Just when it appeared Sarah Palin‘s road trip for America couldn’t confound reporters any further, she has decided to take a significant detour straight into the heart of Manhattan– no, not to visit Grant’s Tomb or get an autograph from the Naked Cowboy, but to meet with (still) potential challenger Donald Trump. ABC News’ Michael Falcone was the first to tweet the meeting of the minds, quickly followed by a blog post that does little to elucidate the thinking behind the meeting.

A massive fire has erupted at Pier 97 at West 57th Street and West Side Highway in Manhattan, currently at three-alarm status and counting. While the cause of the fire is as yet unknown, the warehouse is known to belong to the Department of Sanitation and it is suspected a barge holding diesel fuel has been set on fire. Video after the jump.

For most people following the strange, seemingly endless tale of mutual offense that is the Park 51 Islamic community center debate, it always appeared that the main debate was one of sensitivity– whether Americans were being sensitive enough to moderate Muslims in being hostile to them because others attack America in Islam’s name. Fox News contributor Bernie Goldberg frames it conversely: Why are Muslims not being sensitive enough to American values?

The last time we saw Republican New York Congressman Peter King, he was playing the Felix to Rep. Anthony Weiner‘s Oscar over aid to 9/11 relief workers. Today he visited Fox News sans sidekick to comment on President Barack Obama‘s support of the lower Manhattan Islamic community center, and while he noted that “nobody is questioning the right” to have it, he would have liked to see more sensitivity over the emotions of the 9/11 victims.

Last night, President Barack Obama defended the right of the lower Manhattan Islamic center to exist, as per the First Amendment. The crew of Fox & Friends weighed in this morning, and while they still exhibited some discomfort with the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque,” they praised the President for doing his job and “stand[ing] up for religious freedom.”

The Daily Show went “hyper-local” last night to cover some important but relatively uncontroversial developments in municipal land hearings, in the vein of their Wisconsin freeway update from the last segment. Last night, they went to New York City, where a Muslim group is trying to build an Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan. It’s an obscure story; you probably haven’t heard of it.

Comedy Central is debuting its new series Ugly Americans– an animated series on the monsters that inhabit, create, and propagate Manhattan culture– on March 17 at 10:30 PM. Mediaite was invited to preview the pilot episode of the new series, and if only for its superb navel-gazing it’s worth checking out the pilot. Its only roadblock is that a niche comedy about a culture of limited visibility outside itself can only appeal to so many people.

Inspired by legions of letters from angry Manhattanites who felt the mag was going too Brooklyn, Time Out New York has addressed the Brooklyn vs. Manhattan debate head-on, with a series of 11 articles pitting the boroughs against one another. There’s a quiz, an editor debate, a hypothetical tome on what would happen if every bridge was destroyed, highlights from each hood, statistics and even a slide-show that lets you judge where people are from based on the way they look. Judgers unite!

New York, I Love You, which opens Friday, is an anthology of 10+ shorts directed by the likes of Brett Ratner to Natalie Portman, and starring almost every actor in the world. To celebrate its arrival — and the arrival of glorious fall in New York — we’ve nostalgically compiled a list of the cheesiest, most romantic, most epic, and irresistible movies starring our favorite city. Enjoy!

There is a natural inclination for us to want to explore a world we know without the general limitations we usually experience. This is the fascination with The Sims, in which we can be trimmer, richer and have non-Ikea furniture. (For those of you with non-Ikea furniture already — ooh, aren’t you fancy?) It’s why, [...]

NBC’s New York local affiliate WNBC aired exclusive home video of the tragic collision between a small airplane and a tourist helicopter during their newscast tonight. The video, shot by a tourist aboard a boat on the Hudson captures the moments before and the stunning impact when the small plane collided with a sightseeing helicopter shortly after noon this past Saturday. Video after the jump…

Fox News has the first photos of today’s shocking Hudson River crash between a plane and helicopter, taken by tourists on the scene. They are shocking photos – in the first one you can see the plane with the wing sheared off by the helicopter rotors. The tourist, who came into the Fox studios for an interview, are Canadians visiting the city; the woman who took the photograph said that she had aimed her camera upward to capture both the helicopter and the plane in the same frame. Then the crash.

A tourist helicopter and small plane collided in mid-air over the Hudson River on Saturday — showering debris over the area and sending horrified onlookers to their Twitter accounts. The mainstream media joined in with live breaking news coverage shortly thereafter. But when a story like this breaks there is just no beating Twitter.