Bronx News Roundup, Oct. 9

Happy Friday, everyone. Let's get to the news as we head into the Columbus Day weekend.

It will be an even-longer extended weekend for the 136 employees of the Stella D'oro cookie factory in Kingsbridge, which closed its doors for the last time yesterday afternoon. The plant had produced cookies in the area for almost 80 years. For more than a year, workers were on strike after refusing to take a significant pay cut. In June, the National Labor Relation's Board ordered the plant to restore workers at their previous pay. The owners responded by selling the company to a snack maker that is moving the company's operation to Ohio.

The Indypendent has some good coverage of the workers' response yesterday. Times' city columnist Jim Dwyer wrote about this earlier this week.

There will be a rally outside of the cookie factory on Boadway at 3 p.m. this afternoon.

On Tuesday, thousands showed up to mourn a Bronx firefighter who was killed fighting a blaze in Yonkers last Friday.

The Bronx Zoo recently opened a new Global Conservation Center.

Gov. Paterson praised the stem cell research being done at the Bronx's Albert Einstein College of Medicine, which is the teaching hospital of the Montefiore Medical Center. He called it the "wave of the future."

The Daily News' says the swine flu disporportionally affects blacks and Latinos. The city's vaccination effort kicked off in the Bronx at Montefiore on Tuesday.

A new group in the east Bronx is keeping watch on distressed homes.

Bronx rapper Fat Joe, who just released his ninth solo album on Tuesday, "J.O.S.E 2," said his career goal remains to produce the best hip-hop record of all-time.