A crooked gun broker secretly made thousands of recordings of conversations with corrupt NYPD cops, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. The revelation likely will send shock waves through the department. In a letter filed in Manhattan Federal Court, prosecutors said Alex (Shaya) Lichtenstein secretly recorded some 70,000 conversations, including many with cops. In November, Lichtenstein pleaded guilty to bribing NYPD officers to obtain pistol licenses.Lichtenstein saved the conversations to an e-mail account, “many of them contemporaneous memorialization of dealings of questionable legality with members of the NYPD,” according to the letter written by Assistant U.S. Attorney Martin Bell.

“During our initial review of those recordings, we learned that some of these calls implicated at least one of the defendants in this case.”(nydailynews)…[+]

Police on Wednesday were searching for a missing 28-year-old woman who recently moved from Denver to Los Angeles.

Laura Lynne Stacy was reported missing over the weekend and was last seen leaving her Southern California apartment on Saturday, the Los Angeles Police Department told NBC 4. Her phone was found in a puddle Monday at a park in Santa Clarita about 30 miles away from her Hollywood Hills home. The person who discovered it used the phone to text Stacy’s parents about 5 a.m. Stacy’s car, a 2005 black Acura TL, was found in a remote Lancaster area a day later, the Sheriff’s department told NBC.(nydailynews)...[+]

The Virginia mother and her two young children who vanished after she went on a weekend blind date have all been found safe after police determined they left “on their own free will.”

Monica Lamping and her two kids — 7-year-old Kai and his baby sister, 9-month-old Oria — left were found together in an “adjoining” state, Virginia Beach Police announced Wednesday, without specifying which state. Police initially claimed the mom and kids were in danger — a theory investigators later retracted. “Investigators have determined that they left on their own free will,” police said in a statement.(nydailynews)…[+]

The United States of America is now a more imperfect union. The Democracy Index has downgraded the U.S. from a full democracy to a flawed one, marking the first time the nation has fallen into the lower ranking.

Other flawed democracies include Botswana, India, Japan and Ghana, while much of Western Europe stayed in the full democracy category. Americans’ growing distrust in their government, elected officials and the media prompted the demotion, the Economist Intelligence Unit — the UK-based economic firm that produces the annual index — wrote in a Wednesday report.(nydailynews)…[+]

The “surrogate son” of a famed jeweler suspected of murdering a Hofstra grad once fired a gun into an apartment and cut off his ankle bracelet to flee while on probation, it was revealed in court Tuesday.

James Rackover, 25, was in Manhattan Supreme Court on charges of hindering prosecution, concealment of a human corpse and tampering with evidence in connection to the grisly death of 26-year-old Joseph Comunale in November. The details of his shady past were disclosed as his attorney Maurice Sercarz once again pushed for his client’s bail to be reduced. It stands set at $1 million bond or $500,000 cash — an amount he’s unable to post.(nydailynews)…[+]

President Trump signed two executive actions Tuesday that will advance construction of the controversial Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines.

The actions follow months of protests by environmentalists and Native American groups in North Dakota against the Dakota Access project, a $3.8-billion pipeline that would bring crude oil from the state’s Bakken oil patch through the Midwest and into the U.S. Gulf Coast. Construction on the project was halted in December after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denied a permit for the pipeline to cross under a Missouri River reservoir in the area so it could explore alternate routes.

The 1,172-mile-long pipeline spanning four states had been the subject of raucous, and at times bloody, protests for months at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, which straddles the border of North and South Dakota, that said the $3.8 billion pipeline threatened the tribe’s water source and cultural sites.(nydailynews)…[+]

A large sinkhole in upper Manhattan nearly swallowed two parked vehicles early Monday. The street along W. 167th St. near Edgecombe Ave. in Washington Heights cracked open just before 3:30 a.m. due to a possible “water condition,” according to Con-Ed and FDNY officials. A photo from WABC-TV shows two SUVs leaning into a collapsed lane.Officials closed Edgecombe Ave. from W. 165th St. to W. 170th St. pending an investigation. There were no injuries or evacuations, fire officials said.

In August, a BMW was engulfed in another gaping sinkhole that flooded a dance studio in the Upper West Side.(nydailynews)…[+]

Australian police are investigating the death of an actor who suffered chest wounds from firearms used on the set of a music video on Monday, as media said the man was accidentally shot.

In a statement, Australian hip hop band ‘Bliss n Eso’ said its members were not present at the site of the incident, which took place around 3 p.m. in Brisbane during the filming of one of the band’s music clips. “During the filming of that scene several firearms were used,” said Queensland state police detective inspector Tom Armitt.

“As a result of the use of those firearms one of the actors has received wounds to the chest and has subsequently died from his injuries.” The matter was being treated as a criminal investigation, he added. “I can’t tell you whether they are live or real firearms,” Armitt said.(nydailynews)…[+]

Chelsea Clinton is sticking up for her fellow White House kid. Clinton, who moved into the White House just before her 13th birthday, defended Barron Trump just days after his father’s inauguration. “Barron Trump deserves the chance every child does — to be a kid,” Clinton tweeted Sunday about the 10-year-old. The former First Daughter did manage to get a dig in at Donald Trump, however.“Standing up for every kid also means opposing @POTUS policies that hurt kids,” she tweeted.

Clinton remains “very good friends” with Barron’s older sister Ivanka Trump despite their parents’ vicious presidential campaigns.(nydailynews)…[+]

Pope Francis is taking a wait and see approach to President Trump. The Pontiff said he doesn’t believe in “judging people early,” in an interview published Saturday night in the Spanish newspaper El Pais. “We’ll see what Trump does,” he said. But weighing in more broadly about the rise of populist-style leaders in the United States and Europe, Francis cautioned against seeking a political savior in times of crisis — recalling that Adolf Hitler in 1930s Germany “was voted for by the people and then he destroyed the people.”We look for a savior to give us back identity, and we defend ourselves with walls, barbed-wire fences, from other people,” he said — echoing earlier comments amid Trump’s calls to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border that a leader who focuses only on building walls instead of bringing people together “is not Christian.”(nydailynews)…[+]