Richard Yeh

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 plus up to one year in jail.

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.

The city is hoping to make it easier for New Yorkers to check up on construction projects by becoming the first major city in the nation to use QR codes on building permits.

Brooklyn is about to get a whole lot hoppier.

The ever-popular Brooklyn Brewery says it will increase beer production in the borough tenfold over the next three years, thanks to an $8 million expansion of its facility in Williamsburg.

New York City has chosen a team of real estate developers to bring a 5,000-unit housing complex to Hunters Point South along the Queens waterfront — a project that officials said will be the largest affordable housing development since the 1970s when Co-op City in the Bronx and Starrett City in Brooklyn were completed.

Kew Gardens, NY —

New Yorkers' discontent with the city's inadequate response to the December blizzard continues. A City Council hearing at Queens Borough Hall Friday had residents lining up to describe how they were stranded in their homes for days, with unplowed streets, uncollected garbage, stranded busses and ambulances that did not reach the ailing in time to help. Here are some of their stories.

At his tenth State of the City address, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the state of city is strong, but progress is not inevitable — it is up to us to create it.

Bloomberg also warned that the most severe budget cuts are ahead, due to unfunded mandates and pension benefits with no expected extra help from Albany or Washington this year.