CNN President Jeff Zucker is considering running for mayor of New York City, The New York Times reported Sunday. Asked by the New York Times’ Ben Smith whether he’s considering throwing his hat in the ring for the 2021 mayoral election, Zucker “paused, and said he didn’t want his answer to cause a storm of news,” according to Smith. What Zucker did tell Smith was this: “New York City is going to need a very strong mayor in the aftermath of this, and I always like a challenge.” The 55-year-old Zucker has served as CNN’s president since 2013 and previously led NBC in the late 2000s. The mayoral election will take place next year and incumbent Democratic New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is ineligible to run again due to term limits. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Stephanie Byrd agonized over temporarily laying off nearly the entire staff at her family’s trio of Detroit businesses when the coronavirus pandemic hit. But she’s not just concerned about the impact on their bottom line. She’s worried other black-owned businesses will struggle to withstand another wave of economic uncertainty, following decades of inequity that made it hard for many to flourish in the first place. “Most of the people I know who have businesses and are black are terrified right now,” said Byrd, whose family owns Flood’s Bar & Grille, The Block restaurant and the city’s Garden Theater. “There could be a new wave of black businesses that are able to reinvent themselves post-pandemic, but black businesses could also be wiped out for the most part within a black city.

Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday called for an NYPD officer to be stripped of his gun and badge after video showed him pulling his gun on a crowd of protesters. In the video, the NYPD officer charges at protesters in the middle of an intersection, raises his gun and threateningly swings it around from side to side as people scream and run away. The incident reportedly happened around 10 p.m. near East 12th Street and Broadway in Manhattan. Speaking at a news conference Monday morning, de Blasio said the scene looked “chaotic” but the officer’s actions were “unacceptable and dangerous.” he added the officer should have his gun and badge taken away immediately. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Graffiti on a massive billboard along the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway says “KILL COPS”. The attached photo taken on Monday morning by BoroPark24 and provided to YWN. YWN notes that the last time NYC protesters called for “dead cops”, it ended with the cold-blooded assassination of NYPD officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, who were killed “execution style” while sitting in the patrol car in Brooklyn. Just days prior to that horrific incident, Mayor Debalsio did nothing when thousands of protesters chanted “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want them? Now!” (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday he was concerned that mass protests over George Floyd’s death in New York City could imperil the long, hard fight to contain the coronavirus pandemic in a worldwide hotspot. “You turn on the TV and you see these mass gatherings that could potentially be infecting hundreds and hundreds of people after everything that we have done,” Cuomo said at his daily briefing. “We have to take a minute and ask ourselves: ’What are we doing here?” The Democratic governor said he agreed with demonstrators fighting racism and societal inequality. But he sounded frustrated about possibly compromising more than two months of social and economic sacrifices. New York City is set to begin phasing in economic activity June 8. “It took us 93 days to get here.

New York’s mayor said Monday he was considering putting the nation’s biggest city under curfew after nights of destruction followed three days of largely peaceful protests over George Floyd’s death. Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, had previously rejected imposing a curfew, as many other cities across the U.S. have done to try to curb violence that erupted amid demonstrations over Floyd’s May 25 death, police brutality and racial injustice. But de Blasio said Monday he was talking with Police Commissioner Dermot Shea and Gov. Andrew Cuomo about the idea. The mayor emphasized that no decision had been made on a curfew, and “there are advantages and disadvantages.” Earlier Monday, Shea said he didn’t think curfew would work.

An NYPD hero attempting to stop a pack of marauding looters in Manhattan was run over by their getaway vehicle. As can be seen in the shocking video below, a group of thugs are seen running to their vehicle carrying their loot, when suddenly an NYPD vehicle pulls up and an officer jumps out. As he attempts to stop the vehicle, the driver floors the gas pedal and drives away, leaving the officer injured on the ground. You can bet that Socialist NYC Mayor Deblasio will likely launch a much bigger investigation into the NYPD officers who ran over a few protesters on Saturday night while fearing they would be lynched by an angry mob of criminals, then this incident which nearly left an officer dead.   (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

A fourth day of protests against police brutality kept New York City on edge Sunday, as thousands of people marched and many protesters and officers tried to keep the peace after days of unrest that left police cars burned and hundreds of people under arrest. Demonstrators paraded through multiple neighborhoods, chanting, kneeling in the street, and falling silent for a minute in front of the neon-adorned NYPD station in Times Square in honor of people killed by police. Through most of the day, in most of the city, a tense truce held, with officers keeping their distance and occasionally dropping to a knee in a gesture of respect. But after dark, there were ugly confrontations. Demonstrators in downtown Brooklyn and parts of Manhattan pelted officers with objects and set fires.

YWN has been inundated the past few hours from Flatbush / Midwood residents with messages inquiring about protests in the community. They are all false and sowing unnecessary fear and panic in the community. Some messages told of protests on Avenue J in Flatbush and that Jewish-owned show stores were being looted and set on fire. These are all fake news and 100% false. First off, Flatbush Shomrim has increased their patrols, and have volunteers driving throughout the neighborhood 24 hours a day until this violence subsides. If you see anything suspicious or are concerned about anything, please call 911 and the Flatbush Shomrim hotline at 718-338-9797.

New York City officials were looking for a peaceful way forward as the city entered a fourth day of protests against police brutality that have left police cars burned and led to the arrest of hundreds of people. Mayor Bill de Blasio said he had no plans to impose a curfew Sunday, unlike other major U.S. cities, and smaller cities throughout the state. De Blasio said city police showed “tremendous restraint overall” during the weekend’s protests, but promised an investigation of video showing two police cruisers lurching into a crowd of demonstrators on a Brooklyn street. He was appointing two city officials to conduct an independent review of how the protests unfolded and how they were handled by the police.