ALBANY

NEW YORK REQUIRES ‘GREEN’ SCHOOL CLEANING PRODUCTS

Governor Pataki signed legislation requiring the use of “green” cleaning products in schools statewide, fulfilling a pledge he made during this year’s State of the State address.

The legislation builds on an executive order Mr. Pataki signed in January that required state agencies to use environmentally sensitive cleaning products. Mr. Pataki said that order combined with the legislation will improve air quality in public buildings across the state. Schools will be required to purchase on their own – or through central state purchasing contracts – the green cleaning products. The law takes effect on September 1, 2006.

The state director of Healthy Schools Network, David Boese, said most cleaning products contain various toxins that contribute to poor air quality.

He said the chemicals can trigger asthma attacks and that they have been implicated in other health problems like headaches and dizziness. The measure signed by Mr. Pataki is the first statewide initiative requiring the use of green cleaning products, though a number of local governments and agencies around the country have put similar policies in place.

– Associated Press

LONG ISLAND

LAWMAKERS SEEK MEETING ON PLUM ISLAND’S FUTURE

The Department of Homeland Security is considering moving the aging Plum Island animal disease laboratory off eastern Long Island – a possibility that prompted two lawmakers yesterday to request a meeting with DHS secretary, Michael Chertoff. Senator Clinton and Rep. Timothy Bishop, a Long Island Democrat whose district includes Plum Island, requested the meeting in response to the release of a Homeland Security “fact sheet” on Monday that examines the options for the future of the laboratory. Located off the eastern tip of Long Island’s north fork, Plum Island scientists have studied contagious animal diseases like foot-and-mouth disease and African swine fever since the early 1950s. The former U.S. Army base, located on a tiny pork-chop shaped island, is also the only facility in the country that has vaccines for those diseases, making it a potential target for a terrorist attack on the agricultural economy. The facility, which once was run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was made part of the Department of Homeland Security after that agency was created in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Agriculture Department scientists, however, still conduct much of the research at the lab.

– Associated Press

OWNER OF TATTOO PARLOR CHARGED WITH FORCIBLY TOUCHING TEENAGERS

The owner of a Long Island tattoo parlor was arrested on charges that he sexually abused two teenagers there while piercing one’s belly button. Robert Pastore, 35, was accused of forcibly touching a 17-year-old girl on her “intimate body parts” while piercing her navel in a back room at Bob’s Crystal Blue Tattoos on Saturday, Suffolk County police said in a news release.

After completing the piercing, Mr. Pastore approached the girl’s 18-year-old friend and forcibly touched her also, police said.

Mr. Pastore, of Mastic Beach, was arrested on charges of sexual abuse and forcible touching and was arraigned on Sunday. His lawyer, J. Stewart Moore, declined to comment yesterday. It is a misdemeanor to tattoo anyone under 18 in New York State, police said. It also is illegal to perform some types of body piercings on minors without written parental consent.

– Associated Press

MANHATTAN

MEDICAL EXAMINER SAYS TWO STUDENTS DIED OF OVERDOSES

The two 18-year-old college students, Mellie Carballo and Maria Pesantez, who fell unconscious at 484 E. Houston St. in the East Village on August 12 and died shortly thereafter, overdosed on heroin and cocaine, the medical examiner’s office determined yesterday. Alfredo Morales, who lives at 484 E. Houston St., was arraigned last Thursday for allegedly giving cocaine to the two women, and is currently in police custody. The examiner’s spokeswoman, Ellen Borakove, said yesterday that she expected the results of the toxicology tests for the other four overdose victims who died between August 10 and August 15 in Lower Manhattan, whose deaths led police to investigate the possibility of a batch of tainted heroin, to be available today.

– Special to the Sun

BRONX

DECOMPOSING BODY FOUND IN HUNTS POINT

A civilian called the police Tuesday afternoon after discovering a brown plastic bag that was partially submerged in water in Hunts Point, the Bronx, that was wrapped around a decomposing body. Police determined that the body, found near the corner of Viele Avenue and Tiffany Place, was male, and the bag was sent to the medical examiner to identify the victim and determine the cause of death. The medical examiner’s office will not have results until next week at the earliest.

– Special to the Sun

POLICE BLOTTER

MAN SHOT TO DEATH IN BEAUT Y SALON

A 28-year-old man was shot to death last night inside a beauty salon in Eastchester in the Bronx. The victim was inside Savvi’s Beauty Salon at 3943 White Plains Rd. at 10:17 p.m., when an unidentified person entered the salon and shot him once in the head and twice in the back. The victim, whom police had not identified as of yesterday evening, was dead on arrival at Wyckoff Hospital.

– Special to the Sun

POLICE SEARCHING FOR TWO BANK ROBBERS

On Tuesday morning, a man entered Wachovia Bank at 930 Third Ave. in Manhattan and demanded money from the teller. The suspect, whom police describe as a 200-pound, 6-foot-tall 40-year-old black male with a salt-and-pepper goatee, fled north on Third Avenue with $2,900. The previous morning, a perpetrator whom police describe as a 5-foot-7-inch, 170-pound black man in his late 40s or early 50s, entered Independence Bank at 251 Park Ave. South and handed a note to the teller demanding money. He fled on foot with $9,101 and took the note with him. Neither suspect has been apprehended.

– Special to the Sun

BROOKLYN

BROOKLYN FAMILY SURVIVES CRASH OF PERUVIAN FLIGHT

Six members of a Brooklyn family were among those who escaped from a flaming Peruvian airliner after it crash-landed in the Amazon jungle. The Vivas family – brothers Jose and Gabriel Vivas, Jose’s three daughters, and Gabriel’s wife – had been traveling to Peru to visit relatives and celebrate one of the daughters’ 15th birthday, relatives in Brooklyn said yesterday. Jose and Gabriel Vivas’s mother, Sylvia Vivas, said she had gone to bed before news of the crash was reported and heard about what happened from her daughter yesterday morning. Thirty-one of the 98 people aboard were killed when TANS Peru Flight 204 crash-landed on a flight from the Peruvian capital of Lima to the Amazon city of Pucallpa. Ten people were missing.

– Associated Press