A Brooklyn man has been charged for alleged scamming a 90-year-old Hewlett woman out of $10,000.

In February the victim received a phone call from a man claiming to be from the Federal Trade Commission saying her identity and Social Security number had been “compromised,” and told her she had to withdraw and hand over $10,000 When the man called her the next day asking for more money, she contacted the police. The suspect has been charged with third-degree grand larceny.

DETROIT (AP) — Jalen Brunson’s crossover dribble between his legs created space for a game-winning 3-pointer with 4.3 seconds left and he blew a kiss to a quiet crowd that relentlessly taunted him for three games.
Brunson finished with 40 points to lead the New York Knicks to a 116-113 win over the Detroit Pistons on Thursday night in Game 6 and into the second round of the NBA playoffs.
“I stay poised and I rely on the trust and composure my teammates give me,” Brunson said.
A week after the point guard won the NBA’s clutch player of the year award, he lived up to the billing.
“He’s at his best when his best is needed and he’s done it all year,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “That’s what makes him special.”
Detroit didn’t get a shot off to potentially tie the game and send it to overtime because Malik Beasley fumbled a pass with four-tenths of a second left.
“This is tough,” said Beasley, who had 16 points in the second quarter and finished with 20. “I had a chance to make a three and tie the game. I’m mad about that.”
The third-seeded Knicks will face second-seeded Boston, shooting to advance to the Eastern Conference finals for the first time since 2000.
Game 1 is Monday night in Boston.
“They’re the defending champion so we’re going to have to be at our best,” Thibodeau said.
Mikal Bridges had 25 points and OG Anunoby added 22 for the Knicks, who closed the game out with clutch shots and stops after losing an 11-point lead in the fourth quarter and a 15-point advantage in the second quarter.
The sixth-seeded Pistons had an unprecedented turnaround during the regular season and ended the NBA’s longest playoff losing streak in their first postseason appearance since 2019, but broke another league mark with a 10th straight setback at home dating to 2008.
“We proved to ourselves and to the rest of the league that what we have in our room can be very successful,” Cunningham said.
Detroit’s Cade Cunningham had 23 points, eight assists and seven rebounds. Cunningham was 0 for 8 on 3-pointers and his backcourt mate Tim Hardaway Jr. was 1 of 6 beyond the arc and scored seven points.
Hardaway made a jumper to put Detroit ahead 112-105 with 2:35 left and Brunson responded by scoring the next five points.
Cunningham missed a contested layup with 22 seconds left that when the score was 113-all and Brunson took advantage of the opportunity to win it on the next possession.
“We did so many things well and gave ourselves a chance,” Detroit coach J.B. Bickerstaff said. “They just made one more play than we did.”
Brunson was booed almost every time he touched the ball in the series and heard much worse than that in Game 3.
It was so vulgar that Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr came to Brunson’s defense.
Thibodeau, though, said no one can rattle Brunson.
“His focus is terrific,” Thibodeau said. “He doesn’t get sidetracked with anything but the game. He’s not thinking about what people say, or fans.”

AP NBA: https://apnews.com/NBA

The Suffolk County District Attorney office announced the arrests of 28 alleged gang members saying they are responsible for a long list of crimes.
The alleged crimes include at least 19 different shootings in Suffolk County, armed robberies, drug trafficking and gun charges.

