Chaz Murray, 54, grew up in Merrick bounding through the woods near his home. He became a Boy Scout and went on to camp in the wild. He moved away when he turned 24 and returned seven years ago. On Sunday, he said he was horrified to see the derelict state into which Merrick’s forests off the Meadowbrook Parkway have fallen. Murray, a New York City paramedic, was one of 52 volunteers who came to the woods between Sunrise Highway and Meadowbrook Road in Merrick to clean up debris that had washed from farther north into the forest via the Meadow Brook or had been strewn there by vandals. He said he learned about the cleanup by reading the Merrick Herald Life. more

Merokean Steve “The Crusher” Weiner stood in awe and soaked in the sheer size of the theater where he would attempt to break the Guinness world record for curling metal frying pans with his bare hands. “It was a huge, huge stage,” recalled the 6-foot-2 Weiner during a recent interview at his home in the Gables neighborhood. more

Dave Denenberg, a longtime Nassau County legislator from Merrick accused by his former law firm of over-billing a corporate client for millions of dollars, pleaded guilty to eight counts of mail fraud Wednesday morning in Central Islip federal court. more

Nassau County Legislator Dave Denenberg, the Merrick Democrat accused by his former law firm of over-billing a corporate client for millions of dollars, was due in federal court on Jan. 21, after press time, to answer eight federal mail fraud charges. more

Nassau County Legislator Dave Denenberg, the Merrick Democrat accused by his former employer of overbilling a large corporate client for millions of dollars, was expected to plead guilty to mail fraud charges in federal court in Central Islip on Dec. 11, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York. He didn’t, however. more

Nassau County Legislator David Denenberg, a Democrat from Merrick, is facing eight counts of mail fraud, a federal crime, after prosecutors allege he overbilled a client at his former law firm by $2.3 million. more

Johannes Laursen, former president of the New York Press Association and publisher of four community newspapers on the South Shore, died on Sept. 18, at age 98. more

A state judge has put Nassau County Legislator Dave Denenberg on a daily-living, expenses-only budget, at least until a Sept. 29 court hearing on his former law firm’s application to block Denenberg from selling or transferring financial assets. more

The former law firm of Nassau County Legislator David Denenberg is suing him in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, seeking $3.6 million in damages. The firm alleges that Denenberg systemically and fraudulently overbilled a client to the tune of $2.3 million over eight years, and sought a 25 percent annual bonus from the firm based, at least in part, on those billings. more

Patients should stop thinking of powerful pain medications like Oxycontin and Vycodin as slightly stronger versions of Tylenol and Advil. Rather, they should think of them as “heroin pills.” That’s according to Dr. Andrew Kolodny, president of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing and chief medical officer for Phoenix House, a national, nonprofit drug treatment agency. more