Mariah Carey & Nick Cannon
"Monroe's in paradise," posted Mariah Carey along with an adorable snap of her daughter lounging in a room full of Hello Kitty toys as her twin brother Moroccan looks on.
"Roc doesn't share the fascination lol," she remarked.
Post freelance photographer R. Umar Abbasi captured the dramatic moments before Ki Suk Han was struck by a downtown Q train. A day after the pictures were published, a flurry of criticism erupted — from other media and over social media like Twitter. He recounted the or
deal to The Post yesterday:
I was on an assignment, waiting for a train at the 49th Street subway platform, when I suddenly heard people gasping.
The announcement had come over the loudspeaker that the train was coming — and out of the periphery of my eye, I saw a body flying through the air and onto the track.
David McGlynn
'TOO FAR AWAY TO HELP': A day after snapping the slaying of a man pushed onto the tracks, photagrapher R. Umar Abbasi returns to the scene.
I just started running. I had my camera up — it wasn’t even set to the right settings — and I just kept shooting and flashing, hoping the train driver would see something and be able to stop.
I had no idea what I was shooting. I’m not even sure it was registering with me what was happening. I was just looking at that train coming.
It all went so quickly; from the time I heard the shouting until the time the train hit the man was about 22 seconds.
At the same time, the perp was running toward me. I was afraid he might push me onto the tracks.
The victim was so far away from me, I was already too far away to reach him when I started running.
The train hit the man before I could get to him, and nobody closer tried to pull him out.
What keeps playing over in my mind, what haunts me when I think back on it, is that the man did not scream at all.
I didn’t hear the man cry for help.
And then I was standing there, with this poor man, twisted like a rag doll, and it was so painfully hopeless.
A young doctor named Laura Kaplan came immediately. She was so brave, the way she remained calm. She asked if anyone knew CPR, and there was a man who kneeled down next to her who said, “I don’t know how to do it, but I will try if you tell me.”
And they just kept trying, even though there was no hope.
Then a crowd came over with camera phones and they were pushing and shoving, trying to look at the man and taking videos.
I was screaming at them to get back, so the doctor could have room because they were closing in on her; she thanked me.
I remember telling a woman — whom I later learned was the MTA chaplain — to give the man his last rites.
It was one of the most horrible things I have ever seen, to watch that man dying there.
When it was over, I didn’t look at the pictures.
I didn’t even know at all that I had even captured the images in such detail. I didn’t look at them. I didn’t want to.
It was just too emotional a day.
I brought the camera memory card back to the office and turned it in. Two detectives came and looked at the photos and I just sat in a chair.
When I finally looked at them late that night, my heart started racing. It was terrible, seeing it happen all over again.
I didn’t sleep at all.
All I can hear is that man’s head against that train: Boom! Boom! Boom!
I have to say I was surprised at the anger over the pictures, of the people who are saying: Why didn’t he put the camera down and pull him out?
But I can’t let the armchair critics bother me. They were not there. They have no idea how very quickly it happened.
They do not know what they would have done.
Before I went into the subway, I had been up in Times Square, and my camera was still set for outside lighting. The flash was on 1/64th of a second, which would be split-second recharging.
People think I had time to set the camera and take photos, and that isn’t the case. I just ran toward that train.
The sad part is, there were people who were close to the victim, who watched and didn’t do anything. You can see it in the pictures.
The truth is I could not reach that man; if I could have, I would have.
But the train was moving faster than I could get there.
Q. When are companies going to start writing applications for tablet computers other than the iPad? I own a Pandigital tablet, and when I try to download apps, I’m told they’re either for the iPad or iPhone.
LeRoy Hilton,
Oro Valley, Ariz.
You can expect more apps for non-Apple tablet computers when those devices gain more market share. How soon, or if, that will happen is anyone’s guess.
People who write apps are motivated by the revenue they’re likely to get. They can maximize that revenue by focusing on the tablet computer that is owned by the largest number of people.
Right now, the best opportunity for app writers is the iPad, which in the first three months of 2012 accounted for 68 percent of the 17.4 million tablet computers sold worldwide, according to market research firm IDC. The iPad’s chief competitors, in order of market share, are tablets made by Samsung, Amazon, Lenovo and Barnes & Noble. Pandigital is further down the list.Q. I recently bought a Kindle Fire tablet computer, and I’m disappointed that it cannot be read in the sunshine as other Kindle devices can. Is there anything I can do to make the screen more readable outdoors, such as buying an anti-glare screen protector?
Mary Jo Ready,
Shoreview, Minn.
