Razor Blade

All A&P-owned stores, including Super Fresh, have removed bar soaps from the San Francisco Soap Co. from their shelves because a Bucks County woman found a razor blade in one while washing her daughter's hands, an A&P spokesman said yesterday. San Francisco Soap said it had launched an investigation at its German factory and was checking all bars of soap in its warehouses with metal detectors before shipping them to stores. Last Wednesday night, Ilene Cullman discovered the metal in the honeysuckle-scented soap with her 4-year-old, Mara.

"Tis almost Halloween, time to screen the childrens' trick-or-treat apples for the hidden razor blade or pin. Time to test the candy for the disguised drugs, the planted poisons. But wait! Here comes Jan Harold Brunvand, America's most famous chronicler of modern legends, to tell us that our fear of killer candies is way out of proportion to the facts. "Statistics," he says, "suggest that the kind of nasty-neighbor story that incites such fear at Halloween time is just another urban legend.

The Acme Market in Cinnaminson pulled all 20-ounce boxes of Cheerios cereal off its shelves yesterday after a Burlington Township customer told the store that she had found a razor blade and a straight pin in a cereal box. No other reports of razors, pins or any other objects in cereal have been received by the Malvern-based supermarket chain, general counsel Walt Rubel said yesterday. Cheerios' manufacturer, General Mills Corp. of Minneapolis, also has received no consumer complaints, spokesman Craig Stulstad said.

A history teacher suspended from Haddon Heights High School slashed his throat in a holding cell at Burlington County Superior Court yesterday, minutes after a jury convicted him of sexually assaulting three children. Robert Perozzi, 44, of 200 block of Bergen Street in Brooklawn, was listed in stable condition at Memorial Hospital of Burlington County in Mount Holly. The incident occurred about 4:30 p.m. after Perozzi and his co-defendant were led to a sixth-floor holding cell.

Though it's gentle teasing, "Don't You Wish You Were Me" is, perhaps, applicable in this case. How many people can say they have been approached to host a party on a weekly basis? "It's a joke," the single-named Lizz said about the name of the weekly at Wax on Fridays. "Everyone thinks they're so great when they go out. " Lizz, a hairdresser by day who calls her business Razor & Blade, got the offer from Wax after holding a fashion and hair show there. She had titled that show "Everybody Hates You" - further evidence of her sense of humor, "The owner of the club loved the crowd we brought in, so he said he would give us Fridays," Lizz explained.

Some 15 people saw Kenneth Bernstein murder his estranged wife, Donna, inside a Northeast Philadelphia restaurant in 1993. Yesterday, 12 other people rejected Bernstein's defense of intoxication and convicted him of first-degree murder. Bernstein, 25, showed no emotion as a jury also convicted him of burglary weapons and trespass charges. The jury was to begin deliberations today on whether Bernstein will live or die for the crime. Bernstein's lawyer, Paul J. Hetznecker, seeking a conviction on a lesser degree of murder, claimed Bernstein had been using drugs and drinking liquor before the killing and, therefore, was not able to form the intent to kill.

A Croydon woman who was slashed with a razor blade while trying to protect her daughter from a group of girls spewing curses and challenges to fight was recovering yesterday from a facial wound that required 70 stitches to close. Debbie Hopkins, 29, and her husband Horace, 35, who needed 10 stitches for a gash to his forehead, were rushed to Lower Bucks Hospital. Police say a 14- year-old girl attacked the couple Tuesday night near their home. The girl, whose name is not being released by the police, was arrested for using a razor blade, inserted between her index and middle fingers, to slash the couple, according to police and Horace Hopkins.

Want to know the difference between right and wrong? Steal the answer. Someone in town, obviously among the irony-impaired, did just that, slicing out dozens of pages of ethics laws from books in the city's law library with a razor blade, said its director, Regina Smith. And just to be safe, the thief also cut out the disciplinary procedures for ethics violations, she said. About 35 books at the Theodore F. Jenkins Memorial Law Library on Chestnut Street near 9th have been found vandalized over the past few months, she said.

Christopher J. Kerins, the Trenton vice cop who allegedly snorted heroin and robbed banks, hadn't yet hit rock-bottom last week when he was busted for a Cincinnati-area heist. Yesterday, a sheriff's deputy in the Cincinnati jail where Kerins is being held on $375,000 bail discovered the disgraced cop had slashed across his throat with a razor blade - the victim of an apparent suicide bid. Kerins was rushed by ambulance to the Ohio city's University Hospital in critical condition, but late yesterday the hospital upgraded the officer's condition to fair.

Cross Eugene Ionesco with The Bad Seed and you almost have it. But even that master absurdist couldn't have come up with anything as nastily funny as Sea of Roses, the 1977 film by talented Brazilian director Ana Carolina. This picaresque tale of two women on the road might remind some of a black- comic Outrageous Fortune. In the case of this malcontent mom and her 15- year-old daughter, however, Outrageous Misfortune would be a more fitting title. Though it's live-action, with its astringent color and abrupt cuts, Sea of Roses moves like an absurdist Roadrunner cartoon.

