Rapper Fatman Scoop has died after collapsing on stage at a show Friday in Connecticut. The 53-year-old artist topped charts in Europe with “Be Faithful” two decades ago and later contributed to hits by Missy Elliott and other artists. The cause of his death isn't immediately clear. The mayor of the town of Hamden says he had a medical emergency while performing at a park there, and concertgoers and paramedics tried to aid him. He was taken to a hospital. His family calls him “a radiant soul” in an Instagram post Saturday confirming his death. The New York-born rapper broke out with 1999’s “Be Faithful.” It took off in Europe with a 2003 re-release, hitting No. 1 on the singles charts in the U.K. and Ireland.

A politically active western New York businessman has admitted to a multimillion-dollar pandemic loan fraud, and prosecutors have said some of the money went to the Democrat’s campaign coffer for an unsuccessful bid for a county office. Court records show Hormoz Mansouri pleaded guilty Friday to federal bank fraud and fraud conspiracy charges. The Buffalo News says he admitted in court that he inflated his businesses’ payroll costs and employee numbers on federal pandemic relief loans applications. The engineering-business owner sought the Democratic nomination for Erie County comptroller in 2021. According to his indictment, Mansouri reaped about $3 million in all from the pandemic loan fraud scheme, and $200,000 of it went to his campaign account.

A man suspected of abducting a 9-year-old girl from a New York City supermarket and sexually assaulting her has been killed in a car crash while fleeing from police. The 64-year-old Queens man died Friday after officers attempted to pull him over and pursued his vehicle. Police say the man “forcefully” abducted the girl at a Key Foods store the previous evening while her grandmother was in the restroom. They say he sexually assaulted her in his car, left her on the street and drove away. Police say the man had been arrested four times, most recently for robbery in 2022.

A new report from Columbia University’s antisemitism task force describes a hostile climate for Jewish and Israeli students at the New York City institution during the last school year. The report released Friday also recommends university-wide training and better reporting measures. The report comes days before the start of a new school year, and in the wake of pro-Palestinian protests that shook the Ivy League school in the spring. The task force heard from Jewish students who described being ostracized from student groups and subjected to harassment. The report also recommends broadening the definition of antisemitism and the ways it can manifest.

Donald Trump’s lawyers are moving to halt proceedings in his New York hush money criminal case and postpone next month’s sentencing indefinitely while he tries to have a federal court intervene and potentially overturn his state conviction. In a letter to the trial judge made public Friday, Trump’s lawyers asked that he hold off on a decision on Trump’s request to overturn the verdict and dismiss the indictment in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent presidential immunity ruling. The judge had said he would rule Sept. 16. Trump’s lawyers also urged the judge to postpone Trump’s Sept. 18 sentencing while the U.S. District Court in Manhattan weighs their request that it seize the case from state court.

Two former Georgia election workers who won a $148 million defamation judgment against Rudy Giuliani are asking a court to award them the cash-strapped former New York City mayor’s apartment and other property as they ramp up efforts to collect on the staggering debt. Lawyers for Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss urged the U.S. District Court in Manhattan to force Giuliani to turn over his Madison Avenue apartment, any remaining cash and some of his prized New York Yankees memorabilia, including three World Series rings and a signed Joe DiMaggio shirt.

Authorities say a New York man shot his former wife and her new boyfriend to death after first texting his 15-year-old daughter to exit the couple’s house and wait outside in his car. Fifty-year-old Daniel Coppola was charged with two counts of murder in the deaths of his ex-wife, Kelly Coppola, and her boyfriend, Kenneth Polhman Jr., in the Long Island hamlet of St. James on Wednesday. Suffolk County prosecutors said Friday that Coppola plotted the killings “in excruciating detail” in a typewritten note police found in his home. Coppola pleaded not guilty and defense lawyer Jason Cohen asked that his client be placed on suicide watch.

After struggling to drum up interest following its Cannes Film Festival premiere, “The Apprentice,” starring Sebastian Stan as a young Donald Trump, has found a distributor that plans to release the film shortly before the election in November. Briarcliff Entertainment will launch “The Apprentice” in theaters on Oct. 11. A spokesperson for the Trump campaign on Friday called the film's release “election interference by Hollywood elites.” “The Apprentice” chronicles Trump’s rise to power in New York real estate under the tutelage of defense attorney Roy Cohn.

