NEW YORK (AP) — A co-defendant of the so-called Central Park Five, whose convictions in a notorious 1989 rape of a jogger were thrown out more than a decade later, had his conviction on a related charge overturned Monday.

Steven Lopez was exonerated in response to requests by both Lopez’s attorney and prosecutors.

Lopez was arrested along with five other Black and Latino teenagers in the rape and assault on Trisha Meili but reached a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to the lesser charge of robbing a male jogger.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg told a judge Monday that a review of the case found that Lopez had pleaded guilty involuntarily “in the face of false statements” and under “immense external pressure.”

Lopez, now 48, served about three years in prison before being released in the early 1990s.

The brutal assault on Meili, a 28-year-old white investment banker who was in a coma for 12 days after the attack, was considered emblematic of New York City's lawlessness in an era when the city recorded 2,000 murders a year.

Five teenagers were convicted in the attack on Meili and served six to 13 years in prison. Their convictions were overturned in 2002 after evidence linked a convicted serial rapist and murderer, Matias Reyes, to the attack.

Prosecutors who reviewed the case had concluded the teenagers' confessions, made after hours of interrogations, were deeply flawed.

“A comparison of the statements reveals troubling discrepancies,” they wrote in court papers at the time. “The accounts given by the five defendants differed from one another on the specific details of virtually every major aspect of the crime.”

The Central Park Five, now sometimes known as the “Exonerated Five,” went on to win a $40 million settlement from the city and inspire books, movies and television shows.

Lopez has not received a settlement, and his case has been nearly forgotten in the years since he pleaded guilty to robbery in 1991 to avoid the more serious rape charge. His expected exoneration was first reported in The New York Times.

“We talk about the Central Park Five, the Exonerated Five, but there were six people on that indictment,” Bragg told the Times. “And the other five who were charged, their convictions were vacated. And it’s now time to have Mr. Lopez’s charge vacated.”

Cat food brand Fancy Feast is expanding into feline-inspired human cuisine, with a New York City Italian restaurant designed to celebrate the company's new line.Gatto Bianco, which means "white cat," is described by Fancy Feast as an "Italian-style trattoria," and will be open for dinner reservations on Aug. 11-12 only, according to a news release from Purina, which produces Fancy Feast.The human-friendly dishes were inspired by Fancy Feast's new "Medleys" cat food line, which features options like "Beef Ragú Recipe With Tomatoes & Pasta in a Savory Sauce" for the cat with discerning taste. Only a lucky few will have the opportunity to try the Gatto Bianco pop-up, located between Manhattan's Far West Village and the Meatpacking District. The experience is limited to a total of 16 guests, who will each enjoy a complimentary tasting menu free of charge. The menu was designed by Fancy Feast's in-house chef, Amanda Hassner, and New York restaurateur Cesare Casella, Purina noted."Food has the power to connect us to others in meaningful ways and take us to places we have never been," said Hassner in Purina's release. "The same is true for our cats. The dishes at Gatto Bianco are prepared in ways that help cat owners understand how their cats experience food -- from flavor, to texture, to form -- in a way that only Fancy Feast can."Video above: Couple's cat figurine mewseum in home has more than 7,000 pieces This isn't Fancy Feast's first foray into human dining. In 2021, the company released a cookbook with recipes cat lovers can make to pair with their cat's food.For those who can't get their paws on a reservation, the company will post the recipes on its website.

NEW YORK CITY — The Sept. 11 Tribute Museum is set to permanently close its doors on Wednesday, just a month before the 21st anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

According to the Associated Press, the small museum, which opened in 2006, said it was closing after falling into hard times financially.

“Financial hardship, including lost revenue caused by the pandemic, prevents us from generating sufficient funding to continue to operate the physical museum,” said Jennifer Adams, co-founder, and CEO of the 9/11 Tribute Museum, in a statement to the Associated Press.

The news outlet reported that the Tribute Museum provided tours by volunteers who either lost a family member on Sept. 11 or were connected to the attacks somehow.

The news outlet reported that the Tribute Museum was sometimes confused with the other Sept. 11 museum, The National September 11 Memorial & Museum, which was much more extensive and was opened in 2014.

Adams told the news outlet that most items housed in the tribute museum were being relocated to the New York State Museum in Albany.

Adams added that Tribute Museum would still be available online "to provide educational resources and support for the 9/11 community," the Associated Press reported.

Brattleboro police Chief Norma Hardy remembers Sept. 11, 2001, like it was yesterday. She was a Port Authority officer at the time, living in Brooklyn. She wasn’t scheduled to work that morning, but like everyone, plans changed, fast.“You know, once we realized there was it wasn't an accident, once the second plane had hit... We were mobilized. And we started coming into Manhattan,” Hardy said.As she arrived in lower Manhattan, the towers were already rubble.“I really just came out into a bunch of chaos, and people running around and really horrible scenes,” she said.With her police shield around her neck, Hardy walked block by block, down streets she worked to protect for years.“I kind of think I went into shock at that point, witnessing what I was seeing,” she said.Moments later, a stranger snapped her back to the reality at hand. Hardy and fellow first responders started conducting rescue missions at ground zero. The most prominent sound was firefighters’ man down alarms.“It felt like we were in like a tunnel,” Hardy said. “Because it was like you could hear every sound because you were trying to hear people screaming for help. And you kept trying to hear and we walked, and people were digging with their hands, and they were picking up blocks with their hands. They were fires everywhere.”For days on end, the searching went on, the smoke and debris endless.“Your mind plays a trick on you,” Hardy said. “So, you think that you can hear people? And you really didn't. It was just that we wanted to find people so badly. That's what we thought we were hearing.”The Port Authority Police Department lost 37 officers on just that day. One of Hardy’s best friends, 50-year-old John Dennis Levi, was one of them. They continue to lose officers years later due to illnesses contracted from ground zero.“I have quite a few friends that are fighting different cancers,” Hardy said.While some are still fighting their own 9/11 battles, some of Hardy's young officers can't comprehend how our nation changed that sunny day.“I spoke to some of my officers, and they were little kids when this happened,” she said.For Hardy, the story never changes. Her memories serve as a reminder that those who answered the call of duty on that fateful day will always be remembered.“If you don't have people left who can tell you firsthand accounts of it, I'm afraid that it will get lost in history,” she said.

NEW YORK (AP) — Americans remembered 9/11 on Sunday with tear-choked tributes and pleas to “never forget," 21 years after the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil.

Nikita Shah headed to the ceremony on the ground in a T-shirt that bore the de facto epigraph of the annual commemoration — “never forget” — and the name of her slain father, Jayesh Shah.

The family moved to Houston afterward but has often returned to New York for the anniversary of the attack that killed him and nearly 3,000 other people.

“For us, it was being around people who kind of experienced the same type of grief and the same feelings after 9/11,” said Shah, who was 10 when her father was killed at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

Victims’ relatives and dignitaries also convened at the two other attack sites, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.

Other communities around the country are marking the day with candlelight vigils, interfaith services and other commemorations. Some Americans are joining in volunteer projects on a day that is federally recognized as both Patriot Day and a National Day of Service and Remembrance.