SHE HUNCHED her shoulders against the cold, against the unforgiving winds and the uncertainty that filled the night. Jennifer, a petite 26-year-old prostitute who looked all of 17, stood under the El on Kensington Avenue near Hunting Park late Tuesday, looking for a date. Yeah, she said, she had heard all about the Kensington Strangler, the elusive fiend whom police have linked to the recent murders of two women and the violent attacks on at least three others. For all she knew, he was out there that night, on the prowl for another victim.

Though it's gentle teasing, "Don't You Wish You Were Me" is, perhaps, applicable in this case. How many people can say they have been approached to host a party on a weekly basis? "It's a joke," the single-named Lizz said about the name of the weekly at Wax on Fridays. "Everyone thinks they're so great when they go out. " Lizz, a hairdresser by day who calls her business Razor & Blade, got the offer from Wax after holding a fashion and hair show there. She had titled that show "Everybody Hates You" - further evidence of her sense of humor, "The owner of the club loved the crowd we brought in, so he said he would give us Fridays," Lizz explained.

If, like me, you were hoping for Scarface as a hip-hopera, I am sad to report that Get Rich or Die Tryin' has heat, but not sweep. About the feature debut of gangsta rapper Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, three things are indisputable: He has the brooding dynamism that's fundamental to screen stardom, is lucky in his director, and is considerably less fortunate in his scriptwriter. Jim Sheridan, the Irish filmmaker who cut his teeth on kindred from-poverty-to-notoriety stories My Left Foot and In the Name of the Father, does not merely give us an exploitation movie about a gangsta who, against all odds, rises from street to stage.

Despite the nation's heightened security in the face of warnings about a possible terrorist attack, President Bush yesterday advised people to "go about their lives. " He might have added "and show some common sense. " A West Chester man was arrested at Miami International Airport yesterday because he was carrying a razor blade and a hacksaw blade in his shoe, police said. According to a Miami detective, David McIntyre, 38, was passing through security with his wife and children when the metal detector went off. Screeners asked him to take off his shoes and found the blades.

Philadelphia car owners have resorted to Scotch tape, masking tape and heaven knows what else to keep those hated yellow vehicle-registration stickers on their rear windows. All because of a sticker that wouldn't stick. The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation had hoped the stickers' glue would be "sticky enough to stick, but that it would not be too hard to get off," said Joan Z. Nissley, a PennDot spokeswoman. However, the stickers fell off in many cars, and left a hard film on the window that could be removed only by scraping it with a razor blade.

All A&P-owned stores, including Super Fresh, have removed bar soaps from the San Francisco Soap Co. from their shelves because a Bucks County woman found a razor blade in one while washing her daughter's hands, an A&P spokesman said yesterday. San Francisco Soap said it had launched an investigation at its German factory and was checking all bars of soap in its warehouses with metal detectors before shipping them to stores. Last Wednesday night, Ilene Cullman discovered the metal in the honeysuckle-scented soap with her 4-year-old, Mara.

Hundreds of thousands of pregnant Afghan women are endangered by war, famine and drought in their country, and the United Nations said yesterday that it was seeking $4.5 million to provide basic "birthing kits" and other aid. The U.N. Population Fund is mounting an emergency relief campaign to try to give each woman plastic sheeting to lay on, a sterile razor blade to cut the baby's umbilical cord, and a string to tie the cord. "In the United States, we get so much support for pregnancy and so much health information.

The last time I paid attention to a miracle TV knife, it was that classic advertisement for Ginsu: "It slices, it dices, it never needs sharpening! Watch it cut this nail like butter!" Of course, it has been a long time since I did much cooking with any old nails. And as with many avid cooks, it has also been a while since I used a bruising serrated edge for anything other than slicing bread or a thick-skinned tomato. Hand-forged, high-carbon steel has been the gourmet standard for those obsessed with sheer cutting power, and a heavy full-tanged blade is their mantra.

Christopher J. Kerins, the Trenton vice cop who allegedly snorted heroin and robbed banks, hadn't yet hit rock-bottom last week when he was busted for a Cincinnati-area heist. Yesterday, a sheriff's deputy in the Cincinnati jail where Kerins is being held on $375,000 bail discovered the disgraced cop had slashed across his throat with a razor blade - the victim of an apparent suicide bid. Kerins was rushed by ambulance to the Ohio city's University Hospital in critical condition, but late yesterday the hospital upgraded the officer's condition to fair.

Reacting to the recovery of a gun last week and persistent reports of assaults and weapons, Camden school district officials yesterday ordered a surprise weapons check of students at East Camden Middle School and confiscated several knives, box cutters and razor blades. School security and city police officers using hand-held detectors found weapons, mace or spray paint on seven students as they entered the school. At least two or three other weapons - a box cutter, razor blade and knife - were found on the grounds after word of the security check spilled outside.