ALBANY

PATAKI RELEASED FROM HOSPITAL

Governor Pataki was released yesterday from the hospital, nearly three weeks after an appendectomy and its complications forced the potential presidential candidate to cancel political trips to New Hampshire and California. “It’s great to feel the fresh air and sunshine,” the governor said as he walked out of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical School with his wife, Libby Pataki. “It’s wonderful to be going back to work. … I’m not 100% but I’m a lot better than I was a few days ago.”

– Associated Press

CITYWIDE

MAYOR URGING LOCAL LEADERS TO LOBBY ALBANY FOR EDUCATION MONEY

Mayor Bloomberg is deploying his top guns, including Mayor Koch, to 21 community boards across the city to urge local leaders to lobby Albany for more education money. Last month, Mr. Bloomberg announced that the city would halt construction on 21 schools in those districts, and would hold off on dozens of other school renovations if it did not get more education money from Albany. By taking his case on the road, Mr. Bloomberg is making another unexpected move in what has become a game of political chess between the city and the state over billions of dollars that a court ordered the state to send to the five boroughs. The move could also shift anger about the halted construction away from him. The 15-member team he is sending to make his case also includes the schools chancellor, Joel Klein, the deputy mayors, Dennis Walcott and Kevin Sheekey, a salsa musician, Willie Colon, and the first Puerto Rican elected to Congress, Herman Badillo. A spokesman for the mayor, Stuart Loeser, said Mr. Bloomberg was sending his top advisers to the community boards “to get the most effective neighborhood leaders to hold Albany’s feet to the fire at home.” The first meeting is today at Community Board 4 in Queens.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

MTA OPENS CUSTOMER SERVICE HUB

Straphangers can now go to one central location for their transit woes, Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials said yesterday.The MTA yesterday opened its NYC Transit Customer Service Center at 3 Stone St. near the South Ferry. Subway and bus riders can go to the center for everything from delay verification requests to questions about MetroCards, officials said. The center will replace the Reduced-Fare Service Center and the Transit Information Center, both of which were located at the transit authority headquarters at 370 Jay St.in Brooklyn.The two centers used to serve about 10,000 customers a day, officials said. The Stone Street center is open Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and can be reached by taking the 4 or 5 train to Bowling Green, the R or W to Whitehall Street, or the 1 to South Ferry.

– Special to the Sun

IN THE COURTS

MANHATTAN BROKER ADMITS USING GIRLFRIEND’S SECRETS IN TRADING

A former stockbroker who made nearly $23,000 by trading on secrets learned from his girlfriend about a pending acquisition pleaded guilty yesterday, prosecutors said. Lee Edelman entered the plea to a felony insider trading charge related to his trading before an August 2004 purchase by Applied Materials Incorporated of the assets of Metron Technology N.V., the government said in a release. Edelman was accused in a January indictment of breaking his promise not to trade on the secrets learned through his girlfriend, an associate at a large Manhattan law firm involved in the deal.

– Associated Press

POLICE BLOTTER

POLICE SEARCH FOR CLUES IN STUDENT SLAYING

Armed with a search warrant, investigators planned yesterday to search the Queens home of a potential suspect for clues in the unsolved slaying of a graduate student from Boston whose naked and bound body was dumped in a desolate area of Brooklyn.The suspect, a 41-year-old parolee, was a bouncer at a SoHo nightspot where Imette St. Guillen was last seen alive on February 25. In the ensuing hours, the 24-year-old victim was brutally raped, strangled, and suffocated by someone who stuffed a sock in her mouth and closed it shut with packing tape.

– Associated Press

POLICE INVESTIGATE ELDERLY WOMAN’S DEATH

Police are investigating the suspicious death yesterday of an elderly East Side woman, police said. Phyllis Weiner, 89, was found lying unconscious on the 10th-floor landing of a stairwell inside her East 57th Street apartment building, police said. Weiner lived on the 11th floor with her 94-year-old husband.Weiner’s walker was reportedly left on the 11th floor, where police said investigators also recovered jewelry. Weiner was last seen with a home health care attendant, and her son told police his mother had been planning to cash a check yesterday.

