After having a Pretty Woman moment in a Brooklyn store, the singer-songwriter let rip on X

Name: Kelly Clarkson.

Age: 44. Born in 1982. In Fort Worth, as it happens.

Kings Theatre, Brooklyn

The queen of Philly soul is in phenomenal form in a saucy and effortlessly virtuosic show celebrating 26 years in music

At one point during her triumphant phones-free show at Brooklyn’s Kings Theater, Jill Scott takes a moment to introduce Dwayne Wright, her bass player and co-musical director who is known to his friends, the queen of Philly soul informs the 3,000-strong audience, as the “pussy whisperer”. The crowd cracks up, but she’s not done. “I want you to close your ears and listen with your vagina,” she instructs, as Wright launches into a deep, toe-curling run on his instrument. “Kegel to the music!” she whoops. “You come to a Jill Scott concert and you become a virgin again.”

Perhaps Scott is emboldened by the no-phones policy tonight; ours were stashed in Yondr pouches upon entry à la recent Jack White and Phoebe Bridgers concerts. But the emotionally attuned, pointedly political and proudly horny soul singer probably doesn’t need any help in getting loose. Despite my initial grumbles, the technology ban turns out to be an inspired decision in an evening that feels deeply connected, as if we’re at a summer block party hosted by the neighborhood’s most charismatic character.

Police forcibly broke up protest outside hospital where federal immigration agents took detainee for evaluation

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New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, and other local officials on Monday condemned Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after federal officers dragged a man out of a hospital building where he had been taken following an arrest, prompting a crowd of protesters to gather outside, where they clashed with police.

The incident over the weekend has also drawn scrutiny from critics questioning the New York police department’s response at the scene, in relation to New York City’s sanctuary laws, which bar local police from assisting federal immigration authorities in civil immigration enforcement.

Matthew Rodriguez, 18, was apprehended in Pennsylvania in connection to shooting that killed Kaori Patterson-Moore

A second suspect in the stray-bullet killing of a seven-month-old baby on a Brooklyn street was arrested on Friday, investigators said, two days after a shooting the New York police department (NYPD) commissioner called “a tragedy that truly shocks the conscience”.

Matthew Rodriguez, 18, was apprehended in Pennsylvania by NYPD detectives working with US marshals, according to authorities.

In this week’s newsletter: A new memoir by Fred Brathwaite offers an insight into the city’s emerging underground scene in the 70s and 80s – and shows us the power of subcultures in difficult times

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Hello everyone, I’m Coco Khan, covering for Gwilym Mumford, and this week, as the sun started to peep out from behind the clouds, I counted five Jean-Michel Basquiat T-shirts on passersby during a park walk.

Sure, I may live in a trendy London borough – but it’s still hardly surprising, given that the name and works of the New York artist whose roots were in graffiti have been licensed to fashion brands from Next, Primark and Uniqlo to Supreme and Saint Laurent. It’s hard to imagine that the artist – who died at 27 of a drug overdose, and whose signature slogan SAMO© (Same Old Crap – a criticism of consumerism, and the commodification of art, with a playful copyright mark) – would approve of the Basquiat name being on keyrings, tote bags and clothing. But hey, what do I know – I’m just another purist bore still upset that Ramones T-shirts are worn by millions who couldn’t name a song, when the Ramones themselves did not care.

Joshua Nass, of alleged $600,000 extortion plot, played role in pardon of man convicted of failing to pay $40m in taxes

A New York lobbyist and attorney connected to a presidential pardon issued by Donald Trump in November has been charged with attempting to extort a former client and the client’s son over an alleged $500,000 debt.

Joshua Nass, 34, was arrested on Friday after being charged in federal court in Brooklyn with attempted Hobbs Act extortion. US justice department prosecutors contend that Nass threatened a client for payment that he claimed he was owed for his services.

Asif Merchant testified that Revolutionary Guards coerced him into scheme by threatening his family in Tehran

A Pakistani businessman accused of plotting to kill Donald Trump told a federal jury on Wednesday that he was coerced into the scheme by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, which he said had threatened his family to secure his participation.

Asif Merchant, 47, took the unusual step of testifying in his own defense at Brooklyn federal court, where he faces terrorism and murder-for-hire charges. Speaking through an Urdu translator, he told jurors he went along with the plot only out of fear for his wife and adopted daughter in Tehran.

Singer and songwriter of such pop canon hits as Oh! Carol, Breaking Up Is Hard to Do and (Is This the Way to) Amarillo

“Prolific” hardly does justice to Neil Sedaka’s songwriting output, which ran to more than 1,000 compositions over seven decades.

If he had been willing to stay behind the scenes, turning out tunes for other singers, he would have still merited a place in pop history thanks to the number of those songs that became part of the pop canon, including Where the Boys Are, Love Will Keep Us Together and (Is This the Way to) Amarillo. However, Sedaka, who has died aged 86, had a constitutional need to see his own name in lights.

It took Ellen Baum about 16 hours to finish clearing one section of hair ties, condoms and tissues woven into the fencing

On a blisteringly cold day earlier this month, Ellen Baum was not in the best mood as she walked across the Brooklyn Bridge to meet some friends in Manhattan.

“I had read particularly horrible news that morning about, you know, the general state of the world,” said Baum, who is 37 and works in tech. And then there was the garbage. Baum stared at the dirty tissues, hair ties, trash bags and socks affixed to the suspension bridge’s frame – sometimes she even sees condoms and tampons woven into the fencing – and had a thought. “I can’t do anything about some of these big problems that the world and the city are facing. But I can do one modicum of something nice.”

More than $1m has been raised by Elon Musk and others to commission ‘sterile’ street art of Iryna Zarutska – whose death has become a rightwing flashpoint

Like most blocks in Bushwick, New York, Evergreen Street is blanketed in street art and graffiti. But this month, an incongruous new mural appeared, towering over the street corner. Painted on the side of Formosa, a popular Taiwanese dumpling joint, the image of a blond woman stretches across two stories and an entire apartment block, her right eyebrow fractured by bedroom windows.

The mural is one of a number that have been painted across the US depicting Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee who was killed last year while riding the light rail in Charlotte, North Carolina. Zarutska was traveling home from her job at a local pizzeria when she was stabbed from behind three times.

‘I handed a guy a starting pistol for a stick-up scene. But instead he reached into his car and took out the sawn-off shotgun you see in the movie’

I was part of the New York graffiti artists the Fabulous 5, who were primarily known for painting whole subway cars on the Lexington Avenue line. Lee Quiñones was the group’s Michelangelo. I’d been running with Jean-Michel Basquiat and wanted to take graffiti art into art spaces. I thought that an underground independent film could tell our story in the way we wanted.