No need to line up for cronuts tomorrow morning — Eater New York is reporting that Dominique Ansel Bakery, home of the cronut, has been shuttered by the Department of Health.

Thanks to a tipster, Eater added this picture to Twitter of the DOH notice and an ominous “CLOSED” sign hanging in the bakery's doorway.

Dominique Ansel Bakery shuttered by the DOH http://t.co/iOuKd6fx6zpic.twitter.com/k3PQFwpuuk

— Eater NY (@EaterWire) April 4, 2014

We just heard back from Dominique Ansel Bakery, which released this official statement:

Due to the video that was released showing a small mouse running across the screen for 5 seconds, the health department used it as evidence to ask us to re-cement and closed down the bakery for extermination. As a small one-shop bakery, we often feel like we're being looked at under a tremendous microscope. A lot of time people don't see the larger ramifications of their actions and how a tiny video can be sensationalized and cause harm and damages to an honest, small business that people's livelihood depends on. We of course believe that we run a clean and good operation, but see that we were targeted and will rise to the occasion to be even better.
 
Chef says we will be doing everything that was asked of us, and hope to reopen on Monday mid-day. Our team will be here in person to speak to customers live.

The inspection report is unavailable online at the time of this post, but here is the video in question that Gothamist posted of a mouse scurrying around the kitchen.Until today, the bakery has had a solid “A” grade, even though its most recent inspection from October cited the restaurant for “evidence of live mice” and docked the kitchen for not being “vermin proof.”

Here's how the restaurant fared during that last Department of Health inspection:

Dominique Ansel gained widespread notoriety almost a year ago when he invented the Cronut — a cross between a donut and a croissant. The dessert became a nationwide sensation, and lines at the SoHo bakery extended around the block.

Since then, Ansel has created everything from a deluxe s’more to a "cookie and milk" shot.

Earlier this week, the Health Department shut down a Manhattan Dunkin' Donuts after finding evidence of rats.

NOW WATCH: The Inventor Of The Cronut Shows Us How To Make His Insanely Popular Pastry

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One hundred and thirty-two years ago today the largest elephant of his time arrived in New York City. Both before and after his arrival, this 12-foot-tall 6-ton elephant named Jumbo had a tumultuous life.

Jumbo was captured as a baby in Ethiopia in 1861 and, after being sold several times, eventually ended up at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris for three years, according to Tufts Journal. There he met Matthew Scott, the man who would rehabilitate Jumbo back to health (he'd become ill after suffering from neglect) and be his keeper for the rest of his days.

After a stint in London, Barnum purchased Jumbo from the Royal Zoological Society for $10,000, according to Tufts. Despite protests from Queen Victoria, Jumbo was taken to America.

On April 9, 1882, Jumbo arrived in the Big Apple. He subsequently toured with Barnum & Bailey Circus for several years.

Jumbo died in 1885 after being hit by a train as his keeper was leading him across a seldom-used rail track, according to Tufts. Rumors persist that as Jumbo was dying he reached out his trunk to Scott.

Barnum had Jumbo's hide stuffed, and he continued to take him on circus tours. Jumbo's body was eventually given to the Barnum Museum of Natural History, where it stood until he was burned in a fire in 1975. Before that, Jumbo became Tuft's mascot. Students would pull on his tail for good luck during games and put pennies in his trunk, Tufts Journal said.

After he burned, his ashes were put in a peanut butter jar, which is still considered a good luck charm by Tufts athletes. Jumbo's legacy lives on today, not only as a Tuft's mascot but also as a musical muse for a Canadian folk singer. A life-size sculpture of the elephant was erected 100 years after he passed, in St. Thomas, Ontario, the town of the frightful railway accident.

Jumbo lives on in name, too. The word jumbo may have originated from — or at least been popularized by — Jumbo himself.

SEE ALSO: Zebra Stripes May Serve A Totally Different Purpose Than Once Thought

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The first dog was named Gucci. As Justin, my trainer (as if I were some kind of dog too!), told it, it was because Gucci’s owner wanted to advertise that she’d spent as much on him as on a designer handbag. Gucci was definitely cuter than a handbag, but a lot less practical. Bernese Mountain dogs are built to survive in the Alps, and a high-elevation Financial District apartment in New York City is hardly the same thing. Coaxing Gucci into the elevator, and keeping him from barking long enough to hustle across the marble lobby and out the service entrance, was an act of sheer will that I tried to muster and brute strength that I certainly lacked.

