Police in some of the nation's largest cities have stepped up security in the wake of two explosions that rocked the Boston Marathon.

"We've stepping up security at hotels and other prominent locations in the city through deployment of the NYPD's critical response vehicles until is more about the explosion is learned," Deputy Commissioner of the New York Police Department Paul J Browne told CNBC.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg told New Yorkers that security is being beefed up in both visible and covert ways. "We have 1,000 members of the NYPD assigned to counter-terrorism duties, and they - along with the entire NYPD and the investments we have made in counter-terrorism infrastructure - are being fully mobilized to protect our city," he said in a statement.

Security was also increased in Washington, D.C., at Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House, officials told NBC News. People with hard passes can still access the White House, but the public has been pushed into Lafayette Park and beyond. The Secret Service has put up yellow police tape to keep people away from the front of the White House.

Also, the Metropolitan Police Department in DC confirms to NBC News that the police have "heightened security" in DC. Police at the United States Capitol were taking additional precautions as well, according to a spokesperson.

Organizers from the London marathon — set to take place this Sunday — announced the race will still go on, though British police are in the process of reviewing security plans. 

"A security plan is in place for the London Marathon. We will be reviewing our security arrangements in partnership with London Marathon," Metropolitan Police Chief Superintendent Julia Pendry said.

Meanwhile, other cities announced they would not step up security until more is known about the incident. Police in Atlanta, Miami, Dallas, Houston, and Oklahoma City have all announced they are not making any adjustments, some because they do not have the resources, other because no major events were being held.

It is unclear what caused the explosion that killed two and injured dozens of runners and onlookers near the finish line of the marathon.

Additional reporting by NBC News' Stacey Klein and Mike Viqueira

Philip Kamrass / AP

Gun enthusiasts gather during the annual New York State Arms Collectors Association Albany Gun Show in this Jan. 26, 2013, photo.

Key measures of New York's new gun law are set to kick in, with owners of guns now classified as assault weapons required to register the firearms and new limits on the number of bullets allowed in magazines.

As the new provisions take effect today, New York's affiliate of the National Rifle Association said it plans to head to court to seek an immediate halt to the magazine limit.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo calls those and other provisions in the state's new gun law common sense while dismissing criticisms he says come from "extreme fringe conservatives" who claim the government has no right to regulate guns.

"Yes, they are against it, but they are the extremists and the extremists shouldn't win, especially on this issue when it is so important to the majority," Cuomo said in a radio interview last week. "In politics, we have to be willing to take on the extremists, otherwise you will see paralysis."

New York's new gun restrictions, the first in the nation passed following December's massacre at a Connecticut elementary school, limit state gun owners to no more than seven bullets in magazines, except at competitions or firing ranges.

The new regulations in New York commence as the U.S. Senate prepares to debate expanded gun legislation and weeks after Connecticut joined Colorado in signing into law tougher new gun restrictions.

The New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, the state's NRA affiliate, has a pending federal lawsuit against the new provisions. It plans to ask a judge Monday for an immediate halt to the magazine limit. The new registrations, required over the next year, will be the group's focus later.

The law violates the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens "to keep commonly possessed firearms" at home for self-defense and for other lawful purposes, the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association said in court papers. It is advising members to obey the law in the meantime.

"We are lawful and legal citizens of New York state and we always obey the law," association President Tom King said. "It's as simple as that."

State Police planned to post forms on their website for registration starting Monday. Owners of those guns, now banned from in-state sales, are required within a year to register them. Alternatively, they can legally sell them to a licensed dealer or out of state by next Jan. 15.

Rich Davenport, recording secretary of the Erie County Federation of Sportsmen's Clubs, said their nearly 11,000 members are united in opposition to the law, which he considers a hasty, illogical and emotional response to the Newtown, Conn., school shooting. He also questioned likely compliance with the registration requirement.

"I'm guessing it'll be pretty low," said Davenport, a longtime hunter. He said that even though he's not personally affected by the registration provision, "I'm offended as an American."

The toughest part of the new statute — banning in-state sales of those guns newly classified as "assault weapons" — immediately took effect Jan. 15. The new classification related to a single military-style feature, such as a pistol grip on semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines. Other listed features include a folding or thumbhole stock, bayonet mount, flash suppressor, or second protruding grip held by the non-trigger hand.

It requires owners to register an estimated 1 million guns previously not classified as assault weapons by April 15, 2014, though law enforcement officials acknowledge they don't know exactly how many such guns New Yorkers have.

