WNYC News

One of the first things to hit the market in the spring are overwintered greens. They're planted in the fall and allowed grow until they set up roots. Then they're covered to protect against the extreme cold and will go dormant until the temperatures pick back up around this time of year. What's harvested is a heartier green vegetable.  

Amelia Tarpey is the Program and Publicity Manger for GrowNYC Greenmarkets. She said right now at local farm stands, overwintered greens range from $4 to $6 a bunch.  

Five unions representing more than half of the LIRR's workforce plan to go on strike May 16th if they can't reach a deal with MTA leaders.

On the night Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City, he promised the “most ambitious agenda to tackle the cost-of-living crisis that this city has seen since the days of Fiorello La Guardia” Since taking office in January, the 34-year-old mayor has embraced the 100-day benchmark for his ambitious plans. 

It’s now been 100 days. So what does Mamdani have to say about the start of his tenure?

On April 20, WNYC’s Senior Politics Reporter Brigid Bergin plans to find out during a live conversation about Mamdani’s first 100 days at the Greene Space.

He’ll take questions about what his administration has done so far, where it’s headed and what lessons he’s drawn from the legacy of La Guardia, who notably spoke directly to New Yorkers over WNYC’s airwaves.

We’re livestreaming the event on WNYC’s YouTube channel. We’ll even select a few questions from virtual attendees which you can submit ahead of the event.

Register for the livestream here and submit a question here.

Prosecutors on Long Island say the accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann has admitted to killing 8 women. The Long Island architect was arrested in 2023 and charged with multiple women, many of them sex workers and burying their remains along Suffolk County’s South Shore over two decades. Heuermann is expected to spend the rest of his life in prison as a result of the guilty pleas.

Robert Kolker is the author of the 2013 book Lost Girls: An American Mystery. It detailed the lives of the Long Island serial killer’s victims and was the basis of the Netflix film with the same title. He joins WNYC's Sean Carlson to talk more about what the guilty pleas mean.

A Brooklyn day care owner whose license had been revoked by the state was allowed to open another program a few months later — only to have the second facility shuttered amid allegations of child abuse.

The Eva Crèche Day Care Center in Prospect Lefferts Gardens closed earlier this year after an employee recorded videos showing one worker grabbing and tossing a toddler and children napping and eating on the floor of a private residence that parents had not given permission for their kids to visit. The program was also over overenrolled.

Public records obtained by parents at the now-defunct facility show that in 2020, the same owner had her license revoked at a day care she then ran in Crown Heights — that time for failing to let inspectors inside, and leaving too many kids with one worker.

Five months later, she opened Eva Crèche a mile away.

The Eva Crèche abuse allegations, and several other headline-grabbing incidents at local day cares in recent months, come as the city plans a major expansion of child care. The city shut down one of the Manhattan locations of Bright Horizons, one of the largest child care providers, after an employee gave bleach to children and another sealed a girl’s mouth shut with packing tape. Authorities have charged several workers from Bright Horizons and Eva Crèche for endangering children.

Early education experts said these incidents — while outliers — underscore a broader challenge facing the city’s child care expansion plan. New York City’s 10,000 providers are overseen by a patchwork of state and city agencies, creating inequities across the system in terms of pay, training and quality of care. In some cases, this can create environments where abuse happens, the experts said.

Parents at Eva Crèche said the city agencies that were supposed to keep their kids safe failed to stop abuses.

The Mamdani administration said creating high-quality programs is a key tenet of the city’s expansion plan and officials are working to create a more cohesive system for parents and providers. Health officials said the city has rigorous regulations, and the majority of programs are providing safe spaces for kids.

New York does not charge tax on the sale of bars and coins made out of gold, silver, platinum and other precious metals that are purchased for investment purposes, which are known as bullion. It’s far from alone: At least 40 states have a similar tax exemption, according to the National Coin and Bullion Association. Now, Senate Democrats want to restore the bullion sales tax as part of ongoing negotiations over the roughly $260 billion state budget.

New York City has one of the largest service industries in the country, and tipping has always been a part of that. 

But with tipping expected at way more places now, the rules of who to tip and how much has gotten more complicated. 

All Things Considered producer Elizabeth Shwe did some digging and talked with WNYC's Sean Carlson about tipping etiquette in the city.

You can read Elizabeth's column on tipping etiquette in WNYC Gothamist's newsletter Looped In.

In a scene from the 1990 puppet superhero movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the television journalist April O’Neill storms out of New York City Hall and heads straight into a subway station. Above her head, the words “City Hall” dangle in big block letters. 

But, behind that scene, there’s a secret. She’s not where the movie says she is.

“April O'Neill comes down out of City Hall as the ace reporter and then walks into the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station,” said Brooklyn Academy of Music Director of Programming Jesse Trussel. 

That secret, that the downtown Brooklyn station is subbing in for the City Hall stop, is at the heart of an upcoming film series at BAM’s Rose Cinemas, called “Hoyt-Schermerhorn: Stand Clear of the Closing Doors.” Every movie being shown contains scenes shot in and around the station.

WNYC's Verónica Del Valle explains. 

Morning Edition is back with another month-long celebration of poetry in April. This year, the theme is "good neighbors." 

In this population-dense region, our relationships with our neighbors mean a lot. What is a good neighbor? What does it look like to be a good neighbor? Send us your take, in the form of a poem. We might play it on the air, or share it in print on social media or in our newsletters. 

You can email us your poem at [email protected]. Please send us the text of your poem, as well as a voice memo. Record yourself on your phone, reading your poem somewhere quiet. Shorter poems are preferred, though we can also use excerpts if you need to go longer. Please make sure to say your name as well as your town or borough or neighborhood in the recording. 

New York State Poet Laureate Kimiko Hahn joined Morning Edition's Michael Hill to help kick off Poetry Month at WNYC. 

As the weather warms up this month, astronomy buffs in the New York City area can enjoy a 'sungrazer' comet blazing through our solar system. You can catch a meteor shower. And you can also track the 10-day moon mission. WNYC's Rosemary Misdary joins Weekend Edition host David Furst for April's stargazing report.