Los Angeles Councilman Eric Garcetti defeated City Controller Wendy Greuel in a mayoral election that set spending records and saw both candidates rack up high-profile endorsements on the way to Tuesday's runoff.

With 100 percent of the precincts reporting, Garcetti garnered 54 percent of the vote and Greuel 46 percent.

"Thank you Los Angeles--the hard work begins but I am honored to lead this city for the next four years. Let's make this a great city again," Garcetti, 42, wrote on Twitter early Wednesday.

Decision 2013: Election Results | Full Coverage

Garcetti planned to conduct a news conference at 2 p.m.

Garcetti becomes the first Jewish candidate to be elected to the mayor's office. In 1878, Bernard Cohn was a member of the city's council when he was appointed acting mayor to fill a vacancy. He served for less than one month.

Garcetti will inherit a city still struggling to pull itself from an extended fiscal slump.

"We're going to have to give a little something to get a lot," Garcetti said Tuesday night. "Independent leadership and doing what's right for the city is what I'm going to continue to do."

The contest to succeed outgoing Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who leaves office at the end of June with high marks from his constituents, broke spending records as outside contributions topped $33 million.

"We're talking a whole lot of money and very few votes," said NBC4 political analyst Sherry Bebitch Jeffe. "It's not only the money, but how that money was used.

"It shows the increasing dominance of independent expenditure groups. Those groups can't be controlled by the candidate. Garcetti had greated control over the message. Even though he had far less in contributions from the independent groups, he came out ahead."

Greuel would have become the city's first female mayor, if elected. She called Garcetti early Wednesday to concede, The Los Angeles Times reported, citing a Greuel campaign source.

In their sprint to the finish line after two years of campaigning, both Democratic contenders with similar voting records tried to differentiate themselves from each other in down-to-the-wire pitches to undecided voters.

Greuel had racked up endorsements from the L.A. Chamber of Commerce, the Daily News and high profile figures including former President Bill Clinton, Magic Johnson, and U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer.

"He cares deeply about Los Angeles," Greuel said of Garcetti as she addressed supporters Wednesday in Van Nuys. "He will work tirelessly and be a strong leader at a critical point in the city's history."

Garcetti had the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, the L.A. Times and Newark Mayor Cory Booker in his corner. The fluent Spanish-speaker had talked during the campaign about his paternal grandparents' emigration from Mexico.

Villaraigosa issued a statement Wednesday morning on his Facebook page, thanking Greuel and congratulating Garcetti: "Eric is a true leader who I trust to guide our city into its bright future. I know I am leaving Los Angeles in good hands. I look forward to working with Eric and his team over the next month for a seamless transition so that we can keep Los Angeles moving in the right direction.

"I also want to thank Wendy Greuel for her commitment to the people of Los Angeles and admire her for being willing to put her name on the ballot."

Anthony Weiner has announced his candidacy for New York City mayor with a campaign video posted to YouTube, days after NBC 4 New York exclusively spotted the former congressman shooting part of the video on the stoop of his childhood home in Brooklyn.

"Look, I made some big mistakes and I know I let a lot of people down. But I've also learned some tough lessons," Weiner says in the two-minute, 16-second video posted late Tuesday night, acknowledging the sexting scandal that forced him to resign his congressional seat two years ago.

"I'm running for mayor because I've been fighting for the middle class and those struggling to make it my entire life," he continues. "And I hope I get a second chance to work for you." 

A Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday found that if Weiner jumped into the race, he would get 15 percent of Democratic votes, putting him in second place behind City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, with 25 percent. Neither comes close to the 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff. The survey of 701 Democrats was taken May 14 through Monday and has a plus or minus 3.7 percentage point margin of error.

The video, which opens with a shot of Weiner, his wife, Huma Abedin, and their toddler son in their home, highlights Weiner's upbringing in Brooklyn and his parents' backgrounds as a public school teacher and lawyer.

Timeline: Anthony Weiner Sexting Scandal

Weiner lists rent, job security, education, public safety and business regulations as citywide problems he wants to tackle. He ticks off congressional victories like securing money to put more police on the streets, getting sick 9/11 responders financial help, and leading the campaign for health reform. 

In the closing shots of the video, captured by NBC 4 New York in Park Slope last Thursday, Weiner, sitting alongside Abedin, says "New York City should be the middle class capital of the world."

Abedin, who was pregnant with their son when the sexting scandal broke in May 2011, adds, "We love this city, and no one will work harder to make it better than Anthony." 

Photos: Anthony Weiner Twitter Scandal

The Park Slope home is where Weiner launched his bid for mayor in 2005, and where he later announced that fall he was stepping aside in order to avoid a divisive primary runoff.

Weiner first revealed he was weighing a 2013 run for mayor last month in a New York Times Magazine story that detailed his efforts to repair his marriage. He has also hired a campaign manager, according to Politico, and has released a policy booklet. 

Weiner ran for mayor in 2005, and nearly forced a runoff against Fernando Ferrer, but conceded in the name of party solidarity. He planned to run again in 2009, and was considered a leading contender, but dropped out after Mayor Bloomberg chose to run for a third term.

Prior to his unraveling, Weiner had begun to plan for a 2013 campaign. He still has more than $4 million in his campaign account.

Full Coverage: Anthony Weiner Sexting Scandal

A wandering bear was on the move for about an hour Wednesday morning north of Los Angeles with squad cars and a helicopter on its tail as it scaled fences and surprised several horses in their corrals.

The bear was first seen in the Shadow Hills area, about 20 miles north of downtown Los Angeles.

"He was probably just trying to find a spot where he feels comfortable, safe and can find a food source," said California Fish and Wildlife Department warden J.C. Healy. "This is the time of year -- there are bigger males looking for food, and in the animal world, they're going to compete and push the little guy out."

The black bear surprised two horses as it emerged from a backyard, then walked through another corral that contained three horses a few blocks away. The bear scaled a fence around the second corral and walked along the top of it until leaping back to the ground and trotting under a tree.

Police in squad cars and an airship followed the bear, which was first spotted along Clybourn Avenue at about 6:30 a.m. 

"We deploy officers like we look for suspects," said LAPD Sgt. Rudy Lopez. 

Officers and at least one California Department of Fish and Wildlife agent -- armed with a tranquilizer dart gun -- cornered the bear under trees along Wentworth Street. Aerial video showed agents loading the tranquilized bear into the bed of a pickup.

"The California black bear is very docile, very timid, very afraid of people -- so they're going to do what they can to get away from people," said Healy. "But the general rule of thumb with wild animals is don't take their food source and don't get in front of mom and her cubs.

"Right now, he's just looking to get away from people."

The bear had a tracking tag attached to its right ear, indicating that wildlife officials were in contact before with the bear. The bear was tagged just a few weeks ago in a Santa Clarita neighborhood, about 20 miles northwest of Shadow Hills, Healy said.

The warden planned to transport the bear to a wildlife area, likely the nearby Angeles National Forest. The bear was sedated about four minutes after he was struck with the tranquilizer dart.

"I'm going to sit with him for a while until he wakes up and watch him walk off," Healy said after hoisting the bear into the pickup.

Healy estimated the 2- to 3-year-old male bear weighs about 150 pounds
 

Mark O’Donnell usually books his family’s summer vacation in January. For the last dozen years, that meant reserving an oceanfront house for a week in Long Beach Island, a quiet cluster of beach towns on the New Jersey shore. But this January, he didn’t book the trip. He had Sandy on his mind.

The storm ripped through LBI in late October, but for months he watched the scenes of destruction replay on TV—the whitecaps lapping storefronts on the boulevard, the houses shifted and battered. So he put off vacation planning, too wary to book a trip to a place that might be nursing gaping wounds.

Each summer, families, couples, and carloads of friends migrate to one of the 40 shore towns that dot the coast of New Jersey for brief escapes to the ocean or bay. But this year, many people who have devotedly returned to the Jersey Shore each summer are grappling with the same question that conflicted the O'Donnells: Will it be the same as it used to be?

