MANHATTAN

OFFICIALS PREPARE FOR NEW YEAR’S EVE AT TIMES SQUARE

More than 30 city, state, and federal agencies, including representatives from KeySpan and Con Ed, will be working with the Police Department and the Mayor’s Office to prepare for New Year’s Eve in Times Square this year.

“We expect hundreds of thousands of visitors and New Yorkers to be in Times Square on Friday, and we are doing everything possible to ensure that everyone enjoys the festivities safely,” Mayor Bloomberg told an assembly at One Police Plaza yesterday.

Times Square will be closed to vehicle traffic by 4 p.m. on Friday, and police will be directing attendees to separate viewing sections. The overflow crowd will fill Times Square along Broadway and Seventh Avenue, and then move uptown from 43rd Street to Central Park, the mayor said.

Movement will be restricted. People will not be permitted to return to the special designated areas if they leave, backpacks and bags will be searched, alcoholic beverages will not be allowed, and there will be a number of traffic restrictions, including no cars on Seventh Avenue from 42nd to 59th streets, Broadway from 42nd to 59th streets, and 43rd to 47th streets from Sixth to Eighth avenues, starting at 4 p.m. on Friday. The police said drivers should avoid all crosstown streets from 34th to 59th streets, as well as Sixth and Eighth avenues, and use 23rd Street and the Central Park transverse roads at 65th and 66th streets.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

PROSECUTOR SAYS TERRORISM CASE IS ABOUT A ‘JAILBREAK’

A prosecutor told a federal jury yesterday that the terrorism case against a Manhattan lawyer and two others was essentially about “a jailbreak” in which they helped an imprisoned terrorist feed deadly messages to followers. Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Dember in his closing argument painted all three defendants with the same brush, saying they let blind Egyptian Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman communicate with overseas terrorists despite prison rules imposed to isolate him.

He asked the jury to convict attorney Lynne Stewart, U.S. postal employee Ahmed Abdel Sattar, and Arabic translator Mohamed Yousry in a conspiracy to overcome the government’s effort to silence the still “powerful and influential” sheik. The three defendants enabled “a jailbreak,” Mr. Dember said.

– Associated Press

CITYWIDE

SNAPPLE APOLOGIZES FOR JOKE ABOUT STATEN ISLAND

Staten Island City Council Member James Oddo poured a bottle of Snapple iced tea into a catch basin in front of his district office yesterday as a form of protest to a joke that the beverage company had posted on its Web site. Snapple issued an apology, saying that it “would never purposely offend the residents of this great city, “and the chief executive of the company, Jack Belsito, called Mr. Oddo to extend a personal apology. The joke, which had Staten Island as the punch line in a fill-in-the-blank question about the most recognizable smell, was pulled from the company’s Web site. The company secured a contract last year for the exclusive right to sell beverages at municipal sites in exchange for about $126 million in cash and advertising for the city over five years. The deal created a major rift between Mayor Bloomberg and the city comptroller, Bill Thompson, who said the contract was granted unfairly and was not competitive. Mr. Oddo called his protest “tongue in cheek.”

He accepted the apology, but said standing up against negative stereotypes was a must. “What makes this situation even worse, and frankly more confusing, is that the offending party is a company who has a agreed to partner with New York City, to market the city and tout us across the country.”

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

COUNCIL MEMBER WANTS BETTER DISCLOSURE OF INTEREST RATES

City Council Member Eric Gioia said yesterday he would introduce legislation that would require the city to post information about all the credit cards available in the state on a Web site so consumers can shop for competitive interest rates. The legislation stems from a report the Council released yesterday examining 433 credit cards. The investigation found that debt disproportionately affects low-income residents, senior citizens, and young adults. The lowest interest rate was offered for a Wachovia Bank Visa, which had a 4.5% interest rate. The highest rate came with a Maple City Savings Bank Visa, which had a rate of 20.9%.”Our investigation shows that there are huge disparity in interest rates,” Mr. Gioia said. “Many New Yorkers think these cards are all created equally, but they’re not.”

