It is a well-known fact that you can barely get your knees beneath the table at one of the city’s thousands of diners before a vast tumbler of iced tap water will have been set down in front of you. This frequently impresses first-time visitors to New York from Britain, where we are more accustomed to having to mount long, fierce arguments for the merits of tap water over expensive bottled alternatives. Now, though – under drought regulations introduced by Mayor Michael Bloomberg – the practice is against the law.

This being New York, that absolutely doesn’t mean that it happens any less frequently than it did. (My unscientific research suggests that it is being flouted in 100 per cent of cases.) But it is another small, insignificant sign of a crisis that is not insignificant in the least.

As well as the city’s own drought emergency – which also precludes much car-washing and, as it’s easy to discover by wandering a little too close to the meatpacking district at the moment, street-washing, too – 53 counties in the State of New York are under similar warnings, a pattern being repeated across the east coast. Reservoirs normally over 90 per cent full are down to 60 per cent and below. Thousands of rivers and wells across the country have run dry.

The United States Drought Monitor, which co-ordinates data on water shortage, has labelled every stretch of the east coast from Georgia to the Canadian border as undergoing “severe” or “extreme” drought. And the meteorological indications are that things will get worse: the reservoirs are half-empty, not half-full. As Peter Gleick, a water-resources expert from the Pacific Institute in California puts it: “A good spring rain will not solve this problem.”

The record-breaking temperatures that are roasting New York at the moment can hardly be helping. At Belvedere Castle, the towering mock-medieval edifice in Central Park where the city’s official temperature is registered, the 92F recorded on Tuesday afternoon was approached, as a mid-April high, only by the 88F recorded at the same spot 106 years previously. It is, in the words of Cole Porter, too darn hot.

That will pass soon enough: thunderstorms are forecast for the end of the week. But the underlying problem – the drought – will not. The reasons behind it may well be attributable to climate change, as researchers such as Mr Gleick argue, but something more mundane is also to blame: leaky pipes.

A report from the Environmental Protection Agency, leaked to the press last week, put the mismatch between actual and required spending on America’s networks of pipes, pumps, sewage works and reservoirs at tens of billions of dollars, and by 2019, if no action is taken, at $650bn: a gap an official was happy to concede was “staggering”.

In New York’s case, experts estimate that by the time the more-than-a billion gallons of water pumped into the city reaches its destination, a third as much again has already been lost, often through unrepaired leaks in the iron pipes which bring it from reservoirs in the Catskill Mountains. A few weeks ago, local authorities announced an expensive plan to use an unmanned submarine to patch holes in the Delaware Aqueduct, which carries more than half of the water from the Catskills to the city. It is currently leaking several million gallons a day.

There are politically strategic reasons for patching the holes, too. For many residents of upstate New York, the way the water is vanishing from their rivers and lakes is particularly aggravating when it is simply being lost on its way to the city (which, incidentally, doesn’t take any water from the vast Hudson river by which it stands). That is even more of a waste of water than presenting it, unasked-for, to the customers of New York diners.

Up to two hundred firefighters were sent to the Episcopal cathedral of St John the Divine, the world’s biggest, to tackle the fire, which began in the gift shop.

The damage was thought not to be as bad as had appeared when the flames were rising before daybreak.

“Some events will be cancelled, but as long as there’s space and we can use it the services will go on,” the vicar bishop, Don Taylor, said. “But it’s just painful to see this church engulfed in smoke.”

The neo-gothic cathedral on the Upper West Side of Manhattan has enough floor space to accommodate Chartres and Notre Dame.

Church officials were worried about the fate of the Barberini-designed 17th and 18th century tapestries woven on the pope’s official loom.

“There was such a heavy smoke condition inside that the firefighters couldn’t see anything,” the New York fire commissioner, Thomas Von Essen, said.

“Thermal imagers allowed them to pinpoint exactly where it was and limit the damage.”

No one is thought to have been hurt in the building, which is visited by about 250,000 people a year for religious services, concerts and cultural events.