An anti-glare protector won’t help. The issue is that your Kindle Fire’s LCD, or liquid crystal display, screen is lit from inside, but isn’t bright enough to compete with sunlight. Your only outdoor options are to raise the screen brightness and find some shade. A video that explains how to adjust screen brightness can be found on Amazon’s help pages, at http://www.tinyurl.com/7289vlo. Q. My Windows task bar was always at the bottom of my screen, but the other day it went to the top for some reason. How can I get it back to the bottom of the screen?
Kathleen Gignac,
Bartow, Fla.
The task bar can be dragged to a new location using your mouse. Left-click a blank space on the task bar and, while holding down the mouse button, drag the bar to the bottom of the screen.
You can skip this manual process if you are using Windows XP or Windows Vista. Just go to http://www.tinyurl.com/c7qwp8 and click the automatic “fix it” button. That will return the task bar to its default position at the bottom of the screen.
If you have problems with either of these techniques, the task bar may have become “locked” in its current position. There are directions on the same Web page that explain how to “unlock” the tool bar’s location so it can be moved.
Contact Steve Alexander at Tech Q&A, 425 Portland Ave. S., Minneapolis, Minn. 55488-0002; e-mail steve.j.alexander@gmail.com.
When Dameion Peart got the phone call from his uncle, he didn’t believe it. He drove to his father’s Miami Gardens car wash to see for himself. He hoped the news wouldn’t be too bad, or maybe the shooting happened someplace else.
He pulled up, saw flashing lights and police tape, and knew it was true.
His father, Errold Peart, had been trying to protect a customer Sunday afternoon from armed robbers at the car wash he ran at Northwest 191st Street and First Place.
The robbers turned their gun on Peart, killing him.
“He put his own life before someone else,” his son said.
Now, Peart’s family began the unexpected task of planning a memorial. He was five days away from his 60th birthday.
He won’t get to see his daughter, Mishka Peart, 23, graduate from the University of Miami’s medical school.
“It’s just sad,” Dameion Peart said. “It was unnecessary.”
When the community heard of the shooting, they started dropping by the scene. They were the ones who lived nearby, longtime customers and friends, each with their own tale of how his father had helped them through the years.
They talked about the times Peart, 59, didn’t charge for carwashes to people short on money. They told Dameion Peart, 32, how his father would give money to people who needed help paying for water and electricity, never asking for the money back.
They shared stories about people who couldn’t get jobs because they had convictions — until Peart gave them work.
One of the younger employees told him it was Errold Peart who convinced her to go back to school.
“He was a very good, kindhearted person and a good father at the same time,” Dameion Peart said. “The community where his business is located, he really helped them out here.”
Errold Peart hailed from Jamaica, where he played cricket and worked at one point at a school for problem children, his son said. He eventually came to the United States, where he continued to play cricket for the USA national team.
Peart represented the USA in five matches at the 1990 International Cricket Council Trophy in the Netherlands, where the batsman was the team’s leading scorer, ESPN reported. The USA made it through the first round that year before losing in the second, according to ESPN.
At first, Peart worked with an airline, his son said, but later decided to open his own business.
He started the car wash more than a decade ago, his son said. He chose the location because it was near a busy stretch of U.S. 441 and near Florida’s Turnpike, the Palmetto Expressway and Interstate 95.
“It was like a landmark,” Dameion Peart said. “Everyone knew him.”
But Peart worried about safety.
“He didn’t like guns. But every year, around this time, for the past three years he got held up at gunpoint and people tried to rob him,” Dameion Peart said. “The last time they even followed him home.”
So Errold Peart got a concealed weapons permit.
On Sunday afternoon, he noticed a pair of young men trying to rob a customer. Errold Peart went out to try and stop it, his son said, only to be shot himself.
The men ran away, leaving behind the customer and a bleeding Peart.
Miami Gardens Police still were looking for the suspects on Monday.
Anyone with information is asked to call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-8477.
Think you're a neat freak? Meet Alfreta.
Video-'Crazy Obsession': The $150K Love Doll Collection
The self-confessed germophobe not only spends the majority of her day scrubbing her home with gallons of bleach (as well as public bathrooms and friend's houses when she gets the chance), she utilizes her favorite cleanser to sanitize her meals before eating.
Check out a sneak peek in the player above!
Neat Freaks premieres Wednesday, December 5th on TLC.
So much for compromise.
Left-leaning groups pushing the City Council for a bill forcing private companies to provide paid sick leave have redrafted their proposal to include fines to punish companies that don’t comply.
Advocates for paid sick leave had been expected to offer a compromise to make it more palatable to the city’s business community.
