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Week in Pictures

The Week in Pictures for Jan. 4

By THE NEW YORK TIMES
See the slide show

Here is a slide show of photographs from the past week in New York City and the region. Subjects include New Year’s Eve in Times Square; the return of Sandy Hook Elementary students to classes; and a Fire Department promotion ceremony.

This weekend on “The New York Times Close Up,” an inside look at the most compelling articles in Sunday’s Times, Sam Roberts will speak with The Times’s Joe Nocera, Danny Hakim, Patrick Healy, Michael Barbaro, Eleanor Randolph and Clyde Haberman.. Tune in at 10 p.m. Saturday or 10 a.m. Sunday on NY1 News to watch. Read more…

Accidents and Safety

Woman Is Killed by Garbage Truck in Manhattan

By RAVI SOMAIYA

A 58-year-old woman was walking her bicycle along the curb on 23rd Street, near Park Avenue, when a garbage truck pulling into traffic crushed her to death early Friday afternoon, the police said.

Passers-by captured the aftermath in pictures, and on Twitter, with the woman’s body still partially visible under the yellow truck. (The images are not graphic.)

A street vendor described the accident for The New York Post:

“He clipped her, and she just rolled and fell underneath the wheel,” said Greg Lamans, 43, who works as a street vendor near the accident scene. “Her legs ended up where her arms would be. Her legs were above her head.”

Police officials do not suspect criminality and have not yet identified the woman because her family has not been notified, according to a statement released late Friday.

Man on Icelandair Flight Is Said to Have Been Restrained by Fellow Passengers

By ANDY NEWMAN and RAVI SOMAIYA

It landed online Friday: a picture of a middle-aged man crudely bound and taped to his airline seat, apparently against his will. The brief explanation underneath, posted on the blogging service Tumblr, went like this:

Passanger drank all of his duty free liquor on the flight from Iceland to JFK yesterday. When he became unruly, (i.e. trying to choke the woman next to him and screaming the plane was going to crash), fellow passengers subdued him and tie him up for the rest of the flight. He was escorted off the flight by police when it landed.

A passenger on an Icelandair flight was restrained with tape after he grew unruly and threatened to harm his neighbor.andyellwood.tumblr.com A passenger on an Icelandair flight was restrained with tape after he grew unruly and threatened to harm his neighbor.

Andy Ellwood, the man who posted the picture and the description, said in an interview Friday that it was taken by a friend of his on the flight. He declined to identify his friend, and said that the person did not want to speak about it publicly. But Mr. Ellwood said his friend said that, a few hours into the flight, the man ” became belligerent and started to hurt other passengers.”

It remains something of a mystery what happened to the bound man.

A spokesman for Icelandair, Michael Raucheisen, confirmed there was an incident on a flight between Reykjavik and New York on Thursday. It involved, he said in an e-mail, “a disruptive male passenger who was hitting, screaming and spitting at other passengers while yelling profanities.” He continued:

His behavior was considered to be unruly and threatening. To ensure the safety of those on board, he was restrained by passengers and crew and was monitored for his own safety for the duration of the flight. Upon arrival at JFK the flight was met by authorities who arrested the male.

Ron Marsico, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said that the man had not been charged by federal or local authorities. Mr. Marsico said that the man was 46, had an Icelandic passport and “was taken into custody and transported to a hospital because he was deemed to be intoxicated.”

It was not immediately clear why he escaped the clutches of law enforcement. A Google search for “airline passenger arrested” yields local news stories on others held in recent months for refusing to turn off cellphones, for wearing a bulletproof vest and painting fingernails, among other infractions. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which often detains unruly passengers, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on Friday evening.

Local History

This Lovely 1920s Fire Alarm Box Door Could Be Yours

By SAM ROBERTS

Still haven’t found that post-holiday gift for the nostalgic fire buff who has everything? Check out this potential bargain: the door to a surplus vintage 1925 fire alarm box. It’s being auctioned by New York City, with a minimum opening bid of $50.

Neither gift wrapping nor delivery is included. The faded red door is described as in “fair” condition, but the pull handle and the mechanism attached to it still appear to work, if the video above is accurate.

The alarm box, No. 5743, used to be located at 121st Avenue and 197th Street in St. Albans, Queens.

“The alarm box was used by residents to alert the F.D.N.Y. of a fire,” says the description on the Web site of publicsurplus.com, which is running the sale for the Department of Citywide Administrative Services.

A decade ago, there were still more than 15,000 fire alarm boxes, but given the proliferation of cellphones and the availability of the 911 emergency number, the Fire Department deemed many of the boxes superfluous and prone to false alarms. At last count, there were about 14,000.

The online auction began Wednesday and runs through at least Jan 23. As of Friday evening, no one had placed a bid.

Housing & Economy

Big Ticket | Sold for $50,000,000

By ROBIN FINN
From Real Estate

In this week’s section: There are events in life — a breakup, a death, an illness — that make a change of address good medicine. Call it the real estate cure.

944 Fifth AvenueTina Fineberg for The New York Times 944 Fifth Avenue

Another in the skein of palatial domiciles with Central Park vistas and/or impeccable Fifth or Park Avenue pedigrees that named their price in a resurgent 2012 luxury market and received it without the nuisance of negotiations, a full-floor co-op at 944 Fifth Avenue that sold for $50 million was the most expensive sale of the week, according to city records. And it wasn’t even a penthouse with wraparound terraces. In fact, it is not a penthouse nor does it possess any outdoor space.