With Memorial Day around the corner, it's a question that has taken on more urgency for prospective visitors finalizing their summer plans, and for those on the shore who depend on the seasonal influx of vacationers.

On Long Beach Island, one of the shore's marquee summer destinations, the problem is playing out in the realm of summer real estate, a key industry for much of the Shore. Realtors and homeowners on the island say they’re seeing more rental vacancies than usual for this time of year and worry that the damage from Sandy got more attention than the cleanup.

“People think we’re Seaside Heights and we’re not,” says Joe Mancini, the mayor of Long Beach, the island’s largest township. Like others on LBI, he believes that images of lingering damage in Seaside and Mantoloking, LBI’s neighbors to the north, have sowed the flawed notion that the entire Jersey shore is still damaged.

“This was a horrific storm,” Mancini adds, “but we were aggressive in cleaning it up.”

Certainly, much of the island appears to be in good shape. Fresh signs and flags adorn shops and restaurants along the island’s main drag, letting passersby know they’ve re-opened. A hilltop of debris that was parked outside the Acme supermaket, a symbol of the island's devestation, has been hauled away. The island’s main attractions, the pale sandy beaches, have been restored and will be open for the summer.

But some property owners are having trouble relaying that message to seasonal renters, still clinging to the images of flooding and mayhem. 

Todd Cohan, a 46-year-old entrepreneur who has rented out properties on LBI since 1997, cannot remember a slower summer. Neither of his two luxury oceanfront homes suffered any flooding or damage and still, with just two weeks until Memorial Day, Cohan had vacancies for 40 percent of the season.

To attract prospective guests, he’s posted current images of his properties to real estate websites Homeaway.com and Beachrentals.net. He's added a “pay by credit card” option to his listings, which is something he has never done before, and he estimates that he has emailed about 2,000 people—anyone who has ever inquired about either of his 5-bedroom properties—to see if they’d like to book a few nights.

So far, he’s gotten few positive responses. “They write back to say, ‘due to the devastation and destruction from Sandy’—What destruction? I want them to come down here and show me what they think the destruction is,” Cohan says.

Since the rentals are not his only source of income, he doesn’t expect the vacancies to cripple him, though he says he’ll certainly feel the impact. Each home goes for about $9,000 a week—money he puts toward his mortgages.

Weekly rates for rentals on LBI range in price from the high triple digits for inland cottages to more than $12,000 for exclusive oceanfront properties. While realtors say that the dip in demand has been seen across all price levels, luxury homes have taken it particularly hard.

"Normally, they go first," said Matt Kulinski from the G. Anderson real estate agency. "The way the market works, in January and February, the high-end properties go." But this year, he says, "it's been the other way around."

Vacancies are a concern for both homeowners and local businesses, which depend on a surge of summer income to last them through the slower season. LBI, an island with less than 12,000 residents, has more than 17,000 rental homes, which fill up each summer with visitors. In 2011, summertime tourists generated more than $1.2 billion in spending at restaurants, retail shops and other businesses in southern Ocean County, according to a report commissioned by the LBI Chamber of Commerce.

John Franzoni a realtor at Oceanside Realty who has been in the real estate business for the last 30 years, acknowledges that the storm was worse than any that has hit the island in generations, but doesn’t attribute the dip in rental demand to any real storm damage.

“It’s really because of the perception out there,” he said, noting that just 5 percent of his properties had to be delisted after the storm. “We’re in really good shape, we’re ready to go.”

Still, his rentals are down 20 percent from this time last year—a figure repeated at many agencies along the island—and he says the internet is partially to blame.

“Twenty years ago, on a Saturday or Sunday anytime after the Super Bowl, you’d have people lined up outside to look at rental properties,” he said, referring to the early February weekends when the wave of summer rental bookings begin. “Now, we do 80 or 90 percent of the rentals right over the internet. So that’s been a big change. If people were coming down, they would see the condition, but they only know what they’ve heard. And they’ve gotten a lot of bad reports.”

The island surely wasn’t spared. More than 3,300 applications for residential federal disaster assistance were submitted from Long Beach township alone—a township with just over 8,000 homes. And while the clean-up was aggressive, LBI still bears distinct Sandy scars. Oceanfront homes at the southern end of the island jut out of sand dunes on skinny trunks of exposed pilings. Dumpsters and construction signs still dot the island, particularly in the community of Holgate, which buzzes with the sounds of construction.

But for the most part, the sort of damage that might matter most to tourists has largely been repaired: The beaches have been cleaned and restored and Mayor Mancini says that 95 percent of LBI’s stores and restaurants will be open for business by Memorial Day.

To combat whatever negative impressions would-be visitors may be harboring, a group of LBI devotees organized a commercial aimed at New Jersey residents who may not have seen the island post-recovery. It began airing in early May on about a dozen networks, including Bravo, CNBC, Fox News and Nat Geo, after local businesses and the mayor’s office raised $50,000 for airtime.



While there’s no way to predict the impact the commercial and other publicity may have on wary visitors, rental prices point to optimism. Real estate agents say that homeowners have not lowered their prices just yet. (Cohan hasn't either.)

Kulinski from the G. Anderson Agency predicts that warmer weather will bring more business to the rental market. "When it's cold and windy and not really beach-like weather, [beach vacations] are put on the back burner." He also thinks that prospective renters are waiting to see how much progress the island makes and will eventually commit.

O'Donnell did. After four months of vacillating, he took a daytrip to LBI to assess the storm damage for himself.  He found his usual summer home in Holgate badly beaten, as he had expected. But he found plenty of other homes to choose from and settled on a 4-bedroom in Beach Haven, which he booked for a week in July.

“I was pleasantly pleased. The rest of the island seemed to be in decent shape," he said, adding that he was happy to contribute to the island's summer economy. "They’re working like demons to get it ready.”

The house that Tracy Johnson and Paul Merker share in Sandy-ravaged Highlands, N.J., isn’t so much a home as a campsite: insides gutted to the studs, kitchen sink propped up by two-by-fours, a bathroom with no walls.

They endured winter with a propane heater. They cook meals with a portable stove and hot plate. They take baths warmed by boiled water.

“There are days when I say, ‘I can’t take it anymore, I gotta get out,’” Johnson said.

But when she goes for a walk, she is overwhelmed by the sight: home after home that has been abandoned or ripped apart, months from habitability.

“You see people working on them, but they’re not nearly as far as they’d like to be. It’s depressing,” Johnson said. “It’s everywhere, and that’s the point. You try to get away from your own home, but even when you do that, you’re still not seeing anything different.”

It’s hard to relax in Highlands, a small but proud middle-class town at the northern tip of the Jersey Shore. The borough of 5,000, where the Shrewsbury River meets Sandy Hook Bay, is undergoing a profound transformation that won’t end with the physical rebuilding. The carnage wrought by Sandy—up to eight feet of water inundated downtown—has prompted what might best be described as an existential crisis, with residents, business owners and public officials confronting daunting questions about the kind of place Highlands will be for those who remain, and how it will survive.

Highlands, a modest fishing and commuter community known mostly for its seafood restaurants, doesn’t get as much attention as other communities along coastal New York and New Jersey that were battered by Sandy. It doesn’t boast a boardwalk or amusement park or golden sand. It is, however, emblematic of the region’s post-Sandy struggle. The borough is in a fight for its life, and the solution just might be a colossal engineering project that has been tried just once before, more than a century ago.

Waves of destruction

Before they can tackle such big thoughts, however, the people of Highlands are trying figure out a more pressing question: how to get safely back in their homes before the next big storm arrives.

A significant proportion of property owners have thrown themselves into the task, raiding their savings to start repairs while negotiating a dizzying tangle of red tape required by banks, insurance companies and the government.

At the same time, an unsettling number—exactly how many is not clear—are trying to sell their homes, or have simply walked away.