WASHINGTON (AP) — American businesses are cancelling orders from China, postponing expansion plans and hunkering down to see what trade policy surprises President Donald Trump plans to spring on them next.
The president’s massive and unpredictable taxes on imports seem likely to mean emptier shelves and higher prices for American shoppers, perhaps within weeks.
And the higher costs and paralyzing uncertainty could exact an economic toll: U.S. consumers are in the biggest funk since COVID-19 hit five years ago, and economists say recession risks are climbing.
An early sign of the damage emerged on Wednesday when the Commerce Department released its first look at first-quarter economic growth.
The U.S. economy shrank 0.3% from January through March, the first drop in three years. Gross domestic product — the nation’s output of goods and services — was down from 2.4% in the last three months of 2024. Imports shaved 5 percentage points off first-quarter growth. Consumer spending also slowed sharply.
Separately, a report from payroll provider ADP showed that companies added just 62,000 jobs in April, about half of what was expected, and down from 147,000 in March. It’s a potential signal that businesses may be taking a more cautious approach to hiring amid uncertainty over tariffs.
Asked how much of deterioration in the world’s biggest economy could be traced to Trump’s erratic policies, Boston College economist Brian Bethune said: “All of it.”
As he promised on the campaign trail, Trump has upended decades of American trade policy. He’s been imposing — then sometimes suspending — big import taxes, or tariffs, on a wide range of targets. He’s currently plastered a 10% levy on products from almost every country in the world. He’s hit China — America’s third-biggest trading partner and second-biggest source of imported goods – with a staggering 145% tariff.
China has responded with retaliatory tariffs of its own – 125% on American products. The take-no-prisoners trade war between the world’s two biggest economies has shaken global financial markets and threatened to bring U.S.-China trade to a standstill.
Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, warned last Thursday within two weeks arrivals to the port “will drop by 35% as essentially all shipments out of China for major retailers and manufacturers has ceased.” Seroka added that cargo from Southeast Asia also “is much softer than normal with tariffs now in place.”
After Trump announced expansive tariffs in early April, ocean container bookings from China to the United States dropped 60% — and stayed there, said Ryan Petersen, founder and CEO of Flexport, a San Francisco company that helps companies ship cargo around the world. With orders down, ocean carriers have reduced their capacity by cancelling 25% of their sailings, Flexport said.
Many companies tried to beat the clock by bringing in foreign goods before Trump’s tariffs took effect. In fact, that is a big reason that first-quarter economic growth is expected to come in so low: A surge in imports swelled the trade deficit, which weighs on growth.
By stockpiling goods ahead of the trade war, many companies “will be positioned to ride out this storm for a while,” said Judah Levine, research director at the global freight-booking platform Freightos. “But at a certain point, inventories will run down.”
In the next few weeks, Levine said, “you could start seeing shortages … it’s likely to be concentrated in categories where the U.S. is heavily dependent on Chinese manufacturing and there aren’t a lot of alternatives and certainly quick alternatives.” Among them: furniture, baby products and plastic goods, including toys.
Jay Foreman, CEO of toymaker Basic Fun, said he paused shipments of Tonka trucks, Care Bears and other toys from China after Trump’s tariff plan was announced in early April. Now, he’s hoping to get by for a few months on inventory he’s stockpiled.
“Consumers will find Basic Fun toys in stores for a month or two but very quickly we will be out of stock and stock product will disappear from store shelves, ” he said.
Kevin Brusky, who owns APE Games, a small tabletop game publisher in St. Louis, has about 7,000 copies of three different games sitting in a warehouse in China. The tariff bill of about $25,000 would wipe out his profit on the games, so he is launching a Kickstarter campaign next week to help defray the cost of the duties.
Still, his sales representative is urging him to import the games if possible, because he expects that retailers will soon be desperate for products to sell. If he does import the games, Brusky is considering raising its price from $40 to at least $45.
Worried that tariffs will push up prices and drive away customer, retailers have put expansion plans on hold for next year, said Naveen Jaggi, president of retail advisory services in the Americas for real-estate firm JLL. “What they are telling us is: ‘We want to slow down the decision to open up stores and commit to leases’ because they want to watch how the consumer reacts.”
Consumers already seem to be freaking out. The Conference Board, a business group, reported Tuesday that Americans’ confidence in the economy fell for the fifth straight month to the lowest level since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nearly one-third of consumers expect hiring to slow in the coming months, nearly matching the level reached in April 2009, when the economy was mired in the Great Recession.
Consumer spending accounts for about 70% of U.S. GDP so if nervous consumers stop shopping, the economic fallout could get ugly. Economist Joseph Brusuelas of the consultancy RSM pegs the probability of a recession within the next 12 months at 55%.
Even gloomier is Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management. He sees a 90% chance of a recession by this summer if Trump’s tariffs remain in place. Businesses are already planning on significant disruptions, particularly from the 145% duties on goods from China, he said.
“You see that in company reactions: Orders are down, (spending) plans are down, costs are up, prices paid are up,” he said.
He expects large layoffs by trucking firms and retailers as soon as late May, as the slowdown in goods coming into U.S. ports from China works its way through the supply chain.
Flexport CEO Petersen said shortages of products are “not a tragedy.”
“It’s going to be much more about the layoffs that follow,” Petersen said. “That’s where the real pain is going to be felt. Shortages mean companies aren’t selling stuff and therefore don’t have the profits that they need to pay their workers.”
He said the stakes are so high that he expects the U.S. and China to deescalate their trade war and bring down the tariffs. In fact, Trump and his advisers have sounded more conciliatory lately. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, for example, said that the triple-digit tariffs the U.S. and China have slapped on each other are not sustainable.
But more abrupt shifts in trade policy risk increasing the uncertainty that has paralyzed businesses and worried consumers.
Moreover, said economist Cory Stahle of the Indeed Hiring Lab, “conditions may worsen in the coming months if people start behaving like they are in a recession. Softening some of the recent trade policy changes may ease some business concerns, but it may already be too late.”

The MTA says that a major construction project from Amtrak could disrupt LIRR service for daily riders starting next month.

Two of the four train tunnels that run into Penn Station from the east side are badly in need of repairs to fix damage done by Superstorm Sandy more than 12 years ago. Beginning next month each tunnel will be shut down to be rebuilt for a year and a half, cutting capacity by 25% for three years.

Amtrak insists that there is no other option but the MTA says disruptions could be reduced if they do the repair work during off-peak hours.