– Special to the Sun

STATEWIDE

DOT COMMISSIONER DEFENDS BRIDGE-INSPECTION SYSTEM AFTER FAILURES

ALBANY – The commissioner of the state Department of Transportation yesterday defended his agency’s system for inspecting more than 19,000 bridges around the state, saying two key bridge failures last year were “isolated” incidents. The DOT commissioner, Thomas Madison, testifying at an Assembly hearing, said the department has a “comprehensive” bridge inspection program that meets all requirements of state law and equals or surpasses national bridge inspection standards. Mr. Madison said a “convergence of factors” led to July’s partial collapse of an 82-foot-high ramp that is part of the Dunn Memorial Bridge in Albany.

– Associated Press

THOUSANDS TURN OUT TO MOURN FALLEN TROOPER

GREECE – Massed ranks of police officers bid a hero’s farewell yesterday to a New York State trooper killed in a shootout with suspected bank robbers near a hamlet in rural western New York. Trooper Andrew Sperr, in his “last official act,” wounded both assailants, enabling their quick capture, and “prevented these dangerous individuals from victimizing any further citizens,” the state police superintendent,Wayne Bennett, said at a funeral Mass attended by more than 4,000 officers. “You laid down your life for your fellow man,” Mr. Bennett said.”The greatest act of courage is love. Like all troopers you accepted the risk and did your duty as you agreed to do in your oath of office.”

– Associated Press

RADIATION LEVELS LOW IN INDIAN POINT WATER LEAK

WHITE PLAINS – A leak from the Indian Point nuclear power plants has such tiny concentrations of radioactive tritium and strontium that there is no threat now to public health, officials said yesterday. But politicians and the plants’ owner pledged to keep track of any leaks – which tend to head toward the Hudson River – and to keep the public informed. The Westchester County executive, Andrew Spano, called in officials from several agencies yesterday after the Journal News reported that strontium-90 had been detected in a test well dug at Indian Point, which is in Buchanan on the east bank of the Hudson. The newspaper also reported that officials believe tritium, which had been found in the groundwater earlier, has reached the river.

– Associated Press

FUGITIVE EXTRADITED FROM CARIBBEAN ON DRUG CHARGES

ROCHESTER – A suspected drug dealer accused of importing cocaine here in the summer of 1992 has been extradited from his native St. Kitts in the Caribbean, federal officials said yesterday. Noel Heath, described as one of the top 10 fugitives of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s New York field division, was indicted in 1995 on charges of conspiring to import more than 11 pounds of cocaine into America and conspiracy to possess cocaine with the intent to distribute. If convicted, he could get a maximum sentence of life in prison and be fined as much as $4 million.

– Associated Press

STUDENTS STOP SCHOOL BUS AFTER DRIVER SUFFERS HEART ATTACK

NEWARK VALLEY- A 15-year-old student stopped a school bus yesterday morning after the driver suffered a fatal heart attack while taking the teenagers to a Binghamton-area school. Ken Card, 69, was able to slow down and begin to pull off the road, but Julie Corson used her hands to push his foot off the accelerator and apply the brakes. She then radioed for help around 7:30 a.m. while two other students tried to assist Card, said officials at Newark Valley Central School District. Card was taken to a hospital, where he died.

– Associated Press

LONG ISLAND

SEARCHERS FIND DEAD STRANGER; FRIEND’S CORPSE TURNS UP ELSEWHERE

With their friend missing for more than a month, the two men searching for Thomas Fasciglione along the Long Island shoreline suspected they might find his dead body. Instead, the corpse they found belonged to someone else. While looking for the 50-year-old in marshland just west of the Nassau County line on Sunday, Kevin O’Toole and Bill Murphy discovered a black trash bag containing the badly decomposed body of a stranger, Mr. O’Toole said. Shortly after O’Toole had called 911, a passer-by spotted the body of Fasciglione near an East Rockaway dock some six miles east, according to Nassau County police Officer Adele Burke. The Bay Park resident had been reported missing January 29.

– Associated Press