CITYWIDE

FATHER SENTENCED TO 20 YEARS TO LIFE FOR HARLEM BABY MURDER

A man who admitted to the homicidal abuse of his starved and battered 3-month-old son, whose little body suffered almost continuous pain, was sentenced yesterday to 20 years to life in prison. Colesvintong Florestal, 29, pleaded guilty on January 19 to second-degree murder in the death of the baby, also named Colesvintong. He admitted he had shaken the boy “violently and with force” many times. But an assistant district attorney, Rachel Hochhauser, told the court the abuse was much worse, much more violent, than that.

– Associated Press

DUTCH TEENAGER SAYS HIS STORY ABOUT MISSING WOMAN IS ‘TRUTH’

A Dutch teenager questioned in the case of a young Alabama woman who disappeared in Aruba last year says he had planned to go to his house to have sex with her the night she was last seen but instead left her alone on a beach. In an interview with ABC News’s “Primetime,” Joran van der Sloot, 18, says he did not have sex with Natalee Holloway because they didn’t have a condom. He says they “cuddled for a while” and he last saw her “sitting on the sand by the ocean.” Asked whether he had done anything wrong, Mr. van der Sloot said, “leaving her there at the beach.” “I should have brought her back to her hotel or I should have made sure I left her with someone, one of her friends, but I just should have gotten her back to where she should have been,” he told ABC.

– Associated Press

STATEWIDE

LAWSUIT CLAIMING KODAK LINK TO BRAIN CANCERS IS SETTLED

ROCHESTER – The families of five children who contracted brain or spinal cancers they blamed on toxic releases at Eastman Kodak Company have settled out of court for around $50,000 each – eight years after suing the film manufacturer for $185 million in punitive damages. Occupational health studies have never determined that Kodak’s colossal plant for making photographic film was even remotely to blame for the cancers. And the county health director agreed in spring 1997 after an 18-month review that there was no evidence of unusually high brain cancer rates here.

– Associated Press

FAMILIES STUCK WITH FUNERAL, HOSPITAL BILLS FROM BOAT ACCIDENT An insurance problem means that the families of 20 elderly tourists who died and others who were injured in a tour boat accident on a New York lake are stuck with the funeral and medical bills, the boat’s owner said. The 40-foot Ethan Allen had 48 people aboard when it capsized October 2 on Lake George. Nineteen of the 20 people who died were from Michigan. Jim Quirk, whose company owns the Ethan Allen, said he thought the boat’s $2 million insurance policy with the Miami-based Global Property Owners Association covered marine accidents. The insurance company said the Ethan Allen was insured only for accidents on land, not on the water, and said Mr. Quirk knew that.

– Associated Press

OFFICIAL: FOUR FACING CHARGES IN STOLEN BODY PARTS PROBE

The head of a New Jersey biomedical firm has been charged in a plot to steal tissue from cadavers at New York City funeral homes and sell it for transplants nationwide, a law enforcement official said yesterday. The Brooklyn district attorney, Charles Hynes, was expected to announce indictments today alleging that the owner of Biomedical Tissue Services of Fort Lee, N.J., Michael Mastromarino, ran an illicit body parts ring, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the indictments were still sealed. Three alleged co-conspirators will also be charged, the official said.

– Associated Press

TRIBE UNVEILS CASINO PLAN

SENNETT – The Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma gave town officials their first glimpse of the tribe’s proposed $400 million casino and resort. The complex would include a 300-room luxury hotel and be built on a 400-acre site about three miles north of Auburn, Seneca-Cayuga Chief Paul Spicer and a Rochester developer, Thomas Wilmot Sr. said during a presentation to town officials Tuesday night. It would have three specialty restaurants, an 18-hole golf course, night club, spa and fitness center, and stores.

– Associated Press

20 NURSING HOMES FINED, 15 CITED FOR POOR CARE

Twenty nursing homes in New York State were fined for poor care over the last three months, with one home receiving a federal fine of $109,000, according to a report released yesterday.The report by the Long Term Care Community Coalition in New York City was compiled from records of the state Health Department and the federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The $109,000 fine against The Lemberg Home and Geriatric Center in Brooklyn is the highest fine to a nursing home in New York in recent times, the director of LTCCC, Richard Mollot, said.

