Rear Window

You can leave your hands on the bar. I didn't come over to start something. It's just that I saw you drive up in that 4X4 and figured you might be interested in the four-wheel-drive machine I have outside. It's a Toyota 4Runner. You don't see too many of them around, but they're real nice off-road vehicles, especially with the new V-6 they're putting in them now. Let me put it to you in plain old authentic Frontier Gibberish: This is a bushwhackin', rock-hoppin', cow-kickin' sagebrush-banger of the first water.

A physician's briefcase containing two vials of blood that might be contaminated with the AIDS virus was stolen last night from a car parked near Pennsylvania Hospital in Center City, police said. The vials were marked "biohazard" and were sealed and wrapped separately in two plastic bags each, according to Dr. Nicholas Ifft, owner of the stolen briefcase. Police warned against anyone tampering with the vials. "We are not 100 percent positive it's contaminated," said Ifft's assistant, Celia Abrams, who owns the car. But she said that "one of the tubes had blood from a patient with symptoms that made it very likely they had the virus.

The current craze of drive-by shootings took a new twist last night as men in a car drove around West and Southwest Philadelphia and fired a BB gun or guns at people walking on the street. Four pedestrians suffered minor injuries from BB pellets and were treated at a nearby hospital. Police said that while the city has been plagued recently by drive-by shootings with automatic weapons, this was the first by someone using BB guns. The attacks, police said, began at 9:05 p.m. James Liehr, 27, was walking at 45th Street and Baltimore Avenue when a car with three men inside drove by and one of the passengers leaned out of a rear window and fired a BB gun. Liehr told police he heard a "bang," saw a flash, and felt a sting in his left arm from a pellet.

The Germantown rapist has struck again. A man believed to be responsible for at least three other attacks on women broke a rear window early yesterday to enter a home on E. Church Lane, where a 19-year-old woman was sleeping. Brandishing a knife, he followed roughly the same procedure in the other assaults, binding his victim with duct tape before raping her in her bedroom, police said. Inspector Joseph Mooney, of the Special Victims Unit, said the attacker entered the woman's home at about 5:30 a.m. It was not known if the man wore a bandana or towel over his face, as did the attackers in the previous cases.

Repertory Films Ambler Theater 108 E. Butler Ave., Ambler; 215-345-7855. www.amblertheater.com . Bullitt (1968) $9.50; $7 seniors and students. 8/1. 7 pm. The Three Stooges: Classic Shorts on the Big Screen. $9.50; $7 seniors and students. 8/3. 7 pm. Bryn Mawr Film Institute 824 W. Lancaster Ave., Bryn Mawr; 610-527-9898. www.brynmawrfilm.org . Notorious (1946) $10; $7 seniors and students with ID. 8/2. 7 pm. The Great Dictator (1940) $10; $7 seniors and students with ID. 8/3. 7 pm. Camden County College - Dennis Flyer Theatre 200 College Dr., Blackwood; 856-227-7200.

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation is seeking to restore order to Philadelphia streets - where no license plate is safe from thieves. The plan is to move the little white registration sticker from the corner of the plate, where it is easily cut away for black-market resale, to the safety of the inside rear window. The change could begin as early as Oct. 18, when PennDot hopes to debut the first of its new yellow stickers for Philadelphia's 520,000 passenger cars.

Bruce and Christine did everything together. Ate together. Slept together. Robbed homes together. Yesterday, their trial date in Bucks County Court, they pleaded together. Guilty. The plea - to 35 burglaries throughout the northern half of the county - reunited the burgling Bonnie and Clyde in court. They had been bunking separately in the county lockup for five months following their arrest in November. Their last embrace came in their Northeast Philadelphia apartment.

For the second time in almost a year, the same family in the city's Schuylkill neighborhood has lost a son to violence. Early yesterday, Joseph McGuire was awakened by Homicide Division detectives at his home in the 600 block of South Taney Street and told that his son Thomas, 25, had been fatally shot a short distance away while driving alone in his girlfriend's car. Last April 17, authorities said, Joseph McGuire, a retired Water Department...

Lower Merion police are searching for a young man who exposed himself to a female middle school student after following her. Two girls who attend Bala Cynwyd Middle School were walking near Avon and Merwyn Roads in Narberth on Sunday afternoon when they realized a car had been following them for some time, police said. The driver then pulled over in front of the Main Line students and "one of the girls looks in the the car and the guy is exposed," Sgt. John Stillwagon, Lower Merion police spokesman, said.

The Nissan Pathfinder has never been a real hot item on the compact sport- utility market. It generally finishes well back in the sales pack. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't consider it if you are in the market for a new compact SUV. It is a strong, durable guy that can give a good account of itself on the road and off. It'll tote you to the supermarket in reasonable comfort and hop rocks and jump logs with the best of them. The Pathfinder debuted in 1986 as a two-door.