Bronx News Roundup Nov. 19

A firefighter was seriously injured yesterday after falling two stories while fighting a fire on Shakespeare Avenue in Highbridge.

News, in the Daily News, of a thriving Bronx business that brings festive cheer to the streets of New York.

James Calderon, a Bronx detective, was arrested last week on charges that he and others ran a drug dealing operation that stretched from the Bronx to Virginia. Cops latched onto Calderon after he tried to retrieve an impounded car from the 44th Precinct in Highbridge. Later, when cops searched the car, they found a kilo of heroin. Now, the Daily News has caught up with an ex-girlfriend who describes Calderon as an abusive drunk. Heroin? Violence? Police corruption? Sounds like something out of Ridley Scott's new flick, American Gangster, much of which, incidentally, while based in Harlem, was actually shot in the west Bronx. (Presumably, Harlem's new condos and upscale coffee joints grated with the gritty 1970s urban landscape Scott was trying to portray.)

According to a new Quinnipiac University poll, 70 percent of Bronxites now oppose the Mayor's congestion pricing plan, against a citywide average of 61 percent.

The Times looks at how City Harvest, an non-profit that combats hunger, is trying to alleviate the city's chronic food shortage. The organization, the paper says, is working with farmers to transport unwanted fresh produce - produce that would otherwise rot in the fields or be ploughed over - to poor city neighborhoods including the South Bronx.