Legislative leaders in Albany said Wednesday they were nearing final agreements on tuition increases at New York's universities expected to pass legislation late Wednesday or Thursday.

With the June 30 budget deadline looming, more than 100 advocacy group members gathered on the steps of City Hall on Tuesday to urge Mayor Michael Bloomberg to scale back cuts they say would devastate the city's social safety net.

Mention hydropower and images of massive dams and turbines come to mind. But some local lawmakers are taking aim at a smaller and less visible scale: inside the city’s infrastructure for water supply and wastewater treatment.

The public will soon be able to learn more about decisions made by city government under legislation passed by the City Council Tuesday.

Some words of encouragement for embattled Rep. Anthony Weiner from a fellow New York Democrat who's no stranger to controversy. Representative Charles Rangel said Friday that Weiner can still be an effective lawmaker but “only if the press gets off his back.”

AT&T said Thursday that it will provide free wireless internet at 20 parks around New York City for the next five years.

Chanting "Yes for Youth" in the midday blistering sun, advocates with the group the NYC Youth Alliance and members of the City Council held a rally on the steps of City Hall today to urge Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council to restore more than $50 million for after school and summer youth programs. Without this funding, up to 50,000 young New Yorkers from working class families would lose access to programs such as Out-of-School Time, Beacon community centers, summer jobs, and runaway and homeless youth, said organizer Anthony Ng.

City officials are trying a new approach to building inspections following recent deadly fires in illegally subdivided buildings — including a deadly Bronx blaze that killed a 12-year-old boy and his parents in April.

The group Real Rent Reform set up a make-shift tent city they dubbed "Cuomoville" outside a Chelsea church on Tuesday to pressure the governor and state to pass stronger rent regulation laws before the current laws expire on June 15.

The nonpartisan Independent Budget Office is predicting slightly better news for the city than Mayor Michael Bloomberg laid out in his revised spending plan earlier this month.

City officials are hoping to partner with social media companies like Facebook and Foursquare to improve the city’s engagement with New Yorkers on the Internet.

City officials are still scratching their heads to figure out why the 2010 Census only counted 8.175 million residents in New York — about a quarter million people below the city's own estimates — as they prepare a formal challenge in the next two months.

Council member Margaret Chin has introduced a bill to make the buying of a counterfeit trademark a misdemeanor, punishable with fines of up to $1,000 dollars plus up to one year in jail. Chin is the first Asian-American to represent Manhattan’s Chinatown, and said she's speaking up for her constituents fed up by the unsavory activities brought by the trade.

There's a new landlord for 10 distressed Bronx apartment buildings that had become victims of the housing bust.

Add the state's top law enforcement officer to the list of elected officials voicing concerns over the safety of the Indian Point nuclear power plant in upstate New York.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is urging Congress to pass a bill strengthening background checks for gun purchases. He was in Washington DC on Tuesday lobbying for the measure.

New York is a city of vast and diverse waterfront — with more than that of Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago and Portland combined. But much of its 520-mile shoreline has been underutilized or neglected for decades. Now, city officials are hoping a new, 10-year strategic plan unveiled Monday will provide a framework for the city to reclaim its standing as a world class waterfront city.

The City Council has introduced a package of 17 bills in the wake of the city's botched response to last December's blizzard. But at a Council hearing Wednesday, Bloomberg administration officials rejected the bills, saying they would hamstring the city's flexibility in emergency response, or duplicate efforts already in place at various agencies.

Property owners in Willets Point, Queens, under threat of losing their land by eminent domain as the city makes way for a redevelopment of the area, vowed to reopen a legal case they lost last year.

The city vowed on Wednesday to replace all lighting fixtures that contain the toxic chemical PCB in public schools within 10 years after a federal investigation uncovered elevated levels of the known neurotoxin and suspected carcinogen.