Christine Todd Whitman cannot be held liable for telling residents near the World Trade Center site that the air was safe to breathe immediately after the 2001 attacks, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a lawsuit brought against her by residents, students and office workers.

It found that she was trying to comply with instructions from the White House to get Wall Street operating again at the same time that she was responsible for the health risks people faced

“Whether or not Whitman’s resolution of such competing considerations was wise, she has not engaged in conduct that ‘shocks the conscience’ in the sense necessary to create constitutional liability for damages to thousands of people,” the court said.

As a result, her immunity as a federal official was not waived.

Whitman was quoted saying the air was safe in a press release from the EPA seven days after the attacks:
“I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, D.C., that their air is safe to breath and their water is safe to drink,” she said.

Whitman always insisted that her agency behaved properly.

But two years later the EPA’s Office of Inspector General criticized her sharply for her statement. She could not have known the air indeed was safe, according to a report the office issued.

“For several pollutants of concern, sampling did not begin until September 16, and in many cases the results were not known until after the September 18 press release was issued. EPA was not able to obtain samples and monitor air due to difficulties in access and security, power supply sources, equipment availability, and analytical capacity. As a result, data available before September 18 for making conclusions about air quality for pollutants other than asbestos was limited.”

A column I wrote last year about global warming prompted an email from a reader who told me I was not taking into account rising food prices.

I thought he was overstating his case because he didn’t agree with me. I was wrong.

Clearly rising food prices are a problem as I note in a column for tomorrow. How much biofuels are contributing to the increase is under debate (as with most things) but people point to Congress’ energy bill and the demand for nonfossil fuels. But the price of oil seems also to be contributing factor, so change will come one way or the other.

At the same time, this country makes enormous use of high-fructose corn syrup, possible because of farm subsidies.

If the world is getting too little food, we Americans get too much—processed food, fast food, high in fat and sugar and salt.

A pastor in Mount Vernon, the Rev. Hugh Farrish, is making fresh vegetables available to poor families and senior citizens. He plants 12 acres up in Goshen each year.

I interviewed him last week, wrote about him for tomorrow and thought of him this past weekend when I wandered into my local farmers market. I bought spinach and was on my way out when I noticed one of the workers refilling the bin. From a plastic bag of spinach that looked like it came from a supermarket! How stupid did I feel. I don’t know why I bought it in the first place. I knew there was no spinach growing around here. It is after all April. But that’s what happens when you’re removed from the source of your food.

This week some restaurants in New York City began posting calorie counts on their menu boards. Restaurants have been in court fighting this new requirement and so some are still not complying. Before I stopped eating meat, I occasionally ate a Big Mac with medium fries and a small soda. Nine hundred plus calories—and that was just lunch.

Lots of people think the requirement is silly. Unnecessary. We should already know that fast food is not health food, is their reasoning. So I stood outside a McDonald’s in Manhattan yesterday morning and asked a couple of people what they thought of it. Would it make a difference to them?

“I would think so,” Steven Allen, a 50-year-old truck driver from New Jersey, said as he headed in. “I’d know how many calories to burn off.”

Melody Woods, 30, and an office assistant at the nearby New York Presbyterian Hospital was coming out with a sausage, egg and cheese McGriddle. That’s 560 calories—though the restaurant hadn’t posted the calories yet. You still have to look it up.

It wasn’t something she normally ordered, she said, but she was hungry. Would her choices change?

“Maybe,” she said. “What I shouldn’t order. It might make me stay away.”

FILE PHOTO: Hugh Farrish, pastor of Bowen Memorial Baptist Church in Mount Vernon, poses with an 83-pound watermelon that he grew. (Photo by Rohanna Mertens)

The Pennsylvania primary is finally—finally—tomorrow.

Here’s a last salvo:

And counter salvo:

Pope Benedict XVI is on his way to John F. Kennedy Airport.

A small crowd saw him off from the papal nuncio’s residence on 72nd Street, spread out along the block between Madison and Park avenues.

The gathering had a neighborly feel. Some people had wandered over from nearby apartments. Children, dogs and bicycles were along the barricades.

Then the motorcycles started up.

Watch for the yellow-and-white flag, a woman in the front told two children. Look for the man with the white hat.

His limousine came into view and one woman called out, He’s waving.

And then the limousine turned south on Park Avenue and he was gone.

Joseph Vericker is a Scarsdale photographer who is chronicling Pope Benedict’s XVI visit for the Archdiocese of New York.

“It’s pretty overwhelming,” said Vericker, 51.