But the apartment, No. 11, spans 5,000 square feet and commands an impressive 70 feet of frontage on Fifth Avenue above the treetops of Central Park — shown to full advantage by seven oversize picture windows that transform western views into seasonal portraits — so it does possess ample trophy attributes.

With four bedrooms, and renovated to impress a dozen years ago by Thad Hayes, the go-to designer for deep-pocketed avatars of “timeless” good taste like the Lauder family, the 11th-floor apartment rambles from front to back for a grand total of 12 rooms, not counting a separate but equally elegant two-bedroom, two-bath guest suite on the ground floor. Read more…

Building Blocks

Less Bronx-Whitestone Bridge Yielded More Stability During Hurricane Sandy

By DAVID W. DUNLAP
The Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, seen from Malba, Queens.David W. Dunlap/The New York Times The Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, seen from Malba, Queens.

One very windy day in 1968, the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge began to oscillate crazily, leading drivers to abandon their cars in panic.

Building Blocks

How the city looks and feels — and why it got that way.

Siobhan Roberts at the former Citicorp Center, which the subject of her biography, Alan G. Davenport, helped engineer.David W. Dunlap/The New York Times Siobhan Roberts at the former Citicorp Center, which the subject of her biography, Alan G. Davenport, helped engineer.

But on an even windier night in 2012, as Hurricane Sandy howled across Long Island Sound and buffeted the span, the bridge stood all but unmoving. The difference? Six thousand fewer tons of steel trusses, which were removed in 2004.

The trusses had been installed in 1946 to stiffen the bridge deck and lessen the chances that the 2,300-foot-long span would break apart in the wind, as the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (“Galloping Gertie“) did in 1940.

But it turned out the trusses were doing more harm than good. Their weight was shortening the bridge’s life span by further stressing the structure. From an aesthetic point of view, they spoiled the slender lines of one of the most beautiful bridges in New York. And when those 70-mile-an-hour winds hit the bridge in November 1968, the deck oscillated all the same, as much as 10 inches.

Instead of trusses, the bridge is now equipped with aerodynamic fiberglass fairings along the deck, which streamline the airflow Read more…

Government & Politics

Hurricane Cost City at Least $154 Million in Overtime

By DAVID W. CHEN
Chart of Hurricane Sandy overtime costs in New York City. Click to view full-size version.Independent Budget Office Chart of Hurricane Sandy overtime costs in New York City. Click to view full-size version.

New York City anticipated that Hurricane Sandy would be an expensive disaster for the government, and now, some of the bills are adding up.

In less than two months, the city spent more than $154 million in overtime costs for city workers, with 81 percent going to the Police and Sanitation Departments alone, according to a report released on Friday by the Independent Budget Office.

Over all, 42 city agencies reported overtime costs related to the hurricane, from Oct. 29 to Dec. 24, according to the budget office, which relied on payroll data. After the Police Department ($70.9 million) and Sanitation Department ($53.6 million), the biggest expenses were reported by the fire ($8.6 million), parks ($4.7 million) and transportation ($3.1 million) agencies.

Read more…

Crime & Public Safety

La Guardia-Bound Pilot Arrested on Alcohol Charge

By ANDY NEWMAN
Kolbjorn KristiansenAirport Police Dept., Minneapolis Kolbjorn Kristiansen

Updated, 3:07 p.m. | An American Eagle pilot of a flight headed for La Guardia Airport was arrested at the airport in Minneapolis Friday morning after failing a breath test for alcohol, Minnesota authorities said.

The pilot, Kolbjorn Kristiansen, 48, was waiting for an elevator at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport when airport police officers and a Transportation Security Administration agent “detected the odor of a consumed alcohol beverage” as they passed him, according to arrest papers.

Mr. Kristiansen continued on and boarded American Eagle Flight 4590, completed a preflight check and sometime after that was detained, said Patrick Hogan, a spokesman for the airport. Read more…

Metropolitan Diary

A Passionate Embrace at the Bus Stop

By BARBARA NAHMIAS
Metropolitan Diary

More Reader Tales From the City »

Dear Diary:

I was inspired to write this poem as I gazed out the bus window at the 86th Street and York Avenue stop:

Two elderly people
Passionately
Kiss each other
Goodbye
He nearly drops his cane
She giggles
Like a schoolgirl
Then they
Hesitantly part
It seems to me
They are
The richest people
Alive

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via e-mail: diary@nytimes.com or telephone: (212) 556-1333. Follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.

Police and Fire

With Accessory, Officers Looking Sharp and Staying Safe

By SAM ROBERTS

There is the old joke about why firefighters wear red suspenders (to keep their pants up, of course). Now add to that the query on why police officers wear clip-on neckties.

Why, indeed, when Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly himself favors resplendent tie-it-yourself (a perfect Windsor knot) Charvet, Brioni or Kiton brands, which shun the ready-made variety.

The question is occasioned by an advertisement on Thursday in The City Record, the official government journal, seeking bids for 15,000 to 30,000 “ready-made neck ties with metal clip (female and male)” for the New York Police Department. The bids are due Jan. 30; would-be vendors are advised to enclose a sample of their wares.

Why neckties at all, for that matter? Read more…