Out on the street hush was neither a worry nor a possibility. Instead, the jangling crowd swarming from the 1 train at Rector Street over to the Freedom Tower and the 9/11 Memorial fell heavily, like drowsy smoked bees. Wearing a cute cotton summer dress that I’d bought for two or three euros at an Italian flea market, I was trying to hit the sweet spot between cultivating an air of well-traveled sophistication that the dog-walking agency and its bourgeoise clients desired in their own lives and a free-wheeling, youthful vigor that would keep anyone from questioning why I didn’t have a real job yet.

The truth was, I was 21, stinking, and broke. In an ill-advised attempt at escape from my jobless anxiety, New York City, and hemorrhaging heartbreak, I had blown all my savings on a month of dissatisfying travel around Europe with my best friend, and made it back to the city with a tan, twenty dollars in my bank account, and nowhere to live. At the time, I was sleeping on friends’ couches and hadn’t yet gotten around to washing the bagful of laundry that I’d hauled across the Atlantic and back. I was trying not to hate the wealthier friends I’d met in college, where the elite institution we attended appeared to equalize us. I had learned about lattes and kale, started making offhand jokes about Marx, invited them to see museum exhibits with me. Then we graduated, and the chasm of our origins widened again, though it was my friends’ material comforts, and the meals they shared, that sustained me in those hardest weeks. I wondered if the tourists could smell me.

I shouldn’t have worried. They were transfixed by Gucci and Loki, a lithe greyhound who lived in Gucci’s building, and who I walked at the same time. The dogs really were lovely beasts, and after sitting bored and alone in their air-conditioned apartments all day, it was a joy for them to be out in the colors and wild odors of Manhattan, to have city children smear sticky, affectionate fingers across their snouts while bewildered visitors patted their backs for a firm and muscular reassurance that they weren’t as far from home as they feared. Suited businessmen on their Wall Street lunch breaks complimented me on the dogs’ pedigrees, on how Loki had been trained.

Before taking the job, I’d never spent more than a few minutes of my life with dogs, and if I wasn’t exactly scared of them, I was jumpy and nervous, and the animals could feel it. My ineptitude only exacerbated how mismatched they were; though both Gucci and Loki were strong and probably heavier than me, Loki fizzed with excess energy where Gucci lumbered; more than once I found myself stretched between them, one arm tugging Gucci’s leash, trying to rouse him from the crosswalk, while the other strained to keep Loki from bolting down the sidewalk and out of sight.

On one July day so muggy the sidewalks were steaming, the dogs refused to move out of sight of the halal cart—hoping for another snack, or maybe they were just tired. Whatever the cause, they wouldn’t budge, and I spent ten or twenty minutes tugging and cajoling in total futility. I was ready to give up when a dapper older man turned the corner and, seeing me struggling, asked if the dogs might be thirsty. Without waiting for me to answer, he dashed across the street to the D’Agostino’s and returned with a bottle of Evian water. Evian for dogs! I knew it wasn’t their fault, but I couldn’t help feeling resentful when I was walking miles uptown every morning for a free cup of coffee and a bagel from the cafe where I also worked, since I didn’t have the money to buy food out. As I dribbled the precious nectar over their snouts, a rosy-cheeked older woman, the kind who dresses always in flowing linen and probably works for an arts nonprofit, wished me luck and wafted by.

At that point in my life the $12 an hour I was earning to walk dogs was the most I’d ever been paid for anything, and I wasn’t even good at it. Twelve dollars is what I was earning to sweat in the hell of the subway in July, only to crack and fry my skin in the sun; to walk a bug-eyed chihuahua (horribly named Banksy) near his loft on the border of Little Italy, past gallery women whose powdered and exfoliated skin appeared dry and serene as the paper of a wasp’s nest, despite the heat; to mop up the urine of an incontinent terrier who lived on Wall Street, and deflect the drool from a pair of English bulldogs (“Ten thousand bucks on the end of a leash!” one pedestrian hollered to me) whose kind but awkward owner was always home when I returned them. Every service worker knows the worst moment is when the employer shows up, and you suddenly find yourself an invader in the private space of a person who has paid for you to be there but resents your presence, which is a reminder of what they cannot, or would prefer not, to do.