The driver of a mini-school bus that struck and killed a kindergartner and his mother as they were walking to school in suburban New York will not face criminal charges but has been ticketed for failing to yield to pedestrians and for using his cellphone minutes before the crash. Police said Friday that the 68-year-old driver is keeping his job and could be back behind the wheel when the school year starts next week. The crash happened at around 8:30 a.m. June 20 as Molly Murphy Donovan and her 6-year-old son, Michael Donovan Volpe, were walking to school in the Westchester County village of Mamaroneck.

A historic cemetery for African Americans in Kingston, New York, is being reclaimed as the Pine Street African Burial Ground. People denied church burials were interred in the cemetery for more than 120 years until the late 19th century. The cemetery was covered over by a lumberyard as the city by the Hudson River grew. Archaeological excavations over the last three summers have located the remains of up to 27 people. Now money is being raised to turn the urban backyard into a respectful resting place. Advocates hope DNA and other tests will provide information on those buried there and possibly identify descendants.

In the decade since Black Lives Matter, a spotlight has shined on inequity in education outcomes and, in particular, how exclusionary discipline disproportionately affects Black children. They are more likely to be suspended, missing crucial instructional time and falling behind, beginning a cycle that increasingly disconnects them from school. The past decade has seen some progress in lowering suspension rates for Black students. But massive disparities persist, according to a review of discipline data in key states by The Associated Press.

Racial disparities in how schools discipline students received new attention at the outset of a national reckoning with racial injustice, but the results of reform efforts have been slow to materialize. In many schools around the country, Black students have been more likely to receive punishments that remove them from the classroom, including suspensions, expulsions and being transferred to alternative schools. A decade ago, those gaps became the target of a newly energized reform movement spurred by the same reckoning that gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Donald Trump has asked a federal court to intervene in his hush money criminal case, seeking a pathway to overturn his felony conviction and indefinitely delay his sentencing scheduled for next month. The former president’s lawyers on Thursday asked the U.S. District Court in Manhattan to take control of the New York City criminal case, arguing that the state-level prosecution violated Trump’s constitutional rights and ran afoul of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity. Trump was convicted in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a payment to bury affair allegations that threatened to cloud his 2016 presidential run. A federal judge rejected Trump’s attempt last year to move the case to federal court.

Donald Trump asks federal court to intervene in his hush money case in bid to overturn his conviction, delay sentencing.

Federal jurors in Cheyenne have found a Colorado man guilty of kidnapping a woman on a ranch owned by Michael Bloomberg. Fifty-one-year-old Joseph Beecher faces seven years to life in prison after he was convicted Wednesday on kidnapping, carjacking and firearm charges. Authorities allege Beecher sought to kill the media mogul and former New York City mayor. His motivation is unclear. Beecher didn't find Bloomberg and instead kidnapped a housekeeper at the ranch, ordering her to drive him to Denver and then Cheyenne. Police found the two at a motel and rescued the woman unharmed early the next day.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has lost twice in his battles to stay on the presidential ballot in some states and get off of it in others. North Carolina’s elections board refused to take him off that state’s ballot Thursday, with a majority saying it was too late for him to withdraw. Meanwhile, an appeals court in New York rejected Kennedy’s request to get back on the ballot there, upholding a judge’s decision to disqualify him for having lied on elections paperwork about where he lived. Kennedy has suspended his independent campaign and endorsed Republican Donald Trump.

A former New York City police officer has been sentenced to 27 years in prison for shooting and wounding her ex-girlfriend and killing the ex-girlfriend’s new love interest. Former officer Yvonne Wu was sentenced Wednesday in state court in Brooklyn. She pleaded guilty in June to manslaughter and attempted murder for shooting Jenny Li and Jamie Liang. Wu was off duty on Oct. 13, 2021 when she used her NYPD-issue gun to shoot her former girlfriend Li, and Li’s new partner, Liang. Liang was killed and Li survived with serious injuries. Wu apologized in court and said she would never forgive herself.