PARENTS SAY DOE IS LOST IN THE TRANSLATION
(As seen in the July 5, 2007, Queens Ledger)
BY MARLENE PERALTA

About two dozen immigrant parents and activists assembled on the steps of the Department of Education (DOE) last Wednesday - the last day of school - complaining they are not getting the translation services they were promised.

"Unfortunately, more than four years later, we are forced to bring back the signs again," said Deycy Avitia, from New York Immigration Coalition, "the signs asking DOE to open the schools doors to immigrant parents." 

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BRUTE FORCE IS BACK
(As seen in the June 7, 2007, NY Press)
BY DAVID CHIU

When one thinks of rock ’n’ roll legends, Stephen Friedland isn’t a name that comes to mind. But under the pseudonym of Brute Force, he’s been an underground musical icon since the late 1960s. A singer and songwriter, his biggest claim to fame was having his 1969 song, “King of Fuh,” released by the Beatles’ record company, Apple—only later to be censored. Frustrated with the industry and the lack of success, Friedland dropped out of the music scene for almost two decades.

But the 66-year-old Friedland is now on the comeback trail.

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TENSIONS WITH 'BURGER KING KIDS'
(As seen in the June 8-14, 2007, Downtown Express)
BY JOE OROVIC

According to three eyewitnesses, a sizable amount of Downtown’s Murry Bergtraum High School students (numbers range from 80 to 100 to “a ton”) met at their usual spot — the Burger King on the corner of Fulton and Gold Sts. Their presence there has been so common, locals call them the “Burger King kids.”

According to the parents who saw the incident early in May (they’re not sure of the precise date), tempers inexplicably flared. A shoving match escalated into a classic brawl. Two groups of students hurled half-empty glass bottles of Snapple at each other over Fulton then converged in middle of the street, forming a mass of teenage bodies flailing fists, cursing and shoving each other. One teen was reportedly flung into a yellow school bus dropping off students from P.S. 234 in Tribeca.

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LOOKING TO TAP INTO PARKS DEPT.
(As seen in the June 11, 2007, City Hall News)
BY DAN RIVOLI

During a luncheon last June, six friends griped about their problems with city parks. Gary Papush’s complaint was the clandestine way the Parks Department handled the contract renewal of a food vendor in Dag Hammarskjöld Park. Carol Greitzer did not want the pavilion in Union Square Park to be turned into an outdoor café.

Annoyed by the bureaucracy and lack of transparency in the Parks Department, five of them drafted four principles they wanted the Parks Department to adopt. As their doctrine circulated the internet, supporters were slowly added to the mailing list. Eventually, they were calling themselves 100+ Friends of NYC Parks. Now they are up to 200+ Friends of NYC Parks.

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WHEELED SHOES TIED TO INJURIES
(As seen in the June 11, 2007, Star-Ledger)
BY DANIEL MASSEY

One minute Carlos Procel was as excited as any 10-year-old with a brand new pair of Heelys roller shoes. The next minute, his feet went flying in the air; he landed on his back and was run over by a car in the street outside his Jersey City home.

Carlos, now 11, sustained brain damage in the November accident. He was one of an estimated 1,600 people brought to emergency rooms across the country in 2006 as a result of injuries while wearing the wheeled footwear, according to figures released last week by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

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TELECOMMUTING NOT ALWAYS A GOOD TRIP
(As seen in the JUNE 11, 2007, Daily News)
BY DANIEL CARTY

Working from home might seem like the perfect deal, but before you let your MetroCard expire, consider the downside.

Supporters say allowing employees to do their jobs from home boosts productivity and cuts traffic and smog, but some experts are skeptical of such claims. And even if you're convinced of telecommuting's benefits, it may not be good for your career.

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DISABLEDS' IN-ACCESSIBLE RIDE
(As seen in the June 12, 2007, Daily News)
BY EMILY KELLER

The Transit Authority has a message for disabled New Yorkers - we need to see it to believe it.

The agency no longer accepts doctors' notes as proof that customers need paratransit service, forcing Access-a-Ride users to visit testing centers and walk up steps of a mock bus entrance to prove their disabilities, the Brooklyn News has learned.

