A major tenant anti-harassment bill, co-sponsored by Council Member Oliver Koppell, was introduced in the City Council on Oct. 17.

The new legislation gives tenants an effective tool to fight abusive landlords who harass tenants through threats, repeated interruptions of essential services, removing possessions, and/or damaging entry to a residence.

DeWitt Clinton High School, St. Catherine’s Academy, and 31 other New York City high schools will be taking part in the newly launched Rewarding Achievement (REACH) program. REACH, started by The Council of Urban Professionals (CUP) and funded with $1 million by the Pershing Square Foundation will reward high achieving minority students in urban areas.

Led by the city’s Parks Department, volunteers planted 10,000 trees on It’s My Park! Day. The Oct. 20 effort was part of Mayor Bloomberg’s Million Trees NYC initiative, which aims to plant one million trees in the next 10 years.

All analog broadcasting for television stations across the country will be discontinued and switched to digital broadcasting on Feb. 18, 2009. The U.S. government mandated this to free analog broadcasting frequencies for use by Fire, Police, and other emergency services. After this date, without the purchase of a set-top box, or switch to a cable or satellite provider, 19 million households will be viewing only static.

Find out where and when all the important community meetings in the northwest Bronx are scheduled to happen.

A year after their project met stiff community opposition, a developer’s team returned to Community Board 7 last week to re-pitch their plan to build a small hotel on Webster Avenue in Norwood. This time, residents and board members seemed more receptive to McSam Hotel Group’s plan for a five-story, 42-room Comfort Inn, but many, including CB7 Chair Greg Faulkner, remain unconvinced.

A 35-year-old father was stabbed to death Oct. 20 in North Fordham by a close friend, neighbors said. Orlando Garcia, 46, was arrested and charged in the death of Luis Fermin, a Dominican car mechanic who was living on Briggs Avenue with his wife and two small children.

Starting in January, the Norwood News will run a youth journalism program for Bronx high school students in their sophomore, junior or senior years.

The nationwide home foreclosure crisis sweeping the country is hitting the northwest Bronx particularly hard. Now local homeowners and neighborhood housing advocates are scrambling to recover and limit the damage already done by subprime lending practices.