In the middle are homeowners and business owners who, for various reasons, are waiting. Some have received insurance payouts but can’t afford to supplement rebuilding costs with their own money. Others have decided to see what additional aid they can get from the state or Federal Emergency Management Agency. The local government has requested about $140 million in grants to divide among property owners, a process that could take several months or longer.

The lucky ones have friends or family to stay with, or can afford to rent a second home. The unlucky ones feel so overwhelmed that they simply cannot decide what to do. The Bay Avenue business district remains pockmarked with vacant restaurants.

“Sandy has really struck a blow and shaken people to their core,” said Steve Szulecki, a scientist who heads the local environmental commission and whose home, on a hill, was spared.

Szulecki described two phases of destruction in Highlands. First, he said, was the physical, which displaced people and damaged their homes. “The second wave,” he said, “is the bureaucracy and economics that people are starting to confront.”

Click on interactive map icons to hear stories and see images of the damage:

Even the local government is in a jam.

Three municipal buildings, including Borough Hall, did not have flood insurance and were evacuated after the storm, Borough Administrator Tim Hill said. The government’s deductible on each building is $500,000, leaving the town, which operates on an $8 million annual budget and is already facing a painful drop in tax revenues, unable to foot the bill. One of the three buildings has been put into partial use; most government offices, including the police department, are still working out of trailers.

In the end, the town may have to permanently abandon the buildings and move to higher ground.

Lifting a community

Public officials, meanwhile, are scrambling to help residents navigate the rebuilding process. They’re taking steps to adopt new construction and zoning rules that will make it easier for people to rebuild.

“We’re hoping folks want to remain in town and we’re trying to enable them to do that,” Hill said.

Ultimately, Highlands’ future hinges on a single concept: lifting.

Most of Highlands, including the entire downtown, sits in a major flood zone shaped more or less like a bathtub; parts of it regularly flood at high tide. The only sure way to prevent Sandy-like destruction is to prop everything on stilts or pilings. Depending how badly a building was damaged by Sandy, and its current height in relation to the sea, a home might eventually have to be lifted as much as 14 feet.

About 800 of the downtown’s 1,200 homes and businesses were deemed damaged enough to require that they be lifted. That number could fall as property owners appeal those assessments.

Lifting is an expensive undertaking. Many property owners have found that their $30,000 insurance allotment won’t cover it. The town's $140 million grant proposal would go entirely toward helping residents meet those costs. Some have gone ahead and started the lifting process anyway.

Those who elect not to lift are taking a gamble: they may find it difficult to find insurance, or see their property values drop.

Then there are the quality of life issues. In a town of stilts and small yards, how do the elderly or disabled or parents of young children get in and out of their homes without hurting themselves?

“There are many folks who are in a situation where they’re not sure if they want to go through all of this,” Hill said. “But in the long term…the common sense approach for long-term marketability is going to come into play. If you don’t raise your house, its value isn’t going to be as high.”

But no matter how high people raise their homes, the streets of Highlands will still flood. And property owners and developers will question whether it’s worth the investment.

The Army Corps of Engineers has proposed building a levee system, but the downtown often floods from the inside, through storm drains, and takes additional runoff from nearby hills.

A century-old solution

Szulecki, the head of the environmental commission, believes there is one way to ensure the long-term viability of Highlands: raise the town itself.

His model is Galveston, Texas, the Gulf Coast city that was virtually destroyed by a storm in 1900 and then, over the next decade, was backfilled and raised by as much as 16 feet.

If Galveston succeeded with century-old engineering techniques, Szulecki figured, then a modern, smaller Highlands could pull it off.

He originally suggested it to town leaders before Sandy, but since then the plan has been taken a lot more seriously. Many local officials, including Mayor Frank Nolan, now endorse it. Nolan has estimated that the project—which would be performed in phases, requiring temporary displacement for many homeowners and the demolition of dozens of buildings that could not withstand being lifted—would cost about $25 million, a combination of insurance payouts, public funding and private money.

But the plan has fueled old fears among longtime residents that downtown Highlands, dominated by modest bungalows and vinyl-clapboard homes, will be turned into cookie-cutter rental units and tourist-trap restaurants.

Resistance to change

“This town always had a plan: they wanted to buy houses, knock them down and build condos,” Paul Merker said.

Merker is Tracey Johnson’s fiancé, an unemployed construction worker and Highlands native who says he suffers from insomnia and vomiting from the stress of living in their gutted home. At the stoop is the kayak he paddled around town during Sandy, when he watched what seemed like a tsunami swallow the nearby peninsula of Sandy Hook. His glassy blue eyes and pallid complexion show the toll.

“I think this town is done,” Merker said. “Anyone who has left this town ain’t coming back. I think it will be a new wave of people who are going to have to make it what it’s going to be.”

Merker is among many people born and raised in Highlands who see developers repopulating the town with tenants who don’t have much connection to its history, or stake in its future.

But others think developers could turn out to be the town’s saviors, because there are few options for the growing number of dormant properties—the leveled trailer park, the shuttered restaurants, the abandoned homes.

Those who want to push forward with new development point out that there’s no going back to the pre-Sandy Highlands. What old-timers love about the town—the ability to live modestly near the water and resist interference from the forces of commercialization—seems less viable now. Along the shore there are ramshackle buildings that bring to mind the shotgun shacks of New Orleans’ Ninth Ward. It’s hard to imagine those structures remaining.

Determination and hope

And yet, with all the doubts and suspicion and anxiety, there is a fighting spirit that pervades the place. It’s visible on any casual drive around town: constructions crews laying drywall, the sounds of forklifts moving fishing boats out of dry dock, clam shack owners furiously scrubbing floors and tables in hopes of opening in time for summer.

“This is terrible. It’s horrible. It sucks. But guess what? It’s not the end of the world,” said Leo Cervantes, a owner of Chilangos, a popular Mexican restaurant on Bay Avenue that was ruined by six feet of water. A native of an impoverished neighborhood of Mexico City, Cervantes calls himself a survivor, and has called in all sorts of favors and loans to get his kitchen running by Memorial Day.

“This is a new opportunity,” he said. “A new start. To me, this is the only way: you get up and you do it again.”

Douglas Lentz, co-owner of the Inlet Café, a seafood joint, was more blunt. “I got no choice in the matter but to rebuild,” he said as he pushed a wheelbarrow full of building materials into his restaurant.

Tracey Johnson is more optimistic than Merker, her fiancé. She sees hope in that she's managed to hire a small team of local contractors who are, in piecemeal fashion, slowly putting her house back together.

“I look at it this way: I’m not going anywhere,” she said one warm, breezy Friday in early May. “I’ve lived in this town my whole life. I’m not leaving it to be a resort town.”

A few blocks away, on Shrewsbury Avenue, Regina Yahara-Splain stepped out onto the deck of her ravaged two-story home, across the street from a marina. To her right she could see the place where she nearly drowned while fleeing Sandy, clinging to a fence as the storm surge heaved to her chest. As she recalled the experience, tears streaked mascara across her cheeks.

A disabled widow, Yahara-Splain has borrowed from her retirement accounts to raise enough money to rebuild and raise her house. After months of phone calls, reams of paperwork and thousands of dollars in fees, work was finally underway. Talking about that revived her mood, and she began to daydream about returning home for good.

She closed her eyes and let the sun warm her face. She listened to the gulls, a flag snapping in the wind. She took a gulp of salty air. She imagined pulling an air mattress out there and sleeping under the stars, like she used to.

For the first time in a long while, she could see it happening: something very good coming out of something very bad.

“I wouldn’t live in another town," she said. "The people here have come together so strong. People say, ‘How could you stay?’ I tell them, ‘How could I not?”

She smiled. “What greater place could you ever imagine?”

A gay couple was attacked early Tuesday in SoHo and a man was beaten in the East Village, hours after thousands marched to protest the killing of a gay man and several other bias attacks that have shaken the community, officials said.