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WHAT'S IN A NAME? BROOKLYN SPEAKS
(As seen in the June 16, 2007, Black Star News)
BY JACCI LESLIE

Should Gates Avenue have been renamed after Sonny Abubadika Carson?

That question recently dominated headlines when the New York City Council was split primarily along racial lines in a vote that ended the quest for the renaming. Key proponents of renaming were Council members Al Vann, who introduced the proposal, and Charles Barron; Council speaker Christine Quinn led opposition, denouncing Carson
as “anti-white.”

The controversy also created fissures among Black council members as several abstained from voting, including Letitia James and Leroy Comrie; the latter was also injected in the news when he demanded the firing of Barron’s chief of staff who is reported to have directed the word “assassination” at him.

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SERVICE ALL IN THE FAMILY
(As seen in the June 17, 2007, Daily News)
BY NADIA ZONIS

His father and grandfather were city cops. His Uncle Walter was a City Council member. His beloved first cousin, Fire Battalion Chief John Moran, died on 9/11.

For Congressman Joe Crowley, public service runs in the family.

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THE MILLION-DOLLAR WAITRESS
(As seen June 20, 2007 on MSNBC.com)
BY TIM CATTS

It would be a fairy-tale ending for a contest wrought with drama and controversy. Williams, 46, has been a waitress for 20 years and was a
welder before that. She has never bought or sold a real stock in her life. In fact, she says she never even paid much attention to the markets
before signing up for the challenge. Yet Williams has already bested thousands of financial professionals who entered the contest with Ivy
League degrees and complex trading models. "Part of this was luck," she says. "A lot of it was a gut feeling, some eenie-meenie-minie-moe, and
common sense."

A victory for the little guy? Well, yes. But it's also sign of what Paul Auster once called the "music of chance."

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CONTROVERSY IN WEST HARLEM
(As seen in the June 20, 2007, Architectural Record)
BY DORIAN DAVIS

Renzo Piano is not bashful about his plan to raze century-old, masonry-clad factories and tenements in West Harlem and replace them with big, crisp buildings of steel and glass—a new campus for Columbia University that resembles Metropolis more than it does the existing neighborhood. “Cities are bound to change,” he says, “You have to accept it.”

Pressed for space at its original campus in Morningside Heights, 10 blocks south, Columbia hired Piano in 2003. He created a sprawling, city-within-a-city that covers 17 acres with 6.8 million square feet of box-shaped towers; Skidmore Owings & Merrill formulated the urban plan. But to make way for this development, Columbia must contend with three privately owned warehouses that refuse to sell, including one that was recently added to the National Register of Historic Places. Its plan to demolish them is raising the specter of eminent domain and pitting Columbia against Harlem residents.

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FUTURE FEARS AS MOUNT CARMEL SHUTS
(As seen in the June 21, 2007, Poughkeepsie Journal)
BY EMILY STEWART

With only two days of classes left, parents, students and teachers are trying to decide what to do for the next school year after receiving news their school, Our Lady of Mount Carmel School in the City of Poughkeepsie, will close permanently after classes end Friday.

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HURT HAWKS FLY HIGH
(As seen in the May 8, 2007, Daily News)
BY JEGO ARMSTRONG

That's the story of Manipi, a male red-tailed hawk nursed back to health at the Prospect Park Zoo. After four years of rehabilitation from a
severe mouth infection, Manipi is now on display at the zoo.

Manipi may have fallen from a nest in the park, where he is believed to have been born to a pair of red-tailed hawks that had nested there
for years, Cole said. During his recovery, he was placed with another red-tailed hawk, Seneca, a female found two years ago along a
Westchester highway, suffering from an eye injury.

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BIBLICALLY CORRECT
(As seen in in April 11, 2007, Newsweek)
BY DIMITRY KIPER

In the theater, the seats shake and audiences are sprayed with water at every mention of the flood. Nearby, a Garden of Eden is an animated vision depicting humans happily coexisting alongside dinosaurs and a little girl who laughs every time one of the giant reptiles bares its teeth. And nope, this isn’t your average theme park.

Welcome, instead, to the Creation Museum. Here, dozens of exhibits attempt to show the Bible as the literal truth and the theory of evolution as unsupportable by science.

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