The assault weapon definition also applies to some shotguns and handguns. They include shotguns that are semi-automatic, or self-loading, and have another feature, such as a folding stock, a second handgrip held by the non-shooting hand or the ability to accept a detachable magazine.

Also covered are semi-automatic pistols that can take detachable magazines and have another feature, such as a folding or thumbhole stock, a second handgrip and a threaded barrel that can accept a silencer.

Many county boards in New York have passed resolutions urging at least partial repeal of the law while warning that new registration requirements would be a costly burden on them.

Herkimer County Clerk Sylvia Rowan said Thursday she had received no registration forms for those guns. "There's a lot of confusion on this," she said.

Rowan noted that she had received few formal requests filed from the holders of the county's 12,000 pistol permits to exempt their information from public disclosure, something else authorized under the new law.

Passed Jan. 15, a month after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., the statute originally banned magazines with more than seven bullets effective April 15. Connecticut officials said that shooter Adam Lanza used a semi-automatic Bushmaster AR-15 and five 30-round magazines to kill 20 children and six adults in minutes.

However, acknowledging that manufacturers don't make seven-bullet magazines, the Cuomo administration and New York lawmakers amended their law on March 29, keeping 10-bullet magazines legal but generally illegal to load them with more than seven bullets.

The new Colorado bill, signed into law last month, bans ammunition magazines that hold more than 15 rounds.

Related:

Supreme Court passes on gun case

Gun group endorses background checks

Conservative group: Stop gun bill

NBC 4 New York

Eady Rothstein hopes to meet Larry Brickman, who was a 21-year-old lifeguard when he saved then 5-year-old Rothstein's life.

A woman who was rescued by a lifeguard when she nearly drowned in a pool as a 5-year-old has found her hero, almost 50 years after her brush with death.

Eady Rothstein, from Ramsey, N.J., was sitting on the edge of a pool at a club near Lido Beach on New York’s Long Island in 1964 when she suddenly slipped in.

"I can picture being underwater, screaming," recalled Rothstein. 

A young lifeguard jumped in and gave the little girl mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for several minutes. He persisted until she regained consciousness, saving her life. 

"I've always said I wanted to thank him, and I should do it," said Rothstein.

Larry Brickman, who now lives in Florida, was a 21-year-old medical student living in Long Beach for the summer, working as a lifeguard to pay for school. He knew CPR -- training that most lifeguards did not get back in the 1960s. 

Read more stories at NBCNewYork.com

"If no one was there to do this, I'm afraid she would have succumbed," Brickman said from his Boca Raton office Wednesday. 

Rothstein and Brickman had only met in person that one fateful summer day. Recently, Rothstein came across an article detailing their encounter in a family scrapbook while moving to her new home in Ramsey. So she decided to track him down, and a simple Google search put them in touch.

"I got his phone number. I got his answering machine, and I left a message," said Rothstein. 

Brickman returned her call.

"My final words to her when I hung up that day, after I called her back, were, 'You know, I guess we just got very lucky, you and I both,'" said Brickman. 

Rothstein said after the trauma, her father made her get back in the water with swimming lessons. Now she regularly swims laps in the pool each summer.

An in-person reunion is in the works. For now, words on the phone will have to do. 

"I owe my life, and it's a very nice feeling to finally be able to say, 'Thank you,'" said Rothstein. 

New York State Assembly

New York State Assemblyman Eric Stevenson

A Bronx legislator was charged Thursday with taking $22,000 in bribes after a fellow lawmaker trying to save his own skin wore a wire for the feds, blowing open the latest corruption case to rock New York politics.

The arrest of Assemblyman Eric Stevenson – who allegedly drafted a bill at the behest of four businessmen lining his pockets -- comes just days after six other politicians were arrested in an unrelated graft case.

And there may be more arrests to come.

Assemblyman Nelson Castro, who helped prosecutors go after Stevenson, said in a statement that he has been cooperating for four years in “various investigations aimed at rooting out public corruption.”

Castro, who will not face charges, resigned his seat Thursday under the terms of his deal with prosecutors. Stevenson’s office said he had no comment, and his lawyer could not be reached.

In a statement dripping with disgust, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said the new allegations revealed that the state capital was overrun with crooks.

“It becomes more and more difficult to avoid the sad conclusion that political corruption in New York is indeed rampant and that a show-me-the-money culture in Albany is alive and well,” Bharara said.

