"INFORME: SE VUELVE A ABRIR DE NUEVO UN PAQUETE SOSPECHOSO, EN "TIMES SQUARE".

"Times Square Reopened After

"Suspicious Package" Report".

"08.05.2010."Tina Fineberg for The New York Times An unidentified police officer carrying the bags that prompted the evacuation of Times Square on Friday afternoon".

"Updated, 4:40 p.m. The north end of Times Square was evacuated and shut down for about 90 minutes Friday afternoon after a “suspicious package” was reported just before 1 p.m".

"It turned out to be two packages a green-and-white canvas cooler and a green shopping bag. Officers from the Emergency Service Unit brought their high-tech equipment to bear".

"The X-ray came back inconclusive on the cooler", said Paul J. Browne, the chief police spokesman. So the bomb squad technicians in their astronautlike suits went to work. After operating on the packages, they determined that the canvas cooler contained bottled water, and the shopping bag held books and a gift package wrapped in pink tissue paper".

"Several minutes later, the three-block stretch of Broadway and Seventh Avenue, from 44th to 47th Streets, was reopened, and the throngs that had streaming across the sun-strewn, picnic-tabled crossroads of the world before the interruption resumed their places. At the barricades, tourists seemed to take the latest inconvenience in stride".

"If it happens, it’d be here", said Bill Sykes, 44, a carpenter from Atlanta who had just finished shopping at Toys R Us and was walking up Seventh Avenue when officers herded him outside the taped-off area. It was the day’s second suspicious-package alert and evacuation in the area".

"Mr. Browne said that suspicious-package reports were up by about 30 percent in the city during the jittery, better-safe-than-sorry week that followed the attempted car bombing of Times Square on Saturday night".

"Fred R. Conrad-The New York Times An earlier bomb scare at Eighth Avenue and 45th Street prompted a brief evacuation before 9 a.m. Friday".

"We typically get 90 to 100 a day, believe it not, just on a given day", he said. He said that on Thursday, there had been around 145 reports, but that he was confident they would "eventually taper off".

"Earlier in the day, a few blocks away at 45th Street and Eighth Avenue, a cupcake vendor named Hassane Soliman Elbaz had noticed a small black duffel bag near a trash bin shortly before 9 a.m. He reported the bag to a mounted police officer".

"Police officers cleared the area and brought in a bomb squad to check the bag. They found a gray shirt, white tube socks, a toothbrush and pens".

"Mr. Elbaz, an immigrant from Egypt who lives in Queens and was on his second day selling red velvet, Oreo, Nutella mint and ocean-sprinkled "lue-flecked white frosting" cupcakes from his Little Cupcake Lover cart, said he was relieved. "Sometimes right, sometimes wrong", Mr. Elbaz said. "Everybody has to be careful".

Mr. Browne, the police spokesman, said that that all suspicious-package calls were checked out. "This can be anything from an attaché case left by a pay phone, for example", he said. "At another time somebody just might ignore it and not bother calling the police. Now they’d be more likely to do so, and we’re glad they do".

"He added, half-jokingly, "I think lost property is being returned more promptly these days". Late in the afternoon, Mr. Elbaz was still at his spot. The cupcakes were moving. "Again?" he said when told of the second scare. "That’s crazy. I’ll stay where I’m at".

"Al Baker contributed reporting".

"Robert Caplin for The New York Times Friday afternoon’s bomb scare shut down the north end of Times Square for about 90 minutes".