Instead, the latest version puts costly fines into the bill, such as ordering a business to pay employees three times their daily salary or $500, whichever is greater, if they were not paid after calling in sick.
This week, thousands of art collectors, museum trustees, artists, journalists and hipsters from around the globe will arrive for the phenomenon known as Art Basel Miami Beach. The centerpiece of the week: works shown at the convention center by more than 260 of the world’s top galleries.
Only two of those are from Miami.
While Art Basel has helped transform the city’s reputation from beach-and-party scene to arts destination in the years since its 2002 Miami Beach debut, the region’s gallery identity is still coming into its own.
“Certainly Miami as an art town registers mightily because of the foundations, the collectors who have done an extraordinary job,” said Linda Blumberg, executive director of the Art Dealers Association of America. “I think there’s a definite international awareness there. But the gallery scene probably has a bit of a ways to go. That doesn’t mean it’s not really fascinating and interesting.”
The gallery business, especially where newer artists are concerned, is a game of risk, faith and passion. Once a gallery takes on an artist who shows promise, they become an evangelist on their behalf, showing their work in-house and at fairs, presenting it to museums and curators and potential collectors and bearing the cost of that promotion.
For contemporary artists, most galleries take work on consignment, meaning they get a cut of as much as 50 percent when works sell. While local art galleries have been growing in number and popularity in the last several years — just try to find parking during the monthly art walk in Miami’s hot Wynwood neighborhood — even some of the area’s top art dealers say that while business overall is good, they struggle in the local marketplace.
“Our problem is that we have to do lots of art fairs in order to connect with the market that we need to connect with to sell the work that we have,” said Fredric Snitzer, a Miami-Dade gallery owner for 35 years. “The better the work is, the harder it is to sell in Miami. And that ain’t good.”
A handful of serious collectors call Miami home and store their own collections in Miami, including the Braman, Rubell, Margulies and de la Cruz families. But outside a relatively small local group, many gallerists say, their clients come from other parts of the country and world.
And some gallerists point out the troubling reality that even the powerhouse Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin could not stay open in Miami for more than a few years.
“The fact that big galleries have not been able to sustain their business models in South Florida tells you we’re obviously not at this high established point,” said gallery owner David Castillo. “It’s not like we’ve arrived, let’s sit back and watch Hauser & Wirth open down the street.”
Still, Miami’s gallery business has come a long way since the early 1970s, when a few dealers on Bay Harbor Island’s Kane Concourse were selling high-end pieces but the local scene was hardly embraced.
Virginia Miller, who owns ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries in Coral Gables, first opened in 1974 to showcase Florida artists, though her focus soon added an international scope. She and other longtime observers credit several factors for Miami’s transformation, including the community’s diversity, the establishment of important museums, the Art Miami fair that started 23 years ago, the presence of major collections and, of course, Art Basel Miami Beach.
Six months into negotiations with federal regulators over Miami-Dade’s aging sewer system, the county has come up with a $1.5 billion, 15-year plan to rebuild pipes, pumps and sewage treatment plants that in some cases are almost 100 years old.
County leaders devised the proposal in an attempt to fend off a federal lawsuit, and potentially millions of dollars in fines, for not abiding by the federal Clean Water Act. The county also has proposed replacing or repairing a good portion of the 7,500 miles of sewer lines that regularly rupture and spill millions of gallons of raw waste into local waterways and Biscayne Bay.
Before any work is to begin, the Department of Justice and Environmental Protection Agency — which put the county on notice in May — must accept the county’s terms. The plan, referred to as a consent decree, also must be endorsed by a majority of county commissioners. That could come as soon as late January or early February.
One of the largest repair jobs would be a $555 million reconstruction of the controversial wastewater treatment plant on Virginia Key. Entire concrete structures would be rebuilt, and pump stations and electrical systems would be replaced. The plan calls for spending another $394 million on similar fixes to two other wastewater treatment facilities, in Goulds and North Miami.
Another $408 million would be spent replacing and rehabbing the county’s 1,035 pump stations, and miles of transmission lines that run to and from the plants.
The plan has already garnered some criticism.
The Biscayne Bay Waterkeepers, clean-water activists who filed to join the federal action against the county, say spending hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild on Virginia Key is a waste, because the spit of land is likely to be under water within 50 years.
The group points to a recent study by the journal Science that showed the polar ice caps in Greenland are melting at three times the rate originally believed. They also say a climate change compact Miami-Dade agreed to with three other counties — which accepted a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study that shows sea levels will rise 3 feet by 2060 — shows the Virginia Key plant could be in peril.
