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Hillary Clinton slept here. The year was 2000. Clinton was in the middle of her first political campaign, running to be New York’s junior senator. Steven Spielberg, an enthusiastic donor to Mrs Clinton who had the use of a pied-à-terre in Trump Tower purchased for him by Universal Pictures, barely stayed at the place, despite its views of Central Park, and offered it to the candidate as a crash pad on gruelling campaign days . Trump Tower in New York. Photo: Bloomberg Donald Trump and Clinton were on good terms back then. He donated money to her candidacy and called her “tough and smart”. Moreover, Trump was skilled in the art of spinning his associations with celebrities into publicity. This was particularly true at Trump Tower. Michael Jackson lived in Donald J. Trump’s gleaming Midtown edifice . So have gamblers, a disgraced dictator, a Ponzi schemer and a stock huckster. Credit Photo Illustration by Peter Horvath; photographs by Chad Batka for The New York Times (Trump); Hiroko...

Published time: 14 Aug, 2017 22: 47 Edited time : 15 Aug, 2017 11:58 Crowds have gathered inside and outside of Trump Tower in New York to take a stand against the president’s comments after a weekend of deadly violence in Virginia, where white supremacist groups and counter-demonstrators clashed. Hundreds of people gathered outside Trump Tower in Manhattan, chanting, “Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! Donald Trump has got to go!” “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA,” “Not my president” and “Love, not hate, will make America great .” Inside Trump Tower , “Hate has no home here” was seen on a pink board held up to the windows. Other protesters held aloft signs that read “Too little. Too Late!” in reference to president Trump ’s initial criticism of violence “on many sides” following a two-day gathering in Charlottesville, which ended in tragedy. On Saturday, a participant of the alt-right Unite the Right event killed Heather Heyer , 32, and injured 19 people after mowing through a group of ant...

Beijing:  The Kushner family came to the United States as refugees, worked hard and made it big - and if you invest in Kushner properties , so can you. That was the message delivered Saturday by White House senior adviser Jared Kushner 's sister Nicole Kushner Meyer to a ballroom full of wealthy Chinese investors in Beijing. Over several hours of slide shows and presentations, representatives from the Kushner family business urged Chinese citizens gathered at a Ritz-Carlton hotel to consider investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in a New Jersey luxury apartment complex that would help them secure what's known as an investor visa. The potential investors were advised to invest sooner rather than later in case visa rules change under the Trump administration."Invest early, and you will invest under the old rules," one speaker said. The tagline on a brochure for the event: "Invest $500,000 and immigrate to the United States." And the highlight of t...

TOLLING THE TYCOONS — Albanese calls for 'politically popular' pied-à-terre tax, by POLITICO New York’s Conor Skelding : Foreign "oligarchs" who own real estate in New York but don't live in the city should have to pay two or three times what they pay now in property taxes, Democratic mayoral candidate Sal Albanese said Wednesday. The "politically popular" new tax's revenue, which Albanese said would amount to billions, could then be put toward the development of affordable housing . "Look, there's a lot of money across the world that people want to outsource," he said during a news conference outside the gates of City Hall. "There's a lot of money there, and we can use that to build real affordable housing ." Mayor Bill de Blasio promised years ago to "take a look" at a pied-à-terre tax, but the proposal is opposed by many of the city's real estate interests . "They own Bill de Blasio , big real estat...

A man takes a selfie on the hood of a destroyed limousine during an Inauguration Day protest against President Trump on Jan. 20 in Washington, D.C. The Department of Justice has been cleared to search through website records related to organizing protests that day. Zach Gibson/AFP/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Zach Gibson/AFP/Getty Images A man takes a selfie on the hood of a destroyed limousine during an Inauguration Day protest against President Trump on Jan. 20 in Washington, D.C. The Department of Justice has been cleared to search through website records related to organizing protests that day. Zach Gibson/AFP/Getty Images A judge in Washington, D.C., has approved a government request to access data from a website used to organize protests against President Trump's inauguration — with the caveat that the Department of Justice must establish "additional protections" to safeguard users' privacy and right to free speech. The DOJ already had a war...

