MANHATTAN

POLICE EVACUATE PORT AUTHORITY DUE TO BOMB THREAT

Police evacuated the southern wing of the Port Authority Bus Terminal for almost two hours yesterday morning after police received a bomb threat. The evacuation occurred at 9:40 a.m., half an hour after an anonymous call was placed to 911 reporting a bomb in a package at the bus station’s post office, a spokesman for the Port Authority, Alan Hicks, said. Police, aided by the bomb squad and explosives-sniffing dogs, determined the call was a false alarm. Travelers, who had waited patiently across the street from the bus terminal on Eighth Avenue and 41st Street, rushed into the station yesterday when the doors to the terminal reopened at 11:10 a.m. The evacuation yesterday was the second time police have vacated one of the city’s major transit hubs since the July 7 attacks on the London transit system.

– Special to the Sun

MAN JUMPS IN FRONT OF SUBWAY TRAIN

A man jumped in front of a northbound subway car as it pulled into Union Square station early yesterday morning in an apparent suicide, police said. The man was identified as Antonio Lopez, 35, of Elmhurst, Queens, who worked as a computer specialist for New York City Transit, the authority that operates the subway. Lopez jumped from the platform onto the path of the oncoming N train at 5:34 a.m., police said. Service was disrupted for more than 90 minutes between Prince and 34th streets on the N line. In 2003, the last date for which statistics are available, 24 people committed suicide by “jumping or lying before a moving object,” a category that includes subway trains, according to the city’s Bureau of Vital Statistics.

– Special to the Sun

MAN PROTESTING TOURISM ARRESTED AT MIDTOWN HOTEL

A man hanging from a 10th-story balcony at a hotel in Midtown was arrested after he dropped fliers and attempted to unfurl a banner advocating the end of tourism. The man, who wasn’t identified by police, was wearing a dark green shirt with a sewn badge on the sleeve, onlookers said. One of the fliers included handwritten commentary in slightly incoherent Spanish on a photocopy of an article in El Diario about the four British tourists who were handcuffed and questioned last week after the bus driver reported them as suspicious. “Stop al turismo,” the flier said. The banner was never fully unfurled, onlookers said, but from what they could make out, it said, “Information Respect Your Tourism.” Police from the emergency service unit managed to catch the man and pull him back into the balcony below his at the Kimberly Hotel on 50th Street.

– Special to the Sun

JURY SELECTION BEGINS FOR GOTTI TRIAL

A judge began questioning jurors for the racketeering trial of John “Junior” Gotti yesterday with an admission that she does not expect to find anyone who has not seen “The Godfather” or heard of the Gotti family. “It’s just popular culture,” the U.S. district judge, Shira Scheindlin, told lawyers at the outset of a weeklong process to seat a jury to hear the case against the son of the late mob boss John Gotti. “We all start out knowing these names.”

– Associated Press

MAN ARRESTED FOR PARK ATTACK

Police arrested Ravinesh Singh, 25, for allegedly attacking a woman in Central Park, police said. At about 7:40 p.m. yesterday, the woman, 22, was walking in the park around 72nd Street close to Central Park West when the suspect appeared. He allegedly tossed his keys down, and when she went to pick them up, he said nothing, but then slashed her in the forearm with a folding knife. The victim called police and they arrested Mr. Singh, from Monsey, N.Y., about six blocks away. The victim refused medical attention and was taken to Bellevue Hospital for a medical evaluation. Police charged Mr. Singh with assault and criminal possession of a weapon.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

QUEENS

CHARRED CORPSE FOUND IN SMOLDERING DUMPSTER

Firefighters extinguishing a fire in a dumpster in Astoria, Queens, on Sunday discovered a charred body amid the ashes, police officials said. Police were unable to identify the body and are waiting for an autopsy from the medical examiner to determine if it was a homicide, officials said. A spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office could only describe the man as a Hispanic male.

– Special to the Sun

BROOKLYN

OFFICIALS: ANYONE FOUND GUILTY OF TIRE SLASHINGS FACES JAIL TIME

Government officials, at a press conference yesterday in front of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council in Brooklyn, said anyone found guilty of last week’s tire slashings could face up to seven years in prison. The tires of six vehicles, including two ambulances with the Hatzolah volunteer corps, were slashed Friday around 11:30 p.m. near Eastern Parkway and Kingston Avenue. The Brooklyn district attorney, Charles Hynes, said the crime differed from a simple act of vandalism because the ambulances were emblazoned with Hebrew script, making them “easily distinguishable.” Friday night’s events marked the sixth hate crime committed in the borough in about two months, according to Mr. Hynes. Crown Heights is home to a large, concentrated population of chasidic Jews, and is in a borough where one third of all Holocaust survivors in America live. A detective with the New York Police Department, Bernard Gifford, said investigators had no leads at the moment. Members of the Crown Heights community have posted a $5,000 reward for any information that leads to the arrest of the perpetrator or perpetrators.

– Special to the Sun