Mayor Bloomberg said at a news conference Tuesday that "New York City has zero tolerance for intolerance."

"We are a place that celebrates diversity ... hate crimes like these are an offense against all we stand for as a city, and we will do everything possible to stop them," Bloomberg added.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the two men in the SoHo attack were walking on Broadway between Prince and Houston streets at about 5 a.m. when two men started yelling anti-gay remarks in English and Spanish. The victims, 41 and 42, are Hispanic.

The men were both punched, and one suffered an eye injury, sources said.

Police said two suspects, 32 and 33, were arrested and face a charge of assault as a hate crime.

In the East Village beating, Kelly said two men who had known each other for about a month were out together in Manhattan on Monday. At some point they began fighting about the victim being gay.

The other man then became "enraged," Kelly said, and hurled anti-gay slurs before he beat him unconscious. In that case, the 39-year-old suspect, who is homeless, was arrested and charged with felony assault and aggravated harassment as hate crimes, among other offenses.

Dan Contarino, the victim, told NBC 4 New York he thought the recent spate of attacks have to do with "society changing quickly" as gay marriage becomes legal in more states, causing people with "repressed anger" to lash out. 

"I'm very lucky," said Contarino. "I could be 6 feet under right now."

The Empire State Pride Agenda said in a statement Tuesday that "enough is enough."

"No more violence. We won't stand for it as a community or as a city," said Nathan Schaefer, executive director.

On Monday evening, gay activists and supporters marched to condemn the death of 32-year-old Mark Carson in Greenwich Village, and several other attacks on gays in recent weeks.

Carson was killed Saturday as he walked with a companion through the Village. Police say a man charged with murder as a hate crime shot Carson in the head.

Officials said Monday that police would increase their presence there and in nearby neighborhoods through the end of June, Gay Pride Month.

Police say there has been a rise in anti-gay crimes overall so far this year, to 24 from 14 during the same period last year. 

Kelly said police believe bias crimes are actually underreported, but said there is one theory that the NYPD gets more reports of them after a high-profile case is in the news.

One of the most expensive homes to hit the market in the United States is now on sale—in Connecticut.

The $190 million Greenwich estate includes two islands in the Long Island Sound, nearly a mile of shore front property, and a rich history dating back to the late 19th Century.

The 12-bedroom home was built in 1898 and purchased just after the turn of the century by the daughter of George Lauder, a partner in Carnegie Steel. It was then purchased in the early 1980s by timber tycoon John Rudey, who has decided to sell the property, the Wall Street Journal reported.

An 1,800-foot driveway with cobblestone gutters leads up to the so-called Copper Beech Farm, which boasts a pool, a spa, a grass tennis court, a greenhouse, a stone carriage house and cottage on more than 50 acres of land.

Inside, the home has all the marks of old world luxury: a library with a fireplace, balconies, a staff wing, staff kitchen, dumb waiter, wine cellar, skylights and marble bathrooms.

It's unclear whether the home will actually sell for its asking price. The Journal points out that in 2009 Candy Spelling made headlines when she listed her Los Angeles mansion at $150 million—the home sold for $85 million.

The property is by far the most expensive currently listed on the site of David Ogilvy & Associates, an affiliate of Christie's International Real Estate. The next priciest available is another Greenwich estate selling for just $32 million.

Christie's shows several properties hovering around the $100 million-mark, but none that touch the Copper Beech Farm's $190 price tag. A Beverly Hills home that appeared in "The Godfather" and "The Bodyguard" is on sale for $115 million, as is a $95 million Fifth Avenue residence overlooking Central Park.

After two years of campaigning bolstered by record contributions, the mayoral race between City Councilman Eric Garcetti and Controller Wendy Greuel comes to a close Tuesday as voters take to the polls.

The winner of the run-off election to replace outgoing Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will give the city of Los Angeles either its first female or first Jewish mayor—a leader who will inherit a city still struggling to pull itself from an extended fiscal slump.

In their sprint to the finish line, both Democratic contenders with similar voting records tried to differentiate themselves from each other in down-to-the-wire pitches to undecided voters.

“If you want an independent mayor with proven results, somebody who’s delivered neighborhood turnaround, who’s balanced budgets, I’m your guy," said Garcetti, who was leading by 7 percentage points in the most recent USC Price/Los Angeles Time poll released Friday.

Greuel, who has racked up endorsements from high profile figures, including former President Bill Clinton and Magic Johnson, emphasized her experience as the city government's top critic for the last three years.

“My history has been one of stepping up to the plate and being that tough fiscal watchdog,” she said. “My history has been for standing up for the taxpayers of L.A. and that’s what I’m going to do as mayor.”

The contest to succeed Villaraigosa, who leaves office at the end of June with high marks from his constituents, broke spending records Saturday as outside contributions topped $33 million.

The candidates have received rival endorsements—Greuel from the L.A. Chamber of Commerce, the Daily News and U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer; Garcetti from the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, the L.A. Times and Newark Mayor Cory Booker—but the money and attention the race has garnered is not expected to be matched by voter turnout.

When the two faced off in March for a primary contest, which failed to give either the majority needed for an outright victory, only 21 percent of the city’s registered voters cast a ballot in the race.

Leading up to Tuesday's runoff election, both candidates have made more aggressive attempts to woo Latinos, which represent nearly half of the city's population and roughly a third of eligible voters.

Garcetti, a Spanish-speaker who leads among the coveted demographic, according to recent polls, has talked about his paternal grandparents' emigration from Mexico. Greuel, who has endorsements from prominent Latino leaders, has stumped before Spanish-speaking crowds.

"The candidates are reaching out to the Latino community because they know, with ... a few hundred votes, they can change the entire makeup of the city," Elisa Sequeira, the head of civic engagement for California's National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials told NBC 4 LA.

Just 400,000 of the city's 1.8 million registered voters are expected to cast ballots in the election Tuesday. A smaller voter pool, however, does give some advantages to those who do participate.

“These smaller elections, when you vote for city council, mayor, you have more say. Your vote counts more and as an individual, it affects us more,” web designer Mary Jane Zorick told NBC 4 LA.

Voters will also select  a new city controller and city attorney Tuesday. Polls close at 8 p.m. and results can be monitored here.

The race to become LA’s next mayor was tight Tuesday night with City Councilman Eric Garcetti leading by a slim but swelling margin.

With 44 percent of the precincts reporting as of 12:55 a.m., Garcetti had garnered 54 percent of the vote. His opponent City Controller Wendy Greuel had netted 46 percent of the vote.

The winner of the run-off election to replace outgoing Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will give the city of Los Angeles either its first female or first Jewish mayor—a leader who will inherit a city still struggling to pull itself from an extended fiscal slump.

The contest to succeed Villaraigosa, who leaves office at the end of June with high marks from his constituents, broke spending records Saturday as outside contributions topped $33 million.

Although the race was too close to call, Garcetti was optimistic as he addressed his supporters Tuesday night.

"If this (lead) holds, and it looks like it will, on July 1, we will assume the responsibility of creating jobs, of balancing the budget, of keeping the streets safe, and of improving the quality of life for all Angelenos," he said.

Refresh this page for updates and watch Today in LA for the very latest on the election results.

Nearly a year after his face was horribly maimed in a vicious attack on the MacArthur Causeway, Ronald Poppo spoke publicly for the first time in a video released by Jackson Memorial Hospital Tuesday.

Wearing a Miami Heat hat and sitting on a hospital bed, Poppo is seen strumming a guitar before giving thanks to his doctors and the community.

"Thanks for considering, helping out, people in my predicament need to be helped out and I'm sure there's other people also that have the same type of predicament," Poppo said in the brief video. "I thank the outpouring of people in the community, I will always be grateful for them."

Miami Face-Mauling Victim Recalls Attack

The video was released during a news conference at Jackson Medical Center, where the 66-year-old continues to recover from the injuries he suffered in the May 26, 2012 attack.

