Bronx News Roundup, Dec. 29

Despite the snow, Yankee Stadium is ready to host this Thursday's Pinstripe Bowl, the college football showdown between Kansas State and Syracuse University. Cleanup crews at the stadium said they'd prepared for the storm by covering the field with tarps.

Meanwhile, Syracuse players will take local kids from the Kips Bay Boys and Girls Club and the Bronx Colts Youth Tackle League on a walk-through of the stadium before the game.

Neighbors of the Harlem man accused of killing a Bronx woman and stuffing her body in a suitcase say they heard screams coming from his apartment the day of the murder. Hassan Malik was arraigned yesterday on second-degree murder charges, for the alleged killing of 28-year-old Betty Williams.

Tomorrow night, Bronxnet will host a live screening of its culinary program "Bronx Flavor,"at the Paradise Theatre as part of a holiday benefit performance.

Bronx resident Jose Ramos is one of many across the city to turn this week's storm into financial opportunity by shoveling sidewalks for extra cash.

A family of Bronx rocker siblings, who go by "Graveshift," are spreading holiday cheer with a new song and feel-good music video, which you can watch below, courtesy of the Daily News.

BxNN Story of the Day: New Kips Bay Clubhouse Welcomed by Residents

The latest edition of Bronx Youth Heard, the publication produced by students in our youth journalism program for high school students, includes this story by Vidal Woods about the new Kips Bay Boys and Girls Clubhouse on University Avenue.

White House "Drug Czar" Visits The Bronx

Gil Kerlikowske, the White House "Drug Czar" (center, in white) stands with students and staff beside an anti-drug mural outside the Mary Mitchell Family and Youth Center in Crotona.

The director of the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy visited the Bronx yesterday, holding a press conference at the Mary Mitchell Family and Youth Center in Crotona to officially launch a new nationwide anti-drug youth campaign.

R. Gil Kerlikowske, who serves as the 6th ever “drug czar,” under the Obama administration, was given a tour by Mary Mitchell staff and other community leaders, stopping off at one of the Bronx’s most notorious drug-ridden areas—a neighborhood in Fordham-Bedford Park—as well as a more positive visit to the Garden of Happiness, a community garden on Prospect Avenue and East 181st St.

Kerlikowske’s trip was part of a greater, nationwide campaign from his office aimed to keep teenagers away from drugs. Dubbed the “influence project,” its goal is to engage young people in talking about the positive and negative pressures that influence their behavior.

The drug czar met with students from the Mary Mitchell Center and the Kips Bay Boys and Girls Club to talk about what keeps them drug-free.

“I heard stories about how important their parents were to them, in guiding them,” Kerlikowske said. “I heard stories about how they felt a true responsibility for their younger siblings to make sure they didn’t get involved in drugs.”