Bronx News Roundup Jan. 14

In the Bronx, Internet cafes are as rare as Starbucks. It's good to hear, then, that one (an Internet cafe, not a Starbucks) is about to be built in Soundview. (More here on the borough's digital divide and what's being done to correct it.)

In the Post today, there's a look at a "murderous gang turf war" that's engulfed several Manhattan high schools. The violence has been fueled by the rivalry of two Dominican gangs, Dominicans Don't Play (aka DDP) and the Trinitarios, says the paper. Washington Heights, in northern Manhattan, has been hit the hardest, but both gangs are active in the west Bronx, too. DDP gang members, for example, have been linked to an incident in which a 12-year-old girl was shot in the back and seriously injured following a house party on Marion Avenue in Fordham, last spring.

Yet another kick in the teeth for opponents of the new Yankee Stadium.

Rates of infant mortality, bucking a city-wide trend, increased in the Bronx from six deaths per 1,000 births in 2005, to seven per 1,000 in 2006, according to a new study. In 2006, the Bronx also recorded the highest percentage of babies born to teenage mothers, at 12 percent of all births. Brooklyn, with 7 percent, was second. More here, in what, above statistics aside, is a mostly positive take on the city's health.

Bronx pol Helen Foster is one of only four Democratic Council members supporting Barack Obama's presidential campaign. The other 48 are in Hillary Clinton's camp.