Colleen Long

NEW YORK -- A man accused of abducting and dismembering an 8-year-old Brooklyn boy told investigators that he suffocated the child with a towel after learning that thousands of volunteers were out searching for the youth, a law enforcement official said Thursday.

NEW YORK -- A judge on Tuesday dropped charges that rapper Foxy Brown violated a court order by mooning her neighbor after the woman told prosecutors she would not testify at the trial.

Assistant District Attorney Robert Isdith said he had tried to meet with the neighbor, Irene Raymond, in the weeks before the trial and didn't get anywhere. When he finally got in touch with her, she said she didn't want to pursue the case, he said.

"While the district attorney's office has no doubt the defendant committed this crime, we have no other choice but to dismiss this case," Isdith said.

NEW YORK -- It's the biggest public party in the country. Nearly a million revelers will cram into the streets of Times Square to watch the ball drop on New Year's Eve.

It's also remarkably crime-free, safe and orderly. In the past decade, there have been few arrests and virtually no major problems funneling people in and out of the confetti-filled streets to ring in the New Year.

That's due mostly to what the partygoers don't notice: Throngs of police and counterterrorism officers blanketing the area, working from a security plan specifically tailored for the event.

NEW YORK -- The JetBlue flight attendant whose job-quitting meltdown landed him in court avoided jail time in a plea deal Tuesday that requires him to undergo counseling and treatment for a least a year.

NEW ORLEANS — Tropical rainstorms moving toward the Gulf of Mexico Wednesday threatened to shut down undersea efforts to seal BP's ruptured well, interrupting work just as engineers get close to plugging the leak with mud and cement.

NEW YORK -- Days before the failed car bomb in Times Square, a Pakistani-American scouted the bustling district in the same vehicle and then, on a second trip, left a getaway car blocks from his chosen target, a law enforcement official has told The Associated Press.

NEW YORK -- An Afghanistan-born imam linked to the suspects in an aborted suicide bomb plot against New York City subway stations dodged jail time at his sentencing Thursday but was ordered to leave the country within 90 days.