May 1 (UPI) -- A surprised Oklahoma City police officer captured video of a "small town problem" in the "big city" -- a loose chicken crossing a road.

The Oklahoma City Police Department posted a video to Facebook showing Officer Cook dealing with the unusual pedestrian found crossing a city street.

"You know, just 'cause we're in the big city don't mean we don't have small town problems," Cook says in the video.

Cook pans the camera over to the chicken as it begins to wander into an intersection.

"There's literally a chicken at 10th and Portland," Cook says, "and he's crossing the road."

Read more: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2018/05/01/Oklahoma-City-police-officer-rescues-road-crossing-chicken/2201525200946/

The Mooch is hoping to make this convicted felon great again.

Ousted White House flack Anthony Scaramucci is slated to headline a congressional fundraiser for disgraced former Rep. Michael Grimm on Staten Island later this month.

"Excited to welcome former White House comms director and one of our President's staunchest allies, Anthony Scaramucci, to Staten Island on May 19," the admitted perjurer tweeted Monday night. "You don't want to miss it."

Grimm is vying to win back the congressional seat he renounced in 2015 to serve eight months in prison for committing federal tax fraud.

He confessed to stashing $1 million in restaurant receipts, hiring undocumented immigrants and lying under oath.

Read more: http://beta.nydailynews.com/news/politics/scaramucci-headline-michael-grimm-congressional-fundraiser-article-1.3964823

The police commissioner of a small Long Island village got reappointed to his cushy $245,000-a-year post amid allegations he took an all-expenses-paid trip that included hookers, court records show.

Stephen McAllister, first appointed top cop in Floral Park in 2010, was voted in for a fifth term as head of the 35-member police force on April 2, according to official minutes.

That was just three weeks before McAllister — who pulls down $19,000 more annually than Big Apple Police Commissioner James O’Neill — was named an unindicted co-conspirator by the feds in an NYPD corruption scandal that will soon head to court. (O’Neill oversees a force of some 36,000 cops.)

The records don’t show any discussion before the vote, even though McAllister was the subject of an internal probe last year over testimony that he joined two NYPD cops and others who flew to Miami in 2013 for a college football championship game.

Read more: https://nypost.com/2018/04/30/police-commissioner-kept-245k-job-amid-hooker-allegations/

A Chinese restaurant in Toronto was slapped with a $10,000 fine for making a black customer prepay for his dinner, according to a new report.

Emile Wickham and three friends, who are also black, were celebrating a birthday at Hong Shing in May 2014 when the waiter told them it was the restaurant’s policy to pay for the food ahead of time, Toronto’s Globe and Mail reported.

Wickham, 31, asked other patrons if they too had to prepay – and quickly learned the “rule” only applied to his table. When the group questioned the server, he admitted they were the only ones who prepaid and asked if they wanted a refund. The friends took their money and left.

The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario found Wickham and his friends were the only black people in the restaurant at the time, according to a report issued April 18.

Read more: https://nypost.com/2018/05/01/restaurant-fined-10k-for-making-black-patron-pay-in-advance/

The criminal case against the three men who created the once-thriving local company 5Linx took a dramatic turn Tuesday when one of the three admitted to a wire fraud conspiracy and agreed to testify against the other two.

Craig Jerabeck, one of the founders of the 5Linx multi-level marketing company, pleaded guilty Tuesday to the wire fraud conspiracy and also to the filing of a false tax return.

Jerabeck and two other of the company founders — Jason Guck and Jeb Tyler — were arrested early last year and accused of looting the company and its investors of millions through shell companies and unearned bonuses. The three were scheduled for trial in federal court in mid-September; that trial date is still set for Guck and Tyler.

On Tuesday, however, Jerabeck admitted to crimes different than those contained in the indictment against him last year. He pleaded guilty to the fraud conspiracy, maintaining that he, Guck, and Tyler — or companies they created — pocketed about $2.3 million from a Florida vendor selling 5Linx products, including identity theft protection.

