Janae Pierre: Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. I'm Janae Pierre. This is our one and only episode today. We're taking the day off to observe Presidents Day. Here's your news headlines from Michael Hill.

Michael Hill: French President Emmanuel Macron has called leaders from key European Union nations and the United Kingdom to his ornate Elysee Palace for an emergency meeting today. He wants to discuss how to deal with the Trump administration and step up plans to increase defense spending. European leaders have been stunned by a week-long diplomatic blitz on Ukraine from the Trump administration that seemed to embrace the Kremlin while they cold-shouldered many of its age-old European allies.

There were belligerent warnings ahead of Donald Trump's re-election as US President, but EU leaders publicly ignored the ominous forebodings and somehow hoped Trump would stand side by side with Europe.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is adamant he will not step down after growing calls to do so. A video posted to the administration's social media shows Adams addressing the congregation at a Baptist church yesterday in Queens Village.

Mayor Eric Adams: You're going to hear so many rumors and so many things. You're going to read so much. I am going nowhere. Nowhere.

Michael Hill: State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins is one of the latest on the list of Democrats calling on Adams to resign. Federal prosecutors moved to dismiss corruption charges against the mayor on Friday. The Justice Department says it was necessary so Adams can help the Trump administration with immigration enforcement in New York City. A federal judge will decide whether to dismiss corruption charges against Adams.

Officials in New York are warning consumers to be on the lookout for E-ZPass phone scams. WNYC's Sean Carlson has more.

Sean Carlson: Governor Hochul's office says scammers are sending text messages trying to claim unpaid tolls. The texts often come from international numbers and contain links to unofficial websites. Officials say E-ZPass and the state's mail-tolling system will never send a text requesting sensitive personal information. The state's Division of Consumer Protection is offering tips to avoid scams, including never responding to texts from numbers you don't know and using your phone's report junk feature. You should also delete those messages.

Officials say reporting suspicious messages is one of the best ways to protect yourself as it helps to identify new or trending scams.

Michael Hill: 33 with sunshine now. Wind advisory till 6:00 this evening. Winds up to 50 miles an hour. Mostly sunny, mid-30s today, but the wind chill is 20 to 25, so cold and breezy and gusty. Tonight, mostly clear and cold in the teens for a low and gusty. Then tomorrow, still cold, sunny, upper-20s for a high, and that wind will make you feel as cold as 10 degrees that time. 33 with sunshine now. Michael Hill, WNYC News.

Janae Pierre: A new public plaza is in the works for East New York's Broadway Junction, but residents there fear they could be priced out of their neighborhood. More on that after the break.

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Janae Pierre: Big changes are coming to a busy transit hub in Brooklyn's East New York neighborhood. The community near Broadway Junction has been neglected for decades, but the city has a plan to add new buildings and public spaces to the area. However, some locals worry about what else might come with the big investment. Here's WNYC's Liam Quigley with more.

Liam Quigley: The area around the Broadway Junction subway station isn't exactly welcoming for pedestrians. Cars race by on busy streets and trains rumble on elevated tracks overhead. The sidewalks are often blocked by parked cars. Ayanna McFarlane regularly commutes through the area. She says she only spends as much time here as she needs to. That's partially because she's worried about her safety.

Ayanna McFarlane: I always come here in the morning and I don't stay too long. I don't sit down and hang out and wait for something to happen.

Liam Quigley: This is one of Brooklyn's main crossroads, where some of the borough's busiest streets and subway lines converge. McFarlane just wishes it were nicer.

Ayanna McFarlane: They should make this area better.

Liam Quigley: Now the city has a $500 million plan to improve the area. The MTA is renovating the subway station where five lines intersect. The Economic Development Corporation recently moved forward with a plan to tear down a police precinct attached to the station to build a pedestrian plaza, and there's also a new expanded park. Local Councilmember Sandy Nurse says those improvements have been a long time coming.

Councilmember Sandy Nurse: The idea of these public plazas is nice, and we want more open space, of course. When it comes to Broadway Junction, there's a long list of outstanding needs that the city has not prioritized.

Liam Quigley: Other changes to the neighborhood are already underway. A massive new building for the city Human Resources Administration is nearly finished, adding a shiny glass facade to an area filled with rusty steel and broken sidewalks. Some residents are worried about what might happen to the neighborhood.

Shelly Woodard: I'm thinking gentrification is coming, and it won't be as much of a need for us and our outreach that we're doing now.

Liam Quigley: That's Shelly Woodard, who's volunteered at a nearby church for 15 years, helping out community members in need. She's concerned the changes to the area might force out locals, and she might be right. Developers are pitching plans to build a new tower in place of her church. Woodard says she's committed to volunteering in the area no matter how much it changes.

Shelly Woodard: We will still be here to help out the less fortunate and those who need us to be here with food and clothing and things like that.

Liam Quigley: For now, Woodard's church is safe. Most of the major changes to the neighborhood are still years away.

Janae Pierre: That's WNYC's Liam Quigley. Long before Brooklyn was just pavement and buildings, the borough was covered with hardwood forest, and many of the trees in that forest were American chestnuts. The tree was a vital part of the ecology and early economy but over the last century have been all but wiped out by a blight from an airborne fungus, but an effort to bring the tree back to Brooklyn is now bearing fruit, literally. My colleague Michael Hill talked with Bart Chezar, a chestnut expert who volunteers with the Prospect Park Alliance.

Michael Hill: Bart, tell us about the effort to restore the trees. What are some of the things people have tried to do to save them?

Bart Chezar: Well, after the blight first occurred, they cut down large swaths in Pennsylvania to hopefully stop it from spreading. The principal major scientific efforts started with the American Chestnut Foundation, and my efforts in New York City and Brooklyn is basically built upon the work that they have done locally.

Michael Hill: What do you do?

Bart Chezar: Well, basically, it started in 2004 when working with the American Chestnut Foundation. We first planted some native chestnut trees in Prospect Park. Many of them were lost to blight, but a few of them continued to survive. In one area, we actually had trees that grew to 40-50 feet. We had the opportunity to collect seeds from those trees, which we then planted in Prospect Park in Green-Wood Cemetery, the Brooklyn Botanical Garden.

At that time, also, though, the American Chestnut Foundation was initiating a breeding program where they basically crossed the American chestnut with the Chinese chestnut, which is another species of chestnut, but it's blight resistant.

Michael Hill: How many chestnut trees do you think we have now in Brooklyn?

Bart Chezar: I think I have about 100 chestnut trees between 1 foot and about 45 feet. In the last couple years, a number of the trees have reached a size that they're producing nuts, and we're able to collect them. Two years ago, we collected about 25. This past year, we've collected over 400. It's been quite successful.

Michael Hill: How can people-- How can we help?

Bart Chezar: Well, a lot of it is education, telling people about chestnut trees and why they're important. What I should say is, this year for the first time, we're at a point where we have more seeds than we have places for them to plant.

Michael Hill: Is that a good problem to have?

Bart Chezar: Yes, it is a good problem, but the question is what we do next with these trees. We're actually starting the New York City 1,000 American Chestnut Tree Challenge where we want to take these 400 trees, distribute them throughout the city to interested individuals and organizations to start planting these trees. The goal is to have a thousand 10-foot chestnut trees growing in the city.

They're basically free to anybody, any person or organization. If they contact me, we'll arrange to get them these chestnut seedlings. We'll instruct them on how to plant them, where to plant them, and basically to monitor their growth, and when they reach 10 feet to let us know and we'll see if we can meet that 1,000-tree goal.

Janae Pierre: That's chestnut expert Bart Chezar, talking with my colleague Michael Hill. Thanks for listening to NYC Now from WNYC. I'm Janae Pierre. Enjoy the day. We'll be back with three episodes tomorrow.

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