Getting elementary school students to do their math problems can sometimes prove difficult for teachers. Comment.

Have you ever wondered what the groundward fighting fist and praying mantis martial arts techniques look like? Comment.

A developer has received city approval to begin constructing a condominium complex in the shell of an Astoria warehouse once owned by the Steinway & Sons piano company. Comment.

Queens lawmakers in Albany are exercising some clout as the state Legislature squares off against Gov. George Pataki over the new budget agreement and prepares to override his threatened veto on a deal that would provide fiscal relief for the borough. Comment.

A Jamaica man convicted of the May 2001 rape of a 20-year-old woman was sentenced Monday to 50 years in prison as a repeat violent sex offender, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said. Comment.

State Comptroller Alan Hevesi, known as a respected and low-key political figure, has taken on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in a high-profile battle to bring the powerful state agency under closer scrutiny. Comment.

Longtime Bayside activists and newly installed Community Board 11 members Mandingo Tshaka and Frank Skala stirred up the board’s monthly meeting Monday, using their new positions to speak out on zoning variances and challenge the meeting’s guest speaker, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown. Comment.

Extra, extra! The new baseball field at Cardozo High School in Bayside is now called New York Post Field at Benjamin N. Cardozo High School. Comment.

A longtime Little Neck resident and 30-year Fire Department veteran killed on Sept. 11, 2001 was honored Saturday with a street named in his honor and a plaque dedicated in his memory at Engine Co. 320 in Bayside. Comment.

When Thomas Chen left Taiwan for the United States in 1982, he did not speak a word of English. As a 27-year-old construction worker, Chen came to America seeking what he called “a better business opportunity.” Comment.

Armenians looking for a peaceful place to pay tribute to the victims of the genocide that killed 1.5 million of their countrymen now have a shrine for that purpose in Bayside. Comment.

A city council committee has called for rescinding the 50-cent transit fare hike and for more control over the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which Councilman John Liu said was “caught in crisis of public confidence.” Comment.

Friends, neighbors and family of Michael Carlo gathered at a Whitestone corner Saturday afternoon to honor the lost firefighter in a street renaming ceremony. Comment.

Acting Seniors Comment.

The maternal figures in “The Majesty of African Motherhood,” an exhibit on display at the Langston Hughes Library in Corona, are mostly young women with babies. Comment.

Bonnaroo NE is confirmed to take place Aug. 8-10 at Enterprise Park in Riverhead, L.I. The three-day camping and music festival will be modeled after the original Bonnaroo Music Festival which will once again take place in June in Manchester, Tenn. The initial artist lineup for Bonnaroo NE is listed below. Additional acts will be announced in the coming weeks. Comment.

The computer’s versatility as a real-time media processing system, as well as the emergence of the “VJ” (or video jockey), has made possible new creative forms characterized by the performance of moving images with audio. Comment.

D’Jak: (Denise Jaklitsch) “Self consciously modern, she represents quilting’s individualist strain” (Newsday, 2002) D’Jak is the show’s curator. Best known for her 3-D sculptural sci-fi tapestries and elaborate fantasy dolls, her large-scale appliqued dimensional sci-fi tapestries of robots & strange alien life forms — co-designed with artist Frank Pawlowski — have a quantum element, elegantly blending the past and the future while exploring the UFO enigma. Fantasy doll figures interpret enchanted animal characters of fairytale, legend and Comment.

Fiber arts are and always have been, an integral part of a society’s everyday and spiritual life, not created separately from it. Deriving primarily from materials found in nature, hand made utilitarian and decorative works of varying styles, usage, and dÈcor speak definitively through the ages of a people, a time, and a place. Works in this event will include the use of fiber materials (including fabric) and/or plant sources, sometimes combined with mixed-media applications preferred by the various artists in their striking compositions that infuse elements of the past, Comment.

The Science Playground, which is the largest in the Western Hemisphere, was previously only accessible for children over six years but is now for the first time available for children of all ages. With more than 200 hands-on indoor exhibits, the Science Playground introduces elements that encourage active participation. Parents and children of all ages and abilities can steer, yank and crank, use their own weight, reflexes and imagination to explore how things work while focusing on principles of the physical and the mechanized world. Comment.