More than two decades later, Sept. 11 remains a point for reflection on the attack that reconfigured national security policy and spurred a U.S. “war on terror” worldwide. Sunday's observances, which follow a fraught milestone anniversary last year, come little more than a month after a U.S. drone strike killed a key al-Qaida figure who helped plot the 9/11 attacks, Ayman al-Zawahri.

It also stirred — for a time — a sense of national pride and unity for many while subjecting Muslim Americans to years of suspicion and bigotry and engendering debate over the balance between safety and civil liberties. In ways both subtle and plain, the aftermath of 9/11 ripples through American politics and public life to this day.

And the attacks have cast a long shadow on the personal lives of thousands of people who survived, responded or lost loved ones, friends and colleagues.

Firefighter Jimmy Riches’ namesake nephew wasn’t born yet when his uncle died, but the boy took the podium to pay tribute to him.

“You’re always in my heart. And I know you are watching over me,” he said after reading a portion of the victims’ names.

More than 70 of Sekou Siby's co-workers perished at Windows on the World, the restaurant atop the trade center's north tower. Siby had been scheduled to work that morning until another cook asked him to switch shifts.

Siby never took a restaurant job again; it would have brought back too many memories. The Ivorian immigrant wrestled with how to comprehend such horror in a country where he'd come looking for a better life.

He found it difficult to form the type of close, family-like friendships he and his Windows on the World co-workers had shared. It was too painful, he had learned, to become attached to people when “you have no control over what’s going to happen to them next.”

“Every 9/11 is a reminder of what I lost that I can never recover,” says Siby, who is now president and CEO of ROC United. The restaurant workers' advocacy group evolved from a relief center for Windows on the World workers who lost their jobs when the twin towers fell.

On Sunday, President Joe Biden spoke and laid a wreath at the Pentagon. At the same time, first lady Jill Biden spoke in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where one of the hijacked planes went down after passengers and crew members tried to storm the cockpit as the hijackers headed for Washington. Al-Qaida conspirators had seized control of the jets to use them as passenger-filled missiles.

Vice President Kamala Harris and husband Doug Emhoff joined the observance at the National Sept. 11 Memorial in New York. Still, by tradition, no political figures speak at the ground zero ceremony. It centers instead on victims' relatives reading aloud the names of the dead.

Readers often add personal remarks that form an alloy of American sentiments about Sept. 11 — grief, anger, toughness, appreciation for first responders and the military, appeals to patriotism, hopes for peace, occasional political barbs, and a poignant accounting of the graduations, weddings, births and daily lives that victims have missed.

Some relatives also lament that a nation that came together — to some extent — after the attacks have since splintered apart. So much so that federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, which were reshaped to focus on international terrorism after 9/11, now see the threat of domestic violent extremism as equally urgent.

Henry Silva, a prolific character actor best known for playing villains and tough guys in “The Manchurian Candidate,” “Ocean's Eleven” and other films, has died at age 95.Silva's son Scott Silva told Variety that his father died Wednesday of natural causes at the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California.Silva was a New York City native who dropped out of school as a teenager, in the 1940s. He was accepted the following decade into the Actors Studio, where fellow students included Shelley Winters and Ben Gazzara. He went on to have a long and busy career in film and television, with hundreds of credits before retiring from acting in 2001.He had a breakthrough role on stage and screen in the 1950s as a drug dealer in "A Hatful of Rain” and supporting parts in two of Frank Sinatra's best known movies, both from the early 1960s: “Ocean's Eleven,” the Las Vegas heist film that was a showcase for Sinatra, Dean Martin and other “Rat Pack” members; and “The Manchurian Candidate,” the Cold War thriller about brainwashing and the attempted assassination of a presidential nominee that starred Sinatra, Laurence Harvey and Janet Leigh. (In his last film appearance, Silva was cast in the “Ocean's Eleven” remake from 2000 that starred George Clooney and Brad Pitt).“Our hearts are broken at the loss of our dear friend Henry Silva, one of the nicest, kindest and most talented men I’ve had the pleasure of calling my friend," Dean Martin's daughter, Deana Martin, tweeted. “He was the last surviving star of the original Oceans 11 Movie.”Silva was also seen on such television series as “Wagon Train” and “The F.B.I.,” and in such films as Warren Beatty's “Dick Tracy,” Jerry Lewis' “Cinderfella” and “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai,” in which he played a mobster in the 1999 release directed by one of his admirers, Jim Jarmusch.

NEW YORK CITY — Authorities in New York City said a man was arrested after he allegedly hijacked a city bus with a fake gun Thursday morning.

The New York Police Department said at approximately 7:23 a.m., a 44-year-old man ran in front of a city bus with what appeared to be a firearm in his hand near 199th Street and Linden Boulevard in Cambria Heights.

Police said the man then boarded the Queens bus, in which the bus driver immediately opened all the doors to let a dozen passengers off.

According to police, the man told the driver he was being chased and directed him to continue driving.

Police said at around 7:36 a.m., the bus driver jumped out of the driver-side window near 232nd Street and Linden Boulevard.

According to police, the man took control of the bus before it struck a utility pole.

Responding officers were able to arrest the suspect after he exited the bus, police said.

Police said the driver and the suspect were taken to area hospitals for minor injuries.

An imitation pistol, which appears to be a BB gun, was recovered on the bus, police said.

Police said charges against the suspect are pending, and their investigation is still ongoing.

A Manhattan grand jury has voted to indict Daniel Penny, the Marine veteran who held Jordan Neely in a fatal chokehold on the New York City subway, according to a source with knowledge of the case.

Penny, 24, was indicted on second-degree manslaughter charges.

Penny surrendered to police last month to face a second-degree manslaughter charge. He has since been out on a $100,000 bond.

Penny held Neely, a homeless man and street artist, in a chokehold on the subway train on May 1 after Neely began shouting at passengers that he was hungry and thirsty and didn’t care whether he died. Penny forced 30-year-old Neely to the train floor and restrained him in a chokehold until he stopped breathing. A medical examiner ruled Neely’s death a homicide.

Video above: Rev. Al Sharpton delivers Jordan Neely's eulogy

CNN has reached out to Penny’s attorneys and the attorneys representing Neely’s family.

In May, Penny told the New York Post he was “deeply saddened by the loss of life,” amid what has become a contentious homicide case that has highlighted the city’s handling of unhoused people.

Neely was on a New York City Department of Homeless Services list of the city’s homeless with acute needs – sometimes referred to internally as the “Top 50” list – because people on the list tend to disappear, a source told CNN.

Penny told the newspaper he would take action in a similar situation again, “if there was a threat and danger in the present.” Penny said he is not a white supremacist and race was not a factor.

In response to the May interview, Neely family attorneys called Penny a “killer.”

“This is an advertisement to soften the public’s view of Daniel Penny who choked Jordan Neely to death. We never called him a white supremacist, we called him a killer,” attorneys Donte Mills and Lennon Edwards said at the time. “We want to know why he didn’t let go of that chokehold until Jordan was dead.”

Neely’s killing, part of which was captured on video that was posted online, sparked demonstrations calling for justice in his case as Manhattan prosecutors spent days deliberating how to proceed before apprehending and charging Penny.

America is jammed with parking spots.

