Day: August 12, 2025

OpenAI’s GPT-5 debuts with speed and safety upgrades, but users miss GPT-4’s warmer tone; older models may return after backlash.

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When Paul Randazzo Sr., patriarch of  Randazzo’s Clam Bar, died on Aug. 12, 2024, at 66, it was a hard loss for the family and business.

The post ✰PREMIUM <br>Paul Randazzo Sr.’s memory lives on at Brooklyn’s famed Randazzo’s Clam Bar appeared first on Brooklyn Eagle.

NY AG warns fans of fake Bad Bunny tickets after reports of scams in Puerto Rico; urges caution, vendor checks & safe payment methods.

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A 77-year-old woman drowned at Manhattan Beach on Monday night, police said, days after a teen drowned at nearby Coney Island Beach.

Parks Enforcement Patrol spotted Sheepshead Bay resident Liudmila Marchenko “in distress” on the shoreline at about 6:15 p.m. and told lifeguards, who pulled her from the water and started CPR, officials said. When first responders arrived on the scene, the woman was unconscious and unresponsive, per the NYPD. Marchenko was rushed to NYC Health+Hospitals/South Brooklyn Health, where she was pronounced dead. 

An investigation is ongoing, and the city’s Chief Medical Examiner will determine the cause of death.

Marchenko was spotted about 15 minutes after lifeguards got off-duty at 6 p.m., though it was not immediately clear when she entered the water. Lifeguards are on-duty on New York City beaches from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and swimming is prohibited without a lifeguard. 

Ongoing lifeguard shortages have in recent years forced the city to close sections of some city beaches to swimming, but the city expected to have more lifeguards this summer than last. Marchenko was at least the fourth person to drown at a New York City beach this summer, where six had drowned by the same time last summer, per Gothamist. 

Theresa Scavo, chair of Brooklyn Community Board 15 – which includes Manhattan Beach — said she did not think there had been “any problem with lifeguards or a shortage at any of the beaches in this district.” 

Several beachgoers in New Jersey also required rescue on the evening of Aug. 11 after they became caught in a rip current. It was not clear if similar conditions impacted Manhattan Beach, though the National Weather Service on Tuesday warned that rip current risk was “moderate,” and that life-threatening rip currents are possible in the area. 

The incident came days after 18-year-old Gowanus resident Jun Obas drowned at Coney Island Beach.

Obas lived with epilepsy and autism, according to the Daily News, and was enjoying a rare beach day with his family on when he suffered a medical event in the water at about 3 p.m. on Aug. 6. Lifeguards pulled him from the surf and determined he did not have a pulse and was not breathing, according to parks department spokesperson, and performed CPR until an ambulance arrived to bring him to NYC Health+Hospitals/South Brooklyn Health, where he was pronounced dead. 

Maimonides Health honors 254+ youth in summer jobs at NYC’s largest SYEP healthcare site, celebrating 28+ years of empowering students.

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A new school will open next month to help support students who struggle with dyslexia and other learning disabilities, Mayor Eric Adams told amNewYork in a one-on-one interview on Monday.

The Central Brooklyn Literacy Academy will open in time for the 2025-2026 school year, which starts on Thursday, Sept. 4. Located at 188 Rochester Ave. in Crown Heights’ School District 17, the school was built from an existing building — M.S. 394, which the city announced would gradually close by 2027-2028.

Chalkbeat reports that the school would give M.S. 394 students priority admission and will support students in grades 2 and 3 who struggle with dyslexia and other language-based learning challenges.

Adams, who has a personal history of dyslexia in public schools, said the new school will help ensure that “no student is left behind,” including those with disabilities.

“Our personal journeys should become our personal professional missions,” the mayor shared. “And going through the challenges of a learning disability as a child impacted my desire to go to school and my socialization skills.”

Adams said he dreaded going to school every day. He did not want to read.  It was not until he was in college that he discovered he had dyslexia. 

“Once I learned that, I went from being a D student to being on the dean’s list,” Adams said, adding that he made it his mission to help families with children who have disabilities get the help they need in school. 

According to data from the NYS Education Department, nearly 150,000 school-age children from New York struggled with learning disabilities in 2023. Roughly the same number of children were enrolled in special education services and programs in 2022, but over 154,000 were enrolled in these services in 2021. 

The decrease in the number of children receiving special education services in 2023 could possibly be due to more available support services. 

The Brooklyn school will require certain criteria for admission, including scoring below a specific threshold. Admission is still open, and more information is available on the website, bkliteracyacademy.org. 

“This is an upstream approach to help our children and families deal with learning disabilities. And dyslexia is really one of the important ones,” the Brooklyn-born mayor explained.

Melissa Aviles-Ramos is the chancellor of NYC’s public schools, the largest public school system in the country. She said the Central Brooklyn Literacy Academy builds off the success of the South Bronx Literacy Academy, established in 2023 following parent advocacy to provide critical resources to students with dyslexia and co-occurring conditions like ADHD and anxiety. 

“The intervention is extremely targeted,” Chancellor Aviles-Ramos said. “Students have to score below a certain threshold. And that’s indicative of having a print-based disability. Then, they can enroll in the school.”

The school is open to all students who qualify. Classes will be small, around five to six students, similar to the Bronx academy. Lessons will hone in on phonemic awareness to help students understand multi-syllabic words and how to chunk those words together, Aviles-Ramos explained. 

“Yes, while things of this nature can happen and do happen in a general education classroom, but for students who need this kind of intervention, rather than have them in a separate class, there is a school dedicated to giving them this around-the-clock intervention,” the chancellor described. 

Meanwhile, NYC Public Schools celebrated the newly released state test scores for reading and math on Monday, showing an increase English Language Arts (ELA) proficiency of 7.2 points since 2024, from 49.1% to 56.3% among city students. NYC math scores also fared well, increasing by 3.5 points since last year, from 53.4% to 56.9%

City officials credited the expansion of NYC Reads and NYC Solves education programs this year for improvements. 

A collection of topical political cartoons from various artists curated by the Brooklyn Eagle editorial staff.

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