CITYWIDE

TESTS BEGIN TO SEE HOW DEADLY GASES WOULD MOVE THROUGH CITY

Government scientists released colorless, harmless gases at four midtown locations yesterday as part of an effort to find out how fast and far a chemical attack could move through a city. “It went very well,” a spokeswoman for the Urban Dispersion Program, which aims to produce a computerized model of air flow patterns that could help authorities decide how to evacuate people after a bioterrorist attack, Susan Bauer, said. The project started five years ago, with pilot programs in Salt Lake City and Oklahoma City, and came to New York City in March, tracking the path of nontoxic, odorless gases through well-traveled sections of midtown Manhattan. While the March studies concentrated on outdoor air patterns, this month’s tests will include a release inside a midtown office building, the subways, and outside major landmarks to track how air moves in and out of structures. There will be five more test days over the next three weeks, depending on the weather.

– Associated Press

U.S. CHARGES ALLEGED ASSOCIATE OF LONDON BOMBERS IN 1999 PLOT

A man with alleged ties to the suicide bombers in the July 7 attacks in London once traveled to America intending to help set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon, according to a court document unsealed yesterday.

The criminal complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan charges Haroon Rashid Aswat, 30, a British-born citizen of Indian descent, with conspiring to provide material support for the scheme orchestrated in 1999-2000 by Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri. Mr. Aswat was taken into custody in Zambia last month, where he had been detained in connection to the bombings. British officials want to question him about 20 phone calls reportedly made on his South African cell phone to some of the four bombers who killed 52 people in the London attack, Zambian officials had said last month. The suspect was brought back to London over the weekend, and a judge yesterday ordered him to remain there until Thursday pending an extradition request from American authorities.

– Associated Press

POLICE RAMP UP PATROLS ON AMTRAK

Police have stepped up their patrols of Amtrak trains and tracks in the city in a combined effort with police departments along the railroad’s Northeast corridor, from New York to Washington, to help protect high-profile cities and the transportation network that connects them. Amtrak has its own police force, numbering about 350 officers nationwide, and the city’s Police Department has been using some of its 37,000 officers to patrol areas that are traditionally the domain of Amtrak police since the London bombings July 7. Police from New Jersey, Philadelphia, Maryland, Washington, and other jurisdictions will increase their presence on Amtrak trains and stations as well.

– Special to the Sun

MANHATTAN

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON? GOTTI PROSECUTORS SAY YES, DEFENSE SAYS NO

At a mob trial’s opening, a prosecutor said yesterday that John A. “Junior” Gotti joined his father in a life of crime when he ordered the kidnapping of a radio personality, but a defense lawyer said the son was no longer a gangster.

The contrasting depictions were unveiled in a crowded Manhattan federal courtroom where the 40-year-old Gotti faces a two-month trial along with two others on charges including racketeering, extortion, securities fraud, and loan-sharking. A picture of a smiling Curtis Sliwa, a red beret atop his head, was on a large video screen behind the assistant U.S. attorney, Victor Hou, as he blamed Gotti for a 1992 attack on Mr. Sliwa in retaliation for Mr. Sliwa’s on-air criticism of his father, John Gotti. Mr. Hou said the younger Gotti took over day-to-day control of the family after his father was sentenced to prison for life. He died there in 2002.

– Associated Press

MAYOR WELCOMES WEIGHT WATCHERS TO THE FLATIRON DISTRICT

Wielding an oversize pair of black scissors, Mayor Bloomberg yesterday cut a symbolic red ribbon in the atrium of 11 Madison Ave. to welcome diet giant Weight Watchers to its new headquarters in the Flatiron district. In his only public appearance of the day, Mr. Bloomberg, a Republican who is running for a second term in office, used the ceremony to cite statistics showing a healthy city economy that has turned around since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Mr. Bloomberg said the unemployment rate in the city is has dropped to 5.5% and has remained below 6% for four consecutive months, the longest such period below that level since 2001. The mayor also said the city’s economy was growing faster than the nation’s for the first time since 2001. Moving its headquarters from Long Island, Weight Watchers, led by CEO Linda Huett, will be occupying the 17th floor of the art deco building, which overlooks Madison Square Park. About 250 employees will be working in a 70,000-square-foot space. – Staff Reporter of the Sun

