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The 76-foot-tall Norway spruce that was set up early Thursday morning tiffany jewelry in New York City’s Rockefeller Center has hometown roots.

The towering tree, which will be the centerpiece for the midtown Manhattan landmark’s Christmas festivities, was cut down Wednesday on the North Park Avenue property of Maria Corti.

About 160 neighbors, relatives and the curious turned out for the operation, joined by dozens of staffers from Rockefeller Center, who were handing out green sweatshirts, red scarves and breakfast treats. The activity turned usually placid North Park Avenue into a beehive of activity, with about 60 cars parked on the street and police officers directing traffic.

“I called Rockefeller Center last spring, thinking that I had a possible tree for Christmas silver bangles,” Corti said, adding that she moved into the ranch home only about a year ago. “They suggested that I send in a picture of the tree with someone in the picture for proportion. So, that’s what I did.”

“I thought: ‘That would be the end of that,’ so to speak, because I’m sure a lot of people write in thinking that they have a tree worthy enough for Rockefeller Center.”

Corti, a fifth-grade teacher at Cider Mill School in Wilton, said that within a few days she was contacted by David Murbach, Rockefeller Center’s gardens manager.

“Actually, it is a tough job,” Murbach said when asked how he goes about finding the perfect tree. “It’s one in a million. You think that there are

a lot of good trees around, but they’re not perfect like the ones that we need. We look for perfection.”

Murbach said that he goes aloft in a helicopter to find trees. From the chopper, Murbach said that he spotted the Corti spruce from miles away.

“I was hoping that it was someone else’s tree, because then I’d have one for next year silver rings,” he said.

About 10 a.m. Wednesday, the lumberjacks’ buzz saws fell silent and the tree was lifted off its stump and lashed onto a 115-foot tractor-trailer flatbed for the trip to New York City.

A flock of grade school children immediately descended on the stump to count the rings.

“Forty-three!” confidently announced Kate McKinnon, an 11-year-old student at West Rock Middle School in Norwalk. “I counted twice.” She was with her 6-year-old sister, Claire, and both said that they would be sure to see the tree after it’s decorated.

The next step is to decorate it with 30,000 lights. The tree-lighting ceremony will take place at 7 p.m. Dec. 2, and it will be broadcast live on WNBC-TV, Channel 4.

The tree is the second from the region in two years to be chosen. In 2007, a Norway spruce from Shelton got the distinction.

Tree timeline Historical milestones for Rockefeller Center tree: 1931: Workmen on a muddy construction site put up the first Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. At the time of the Depression, the workmen placed the tree in the middle of a construction site. 1933: First formal Rockefeller Center tree-lighting ceremony takes place. Tree is decked with 700 lights in front of the 8-month-old RCA Building. 1936: Two trees, each 70 feet tall, were erected. For the first time, the lighting ceremony included a skating pageant on the newly opened Rockefeller Plaza outdoor ice skating rink. 1942: Three trees were placed on Rockefeller Plaza, one decorated in red, one in white and the other in blue to show support for troops in World War II. 1949: Tree was painted silver to look silver bracelets like snow. 1951: The center’s tree lighted for the first time on national television on the Kate Smith Show. 1966: The first tree from outside the United States was erected. It was given by Canada, in honor of the centennial of its confederation. 1980: For 50th anniversary of tree lighting, a 70-foot-tall Norway spruce came from the grounds of the Immaculate Conception Seminary of Mahwah, N.J. Bob Hope participated in the lighting. 1999: The largest tree in Rockefeller Center history, 100 feet high, from Killingworth, Conn. 2007: For the first time, the tree is lit with 30,000 energy-efficient LEDs. Hundreds of solar panels atop one of the Rockefeller Center buildings help power the new LEDs.

The New Jersey Attorney General issued the following news release:

Attorney General Anne Milgram announced that an Essex County pharmacist has pleaded tiffany guilty for his role in a Newark-based narcotics ring that distributed millions of dollars a year in illegal prescription painkillers such as OxyContin.

Ahmed “Felix” Aly, of Union, pleaded guilty on Friday (Oct. 30) to second-degree racketeering before Superior Court Judge Joseph Cassini in Essex County, according to Criminal Justice Director Deborah L. Gramiccioni. Sentencing has been set for Dec. 14, at which time the state will recommend Aly be sentenced to state prison for a period of between 5 to 10 ten years. As part of the plea, Aly was also required to surrender his New Jersey Pharmacist License for life without the possibility of reinstatement.

In pleading guilty, Aly, a pharmacist at RGN Pharmacy in Newark, admitted that, in exchange for money, he knowingly filled or caused employees in his pharmacy to fill multiple fraudulent prescriptions which were given to runners who would then return them to others in the ring for distribution throughout the east coast.

Aly’s guilty plea was related to charges filed as a result of Operation Pandora, an investigation led by the New Jersey State Police and the Division of Criminal Justice, assisted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The investigation led to the arrest in January 2007 of the leader of the silver bangles, Mohamed Hassanain, 43, of West Orange, and 19 other members. Hassanain pleaded guilty on July 31, while on trial, to racketeering and money laundering, charges contained in an Aug. 2, 2007 state grand jury indictment. The state will recommend that he be ordered to serve 18 years in prison when he is sentenced.

In pleading guilty, Hassanain admitted that between July 2005 and January 2007, he orchestrated the narcotics ring that sold approximately 40,000 OxyContin and Percocet pills per week. Most of the pills went to a distribution ring based in Bronx, N.Y. The Bronx ring in turn sold some of the drugs to a ring in the Boston area.

The charges stem from an investigation by the New Jersey State Police and Division of Criminal Justice, assisted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. The case is being prosecuted by Supervising Deputy Attorney General Mark Eliades, chief of the Division of Criminal Justice Gangs & Organized Crime Bureau, and Deputy Attorneys General Mark Ondris and Paul Salvatoriello.

The investigation determined that Hassanain and his deputies within the ring provided several hundred names a week to Dr. Mario Comensanas, 53, of Livingston, who was paid up to $100 per name to write a “set” of prescriptions, including 60 OxyContin pills, 90 Percocet pills and vitamins for patients that did not exist or whom he never saw. Comensanas pleaded guilty on March 19, 2007 to first-degree racketeering and second-degree distribution of narcotics for writing thousands of fraudulent prescriptions for the ring. He is currently awaiting sentencing.

Hassanain, who ran the ring from his home in West Orange and his business on Clinton Avenue in Newark, admitted that he maintained various “stash” houses around the Essex County area where he would accumulate tens of thousands of pills per week for wholesale distribution. At the “stash” houses, pills were packaged in bulk and individuals from the Bronx would come weekly to transport the narcotics and provide Hassanain with tens of thousands of dollars.

On Jan. 25, 2007, the Division of Criminal Justice executed arrest warrants at 10 silver rings locations and upon five vehicles utilized by the enterprise. Consequently, more than 40,000 narcotics pills, approximately $650,000 in cash, approximately nine weapons, and thousands or prescriptions, both blank and executed, were recovered. The state placed liens against 14 parcels of real property allegedly acquired with the proceeds of the illegal enterprise.

Attorney General Milgram credited Detectives Thomas McEnroe and others within the State Police Major Crime Unit and detectives in the Division of Criminal Justice Gangs & Organized Crime Bureau – North Squad. She also credited the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration New Jersey Division, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Gerard P. McAleer of the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, members of the NY/NJ High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program, and the New York State Police for assisting in the investigation.For more information please contact: Sarabjit Jagirdar, Email:- htsyndication@hindustantim