In every apartment there was a magnetic QR code on the fridge for me to scan with my phone on entering and again before I left, logging the GPS-tracked route I’d taken and digitally stamping my timesheet for the walking agency so that I could make sure to hop the train—if I was lucky enough to have an unlimited MetroCard—or walk—and save money but show up late—to my next half-hour appointment. My walking routes, which appeared overlayed on Google Maps and were emailed to the dogs’ owners, along with the little notes I was required to write about the performance of their pets, took me too close to places I had known very differently.

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Most New Yorkers don't even know it exists. But a million forgotten souls are buried in mass graves dug by convicts on a tiny, forbidden island east of the Bronx.

Since 1869, still-born babies, the homeless, the poor and the unclaimed have been stacked one upon the other, three coffins deep, on Hart Island.

Corpses are interred in great, anonymous trenches. There are no tombstones. Small white posts in the ground mark each 150 adult bodies. A thousand children and infants are buried together per grave.

It is one of the largest cemeteries in the United States. And the least visited.

The men doing the digging are convicts from Rikers Island, petty offenders tasked with carrying bodies to their final resting place.

Nearly 1,500 fresh corpses arrive each year, says visual artist Melinda Hunt, who heads the Hart Island Project, which campaigns to make the cemetery visible and accessible.

The authorities say nearly a million people have been buried here since 1869.

It is forbidden to film and photograph the uninhabited, windswept island. Visits must be authorized by the Department of Corrections, which runs the island.

First used as a cemetery in the Civil War, Hart Island has variously served as a training camp, a prison for captured Confederates, a workhouse, a mental asylum and even a Cold War missile base.

The only jetty is closed to the public, hemmed in by railings, barbed wire and spikes. Notice boards warn people to keep out.

Records long inaccessible 

For years, records of who's been buried where have been patchy and negotiating access has proved challenging.

Some have been lost, others burnt. Families sometimes cannot even find out if their loved ones were buried by the city.

"You have a right to know where a person is. It's very important not to disappear people. It's not an acceptable thing to do in any culture," Hunt said.

The Department of Corrections says it doesn't have the infrastructure to welcome visitors on an island where the buildings are dilapidated and abandoned.

Under pressure, however, the authorities have allowed a few visits since 2007, albeit within a gazebo far from the graves.

"You don't see anything," said Elaine Joseph, a 59-year-old nurse whose baby daughter died at five days old in 1978.

"They check your ID, and ask you to hand over your cell phone, any electronic equipment and they put it in an envelope and lock it and then you get to the island, they ask for your ID again.

"They treat you as a visitor of an inmate," she said.

In November, a small group of women who threatened to bring a complaint were given permission to visit specific grave sites.

Joseph became the first to go on March 14.

Once there, she broke down in tears.

"I can't say I found closure. When you lose a child, there really is never closure. There is a piece of you that is gone," she said.

"I did find solace in that there was water surrounding it and there was a lovely view."

She was even allowed to take a photograph.

Laurie Grant, a 61-year-old doctor who gave birth to a still-born daughter in 1993, hopes to be the next.

But on March 28, she waited in vain in the rain on the jetty.

Due to unwillingness or miscommunication, those who were supposed to ferry her across the water left before she even arrived.

 Public cemetery closed to public 

Over the years, Hunt said she has lost track of all the families she has tried to help, though estimates the number is at least 500.

Most were Americans, but there have been others from France, the Netherlands and Poland, and one Irish woman looking for a grandfather.

The Hart Island Project has so far managed to list more than 60,000 burials in the database.

A bill has been introduced to the city council seeking to transfer the island to the parks administration, but has not been taken up yet.

Joseph dreams of being able to return as often as she wants to what she calls "a public cemetery that the public is not allowed to visit."

She also dreams of flowers and a bench to honor her baby. "If I can put a marker on a bench, I'll be happy," she said.

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My fiancee realized her iPhone 5 was missing as soon as we got home.

While she searched her purse and jacket again, I signed into her account on iCloud.com and activated the Find My iPhone app. Immediately, GPS data showed that the phone was around 71st and Amsterdam, a mile north of our Manhattan apartment at 58th and 9th Ave. The phone was in the backseat of the taxi we had taken from Union Square.