Related video above: UN says nations nowhere near climate goals

Approximately 2 billion parking spots cover the country, enough to pave over the entire state of Connecticut. From baseball stadiums in Los Angeles to malls in Atlanta, parking lots are bigger than the buildings they surround.

Cities have built so much parking through a policy few people know — minimum parking requirements. Cities don't just require parking spaces for nearly every office, mall, store, movie theater, bowling alley, restaurant and other building, those requirements often include a certain number of spots for every building.

Mandatory parking minimums helped shape the modern makeup of American cities. They become a self-fulfilling prophecy, in effect. More parking spaces mean bigger parking lots. Bigger parking lots mean more buildings isolated from roads and sidewalks, separated from arterial infrastructure by vast oceans of asphalt. Faced with so much mandatory automotive-centric infrastructure, many people abandon walking and choose to drive.

Parking requirements have come with other downsides, and a growing number of cities and towns — in both Republican and Democratic-led areas — are now reforming their parking rules. The effort to end parking requirements has gained federal support as well.

In their zoning codes, many cities mandated that any new or re-purposed real estate projects include a minimum number of off-street parking spaces, often based on the size of the development or type of land use.

But now, U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia, a Democrat from California, recently introduced a bill that would eliminate parking minimums for new affordable residential, retail, industrial and commercial construction. Separately, he introduced legislation to scrap parking requirements close to public transit.

Affordable housing, environmental and public transportation advocates say parking minimums reduce the supply of housing and raise costs. Developers often bundle the costs of parking in rent or housing prices.

It costs about $28,000 to build a parking spot, according to WGI, a construction engineering company. Construction costs are highest in New York City, where it's notoriously difficult to find a spot. A new parking spot in the city runs up to $36,000, not including the cost of buying the land.

Parking rules deter developers and businesses that can't afford to construct the required parking and spaces that could have held apartments have instead been swallowed up by parking mandates.

They also increase traffic congestion, carbon emissions and make cities less walkable, critics say.

They are unequal because everyone pays for them — even people who don't own or can't afford a car.

"It damages the economy because everything everywhere has to include the cost of parking," said Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at UCLA and an evangelist of anti-parking mandates. "It's a long train of consequences."

Arbitrary rules

Parking requirements began a century ago.

By the 1920s, New York City, Los Angeles and other U.S. cities were jammed with cars on the curbs. To manage this problem, cities began adding newly-invented parking meters in their densest areas, hoping to both keep the number of cars to those who truly needed them and to make some money at the same time. They also created off-street parking requirements for new buildings,

The mandates accelerated during the postwar period as more people drove, highways developed and suburbanization swept the country.

Minimum parking laws "spread faster than any other planning regulation ever has," Shoup said. "They went from nowhere to everywhere."

Policymakers, planners and developers designed cities and suburbs with the goal of providing everyone — even if they didn't drive — ample places to park.

"Planners were responding to what people wanted without thinking there would be terrible effects in the long run," he said.

The requirements were often arbitrary and puzzling, said Tony Jordan, the co-founder of Parking Reform Network.

A few examples Jordan has found: Tiny Woodbury, Georgia, population 905, has dozens of specific parking mandates, including separate regulations for heliports and helistops. (Five spaces per helistop, and one per 1,000 square feet of heliports.)

SeaTac, Washington, requires one parking spot at butterfly and moth breeding facilities for every 150 square feet of office or retail space.

Dallas requires one parking space for every million gallons of capacity at a sewage treatment plant, but two parking spaces for a water treatment plant.

"Take a sample of any 10 municipalities almost anywhere in the country and you'll find a similar set of contradictions and headscratchers," Jordan said.

Cities reverse course

In Shoup's influential 2005 book, "The High Cost of Free Parking," he recommended that cities should remove off-street parking requirements, charge demand-based prices for curb parking – the lowest prices that will leave one or two open spaces on each block to alleviate parking shortages – and spend the meter revenue to improve public services.

His ideas are having a moment.

Last year, 11 cities ended their minimum parking mandates, including Raleigh, Anchorage and Lexington, Kentucky, according to the Parking Reform Network, a nonprofit group that researches and advocates for parking policy changes.

California became the first state to pass legislation ending parking minimums for new developments close to public transit.

Four cities have ended them so far in 2023, including Richmond, Virginia.

"The parking minimums have contributed to urban sprawl, lack of abundant and affordable housing, and automobile dependency," said a staff report by Richmond's Department of Planning.

Richmond and other cities will allow property owners to decide how much parking to add to their proposed developments, allowing market forces to determine how many parking spots are needed.

Some cities, including Nashville, are moving in the exact opposite direction of parking minimums, creating maximum parking requirements that cap the number of spots developers can build.

Affordable housing

Cities are looking for ways to reinvent their public spaces after the damaging impact of the pandemic. They also face a lack of affordable housing.

Scrapping minimum parking requirements could help both challenges. Instead of developers setting aside land to build parking, it could be turned into smaller apartment complexes, advocates say.

In Buffalo and Seattle, which ended parking minimums in 2017 and 2012 respectively, nearly 70% of new homes built after parking reforms would not have been allowed under the previous rules, according to research from Sightline Institute, a non-partisan sustainability advocacy group.

In Buffalo, developers built less parking than previously required and made parking an amenity, charging individual users fees rather than bundling it into rent or housing prices, researchers at the University at Buffalo found.

Seattle developers built 40% less parking than would have been required prior to the reforms, resulting in 18,000 fewer parking spaces, researchers at Santa Clara University found.

"These findings highlight the impact that policymakers can have by reducing or eliminating off-street parking requirements," the researchers said.

A better policy, Brookings Institution researchers said in a 2020 report on parking minimums, would be to let developers and businesses decide how much off-street parking to build.

In places where demand for parking is high, developers will choose to build spots, the researchers predict.

But in places with an oversupply of parking spots and a shortage of affordable housing, they say, "parking minimums are 20th-century relics that deserve to be retired."

New York City fired more than a thousand workers who failed to comply with the city's COVID-19 vaccine mandate, the mayor's office said Monday.

The 1,430 workers who lost their jobs represent less than 1% of the 370,000-person city workforce and are far fewer terminations than expected before a Friday deadline to get the shots.

The city sent notices in late January to up to 4,000 workers, saying they had to show proof they got at least two doses of the vaccine or else they'd lose their jobs. Three-quarters of those workers had already been on leave without pay for months, having missed an earlier deadline for getting vaccinated in order to stay on the job.

Mayor Eric Adams' office said hundreds of workers produced proof of their vaccines or got the shots after being notified they would be fired. Of the 1,430 fired workers, about 64% worked for the city's education department.

The United Federation of Teachers, the public school teachers' union, said last week that about 700 of its members had been given notice they would be fired. The union joined with others to sue to block the firings, but a judge ruled in favor of the city on Thursday.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday dismissed an appeal from a group of Department of Education employees. New York City has imposed some of the most sweeping vaccine mandates in the country, requiring almost all city workers to be vaccinated and requiring private employers to ensure their workers get vaccinated as well.

Customers of restaurants, gym and entertainment venues also have to show proof of vaccine to enter.

This story was originally published by Alexandra Miller of Newsy, and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

NEW YORK — Families are suing the owners of an apartment building in the Bronx after 17 people died in a fire.

