Eastern/Southeast Queens News

The mayor’s preliminary budget released on May 3 proposes to cut about $47 million from the Department of Cultural Affairs, the city agency that funds public and nonprofit cultural programs.

So the dance begins; these will not be the final numbers.

Hiram Monserrate, a former state senator and city councilman from western Queens, pleaded guilty on Friday to funneling more than $100,000 intended for a nonprofit to help fund his failed bid for the state Senate in 2006, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said.

Monserrate, 44, who was elected to the state Senate in 2008 and then ousted in early 2010 after being convicted of misdemeanor assault for dragging his bleeding girlfriend through his apartment building in Jackson Heights, pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to charges of conspiracy and mail fraud. He faces two years in prison when he is sentenced on Sept. 14, prosecutors said.

David Rosen, the former CEO of MediSys Health Network, a nonprofit corporation that runs Jamaica Hospital and Flushing Hospital Medical Center, was sentenced Monday to three years in prison by a Manhattan federal court for bribery.

Rosen, 64, of upstate Harrison will also spend two years under supervised release following his prison term, and is required to pay a $500 special assessment fee.

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The cost of tap water, which has been rising year after year after year, will go up 7 percent in fiscal year 2013, which begins July 1. The city considers that an accomplishment because it had initially projected water rates would go up 9.3 percent.

Water rates have been skyrocketing every year since fiscal 2007, often at double digits. Critics say the sharp increases are effectively tax hikes, given the necessity of water, putting the lie to the mayor’s frequent boasts that he keeps taxes down.

U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) has introduced legislation that would she says, reduce the number of bird strikes at New York airports by speeding up the removal and killing of Canada geese from the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge.

In a statement issued by her office on April 25, Gillibrand said the move was prompted by bird-plane collisions that forced emergency landings at Kennedy Airport in Queens on April 19 and at Westchester Airport on April 24.

Dogfighting and cockfighting are illegal in New York State and so is going to such events. Now, punishment for spectators at these venues may increase on the federal level, much to the satisfaction of animal rights advocates.

Under the Animal Fighting Spectator Prohibition Act of 2011 introduced by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), any person who attends an animal fighting event would be subject to a fine of up to $100,000 and imprisonment of up to one year for each violation.

Historic locations around the city will compete for a slice of a $3 million chunk of grant money offered through Partners in Preservation.

On April 26, 40 spots were selected to compete for the loot. Five can be found in Queens: Flushing Town Hall, the Rocket Thrower statue in Flushing Meadows Park, Louis Armstrong House Museum, Queens County Farm Museum and the Astoria Pool Olympic high dive.

Adis Medunjanin, 34, who joined al Qaeda and plotted to commit a suicide terrorist attack, was found guilty of multiple federal terrorism offenses after a four-week trial, the government announced Tuesday.

The defendant and his accomplices came within days of executing a plot to conduct coordinated suicide bombings in the New York City subway system in September 2009, as directed by senior al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, the prosecution said. When the plot was foiled, the defendant attempted to commit a terrorist attack by crashing his car on the Whitestone Expressway in an effort to kill himself and others.