We quickly looked up advice on the Internet, called 311, wished we had gotten a receipt that would show the taxi medallion number, called a police number that operator gave us, and filed a Yellow Taxi Lost and Found form. These are all appropriate steps to take eventually. But at the moment they were a waste of time.

The key to getting the phone back immediately is right there in the Find My iPhone app.

Click on the My Devices menu at the center of the screen, select the missing phone, and from the window that pops up select "Lost Mode." This will lock the phone and give you the option to display a message directing people to call another phone number to return it. If you use a passcode, as you should, then a Lost Mode message is the only way that a kind stranger will know whom to call. You can also make the phone emit a sound to help people find it. There is also an option to wipe your phone if it comes to that.

While I continued pinging the phone, however, I got no response. Meanwhile, it had moved to 53rd and 11th ave.

It was then that my fiancee, a near-native New Yorker, made a clutch decision. Noticing the phone had stayed put for a few moments, she hurried to the bedroom and changed from a dress to pants and shoes, so she could move fast. She said she was going over there — 0.6 miles away — in hopes that the driver was taking a break — around 9 p.m., four hours into his night shift.

She took my phone and ran out the door.

I sat at the computer watching the GPS locator, very worried it would start moving again, and kept pinging the phone. Ten minutes later — still no movement — I figured out how to place a call using Google Voice and I dialed my phone, which she was carrying.

She answered, breathless but happy. She had found her phone.

A bunch of taxis had been parked on 11th Ave by De Witt Clinton Park, and she had peered into them one-by-one, lighting the backseat with the other phone. She had found the phone in an empty taxi and found the driver standing nearby drinking a Big Gulp soda. He had been shocked that she found him but was happy to hand over the phone.

I learned from this experience that Find My iPhone and Lost Mode are key to getting back a phone immediately. The former shows whether your phone is really in a taxi, and also whether it is within running distance. The latter provides the only effective way of communicating with kind strangers.

Sometimes you won't be able to get the phone back immediately, however, in which case you will have to call 311. It helps immensely if you can identify the taxi's medallion number, so keep your receipts or pay with an app that keeps receipts for you. Even if you don't have the number, there's a good chance you will recover your phone, assuming drivers follow the rules for lost items.

SEE ALSO: 21 great iPhone tips and tricks

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"Game of Thrones" actor Peter Dinklage is known as the laid back fun loving Tyrion Lannister on the popular HBO series, but in real life there's one thing that irks him.

During a recent Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything), the actor asked if he liked living in New York.

While the actor said he's generally a private person the only thing that upsets him is people trying to sneakily take his photo.

"One thing that sort of gets to you are the cameras/cellphones," Dinklage wrote. "People try to be sneaky and try to get your picture without coming up to you or asking, and that’s what kind of gets to me."

Dinklage added he has seen "every combination" of people trying to get his photo.

"Some people will even send their kids over to ask for directions!" he said. 

Instead of being embarrassed or trying snap a quick shot, the actor said he rather have fans muster up the courage and ask for a picture.

"If you see me on the street and want a photo, ask!" he said wrapping up the AMA. "It's just weird when your kid asks for directions."

SEE ALSO: The 6 Best-Rated 'Game Of Thrones' Episodes

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Imagine if your dining room was 15,000 square feet and contained eight miniature restaurants, staffed by world-renowned chefs serving artisanal food and drink, all day, every day.

This is the unusual amenity enjoyed by tenants of Gotham West, the new luxury apartment complex tucked into the back pocket of Hell's Kitchen.

Click to go straight to the tour » 

Located way out on 11th Avenue between 44th and 45th Streets, Gotham West Market is a large, glassed-in food market spanning the ground floor. It exists because of the building's inconvenient address. When the developers were designing it, they wanted to include a high-quality, immersive dining experience for tenants (and to lure prospective renters so far west).

They reached out to several specialty grocers, who were all turned off by the odd space configuration, said Christopher Jaskiewicz, chief operating officer of Gotham Organization, Inc. "So we decided to curate our own market," Jaskiewicz told Business Insider. His team spoke with 50 operations before narrowing it down to an elite nine, which would set up shop inside (Little Chef has since left the building).

So far, it's working. From the moment patrons walk through the glass doors, Gotham West Market offers an immersive experience, allowing visitors to watch as their food is prepared before their eyes, and providing direct access to the cooks' encyclopedic knowledge of the menu. It has become not just a convenient dining option for tenants, but a destination for all New Yorkers, including the business lunch crowd, weekend travelers, and tourists.