The five lawsuits named Bronx Park Phase III Preservation, the Bronx Phase III Housing Co., and three investment groups as defendants.

The suits allege that safety violations led to the tragedy.

Fire officials said a malfunctioning space heater started the blaze on January 9.

The fire produced suffocating smoke that rose through a stairwell and killed people as they tried to flee.

Lawyers with the New York law firm Weitz & Luxenberg said owners of the building did not follow rules for self-closing doors and windows that can stay open.

Attorneys added that residents of the apartment where the fire started left their front door open.

Spring-loaded hinges were supposed to shut the door automatically, but they did not work.

Fire investigators said that the apartment’s front door and a door on the 15th floor should have been self-closing to help contain the spreading smoke, but that the doors stayed fully open.

It was not clear if the doors failed mechanically or if they had been manually disabled

The lawsuit did not specify details about monetary damages and did not cite specific safety violations.

Another attorney, Larry Goldhirsch, said specifics will be announced in the coming weeks.

A spokesperson for the building’s owners denies they were responsible.

NEW YORK —

A New York Police Department officer was killed and another critically wounded Friday night while responding to a call from a woman about her son, who "suddenly, without warning" shot at them from the back room of a Harlem apartment, police said.

Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell denounced the death of the 22-year-old officer, while Mayor Eric Adams spoke in sweeping terms about the need to crack down on illegal guns.

"Countless officers lined this hallway after carrying him in and grieve for their brother while praying with everything they have for the other" officer, Sewell said. "I am struggling to find the words to express the tragedy we are enduring. We're mourning, and we're angry."

Authorities said the officers, along with a third officer, went to the apartment on 135th Street after a call came in from a woman needing help with her son, identified by police as Lashawn J. McNeil, 47.

Authorities said the officers spoke with the woman and another son, but there was no mention of a weapon. Then two of them walked from the front of the apartment down a narrow hallway.

NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig said McNeil swung open a bedroom door and opened fire at the officers, striking them.

As McNeil tried to flee, a third officer who'd stayed with McNeil's mother in the front of the apartment shot at McNeil and wounded him in the head and arm, Essig said.

A law enforcement official who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to respond publicly had said the man died, but authorities did not speak about his condition at the press conference, or take any questions.

McNeil's last known address is in Allentown, Pennsylvania, about 90 miles west of New York City.

Police dispatch audio captured some of the chaotic scene, including an officer screaming for assistance and another officer informing the dispatcher that two officers had been shot.

One officer asks for "three buses" or ambulances to the scene, a six-story apartment building, and police to block off traffic on the route to nearby Harlem Hospital. The building is on a block between two iconic Harlem avenues: Malcolm X Boulevard and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard.

An officer was wounded in the leg Tuesday night in the Bronx during a struggle with a teenager who also shot himself. On Thursday, a narcotics detective was shot in the leg on Staten Island.

Before Friday, the last NYPD officer killed in the line of duty was Anastasios Tsakos, who was struck by a suspected drunken driver in May 2021 while assisting officers at the scene of an earlier crash on a Queens highway.

The last NYPD officer fatally shot in the line of duty, Brian Mulkeen, was hit by friendly fire while struggling with an armed man after chasing and shooting at him in the Bronx in September 2019.

Mulkeen's death came about seven months after Det. Brian Simonsen was killed by friendly fire while he and other officers were confronting a robbery suspect at a cell phone store in Queens.

In 2017, Officer Miosotis Familia was ambushed by a gunman as she wrote in a notebook in a mobile command post. In 2016, Sgt. Paul Tuozzolo was killed in a gunfight with a man who'd broken into his estranged wife's home.

In 2015, Officer Randolph Holder was shot and killed by a man riding a stolen bicycle in Manhattan and Officer Brian Moore died after he was shot by a man in Queens.

The year before, Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were fatally shot by a man who ambushed them as they sat in their patrol car in Brooklyn.

___

Associated Press writer Deepti Hajela in Essex County, New Jersey, contributed to this report.

NEW YORK —

A woman was pushed to her death in front of a subway train at the Times Square station Saturday, police said, a little more than a week after the mayor and governor announced plans to boost subway policing and outreach to homeless people in New York City's streets and trains.

The man believed responsible fled the scene but turned himself in to transit police a short time later, Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said at a news conference with Mayor Eric Adams at the station.

The 40-year-old victim, identified as Michelle Alyssa Go of New York, was waiting for a southbound R train around 9:40 a.m. when she was apparently shoved, according to police.

“This incident was unprovoked, and the victim does not appear to have had any interaction with the subject,” Sewell said.

A second woman told police the man had approached her minutes earlier and she feared he would push her onto the tracks.

“He approaches her and he gets in her space. She gets very, very alarmed,” Assistant Chief Jason Wilcox said, describing the earlier encounter. “She tries to move away from him and he gets close to her, and she feels that he was about to physically push her onto the train. As she’s walking away she witnesses the crime where he pushes our other victim in front of the train.”

Police on Saturday night identified the suspect as 61-year-old Simon Martial. Martial, who police said is homeless, was charged with second-degree murder. It was not immediately known whether he had an attorney who could comment.

Wilcox said Martial has a criminal history and has been on parole.

“He does have in the past three emotionally disturbed encounters with us that we have documented,” he said.

Subway conditions and safety have become a worry for many New Yorkers during the pandemic. Although police statistics show major felonies in the subways have dropped over the past two years, so has ridership, making it difficult to compare.

And some recent attacks have gotten public attention and raised alarms. In September, three transit employees were assaulted in separate incidents on one day. Several riders were slashed and assaulted by a group of attackers on a train in lower Manhattan in May, and four separate stabbings — two of them fatal — happened within a few hours on a single subway line in February.

In recent months there have been several instances of people being stabbed, assaulted or shoved onto the tracks at stations in the Bronx, Brooklyn and at Times Square.

Saturday's attack against Go, who was of Asian descent, also raised concerns amid a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes in New York and around the country. Police officials said the killing, including whether it was a hate crime, was under investigation, but noted that the first woman Martial allegedly approached was not Asian. Martial is Black.

“This latest attack causing the death of an Asian American woman in the Times Square subway station is particularly horrifying for our community," Margaret Fung, executive director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said. She said the community was still mourning the Dec. 31 death of Yao Pan Ma, a Chinese immigrant who was attacked in April while collecting cans in East Harlem.

"These attacks have left Asian Americans across the city and across the country feeling vulnerable and they must stop,” Fung said in a statement.

Adams, who has been mayor for two weeks, has noted that a perception of danger could drive more people to eschew the subway, complicating the city's economic recovery as it tries to draw people back to offices, tourist attractions and more.

“We want to continue to highlight how imperative it is that people receive the right mental health services, particularly on our subway system,” the mayor said Saturday. “To lose a New Yorker in this fashion will only continue to elevate the fears of individuals not using our subway system.”

“Our recovery is dependent on the public safety in this city and in the subway system,” Adams said.

Under his predecessor, Bill de Blasio, the city repeatedly said it was deploying more police to subways after attacks last year and pressure from transit officials. The agency that runs the subway system, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, sped up work to install security cameras in all 472 subway stations citywide, finishing that project in September.

