CITYWIDE

FIRST AMENDMENT ACTIVITIES PERMITTED IN FRONT OF SCHOOLS

The city has agreed that First Amendment activities including leafletting, petition-gathering, picketing, and holding press conferences can occur on public sidewalks in front of schools, a civil rights lawyer said yesterday.

The agreement between the city and lawyers for the New York Civil Liberties Union was approved March 16 by a federal judge who was scheduled to preside at a trial over a 2003 lawsuit brought by a youth advocacy organization, the Ya-Ya Network, said Christopher Dunn, the Nyclu’s associate legal director.

The lawsuit was brought after students working with the group alleged they were threatened with arrest outside schools for handing out literature telling other students about their rights to keep personal information from military recruiters. The Nyclu said it was “essential” for such student activities to be allowed to occur outside schools.

“Because so many important controversies involve our schools, it is essential that students, parents, teachers, and advocates be able to protest or engage in other First Amendment activity in front of schools,” Mr. Dunn said. “This settlement assures that they now can do so without fear of arrest.”

New York police officers were notified of the agreement last week.

The executive director of Ya-Ya Network, Amy Wagner, said it was important to have access to students outside schools.

“As the public controversy over military recruiting in schools intensifies, it is particularly important that students have access to facts which are not included in the recruiters’ sales pitch,” she said.

City lawyer Dara Weiss noted that the settlement allows for people to participate in “legitimate expressive activities near school grounds provided that they are not engaging in any unlawful activity.”

– Associated Press

MILLER DENOUNCES SALES TAX, BUT WANTS COMMUTER TAX REINSTATED

The speaker of the City Council, Gifford Miller, said he was against the sales tax increase that Albany agreed to earlier this week to finance at least part of the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s spending. However, he said he was in favor of reinstating the commuter tax.

State legislators announced Monday that they would come up with enough money to cover the interest on $3 billion in new borrowing for the cash-strapped MTA.

“I believe the correct way to stabilize the MTA’s finances is to reinstitute a commuter tax. People who benefit from the MTA are commuters,” he said. Mr. Miller is one of four Democrats hoping to challenge Mayor Bloomberg, a Republican, in November’s election.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

PUBLIC SCHOOLS ROLL OUT ‘GARDENBURGER’ ON LUNCH MENUS

The hamburger has always been a staple of school lunches, but starting yesterday, a new burger – the Gardenburger – made its debut on New York City public school cafeterias.

The introduction of the veggie burger is part of an overall drive by the Department of Education to provide students with healthier food alternatives.

“We would like to wean them off hamburgers and we think introducing a vegetable burger is an excellent way to introduce them to some healthier foods,” the executive director of school food, David Berkowitz, said, quickly adding that traditional beef patties aren’t history. “Burgers and pizza will obviously continue to be very popular,” he said. “What we can do is introduce new foods that will also be very popular.”

During yesterday’s Gardenburger kickoff, students won prizes like iPod Shuffles, pocket radios, and pens shaped like vegetables.

Mr. Berkowitz said initial indications showed that students like the burgers, and said they will be on school menus several times a month.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

INVESTIGATORS SEARCH FOR SOURCE OF VIRULENT AIDS STRAIN

City health investigators said they haven’t found the source of a virulent strain of AIDS virus detected last February in a man who rapidly progressed to full-blown AIDS and showed resistance to almost every anti-retroviral drug used to combat the disease.

“The source of the New York City man’s infection is still unknown and remains under investigation,” Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden said in a health department statement. “As of today, no other cases of multi-drug-class resistant, rapidly progressive HIV have been identified.

Mr. Frieden said investigators have contacted most of the sex partners whom the patient could identify by name, and that many were previously HIV-infected. The virulent case, diagnosed last February in a New York man in his mid-40s, served as a “wake-up call” to public health officials and people at risk of HIV infection.

– Bloomberg News

BROOKLYN

BREWERY TO UNVEIL TOURISM SWEEPSTAKES

Thinking about a vacation to the Bahamas? Ah, fuggedaboutit, come to Brooklyn instead. At least that will be the message when the Brooklyn Brewery announces a vacation sweepstakes contest today aimed at stimulating Brooklyn tourism.

Entry forms for the contest will be available in supermarkets and bars throughout the city and upstate New York. Winners receive an all-day excursion to sites in Brooklyn including a tour of the Brooklyn Brewery, lunch at Nathan’s Famous in Coney Island, tickets to a Brooklyn Cyclones minor league baseball game, and free rides on the Cyclone rollercoaster and Deno’s Wonder Wheel on the Coney Island boardwalk. Marty Markowitz, borough president of Brooklyn, will announce 10 winners of the contest on July 22.

Each sweepstakes winner may invite up to five guests and will be picked up by limousine or flown to the city by JetBlue Airlines on August 22 for the excursion, with all expenses paid for by the Brooklyn Brewery.

– Special to the Sun