“Doubling down on Virginia Key the way they’re doing it is just stupid,” said environmental attorney Albert J. Slap, representing the Waterkeepers. “There’s not a dime in it for armoring the plant, or raising it. It’s on a barrier island.”
Doug Yoder, deputy director of the county’s water and sewer department, didn’t dispute the Army Corps findings, and said the county could abandon the Virginia Key plant for a new plant on the western edge of the county if federal regulators make such a demand.
“We certainly don’t want to spend a lot of money fixing up a facility we’ll soon abandon,” he said.
Most of the costs for the overall plan will be covered through county revenue bonds, Yoder said, meaning a future increase in water rates and debt service bills. Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez has been warning for months that rate hikes are in the offing.
To meet demands from the feds, the county also must abandon by 2027 an outflow system it now uses that dumps up to 120 million gallons of sewage each day miles offshore. The county has until July 2013 to come up with an alternate disposal method.
A project cited in the new plan that had not been publicly addressed previously is the installation of 7,660 linear feet of sewer mains in an industrial area just below State Road 112 and between Northwest 27th and 37th avenues, which now depends on septic tanks. The job of hooking up local businesses there to county sewers would cost a little over $2 million.
Federal regulators began talks with Miami-Dade in May after a series of massive raw sewage spills released more than 47 million gallons of untreated human waste throughout the county. DOJ and the EPA, along with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, sketched out the 78-page consent decree.
Four times between October and December 2011, the sewage treatment plant on Virginia Key alone ruptured, spilling more than 19 million gallons.
The county also has agreed to pay a $978,000 fine for past spills within 30 days of the plan being accepted, with about half the money going to the DOJ and the other half to the state.
DOJ spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle declined to comment Friday.
In October, the county denied 12 permit applications in the Coconut Grove area by businesses that wanted to install sinks, toilets or showers. The county said it was imposing a moratorium on new sewage outflow from a Coconut Grove-serving pump station.
Linda Gray and Patrick Duffy eulogized their late Dallas co-star Larry Hagman in an emotional memorial service in Texas on Saturday.
Video-Larry Hagman's Son: 'Dallas' Kept Him Alive
Gray, at one point overcome by tears, spoke affectionately of Hagman, her TV husband of many years.
"To work as Sue Ellen Ewing with J.R. was magical," she recalled. "To call him my friend for 35 years, priceless."
Duffy, who played Hagman's on-screen rival in the series, reminisced about his passionate and ever-positive friend.
Video-Matt Damon: Larry Hagman Impacted My Life
"There was never a day that went by that he didn't tell me how lucky we are to be working," said Duffy. "Anything he could do within the realm of his profession was the most exciting thing he could possibly do and he personified that."
According to DallasNews.com, Josh Henderson, Jesse Metcalfe, Brenda Strong, Julie Gonzalo and Sheree Wilson, of Dallas' TNT reboot, were also in attendance.
Video: Larry Hagman Reflects on Cancer Struggle
Hagman, 81, passed away from complications related to chemotherapy November 23. His ashes will be spread all over the world, per the late actor's wishes.
Knocking down heaven’s doors is harder than it looks.
It took workers two nights and a 55-ton crane to remove the massive bronze doors at St. Patrick’s Cathedral to be worked on as part of the ongoing three-year, $175 million restoration project at the renowned Midtown church.
The doors — each weighing about 9,000 pounds and featuring three-dimensional sculptures of American saints — were removed one by one Friday and Saturday morning, shutting down Fifth Avenue completely so the crane could be inched up to the cathedral steps.
The doors have been in place since the 1950s — and haven’t been cleaned since.
NY Post: Chad Rachman
LORD’S WORK: Hardhats lift one of the 9,000-pound doors from St. Patrick’s Cathedral, upon which future cardinal Timothy Dolan symbolically knocked (below) in 2009 to seek acceptance.
For their removal, each was covered in thick padding and encased in a steel frame weighing 2,100 pounds, then pulled off the hinges as Monsignor Robert Ritchie, rector of the cathedral, kept watch.
Temporary doors made of sheet metal and wrapped in vinyl with a printed image of the real doors on them will serve as placeholders.
As part of the restoration, a layer of paint will be removed from each door and the bronze will be polished and waxed to prevent tarnishing.
The project is being completed by Remco CEO Robert Maher — an Xavier HS alumnus whose graduation was held at the cathedral.
“I lit five candles today,” Maher told Ritchie as the doors came down, to which the monsignor replied, “To Saint Jude, I hope” — a reference to the patron of hopeless causes.
bdefalco@nypost.com
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