New photos from Poppo's birthday celebration at the hospital were also released.

Poppo remains completely blind following the attack and has undergone four surgeries since the attack but remains in good spirits, his doctors said.

Face Mauler Allegedly Met Victim Before Attack: Report

"He's had a long year but he's managed to cope quite well with what's happened to him," Dr. Wrood Kassira said. "I would say he's content with where he is right now."

Kassira, one of Jackson's plastic surgeons, said Poppo had skin grafting surgery and all his wounds have closed.

"He had extensive trauma to his face, it was bad," Kassira said.

Poppo has been told of his options for more surgeries or prosthetics for his eyes and nose, but he hasn't been interested in them. He has undergone four surgeries and is unwilling to have further reconstruction.

"There's still work that can be done, but he's more than happy with how he is now, he's quite grateful," Kassira said.

Poppo has gained more than 50 pounds since he was brought to Ryder Trauma Center, and continues to work with an occupational therapist who has taught him how to dress himself, feed himself, shower and shave.

Doctors gave Poppo a guitar to help with his therapy, and he practices with it every day. He played guitar 40 years ago when he was in a band and is trying to pick up chords but not being able to see makes it tough, they said.

The incident unfolded when a naked, 31-year-old Rudy Eugene attacked Poppo and stripped him of his clothes on the causeway last May, police said.

Only Marijuana Found in Face Chewer's System: Medical Examiner

An officer eventually shot and killed Eugene after he refused to stop the attack, police said. By that point Eugene had gnawed away more than half of Poppo's face, gauged out his left eye, and severely damaged his right one.

Authorities had initially speculated that bath salts may have been the cause of the attack, but the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner said tests showed only marijuana in Eugene's system.

Doctors, meanwhile, say Poppo is adjusting to his new life.

"I think he wants the world to know he's not traumatized by this," Dr. Urmen Desai said. "He's a simple guy and he's happy and grateful for being alive after such an incident."

Click Here to Watch the YouTube Video

Two agents with the FBI's elite hostage rescue team apparently fell to their deaths while on a counterterorrism training exercise off Virginia Beach Friday.

An FBI spokeswoman said Tuesday that the two were rappelling down a rope from a helicopter to a ship that was about 12 miles off the coast when the helicopter ran into some kind of trouble.

Agent Christopher Lorek, 41, and Special Agent Stephen Shaw, 40, fell a "significant distance," Special Agent Ann Todd said.

Both men were a part of the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group and were on a weeklong training trip in Hampton Roads when they fell Friday. The agents were airlifted to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, where they were pronounced dead.

More investigation into the incident continues. An official cause of death is not yet known, pending toxicology tests.

The accident happened on a Military Sealift Command ship the FBI leased from the Navy, reported WAVY-TV, citing a Navy spokesperson.

Navy personnel were not involved in the training, which the FBI spokeswoman described as a "maritime counterterrorism exercise."

Lorek and Shaw were based with the rest of the CIRG team in Quantico, Va.

"We mourn the loss of two brave and courageous men," FBI Director Robert Mueller said in the statement. "Like all who serve on the Hostage Rescue Team, they accept the highest risk each and every day, when training and on operational missions, to keep our nation safe. Our hearts are with their wives, children, and other loved ones who feel their loss most deeply. And they will always be part of the FBI family."

Lorek joined the FBI in 1996 and is survived by his wife and two daughters, ages 11 and 8. Shaw worked for the FBI for eight years. He is survived by his wife, 3-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son.

Lorek and family joined Three Chopt Church of Christ in suburban Richmond about six years ago, minister Bob Odle said. "They are as solid as they come,'' Odle said. "They were here every time the doors were open."

Church members knew he had a high-risk job and was often out of town, but they didn't know exactly what he did.

The FBI will be holding a private memorial service for the agents Tuesday.

The Hostage Rescue Team is part of the Critical Incident Response Group based at Quantico. The team is trained in military tactics and outfitted with combat-style gear and weapons.

The group was formed 30 years ago in preparation for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. The team is deployed quickly to trouble spots and provides assistance to local FBI offices during hostage situations. It has participated in hostage situations more than 800 times in the U.S. and elsewhere since 1983.

Some of their preparation consists of scuba diving, dropping quickly out of helicopters and battling in close quarters.

"They're really the best of the best as far as civilians. Their only counterpart would be something like Navy SEAL Team 6 or U.S. Army Delta," said Clint Van Zandt, a former FBI hostage negotiator who deployed with the rescue team. "There is no other police or FBI SWAT team that's their equal, because that's their full-time job. That's all they do is train for highly critical terrorist, hostage and criminal situations.''

The hostage rescue team is organized into tactical units made up of assaulters and snipers who are supported by helicopter and intelligence and communication teams, among others. Unlike FBI SWAT teams that train several days a month, the hostage team preps full time.

The team made headlines earlier this year when they successfully rescued a 5-year-old boy who was being held hostage in an underground bunker in Alabama. Agents killed the boy's captor, Jimmy Lee Dykes, who took the boy from a school bus.

• READ MORE: CIRG Helps Rescue Kidnapped Alabama Boy

In 2011, two team members helped apprehend a Somali man who prosecutors say is the highest-ranking pirate whom federal officials have ever captured. Mohammad Saaili Shibin was the chief negotiator for a group of pirates who took four Americans hostage aboard their yacht and later killed them. Unlike the other pirates in the case, Shibin was arrested in Somalia. In August, a federal judge sentenced Shibin to a dozen life sentences.

Team members also responded to the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa and have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Domestically, their resume also includes rescuing nine hostages held at a federal prison in Talladega, Ala. in 1991 by Cuban inmates who were rioting to prevent their return to Cuba.

Stay with News4 and NBCWashington.com for the latest on this developing story.

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Metro-North regular service returned to normal on Wednesday morning, five days after the train crash and derailment involving Metro-North Railroad trains near Bridgeport on Friday, May 17.

Patrick Coughlin, of West Haven, was one of the commuters traveling by train on Wednesday morning.

"I drove to work Friday. Monday, I was about an hour and a half late, so it wasn't too bad," he said.

A track inspection car did a run-through just before 3 p.m. on Tuesday.

"With one of the two damaged tracks rebuilt and returned to service, beginning with the 3:07 p.m. departure from Grand Central Terminal, Metro-North will operate about half of the regular eastbound PM peak service and regular hourly westbound service with the 4:23 PM train from New Haven," Metro-North said in a statement issued on Tuesday.

Amtrak has also  resumed service between New York and New Haven today.

Work has been going on around the clock since Saturday night, when the National Transportation Safety Board completed its initial investigation of the scene and allowed Metro-North to begin removing the two 8-car trains, according to the MTA.

Malloy conceded that traffic on Connecticut's highways was not as congested as had been predicted, but urged people to carpool or work from home on Tuesday to avoid major problems.

"We are confident that the reconstruction work, inspection and testing will be completed in time for a normal rush hour on Wednesday," said Howard Permut, president of Metro-North.  "We are grateful for the tireless work of all departments and employees engaged in this huge task."

About 100 workers have been on the job around the clock since Saturday removing the damaged trains and repairing the track, Permut said.  Crews are rebuilding about 2,000 feet of track, according to Permut.

The National Transportation Safety Board authorized the removal of rail cars from the crash site on Saturday night, allowing the investigation and clean-up process to proceed. All rail cars were removed by Sunday afternoon and taken to the Bridgeport railyard, according to the NTSB.

Investigators are looking into a broken part of the rail that underwent repairs last month, but have not determined whether it was a pre-existing fracture or if it occurred as a result of the accident, according to NTSB spokesperson Earl Weener, who spoke at a news conference on Saturday afternoon. The board said the FBI has ruled out foul play in the investigation.

The trains were traveling at approximately 70 mph at the time of the crash, which is the posted speed limit, according to the NTSB.

