New York Desk

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun
NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

STATEWIDE


TWO TEACHERS UNIONS MAY MERGE New York State’s two powerful teachers unions – NEA New York with 40,000 members and the New York State United Teachers union with 400,000 members – might become one even more powerful union by 2006. NYSUT, which is the parent group for New York City’s United Federation of Teachers, is expected to approve the proposed merger. The delegate assembly of NEA New York is scheduled to vote on the proposal in mid-April.


Last month, the NEA board of directors voted in favor of the merger with a 90% majority. The lone NEA opponent is Philip Rumore, the president of the Buffalo Teachers Federation. He opposes the merger. He says teachers in Buffalo will lose in the deal, which would shift the teachers’ balance of power in Albany. He said he needs to rally one-third of the NEA delegate assembly by April to block the merger,something he thinks he can do.In the event he isn’t successful,he’s already having union accountants analyze the possibility of going independent. He said so far it appears “very feasible.”


The executive director of NEA New York, Kathleen Lyons, said she’s hopeful about the merger. “We’ve never gotten this far or anywhere close to it,” she said. “We have long felt that all educators would be better served if they were under one organization,” she said, adding that it would give “additional power and clout in the Legislature.”


– Staff Reporter of the Sun


MANHATTAN


WTC MEMORIAL BOARD INCLUDES DE NIRO, EISNER The Board of Directors for the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation was announced yesterday, and among its 31 members are actor Robert De Niro, Walt Disney head Michael Eisner, New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, and financier Henry Kravis. Presidents Ford, Carter, Clinton, and Bush will serve as honorary members.


The chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, John Whitehead, will serve as founding chairman on an interim basis until the board selects a permanent chair. Governor Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg, and Mayor Giuliani will serve as honorary trustees.


– Staff Reporter of the Sun


SUBWAY DERAILMENT CAUSES DELAYS A subway train that derailed early yesterday morning near Penn Station in Midtown caused a ripple effect of delays into the evening rush hour, frustrating passengers riding home on the nation’s largest transit system. No injuries were reported after an F train jumped the track at about 4:13 a.m. near 34th Street and Sixth Avenue, but 57 passengers were evacuated from the train. While officials were investigating the incident, smoke was detected in the tunnel somewhere between West Fourth Street and 34th Street. At around 1:30 p.m., authorities shut down the Sixth Avenue tracks in both directions, affecting the B, F, D, and V lines. Service on the F line was diverted to Eighth Avenue, at least through the evening rush hour. The D line was running only between the Bronx and 34th Street and along the N-R line in parts of Brooklyn. And the B and V lines were suspended in both directions until further notice. Transit officials said the smoke was likely linked to the early morning derailment.


– Associated Press


CITYWIDE


FOREIGN-BORN SEX PREDATORS ARRESTED More than two dozen foreign-born sex offenders were re-arrested yesterday as part of Operation Predator, a joint effort between the city’s Department of Probation and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Division of the Department of Homeland Security.


The arrests were made as part of a nationwide initiative to round up people who had been convicted of sexual crimes against children, child sex tourism, Internet child pornography, and human trafficking. Of 33 suspects targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 26 had been arrested as of yesterday afternoon, and officials expected that number to rise as the day went on. Most of those arrested had served time for rape, officials said. At least nine of the 33 offenders are in the country illegally, officials said, and the rest, though they may have a lawful immigration status, have by their actions forfeited that privilege, said the assistant secretary of immigration and customs enforcement, Michael Garcia. They now face deportation.


“We are a nation of opportunity, but also of laws,” said a Homeland Security spokesman, Marc Raimondi. For those arrested, he said, “Their welcome mat has been rolled up.” So far, more than 2,100 foreign-born ex-offenders arrested under Operation Predator have been deported, officials said.


– Special to the Sun


ELEMENTARY STUDENTS EVACUATED AT P.S. 109 Two hundred fourth- and fifth graders were evacuated today from P.S. 109 in the Bronx after 38 students complained of nausea. The students were evacuated to an auditorium in the main school building from an annex building.


