals overseas.

2. An important  subway station in Queens has closed for the rest of the year due to a need for repairs and renovations. The MTA closed the busy Astoria Boulevard station Sunday and it will remain shut down until December as crews make major renovations. 

3. A new Associated Press data analysis shows that over the past 20 years, Americans have been twice as likely to sweat through record-breaking heat rather than shiver through record-setting cold. The AP looked at 424 weather stations throughout the Lower 48 states that had consistent data since 1920 and counted how many times daily hot temperature records were tied or broken and how many daily cold records were set.

Get caught up on the day's top stories with Brandon and The Update!

From New York, the greatest city in the world, it's The Update with Brandon Julien! For the second time in as many weeks, there's been a deadly shooting overseas. First there was the New Zealand mosque shooting, and then, there was this.

Some stories talked about on today's show were:

1.  A gunman killed three people and wounded nine others on a tram in the central Dutch city of Utrecht, sparking a manhunt that saw heavily armed officers with sniffer dogs zero in on an apartment building close to the shooting.  Authorities immediately raised the terror alert for the area to the maximum level, and the city's mayor said a "terror motive" was the most likely theory. 

2. The arrest of singer R. Kelly on charges of sexually abusing girls as young as 13 has focused the lens of the #MeToo movement on young victims. Studies show that 7 in 10 girls are sexually harassed by age 18, and 1 in 4 are sexually abused. Experts believe the rates are higher for girls of color. The national nonprofit Girls Inc. has launched a #GirlsToo campaign to ensure that young survivors are included in the conversation around #MeToo.  

3. An appeals court will consider the constitutionality of a struck-down Kansas statute that had required people to provide documents proving U.S. citizenship before they could register to vote. A three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments today in Salt Lake City in a case with national implications for voting rights.

Get caught up on the day's top stories with Brandon and The Update!

From New York, the greatest city in the world, and now available on DVD, it's The Update with Brandon Julien! Some stories that were talked about on today's show were:

1. Rape charges have been dropped against two former NYPD officers who had sex with an 18-year-old woman in a police van after arresting her for marijuana possession. The New York Times reports the Brooklyn District Attorney's office dropped more than 40 charges against former Detectives Richard Hall and Edward Martins, including rape, sexual assault and kidnapping.

2. A 30-year-old Long Island man is being accused of gouging out his grandmother's eyes and blinding her during a dispute over money. Prosecutors say Michael Grief was arguing with his grandmother at their Sayville home for allegedly using her debit card to overdraw her account by $1,000.

3. Facebook's priority is no longer connecting the world. Instead, it wants to help individuals and small groups to carry on private conversations that even Facebook can't listen in on. The company's new strategy, laid out by CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, is to prioritize its messaging services over its traditional social network.

Get caught up on the other top stories of the day with Brandon and The Update!

From New York, the greatest city in the world, it's The Update with Brandon Julien! First, developing news leads off. Nineteen people have been injured, two critically, in an apartment fire in the Bronx early Wednesday. The fire broke out around 6:15 a.m. inside the second floor of the Holland Avenue building and quickly spread throughout the building.  

Then, Three men received prison sentences in the widespread college basketball recruiting scandal that has tainted two dozen schools.

And U.S. health officials have approved a medication related to the mind-altering drug ketamine as a new option for patients with severe depression as the FDA cleared the inhalable drug for patients who have failed to find relief with older antidepressants.

Get caught up with the day's top stories with Brandon and The Update!