A Queens woman who was pepper-sprayed for dashing down an up-only subway staircase is suing the city - and the cop who hauled her away in cuffs - for $3 million.

Naeema Screven says she was only trying to catch her train, which was pulling into the station, when she zipped down to the A line platform at the Broadway station in Brooklyn.

One side of the stairway was designated "down" and the other side "up," the complaint filed in Brooklyn Federal Court said.

The "down" side of the stairway was crowded, so she admits she crossed under the yellow tape to the "up" side.

NEW ORLEANS - The cholesterol drug Crestor slashes the risk of heart attacks and strokes in half for people with normal or low cholesterol in a study, potentially opening a way to save the lives of thousands of seemingly healthy people.

The benefits were shown in patients with high levels of a protein called CRP, an indicator of inflammation. CRP is tied to heart risk even in people with no additional symptoms. Crestor is approved by U.S. regulators only to lower bad cholesterol.

The trial, reported at the American Heart Association meeting in New Orleans, may help double Crestor's yearly sales to $6.33 billion by 2015, expand the $34 billion market for all cholesterol-lowering medicine and prevent 50,000 heart complications a year, analysts said.

The results suggest an additional 6 million men over age 50 and women over age 60, the group studied, should take the drugs, doctors said.

"Half of heart attacks and strokes happen among apparently healthy men and women with normal or even low levels of cholesterol," said Paul Ridker, the lead investigator from Harvard Medical School.

The study may also spur a push to screen healthy people for CRP, though doctors at the meeting debated whether the findings resulted from CRP control or lowering bad cholesterol further than is now recommended.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — A 23-year-old teacher burned in an acid attack on 15 schoolgirls and instructors wants the Afghan government to throw acid on her attackers and then hang them. Kandahar's governor said Tuesday that authorities had arrested 10 alleged Taliban militants for the Nov. 12 attack in this southern city and that several confessed to taking part.

Gov. Rahmatullah Raufi said the men would be tried in open court, a pledge that pleased Nuskaal, a first-year math teacher who suffered acid burns on her shoulders.

"Those girls were simply going to school to get an education," said Nuskaal, who like many Afghans goes by one name. "My parents told me that security isn't good enough and that they were worried about me teaching. But I told my parents I won't stop teaching. I'm not afraid."

After the attack, President Hamid Karzai called for the perpetrators to be executed in public. Nuskaal said the attackers should have acid thrown on them first.

Men riding motorbikes squirted acid from water bottles onto three groups of students and teachers walking to school. Several girls suffered burned faces and were hospitalized. One teenager couldn't open her eyes for days after the attack, which sparked condemnation around the world.

Afghanistan's government called the attack "un-Islamic," while the United Nations labeled it "a hideous crime." First lady Laura Bush decried the attackers as cowardly.

The government charged Tuesday that high-ranking Taliban fighters paid the suspects a total of $2,000 to carry out the attack. The assailants came from Pakistan but were Afghan nationals, said Doud Doud, an Interior Ministry official.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi denied Tuesday that any of the group's members were involved.

Kandahar province is the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban, the hard-line Islamic militiamen who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 and are now waging an insurgency against Karzai. The area is one of Afghanistan's most conservative, a place where women rarely venture far from home.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — A 23-year-old teacher burned in an acid attack on 15 schoolgirls and instructors wants the Afghan government to throw acid on her attackers and then hang them. Kandahar's governor said Tuesday that authorities had arrested 10 alleged Taliban militants for the Nov. 12 attack in this southern city and that several confessed to taking part.

Gov. Rahmatullah Raufi said the men would be tried in open court, a pledge that pleased Nuskaal, a first-year math teacher who suffered acid burns on her shoulders.

"Those girls were simply going to school to get an education," said Nuskaal, who like many Afghans goes by one name. "My parents told me that security isn't good enough and that they were worried about me teaching. But I told my parents I won't stop teaching. I'm not afraid."

After the attack, President Hamid Karzai called for the perpetrators to be executed in public. Nuskaal said the attackers should have acid thrown on them first.

Men riding motorbikes squirted acid from water bottles onto three groups of students and teachers walking to school. Several girls suffered burned faces and were hospitalized. One teenager couldn't open her eyes for days after the attack, which sparked condemnation around the world.

Afghanistan's government called the attack "un-Islamic," while the United Nations labeled it "a hideous crime." First lady Laura Bush decried the attackers as cowardly.

The government charged Tuesday that high-ranking Taliban fighters paid the suspects a total of $2,000 to carry out the attack. The assailants came from Pakistan but were Afghan nationals, said Doud Doud, an Interior Ministry official.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi denied Tuesday that any of the group's members were involved.

Kandahar province is the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban, the hard-line Islamic militiamen who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 and are now waging an insurgency against Karzai. The area is one of Afghanistan's most conservative, a place where women rarely venture far from home.

RIVIERA BEACH, Fla. - A judge has declared unconstitutional a law banning sagging pants in this town after a teenager spent a night in jail on accusations he exposed too much underwear.

Circuit Judge Paul Moyle struck down the law after a lawyer for the teen, Julius Hart, 17, argued, "Your honor, we now have the fashion police."

A nonprofit group that spruces up Midtown is violating the civil rights of four Rastafarian workers by ordering them to hide their dreadlocks under their uniform caps, the feds charged yesterday.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed suit in Manhattan federal court against the Grand Central Partnership, alleging that the hair-raising order discriminates against the men because of their religious beliefs.