Castro was just a fledgling assemblyman when he was secretly indicted in 2009 on a perjury charge stemming from a civil case, he said. He began cooperating with prosecutors after that, according to court documents that did not refer to him by name.

A criminal complaint said that in meetings at a diner, a steakhouse and a hotel room, a group of businessmen bribed Castro and Stevenson to help them open day-care centers for senior citizens.

Stevenson, a two-term Democrat, allegedly agreed to use his influence with a utility company and the city Buildings Department to expedite the opening – and his law-making abilities to crush any competition.

He was captured on tape making a deal to draw up legislation that would impose a moratorium on new centers, effectively giving the gang of four a monopoly, the complaint says.

"You can write down the language, basically what you want," he allegedly told a go-between for the businessmen, an unnamed wannabe pol who also ended up cooperating with the probe.

Stevenson eventually introduced the moratorium bill, which Bharara called “a fairly neat trick that offends both the core principles of both democracy and capitalism.”

He also was caught talking about the payoffs – sometimes referred to as “blessings” -- on tape, prosecutors said.

"Are they putting together a nice little package for me?" he allegedly asked the informant on Dec. 27, going on to discuss his mounting expenses. "I got my inauguration...I gotta feed all the people."

Despite the indiscretions, Stevenson was apparently aware that authorities could be monitoring him.

He warned about "recorders" and refused to accept cash in a restaurant where he spotted surveillance cameras, waiting until he was outside to put the padded envelope in his front pocket, the complaint said.

During the Dec. 27 rendezvous, Stevenson and the informant chatted about a rogue's gallery of state legislators who had ended up in jail -- and how pervasive misdeeds are in the capital, according to the court papers.

"Bottom line, if half of the people up here in Albany was ever caught for what they do, they would probably be in the same place," he was quoted as saying, discussing how former state controller Alan Hevesi had aged while locked up.

That was three months before another state lawmaker, Sen. Malcolm Smith, would join the ranks of Albany power brokers accused of abusing the public trust.

On Tuesday, Smith, a New York City councilman and four other politicians were charged in a bribery scheme aimed at getting Smith a spot on the GOP ballot in the city mayoral election.

A University of Illinois at Chicago study last year found that New York ranked first in the country for public corruption, racking up 2,522 convictions between 1976 and 2010.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Related:

Lawmaker accused of bribes in NYC mayoral race plot

A 17-year veteran of the NYPD has been indicted on charges of armed robbery, narcotics trafficking and illegal use of a firearm, and prosecutors say he allegedly committed at least one of the crimes while on duty in his Harlem precinct. 

Jose Tejada, 45, was taken into custody at Kennedy Airport Wednesday after returning from the Dominican Republic, officials said. He was off-duty at the time of his arrest.

The indictment adds Tejada as a defendant to a previously filed indictment against a violent robbery crew responsible for more than 100 armed robberies of narcotics traffickers in New York City.

Read original story on NBCNewYork.com

Authorities say Tejada has been linked to three robberies in the Bronx in 2006 and 2007 that netted thousands of dollars in cash and cocaine. During one of the robberies, Tejada was on duty and in uniform and used his status as a police officer to gain access to a private residence in the Bronx where drug dealers were believed to be living, according to the indictment. 

According to court documents, Tejada allegedly helped members of a violent robbery crew pose as police officers by supplying them with NYPD equipment. He also allegedly used his status as a police officer to search confidential law enforcement databases and see if his crew members had outstanding warrants.

More than 20 members of Tejada's alleged crew have been convicted in connection with the ongoing case, including another NYPD officer and an auxiliary officer, prosecutors said.

If convicted of the narcotics and firearms charges, Tejada faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. Attorney information for him was not immediately available.  

The Drug Enforcement Agency task force helped NYPD and Port Authority make the arrest.

This story was originally published on Thu Apr 4, 2013 5:30 AM EDT

NEW YORK -- Two fragments that could be human remains were found on the first day of sifting debris from construction sites around the World Trade Center site in a renewed effort to find 9/11 victims, officials said Tuesday.

The two pieces were found Monday in the first day of a 10-week sifting operation. The city has collected about 60 dump truck loads of debris from construction areas around the trade center site over the past two and a half years that is now being examined for remains. 

The debris was collected from the World Financial Center, West Street and a lot near Liberty Street since the last sifting operation in mid-2010.

