New York City

More than 10,000 people may gather today in New York's Prospect Park to celebrate what would have been the 51st birthday of the late pop star Michael Jackson at a "block party" organized by filmmaker Spike Lee. Heavy rain and thunderstorms predicted by the National Weather Service won't stop the event, Lee's company said. The event will be a "Brooklyn-style block party," Lee told the Root, an online magazine of black American culture. "It's going to just be how we do it, Brooklyn style.

Tavern on the Green, a 75-year-old institution in New York's Central Park that was the second-highest-grossing restaurant in the United States last year, will be taken over by Dean Poll, who runs another eatery in New York's most famous park. Poll, who operates Loeb Central Park Boathouse, was awarded a 20-year lease for Tavern on the Green by New York's Parks & Recreation Department, which issues the license for the restaurant because it's on city property. The city, which announced the decision Friday in a press release, was seeking a more lucrative deal that would give it as much as 20% of the restaurant's revenue.

Regarding Barbados ["Jump In. And Savor." by Janis Cooke Newman, Nov. 1]. She should have tried the cuisine at Eve's Garden in Hastings . . . scrumptious. Loved the article. Vanita Maloney New York City

Doctors say they've never seen anything like it: A window washer who fell 47 stories from the roof of a Manhattan skyscraper is now awake, talking to his family and expected to walk again. Alcides Moreno, 37, plummeted almost 500 feet in a Dec. 7 scaffolding collapse that killed his brother. Somehow Moreno lived, and doctors at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center announced Thursday that his recovery has been astonishing. He has movement in all his limbs.

Four giant waterfalls will be erected in New York for three months this summer in a public art project city officials hope will create $55 million in tourism revenue. The waterfalls, including one that will fall from the Brooklyn Bridge, are the brainchild of Danish artist Olafur Eliasson. Installation will cost $15 million, funded by private donations to New York's Public Art Fund. "It's about seeing water in a different way," Eliasson told a news conference Wednesday.

It will take up to two weeks to determine the cause of Heath Ledger's death, the New York City Medical Examiner's Office said Wednesday, but police were investigating the possibility of a drug overdose as additional details emerged about the discovery of the 28-year-old actor's body. Authorities said a rolled-up $20 bill was found near Ledger's body on the floor of his loft, and that one of the women who discovered him had phoned actress Mary-Kate Olsen before she called authorities.

The yellow cab pulled over to pick up a passenger across from the Empire State Building as its driver, Mahbub Hossain, chatted on his cellphone headset. If this had been a test, Hossain would have ended up with a $200 fine.

The brutal 1981 slaying of three Bonanno crime family captains could lead to more charges in the big mob investigation that on Thursday resulted in the arrest of scores of Gambino crime family members and associates. Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have told Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis that their investigation, which resulted in the arrest of the reputed leadership of the Gambino family and numerous captains and soldiers, is focusing in part on the 1981 slayings.

A 39-year-old man with a history of mental problems was arrested in the slaying of a psychologist attacked in her office with a meat cleaver, police said. David Tarloff of Queens was taken into custody after investigators matched him with three palm prints found at the bloody crime scene, said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. Tarloff made statements incriminating himself during a 25-minute interrogation, Kelly said. Therapist Kathryn Faughey was slashed 15 times with the cleaver and a 9-inch knife in her Manhattan office Tuesday evening.

Federal prosecutors have offered plea bargains to almost all of the 62 reputed Gambino crime family members and associates arrested three weeks ago. Letters containing the plea offers, which legal sources said proposed prison terms of four months to nearly 20 years, were given to defense attorneys Wednesday in Brooklyn federal court in a pretrial conference. The U.S.