Sixteen of the students who complained were taken to North Bronx Central Hospital. All were discharged, and there were no serious injuries. In the meantime, teams from the Fire Department, Hazmat, the Department of Environmental Protection, and the Department of Education’s Precision Testing Unit converged on the school to test its air quality. No one found any noxious fumes or bad air. School officials think the nausea might have been caused by some sort of cleaning solution in the bathroom. The students will return to school tomorrow.


– Staff Reporter of the Sun


CITY RESCINDS SECTION 8 VOUCHERS FROM 600 FAMILIES The city had to rescind Section 8 housing vouchers from roughly 600 homeless families because it issued too many before the program was cut by the federal government.


The city Department of Homeless Services sent letters to those who had certified vouchers and were living in homeless shelters to tell them that if they did not sign leases on apartments by December 19 they would lose their voucher subsidies. The commissioner of the Department of Homeless Services, Linda Gibbs, testified yesterday at a City Council hearing that a Bloomberg administration program called Housing Stability Plus, which would subsidize rent for low-income New Yorkers, would help resolve the problem and would make permanent housing more plausible.


– Staff Reporter of the Sun


NEW CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER NAMED After a yearlong search, the New York City comptroller, William Thompson Jr., named Deborah Gallegos as the city’s chief investment officer. The job entails supervising the development of the city’s investment policies and the supervision of the Bureau of Asset Management, which oversees the roster of city investment advisers. She will manage about $85 billion in assets for the city’s five pension funds.


Ms. Gallegos, who will start on January 3, had been the deputy investment officer for the state of New Mexico for the past year, where she oversaw a $1 billion private equity program and worked with the governor on investing $11.8 billion in assets. Prior to that, she spent six years working for J.P. Morgan Fleming Asset Management as a vice president for the firm’s global emerging markets fund. Her new job comes with an annual salary of $195,000.


– Staff Reporter of the Sun


POLICE BLOTTER


THIEVES MAY NOT HAVE KNOWN VALUE OF PAINTING The thieves who pilfered a high-priced painting from a posh Upper East Side gallery may not have been connoisseurs of 19th-century artists, police said, but petty thieves who may have been looking for anything to steal and stumbled upon “Interieur Orientale,” an 1851 work by French Romantic Theodore Chasseriau.


The 18-by-14 inch painting, which depicts a harem like scene featuring a topless female figure accompanied by chambermaids, is valued at about $1 million, said a veteran art appraiser who is a former president of the Appraisers Association of America, Sylvia Wolf. The obscure work had been purchased by the gallery, Adam Williams Fine Art, at a Sotheby’s auction in London this summer for $624,000, just under its estimated value, Ms. Wolf said. Chasseriau’s pieces typically fetch between $20,000 and $2 million. Police are still looking for the suspects, described by witnesses as two black males over 30 years old. Nearby art gallery owners, many of whom claim to have had pieces stolen in the past, weren’t surprised of Tuesday afternoon’s heist. “When a lot of high priced art is being sold, art theft goes up,” said Beth McKeown, manager of the Paul McCarron Gallery off Madison Avenue.


– Special to the Sun


HOME INVADER STABBED FATHER, BEAT SON, POLICE SAY Police are hunting for a home invader who stabbed a man to death in his Ozone Park house and pistol-whipped the man’s son yesterday.


Ignatis Beharry, 55, was killed after the unidentified invader stabbed him in the chest multiple times in his 127th Street home at 10:39 a.m. police said. Beharry’s 28-year-old son was beaten over the head with a pistol when he intervened to try and save his father. Police described the attacker as a black man in his 20s wearing a white shirt, black tie, black pants, and black jacket. The attacker fled the scene. The victims were taken to Jamaica Hospital, where Beharry was pronounced dead at 11:15 a.m. Beharry’s son was treated for head trauma. Beharry’s death marks the eighth homicide in the 106th Precinct this year.


– Staff Reporter of the Sun

NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.


The New York Sun

© 2025 The New York Sun Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The material on this site is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used.

The New York Sun

Sign in or  Create a free account

or
By continuing you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use