However, the city also has repeatedly faced complaints in recent years about heavy-handed policing in subways. Protests erupted, for example, after police were seen on bystander video handcuffing a woman they said was selling churros without a license at subway stations in 2019 and punching a Black teenager during a brawl on a subway platform that same year.

Six police officers were assigned to the station Saturday, authorities said.

Joining Adams last week to discuss the state of the subways, Gov. Kathy Hochul said she was planning to put together five teams of social workers and medical professionals to help the city guide people living on streets and subways to shelter, housing and services.

Both Hochul and Adams are Democrats.

In an attempt to tackle pay inequality, New York City is the latest jurisdiction to require most employers to specify salary ranges for all job postings.

Related video above: Is It Fair To Get Paid Less Money as a Remote Employee Based on Where You Live?

The mandate will go into effect in April and will apply to employers with more than four employees but excludes temporary hiring firms.

"Our new law shines a light on pay inequity," Helen Rosenthal, a former City Council member and sponsor of the bill, told CNN in a statement. "Including pay ranges in job postings allows job seekers to determine whether they will be able to support themselves and their family when they apply for a job."

Not posting the minimum and maximum salaries will be considered an "unlawful discriminatory practice" under the city's human rights law and may result in a fine of up to $125,000.

Beverly Neufeld, president of PowHer New York — a nonprofit organization focused on economic equality for women that worked with Rosenthal on the legislation — called it a "concrete step in eliminating the causes of wage inequality."

"This transformative law will minimize bias, maximize transparency, shift cultural norms and level the "paying" field," she said in a statement.

A version of this bill has been introduced in New York State Senate and other states have adopted similar measures. In 2019, Colorado became the first state to require the salary or hourly wage to be included in job postings.

The median salary for women was 18% lower than that of men in 2021, the equivalent of 82 cents on the dollar and a 1 cent increase on 2020, according to Payscale, a compensation data company. The study also found that when controlled for factors such as experience, industry and job level, women still make less even when they have the same employment characteristics: 98 cents for every dollar.

The salary-range legislation passed last month in the city council with a 41 to 7 vote. Mayor Eric Adams had until Friday at midnight to veto the bill to prevent it from becoming law.

Republican council member Joe Borelli, the minority leader, voted against the bill and called it "an unnecessary interference" in a contract negotiation.

BRONX COUNTY, N.Y. —

A major fire in a residential apartment building in the Bronx in New York City on Sunday left 19 people dead, including nine children, in what Mayor Eric Adams described as one of the worst fires the city has experienced in modern times.

The blaze sent 32 people to hospitals with life-threatening conditions, Daniel Nigro, commissioner of the New York City Fire Department, said earlier Sunday. A total of 63 people were injured.

A "malfunctioning electric space heater" was the source of the fire, Nigro said during a press conference. The heater was in the bedroom of an apartment, and the fire consumed the room and then the entire apartment, he said.

The apartment door was left open and smoke spread throughout the building when the residents left their unit, Nigro said.

"This is a horrific, horrific, painful moment for the city of New York, and the impact of this fire is going to really bring a level of just pain and despair in our city," Adams said.

About 200 members of the New York City Fire Department responded to the fire at the 19-story building at 333 East 181st St. The fire began a little before 11 a.m. in a duplex apartment on the second and third floors of the building, the FDNY said.

Firefighters were met by "very heavy smoke, very heavy fire" in the hallways.

Victims were found in stairways on every floor of the building, many in cardiac arrest, in what Nigro said could be an unprecedented loss of life. The injuries were predominantly from smoke inhalation, he said.

Firefighters kept attempting to save people from the building despite running out of air tank, Nigro said. Some of the residents who were trying to leave the building could not "escape because of the volume of smoke."

The FDNY posted several images of the scene showing ladders extending into apartment windows as well as a number of broken windows.

"This is going to be one of the worst fires that we have witnessed during modern times here in the city of New York," Adams said.

"I am horrified by the devastating fire in the Bronx today," New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said on Twitter. "My heart is with the loved ones of all those we've tragically lost, all of those impacted and with our heroic FDNY firefighters. The entire State of New York stands with New York City."

The residential apartment where the fire occurred is 50 years old and has 120 units, according to building records.

There have not been any major building violations or complaints listed against the building, according to city building records. Past minor violations were rectified by the property and there were no structural violations listed.

Apartment fire impacts Muslim and immigrant community

The building where the fire occurred housed a largely Muslim population, Adams said, with many immigrants from Gambia, a small nation on the east coast of Africa.

The mayor said that one priority will be to make sure that Islamic funeral and burial rites are respected. Another will be to seek Muslim leaders to connect with residents.

The names of people who request government assistance will not be turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Adams said.

"We want people to be comfortable in coming forward, and it's imperative that we connect with those on the ground to make sure they get that message and that word out," Adams said.

Christina Farrell, first deputy commissioner of NYC emergency management, told CNN's Phil Mattingly Sunday that residents who lived in the apartment building are now being housed at a middle school next door.

"We have all the residents here. We've been able to give them food, a warm space, water, any short-term needs that they had. People brought their pets and so we are in the process of finding people shelter this evening," Farrell said. "We work with the Red Cross, we have hotel rooms and have other resources available. And so we will be making sure every family has a safe, warm space to sleep in tonight."

A service center will be set up Monday, Farrell said.

"We'll be hopeful that many of them will be able to go back into their apartment in the coming days," she said. "But for the people that are out long-term, we will work with them and the state to get them appropriate housing."

Hochul, appearing at a press conference Sunday, said she met with survivors of the fire, including a mother who was her family's sole survivor.

"It's impossible to go into that room, where scores of families who are in such grief, who are in pain, and to see it in the mother's eyes as I held her, who lost her entire family," she said.

As she prepares her new budget this week, Hochul said she will establish a compensation fund to help provide the victims of the fire with money for housing, burial costs and other necessities.

"Tonight is a night of tragedy and pain, and tomorrow we begin to rebuild," Hochul said. "We rebuild their lives and give them hope, especially those who came all the way from Africa [from] Gambia in search of a better life right here in this great borough of the Bronx."

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer also spoke at the conference and said numerous forms of assistance are being examined on the federal level and will include housing and tax assistance as well as and immigration assistance, "so families can be reunited."

The Radio City Rockettes have announced they are canceling the remainder of their 2021 season due to a COVID outbreak.

"We regret that we are unable to continue the "Christmas Spectacular" this season due to increasing challenges from the pandemic," the Rockettes posted in a tweet.

Shows on Friday had been canceled due to breakthrough COVID-19 cases among crews of the production.

The show is performed annually during the holiday season featuring the Rockettes.

"All tickets for impacted shows will be fully refunded at the point of purchase," the performance group said on Twitter.

The state is dealing with rising cases of COVID-19 as it reported its highest single-day total for new cases, with just over 21,000 people testing positive for the virus, the Associated Press reported.

Bradley Cooper opens up about a harrowing ordeal he faced after being held at knifepoint in New York City.

USA Today and CNN reported that the actor revealed the October 2019 scary incident on Dax Shepard's "Armchair Expert" podcast on Monday.

According to the news outlets, Cooper said it happened on the subway on his way to pick up his 4-year-old daughter, which he shares with ex Irina Shayk, from school.