As I approach my first anniversary as reviewer of community theater productions for the TimesLedger Newspapers, I continue to, at least when it comes to community theater, expect the unexpected. Although there are names and groups whom I have come to regard with utmost dependability, I still have to admit that “surprise” is so often in store when I walk into a local theater. Comment.

Queens residents seemed resigned this week to the new subway, bus and Long Island Rail Road fare hikes put into effect by the Metropolitan Transit Authority and have started figuring out how to pay for the jolt in public transportation fees. Comment.

Crime Victim Assistance Unit Comment.

With two of the borough’s most notable and revered music groups celebrating their 50th and 75th anniversaries this year, there has been very little notice of an up-and-coming musical ensemble that has quietly been preparing to take the stage at LeFrak Hall Friday night. Comment.

I am a graduate of the High School of Performing Arts who majored in theater. After high school I spent some time working professionally in the theater and trying to break into film. But a writers’ strike hit, auditions dried up and I decided to go to college. Comment.

Housing work group Comment.

Titled “Unbroken,” to celebrate the indomitable spirit of these forgotten groups, the exhibit opens Saturday, May 10, at the Rockaway Arts Center, sTudio 7 Gallery in Fort Tilden, Rockaway, and runs through Sunday, June 29. Comment.

Claudio Gonzalez wants to spread art to the masses. Comment.

Business can be pretty tough if you get sick, especially if you are the sole proprietor. And that leads us to the topic of health coverage for those going it alone. Comment.

May 13- Minority and Women Owned Business Seminar – Diamond Club at Shea Stadium – 8:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. 718-898-8500 Comment.

Bayside, 18-55 Corporal Kennedy, Coop Hi-Rise, $209,000, Bed 2, Bath 1 Comment.

Tuesday, May 13 - Queens Centers for Progress holds the Phil Olin Dinner Dance honoring all past distinguished honorees from 1955 to 2002 at 7 p.m. at Terrace at on the Park. Comment.

More than a hundred Queens groups converted on the Museum of the Moving Image Monday to protest further funding cuts hours after the City Council voted to approve sales and income tax hikes as part of the city’s effort to close a $3.8 billion budget deficit. Comment.

ELMHURST — Police believe one rape and two attempted rapes in Elmhurst may have been perpetrated by a single assailant. Comment.

In a letter published in last week’s paper, Andrew Ippolito takes issue with an April 17 editorial in which we disagreed with a call by the John Golden Park Block Association to end the Parks Department policy that allows dogs to run off leash before 9 a.m. Since then, Frank Skala, the president of the East Bayside Homeowners Association, has echoed that call. Comment.

These are tough times for illegal aliens. In the wake of 9/11, the country has little tolerance for people who entered or have remained in the United States illegally. Given the charged political atmosphere, we are impressed that a handful of public officials found the courage to grant a Pakistani boy the chance to continue to live out his American dream. Comment.

A high school baseball game in Ridgewood was interrupted last Thursday when gang members ran on the field, firing shots at Grover Cleveland players, police said. By the time it was over, eight teenagers were arrested and four of them allegedly were carrying guns, the authorities said. Fortunately, only one kid was injured but this could easily have turned into a tragedy. Comment.

I was walking down Northern Boulevard the other day when I saw a woman get off the bus. I noticed that her blouse was pulled up on one side. As she came closer, I called her attention to it. “Lady,” I said, “you are exposed.” Comment.

The Queens Flag Day Committee held its ninth annual dinner dance, hosted by Tony Corbisiero of Ricardo’s in Astoria last week. The Man of the Year Award went to Dennis Tortora, vice president and comptroller of Steinway & Sons Piano Co. The Woman of the Year Award went to Dee Richard, columnist and photographer at the award-winning TimesLedger Newspapers. Comment.

Do parents care about movie-rating classifications? Apparently many don’t. Comment.

As we approach our late teen years, the idea of dating is becoming more prominent in our lives. The pressure to have romantic connections with the opposite sex has heightened tremendously. Comment.

Our April showers certainly performed in 2003 as is annually predicted. Flowers seemed to pop up and bloom overnight. They are beautiful, and we are grateful, as we are for the rain — as long as it doesn’t make similar demands on us as it did on Noah. He was wise to take the warnings of a flood to build an appropriate ark to save the animals. Comment.