So if people are going out of their way to sample the gourmet purveyors, is Gotham West Market really a food court after all?

"We never use the word 'food court' because of the connotation it has,"Jaskiewicz says. "But if someone wrote 'the best food court ever built,' we'd take that. Maybe we are."

Gotham West Market gives neighbors and tourists alike a reason to venture deep into Hell's Kitchen. It's located way out on 11th Ave., between 44th and 45th St.

This dining destination exists because of its inconvenient address. The developers of Gotham West, the new luxury apartment complex sitting above and behind the market, aimed to lure renters by providing a quality, one-of-a-kind dining experience under their own roof.

Forget your preconceived notions of food court fare. Gotham West Market features eight premiere artisanal food purveyors, plus a bike shop and beer locker.

Pat Kiernan is a legendary anchor who's been the face of New York City news since 1997. He gets up at 3 am every day and his workday doesn't end until 6 pm.

How does he do it?

We followed him around for a day to figure out just that.

Produced by Will Wei

NOW WATCH: The Truth About 'The Most Interesting Man In The World'

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The New York Attorney General's office filed legal paperwork on Friday to compel Airbnb to turn over names of some of its users.

The AG wants to subpoena Airbnb's records to locate people it believes are running "illegal hotels," according to an AG spokesperson.

New York's top attorney believes that some people are using Airbnb to rent rooms as a business, sidestepping licensing requirements and not complying with rules like fire safety regulations, the spokesperson said. The AG is also looking at how hotel tax laws should apply to Airbnb rentals, the court documents said.

The spokesperson says the AG isn't trying to shut down Airbnb entirely in New York, nor stop people from using it to rent out a spare room now and then.

"It is illegal for residents of Class A buildings to rent out their apartments for any period of time less than 30 days unless they are also present in the apartment," the documents say.

In other words, in New York, it is okay to sublet your apartment for a month or more; it's not okay to rent it for a few nights.

One reason the AG is pursuing this is because of an increasing number of complaints by landlords and fellow tenants when Airbnb rentals go awry, according to the documents.

The AG's office is especially interested in finding those Airbnb users who have multiple New York listings on the website, the spokesperson told us. The spokesperson sent us a list of the type of user they want to investigate, those that have 15-140 properties for rent through the website.

Airbnb has filed a motion to quash the subpoena.

On its blog, Airbnb argues that the issue in New York is hotel taxes:

"Earlier this week, we released new data indicating that the Airbnb community will generate $768 million in economic activity in New York and support 6,600 jobs this year. We highlighted a state law that prevents Airbnb from collecting and remitting $21 million in hotel taxes. And we asked leaders to work with us to change the law to permit Airbnb to collect and remit taxes on behalf of our hosts and guests. It isn’t every day that a company offers to help contribute more tax revenue."

Airbnb is fighting legal battles on both coasts. People in San Francisco are getting evicted for using Airbnb and are starting to fight back.

We reached out to Airbnb for further comment and will update when we hear back.

Here's the full court document that spells out the AG's argument:

Brief AirBnb 11.8.13

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Five were hospitalized after a New York City bound Megabus crashed into a guardrail on I-95 Friday afternoon, police officials said.

The bus, which had come from Washington, D.C., drove onto the right shoulder of the interstate and then smashed into a guardrail at around 3:39 p.m., the Maryland State Police said in a statement.

The driver told police he believed the bus had had a mechanical failure, the state police said.

Of the 68 passengers on board and the driver, only 5 were hospitalized at Harford Memorial Hospital as a precaution, police said, and no further serious injuries were reported, police said.

I-95 was shut down as the investigation ensued, police said.

Megabus released a statement Friday afternoon recapping the accident, and adding, "Safety is megabus.com's number one priority," a CBS affiliate in Baltimore reported.  

Following a series of fatal crashes in 2011 through 2013, the city enacted a permitting process for intercity buses in May last year that requires bus companies to register all buses and follow a set of operational guidelines ensuring the safety of passengers and drivers. The move came months after the federal government shut down Fung Wah, a popular Chinatown bus company, when state inspectors found structural deficiencies and shoddy repairs on buses in the fleet, The New York Times wrote. 