Slideshow: Marking the 11th anniversary of 9/11

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Ceremonies at World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Shanksville, Pa. mark 11 years since the attacks.

Launch slideshow

The material amounts to 590 cubic yards -- 38 from the WTC, 13 from the western edge of the southbound lanes of West Street and 539 from the Liberty Street area, where four pieces of possible human remains have already been found.

More news from NBCNewYork.com

Any human remains will be analyzed by the medical examiner's office for possible matches to 9/11 victims. Of the 2,750 people killed at the trade center, 1,634 have had remains identified.

By NBCNewYork.com

Julie Larsen Maher/Bronx Zoo via Reuters, file

Pattycake, the first gorilla born in New York City, sits in the Wildlife Conservation Society's Bronx Zoo. She has died aged 40.

Pattycake, the first gorilla born in New York City, has died aged 40, the operators of the Bronx Zoo announced late Sunday.

She was suffering from chronic cardiac problems and was under medical care due to her advanced age, the Wildlife Conservation Society said in a statement.

"Millions of children in New York City grew up with Pattycake at the Bronx Zoo," said Jim Breheny, director of the Bronx Zoo and WCS executive vice president. "Pattycake was a very special animal and her presence will be deeply missed."

The median life span for gorillas in zoos is 37 years, and Pattycake was the 31st oldest gorilla of the 338 presently residing in North American zoos, WCS said.

Pattycake was born at the Central Park Zoo on Sept. 3, 1972 and lived there with her parents Kongo and Lulu until moving to the Bronx Zoo in 1983.

She had 10 infants while at the Bronx Zoo, including twins born in 1995. Her offspring currently reside in zoos in Omaha, Louisville, Utah, Detroit, Boston and Buffalo.

Related:

Gang trafficking of endangered great apes prompts global action

Baby gorilla on black market for $40,000 is rescued

This story was originally published on Mon Apr 1, 2013 4:16 AM EDT

Police are searching for a man who allegedly tasered and then attempted to sexually assault a 23-year-old woman in a park in New York's Queens.

Authorities say the victim was jogging in Forest Park around 7:30 p.m. Friday night when the man grabbed her from behind, threw her to the ground and began to remove her clothing.

A couple walking their dog came upon the attack in progress, startling the man, who then ran off.

Read more stories at NBCNewYork.com

The victim was taken to a local hospital for wounds to her neck, officials said.

The woman told police that the man used a taser in the attack and also took her iPhone, officials said.

By NBCNewYork.com

WNBC

A car rests in the middle of mangled scaffolding after jumping a curb Saturday in Brooklyn.

A 3-year-old and his mother were fighting for their lives after a car jumped the curb and struck some scaffolding at the corner of Utica and Church avenues in Brooklyn around 6:50 p.m Saturday, officials said.

Twelve people were injured when a Lincoln sedan crashed through a bus stop and hit a sidewalk shed, causing it to collapse, New York Post Reported. Four of those injured by the incident are in critical condition.

A woman was driving the car with a male passenger when the accident occurred, according to The Associated Press.

The scaffolding partially collapsed and rescuers worked to secure it while others tended to the injured, officials said.

The child, his mother, and two other women in critical condition were taken to Kings County Hospital, New York Post Reported. Five people with serious but non-life threatening injuries were taken to Brookdale Hospital.

-- NBCNewYork.com

This story was originally published on Sat Mar 30, 2013 8:53 PM EDT

NEW YORK CITY -- The NYPD is again planning to beef up patrols in Times Square and Midtown the night of Easter Sunday, a day that in recent years has seen violence as part of a yearly gang initiation ritual following the Javits Center car show.

Police say the Easter Day "wilding" started years ago but became especially violent in 2010, when hundreds of gang members attended the annual auto show at the Javits Center, then conducted gang initiations in Times Square.

Two women were shot during the sprawling brawl, two other people were wounded and several police officers injured. More than 50 people were arrested.

Since then, police have beefed up Easter patrols and monitored activity at the car show. The Daily News reports the NYPD is also monitoring social media to look for gang members who may be planning a "mobbing" through Times Square.

Read more news from NBCNewYork.com

There have not been any gang incidents on Easter since 2010, and the NYPD is looking to keep it that way.

"For me, it's a religious holiday and it should be respected," said Michael Hoard in Times Square Friday night.

The police "are here to protect us, that's the bottom line," said Al Centrella of Hempstead, who was in the area with his wife to see a show.