Malloy and other officials spoke at a news conference on Saturday morning where they described a grisly scene after a Metro-North commuter train heading east from New York City derailed and was hit by an oncoming train heading west from New Haven.

"The damage is absolutely staggering," Sen. Blumenthal said. "Ribbons on the sides of cars are torn away like ribbons of clothes."

The NTSB's investigation could take seven to 10 days but that does not mean that service shutdown will take that long, board spokesman Earl Weener said..

The eastbound Metro-North train derailed just after 6 p.m. and was hit between the Bridgeport and Fairfield stations, officials said.

According to Metro-North, around 750 people rode the shuttle trains and boarded buses at Bridgeport to Stamford, which is 20 percent of the 4,000 people who ordinarily board trains at New Haven, Milford and Stratford during the morning peak.

However, overall morning peak ridership on the entire New Haven Line was down just 20 percent, indicating that many people drove to other stations to catch a train.

Metro-North has set up a toll-free number for customers on the trains involved in Friday’s crash to provide assistance. Call at 1-800-638-7646 for information on referral/support services, lost & found items and assistance with any paperwork.

Service Plan

The New Haven Line Service plan is posted on the MTA Web site.

Navy dolphins discovered an unusual torpedo off the coast of San Diego and handlers said it was obvious within minutes that the find was significant.

The dolphins were working off the coast of Coronado on mine-hunting training exercises in March when they recovered a 130-year-old Howell torpedo – one of the first self-propelled torpedoes developed and used by the U.S. Navy.

“There were only 50 Howell torpedoes made, and we discovered one of the two ever found,” said Braden Duryee, operations supervisor for the SSC Pacific Biosciences Division.

Within two weeks, two dolphins marked the object on the sea floor doing their regular daily training exercises.

The dolphins, named Ten and Spetz, followed procedure when an object of interest is discovered by surfacing and touching the side of a trailing boat in a certain manner.

Navy divers then went in and recovered it.

“It was puzzling and exciting,” said Chris Harris, Operations Supervisor for Navy Marine Mammals Program.

It’s so old, the divers actually Google'd information to identify it.

The rare torpedo was 11-feet long and propelled by a flywheel spun before launch.

“It’s almost Victorian in its design,” Harris said.

It could move at a speed of 25 knots and had a range of 400 yards SSC Pacific experts said.

The Naval Undersea Museum houses the only other known Howell torpedo in existence today.

The Howell torpedo recovered by SSC Pacific, is stamped “USN No. 24” and is said to be in pristine shape.

Duryee said it’s no surprise the dolphins found the item. What’s surprising to him is the torpedo's age.

As NBC 7 reported in November 2002, the dolphins train almost daily in the shadow of San Diego's skyline. Watch Video: Navy-Trained Dolphins Search for Bombs

In 1959, Navy scientists studied dolphins in an attempt to design a faster torpedo. That program quickly shifted focus to covert training. Several decades later, the program was declassified.

The dolphins are trained to find any types of items that are man-made. in the 50 years MMP has been around, dolphins have discovered and marked a number of unique items in the ocean.

In addition to dolphins, the Navy uses sea lions to recover objects like military hardware off the bottom of the ocean. 

A massive 200 mph tornado ripped through the Oklahoma City area on Monday afternoon and left a 20-mile path of destruction in its wake. At least 24 people were killed, the Oklahoma City medical examiner said, and rescue crews are searching frantically as night falls to find survivors in the wreckage.

“The whole city looks like a debris field,” said Mayor Glenn Lewis of the city of Moore, which appeared to be hardest hit.

Check out the videos, images and tweets from the ground:

For the next week, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy plans to live on the equivalent of a food stamp budget to understand what it means to live on a food budget of $4.80 per day.

Murphy said he is taking the Food Stamp Challenge to better understand how the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program works on a personal level, according to a news release.

The challenge started on Monday.

“427,000 people in Connecticut rely on SNAP benefits to feed themselves and their families,” Murphy said in a statement. “Spending some time living on this budget gives policymakers a firsthand look at the realities of maintaining a balanced and nutritious diet on an extremely limited budget. It’s not easy, but it’s important for people in Washington to understand what our constituents who rely on SNAP face every day. Some lawmakers have proposed steep, damaging cuts to SNAP as part of the Farm Bill here in Congress, and we owe it our constituents  to face up to the reality of those cuts.”
 
As of January of 2013, 12 percent of the state’s population participates in the program. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the Food Stamp Program, the average monthly benefit in Connecticut is $143.89 per family member, which is $4.80 per day or $1.60 per meal, according to Murphy’s office.
 
Murphy will keep track of his meals and post observations throughout the week via Twitter and Facebook.

In 2011, U.S. Congressman Joe Courtney took the challenge. He and his wife are on $32 per week and he blogged about the experience. http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/Congressman-Lives-on-Food-Stamp-Budget-for-a-Week-132787213.html
 

A woman is fighting for her life at a hospital after being set on fire Monday morning inside a North Texas convenience store.

Witnesses said a woman walked into the Buy and Save convenience store at the Texaco gas station on Long Ave. and Azle Ave. in Fort Worth and doused the victim with flammable liquid.

Witnesses said it "took one second" for the attacker to light the victim on fire after dousing her with the liquid. Witnesses said they couldn't tell how she ignited the fire. They added she didn't say anything to the victim before lighting her on fire.

The victim's friend, standing nearby, caught on fire as well.

The attacker got into a car that was waiting for her in the parking lot and they drove off.

Fort Worth police haven't identified the attacker, anyone else in the vehicle, or the kind of car. Detectives spent seven hours at the store collecting evidence and taking photographs.

The Buy and Save had surveillance cameras inside the store. Police are looking through those videos now trying to identify the attacker.

NBC5 spoke with Alex Hilo, the night shift worker at the Buy and Save.

"I was making the coffee and I see a bunch of fire going, I go and try to help her out. I threw some water on her, to put the fire out. But this thing happened too fast," Hilo said.

"All I saw was just fire. Somebody threw something and lit someone on fire. It was scary thing," he added. "All the top of her body [was burned]. Her hair, her face, everything was burned."

Hilo said the victim's screams for help sounded like a "nightmare."

Moments after the attack, Hilo rushed into action. He grabbed jugs of water from the store shelves and poured them on the victim. He also started grabbing at her clothes.

"I wanted to take her clothes, there was liquid on it, so I knew if I could get her clothes off, there'd be less fire," he said.

The victim was transported via helicopter to a Dallas hospital. Firefighters said she has life-threatening burns over her entire body. Her name has not been released because police haven't contacted her family.

"It appears to be a targeted attack. That's what it looks like right now. This women had some type of previous relationship prior to this incident occurring,” said Tim Hardeman, with the Fort Worth Fire Department.

The victim's friend was also rushed to the hospital with burns over her back.

Alex Hilo also suffered minor burns on his hands and forearms from trying to save the women's lives. He was treated on scene.

"There's no time to think. I had to act fast, fast fast," he said.

Hilo said the victims are regular customers during his shift, but he doesn't know their names. He also said the suspect is a regular customer, too, but he doesn't know her name either.

NBC 5's Greg Janda contributed to an earlier version of this story.

The body of a Dallas firefighter who radioed for help after becoming trapped in a burning condominium has been recovered.

The firefighter, Stanley Wilson, was among the 100 Dallas firefighters who responded to a six-alarm fire at the Hearthwood Condominiums at 12363 Abrams Road Monday morning.

According to Dallas Fire-Rescue Chief Louie Bright III, Wilson was a 28-year-veteran of the fire department. Wilson was a native North Texan and a Lake Highlands graduate.

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said of Wilson, "He's a hero. As I told his boys, they should be very proud."

Wilson is survived by a wife and two sons.