“We are not selling our stake and are comfortable with our rights relating to any sale by others,” said Sarmad Zok, chief executive of the prince’s company, Kingdom Hotel Investments . “We are proud to have partnered with Ashkenazy to reinstate the glory of this unique asset.” The partners have a plan for an extensive modernization program to better compete with other five-star hotels in Manhattan and to reopen areas of the hotel that have been bogged down in renovations. The Plaza’s famous Oak Room and the wood- paneled Oak Room Bar have been closed for the past six years. Whether Mr. Roy and Sahara truly intend to sell or are merely trying to bolster the price, they appear to be pressing forward. “We’ ll solicit bids ,” said Jeffrey Davis, an international director of JLL, who is overseeing the bidding for Sahara. “It’s the most iconic real estate asset in the world. It’ ll garner international attention .” Mr. Davis declined to comment on whether Kingdom Hotel Investments has ...

“We are not selling our stake and are comfortable with our rights relating to any sale by others,” said Sarmad Zok, chief executive of the prince’s company, Kingdom Hotel Investments . “We are proud to have partnered with Ashkenazy to reinstate the glory of this unique asset.” The partners have a plan for an extensive modernization program to better compete with other five-star hotels in Manhattan and to reopen areas of the hotel that have been bogged down in renovations. The Plaza’s famous Oak Room and the wood- paneled Oak Room Bar have been closed for the past six years. Whether Mr. Roy and Sahara truly intend to sell or are merely trying to bolster the price, they appear to be pressing forward. “We’ ll solicit bids ,” said Jeffrey Davis, an international director of JLL, who is overseeing the bidding for Sahara. “It’s the most iconic real estate asset in the world. It’ ll garner international attention .” Mr. Davis declined to comment on whether Kingdom Hotel Investments has ...

A D.C. Superior Court judge on Thursday ruled in favor of the Department of Justice's ability to exercise a search warrant for data related to an anti-Trump website the DOJ believes is connected to plans for violent Inauguration Day riots . The Justice Department had originally sought a slew of records related to the website Disruptj20 .com from its website hosting company , DreamHost, including HTTP visitor logs that would reveal IP addresses for all of the website's visitors. But DreamHost objected to the Justice Department's request and said it could reveal 1.3 million visitors' identities. The DOJ earlier this week said that it was revising its warrant to include a date range on material it requested, to exclude all visitor logs and the website's draft blog posts that were never published. Chief Judge Robert E. Morin granted that revised request Thursday , although DreamHost fears the DOJ will still access some IP addresses given that it will still be abl...

A Confederate flag hangs in an East Village apartment window . (PIX11 News) EAST VILLAGE, Manhattan — A person living in the East Village hung up Confederate flags in the windows of an apartment, and the locals are not happy about the display The NYPD confirmed that a person was trying to throw rocks at the windows on the sixth floor on Wednesday. A colonial- era American flag and the flag of Israel were also displayed in the windows of the E. 8th Street apartment . A colonial- era American flag , Israeli flags and Confederate flags hang in an East Village apartment window . (PIX11 News) A neighbor told the New York Daily News that the flags have been hanging in the windows of the apartment for more than a year. The Daily News reported that “dozens of neighbors” gathered outside of the building to look at the flags. Police went to the building to talk to the tenant of the apartment on the top floor on Wednesday night, but the tenant did not answer the door and was believed to no...

Hate, Hope and Swimming Lessons An American Summer With the First Syrians in Iowa Abdul Fattah Tameem and his family enjoy the pool on a hot summer day at the family's new apartment complex in West Des Moines , a suburb of Des Moines, Iowa." width="1520" height="1014" /> Abdul Fattah Tameem and his family enjoy the pool at the family’s new apartment complex in West Des Moines . By ROBIN SHULMAN | Photographs by DANNY WILCOX FRAZIER —VII for TIME Just over a year ago, Ghazweh Aljabooli and her husband and five children landed at the Des Moines airport and became the first refugees from Syria’s ongoing civil war to settle in Iowa . In their first summer in America, each step felt momentous . The first shopping trip to Walmart, the kids playing in a pool and taking the bus to school, all put the horrors of war further behind them—the years without sufficient food, the bombs that destroyed their house and ruined their city of Homs, the month they cam...