Apple is hoping to put an end to the days of students weighed down with a backpack full of textbooks. The tech company said it's aiming to change the way students use textbooks with a free app for downloading those schoolbooks to an iPad.

A City Council stalemate over a so-called living wage bill has ended with a deal that could raise the pay for several hundred workers a year at city-subsidized developments.

For the first time, emergency dispatchers from the NYPD, FDNY and Emergency Medical Dispatch services are in the same location and using the same technology to respond to 911 calls. The mayor touted this coordinated approach as a major milestone in the city's emergency call system, which has been in need of an overhaul for decades.

New York City police say a man has confessed to a string of arson attacks at an Islamic cultural center and four other sites on New Year's Day.

The American Museum of Natural History plans to put its galleries and laboratories on offer to master's students in a new training program in earth science education. The Master of Arts in Teaching program is meant to address a shortage of qualified earth science teachers in high-need public schools in New York.

New York City education officials and the teachers union say they will not be able to reach an agreement on a new teacher evaluation system by a December 31 deadline. Without an agreement, the city Department of Education will have to forfeit $60 million in federal grant money meant to help 33 struggling schools.

For many high school seniors, this vacation week may be spent working on, or perhaps agonizing over, college applications. Deadlines for many universities are in January, while others, such as CUNY, follow a February 1st cutoff. A college admissions counselor offers some advice on getting through the application process.

The U.S. is officially bringing its mission in Iraq to a close after nearly nine years at war, the loss of more than 4,400 U.S. service members and more than 32,000 wounded in combat.

Several advocates for sex trafficking victims are pushing the City Council for legislation that would penalize livery car drivers for knowingly transporting individuals forced into prostitution.

A group of civic leaders in Queens is proposing once again to turn an old rail line that runs through Forest Hills into an elevated park. Several community leaders proposed the idea a few years ago, but the project stalled. Now, leaders say there's more political buy-in.

A New York State supreme court judge issued an injunction saying that Con Ed cannot evict the developer of an Islamic community center near the World Trade Center site despite being owed back rent.

Had a hankering to plant a community garden? Want to scrub the graffiti off a nearby building and paint a mural instead? The non-profit group Citizens Committee for New York City is taking applications for its annual neighborhood improvement grants. The program gives small grants to projects in low-income neighborhoods.

Friends and foes of a local living wage bill packed a New York City Council committee hearing Tuesday to examine the merits of a revised version of the legislation.

As the city council revives the debate over a living wage bill on Tuesday, more than a thousand people packed Riverside Church Monday night to show their support for the measure.

City council members are reviving the debate over a living wage bill by introducing a revised version of the legislation on Tuesday. The proposed measure, called the Fair Wages for New Yorkers Act, would require that businesses in development projects subsidized by the city pay workers $10 an hour with benefits.

New Jersey is one of 11 states Wednesday that applied for a federal waiver from elements of No Child Left Behind, the federal education law. New York state is also expected to apply for the waiver by February.

When members of the public want to know how many people visited city-owned museums in a given year or how much city agencies paid workers in overtime, they can check the Mayor's Management Report. On Monday, city council members examined the merits of the report itself by asking: How well are we measuring the city's performance?

Now in her 49th year at the helm of a Brooklyn middle school, Principal Madeleine Brennan is well-versed in the peculiarities of young teenagers. In order to lead them, she says, you just "have to love that age group." Brennan will be honored by her union Tuesday night as the longest-serving junior high school principal in New York City public schools.

The Hudson Yards development project on Manhattan's west side now has the anchor tenant it needs to start construction. The leather-goods maker Coach Inc. will occupy a third of the commercial space in a new 51-story tower at 30th Street and 11th Avenue. Mayor Bloomberg says the deal means the far west side's economic potential is now becoming a reality.

Mayor  Michael Bloomberg, city Comptroller John Liu and labor leaders said Thursday that they've developed a plan to potentially make New York City a national leader in the way public pensions are governed.