People reported that Cooper didn't notice the person approaching him because he was wearing headphones and couldn't hear what he was saying.

Cooper said he at first thought the person was asking for a selfie, but when he noticed the blade, he knocked the person's arm away and ran.

As the person was running away, Cooper said he could get a picture of them and show police who were nearby.

Cooper said he then got back on the subway and picked up his daughter.

The Oscar nominee was unharmed.

NEW YORK —

New York City will phase out its controversial gifted and talented student program after years of debate that the exclusive classes further segregated students.

City officials say the new policy will allow all rising kindergarteners to have access to accelerated learning, in what the Mayor says will provide an equitable model allowing children to "reach their full potential."

The program, named Brilliant NYC, will do away with the test given to 4-year-olds before they enter kindergarten to identify "gifted and talented" students, and instead implement an accelerated instructional model in Fall of 2022 that will serve all approximately 65,000 kindergartners, according to the Department of Education (DOE).

"The era of judging 4-year-olds based on a single test is over," New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement. "Brilliant NYC will deliver accelerated instruction for tens of thousands of children, as opposed to a select few," he said.

"Every New York City child deserves to reach their full potential, and this new, equitable model gives them that chance."

The current gifted and talented program admitted 2,500 students based on test scores, many who were predominantly Asian American and White, according to the DOE.

For years, students, advocates and some educators alleged the city's gifted and talented exam was polarizing and didn't ease the existing debates over the unequal and discriminatory treatment of Black and Latino students.

New York City public schools are some of the most segregated in the U.S., according to the UCLA Civil Rights Project. In an updated analysis using 2018 data, a report released this year found that New York retains its place as the most segregated state for Black students, and second most segregated for Latino students, trailing only California.

The segregation is stark in New York City. In the city's public schools, 74.6% of Black and Latino students attend a school where fewer than 10% of the student body is White. Additionally, 34.3% of White students attend schools that are majority-White, according to the DOE.

Earlier this year, students and advocates filed a lawsuit against state and city defendants that "challenged the racial hierarchies in public education and asserting their right under the New York State Constitution to an education that identifies and dismantles racism."

What happens next

Admission to the program was based on a test score and availability of seats in the program, and not every child that scored high enough received an offer, the DOE explained. But that structure ends as every kindergartener will now have access to accelerated learning.

Students currently admitted to gifted and talented program will continue their elementary education in their current programming, the DOE said.

Under the new plan, students heading into third grade will be universally screened to evaluate whether they may benefit from tailored accelerated instruction, however will remain in mixed-level classrooms, according to the DOE.

Robin Kelleher, an elected parent leader in District 2, told the New York Times Friday that de Blasio's announcement felt like a "political stunt," and that the mayor would be leaving a pile of "bloody broken bone fragments" for the next mayor to clean up.

Eric Adams is the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York.

According to the Times, Adams has endorsed keeping the gifted and talented classes while increasing them in low-income neighborhoods.

That idea has been questioned by researchers, but it is popular with some parents, including Black and Latino families who want more gifted options, the Times reported.

During an appearance on Brian Lehrer's weekly ask the mayor show Friday, de Blasio defended the plan.

"We respect the parents who worked hard to get their kids ready for a test that I think was a mistake to begin with but it exists," he said. "And we don't want to take away from people who got something that's why we're phasing it out."

Adams' spokesperson Evan Thies told CNN that, Adams, "will assess the plan and reserves his right to implement policies based on the needs of students and parents, should he become mayor. Clearly the Department of Education must improve outcomes for children from lower-income areas."

Under the new plan, the accelerated instruction will include learning through projects centered on real world problems, including in part, robotics and coding to community organization and advocacy, per the DOE.

Officials plan to train all 4,000 kindergarten teachers in this accelerated learning instruction, hire new teachers already trained, and launch teams of experts across the boroughs to support its implementation. The DOE also plans to expand the schools with the accelerated program from 80 to 800.

The DOE said it plans to launch citywide forums in all 32 districts this October and November to gain community feedback, before rolling out the plan in December.

"As a lifelong educator, I know every child in New York City has talents that go far beyond what a single test can capture and the Brilliant NYC plan will uncover their strengths so they can succeed," Schools Chancellor Meisha Porter said.

Porter also appeared on Brian Lehrer's show to answer questions about the new plan.

"This moment is about making sure that you don't have to cross district lines, that you don't have to go outside your neighborhood, but that your neighborhood schools can actually provide the support the services the type of learning that your child needs.

A statue honoring George Floyd in New York City’s Union Square Park was vandalized on Sunday, police said.

According to police, a video showed an unidentified man on a skateboard throwing paint on the statue at approximately 10 a.m. then fleeing. Nearby statues of late Congressman John Lewis and Breonna Taylor, a Louisville, Kentucky, woman shot and killed by police last year, apparently weren’t touched.

Police have not released the video.

Sunday's act wasn't the first example of vandalism to the statue memorializing Floyd, whose killing at the hands of police in Minneapolis last year galvanized a racial justice movement across the country.

The statue was unveiled on the Juneteenth holiday in a spot on Flatbush Avenue, in Brooklyn, and it was vandalized five days later with black paint and marked with an alleged logo of a white supremacist group.

Members of the group that installed the statue cleaned it, and local residents and one of Floyd’s brothers gathered in July as it was prepared to move to Union Square, in the heart of Manhattan.

A man in New York City died early Saturday morning while subway surfing on top of the J-train on the Williamsburg Bridge.

The 32-year-old man lost his footing, fell from the train onto the tracks, and was struck by an oncoming train, the New York Police Department (NYPD) confirmed to CNN.

Video above: Teen killed in 2019 while 'subway surfing' in New York City

Officers found him "unconscious and unresponsive" around 4:35 a.m. and emergency medical services pronounced him dead at the scene.

Authorities have not yet identified the individual.

The J-train was suspended between Broad Street and Marcy Avenue and was delayed as a result of the incident, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Normal service has since resumed.

"Riding on top of trains is not smart," MTA Spokesperson Tim Minton told CNN.

Thrill-seekers often find their way on top of the train cars in attempts to surf the subway. In 2019, a 14-year-old boy died after getting struck while subway surfing, CNN affiliate Spectrum News NY1 reported.

NEW YORK (AP) — Mayor Bill de Blasio says New York City will terminate business contracts with President Donald Trump after last week's insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

"New York City doesn't do business with insurrectionists," de Blasio tweeted Wednesday morning.

The Trump Organization is under city contract to operate the two ice rinks and a carousel in Central Park and a golf course in the Bronx.

According to de Blasio, the City is looking to terminate contracts with the Wollman and Lasker skating rinks at Central Park and the Ferry Point Golf Course.

De Blasio says the Trump Organization profits about $17 million a year from those sites.

“The President incited a rebellion against the United States government that killed five people and threatened to derail the constitutional transfer of power," de Blasio said in a press release. "The City of New York will not be associated with those unforgivable acts in any shape, way, or form, and we are immediately taking steps to terminate all Trump Organization contracts."

According to the press release, the carousel is currently closed, and termination of that contract would go into effect 25 days after the City's termination notice is received.

The City would terminate the agreement for the two ice rinks in Central Park after 30 days' written notice, de Blasio stated in the media release.