Speakers at the recent meeting of the Queens Civic Congress described their activities to protect the Croton Watershed in Westchester County and prevent the building of a water filtration plant in Van Cortland Park in the Bronx. The Croton Watershed Clean Water Coalition and Queens Councilman James Gennaro (D-Fresh Meadows), chairman of the Committee on Environmental Protection, sent speakers. Comment.

Chris Petallides may be a successful architectural engineer in the process of building a home in Little Neck, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t feeling the budget pinch with a looming income tax surcharge, water rate hikes and a five-month-old 18.5 percent property tax increase. Comment.

Welcome to the Point. The Point being College Point. Spring has finally arrived and it certainly is most welcome. The grass is green and growing, and the flowers are budding. The birds are flying and chirping and very happy that their real spring weather has finally arrived. Comment.

Nearly everywhere I go it seems that everyone I come across asks me the same question: What’s up with the Mets? My usual response is not printable within the confines of a community newspaper, but for the next few hundred words or so, I will try to water down my comments on the current state of New York’s most sorry franchise this side of the Rangers. Comment.

Leo Nicholas and the College Point Road Runners will celebrate the running of the 25th Annual Queens Half-Marathon Saturday, May 17, a race that has traveled a long and sometimes bumpy road since its inception a quarter of a century ago. Comment.

After toiling through six innings of frustration, Andrew Perez had the chance to erase it all with one swing of the bat. Comment.

St. Francis Prep’s Kristen McEvitt and The Mary Louis Academy’s Stephanie Godziewski have been battling it out on the softball field since freshman year, two of the most dominant pitchers in the city going head-to-head in meaningful games. Comment.

School: St. Francis Prep Comment.

Jaclyn Miccio is sick and tired of being sick and tired. Comment.

After last year’s disappointing season, Brooklyn Knights coach Dan Fisher made a wish list of players to improve the Premier Development League team and brought it to college soccer games during the fall. Comment.

It is a fitting finale for Andrew Svoboda. Comment.

Each member of the Queensborough Community College baseball team circled the date in big felt marker: May 1, vs. Bronx Community College, CUNYAC championship game. Comment.

Every time she gets an increase in her Social Security paycheck, Marilyn Woliner, 75, faces a larger increase in rent at her rent-stabilized apartment in the Pomonok housing complex in Kew Gardens Hills. Comment.

The Queens College women’s softball team dropped two of three games to C.W. Post in the New York Collegiate Athletic Conference championship, but it still managed to receive an at-large bid to the NCAA Division II Northeast Region. Comment.

Meric Law 12, Printing Express 3. Meric Laws’ entire team contributed in this game. There was great hitting by Ryan Magee, who went 3-for-3, and Mike Lavin, Mike Calasuno and Ryan Paccione, who all went 2-for-3. Timely walks by Timothy Yoo and Kieran Mahoney kept several rallies going. Printing Express had a great performance by catcher Anthony Larosa, and Anthony Charalambous really pitched his heart out. Comment.

Lum scored a 35.05 in the all-around and scored a 9.05 to medal on bars. Manzi scored a 34.475 in the all-around and an 8.975 to medal on vault, where she performed a Tsukahara vault. Lum and Manzi are coached by Victor Shifrin and Christine Phillips. Comment.

246-04 Jericho Turnpike, Bellerose Comment.

I like to go in the evening when it's a little busy. Even on a Friday and Saturday Arturo's is serene - gracious, a little formal, a little old-worldish. Appetizers are served from a cart rolled up to your table. The pastas and dishes like Fillet Mignon Arturo's are prepared at a table by your side. There's a tiered dessert cart to peruse before ordering and if you order zabaglione (we did) it's whisked together before you and served hot over berries and vanilla ice cream in a footed glass. Comment.

A day of fishing in Howard Beach for Enrico Santarelli and Louis Raia started when the two packed up their car with coolers full of the day's meals, two chairs equipped with homemade rod-holding devices and at least five basic fishing rods to increase the odds of making a good day's catch. Comment.

A well-regarded Astoria non-profit organization is coming under fire from a union that contends its managers are using intimidation and hostility to thwart the labor group's bid to organize employees. Comment.

Sept. 11, 2001 should have been Lt. Michael Warchola's last day on the job. Comment.