MUSEUM ON AFRICAN-AMERICAN INFLUENCE ON FILM GETS $25M FUNDING

A museum that has been in the planning since the late 1980s to archive African-American achievements in film has been promised more than $25 million in funding from the state to build a complex that will include a 600-seat auditorium, a 60-seat screening room, a research library, and a café. The Museum of African-American Cinema, which was granted a provisional state charter in 2001, will be constructed in Harlem and designed to hold more than 9,000 films, videos, photographs, scripts, costumes, and other artifacts documenting the history of black cinema that began with the creation of the medium in the early 1900s. Governor Pataki signed legislation July 19 that committed the state’s financing to the project, as part of an upper-Manhattan economic improvement district, in conjunction with the New York City Economic Development Corporation.

– Special to the Sun

BRONX

CLINTON ANNOUNCES PLAN TO BUILD AFFORDABLE HOUSING WITH INTERNET

Senator Clinton and a former Treasury secretary, Robert Rubin, were on hand yesterday at an affordable housing complex in the Bronx to launch “access@home”, a $1 billion public-private partnership that seeks to build more than 15,000 affordable homes with high-speed Internet access in the next five years.

The initiative, which will deliver $1 billion in grants, below-market loans, and equity investments, is a partnership between the Local Initiative Support Corporation, or LISC, its subsidiary the National Equity Fund, and One Economy, a non-profit that brings technology to low- and moderate-income people. The program will also pay for computer training and access to low-cost computers. Mrs. Clinton cited a “broadband gap” among the five boroughs that “threatens to endanger the city’s economic capabilities at a time when the city’s prospects lie outside New York’s central business district.”

Mr. Rubin, the chairman of the LISC, said that delivering broadband access to distressed communities is a tool of economic empowerment and a vital element in remaining competitive globally. Approximately $200 million will be invested in 3,000 units with broadband access in New York State. – Special to the Sun

BROOKLYN

HOME BURGLARIZED IN CROWN HEIGHTS

Police arrested Dale Shields and charged him with burglarizing a home in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. At 9:30 p.m. on Sunday, Shields, 39, and an accomplice forced their way into the lobby at 881 Eastern Parkway close to Albany Avenue, next door to Israel Henry Beren Torah Center/United Lubavitch Yeshiva. The suspects then allegedly broke into a couple’s second-floor apartment, but the male victim called police and chased the suspects onto the street when one of them escaped. Residents helped detain Shields until police arrived. Shields is black, and the victims are Jewish, but police said they are not considering the case a bias attack, and as of yesterday afternoon the New York Police Department’s Hate Crime Task Force was not investigating the incident. Shields, who lives at 770 Empire Blvd., reportedly has a long rap sheet and has served time in prison for burglary.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

TEENAGER ARRESTED ON GUN CHARGE IN GIRL’S SHOOTING

A 16-year-old boy was arrested yesterday on suspicion of owning the gun his 10-year-old brother used to shoot an 11-year-old Brooklyn girl in the head, police said. Courtney McIntosh faces a charge of criminal possession of a weapon in the Saturday evening shooting of Brenda Fields, who remained in critical condition at Brookdale Hospital Monday night, a police spokeswoman, Sergeant Christine Doherty, said. The 10-year-old boy, whose name was not released because of his age, has been charged with first-degree assault. Courtney, who retained a lawyer and was not speaking to police, turned himself in at the 73rd Precinct in Brooklyn, police said.

– Associated Press

QUEENS

GIRL MOLESTED IN ASTORIA PARK

A 9-year-old girl was molested by a 23-year-old man in Astoria Park, police said. At around 3 p.m. yesterday, she and a 12-year-old girl were playing at Ditmars and Shore boulevards when the suspect approached them. He allegedly dragged the younger girl into the bushes, pulled down her pants and underwear and fondled her. The girl screamed and a witness took notice and called 911, police said. Police identified an auto used by the suspect that was left at the scene, checked and secured it, and located him at his residence and placed him under arrest.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun