The Port Authority blew its deadline to prepare the World Trade Center site for developer Larry Silverstein’s builders and started forking over $300,000 a day in fines. Manhattan apartment prices bucked national trends yet again, rising 17 percent to an average of $1.4 million. Firemen rushed into a burning building to rescue two toddlers left behind by their mom’s boyfriend. Police in Brooklyn shot and killed one of the FBI’s most-wanted criminals when he emerged from a bodega with a bag of Doritos and a loaded gun.

Tom Wolfe ankled publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux, taking his new novel to Little, Brown for a reported $6 million to $7 million. A-Rod popped up on Carson Daly’s New Year’s special to celebrate his new management deal with Madonna (and Daly) rep Guy Oseary. Former Yankee Jim Leyritz, allegedly driving drunk on a suspended license, was jailed on manslaughter charges. Iron man Stan Friedman demolished all comers in the ESPN Zone’s TV-watching endurance contest. Isiah Thomas, coach of the bottom-dwelling Knicks, resolved not only to bring a championship to the Garden but also to leave behind “legacy, a tradition, an imprint, and a blueprint.” And the papers reported that Alcides Moreno, the window washer who fell 47 stories on December 7, spoke for the first time since the accident — on Christmas Day. —Mark Adams