ALBANY

MORNING-AFTER PILLS WITHOUT PRESCRIPTION APPROVED BY SENATE

The state Senate gave final legislative approval yesterday to provide easy access to the morning-after pill through pharmacists, midwives, and nurses despite strong opposition by lawmakers who likened the emergency contraception to abortion.

The measure will allow girls and women to obtain the medication without a physician’s visit or prescription and without parental consent regardless of the patient’s age. The medication could be provided by any pharmacist, nurse, or midwife that gets a blanket prescription from a physician for any customers.

The proposal, sponsored by a Republican, split the GOP-dominated chamber during a debate in which some equated the birth-interruption medication to abortion. The Democrat-led Assembly passed the measure in January. It now goes to Republican Governor Pataki to be signed or vetoed and could be subject to an override attempt.

– Associated Press

BILL TO SET UP INTERNET PRESCRIPTION SITE HEADS TO GOVERNOR

Legislative leaders said yesterday they have reached agreement on a bill that would create the nation’s first online price comparison for prescriptions in drugstores.

The Internet Pricing bill would require all pharmacies to transmit their prices for the 150 most commonly prescribed drugs to the state Department of Health.

The data would then be posted online by the department. A similar Web site created by Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in August 2004 now covers about one in five retail drugstores across the state, spokesman Marc Violette said.

The bill passed the Senate yesterday. Richard Gottfried, a Manhattan Democrat sponsoring the measure in the Assembly, said he expects his chamber to follow suit.

Supporters say the measure would allow patients, particularly the elderly, to save hundreds of dollars a month.

“There is a great disparity in pharmaceutical pricing, and this bill allows our seniors across this state to check those prices and get the best deal they can,” state Senator Martin Golden, a Brooklyn Republican who sponsored the bill, said. Pharmacists have opposed the idea, saying few of the elderly or uninsured have Internet access and that the law would cost tens of millions of dollars a year for pharmacies across the state.

– Associated Press

CITY OPPOSES BILL RECLASSIFYING SEGWAYS FOR SIDEWALK USE

A bill in Albany that could allow people to cruise city sidewalks on Segways – self-balancing two-wheeled electric scooters billed as a revolution in mobility – has drawn opposition from the city, which says the scooters would wreak havoc on crowded city sidewalks. The bill, introduced in the waning days of the legislative session, would reclassify the Segway Human Transporter as an “electric personal assistive mobility device” rather than a motorized vehicle and allow disabled people to use them on city sidewalks and in bicycle lanes. The city also argued in a memorandum of opposition that it would be impossible to ensure only disabled people used the device. The Segway costs between $3,000 and $5,000 and travels about 10 miles per hour.

– Special to the Sun

MANHATTAN

WOMAN FOUND GUILTY OF CONSPIRACY IN GOLDEN VENTURE TRIAL

A 56-year-old woman was convicted yesterday of using her Chinatown storefront to help orchestrate human-smuggling schemes, including the treacherous 1993 Golden Venture voyage that ended in the deaths of 10 Chinese immigrants.

A jury in federal court in Manhattan deliberated one week before finding Cheng Chui Ping guilty of conspiracy, money laundering, and trafficking in ransom proceeds. However, it failed to reach a verdict on the most serious charge – hostage taking – which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey ordered jurors to return to court today to resume deliberations on the remaining charge.

Cheng, known as “Big Sister Ping,” was outside America when she was indicted in 1994 and remained a fugitive until 2000,when the FBI arrested her at a Hong Kong airport. She lost an extradition fight in 2003.

During four weeks of testimony, prosecutors sought to convince the jury that Cheng’s demure manner masked a sinister streak that by the 1990s had earned her the reputation as one of Chinatown’s reigning “snakeheads” – slang for alien smuggler. The government alleged Cheng became a multimillionaire by smuggling thousands of immigrants – she called them “customers” – who endured perilous journeys on dilapidated cargo ships like the Golden Venture. She also hired a vicious street gang to hold illegal immigrants hostage in safe houses while collecting smuggling fees of up to $40,000 a person, prosecutors said.

Defense attorneys countered that the case was built on the false accusations of unsavory cooperators, including a convicted killer who once was the street gang boss. Cheng was guilty of running an underground money transferring operation in Chinatown, not of smuggling immigrants, said defense attorney Lawrence Hochheiser. She “had nothing to do with the Golden Venture,” he said.

– Associated Press

TAXI FEDERATION OFFERS REWARD FOR CAR INFO ON HARLEM HIT-AND-RUN

The president of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, Fernando Mateo, offered a $500 reward in a quest to track down the driver of a dark-colored Lincoln Town Car that clipped a 12-year-old riding a bike on 118th Street in Harlem on Monday, sending the boy to the hospital with head injuries.

The boy is in stable condition at Harlem Hospital and missed his middle-school graduation yesterday. Police said the investigation is ongoing and have not confirmed that the vehicle involved was a livery car.

– Special to the Sun

CYCLIST KILLED IN TRUCK COLLISION ON HOUSTON STREET

After colliding with a furniture delivery truck on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a bicyclist was fatally wounded yesterday, police officials said. Yesterday’s accident happened around 10:30 a.m, when the bicyclist, Andrew Ross Morgan, 25, was riding west on East Houston Street and the driver of the truck turned north onto Elizabeth Street. The two collided, leaving Morgan trapped in the undercarriage of the truck. Morgan sustained injuries to most parts of his body and was rushed to St. Vincent’s Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The driver, who was not identified, was not charged, but was issued a summons for an expired inspection sticker, police said.

– Special to the Sun

BROOKLYN

LANDLORD STABBED TO DEATH BY TENANT IN PARK SLOPE

The elderly owner of a makeshift single-occupancy hotel in Brooklyn was fatally stabbed to death yesterday by one of his tenants over a room key, police said.

The tenant, identified as James McElwee, 55, has been arrested by police and charged with murder. According to police, Mr. McElwee had been battling with the owner of the property for about a year over a key to one of the rooms at 151 Prospect Ave., a two-story Park Slope building police described as a boarding house.

Mr. McElwee had been living in a small room at the house. About a year ago, police said the owner allowed him to move into a larger room that had become unoccupied. After moving into the larger room, however, Mr. McElwee failed to return his key to his previous room. The dispute came to a head early yesterday morning when Mr. McElwee plunged a knife into the owner’s chest, police said. The blade of the knife, however, shattered after striking the building owner’s chest. Mr. McElwee left the scene and then returned with another knife and stabbed the landlord repeatedly, police said. The name of the victim was not released by police. An attorney representing Mr. McElwee could not be reached yesterday.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

JUDGE ASKS DISTRICT ATTORNEY HYNES TO EXPLAIN O’HARA PROSECUTION

State Supreme Court Judge Abraham Gerges yesterday asked the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles Hynes, to explain why his office chose to prosecute a former state Assembly candidate, John O’Hara, on voting fraud charges under a rarely enforced law. O’Hara, a perennial office-seeker who failed in each of his six bids for City Council and state Assembly in the 1990s, was arrested in 1996 for registering to vote from an apartment that did not qualify as a “fixed, permanent,, and principal home” under state election law. In 1999, at his third trial, O’Hara was sentenced to five years’ probation, fined $20,000, and ordered to perform 1,500 hours of community service.

O’Hara’s attorney, Barry Fallick, said that he and his client are “surprised and encouraged” by Judge Gerges’s move. A spokesman for Mr. Hynes, Jerry Schmetterer, said the district attorney would have three weeks to respond to the judge’s questions. “We’ve answered this in the past, and we’ll answer it again,” Mr. Schmetterer said.

– Special to the Sun