When firefighters arrived shortly before 3 a.m., smoke was seen billowing through the roof of the complex. Dallas Fire-Rescue's Jason Evans said firefighters initially started to attack the fire offensively, but moved to a defensive posture due to how fast the fire was growing.

At about 5 a.m., Wilson radioed that he was trapped inside the building and that he wasn't sure where he was. Evans said crews had not been able to reach Wilson by radio since that message.

At about 9:15 a.m., Wilson was found. He was removed from the rubble, covered in an American flag and carried to an ambulance as dozens of firefighters and onlookers flanked either side, removed their helmets and saluted the procession.

The DFR ambulance then left the scene with a police escort, but without lights or sirens.

Two other firefighters were injured battling the fire and were hospitalized.  Evans did not believe the injuries to those firefighters were life-threatening.

Even though the large fire made searching for the trapped firefighter, or any other residents, difficult, five residents were rescued from the fire. Some older residents were seen climbing down the ladder of a DFR fire engine to safety.

Two injured residents were treated at the scene for minor smoke inhalation. There are no reports of any other injured or missing residents. At this time, the only known fatality is the firefighter, Stanley Wilson.

Many other residents of the community were evacuated. 

Officials said at least 24 units were destroyed and that the roof of the building collapsed in some areas, leaving third-floor apartments exposed. Other damaged portions of the building may have collapsed as well.

Church leaders from Park Cities Baptist Church spent Monday night with Wilson's family.

"Stan is just a selfless man, led his boys to be selfless leaders," said Dr. Jeff Warren of Park Cities Baptist Church.

"He was always looking out for everybody else," said David Ochoa, Boy Scouts of America Troop 890 Scout Master.

Church leaders will meet tomorrow with members of Wilson's family to prepare for his funeral, which will include both Dallas firefighters and members of Troop 890.

The cause of the fire is under investigation.

NBC 5's Kevin Cokely contributed to this report.

A 14-year-old girl riding a city bus in Queens, New York, Saturday on her way home from a sweet-16 party was shot in the head and killed by a stray bullet from gunfire on the street, police said.

Police identified the victim Sunday as Daja Robinson of South Jamaica.

Robinson was sitting about three rows from the back of the Q6 bus at about 8:45 p.m. near Sutphin and Rockaway boulevards in South Jamaica when the shot came through the bus and killed her.

The shots were fired toward the bus while it was moving, according to police. Investigators recovered nine bullet shell casings.

Robinson was with two friends returning from the party at Onyx Lounge on Rockaway Boulevard, according to Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.

Kelly said police didn't believe Robinson was the intended target, and they are looking into possible gang involvement in the shooting. 

No arrests have been made. 

The MTA says that the clean-up process has begun at the Metro-North Railroad crash site after Friday's rush hour derailment in Connecticut that injured 72 people.

The National Transportation Safety Board authorized the removal of rail cars from the crash site on Saturday night, allowing the investigation and clean-up process to proceed. All rail cars were removed by Sunday afternoon and taken to the Bridgeport railyard, according to the NTSB.

"Our crews will essentially be rebuilding two thousand feet of damaged track, and overhead wires and signal system," said Metro-North Railroad President Howard Permut.

Crews will work around-the-clock over multiple days to rebuild, which means disruption to the New Haven line will persist in the coming week, Permut said.

Investigators are looking into a broken part of the rail that underwent repairs last month, but have not determined whether it was a pre-existing fracture or if it occurred as a result of the accident, according to NTSB spokesperson Earl Weener, who spoke at a news conference on Saturday afternoon. The board said the FBI has ruled out foul play in the investigation.

The trains were traveling at approximately 70 mph at the time of the crash, which is the posted speed limit, according to the NTSB.

Officials arrived on the scene on Saturday morning to begin investigating the cause of the train crash, injuries sustained by the commuters and operator performance.

Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy and other officials spoke at a news conference on Saturday morning where they described a grisly scene after a Metro-North commuter train heading east from New York City derailed and was hit by an oncoming train heading west from New Haven.

"The damage is absolutely staggering," Sen. Blumenthal said. "Ribbons on the sides of cars are torn away like ribbons of clothes."

The NTSB's investigation could take seven to 10 days but that does not mean that service shutdown will take that long, board spokesman Earl Weener said..

The eastbound Metro-North train derailed just after 6:00 p.m. and was hit between the Bridgeport and Fairfield stations, officials said.

"We came to a sudden halt. We were jerked. There was smoke," Alex Cohen, a Canadian passenger on the westbound train en route to New York, told NBC Connecticut.

"People were screaming; people were really nervous. We were pretty shaken up. They had to smash a window to get us out," he said.

St. Vincent Hospital in Bridgeport, Conn. said on Saturday that it saw a total of 46 patients, six of whom were admitted for treatment.  As of Saturday night, all patients remained in the hospital and were reportedly in stable condition.

Bridgeport Hospital saw 26 patients and admitted three. Two of those patients were in critical condition a day after the accident, and one was in stable condition.

An Amtrak train traveling from New Orleans to Chicago derailed Sunday with at least 197 passengers on board, according to officials.

The City of New Orleans train No. 58 was scheduled to arrive in Chicago, but derailed at 9:30 a.m. CDT just outside Chicago’s Union Station on 16th Street, officials said.

Shuttle buses transported passengers to Union Station and no injuries have been reported, authorities said.

Amtrak officials said the wheels of the train "lost contact with the tracks," but no further details were immediately available Sunday morning.

Trains on Metra's Rock Island District line are blocked from entering or exiting the LaSalle Street station. Commuters on delayed Metra trains are being routed to CTA buses, which will take them around the blockage, according to Metra's website.

CTA is honoring Metra passes for commuters between LaSalle Street station and their 35th Street station on the Green Line. Commuters can then board metra trains from the Lou Jones station, Metra said.

Metra trains No. 214 and 209 will not operate Sunday due the obstruction, according to Metra.

Amtrak train No. 391 is also delayed up to three hours, Amtrak officials said.

Check back for updates on this developing story.

It's all about the odds, and one lone ticket in Florida has beaten them all by matching each of the numbers drawn for the highest Powerball jackpot in history at an estimated $590.5 million, lottery officials said Sunday.

The single winner was sold at a supermarket in Zephyrhills, Fla., according to Florida Lottery executive Cindy O'Connell. She told The Associated Press by telephone that more details would be released later.

"This would be the sixth Florida Powerball winner and right now, it's the sole winner of the largest ever Powerball jackpot," O'Connell told AP. "We're delighted right now that we have the sole winner."

She said Florida has had more Powerball winners than any other state.

The winner was not immediately identified publicly and O'Connell did not give any indication just hours after Saturday's drawing whether anyone had already stepped forward with that winning ticket.

With four out of every five possible combinations of Powerball numbers in play, lottery executives said earlier that someone was almost certain to win the game's highest jackpot, a windfall of hundreds of millions of dollars — and that's after taxes.

Saturday night's winning numbers were 10, 13, 14, 22 and 52, with a Powerball of 11.

Estimates had earlier put the jackpot at around $600 million. But Powerball's online site said Sunday that the jackpot had reached an estimated $590.5 million.

Terry Rich, CEO of the Iowa Lottery, initially confirmed that one Florida winning ticket had been sold. He told AP that following the Florida winner, the Powerball grand prize was being reset at an estimated jackpot of $40 million, or about $25.1 million cash value.

The chances of winning the prize were astronomically low: 1 in 175.2 million. That's how many different ways you can combine the numbers when you play. But lottery officials estimated that about 80 percent of those possible combinations had been purchased recently.

While the odds are low for any one individual or individuals, O'Connell said, the chance that one hits paydirt is what makes Powerball an "exciting game to play."

"There is just the chance that you will have the opportunity and Florida is a huge Powerball state. We have had more winners than any other state that participates in Powerball."

Such longshot odds didn't deter people across Powerball-playing states — 43 plus Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands — from lining up at gas stations and convenience stores Saturday for their chance at striking it filthy rich.

