Good morning. It’s Wednesday. We’ll get details on drone shows in Central Park and Prospect Park that are planned for New Year’s Eve. We’ll also find out why a judge upheld a bribery charge that Mayor Eric Adams is facing.
Unlike the brightly lit objects in the sky that have left people in the Northeast on edge in recent weeks, there won’t be anything mysterious about 500 drones that are to climb toward the sky above Central Park on New Year’s Eve.
Or another batch of illuminated drones that will fly over Prospect Park in Brooklyn.
They will be deployed for light shows that will take the place of the usual fireworks spectacle at midnight.
But instead of lighting up the night sky to the delight of all the onlookers who can see the sky over the park, the Central Park drone show will be seen mainly in a “frozen zone” on the 72nd Street transverse, south of the Bethesda Fountain. It will be “event-facing,” according to the New York Road Runners, which plans to stage it, meaning that it will be directed at the 4,000 runners taking part in the annual Midnight Run. The drones will project images that have to do with — what else? — running.
The Road Runners dropped plans for the fireworks show a couple of weeks ago because of the drought and is awaiting city permits for the drone show.
The Prospect Park Alliance, which in the past coordinated its own New Year’s Eve fireworks show in Brooklyn, has also switched to a drone-driven light show. There, illuminated drones will be programmed to turn the night sky into a canvas for sparkly representations of landmarks like the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty.
The Road Runners and the alliance gave up on fireworks after Mayor Eric Adams announced a drought warning and banned fireworks and open flames and fireworks — a ban he has recently rescinded. The weather had been so dry in the early fall that trees and grass had become fuel for a brush fire that spread across two acres of Prospect Park.
Morgan Monaco, the president and chief executive of the Prospect Park Alliance, said when she decided two weeks ago to stage a drone show that she did not want to risk a stray spark from fireworks doing more damage on New Year’s Eve. The Road Runners said then that the group was “exploring other festive options.”
December has turned out to be wetter than usual. The city says that rainfall is running more than three-quarters of an inch above the norm. And on Monday, Adams downgraded the city’s drought warning to a drought watch and said he hoped to rescind it “if conditions continue.”
The rain on Monday had lifted reservoir levels to 68.6 percent, the city’s Department of Environmental Protection said. That is still short of the normal level for this time of year, which is just under 83 percent.
More rain is coming, mainly this afternoon and evening, the National Weather Service says — but no more than a quarter-inch is expected, and the storm will clear out before sunrise on what promises to be a mostly sunny Thursday. Friday could bring yet more rain and even snow from 1 p.m. on, though the Weather Service says the chance of precipitation is no more than 50 percent.
As for mystery sightings in the sky, the F.B.I. says that it has received “tips” about more than 5,000 reported drone sightings in the last few weeks and that the information has led to “approximately 100 leads.” The police in New York said they had gotten 120 calls last weekend, more than in all of November.
But Rebecca Weiner, the head of intelligence and counterterrorism for the Police Department, said that most of the reports were not about drones at all. At least one object that someone called about was the planet Venus. Others were airplanes and helicopters, she said.
While reports have soared, there has not been a marked increase in the number of actual drones spotted by the police, Weiner said. On average, the department detects 300 to 400 drones in the sky, and as many as 2,000 a day in the summer.
The Department of Homeland Security and three other federal agencies — including the F.B.I.— said that there had been “a limited number” of drone sightings over military facilities in New Jersey. Sightings near or over Defense Department installations “are not new,” and the Pentagon takes “unauthorized access over its airspace seriously,” the three agencies said in a statement.
As my colleagues Alyce McFadden and Nate Schweber wrote, the drone anxiety has been driven by thousands of people who have taken to social media.
“What’s real and what isn’t?” asked David Whitely of North Bergen, N.J., who said he thought that misinformation had been rampant. “Personally, I’m exhausted.”
Weather
Rain is likely in the afternoon and evening, with temperatures in the upper 40s. Tonight, rain continues, with temperatures in the upper 30s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect through Dec. 25 (Christmas Day).
The latest New York news
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Terror charge in health care executive’s shooting: A grand jury formally indicted Luigi Mangione in the assassination of Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare. Mangione was accused of first-degree murder, a charge that branded him a terrorist.
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Trump accuses a juror of misconduct: The president-elect’s latest attempt to overturn his conviction on charges of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal was rebuffed by the judge, who called the allegation about the juror “mere hearsay and conjecture.”
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Another murder charge: Rex Heuermann, already accused of murdering six women in the Gilgo Beach serial killings, has been charged in the death of Valerie Mack, whose remains were found in 2011.
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A flood in the Bronx: A water main break near Webster Avenue and East Mosholu Parkway South flooded streets and left cars submerged up to their taillights.
Judge upholds a bribery charge in Adams’s corruption case
A federal judge on Tuesday let stand one of five bribery charges that Mayor Eric Adams is facing.
Judge Dale Ho rejected arguments by Adams’s lawyers that prosecutors had failed to meet the federal definition of bribery. The prosecutors said that was what took place when Adams accepted luxury travel from the Turkish government. In return, they say, Adams pressured Fire Department officials to sign off on the opening of a new Turkish consulate in Manhattan.
Adams’s lawyers had pointed to recent Supreme Court rulings that raised the bar for prosecutors to bring corruption cases. Judge Ho acknowledged that the standard had evolved but rejected Adams’s argument that the indictment was too vague to pass muster. Adams was indicted in September and pleaded not guilty.
The judge said that Adams’s lawyers had raised legitimate questions about whether too much time had passed between the benefits Adams was accused of receiving and the actions he was accused of taking in return. But he said that such questions should be resolved at trial — where the Supreme Court rulings could still pose a challenge for the government’s case.
Prosecutors said that when Adams contacted Fire Department officials in 2021, those officials believed they “would lose their jobs” if they did not approve the opening of the consulate. Adams had won the Democratic mayoral primary and was all but certain to become the next mayor, and he had appealed directly to the fire commissioner for the assistance, prosecutors said.
Judge Ho’s ruling came a day after President-elect Donald Trump said he would consider pardoning Adams. My colleague Jan Ransom writes that the two men have become unlikely bedfellows in recent months, with Trump suggesting that Adams was the target of a politically motivated prosecution.
METROPOLITAN diary
Trivia Night
Dear Diary:
I was on my way home from work. I decided to walk up Third Avenue for a change. I got hungry as I reached 82nd Street and decided to pop into a bar for a pint of Guinness and a bite.
I soon found myself chatting with a genial guy celebrating his first day of work in a new job. We clinked glasses to toast the occasion. A woman sitting nearby chimed in to say that she had just interviewed for a job. In swooped her glass to join ours.
Our celebration was interrupted by the announcement that it was trivia night. The three of us looked at one another, shrugged and nodded.
We banded together to deliberate over Beyoncé’s new title track, slalom skiing and a radioactive element with a short half-life that glows blue. (“Einsteinium,” I blurted out from somewhere in the recesses of my brain.)
We finished trivia night strong, drank our dregs and branded ourselves Team Einsteinium. Then, without exchanging numbers or social media profiles, we waved goodbye and went our separate ways.
— Irene Walsh
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Francis Mateo and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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