Affordable, and sometimes free, high-speed Internet access is coming to the Bronx – one restaurant, building and neighborhood at a time. The virtual reality is that there’s a digital divide between those who have high-speed Internet access and those who don’t. That gap is widest in working-class, low-income communities like much of the Bronx.

For decades, community leaders and environmentalists have dreamed of cleaning up the Harlem River, and renovating its underutilized eastern shoreline. It’s quite a dream. The eight-mile waterway is polluted; its shoreline, on which factories and power plants once stood, is presumed to be one large brownfield (land whose redevelopment is complicated by environmental hazards).

Thanks to YouTube, the Bronx and the world were made aware this weekend of a German military training exercise where soldiers were told to imagine African-Americans in the Bronx exiting a van before firing off their machine guns. But anyone who has a Google News Alert set for Bronx will learn relatively quickly that our borough is frequently used for target practice by clueless people trying to make a point in violent contexts. In fact, the Norwood News ran an editorial about exactly this last July. Here are a couple of excerpts:

Lifelong baseball fan and girls little league softball coach, John O’Neil can honestly say that his favorite team is the Mets – as in the group of 16 young ladies he trains every spring. No offense to the New York Mets, but the choice between the hardened major league team and his budding talents is a virtual no-brainer.

Since joining the Friends of Van Cortlandt Park in 2000, Christina Taylor has seen a lot of changes. Involvement in the Friends’ environmental internships has increased, areas of the park are being reforested and, of course, in 2004, the city chose Van Cortlandt Park as the site for a controversial new water filtration plant.

Leaving his new family behind and putting his life in potential danger, Staff Sergeant Christopher Perkins of Norwood is on his way back to Iraq for a second tour of duty. Perkins spent his first 15-month tour in southern Iraq with his fellow soldiers from the 245th Maintenance Company of the National Guard, a unit based in the Kingsbridge Armory.

More than 30 people gathered in the rain two weeks ago to tell the Parks Department and the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) how they think $4.5 million the city has set aside for Jerome Park Reservoir can best be used.

Never underestimate the power of J-Lo. Need evidence? Take the hundreds of screaming, starry-eyed fans who lined up last week for a chance to meet the multi-talented Bronx-bred performer, otherwise known as Jennifer Lopez, at an autograph session inside F.Y.E. music store on Jerome Avenue near Gun hill Road.

In an ongoing effort to improve living conditions in this growing part of the northwest Bronx, Community Board 7 decided at its February meeting to authorize the city’s Department of Planning to work with them on the rezoning process referred to as 197C in the city’s Charter.