COVID Alert NY App Launches as Cuomo Fact-Checked on Nursing Home Claims

Bronx Teen First Vaping-Related Death in New York State

By SÍLE MOLONEY

Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced on Oct. 1 the launch of an innovative technology-based tool, the COVID Alert NY, to help curb the spread of the coronavirus. “Contact tracing has been instrumental in stopping the COVID spread, and we have worked hard over these past months to establish a nation-leading testing and tracing program. Today, we are building on that effort [….] with our official Exposure Notification App created by the New York State Department of Health in partnership with Google and Apple,” the governor wrote. “With COVID Alert NY, you can use your phone to receive alert notifications if

By SÍLE MOLONEY

New Yorkers use an estimated 23 billion (not 23 million, 23 billion) plastic bags every year, according to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. That’s 1,182 bags per person, with each bag being used for about 12 minutes. Approximately 85 percent of this staggering total ends up in landfills, recycling machines, waterways, and streets. Here’s something else everyone should reflect upon. The Ecology Center (ecologycenter.org) wrote, “Like many other plastics, we can’t guarantee that plastic film is getting recycled, even if it is clean, dry, and disposed of in the “right” place. We also know that all plastic ever

By ELIOT SCHIAPARELLI

Norwood News, in partnership with WFUV radio and BronxNet Television, presents a five-part series on national issues affecting voters in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election, seen through the local lens of Bronx neighborhood communities. Part 1 looks at the environment. Sewage treatment plants, major trucking routes, food distribution centers, and highways like the Cross Bronx Expressway, all clustered together in the South Bronx have created an area with such poor air quality, it has been nicknamed “Asthma Alley,” by locals. According to a 2018 City health department report, pollution levels in the South Bronx

By SÍLE MOLONEY

Assemblywoman Nathalia Fernandez has issued a statement regarding residents’ concerns in the Allerton community about the possibility of a substance abuse treatment center being opened in the neighborhood. Department of Buildings work permit signs at 2500 Williamsbridge Road had prompted concern among the community that a treatment center was going ahead. The assemblywoman said that she contacted the New York State Office of Addiction Services and Supports who confirmed that there was no such application pending at the site. Proud to stand with my community to demand answers on the use of 2500 Williamsbridge Road. Together we will make

By SÍLE MOLONEY

New York Blood Center is calling on the community to make appointments to visit donor centers as COVID-19 has fundamentally changed the process of donating blood. Before COVID-19, mobile blood drives hosted by high schools, colleges, businesses and other organizations made up about 75 percent of the region’s incoming blood supply, but the number of blood drives has dropped by two-thirds this year due to the pandemic. The upcoming school year presents new and unprecedented challenges. Blood donations are typically lower during the summer and the return to school usually helps make up the difference and stabilize the blood

By SÍLE MOLONEY

On Friday, Sept. 24, U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh ordered the Census Bureau to keep conducting the census count until October 31. City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, who yesterday announced his withdrawal from the mayoral race in New York City, and 2020 Census Task Force Co-Chairs, Carlos Menchaca and Carlina Rivera, issued a statement on the court ruling extending the census period. “This is a win for New York and gives us another month to get a complete count in the City. We have seen the Trump Administration try and fail, again and again, to exclude immigrants

By AURÉOLE RIBES

As a youngster in the Sixties and Seventies, Stephen Ritz and his friends would drill a hole in a quarter, put a fishing string through it, and play infinite pinball games at Larry’s Luncheonette on the corner of Gun Hill Road and Tryon Avenue in Norwood. They got away with it for a few weeks. Ritz recalls this little ploy with fondness and has an amalgam of other memories as well. He remembers learning basketball at Mosholu Montefiore Community Center, building little tree houses in Reservoir Oval Park, biking down Gun Hill Road, and meeting the Duncan “YoYo”

By SÍLE MOLONEY

Bronx native, attorney, and board member of Northwest Bronx Democrats 4 Change, Oswald Feliz, is clear on what his top three issues are in running for City Council in the 15th District. “Number one, I will work to racially and economically desegregate our public-school system,” he said. “We actually have the most racially and economically segregated system in the country, and that has to change.” Feliz said that in a city which has the largest public-school system in the country, with over 1.1 million students, where 70 percent are from minority communities, it is unjust that only a

By DAVID GREENE & SÍLE MOLONEY

Catholic school children enrolled in schools in the Archdiocese of New York returned to class on Wednesday, Sept. 9 for the first time since March when the pandemic forced most of the city into lockdown. However, the return to school was quite different, and not just because of mask wearing. Children of all ages returned to their cathedrals of education at St. Raymond Academy for Girls in Castle Hill, Immaculate Conception in Olinville, St. Philip Neri School in Bedford Park, St. Brendan’s School in Norwood and dozens of others. Students were greeted with warm “hellos” as well as temperature