CITYWIDE

PROTESTERS CHIDE MAYOR FOR TAKING 2 SCHOOLS OFF CONSTRUCTION LIST

Mayor Bloomberg attended a groundbreaking for a high-rise apartment building in Lower Manhattan yesterday. But protesters gathered at the event and criticized Mr. Bloomberg for taking two nearby schools off his to-do list. Mr. Bloomberg announced earlier this week that without the court-mandated money the city is owed from Albany, it can’t afford to build all the schools it had planned to construct. Protesters said the city had agreed to build these schools with its own money. The speaker of the state Assembly, Sheldon Silver, took the protesters’ side.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

MUSLIM GROUP TO RALLY OUTSIDE OF DANISH CONSULATE OVER CARTOONS

Friday the New York Muslim Leadership Council, an umbrella organization of mosques and Muslim organizations in the greater New York area, will stage a rally outside the Danish Consulate to protest the publication of 12 cartoons of Muhammad in a Danish paper, Jyllands-Posten. A spokesman for the council, Dr. Shaik Ubaid said the cartoons demonized Muslims in a manner that could lead to oppression and even genocide in Europe. He added that the riots in the Middle East were the result of manipulation and exploitation by dictatorial governments.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

NEW YORKERS WIN AWARD FOR BEING CIVIL

ATLANTA – Faced with a strike that shut down the nation’s largest public transit system at the height of the holiday shopping season, millions of New Yorkers defied predictions of uncontrolled chaos and went about their daily business without giving up being civil. For their “forbearance and aplomb,” they’re among the winners of the 2005 Civies, awards given by the two-person watchdog group Americans for More Civility.

– Associated Press

FORMER JUDGE SUSPENDED IN PARKING TICKET SCAM

A former administrative law judge for the Parking Violations Bureau has been suspended from the practice of law for three years for devising a scheme to avoid paying for at least 167 parking tickets worth $12,000. The state Supreme Court’s Appellate Division yesterday suspended Glen Caldwell, a law judge for the PVB until he left in 1996.

– Associated Press

STATEWIDE

HILLARY CLINTON IMMORTALIZED AT FAMED WAX MUSEUM

Amid the hoopla surrounding Senator Clinton’s possible 2008 presidential run, Madame Tussands’ famed wax museum has secured a unique spot. A life-size figure of the former first lady-turned-politician was unveiled there yesterday, complete with a campaign-style balloon drop, flags, and a ceremonial rendering of “Hail to the Chief.”

– Associated Press

REPORT: STATE HEALTH SYSTEM UNPREPARED FOR AGING POPULATION

The large hospitals and institutions that comprise the state health care system are not prepared for an aging population that is healthier and increasingly looking to alternative forms of long-term care, a new report says.The report found that the state “needs a health care system that is more flexible and less costly than one heavily based on institutional infrastructure.”

– Associated Press

IN THE COURTS

MAN ARRESTED FOR KILLING GIRLFRIEND PLEADS GUILTY

The man arrested for killing his girlfriend and abandoning her barefoot 4-year-old daughter on the streets of Queens in the middle of the night pleaded guilty to charges of manslaughter and reckless endangerment of a child, the Queens district attorney said yesterday. Cesar Ascarrunz, 32, choked Bolivian-born Monica Lozada-Ruadineira, 26, to death on September 24 last year, officials said.

– Special to the Sun

KENDRA’S LAW’ DEFENDANT READIES FOR POSSIBLE RETRIAL

Andrew Goldstein, the admitted subway shover whose actions led to a state law allowing courtordered treatment of the mentally ill, fired his lawyer yesterday and said he wanted the Legal Aid Society to defend him if he is retried.

– Associated Press

ART DEALER SENTENCED FOR SELLING FAKES ON INTERNET

An art dealer has been sentenced to four years and eight months in prison after he admitted selling forged artworks over the Internet. A U.S. district judge, Michael Mukasey, also ordered Richard Vitrano, 56, to pay $193,902 to victims of the crime and to forfeit 57 paintings involved in the scheme.

– Associated Press

PARENTS OF TEENAGER MISSING IN ARUBA SUE DUTCH YOUTH IN NEW YORK

The parents of Natalee Holloway, the Alabama teen who went missing during a high school graduation class trip in Aruba last May, have sued a youth who was questioned in connection with her disappearance. The lawsuit, filed late yesterday in Manhattan’s state Supreme Court, seeks unspecified money damages against Joran van der Sloot, 18, and his father.

– Associated Press

POLICE BLOTTER

MAN’S BODY FOUND ON SIDEWALK

The body of a young black man with a gunshot wound to the head was found on the sidewalk in Brooklyn early yesterday morning, police officials said. Residents of 1907 Bergen St. in Brownsville called police when they saw a suspicious blue laundry bag on the sidewalk. Responding officers discovered the body, but were not able to identify him yesterday. Officials speculated that he probably was not killed in the area because there were no complaints of shots fired.

– Special to the Sun