Four winners were announced as recipients of the Queens Economic Development Corp. 16th annual Queens StartUP! Business Plan Competition Monday.

Hailing from Cambria Heights, Broad Channel, Flushing and Astoria, the entrepreneurs each won $10,000 to jumpstart their new businesses. Read more

The MTA thanked two transit workers Wednesday for stepping in to help passengers in Jamaica from the Sutphin Boulevard-Archer Avenue station on April 5 when a fire erupted in a utility room on a platform.

Gary Mullings, first photo, a station cleaner, and Ophadell Williams, second photo, a traffic checker, sprang into action to aid riders while the latter was en route to collect bus ridership data for an assignment and the former was already on duty in the station. Read more

The New York City Rent Guidelines Board voted last week to increase rents for the city’s 1 million stabilized apartments in what would be the largest increase in almost a decade.

“I believed that the numbers initially reported were much too high, so I called for a better balance — and it is good the board moved lower,” Mayor Adams said following the vote. Read more

Mayor Adams said the administration is “excited about the energy” it is receiving from Albany lawmakers in whose hands the future of school control lies.

“It’s imperative that we get help from Albany,” Adams said at a press conference on Monday at City Hall alongside schools Chancellor David Banks, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations and the Service Employees International Union. Read more

Donning a pink and navy-striped crewneck and a button with a clothes hanger crossed out by a red-slash “no” symbol, Forest Hills resident Diane Weisstuch certainly looked the part as she stood on the steps of Queens Borough Hall ahead of last Thursday evening’s abortion rights rally.

And it wasn’t her first rodeo, either. Weisstuch said she made the button for the 2017 Women’s March, when, following the election of Donald Trump as president, many Americans feared the right to choose would come under threat. But, she said, things are different this time, as, following the publication of a leaked, draft majority Supreme Court decision last week, the 1973 landmark case Roe v. Wade looks poised to be overturned, and with it, that fear would become reality. Read more

A recent City Council vote to delay the pay transparency law from going into effect has bought some businesses more time to prepare while leaving applicants dismayed that salaries for many positions will remain unknown.

Frank Fredericks runs a small digital agency out of Astoria that handles social media marketing, customer acquisition and marketing and in recent years has been on both sides of the hiring process. Read more

President Biden announced on Thursday that Karine Jean-Pierre, The White House deputy press secretary, was promoted to the top spot, replacing Jen Psaki who will be departing from the role on May 13.

When she starts her tenure, Jean-Pierre will be the first Black and openly LGBTQ+ press secretary serving The White House. 

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Monday evening’s leak of the U.S. Supreme Court draft majority opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — in which Associate Justice Samuel Alito says that Roe v. Wade must be overruled — has taken both Queens and the nation by storm as the right to choose an abortion is on the chopping block.

If the ruling outlined in the opinion obtained by Politico — the first to ever be leaked ahead of an official ruling — holds, the right to choose would no longer be a protected one in all 50 states. It is the culmination of a decades-long effort by the right to severely limit abortion access, all the while, the balance of the Supreme Court has shifted in their favor. Read more

The plaza above the Jamaica Avenue-Van Wyck E-subway station at the edge of Kew Gardens has been in a state of disarray for over a decade, according to Roxanne Simone Lord Marcelle, the executive director and founder of the Southeast Queens Chamber of Commerce, who wants to raise $100,000 and revitalize the space as a thank-you to first responders a stone’s throw away at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center.

For years the park-like area has become a haven for the homeless and people using drugs, according to Lord Marcelle, who had to pass it when going to the juice bar she owns when it was located in Kew Gardens. It also suffers from a lack of lighting. Read more

The city Department of Sanitation cleaned up garbage surrounding the Hollis Long Island Rail Road station on Tuesday. For years the area has been a site for illegal dumping, but it has gotten worse since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, according to Novella Oliver, a former leader of the now-defunct Woodhull Civic Association.

The other problematic areas for illegal dumping included 191st Street and Woodhull Avenue, 195th Street between Sagamore and 99th avenues, and 99th Avenue between 193rd to 195th streets, according to Oliver and her neighbors Noreen Wright and Goutam Bhola. Read more

Even before the housing bubble crisis of 2008, almost any residential neighborhood could have a house become an eyesore and even a danger if the owners could not meet mortgage payments and a bank or lender moved in to foreclose.

The lending institution is required by state law to maintain the grounds and building in a proper fashion. Read more

The New York Blood Center is giving out free planters and packets to grow Zinnia flowers to all donors on Mother’s Day weekend.

The blood center wants to ensure that blood is available for new mothers and babies because women lose about one pint of blood giving birth and supplies have run low as students went on spring break and families took vacations, according to NYBC. Read more