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.

New Yorkers may feel that The Metropolitan Transportation Authority was the target of a domestic terrorism attack this morning when they walked out of their homes to head to work and discovered that the subways and buses in the city weren’t rolling. Transit workers walked off the job Tuesday morning because their demands hadn’t been met by the city during several days of particularly vile and angry labor talks. According to Roger Toussaint, the union president, workers “are tired of being underappreciated and disrespected.” So they decided they would disrespect the city they serve, by attempting to bring it to its knees just a few days before Christmas.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg calls the strike “cowardly,” and immediately put an emergency plan into effect to alleviate the gridlock caused by the strike. He added that a strike by transit workers during the busiest time of the year is “illegal and morally reprehensible.” More than 7 million people ride the subways and buses every day during a regular week in New York City, but that number is greatly increased this time of year. The walkout could cost the city as much as $400 million a day, and will cause untold repercussions for businesses at the height of the shopping and tourist season.

There hasn’t been a citywide transit strike in New York City in more than 25 years. Because it is illegal for mass transit workers to strike in New York, the bus and subway employees who are striking—over 33,000 employees—will face huge fines for participating. Peter Kalikow, the head of the MTA, calls the strike “a slap in the face” to all New Yorkers. State lawyers are headed to court today to block the walkout, which was called by the union just three hours after a midnight deadline. Toussaint said the proposed new contract with the MTA should have been a “no-brainer,” and the union feels the strike is justified.

Bloomberg is urging New Yorkers to make arrangements to carpool, walk, or ride bikes to work, or work at home if possible. Meanwhile, New York yellow taxis are attempting to help ease the congestion on city streets by taking up to four passengers at a time. Many people are having trouble understanding the new pricing structure for taxis implemented by Bloomberg, with the city divided into zones. Manhattan has been divided into four zones, with a $10 fare per person for travel within a single zone and an additional $5 for traveling into another zone. The confusion hasn’t impeded the demand for taxis this morning, though. A line of yellow cabs circles the block outside Penn Station, with drivers and hopeful passengers screaming out locations, hoping to match up with other people heading to the same locations so they can share rides.

One subway booth in New York City has a sign posted saying, “Strike in Effect. Station Closed. Happy Holidays.” Obviously city transit workers aren’t interested in peace and goodwill to all men. No matter how angry they are about the impasse with the MTA, it’s a sad day indeed when they let their acrimony ruin the holidays for the millions of people who are responsible for them having jobs in the first place.

On Wednesday a state judge ruled that the city must provide the public with the names of the 28 people who have been identified so far among the tapes of nearly 130 emergency calls made that day. But on Thursday, the city filed an appeal, which effectively puts a halt to the release of those tapes for the moment. The Times will now have to seek an appellate hearing to lift the stay. The newspaper, along with relatives of several Sept. 11 victims, hopes that the tapes may offer a glimpse into the experiences of the 2,749 people who were killed when the twin towers came down.

Sally Regenhard, whose son was one of the firefighters killed that day, is one of the plaintiffs joining the Times in its lawsuit. Regenhard said that allowing only half of the conversations to be heard isn’t enough, and that the public should be allowed to hear both sides of the conversations to get a true picture of what was happening inside the towers. “What we’re getting is only half the truth, half of the story,” Regenhard said, adding that if families were able to listen to tapes of the callers who have not yet been identified, they may be able to hear their loved ones’ voices. “Only a mother could listen to recordings and maybe hear some glimmer of your child’s voice, even though his name may have been garbled,” she said.

The victims’ families are represented by attorney Normal Siegel, who told reporters that he wants to learn whether operators’ instructions may have affected the evacuations of the buildings. “We will potentially hear Operator A say, ‘Go to the roof,’” Siegel said. “We might hear Operator B say, ‘Stay in place. We’re coming to get you.’” The appeals court ruling will allow the release of the 28 tapes to the public only if the families of those callers consent to the release. So far, at least three families have asked to listen to the voices of their loved ones during their final hours.

One of those victims was Christopher Hanley, 35, an employee of Radianz, a division of Reuters. Hanley’s parents shared the tape of their son’s emergency call with The New York Times. Hanley made a call to 911 from the Windows on the World restaurant just four minutes after a hijacked airplane struck the north tower. He had been attending a conference there, and he had to repeat his story to two different dispatchers. “Yeah. Hi. I’m on the 106th floor of the World Trade Center. We just had an explosion on the, on the like 105th floor,” Hanley told a dispatcher. Later, he says, ‘We have smoke and…it’s pretty bad.” The dispatcher tells him to “sit tight. Do not leave, okay?” The police dispatcher then transferred the call to the fire department dispatcher, who told Hanley to stay put and promised that firefighters were on the way. “All right,” Hanley replied. “Please hurry.”

Under the current city rules of New York City, which have been in place since 1971, people who have a sex-change operation can apply for a revised birth certificate, but only if they’ve actually had surgery. And even then, the only change made is to remove reference to gender entirely. But a new plan, announced in September, will make it easier for transgender New Yorkers to have their genders changed on their birth certificates whether or not they’ve been physically altered to a different gender.

New York City has a significant transgender community, and for years they have requested that the city change its policies regarding birth certificates being changed to reflect a person’s newly adopted gender-identity. The new plan will allow transgender people to change their birth certificates to reflect a new gender even if they haven’t had genital surgery. As long as they can show substantial proof that they have undertaken other steps to irrevocably alter their gender—such as undergoing hormone therapy—they can request that their birth certificate be changed.

Lorna Thorpe, Deputy Commissioner of New York’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said that the city’s current system is “outdated,” because surgery isn’t the most prevalent means for a transgender person to switch genders. “A lot of transgender persons use different techniques to switch genders,” Thorpe said. “Some try hormones. A smaller number undergo surgery—in part, because not everyone is capable of undergoing the surgery.”

The new policy is necessary, transgender advocates say, because of problems people have encountered since 9/11 due to increased security measures in the city. New Yorkers must show a picture ID to enter airport terminals, public monuments, office towers, and government buildings. But if someone inspects an ID and notices that a person’s appearance doesn’t match the gender listed on their ID, that’s where the trouble starts.

Cole Thaler, a transgender rights attorney for the national legal aid group Lambda Legal, says, “That can be a very dangerous situation for a transgender person.” Thaler said that if a person’s birth certificate matches their appearance, it will make it easier for them to obtain other government-mandated records such as drivers’ licenses, passports, and Social Security cards.

The new policies will move New York City into the forefront of efforts by transgender advocates to redefine gender across the board. All but three states in the US now allow people who have had a sex-change operation to get a new birth certificate. Almost all of those states require proof of a gender-reassignment surgery in order to issue a revised birth certificate. Laws in Tennessee, Ohio, and Idaho strictly prohibit a change of gender on a birth certificate for any reason.