​The honeymood period is apparently still going strong for Andrew Cuomo -- a survey of voters from Quinnipac University found that New Yorkers approve of the governor by a whopping ratio of 69-19.

But just because voters love Cuomo doesn't mean they're happy with politics in general -- on that topic, voters said 58-42 that they were dissatisfied with the way things were going in New York.

Perhaps most surprisingly, the poll found that New Yorkers are actually quite keen on gambling in their own state, with voters favoring the creation of casinos 54-38. Gambling in New York could take the form of an Atlantic City-style casino and hotel" at Aqueduct Race Track. Perhaps unsurprisingly, men favor gambling initiatives more than women do, reasoning that it would be good for the economy, and therefore worth the cost it would take to build such a facility.

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​Just days after a U.S. District court judge ruled to intervene in New York state's redistricting process, local political leaders in Upper Manhattan are calling for the legislature to redraw district lines to favor the local Dominican community's voting power.

The 15th Congressional District, which includes some storied parts of Upper Manhattan such as Harlem and Washington Heights, is currently 46 percent Latino, according to the 2010 census. Redrawing district lines to create an even stronger Latino majority in the district would increase the chances that another Latino congressional candidate would be voted into office -- but it also means stretching the limits of what is considered a "district" along vague geographical lines.

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​Lower Manhattan saw nearly 9.8 million tourists visit last year, a record number for an area revitalized by development and the World Trade Center site.

Many of those were drawn here by the newly-opened September 11 Memorial, which has already attracted more than 1 million visitors in the four months it has been open.

Downtown Alliance President Liz Berger said in a statement: "Tourism is thriving in Lower Manhattan like never before. The secret is out -- Lower Manhattan is a destination of choice in the region, nationally and around the world."

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​As the national news media continues to ramp up a crusade against Iran, NYPD officials are now insisting that New York could be the next target of an Iranian attack.

NYPD's director of intelligence analysis, Mitchell Silber, spoke to the NY Daily News about the topic:

"Iran is the subject of the vast majority of our discussions right now. This, right now, is a front-burner issue. I hesitate to say it's No. 1, because we don't want to ignore the other threats, but right now, it's essentially No. 1."

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So, maybe Valentine's Day has you a little bit down about relationships. (Or not! We won't judge.) But either way, there should still be a little room left to celebrate what you love (and hate) about that city. To that end, the interactive mapping website MyBlockNYC compiled two separate videos, made up of crowdsourced video clips, doing just that.

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​As Albany continues to struggle with redistricting, a federal judge from Brooklyn has formally called for a "special master" to oversee the process, signaling a lack of faith in the state legislature to get things done in a timely or fair manner.

Judge Dora Irizarry, who serves in the US District Court in Brooklyn, sided with a group of voters who brought a lawsuit against the state, seeking to intervene before new district lines are permanently drawn. In her five-page decision, Irizarry said that the state should appoint a panel of three judges to oversee the lawsuit, and a "Special Master" to oversee the redistricting practice.

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​The NYPD has quietly revised its Patrol Guide to add a clause that gives officers more leeway in the use of deadly force, despite currently dealing with fallout from a police shooting that left an unarmed teen dead in the Bronx. The revision is based on a 2010 New York Court of Appeals ruling which stated that the decision to fire a gun should be left to an individual officer's discretion.

The ruling threw out a lawsuit by Tammy Johnson, who was hit by a stray bullet when police began shooting at an armed robber in Harlem. Johnson had her 18-month-old daughter with her at the time.

However, in that case, the court ruled that officers violated no NYPD guidelines. In response, NYPD has revised the Patrol Guide to reflect the court's decision. Officers are now instructed that they shouldn't fire their weapons if, "in their professional judgment," innocent bystanders run the risk of being hurt.

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​Brace yourselves -- MTA plans at least 59 more nights of subway closures this year under its new FasTrack program. In total, that adds up to 413 hours of limited service on certain subway lines. Every month this year (except August and December) will see at least one major line shut down for repairs overnight during the work week.

Carmen Bianco, the MTA's senior vice president of subways, told the NY Daily News:

"We know it's an inconvenience to our customers and we apologize for the inconvenience. Hopefully, our customers will only have to walk a block, or two blocks at the most, to get alternate service."

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​Just when we thought that the Republican race was about to be Mitt Romney all the way, a new survey of Michigan voters from Public Policy Polling shows that Santorum could pull ahead in the state's primary election on February 28, putting him at the forefront of the race. His support among Michigan's conservative voters is currently above Romney's at 39 percent, compared to Mitt's 24 percent.

Santorum, a more traditional conservative than Romney, is expected to do well among Tea Party voters and right-wing evangelicals in Michigan. Straight off the successes of three primary wins last week, he is poised to pull ahead as Republican voters continue to resist Mitt Romney's candidacy.

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​After an audit found that the Port Authority was nearly $2 billion overbudget, the New York Post went digging and discovered that the PA has elaborate, high-tech security plans for protecting the redesigned World Trade Center site. Maybe that's where all the money is going!

The security plan calls for several different kinds of fancy-schmancy cameras to be used at the memorial site, including devices that can recognize human faces and retinas and match them to a criminal watch list. Are we the only people getting creepy Minority Report vibes from this? No?

The Port Authority also wants to utilize new kinds of artificial intelligence that can detect when people engage in "suspicious activity" and deploy police officers to those areas. According to the Post the cameras would be trained to notice:

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