The men - Deon Bailey, Brian Lee, Frantz Seraphin and Milton Marcano - all work as security patrol officers for the partnership.

The partnership's dress code requires officers to have their hair "properly cut" or tucked "neatly inside their security department issued uniform caps."

But the men's "growing dreadlocks have become increasingly difficult to tuck fully inside the uniform caps," the lawsuit says.

All four have been repeatedly reprimanded, and Bailey, Lee and Seraphin were briefly suspended from work.

The dress code also requires that officers be "clean shaven," and in 2005, Seraphin, who had started growing a beard "in accordance with his Rastafarian beliefs," shaved it off after he was threatened with firing, according to the lawsuit.

The men declined to comment.

"In our view, the Rastafarians are being treated differently," said EEOC lawyer Robert Rose.

The lawsuit seeks back pay and interest, as well as punitive damages.

A spokesman for the partnership said the lawsuit was "without merit" and said the partnership had made "numerous good-faith efforts to resolve the matter."

"This lawsuit is surprising since it comes on the heels of a previous accommodation made by GCP, in consultation with union representatives, to furnish custom-made larger hats for use by the employees named in this lawsuit. This custom-made hat was successfully tested and approved by one of the complainants, who also serves as a union delegate," spokesman David Roskin said.

Yesterday's case follows a similar lawsuit filed in 2006, when the EEOC sued United Parcel Service in New Jersey on behalf of another Rastafarian, Ronnis Mason, who was told he had to shave his beard. That case is awaiting trial.

There's ALWAYS been problems in corporate America with our sistas and THEIR "braids/ethnic looking hairstyles,"  etc., but would they do this to someone who's jewish with their Yarlmulke and the long curls that hang from THEIR head's and off THEIR faces?? Just doesn't make sense to me family.....Help me out here!!!

Peace and Ancestral Blessings family!

You all have no idea how wonderful it is to meet such positive and cultural people. it does some'n to my spirit that I can't even begin to describe. We are putting ogether two things. One, a NEW movement for the 21st century that we're going to put together through my weekly internet radio show which I HOPE you all have listened to and told your friends and family about. :-)  Secondly, we're working on putting together an African-American Independent Political Party (AAIPP). Reason being, The Democratic AND Republican Parties have BOTH failed our people! TREMENDOUSLY!

Let me give you all that DON'T know, a little history about people of color and the two major political parties.

From 1865, when we were ALLEGEDLY released from slavery till about 1964, you're talkin' about 100 years....Blacks in America voted predominantly Republican. It only made perfect sense since the President that "freed" us was a Republican. But even before AND after that, most of the abolitionists we Republicans, and it was Republican Congresses that gave us the different legislations that have HELPED our people. The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, The Voting Rights Act, The Civil Rights Act, were all passed by The Republican Party. The Democrats were hell-bent against it ALL. As a matter of fact, it was the Democrats that were PRO-SLAVERY! Shocked?? Pay attention! In 1964, when Dr. King was trying to get the Civil Rights Act passed under Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson, the racist scumbag that he was, there was a Republican senator from Arizona named: Barry Goldwater. Now...Sen. Goldwater said: "Blacks don't need a civil righs bill." Why would he say that? 100 years of supporting Republicans and Republicans supporting us, and a Republican senator says THIS?? 

Without hearing or understanding the FULLNESS of what the senator was saying, he media and the so-called "Black Leadership" at the timemisconstrued what Sen. Goldwater said, and like a giant exodus, blacks said: "Well, if that's how the Republicans feel, then maybe we should support the Democrats!" And just like a streak of lightening, Blacks in America started supporting the Democratic Party. NOW.....What WE need to understand is, Sen. Goldwater wasn't saying that blacks in America didn't NEED civil rights. He was saying that all the civil rights WE needed, were given to us in the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the constitution and just needed to be BETTER ENFORCED!

So why all this? Because I'm a firm believer in Mao Tse-Tung's philosophy of: "No Investigation, No Right to Speak!" Year after year, election after election, blacks give this undying, unbending, unwaivering support to a political party that historically wanted them to pick cotton  God's sake! Now, while the Democrats may not want to pick cotton....well....with the exception to the Dixiecrats(Southern Democrats), they have failed to meet the needs of our people as a whole, and thats why we have to using our VERY POWERFUL VOTING BLOC and ECONOMIC POWER (850 Billion per annum), to bring about the change that we REALLY need in our communities and stop 2 things. ONE, waiting 4 someone ELSE to come and save us when we're more than capable of doin it 4 our selves, and TWO, stop letting OTHER PEOPLE pick OUR leaders!! So again, this is why I'm promoting the formation of our OWN political party that we can use to win local, countywide and state elections. Remember, ALL politics is local! it CAN be done. The Democratic Party aint SHYT w/o our vote. Think about that as we move forward in the 21st century in no better a position than we were 100 years ago as far as political and economic empowerment is concerned. 850 Billion dollars a year we spend as a people in America. We're only 12.8% of the population (40 million), making us the 6th largest GNP(Gross National Product)....meaning if blacks in America were a country, we'd be the 6TH largest ECONOMICALLY STRONG nation IN THE WORLD...but yet.......we don't even make our own toilet tissue.

What do YOU think???

Sincerely,

Bro. Hank!!