QUEENS

PIPE BOMB FOUND IN SMOLDERING TRASH CAN

Firefighters found a live pipe bomb in a smoldering trash can in Queens Saturday, police said.

Firefighters responding to a 911 call about a fire found the small explosive after putting out a blaze at the rear of a residential building at 35-16 201st St. in the Bayside section of Queens. Members of the police department’s bomb squad brought the pipe bomb to a facility where it was safely dismantled, police said. Detectives from the special arson unit are still investigating the origin of the bomb, police said yesterday.

– Special to the Sun

THE BRONX

GROUND BROKEN ON $6.9 MILLION NEW WATERFRONT PARK

Work on a $6.9 million new waterfront park in the South Bronx was kick-started yesterday when Mayor Bloomberg and Adrian Benepe, the parks and recreation commissioner broke ground on Barretto Point Park.

In addition to the $5 million from the mayor’s executive budget, the park project also received a $1.5 million grant from the State Department of Environmental Conservation and a $350,000 Clean Water/Clean Air Bond Act grant.

“Waterfront parks throughout New York City are experiencing a waterfront renaissance,” Mr. Benepe said in a statement. “In the Bronx, we have focused on improving waterfront access and expanding our greenway system.”

Today, the five-acre area where the park is to be located is an abandoned field Athletic courts, play equipment, and a boathouse on the East River will be among the highlights of Barretto Point Park, which will be completed by fall of next year

– Special to the Sun

CITYWIDE

SCHUMER WANTS A NEW NATIONAL SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY

Senator Schumer, a Democrat of New York, lambasted state laws governing sex offenders yesterday and announced legislation that he said he would introduce to the Senate to keep children safe from sexual predators.

Citing last month’s news that a man who had been convicted of rape in Washington was able to be a foster parent for more than 20 children and adopt one child before it was realized he had a criminal history, Mr. Schumer called for a national sex offender registry and stricter registration standards for convicted offenders.

By his calculations, more than 100,000 sex offenders are walking the streets unbeknownst to local law enforcement. In New York alone, there are 21,000 registered offenders and about 7,000 more who aren’t registered, he said.

“Convicted sex offenders shouldn’t be able to escape the letter of the law just by moving across state lines,” he said in a statement. “Having access to information about sexual predators in your community is a right, not a privilege, and parents should not have to go through a bureaucratic morass just to assess whether their neighborhoods are safe.”

Under the current system, an offender can cross state lines and remain undetected by local authorities unless searched for in the national database maintained by the FBI, he said. Along with Senator Biden, a Democrat of Delaware, and Senator Hatch, a Republican of Utah, Mr. Schumer is pushing for the passage of the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act. The legislation would link state registries and strengthen standards for registration, he said. Mr. Schumer also called for a new national registry complete with DNA data on sex offenders.

– Special to the Sun

WEINER PROMISES WIRELESS INTERNET IF ELECTED MAYOR

In an effort to bring New York into the “digital age,” Democratic mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner is promising that – if elected – he will provide wireless Internet, or “Wi Fi,” citywide, allowing users of wireless-equipped computers to get online from anywhere in the city. Tokyo and Seoul, Mr. Weiner said, already have citywide Wi Fi, and similar projects are under way in Boston and Philadelphia.

The Wi-Fi pledge from Mr. Weiner, a congressman whose district straddles Brooklyn and Queens, was unveiled at a press conference yesterday at City Hall as part of the candidate’s “High Tech NYC Initiative.”

Among other provisions of Mr. Weiner’s plan are pledges to provide real-time traffic updates to New Yorkers over e-mail and text messaging, and to wire city subway platforms so that straphangers can make emergency 911 calls from their cell phones

– Staff Reporter of the Sun