CITYWIDE

Mayor Will Provide Security for Ahmadinejad

Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday that the city would provide security for President Ahmadinejad of Iran as part of its agreement with the United Nations, but the mayor has no plans to have the radical leader over for dinner. “I will tell you I will not host this person in my home,” Mr. Bloomberg told reporters at City Hall. “I don’t plan to meet him or have any other contact with him, but the NYPD will do their job and make sure that everybody is safe in this city.” In 1995, Mayor Giuliani caused a national stir when he had the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat thrown out of Lincoln Center for a concert celebrating the U.N.

— Staff Reporter of the Sun

Judge: ImClone Patent Belongs to Israelis

A federal judge ruled yesterday that three scientists from Israel are the true inventors of a patent used for the company’s blockbuster cancer drug Erbitux rather than seven people whose names are now on it. U.S.District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald said lawyers for the scientists had proved they were entitled to sole inventorship of the patent. Lawyers had predicted that the case could have significant effects on the future of Erbitux, a colon-cancer treatment drug made by ImClone, the company whose founder, Sam Waksal, is serving a prison sentence for his role in the stock scandal that also ensnared Martha Stewart. In a 2003 lawsuit, Yeda Research and Development Co. of Israel sued ImClone, which has an exclusive license for the formula used in Erbitux to inhibit tumor cells, and its partner Aventis, claiming three of its researchers were the real inventors. “It is not the intent of Yeda to keep anybody off the market,” a lawyer for the plaintiffs said in a hearing last summer. A lawyer for Aventis later noted that one trial witness had remarked that hundreds of millions of dollars were at stake for Yeda and Erbitux, which is distributed in the U.S. by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.

— Associated Press

Manhattan Media Launches ‘City Hall’ Newspaper

Manhattan Media, the publishing company behind the community newspapers Our Town, Chelsea Clinton New, and The West Side Spirit rolled out their new publication “City Hall” at a launch party last night in TriBeCa appropriately held at the restaurant City Hall on Duane Street. Manahattan Media’s new newspaper will be released monthly until January 2007 when the paper plans to publish on a bi-monthly basis. The first issue takes a look at City Halls’ top 35 rising stars under 40 years old. Some of the names on the list include Elliot Spitzer’s senior adviser Rich Baum, Deputy Mayor for Administration Ed Skyler, and Founder and President of the Knickerbocker SKD Josh Isay. Many of the young stars touted in the premiere issue attended the event. Like Manahattan Media’s other neighborhood publications “City Hall” will be available to readers by subscription.

— Special to the Sun

Young Jewish Adults See Cultural Experiences

The National Foundation for Jewish Culture presented a conference yesterday at the offices of the UJA Federation that highlighted a recent NFJC study on culture and young adult Jewish identity. The study, conducted by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion professor Steven Cohen and University of California at Davis professor Ari Kelman confirmed that Jewish cultural programming is a valuable way of reaching young adult Jews who are unengaged with the Jewish community.The study also concluded that many young adults who were engaged but unaffiliated sought cultural events that were alternatives to the organized Jewish community, which they found “bland, conformist, conservative, and alien.” The young adults sought Jewish cultural experiences that were entertaining and crossed boundaries between Jews and non-Jews. At the conference, New York University professor Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett said these unaffiliated young Jews “feel claustrophobia in 100% Jewish settings.”

— Staff Reporter of the Sun

Foundation Announces $1 Million Prize Winner

The Broad Foundation has announced the winner of its $1 million prize for urban school districts today at a ceremony in the Museum of Modern Art. Five national finalists, including the New York City Department of Education, are competing for the prize, which rewards school districts that improve student performance and reduce achievement gaps between students from different ethnic groups and income brackets. The winner will receive $500,000 toward college scholarships for graduating seniors, the largest prize in the country awarded to a single school district. The other finalists will each receive $125,000 in scholarships.

— Special to the Sun

Lawmaker Wants ‘Taggants’ Tracked

Senator Schumer renewed a plan yesterday to require “taggants,” or tracers, be implanted in ammonium nitrate, a farm fertilizer commonly used to make bombs like the one used in Oklahoma City in 1995. In a letter to a Congressional conference committee considering a current Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill, Mr. Schumer urged them to include a provision for taggants, which can be implanted into chemical compounds, enabling law enforcement to trace the manufacturer and buyer. In two precautionary measures, he also proposed mandating identification for sales of ammonium nitrate, as well as requiring sellers keep sales records and be registered with the Department of Homeland Security. The plan comes on the heels of the police department’s Operation Kaboom, when police obtained more than a ton of the compound undetected, and created a bomb with it on an NYPD firing range last week. “The fact that two NYPD detectives with no knowledge of bomb-making were able to create an enormous and lethal bomb from directions found on the Internet should serve as yet another wake-up call,” Mr. Schumer said. “It shouldn’t be so easy to get.”

— Special to the Sun