Fung Wah continues to struggle to reopen, the Boston Globe wrote in February.

Megabus.com could not be reached for comment nor could the Maryland State Police for any updates on the injured victims or cause of the crash.

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New York hotspot Bagatelle —best known for its over-the-top brunch parties — will start serving a sundae that costs a whopping $1,000 next month. 

The Mauboussin Mega Sundae by Chef Sebastien Chamaret contains homemade vanilla ice cream with macaroons, chocolate truffles, Dom Perignon Rose sorbet with gold leaves, chocolate vodka sauce, gilded brownies and fresh whipped cream served in an over-sized martini glass.

It also comes with a memento: a black steel and white gold ring from jeweler Mauboussin.

Sounds like the perfect complement to Bagatelle's $22 cheeseburger and $1,000 magnums of rosé.

SEE ALSO: At $2,000 A Head, The World's New Most Expensive Restaurant Is A Sensory Overload

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Two years and $20 million dollars later, Central Park's Tavern on the Green officially re-opens for business tomorrow.

The nearly 150-year-old landmark received an understated and sophisticated makeover by new owners Jim Caiola and David Salama. Instead of the restaurant's old glitzy Crystal Room, there's the elegant and airy Central Park Room, a dark-wood bar room, casual south wing, 300-seat courtyard, and 110-seat garden area. The new Tavern is intended to appeal to New Yorkers, not just tourists. Its rustic menu by chef Katy Sparks features locally sourced items, and the space is significantly smaller than the sprawling original, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The iconic restaurant, which originally opened in 1870 to house Central Park's sheep before turning into a restaurant in 1934, closed in 2009 after it filed for bankruptcy.Though we'll have to wait until May for lunch and brunch, Tavern's "rustic"dinner menu items like "Marinated Vermont Quail" for $30, "Faroe Island Salmon," for $29, and "Blistered Citrus and Legumes Salad" for $14. 

The restaurant is located on 67th street and Central Park West, with dinner hours from 5 PM to 1 AM.

SEE ALSO: Obama Is Eating At The Legendary 'Jiro Dreams Of Sushi' Restaurant

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Fans of New York's fat, doughy bagels swear they're the best in the world. Montreal natives are partial to their city's smaller, wood-oven-baked variety.

A new New York City bagelry, Black Seed, aims to combine the two in hybrid form. Black Seed, which opened today in NoLiTa, is the brainchild of Noah Bernamoff of Red Hook's Canadian-style Mile End Delicatessen and Matt Kliegman of East Village Cafe The Smile. 

Their hybrid bagels start with hand-rolled, glutinous dough — the staple of New York bagels — but are boiled in honey and baked in a wood-burning oven, like the bagels of Montreal.

"We're trying to not make the bagels a geographic thing — I'm a Montrealer, Matt's a New Yorker, and we both love a good bagel,” Bernamoff said in a press release. “We think there are benefits to each city's bagel-making process and are trying to capture that at Black Seed. The bagel’s shape is original, the size is reasonable and the seeding is substantial.”

Black Seed's Elizabeth Steet location will also serve sandwiches, salads, and homemade cream cheese. A second location, a kiosk at Brookfield Place, is set to open in May.

By all accounts, New Yorker's are taking the city's latest hybrid treat in stride; Black Seed announced on its Twitter account that it had run out of bagels by about 3 p.m. on opening day.

Here's how things looked in the kitchen earlier:

And some photos and reactions from satisfied bagel-eaters:

The good news is @BlackSeedBagels is reallllllllllly good. That is also the bad news though cause I just got seconds.

— francesca stabile (@frantaclaus) April 23, 2014

Black Seed is at 170 Elizabeth St. (between Spring and Kenmare). Check out the full menu below.

SEE ALSO: The 10 Best Bagel Shops In New York City

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In the city that never sleeps there lies a magical place filled with pools and bubble jets and smoothies.

It's called Spa Castle, and it's a mecca of resort-like accommodations built for the masses. Modeled after popular and traditional Asian saunas and luxurious European spas, this holy land has only one drawback: The pilgrimage to get to its Queens location deters many who wish to visit.

Now it's opening in the middle of Manhattan.

Here's why Spa Castle is awesome.

You don't have to get on a plane to feel like you're relaxing somewhere far away. In fact, even the air is different. Multiple purified air dispensers, which distribute filtered oxygen-enriched air, are installed throughout the spa.