At the United Nations this morning, Vericker was able to photograph the pope being greeted by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon but then was escorted to the back of the room for the address to the General Assembly. Then, because he was in one of the advance cars, he had to leave the building early.

Things picked up at Benedict’s next stops. At Park East Synagogue and St. Joseph’s Church on the Upper East Side, he was 10 feet from the pontiff.

“It was a great experience for me,” Vericker said. “I was shooting pictures of the pope while I was singing the Our Father with him. He gave a blessing. It was wonderful day.”

Vericker said he had been praying that everything would go well.

One of his daughters, Elizabeth,  called him to wish him good luck.

“You’ve been chosen to do this for a reason,” she told him.

Vericker photographed Benedict’s predecessor Pope John Paul II at a private event in 1995 with about 40 people.

“When I even think about that, even to this day, I get chills up and down my spine because I felt I was in the presence of a saint,” he said. “I didn’t realize it then, but that’s how I feel now. It was just such an incredible experience. After it was over, we went home, it was late Saturday night, and I actually said the Rosary with the family.”

New York City’s requirement that restaurants post calories on menus was upheld by a federal judge today, the Associated Press reports.

The New York State Restaurant Association had challenged the new law, which takes effect on Monday.

It applies to restaurants such as McDonald’s which have more than 15 outlets across the country.

“It seems reasonable to expect that some customers will use the information disclosed,” U.S. District Judge Richard Holwell said.

And choose lower calorie meals and lower the incidence of obesity.

Westchester has proposed a similar measure.

PHOTO: A McDonald’s in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Chris Gardner, file)

You can buy all sorts of things at DeCicco Markets. One thing you can’t get? Cigarettes.

The six family-run stores—in Pelham, Bronxville, Scarsdale, Jefferson Valley, Ardsley and New City—stopped selling tobacco on March 1.

Speaking at an award ceremony yesterday, Frank DeCiccio Jr. said the family did not know what kind of response it would get.

“Positive, all positive,” he said.

The family, 10 members of whom were on hand for the ceremony, considered the move for about six months. No one in the family smokes, said DeCicco’s father, also named Frank.

“We thought it was a healthy thing to do,” Frank DeCicco said.

Added sister-in-law, Diane DeCicco: “We knew it was the right thing. You see the young people smoking and you say, ‘My goodness.’”

“Years ago we glorified it,” she said. “Now we know better.”

The DeCiccio family was honored this morning by the Westchester County Board of Health.

“It’s not often that we see businesses put the health of the public before their profits,” said the board’s president, Dr. Douglas G. Aspros.

Wal-Mart, the largest seller of firearms in the country, has agreed to tighten its standards for selling guns.

Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the group begun by New York’s Michael Bloomberg and Boston’s Thomas Menino, announced a 10-point code that that retailer had agreed to.

The company will videotape sales, implement stiff controls on inventory, and flag customers who have purchased guns that later were recovered in crimes.

The deal was announced as the group met in Washington, D.C.

This morning it released an ad intended to pressure that presidential candidates to move on the gun show loophole. Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Republican McCain are all shown vowing to close it.

Watch it here.

PHOTO: A Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Supercenter store in Little Rock, Ark. (AP Photo/Danny Johnston)

A new poll commissioned by Mayors Against Illegal Guns found that stopping gun violence was a major goal for most American: 70 percent called it very important.

Democrats were more likely to answer “very important” than Republicans, at 83 percent and 61 percent. The firms that conducted the polling noted that the partisan divide was smaller than the split over the Iraq war.

Nearly half of those polled, 48 percent, said that protecting the right to own guns was also very important.

Seventy-seven percent want to require criminal background checks at gun shows. Support for background checks crossed party lines—85 percent of John McCain backers would favor them to 89 percent of those preferring Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.

The poll was conducted by two polling firms, one Democratic, the other Republican, in advance of a national summit on gun violence in Washington, D.C. on Monday.

The bi-partisan coalition of more than 300 mayors will be focusing on a federal legislative agenda, including the federal background check system.

Meanwhile another group has spun off the original coalition: County Executives Against Illegal Guns.Westchester County Executive Andy Spano is a founding co-chairman. Putnam’s Robert Bondi has also joined.

Here is a way to help veterans: donate DVDs.

This group, DVDs4VETS, arranged for the donation of more than 25,000 DVDs to veterans hospitals, centers and clinics in the last year.

The executive director is a Harrison man, Laurance Baschkin. I wrote about him in the past.

If you’re interested, take a look at the Web site.