After a year’s hiatus, highlighted by a sharp rise in gun violence, the 52nd Precinct is once again becoming an Operation Impact precinct – gaining 70 fresh recruits to police three designated hot zones over the next six to eight months.

At the Chamber of Commerce luncheon during Bronx Week, the mayor announced a new task force to create a plan for the south Bronx. Many of us remember other plans for the south Bronx; some of them have gone a long way toward being implemented. What interests us is, that in this case, the area to be reviewed is Community Districts 1 to 4. The term ‘South Bronx’ has referred to the area below Fordham Road or Districts 1 to 6 since, at the latest, the work of the South Bronx Development Office, which started in the late 1970s.

In the back room of the New Orleans office of ACORN, a national grassroots community organization, grows a culture in a Petri dish. A young organizer named Elliot told me, with only a little hyperbole: "It’s going to save the world." Well, maybe not the world. But if it works, it could help 200,000 families return to their Crescent City homes.

Last November, a well-known Korean supermarket on East 204th Street between Mosholu Parkway and the Grand Concourse quietly closed its doors for good. Suzie’s Oriental Food Market – or Suzie’s as it was commonly known – had been in the neighborhood since 1974.

Beginning this fall, more than a dozen northwest Bronx public schools will be granted a greater degree of autonomy as part of Mayor Bloomberg’s ambitious new Empowerment Program.

Peter Fine, the well-connected developer who is emerging as a top contender to secure the rights to redevelop the Kingsbridge Armory, has cultivated success as well as controversy in other areas of the city. As the Norwood News reported last issue, everyone interested in the armory project generally liked the detailed proposal Fine laid out at a Community Board 7 Land Use meeting on May 31. Fine put wind behind his own sails by securing a Zerega Avenue industrial site, which he would use to relocate the two National Guard units currently housed in the armory.

Sarwar Construction, a Brooklyn-based construction company, has been fined $7,450 by OSHA (the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration), following the death of employee Mohammad Nadeem who fell from scaffolding on Dec. 7 last year while working on a Bedford Park apartment building.

Several community residents have been appointed as new members to Community Board 7, according to the Bronx borough president’s office. The new members are Helene Hartman-Kutnowsky, Cynthia O’Neal Riley, Enrique Vegam, George Berdejo and Waleska Roldan.

New York lawmakers dealt a potentially serious blow to predatory lenders, unanimously passing a bill that would protect vulnerable homeowners, many of them senior citizens, from "foreclosure rescue" scams.