Read more: https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2018/05/01/5-linx-craig-jerabeck-guilty-wire-fraud-tax-fraud-jason-guck-jeb-tyler/568764002/

Former Assistant U.S. attorney George C. Burgasser spent Sunday evening on his son's boat docked at Smith Boys marina in North Tonawanda.

Then he disappeared.

Police said his son, who was below deck, heard a sound. He came up to the deck, saw his dad was missing and went into a panic, police said.

Another son, who came to help in the search, later found Burgasser's lifeless body floating in the water a couple of docks away, police said. Burgasser, who lived in North Tonawanda, was 63.

A preliminary investigation by the North Tonawanda police indicates the death was likely either an accident or related to a medical event, said Capt. Thomas Krantz.

Read more: http://www.syracuse.com/state/index.ssf/2018/05/former_federal_prosecutor_found_dead_in_niagara_river.html

ALBANY — Actress and Democratic gubernatorial primary candidate Cynthia Nixon earlier this month said she couldn't publicly reveal her tax returns because she filed for an extension.

But Nixon's campaign has so far declined repeated requests over the past 10 days from the Daily News to release her filing for the extension.

While the extension filing would not include many of the specifics that a full return would, including her sources of income and how much she gave in charitable donations, it would give an indication of how much money Nixon made the previous year.

According to the IRS form, Nixon would have to provide her estimated total tax liability in 2017, total 2017 payments, her balance that is due the feds, and the amount she is paying.

Read more: http://beta.nydailynews.com/news/politics/lovett-cynthia-nixon-won-reveal-tax-returns-extension-request-article-1.3963087

ALBANY – Kathy Hochul, the state lieutenant governor who has logged tens of thousands of miles promoting Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and his policies, again is facing questions about her political future after the governor recently promoted her as an ideal candidate to run for Congress.

That’s not sitting well with some who, like Hochul, are female and members of the Democratic Party who have fought to ascend the male-dominated political clubhouse in New York.

Some of them are saying Hochul already has made her intentions known publicly and privately that she wants to run again for lieutenant governor. So, as more than one Democrat asked, why is the only statewide elected official who is a woman being left hanging?

“I like Kathy Hochul very much," said veteran Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, a Manhattan Democrat, who has campaigned with Hochul and hosted her on multiple trips to her district that includes neighborhoods like Greenwich Village.

Read more: http://buffalonews.com/2018/04/28/amid-political-chatter-democratic-women-push-hochuls-re-election-bid/

NEW YORK (AP) — New York's former assembly speaker returns to federal court Monday to listen as prosecutors accuse him for a second time of collecting $4 million in illegal kickbacks from a cancer researcher and real estate developers.

This will be the second criminal trial for Sheldon Silver, 74, a Democrat who was once among the most politically powerful people in the state.

His first, in 2015, ended with a guilty verdict and 12-year prison sentence. That conviction, however, was reversed last July, giving Silver a second chance to avoid possibly spending the rest of his life in prison.

The trial is likely to largely be a repeat of the last, tailored slightly to conform to a June 2016 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that narrowed the definition of a corrupt act.

Read more: https://www.timesunion.com/news/crime/article/Openings-to-begin-in-ex-Assembly-speaker-s-12872929.php

Albany -- A pair of leading Senate Republicans joined an Assembly Democratic effort to separate mandatory state exams from teacher evaluations.

“Testing should not be the Holy Grail of our educational system but just one measurement,” Saratoga and Schenectady county Republican Sen. Jim Tedisco said recently, with the filing of a bill that he is sponsoring with Long Island's Carl Marcellino to disallow the use of statewide student exam results in teacher performance reviews.

“It’s time we close the book on the era of over-testing and stop the testing madness once and for all,” added Tedisco who is a former special education teacher, guidance counselor and coach.

If passed and signed into law, that would mean that the state math and English tests given in Grades 3-8 and the high school Regents exams, wouldn’t be used as part of teacher performance evaluations.

Read more: https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Senate-joins-push-to-de-couple-state-exams-from-12870223.php