Bronx News Roundup, Aug. 16

This past weekend in the Bronx began where the previous weekend left off -- with violence.

Just after midnight on Friday night, a car pulled up to a group of teenagers in Williamsbridge on Fenton Avenue and opened fire, killing 16-year-old Tashawn Bromfield of Connecticut. Tashawn was in town visiting his father. No one else was injured. Police said Tashawn was not the intended target and that it may have been the result of a gang initiation. More from NY1.

A few hours later, at about 7:15 Saturday morning, more tragedy struck the borough as 19-year-old Kevin Mejia was killed after falling from the roof of a six-story apartment building on University Avenue. Police are treating Mejia's death as an accident, saying the teenager lost his footing. It's unclear what he was doing on the roof of an apartment building blocks away from his own.

On Friday afternoon, a battery exploded at the Longwood Ave. 6-Train station.

Bedbugs are thriving in all the five boroughs, a new poll suggests.

Pedro Espada Jr. may benefit from a crowded 33rd Senate District race this fall.

Scholars worry that the writings of a legendary Yiddish author, Chaim Grade, will be trashed by Bronx bureaucrats. The Bronx Public Administration took the writings after Grade's widow, who lived in the Amalgamated Houses, died in May and left no will.

Now, in some more inspiring, sports-related news, Bronx native and Villanova senior guard Corey Fisher set what appears to be a new street basketball record when he dropped 105 points during a summer league game at Watson Gleason Playground. Former NYC hoops star Howard Garfinkel called Fisher a "pathological scorer."

A team of Bronx high school all-stars beat their Brooklyn counterparts in the Nike World Basketball Festival's Battle of the Boroughs. The Boogie Down takes on either Queens or Manhattan next weekend for the championship.

NBC reports on the Bronx's wildly successful Rocking the Boat youth program.

Here's some more coverage of Justice Sotomayor's visit to Lehman College on Saturday. NY1.

Bronx News Roundup, May 28

 Happy Memorial Day weekend, everyone! Enjoy the extra day off. Here are today's Bronx headlines:

A Jamaican drug lord, Christopher Coke, operated a drug ring out of Eastchester and parts of Queens for years, according to police. Law enforcement officials in Kingston, Jamaica have been pursuing Coke for the past four days, in violent assaults that left 74 people dead so far. Coke has still not been found.

A new book chronicles the pandemic of fires that ravaged the South Bronx during the 1970s.

An effort to keep state parks open this summer could lead to major cuts for institutions like the Bronx Zoo and Botanical Garden. The plan would take money from the state's Environmental Protection Fund, which pays for the zoo and gardens, to cover the cost of keeping the parks open.

Sam Suzuki, the Soundview landlord who was issued an arrest warrant by a housing court judge this month for ignoring court orders to fix his crumbling properties, has turned himself in to authorities.

Neighborhoods in the Bronx and Manhattan have the highest concentration of airborne nickel particles during the winter, according to a new air quality study from the Department of Health. Nickel, usually from oil burners, can irritate the lungs and worsen asthma and emphysema symptoms.

A video of Rocking the Boat founder Adam Green discussing the program, a boat-building project for students in the South Bronx. Here's a video interview with some of the program's participants that we took a few months back.

The city has settled to pay $700,000 to a mentally disturbed Soundview man who was shot by police officers during an altercation in 2005.

A pre-trial hearing is happening today for the two men accused of bomb plots at two Riverdale synagogues.

Rocking the Boat's New HQ in Hunts Point

I took this video on March 25 of Jhairo Colon, an 18-year-old program assistant at Rocking the Boat, at the organization's celebration of their impressive new facility on Edgewater Road next to Hunts Point Riverside Park. Rocking the Boat trains teens in boatbuilding and they develop leadership and job skills along the way. As RTB likes to say, "Kids don't just build boats at Rocking the Boat, boats build kids."

Colon has been with Rocking the Boat for four years. He lives in the Fordham Road area and attends Lehman College. For more information on Rocking the Boat, go to www.rockingtheboat.org.

Bronx News Roundup, Oct. 6

State Senator Jeff Klein is considering running for attorney general, should current Attorney General Andrew Cuomo run for governor.

A sickly Westchester boy - whose father lives in Norwood - traveled to the Dominican Republic recently for stem-cell treatment. The procedure is illegal here in the US.

Unemployment in the Bronx is actually down on 2007 levels.

Last weekend, Rocking the Boat, a Bronx-based organization that uses boat-building to empower youth, organized a boat-trip around Manhattan, to raise money for charity.

Animal Feeds, a 4,000-square-foot store in Morrisana that sells what its name implies, is doing brisk business, despite the recession.

The first doses of the H1N1/swine flu vaccine have arrived in the city. Health care workers at Montefiore Medical Center will be among the first to be vaccinated. In their monthly column in the Mount Hope Monitor, Morris Heights Health Center has more on what you need to know this year to stay flu-free.

NY1 profiles State Senator Pedro Espada for Hispanic Heritage Week.

Allison Oldak, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr.'s Republican opponent in the Nov. 3 election, has yet to raise any money for her campaign. In April, in a special election, Diaz faced another cash-strapped challenger in Anthony J. Ribustello.

By my count, three Bronxites - Diaz, Adolfo Carrion (Diaz's predecessor who now works for the White House), and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor - have been included in Hispanic Business Magazine's annual list of the 100 most influential Hispanic-Americans. There's no room, however, for Espada, who's arguably more influential than both Diaz and Carrion.

News Roundup for July 26

The organization Rocking the Boat and Joseph Rachlin of the Lehman College biology department are featured in a story about efforts to restore urban rivers in the current issue of the Nation. A preview is available here.

NY1 has an update on a fire that gutted some Jerome Avenue stores in May. The police are searching for a group of teens that were captured in a surveillance video.

Bronx parents, students and council members rallied at City Hall yesterday to protest overcrowding in the schools, News 12 reports.

News 12 also reports on plans to improve bus service in the Bronx. The changes come 6 months after State Senator Jeff Klein released a study criticizing express bus service.

The Daily News reported yesterday about the contentious search for a new home for Peace and Diversity High School, which outgrew its space on Lehman's campus last year.

And the NY Times looks at the Diabetes epidemic in the city, noting that "New Yorkers in East Harlem, Williamsburg-Bushwick and certain parts of the South Bronx are hospitalized for diabetes at 10 times the rate of residents of the Upper East Side."