– Associated Press

ALBANY

WELD GETS MORE CONSERVATIVE SUPPORT DESPITE CHAIRMAN’S CHOICE

A day after a Republican candidate for governor, William Weld, was passed over by the state Conservative Party chairman and after Mr. Weld’s status in a federal probe got murkier, he attracted the endorsement of three county Conservative Party chairmen. The conservative leaders of Albany, Rensselaer, and Sullivan counties endorsed Mr. Weld yesterday.

– Associated Press

REP. SWEENEY HOSPITALIZED OVERNIGHT

Rep. John Sweeney was hospitalized at Albany Medical Center yesterday after complaining he felt ill. Aides said he was being held overnight for observation. Mr. Sweeney, a Republican of Clifton Park,went to the hospital after appearing at the Port of Albany for a news conference denouncing a deal to sell port operations in six American cities to a state-run company from the United Arab Emirates. On the way to his next event, Mr. Sweeney felt ill, called his doctor, and met him at Albany Medical Center, aides said.

– Associated Press

NEW DRUG PLAN COSTS NEW YORK $115 MILLION, SCHUMER SAYS

New York has shelled out $115 million to help seniors get medicine amid the confusion of a new federal drug benefit called Medicare Part D, Senator Schumer said.The federal government says it will ultimately repay those costs. From the launch of the program on January 1 through February 20,the state incurred $115 million in costs for the prescriptions of so-called “dual-eligibles,” those who are eligible for coverage under Medicare and Medicaid. That figure does not include drugs for those enrolled in a state program called EPIC, or Elderly Pharmaceutical Insurance Coverage, the senator said.

– Associated Press

POLICE BLOTTER

POLICE ARREST MOTHER FOR ABANDONING CHILD

Police arrested a Williamsburg woman for abandoning her child while she went to work, police said. At 7 a.m. yesterday, police said the woman, Bazan Guadulope, 36, left her 3-year-old son in their Johnson Avenue apartment and went to work at a food-vending stand.The child went outside and an ambulance driver noticed him and called 911. Police arrested Ms. Guadulope and charged her with child endangerment. She did not have a criminal history, but was known to the city’s Administration for Children’s Services because of two unsubstantiated reports of maltreatment, police said. The toddler was taken to Woodhull Medical and Mental Health Center for an examination, but police said he did not appear to be injured.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

FAMILY INDICTED FOR RUNNING ILLEGAL CHECK-CASHING BUSINESS

A New Jersey couple and their son were indicted on charges of running a multimillion-dollar illegal check cashing and money transmittal business in Midtown, according to the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Vadim Vassilenko, 39,Yelena Barysheva, 40, and their son, Alexey Baryshev, 21, transmitted money and cashed checks for Eastern European clients through their one-stop shopping business, Western Express International, Incorporated, on Eighth Avenue, near the corner of 38th Street, the district attorney’s office said.The defendants earned more than $25 million in a three-year period ending in 2005. They were charged with violating the state banking law by allegedly engaging in the business of transmitting money and cashing checks without a license; they were also charged with falsifying business records for allegedly supplying false information to two banks when they opened accounts at the institutions.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

IN THE COURTS

SINATRA PICTURE ENTERED INTO EVIDENCE IN JUNIOR GOTTI RETRIAL

A 1970s picture showing Frank Sinatra with a collection of mobsters in the nation’s largest Mafia family was entered into evidence yesterday in the racketeering retrial of John “Junior” Gotti.The photograph was introduced by an assistant U.S. attorney, Michael McGovern, as the prosecutor questioned Gotti’s one-time closest confidant, Michael “Mikey Scars” DiLeonardo. DiLeonardo, considered a key prosecution witness, took the stand a day after the government in its opening statement promised to uncloak the mob of the romanticized image some people possess of it. Still, Mr. McGovern introduced the photograph showing Sinatra with former Gambino crime family head Carlo Gambino, who led the family until he died in 1976.

– Associated Press