The mayor added that process for terminating the contract for the golf course is more detailed “and is expected to take a number of months.”

According to de Blasio, a contract can legally be terminated by the City if a company's leadership is engaged in criminal activity, The Associated Press reported.

A Trump Organization spokesperson said the City can't cancel the contracts and the company will "fight vigorously."

It is the latest example of how the Jan. 6 breach by violent Trump supporters is impacting the Republican president's business interests.

On Sunday, the PGA announced that they are moving the PGA Championship from Trump's golf course in New Jersey next year.

Germany's biggest bank, Deutsche Bank, decided not to do business with Trump and his company, to who he owes more than $300 million, which is set to be due in the next coming years.

Signature Bank in New York said they are closing two personal accounts.

Warning: The following content may be distressing for some viewers.

Hundreds of New York firefighters and police officers immediately headed to work once Flight 175 hit the South Tower. One of those officers was Louis Savelli.

After leading the NYPD counter-terrorism unit created in the aftermath of the attack for many years, the born-and-bred New Yorker eventually moved his family to Iowa for a fresh start, opening an authentic pizzeria in 2014. He brought a little piece of the Big Apple with him: posters, pizza ovens and his prized accent.

The retired detective came to Camp Dodge with lessons learned from 9/11 to teach counter-terrorist training to law enforcement all over the country.

"That was my unit... to arrest members of Al-Qaeda," Savelli said.

"When the second plane hit, which I knew right away, and then everybody knew right away that was a terrorist attack. I ran right into work," Savelli said.

It was a life-changing day burned into his mind.

"The streets of New York were mayhem," Savelli said. "People were trying to drive all over to get places. Nobody was stopping at lights. Horns were beeping. It was something out of a movie, like a science fiction movie."

Savelli shared photos that he had captured from ground zero.

"It was just constant dust for quite a while, from all the debris, from the pulverization of the buildings, all the stuff that was in the air. It was very surreal," Savelli said.

He and his team worked frantically.

"Trying to sift through tons and tons of rubble by hand, trying to find people. And then just being frustrated not really finding anything," Savelli said.

However, there were only a few survivors.

"A lot of memories of specific things... are kind of, like, blurry or nonexistent," Savelli said. "So a lot of things that happened, it's hard to remember specific things. But I do remember my recovery efforts at ground zero were mostly body parts. It's kind of hard to say on TV. I don't remember an entire person, finding an entire person on that day, on 9/11, and then throughout that time. I assume that ... not remembering is a part of my mind blocking it out."

Now, 20 years later, he cannot block it out. Like many of the first responders, Savelli is suffering. The dust he breathed in at ground zero has caused asthma, skin cancer and gut-wrenching stomach pain now.

"Sadly, all those guys that stayed there looking for people and looking for DNA, and anybody who could've at least recovered something for the family, every one of them has gotten seriously sick," Savelli said. "At least 5,000 total first responders have died of cancer. And about 15,000, 20,000 have gotten some sort of serious cancer-related disease since then."

In addition to the pain is the fear that terrorism will rear its ugly head on United States soil again after pulling out of Afghanistan.

"Without a doubt, we are much more at risk today than we've been in a long time," Savelli said. "Are we going to have people like Taliban or ISIS or Al-Qaeda or Haqqani Network or some others coming in with them? And without a doubt that will happen. So we have to do a better job."

Aside from his pizza businesses in Des Moines, Savelli also runs a security firm.

"I was a member of the NYPD on 9/11 at ground zero and you know we did our job, but the United States military sacrificed so much to go overseas and protect this country," Savelli said. "And they are my heroes."

He said we should remember that the people willing to put their lives on the line, don't do it for the money.

"The people out there sacrifice, for very little money. The cops, the firefighters, the military, EMTs, they make very little money," Savelli said. "But yet they risk their lives out there for strangers."

When this century began, you could pull up to the airport 20 minutes before a domestic flight in the United States and stroll straight over to your gate. Perhaps your partner would come through security to wave you goodbye. You might not have a photo ID in your carry-on, but you could have blades and liquids.

Back in 2001, Sean O'Keefe, now a professor at Syracuse University and former chair of aerospace and defense company Airbus, was deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget in the George W. Bush administration.

"At the White House, I was a member of the National Council Security team," he told CNN Travel. He and his colleagues had been briefed on the al Qaeda terrorist group and understood the threat it posed, "but at the same time our imaginations simply did not give us the capacity to think that something like [9/11] could happen."

It had been nearly 30 years since Palestinian terrorist attacks at Rome airport in 1973, which killed 34 people and demonstrated that air travel was vulnerable to international terrorism. "That seemed to have changed the whole security structure in Europe and in the Middle East in a way that didn't really penetrate the American psyche," O'Keefe said. "It's this typical American mindset; we have to experience it to believe it."

Then on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, a team of 19 hijackers was able to board four different domestic flights in the northeastern U.S. in a series of coordinated terror attacks that would claim 3,000 lives. Flying in America, and the rest of the world, would never be the same again.

'Something just happened in New York City'

O'Keefe was in the White House's West Wing with Vice President Dick Cheney when the news came through. They "had the television on, matter of fact it was CNN," he recalled. "The phone rang. His receptionist was on the hotline to tell him to (turn the sound up); something just happened in New York City."

Like millions of people around the world watching the same scenes live after the first plane hit the World Trade Center's North Tower, O'Keefe and his companions assumed they were witnessing a terrible accident, a matter for the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Transportation.

But when the second plane hit the South Tower 17 minutes later, O'Keefe said, "That was the moment where it was really evidence that this was something more than an accident, this was a premeditated effort. The security guards, the Secret Service, all mobilized."

The events of that morning in the U.S. changed the nation "automatically, immediately, into one obsessed, in big ways and small, with protecting its security," wrote historian James Mann in 2018. "The way that 325 million Americans go through airports today started on Sept. 12 and has never gone back to what it was on Sept. 10."

'We all had an epiphany on the same day'

The U.S. government immediately began work on the security manifesto that by November 19, 2001, would be passed into law as the Aviation and Transportation Security Act.

"The fact that they had orchestrated that strike with three different flights in three different places" made clear how vulnerable the U.S. was, O'Keefe said. "That was a real slap in the face. It reminded us how naive we had been."

Getting agreement from Congress on security changes was fast and unanimous, he recalled. We needed "to make the resources available right away, to reinforce all those doors and cockpits (and) actually establish security perimeters."

In airports and on airlines, meanwhile, tougher security measures were introduced as soon as civilian air travel resumed on Sept. 14. The National Guard provided armed military personnel at airports, and travelers faced long lines as the new systems got their start.

Those early post-9/11 passengers -- people who hadn't canceled or rescheduled their trips -- were, O'Keefe said, largely accepting of the new high-security regime, with its disruptions and delays. "We all had an epiphany on the same day."

Identification checks

Some of the 9/11 hijackers had been able to board flights without proper identification. After the attacks, all passengers age 18 and over would need a valid government-issued identification in order to fly, even on domestic flights. Airports could check the ID of passengers or staff at any time to confirm that it matched the details on their boarding pass.

