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Volume XIX • Number 9 • March 8 - 14, 2012 •
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Second woman nabbed in local prostitution sting By MIAWLING LAM A local massage parlor could be shuttered after a second employee was busted for soliciting sexual services. Undercover NYPD investigators swooped on New Healing Touch, a massage parlor located at 4685 Manhattan College Parkway, at around 3:40 p.m. on Wednesday, February 29. Commanding officer of the 50th Precinct Captain Kevin Burke said the sting operation was ordered after an employee was nabbed for offering sexual services in December. “Based on that, we wanted to retest them to see if that criminal activity was still going on. And so another vice undercover went there…and same thing but a different individual,” he said. “[She] agreed to do a massage, took him to the room and also agreed to a prostitution act.” Ying Al Li, 43, from Queens, was
arrested and charged with one count of unauthorized practice of a profession and another misdemeanor prostitution count. It is understood Li offered to manually stimulate her client’s penis for $20. Captain Burke said authorities now had legal grounds to pursue New Healing Touch’s closure. “We’re required to make two arrests within a year for this type of offense—which we’ve met—so the next step forward is to submit them for a nuisance abatement,” he said. Under a nuisance abatement order, a city judge can order a building to be boarded up if there is sufficient evidence that two counts of prostitution occurred on the premises. However, Captain Burke warned it could take a couple of months for the case to progress through the courts. The latest arrest comes after Yingji Li, 40, was busted and Continued on Page 10 Police arrested a second suspect at New Healing Touch on Manhattan College Parkway near Broadway.
Specialized HS admits from RKA soar
Sleeping Beauty (Deanna Sherman) and Rapunzel (Samantha Bowden) take a break from working the slides, tunnels and bounce castle at the Riverdale Y Purim Carnival last Sunday. The Jewish holiday of Purim, observed this Wednesday night through Thursday, commemorates the miraculous survival of Persia’s Jewish population. Celebrations typically involve costume parties, reveling, gifts to the needy and food baskets for friends.
By MIAWLING LAM Thirty students from the Riverdale Kingsbridge Academy won coveted seats in the city’s nine elite specialized high schools this year. Data released on Tuesday by M.S/H.S 141 shows the number of students receiving offers to the prestigious schools has nearly doubled within the past year. Of the 30 students who gained admission to the city’s crème de la crème of high schools, 11 received an offer from the traditional powerhouses—Bronx High School of Science, Stuyvesant High School and Brooklyn Technical High School. Seven students received an offer from Bronx Science; another three were granted entrance to Brooklyn Tech; and one made the cut-off score for Stuyvesant. Eight RKA students were offered seats at the High School of American Studies at Lehman College; five were accepted at the High School for Mathematics, Science and Engineering at City College; two at Brooklyn Latin
and four at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. In comparison, RKA sent just 16 students to the city’s nine prestigious schools last year and 25 eighth-graders in 2010. This year as well, one student gained admission to the highly competitive Eleanor Roosevelt High School on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and another was accepted to The Beacon School on the Upper West Side. RKA principal Lori O’Mara said of the 196 eighth-graders who sat for the Specialized High School Admissions Test, 15 percent were accepted. “We are, by far, the numberone Bronx feeder school to the specialized high schools,” she said. “Twenty-six of the 30 acceptances were from the eighth-grade honors classes. This is an acceptance rate of 46 percent for the 63 students in the honors classes.” She attributed the school’s positive results to the formation of new enrichment clubs including Math Olympiad, a rigorous
middle-school math club that pushes students to challenge their thinking; an Art Portfolio Club, where students have the opportunity to work with an art teacher to develop a portfolio; and a Chorus Club, which helps students hone their musical skills. O’Mara also cited the inclusion of more rigorous reading material in all English language arts classes as helpful in promoting vocabulary development and critical reading skills. The latest results represent a stunning reversal of the decline in RKA students being offered seats at specialized high schools. However, the numbers are still a far cry from the 150 students the school sent to the prestigious schools in the early ‘90s. Meanwhile, Riverdale’s tiny Kinneret Day School boasted that 75 percent of its students who sat for the Specialized High School Exam received an offer. Kinneret Day School assistant principal Simone Nenner said that the High School of AmeriContinued on Page 11