When you go to Spa Castle, you're given a wrist watch, which will be used throughout your visit. It will open your personal locker and create a running tab for any services or purchases made throughout your visit.

Cleanliness is also a number one priority. Each guest must shower using the Spa Castle facilities before entering the saunas and pools.

Then you can go to town on all of the exciting rooms and pools within the facility.

There are tons of theme rooms. According to the Spa Castle site, "each room offers specific healing affects. The lining of each room is made from natural and authentic components, each organically beneficial to the body."

This is the Gold Room, which is lined with plates made of real gold. Today, gold is found to comfort sore limbs and assist in reaching the perfect balance in your mind, body and soul.

This is the Himalayan Salt Room. The calcium, sodium, magnesium, carbon, and manganese found in the blocks of salt helps relieve allergies and asthma, softens the skin, and reduces signs of aging.

 This room focuses on the use of Color Therapy to balance “energy” within the mind, body and soul.

While heaters convert infrared light into heat, which is absorbed through the skin, stimulating blood circulation.

Behold, the Jade sauna:

The Loess Soil Sauna room provides a unique meditative environment. 

Don't forget the Ice Room!

The pools are gorgeous:

Spa Castle is very kid-friendly:

There's a waterfall room:

And plenty of places to eat and drink:

Or just hang out:

You can learn more about Spa Castle, and its new location in Manhattan, here.

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Wildlife control contractors have shot almost 26,000 birds at John F. Kennedy International Airport over the past five years to stop them interfering with passenger flights — including more than 1,600 protected birds the airport did not have express permission to kill, internal records show.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the airport, was granted limited permission to shoot "problem" species — mainly seagulls, geese and mourning doves — named on a special kill permit issued each year by the Fish and Wildlife Service.

But the authority's own records show that between 2009 and 2013, they killed 1,628 birds from 18 different species that are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and are not named on the permits.

That list includes snowy egrets, red-winged blackbirds and American kestrels.

"It appears they will kill anything they see and they don't think twice about it," said Jennifer Barnes, an attorney with animal advocacy group Friends of Animals which recently filed a federal lawsuit to suspend the killing of all migratory birds at Kennedy.

The Port Authority, which contracts the job of managing airport bird hazards to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, is able to shoot these species because its permits make allowance for "emergency situations," according to the permit.

That means any migratory birds can be exterminated if they are deemed to pose a "direct threat to human safety"— with the exceptions of eagles and endangered or threatened species, under the law.

Critics say the emergency clause gives airports too much discretion to slaughter migratory birds, an act that usually carries fines of up to $15,000 or six months in prison.

"If a bird they kill is not listed on the permit, they never have to explain why they needed to kill that animal, why it was an emergency," Barnes said.

But while the killing of three snowy owls that were shot for being too close to runways early last December sparked a public and media outcry — and a promise by the Port Authority to stop shooting the owls in favor of trapping and relocating them — the raptors represent only a fraction of the federally protected birds that landed on the airport's hit list.

The agency has also gunned down the brown-headed cowbird, boat-tailed grackle, common raven, American crow, fish crow and waterfowl and wading birds that relish the coastal wetlands neighboring Kennedy, such as the wood duck, bufflehead, American wigeon, semipalmated plover, sanderling, least sandpiper, black-crowned night heron, great egret and cattle egret, according to Port Authority records.

Four American kestrels, a small type of falcon, were also killed.

Carol Bannerman, a spokeswoman for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, said the actions it takes to reduce wildlife hazards at airports are "in compliance with federal and state rules" and that it relied more on non-lethal measures.

"More than 90 percent of the wildlife encountered at airports is chased away. Others aren't attracted to the airport due to habitat changes," she said.

A spokesman for the Port Authority did not respond to calls and questions. But the authority has previously defended the practice of killing birds in the name of averting potential mid-air disasters.

For airports, the biggest threat birds pose is that they will get sucked into a passenger jet's engines and disable its ability to fly, as happened to a US Airways plane famously piloted by Capt. Chesley Sullenberger that splash-landed into the Hudson River in January 2009.

Last year, planes landing at or ascending from Kennedy struck birds on 174 separate occasions, with only a handful of these strikes causing actual damage to aircraft, according to Federal Aviation Administration data.