Work started on the cathedral in 1892 but, for lack of funds, it is still far from completed.

Its famous visitors have included Martin Luther King Jr, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa and Bishop Desmond Tutu.

Duke Ellington performed his Sacred Concert there in 1968.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center was founded in 1969 to celebrate the diversity of cinema from around the world, to recognize and offer support to new filmmakers, and to further the awareness and understanding of the art of filmmaking. The Film Society’s reputation is matched by its popularity, primarily due to its two world-class international festivals, the New Directors/New Films festival that celebrates new cinematic artists, and the most famous and prestigious film festival in the country, the New York Film Festival.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center delivers to a broad and diverse film-going audience a 363-day season that includes premiers of new films from established and emerging directors all over the world; major retrospectives of film genres, actors, and directors; in-depth symposia and conferences; and high-profile events spotlighting cinematic events and legends. The Society runs a year-round cinema, the Walter Reade Theater, which seats 268 and features state-of-the-art films. It also publishes the most respected cinematic journal in the country, Film Comment. Each year the Society puts on an annual Gala Tribute honoring legendary celebrities and industry leaders, televised from Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall. The Society also hosts an annual Young Friends of Film Honors celebration paying tribute to a notable artist midway through their career. At various times of the year Hollywood studios partner with the Lincoln Center to present special live appearances, concerts, and gala premieres.

Each year the Film Society welcomes an audience of more than 200,000 moviegoers, filmmakers, and industry leaders from around the world, representing every age, nationality, and economic and ethnic group. Because of its reputation as a pioneer among film institutions, the Society has become one of the film world’s most respected and influential purveyor of cinematic discoveries and trends. Since its inception, virtually every major director in the world—including the likes of Martin Scorsese, Francois Truffaut, Jen-Luc Godard, and Pedro Almodovar—has been introduced to American audiences by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

This year the New York Film Fesitval will be celebrating its 43rd year of showing the newest and most important cinematic works by directors from around the world. The festival begins on September 23 and runs for 17 days, showcasing an impressive array of inspiring and provocative cinema created by first-rank international artists and emerging talents. This year’s extraordinary program presents George Clooney’s “Good Night, and Good Luck” as well as Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote, and lots of other gems. The festival is being sponsored by HSBC Private Bank, the New York Times, and Audi, and ticket sales to the general public will be available from now until the first day of the festival.

A man dressed as a fireman set several small fires in an apartment building hallway on Halloween evening, outside the door of a 34-year old single woman. He pounded on the woman’s door, and when she opened up he said, “FDNY! We have a report of smoke and I am here to make sure there is no fire in your apartment!” According to the story reported by the New York Daily News, the woman told detectives that she saw and smelled smoke when she opened the door, so she believed the man dressed in fireman’s gear did indeed intend to check her home for signs of a fire.

After the woman let him into her apartment, the fake fireman pulled a handgun. Covering her face with a chemical-soaked rag, the man then bound her hands and feet with duct tape. Over the course of the next 12 hours, the man repeatedly assaulted her sexually while videotaping himself. He forced the woman to try on clothing and shoes so he could photograph her in them, but he was careful to use latex gloves, throwing them into a trash bag he had brought with him. The woman regained consciousness several times during the attacks, but the man quickly drugged her again.

While the ordeal was taking place, real New York City firefighters responded to several emergency calls from other residents of the apartment building who had smelled the smoke and discovered the fires, which were extinguished quickly. Some residents even tried to evacuate the building. One of those residents told reporters that he knocked on the victim’s door to alert her to what was going on, but there was no answer. The building superintendent said that also during the attack, several of the victim’s came to her apartment to pick her up so they could all go together to a party, but when there was no response to their knock, they left the building.

Police said that the attacker left around dawn Tuesday morning. When the woman came to, she was able to free herself from her bindings and dial 911 for help. Officers were able to find the gas mask the fake fireman wore over his face, but very few other clues. The Daily News reported that the victim is worried about the attacker having stalked her because he knew some personal details about her life.