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

ALBANY

SUNY AT ALBANY HIRES PRESIDENT FROM UTAH

Utah State University President Kermit Hall was named president of the State University of New York at Albany yesterday. Mr. Hall’s appointment was approved unanimously by the State University of New York board of trustees. He is to be paid $280,000 a year in the new job, according to a SUNY spokesman, David Henahan.

Mr. Hall was president and a history professor at Utah State for four years. Before that, he was provost, vice chancellor, and history professor at North Carolina State University for two years and was executive dean and a professor of history and law at Ohio State University from 1994-97. He’d also held academic and administrative jobs at the University of Tulsa, the University of Florida, Wayne State University, and Vanderbilt University.

Utah State enrolls 23,500 students on eight campuses, compared to about 17,000 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled at SUNY’s Albany campus. His focus there was on improving academics while increasing the freshman retention rate and attracting better students as measured in tests.

– Associated Press

THRUWAY OFFICIALS SAY PATAKI IS TRYING TO WITHHOLD DOCUMENTS

Top Thruway Authority officials testified yesterday that Governor Pataki is trying to withhold 600 pages of internal documents in a canal system scandal to protect the right to some secrecy between government agencies. John Buono, the Pataki-appointed chairman of the authority, testified in an Assembly hearing that he thinks the documents should be released for the public good and that their exposure won’t hurt the authority. Still, his authority went to court yesterday over the documents in part on the advice of a Pataki counsel, who wants the records kept secret, Mr. Buono testified. State Supreme Court Justice Joseph Cannizzaro issued a temporary restraining order yesterday delaying release of the documents and will rule today whether the internal memos, e-mail, and other documents should be made public.

– Associated Press

POLICE BLOTTER

TWO NEIGHBORS CHARGED IN DRIVE-BY KILLING

A pair of Brooklyn neighbors were arrested and charged with the Christmas Eve drive-by slaying of a 14-year-old boy in East Flatbush, police said yesterday. Dalton Walters, 24, and Sheldon Thomas, 17, were arrested by officers in the middle of the night yesterday and charged with murder in the second degree and assault. If convicted, they could face a prison sentence of 25 years to life.

According to witness accounts given to police at the crime scene several days ago, the 14-year-old boy, Anderson Bercy, was hanging out on a stoop near his home on Snyder Avenue with friends at about 11 p.m. when a light-colored four-door sedan drove by. Police said the car then made a U-turn, slowed down, and Mr. Walters and Mr. Thomas allegedly opened fire. The motive in the slaying was unclear and still under investigation, police said.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

VICTIM IDENTIFIES KILLER BEFORE DYING

Police say the victim of a murder suicide in Queens identified her killer before dying from three gunshot wounds to the stomach. Lisa Taylor, 35, told responding police officers that Christopher Alexander, her 19-year-old downstairs neighbor at a row house in the Jamaica section, shot her at about 10 p.m. Monday night. Alexander’s body was found slumped against the side of a church dumpster, a gunshot wound to the chest, a 380-caliber pistol in his hand, an apparent suicide.

Taylor was shot in front of her 7-year-old daughter, who is now in the custody of relatives. Police say the shooting happened after a fight between Taylor’s daughter and Alexander’s 9-year-old brother. The nature of that dispute is still unclear, police said.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

POLICE INSPECTOR UNDER INVESTIGATION KILLS HIMSELF

A New York Police Department deputy inspector suspected of working a second job on department time shot and killed himself yesterday morning as he was scheduled to go on duty.

Deputy Inspector Richard Capolongo shot himself with his service weapon just before 7 a.m. in the locker room of the 107th Precinct in Queens, police and union officials said. Capolongo, a 19-year police department veteran, was transferred to Queens from the Manhattan North narcotics unit eight months ago after the start of an internal investigation into his performance, police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. Capolongo, 42, was suspected of leaving work without authorization to perform another job, said Captain John Driscoll, of the Captains Endowment Association.

– Associated Press