The number of bird strikes is down from a peak of 258 in 2011 but still marks an overall rise in the last 20 years, according to the FAA'S wildlife strike database.

In one case last October, several Canada geese were sucked into one of the engines of an incoming LAN Airlines Boeing 767.

The plane landed safely and the whole engine had to be removed and sent for repairs.

SEE ALSO: Audi's New Electric Concept Car Could Make Plug-In Charging Obsolete

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York Attorney General's office is seeking information from exchanges and alternative trading platforms about their relationships with high frequency trading firms, as part of its probe into allegedly unfair trading practices on Wall Street, according to sources familiar with the situation.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office is expected to send subpoenas within days to exchanges, one of the sources said on Thursday. Another source said major banks that operate dark pools, or platforms where trades take place out of sight of the rest of the market, have been sent letters asking for information.

The sources spoke this week on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The major U.S. exchange operators include IntercontinentalExchange Group <ICE.N>, Nasdaq OMX Group Inc <NDAQ.O> and BATS Global Markets.

NYSE, a unit of ICE, has already been cooperating with the attorney general by sharing data, while BATS has also had conversations with the prosecutor, two of the sources said. Nasdaq Chief Executive Robert Greifeld said in an interview on April 24 that his company had not been subpoenaed.

Exchange operators and Schneiderman's office declined to comment.

The expected move by Schneiderman's office shows how investigations into the practices of high-frequency trading firms are broadening. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Federal Bureau of Investigation have also said they had several active probes into high-speed and automated trading.

The probes have been going on for several months to a year but scrutiny has intensified in recent weeks following the release of best-selling author Michael Lewis' new book, "Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt." In the book, Lewis contends that high-frequency traders have rigged the stock market, profiting from speeds unavailable to others.

Virtu Financial, one of the largest high-frequency market-making firms, recently delayed the launch of its initial public offering as focus of the industry had grown.

Separately, the NYSE said on Thursday it would pay $4.5 million to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to settle charges that it violated regulations, including around co-location practices.

Schneiderman has been looking into what he considers unfair Wall Street practices for about a year and has spoken out against issues such as exchanges allowing high-frequency trading firms to "co-locate" their computers within the exchanges' data centers so that trading information reaches them faster than others.

At least half-a-dozen high-frequency trading firms, including Tower Research Capital LLC, Chopper Trading LLC and Jump Trading LLC, were sent subpoenas two weeks ago, Reuters has previously reported.

One of the sources said the earlier subpoenas requested information about business operations, including their strategies, the technology they use, and any communications - such as e-mails, writings, notes, text messages and even social media posts - the firms had with the exchanges.

The information requested is so broad that some of the firms have asked that the scope be narrowed, the source added.

(Additional reporting by John McCrank and Herbert Lash; editing by Paritosh Bansal and Richard Chang)

SEE ALSO: Congressmen Took Turns Flogging The SEC Chair For High-Frequency Trading In A Hearing

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News of today's unfortunate F train derailment had New Yorkers once again thinking about how the lines they use compare to the rest of the subway system normally.

As it turns out, the F tends to disappoint more than most other subway lines.

The MTA's Transit and Bus committee holds monthly meetings. The meeting materials, available from the MTA's website, include a number of performance and quality indicators for the subway system.

We took three of those indicators for each of the city's subway lines from the most recently available materials from the committee.

The first indicator, wait assessment, is the percentage of wait times during weekdays that are close to on schedule. If an L train is supposed to come every seven minutes, and four trains arrive following that schedule, but the fifth train comes ten minutes after the previous train, the L would receive a score of 80% for this measure.

The second indicator, terminal on time, is the percentage of trains during weekdays that arrive no more than five minutes late at their final stops, without having skipped any stations along the way.

The last indicator, subway car quality, shows the scores from an MTA customer survey. It is a composite percentage based on customers' views of the appearance and cleanliness of subway cars, the proper function of equipment like doors, lights, heating, and air conditioning, and the understandability of the car's signs, maps, and announcements.

Here are the city's subway lines, ranked from best to worst by the average of those three measures:

The L comes out on top, with its highly rated cars and good performance being on time to its terminals. The 4/5 lines are a mess, with just over half of their trains arriving at their final stops on time.

SEE ALSO: Candid Photos Of New Yorkers Riding The Subway In 1960

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