Calls by AP to the Publix supermarket outlet in Florida where the winning ticket was sold were not answered Sunday.

Elsewhere, Rich said, lottery officials reported 33 winning tickets for a $1,000,000 prize each were sold around 17 states, led by six tickets in New York. He said lotteries reported 2 winning tickets each for the $2,000,000 PowerPlay, one in New York and the other in South Carolina.

Before the drawing, there was a rush for tickets around the country.

At a mini market in the heart of Los Angeles' Chinatown, employees broke the steady stream of customers into two lines: One for Powerball ticket buyers and one for everybody else. Some people appeared to be looking for a little karma.

"We've had two winners over $10 million here over the years, so people in the neighborhood think this is the lucky store," employee Gordon Chan said as he replenished a stack of lottery tickets on a counter.

The world's largest jackpot was a $656 million Mega Millions jackpot in March 2012. If $600 million, the jackpot would currently include a $376.9 million cash option.

Clyde Barrow, a public policy professor at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, specializes in the gaming industry. He said one of the key factors behind the ticket-buying frenzy is the size of the jackpot — people are interested in the easy investment.

"Even though the odds are very low, the investment is very small," he said. "Two dollars gets you a chance."

That may be why Ed McCuen has a Powerball habit that's as regular as clockwork. The 57-year-old electrical contractor from Savannah, Ga., buys one ticket a week, regardless of the possible loot. It's a habit he didn't alter Saturday.

"You've got one shot in a gazillion or whatever," McCuen said, tucking his ticket in his pocket as he left a local convenience store. "You can't win unless you buy a ticket. But whether you buy one or 10 or 20, it's insignificant."

Seema Sharma doesn't seem to think so. The newsstand employee in Manhattan's Penn Station purchased $80 worth of tickets for herself. She also was selling tickets all morning at a steady pace, instructing buyers where to stand if they wanted machine-picked tickets or to choose their own numbers.

"I work very hard — too hard — and I want to get the money so I can finally relax," she said. "You never know."

A deaf 11-year-old mini Yorkie apparently taken by dognappers demanding $1,000 from his owners was dropped off by someone in a white car near his owner's home on Saturday, the dog's owner told NBC4 News.

Someone speeding by in a white car with tinted windows dropped off the dog named Walter. A woman walking her dog in the neighborhood noticed the Yorkie, checked his dog tag and called the owner, Tricia O’Kelley.

Walter, who weighs about 5 pounds, hadn't been seen since Thursday afternoon in the family’s fenced-in backyard along Los Feliz Boulevard in the Griffith Park area. 

A blocked number called O’Kelley’s cellphone, which is listed on Walter’s tags, about 10:15 p.m. Thursday.

The man on the other end of the line told O’Kelley he wants $1,000 for the dog’s safe return. O’Kelley said she heard another man laughing in the background.

Her husband took over negotiations. The dognapper said he’d call back and hung up.

Within minutes, the blocked number called back and this time, O’Kelley’s husband, Adam Rosenblatt, put the call on speaker so the police on a second phone could hear.

The dognapper laid out his demands.

He wanted the family to create phony fliers offering a $1,000 reward for Walter’s return and listed streets on which he wanted them posted. Then, he would bring one of those posters to a Chevron station on Western and Franklin avenues where he would exchange the dog for the cash.

Police suggested they make the fliers and meet the men at the gas station with a plain-clothed officer.

O’Kelley’s husband was in the process of hanging up the fliers when the man called back, saying he’d been lied to and that police were at the gas station.

“He said, ‘Don’t lie to me. I’m keeping your dog,’” O’Kelley said.

That last phone call at 11:15 p.m. Thursday came from a 7-Eleven payphone in North Hollywood, O’Kelley said. And that was the last time she heard from whoever has Walter.

Walter has a condition that causes his trachea to collapse, which is common for his breed.

Walter was outfitted with tags and has a microchip.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney holds the daily briefing.

History will have to wait at least one more year.

Orb, the Kentucky Derby champion who many hoped would become the first Triple Crown winner in 35 years, finished fourth in the Preakness Stakes on Saturday, as 15-1 longshot Oxbow pulled off a surprise wire-to-wire win at Pimlico.

"It's so special," said Oxbow jockey Gary Stevens, who came out of retirement this year at age 50. "We were kind of flying under the radar after the Derby. Didn't get a lot of respect."

Oxbow trainer D. Wayne Lukas seemed to take pleasure from dashing Orb's Triple Crown hopes.

"I get paid to spoil dreams," Lukas said.

Orb's fate may have been sealed days before the race, when he drew the No. 1 post position along the rail -- only two horses have won the Preakness from that position over the last 63 years. Sure enough, Orb got boxed in against the rail by a pack of horses early in the race, and could never find room to break free.

Meanwhile, Oxbow pulled ahead of the pack and never relinquished the lead.

"When I hit the half-mile pole, I just said, 'Are you kidding me, is this happening?'" said Stevens, who worked for NBC as a racing analyst during his seven-year retirement.

Oxbow finished the 1 3/16th-mile race in 1:57.54. Itsmyluckyday finished second, Mylute finished third and Orb, the 3-5 favorite, finished fourth.

But nobody ever gave Oxbow a serious threat.

It's a landmark win for Lukas: Oxbow's Preakness victory marks the trainer's 14th Triple Crown win, the most ever. He's won the Preakness six times, and the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont four times each. He passed James Fitzsimmons, who has won 13 Triple Crown races.

Jockey Gary Stevens has now notched three wins apiece at the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont over his career.

Oxbow's win means the Triple Crown drought continues.

In the lead-up to the Preakness, Orb seemed like a prime candidate to end that drought, and bettors made him a heavy favorite. His breathtaking late push in the Kentucky Derby had people believing: He emerged from the back of the pack down the stretch, blew past a large group of horses and pulled away from the pack for a dominant win. Combined with a pedigree to make race fans drool -- his blood lines includes two Triple Crown winners, Seattle Slew (1977) and Secretariat (1973) -- many thought the three-year-old colt would take a place among the horse-racing elite.

Instead, he'll become another in a long line of almosts and what-ifs. Only 11 horses have won the Triple Crown, and none since Affirmed in 1978.

Orb wasn't the only one trying to make history on Saturday who came up short in Baltimore.

Rosie Napravnik, the jockey riding Mylute, hoped to become the first female jockey to win the race. Instead Mylute finished in third place.

Kevin Krigger, the jockey riding Goldencents, hoped to become the first African-American jockey to win the race since 1898. He too came up short as Goldencents finished in fifth place.

Chicago's Navy Pier went into the record books this weekend for longest ride on a Ferris wheel.

Beginning Friday, pier operations manager Clinton Shepherd attempted to break the Guinness World Record for the longest ride on Chicago's iconic attraction. Shepherd hopped on at 2:30 p.m. with plans to stay on for a full 48 hours.

The previous record was 30 hours and 35 seconds. Shepherd broke that record and Navy Pier lit up the sky with fireworks after 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, but he didn't stop there.

He remained on the wheel for another 18 hours to reach his 48-hour goal, setting a new record of 48 hours, 8 minutes and 25 seconds on the Ferris wheel with no sleep.

Throughout the process, fan could follow Shepherd on Twitter and ask him questions via #FWRecord. Or ride along with him to be a part of history.

Navy Pier also offered free rides on all Pier Park attractions to all active military men and women and their families ahead of Armed Forces Day on Saturday. 

“This achievement highlights Navy Pier as the number one tourist attraction in the Midwest and serves as a great attraction as the City of Chicago honors the men and women of the Armed Forces,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said.

“Navy Pier is excited to host Clinton’s world record attempt,” Navy Pier, Inc CEO Marilynn Gardner said. “We support his commitment to bringing the world record to the city of Chicago where the first Ferris wheel was built in 1893 and we are proud to partner with him to dedicate his ride to the men and women of the armed forces.”