NEW YORK, Oct 23 — It’s a vibrant area with a bad reputation: some 1.5 million people, many of them immigrants, live in the Bronx, a borough in New York City.

For decades, poverty and crime made headlines here, but it’s also the birthplace of hip hop culture and home to the famous Yankees baseball team.

The locals say things have improved a lot since the notorious fires of the 1970s, yet there are still many issues. — DW