Before the events, the U.S. federal government had a small list of people deemed a threat risk to air travel. However, what we know today as the No Fly List -- a subset of the Terrorist Screening Database denoting people who are barred from boarding commercial aircraft for travel into, out of and inside the U.S. -- was developed in response to 9/11.

Around the world, countries became more stringent with identity checks, security screening and their own versions of the No Fly List. In 2002, the European Union introduced a regulation demanding airlines confirm the passenger boarding the aircraft is the same person who checked in their luggage, which meant checking ID both at luggage check-in and when boarding. Later in the decade, fingerprint IDs and retina and iris scanning were introduced in some countries.

The creation of the TSA

Airport screening in the U.S. used to be piecemeal, undertaken by private security companies appointed by airlines or airports.

As part of the new security act, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was introduced in November 2001. Now an agency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which was formed a year later, the TSA took over all the security functions of the FAA and U.S. airlines and airports.

By the end of 2002, the agency had already recruited close to 60,000 employees, wrote TSA historian Michael P. C. Smith.

Looking back 20 years later, O'Keefe reflected that it was "an enormous challenge in that immediate time afterward to mobilize a whole new cadre of security forces, thousands of trained professionals to do this."

"It was not without its flaws," he added. "Recruiting issues and right training and all the things that were necessary: We went through plenty of fits and starts to make that happen."

The fact that America's "allies and friends and partners" around the world "had already been through this," was a huge benefit, he said. "We were able to learn from them, how they did it and what they did."

Security screening

Some of the 9/11 hijackers were reported to have been carrying box cutters and small knives, which they were able to bring through security.

Before long, with the new streamlined enforcement by the TSA, potential weapons like blades, scissors and knitting needles were no longer allowed on board, and airport workers were better trained to detect weapons or explosives.

By the end of 2002, the TSA met a key mandate of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act by deploying explosives detection systems nationwide. In the following years, other terrorist attacks would further change what we could and could not bring on board planes.

In August 2006, a foiled plot to detonate liquid explosives on multiple transatlantic flights led to today's restrictions on liquids, gels and aerosols in carry-on luggage. That same month, the TSA began requiring passengers to remove their shoes to screen for explosives -- five years after the "shoe bomber" incident of 2001 -- and the agency also deployed federal air marshals overseas.

Metal detectors were standard at airports before 9/11, but by March 2010 -- a few months after the "underwear bomber" was apprehended on a Christmas Day flight after a botched mid-air attack using a device hidden beneath his clothing -- full-body scanners were starting to be installed at U.S. airports, and about 500 were in action by the end of that year.

By July 2017, in response to increased terrorist interest in hiding improvised explosive devices inside commercial electronics and other carry-on items, the TSA began requiring travelers to place all personal electronics larger than a cell phone in bins for X-ray screening. By the following February, facial recognition technology was also being piloted.

Safety on board

"It used to be (that getting) into a cockpit on an American aircraft that was flying in American airspace was as easy as the doors you use to get into the (toilet)," O'Keefe recalled.

Bulletproof and locked cockpits became standard on commercial passenger aircraft within two years of 9/11.

The Arming Pilots Against Terrorism Act was signed into law in November 2002, and by the following April, the first weapon-carrying pilots were on board U.S. commercial flights.

While aviation fans and children could once hope to get a visit to the flight deck, that dream swiftly came to an end.

Private jet pilot and social media star Raymon Cohen told CNN Travel in July that he believes the unprecedented inaccessibility added to flying's mystique.

"People are not welcome in the cockpit anymore, so it's like a big secret," Cohen said. "Now this (following pilots on Instagram) is one of the only ways people can see what's happening."

Passenger confidence

The immediate impact of 9/11 included a big drop in travel demand. Not only had passenger confidence taken a hit, but the additional security meant the flying experience was no longer fast and hassle-free.

In 2006, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) estimated that airline revenues from domestic U.S. flights fell by $10 billion a year between 2001 and 2006. For comparison, the net losses globally due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 were $126.4 billion in total, according to the IATA.

In a study from 2005 on the impact of 9/11 on road fatalities, Cornell University's Garrick Blalock, Vrinda Kadiyali and Daniel H. Simon found an increase in travelers choosing to drive rather than fly. The unintended consequence of this was that "driving fatalities increased significantly following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001." They estimated that a total of 1,200 additional driving deaths in the past five years were attributable to the effect of 9/11.

Speaking to CNN ahead of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, Kadiyali said, "There's been the fall of Kabul and all these recent events in Afghanistan (...) It did cross my mind whether people would start getting nervous about flying again."

Delays, long lines and confusion over restrictions are also all back on the agenda in the pandemic era.

As to whether something like 9/11 could happen again, O'Keefe reflected upon the fact that the greatest achievements of Homeland Security, and of security services around the world, can never be shared with the general public.

"In the process of educating the public, what you also do is educate the terrorists," so we will never know of all the near-misses, he said. "You almost get into a false sense of security."

That September morning in 2001 "flipped the switch right away from almost non-existent security to unbelievable, in-your-face, all the time."

However, two decades later, there have been no aviation-based terrorist attacks anywhere near the scale of 9/11. Said O'Keefe, "These security measures have worked."

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio strongly encouraged vaccinated people to wear masks indoors but stopped short of reissuing a mask mandate on Monday, spurning guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."We want to strongly recommend that people wear masks in indoor settings even if you're vaccinated," de Blasio said. "If you don't know the people around, if you're not sure if they're vaccinated or not, or if you know some are unvaccinated, it's absolutely crucial to wear a mask even if you are vaccinated."Still, he did not require masks in all indoor settings, a step that Washington D.C., Los Angeles County and some other large metro areas have taken. Already, New York City requires vaccinated people to wear masks on public transit, in hospitals and in schools.Last week, the CDC issued new guidance that fully vaccinated people should wear masks indoors when in areas of "substantial" or "high" COVID-19 transmission, a metric based on case rates and positivity rates in a county. All five boroughs in NYC are in areas of "substantial" or "high" transmission.De Blasio's decision not to reissue a mask mandate reflects the waning influence of the CDC at this point in the pandemic, when protective vaccines are widely available for everyone 12 and older.The CDC's new mask guidance was based on an outbreak of the delta variant among mostly vaccinated people in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in which five people were hospitalized and no one died. The vaccines, though not 100% effective, provide substantial protection against severe illness and death.In recent weeks, the mayor has emphasized the importance of vaccinating as many people as possible and downplayed the use of masks, saying vaccines are "the whole ball game.""Masks can be helpful, we are going to delineate to New Yorkers the best way to use masks, but they don't change the basic reality. Vaccination does," he told CNN on Friday.About 55% of all NYC residents are fully vaccinated, according to city data, a number higher than the total U.S. rate of about 50%. The rate differs by borough, however: about two-thirds of Manhattan residents are fully vaccinated, while only 46% of Bronx residents can say the same.Mayor de Blasio said Monday the city still plans to focus its efforts on raising vaccination rates. "Everything we do is vaccine-centric," de Blasio said.The city has offered both carrots and sticks to encourage vaccinations. Any resident who gets a first dose of the vaccine at a city-run vaccination site will get $100. At the same time, all unvaccinated city employees will be required to start weekly testing on Sept. 13.The mayor also announced Monday that every new employee for the city of New York will be required to prove they are vaccinated before they can begin work.