CITYWIDE

TEST PREP COSTS STUDENTS TWO DAYS A WEEK, UNION STUDY SAYS

Students are losing more than two days a week of classroom instruction to test preparation and paperwork, a survey released yesterday by the United Federation of Teachers found. Two-thirds of the 3,000 teachers polled said they spend more time on mandated paperwork this year than last year and the year before. More than half of the teachers said they spent more than four hours a week on paperwork.

Two-thirds of teachers also said they start preparing students for standardized tests more than six weeks before the test, and more than half said they spend more than five hours a week on test preparation – compared to about an hour and a half on science or half an hour on arts.

The chancellor’s press secretary, Jerry Russo, said, “Our students are required to pass examinations as part of their education and it is our obligation to ensure that they are well-prepared for these exams.”

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

‘SIDEWALK’ LAWSUITS DROP BY 50%

Lawsuits related to slip-and-fall sidewalk cases dropped by nearly 50% in the last two years, but overall lawsuit payouts were up, according to the city’s top lawyer. The city’s corporation counsel, Michael Cardozo, told a City Council committee yesterday that there were 606 suits related to sidewalk injuries filed between September 2003 and February 2005 compared to 1,196 from the two years before. The decline was attributed to a new law that places more financial burden on landlords who maintain the sidewalk space in front of their buildings.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

CITY SUPPORTS MAKING SALE OF EXPIRED METROCARDS A MISDEMEANOR

The Bloomberg administration is backing a state Senate bill that would make it a misdemeanor to sell expired MetroCards. The bill, sponsored by Senator Martin Golden, a Republican of Brooklyn, is aimed at people who add rides to expired MetroCards for a fee, then loiter at transit stops to sell them at a discounted rate. Selling expired cards is currently classified as a violation under MTA rules, making it difficult for the city to consistently prosecute offenders.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

FERRY CAPTAIN TOOK BLAME RIGHT AFTER CRASH

Minutes after the ferry Andrew J. Barbieri slammed into a Staten Island pier, assistant captain Richard Smith took the blame, allegedly telling ferry supervisor Patrick Ryan “I blacked out. It’s all my fault. I killed all these people.”

In the 17 months since the ship-shredding disaster claimed 11 lives, the National Transportation Safety Board has shifted its focus from Mr. Smith’s conduct that day to Mr. Ryan’s supposedly slack grip on the ferry operations.

The NTSB is set to issue its final report on the crash today, including recommendations for changes in ferry operations.

– Associated Press

MANHATTAN

STEWART GREETS EMPLOYEES ON FIRST DAY BACK

Fighting back tears at times, Martha Stewart told cheering employees on her first day back at work yesterday that prison was a life-changing experience that made her realize her company may have been out of touch with ordinary Americans.

Dressed in a chocolate brown suit and pumps, Ms. Stewart addressed her employees from a stage where a simple bouquet of yellow daffodils sat in a glass vase atop a stool. Behind her were giant posters of her magazine’s April cover with a photo of daffodils and a headline appropriate for the day: “Just in time for Spring.”

“I love all of you from the bottom of my heart – I’m really glad to be home,” she said, choking up at the end of her speech. Afterward, she stepped off stage and embraced co-workers one by one.

Ms. Stewart, 63, told the employees that she “learned a great deal about our country” in meeting a cross-section of Americans at the federal women’s prison at Alderson, W.Va. She said that her experience would lead to changes at her homemaking empire that would it more accessible to ordinary people.

– Associated Press

ACTIVIST SAYS AUDIENCE MEMBERS THREATENED HIM AT COLUMBIA TALK

An American-born Palestinian activist, Zaid Khalil, says audience members attending a pro-Israel conference at Columbia University on Sunday threatened him.

Mr. Khalil, a 29-year-old New York City resident who is reportedly affiliated with the anti-Israel International Solidarity Movement, and a handful of other audience members sitting near him occasionally jeered at the event’s speakers, who spoke out against Middle Eastern studies professors at Columbia.

After a speaker, author Phyllis Chesler, described Israel’s army as a moral force, Mr. Khalil shouted from the audience that he was shot by Israeli soldiers. In 2002, while trying to block an Israeli military operation in the West Bank, Mr. Khalil was reportedly injured in the thigh from shrapnel after Israeli soldiers fired in his direction. In reaction to his remark, an audience member, Richard Wolfe, 35, from Staten Island, screamed in return that he regretted the soldiers had missed and called Mr. Khalil a “maggot.” Other audience members shushed both men. Mr. Khalil and four other people accompanying him left the conference voluntarily toward the end of the day-long conference. Mr. Khalil said another man approached and said he wished the soldier had killed Mr. Khalil. Mr. Khalil, his companions, and Mr. Wolfe are not Columbia students.

The event was organized in part by the David Project, the Boston-based group that helped produce the documentary video “Columbia Unbecoming,” the Zionist Organization of America, and the Columbia chapter of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. An organizer, a Columbia associate professor of clinical medicine, Neil Shachter, said he did not hear the comments directed at Mr. Khalil.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun