Police: 4 wounded in shooting on Bourbon Street in New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS — Four people were shot on the French Quarter's iconic Bourbon Street, sending people running as revelers partied Saturday night amid the countdown to Mardi Gras, police and bystanders said. But the party was back in full force hours later as crowds returned afterward.

Two males and two females were wounded just before 9:30 p.m. time, New Orleans police spokesman Frank B. Robertson said. He reported that one male was in critical condition and had undergone surgery, while the other three were in stable condition. He did not release their ages.

Robertson said detectives were working to identify a suspect and determine a motive. A police statement said the shooting occurred on the French Quarter street, but did not provide the exact location where the shots were fired. He said he had no additional information immediately.

"They're just piecing together what happened," he added. Subsequent messages left with police seeking more information were not immediately returned.

The streets were crawling with bar-hopping throngs taking in the last weekend before Fat Tuesday, the enormous party that engulfs New Orleans each year with parades, gaudy floats and merrymakers tossing trinkets and beads to the crowds.

Bourbon Street street is home to strip clubs, watering holes and second-floor balconies lined by people who throw beads to revelers below each Mardi Gras season. The street often gets so crowded that officers have to control the crowds on horseback.

Patrick Clay, 21, an LSU student, told The Times-Picayune he was standing on the corner of Bourbon Street when suddenly he saw a crowd running and people screaming that there was a shooting.

"Everyone immediately started running and the cops immediately started running toward where people were running from," Clay said. "I was with a group of about seven people and at that point we all just kind of grasped hands and made our way through the crowd as soon as possible."

Afterward, police moved in to investigate. Many revelers said they stayed hunkered down in bars and other establishments until police cleared them to move freely.

WWL-TV reported that police had obtained surveillance video from one of the establishments as part of the investigation.

"We don't know what happened but they shut down the entire block for an hour," Peter Manabani, an employee at the Rat's Hole bar, told AP as loud music thumped in the background. He said the block reopened shortly before midnight and his establishment was again thronged entering the early hours.

Early Sunday there were no signs a shooting had occurred, as revelers had returned to party mode, packing the block anew amid a heavy police presence. Many milled about, wearing beads, drinking and carousing.

"It's scary. We heard about the shooting in the cab ride down here and almost turned around but it's our first Mardi Gras and we wanted to be here," said Ashley Holleran, 19, of Allendale, N.J., visiting with a friend from New York.

Laura Gonzalez, 21, of Baytown, Texas, said it was also her first Mardi Gras and she spent some time in the Fat Catz Bar nearby as police investigated the shooting. She said the bar quickly locked its doors soon after the shooting and wouldn't let anyone in or out while police kept the crime scene clear of throngs.

Asked if it was frightening, she responded: "Not really. We were just locked in a bar and we weren't going to let this one incident wreck our party."

Parades rolled all day Saturday but none on Bourbon Street because the streets are too narrow. One of the biggest Mardi Gras parades, the Krewe of Endymion, rolled down Canal Street and just skirted Bourbon Street a few hours before the shooting. Typically, once the parades end, partygoers head to the French Quarter.

The lifeblood tourism trade is vital to New Orleans and Mardis Gras is one of the city's signature events, along with Jazz Fest and major sporting events such as the recent Super Bowl. Yet decades-old problems persist and New Orleans remains plagued by violent crime, including gun violence that soared after Hurricane Katrina clobbered the city in 2005.

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8-year-old boy killed in early morning Brooklyn fire

A boy was killed in an early morning fire that ripped through a Flatbush home, police said.

The blaze filled the first floor of the home on Bedford Avenue near Farragut Road about 2:50 a.m., authorities said.

Sixty firefighters extinguished the flames shortly after 3:30 a.m., according to an FDNY spokesman.

The eight-year-old was pronounced dead at the scene. A civilian and firefighter also suffered minor injuries, and were taken to Long Island College Hospital for treatment.

The cause of the fire has not been determined yet, but it is not believed to be suspicious.

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Original Iwo Jima monument coming to NYC auction

AP

This iconic Feb. 23, 1945 photo shows US Marines of the 28th Regiment, 5th Division, raising the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi in Iwo Jima, Japan.

A long-forgotten piece of America's military history is going up for sale.

The original smaller statue of the iconic raising of the US flag at Iwo Jima in 1945 is expected to fetch up to $1.8 million later this month at a New York auction dedicated to World War II artifacts.

That such a statue even exists is news to all but the most ardent history buffs.

Most Americans are familiar with the 32-foot-tall Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Va. Felix de Weldon's 1954 bronze depicts five Marines and a Navy Corpsman raising the flag on Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi as Allied forces struggled to capture the Japanese-held island.

AP

A bronze statue by sculptor Felix de Weldon, center, and Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal at the White House in Washington. The sculpture, depicting five Marines and a Navy Corpsman raising the flag on the island of Iwo Jima, was inspired by a photo taken by Rosenthal on Feb. 23, 1945. The original 12 1/2-foot-tall statue created by de Weldon soon after Rosenthal took his picture in 1945 is being auctioned Feb. 22 in New York.

Less well-known is the 12 1/2-foot-tall statue created soon after the event.

De Weldon, a young sculptor serving as an artist in the Navy, became instantly transfixed by an Associated Press image of the Feb. 19, 1945, flag planting, which would earn photographer Joe Rosenthal a Pulitzer Prize and resonate around the world.

"It's an incredibly iconic image of bravery," says Marci Reaven, vice president of historic exhibits at the New-York Historical Society. "It immediately captured Americans' imaginations, their hopes for victory and their fears at a difficult time."

De Weldon canceled a weekend leave to model a wax sculpture of the photo to present to the chiefs of staff. Congress soon called for construction of a large statue. But burdened with war debt, it could provide no financing and de Weldon agreed to fund it himself.

Completed in just three months, de Weldon's cast stone monument was erected in Washington, D.C., in front of what is now the Federal Reserve Building on Constitution Avenue. It remained there until it was removed in 1947 to make room for a new building.

At about the same time, the government authorized a foundation for de Weldon to build a much larger flag-raising statue in bronze — the 32-foot Iwo Jima monument in Arlington.

The 12 1/2-foot version was returned to de Weldon, who covered it with a tarp behind his studio. It remained largely forgotten for more than four decades.

The story of how military historian and collector Rodney Hilton Brown came to own the statue is, like Rosenthal's photograph, one for the history books.

In researching material for a biography on de Weldon, Brown learned about the old studio and amazingly found the monument still covered by the tarp. He purchased the 5-ton monument from de Weldon in 1990, paying with "a Stradivarius violin, a 1920s solid silver Newport yachting trophy and a lot of money."

But years of neglect had taken their toll. The joints of the sculpture's inner steel skeleton suffered extensive damage. Brown was told by a restoration house that it could build a brand-new monument for a quarter of the cost that it would take to restore it.

"They said, 'You're crazy.' And I said, 'You're right, I'm crazy. I'm crazy for my Marine Corps. I'm crazy for my country," Brown says. "This is the original first Iwo Jima from the last year of WWII and it's going to get restored."

Brown unveiled the restored version of the statue in 1995 on the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York on the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima. It remained on the aircraft carrier until 2007 and was then moved to a storage facility in Connecticut.

Brown, 70, founder of the New York-based Virtual War Museum, said he wants to sell the statue now because "it doesn't fit in my living room. I want to find it a good home so we can pass the flag onto somebody else."

It will be brought out of storage for display in a sculpture garden adjacent to Bonhams auction house in Manhattan before the Feb. 22 sale.

The successful bidder will also get the tools de Weldon used to build the statue, plus the sculptor's drawings, sketches and photos of the monument. Also included is the June 4, 1945, Orders for Rosenthal and de Weldon to report to the White House to present a model of the monument to President Harry S. Truman.

Among the other 186 lots at the auction is a 16-by-20-inch copy of Rosenthal's award-winning photograph that includes a handwritten inscription to de Weldon. The only known photograph autographed by the photographer to the sculptor, it's expected to sell for $7,000 to $10,000, Brown said.

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Weekly unemployment applications fall to 366,000

WASHINGTON — Fewer Americans sought unemployment benefits last week, indicating companies continue to hire at a modest but steady pace.

The Labor Department said Thursday that weekly applications for unemployment benefits fell 5,000 to a seasonally adjusted 366,000.

The four-week average, a less volatile measure, dropped to 350,500, the lowest in nearly five years. The average is low because of seasonal factors, which reduced applications sharply last month.

Weekly applications are a proxy for layoffs. When layoffs decline, net hiring typically rises.

The four-week average of applications has dropped nearly 6 percent in the past three months. At the same time, hiring has picked up: Employers added an average of 200,000 jobs a month from November through January.

In January, employers added 157,000 jobs. And annual revisions included in the Labor Department's January employment report showed the economy created 600,000 more jobs in 2011 and 2012 than previously thought.

Still, the unemployment rate ticked up to 7.9 percent in January from 7.8 percent in December. Economists expect unemployment will decline if hiring continues at last year's monthly pace of 180,000. The rate fell 0.7 percentage points in 2012.

More hiring and income are needed to fuel greater economic growth. The economy shrank at an annual rate of 0.1 percent in the October-December quarter. But the decline was mostly caused by deep cuts in defense spending and sluggish growth in company stockpiles — one-time events that analysts say are likely rebounding in the current quarter.

Economists expect growth of around 2 percent this year. Strength in areas like housing and auto sales could partly offset government spending cuts this year.

Home builders are stepping up construction to meet rising demand. That should create more construction jobs. Home prices and sales are also increasing.

The housing recovery is boosting jobs at home-supply stores and retailers. Home Depot said Wednesday that it plans to hire 80,000 temporary employees for the spring selling season. The jobs will be part-time and full-time, the company said.

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Time Warner's fourth-quarter earnings up 51 percent

Time Warner is reporting a 51 percent increase in fourth-quarter earnings even as revenue was largely unchanged. Rising fees from cable and satellite companies and higher ad revenue at the TV networks offset revenue declines at its movie studio and magazine businesses.

Net income was $1.17 billion, or $1.21 a share, for the final three months of 2012. That's up from $773 million, or 76 cents a share, a year earlier.

Adjusted for one-time items, earnings came to $1.17 per share. That beat the $1.10 per share that analysts expected.

Revenue was almost steady at $8.16 billion. Analysts surveyed by FactSet expected revenue of $8.22 billion.

WireImage

Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes

The company expects 2013 adjusted earnings to be up in the low double-digit percentage.

Time Warner Inc. is raising its quarterly dividend by 11 percent to 28.75 cents per share.

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North Korea threatens 'stronger' measures than nuclear test

EPA

A researcher at the Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety in Daejeon looks at radiation detection monitors Tuesday amid reports on North Korea's imminent third nuclear test.

SEOUL — North Korea stepped up its bellicose rhetoric on Tuesday threatening to go beyond carrying out a promised third nuclear test in response to what it believes are "hostile" sanctions imposed after a December rocket launch.

The North frequently employs fiery rhetoric aimed at South Korea and the United States and in 2010 was blamed for sinking a South Korean naval vessel. It also shelled a South Korean island in the same year, killing civilians.

It did not spell out the actions it would take. The North is not capable of staging a military strike on the United States, although South Korea is in range of its artillery and missiles and it can hit Japan with its missiles.

"The DPRK (Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, or North Korea) has drawn a final conclusion that it will have to take a measure stronger than a nuclear test to cope with the hostile forces nuclear war moves that have become ever more undisguised," the North's KCNA state news agency said.

The United States and South Korea are staging military drills that North Korea says are a rehearsal for an invasion, something both Washington and Seoul deny.

The North successfully launched a long-range rocket in December in violation of U.N. resolutions that banned it from developing missile or nuclear technology after nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009.

The North says that it has the sovereign right to launch rockets for peaceful purposes.

Its widely trailed third nuclear test was announced in response to the sanctions agreed in January, although satellite imagery indicates that the isolated and impoverished state has been readying its nuclear test site for more than a year.

While most experts believe the North will stage a test, the timing is not known. It could come around Feb. 16, the anniversary of former leader Kim Jong-il's birth.

Another unknown is what the North will use as fissile material. In the past it has used its diminishing supply of plutonium stocks, but is believed to have enriched weapons grade uranium that would give it a second path to a nuclear bomb.

US nuclear expert Siegfried Hecker, who visited a North Korean nuclear facility in 2010 believes the North could stage two explosions, one using plutonium to as to perfect its capacity to design a warhead small enough to be mounted on a missile, and a second using highly enriched uranium.

"Such (dual) tests have some technical limitations and are more challenging to conduct, but they have the huge advantage of not incurring additional political cost - in other words, they can get two for the price of one," Hecker wrote in the Feb. 4 issue of Foreign Policy magazine.

Pyongyang's two tests so far have been puny. The yield of the 2006 test is estimated at somewhat less than 1 kiloton (1,000 tons of TNT equivalent) and the second some 2-7 kilotons, compared with say 20 kilotons for a Nagasaki type bomb, Hecker wrote.

North Korea has in the past used the leverage gained from its nuclear and rocket tests to try to restart six-party talks aimed at securing international recognition and aid for the country whose only major diplomatic backer is China.

There are few signs that the United States is willing to talk after the North rebuffed a food aid deal in March 2012 when it launched a long-range rocket after promising not to.

The planned third nuclear test and "stronger" measures come as South Korea prepares to swear in new President Park Geun-hye on Feb. 25. Park had pledged talks and aid if the North gives up its nuclear ambitions.

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787 grounded, but batteries can fly

WASHINGTON — At the same time the government certified Boeing's 787 Dreamliners as safe, federal rules barred the type of batteries used to power the airliner's electrical systems from being carried as cargo on passenger planes because of the fire risk.

Now the situation is reversed.

Dreamliners worldwide were grounded nearly three weeks ago after lithium ion batteries that are part of the planes led to a fire in one plane and smoke in a second. But new rules exempt aircraft batteries from the ban on large lithium ion batteries as cargo on flights by passenger planes.

AP

A Boeing 787 Dreamliner

In effect, that means the Dreamliner's batteries are now allowed to fly only if they're not attached to a Dreamliner.

The regulations were published on Jan. 7, the same day as a battery fire in a Japan Airlines 787 parked at Boston's Logan International Airport that took firefighters nearly 40 minutes to put out. The timing of the two events appears coincidental.

Pilots and safety advocates say the situation doesn't make sense. If the 787's battery system is too risky to allow the planes to fly, then it's too risky to ship the same batteries as cargo on airliners, they said.

"These incidents have raised the whole issue of lithium batteries and their use in aviation," said Jim Hall, a former National Transportation Safety Board chairman. "Any transport of lithium batteries on commercial aircraft for any purpose should be suspended until (an) NTSB investigation is complete and we know more about this entire issue."

Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, a former US Airways pilot famed for his precision flying that enabled passengers and crew to survive an emergency landing on the Hudson River in New York, said in an interview that he wouldn't be comfortable flying an airliner that carried lithium ion aircraft batteries in its cargo hold.

"The potential for self-ignition, for uncontained fires, is huge," he said. The new regulations "need to be looked at very hard in the cold light of day, particularly with what has happened with the 787 batteries."

The battery rules were changed in order to conform US shipping requirements with international standards as required by Congress, the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said in a statement.

The International Civil Aviation Organization, a U.N. agency that sets global aviation standards, adopted the aircraft battery cargo exemption in October 2011, and it went into effect Jan. 1. The organization's standards normally aren't binding. But a provision inserted into US law at the behest of the battery industry and their shippers says the rules can't be stricter than the U.N. agency's standards.

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Deadly deserts

Ralph Peters

Violence in Allah’s name in northern Africa won’t end in my lifetime — and probably not in yours. The core question is: To what extent can the savagery be contained?

From the Atlantic coastline to the Suez Canal, struggling governments, impoverished populations and frankly backward societies struggle to find paths to modernization and to compete in a ruthless global economy. Religious fanatics for whom progress is a betrayal of faith hope to block development.

Still, if the only conflict was between Islamist terrorists and those who want civilized lives, the situation could be managed over time. But that struggle forms only one level in a layer cake of clashing visions and outright civil wars bedeviling a vast region. Much larger than Europe, the zone of contention encompasses the Maghreb, the countries touching the Mediterranean, and the Sahel, the bitterly poor states stretching down across desert wastes to the African savannah.

AFP/Getty Images

Figthers of the Islamic group Ansar Dine

The Sahel is the front line not only between the world of Islam and Christian-animist cultures in Africa’s heart, but between Arabs and light-skinned tribes in the north, and blacks to the south. No area in the world so explicitly illustrates the late, great Samuel Huntington’s concept of “the clash of civilizations.”

If racial and religious differences were not challenge enough, in the Maghreb the factions and interest groups are still more complicated. We view Egypt as locked in a contest between Islamists and “our guys,” Egyptians seeking new freedoms. But Egypt’s identity struggle is far more complex, involving social liberals, moderate Muslims, stern conservative Muslims (such as the Muslim Brotherhood) and outright fanatics. The military forms another constituency, while the business community defends its selfish interests. Then there are the supporters of the old Mubarak regime, the masses of educated-but-unemployed youth and the bitterly poor peasants.

Atop all that there’s the question of whether the values cherished by Arab societies can adapt to a globalized world.

The path to Egypt’s future will not be smooth — yet Egypt’s chances are better than those of many of its neighbors. Consider a few key countries in the region:

Mali

Viva la France! (Never thought I’d write that in The Post.) Contrary to a lot of media nonsense, the effective French intervention in Mali demonstrates that not every military response to Islamist terror has to become another Afghanistan: The French are welcome.

As extremists invariably do, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and its allies rapidly alienated their fellow Muslims — after hijacking a local uprising. The local version of Islam is far more humane and tolerant than the Wahhabi cult imposed by Islamist fanatics. To the foreign extremists, the Malian love of Sufi mysticism, ancient shrines and their own centuries of religious scholarship are all hateful — as is the Malian genius for music that’s pleased listeners around the world.

Have a comment on this PostOpinion column? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!

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Twitter says hackers may have gained access to information about more than 250K users

SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter confirmed Friday that it had become the latest victim in a number of high-profile cyber-attacks against media companies, saying that hackers may have gained access to information on 250,000 of its more than 200 million active users.

The social media giant said in a blog posting that earlier this week it detected attempts to gain access to its user data. It shut down one attack moments after it was detected.

But it discovered that the attackers may have stolen user names, email addresses and encrypted passwords belonging to 250,000 users. Twitter reset the pilfered passwords and sent emails advising affected users.

The online attack comes on the heels of recent hacks into the computer systems of U.S. media and technology companies, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Both American newspapers reported this week that their computer systems had been infiltrated by China-based hackers, likely to monitor media coverage the Chinese government deems important.

China has been accused of mounting a widespread, aggressive cyber-spying campaign for several years, trying to steal classified information and corporate secrets and to intimidate critics. The Chinese foreign ministry could not be reached for comment Saturday, but the Chinese government has said those accusations are baseless and that China itself is a victim of cyber-attacks.

"Chinese law forbids hacking and any other actions that damage Internet security," the Chinese Defense Ministry recently said. "The Chinese military has never supported any hacking activities."

Although Bob Lord, Twitter's director of information security said in the blog that the attack "was not the work of amateurs, and we do not believe it was an isolated incident."

"The attackers were extremely sophisticated, and we believe other companies and organizations have also been recently similarly attacked," Lord said. "For that reason we felt that it was important to publicize this attack while we still gather information, and we are helping government and federal law enforcement in their effort to find and prosecute these attackers to make the Internet safer for all users."

One expert said that the Twitter hack probably happened after an employee's home or work computer was compromised through vulnerabilities in Java, a commonly used computing language whose weaknesses have been well publicized.

Ashkan Soltani, an independent privacy and security researcher, said such a move would give attackers "a toehold" in Twitter's internal network, potentially allowing them either to sniff out user information as it traveled across the company's system or break into specific areas, such as the authentication servers that process users' passwords.

In a telephone interview Friday, Soltani said that the relatively small number of users affected suggested either that attackers weren't on the network long or that they were only able to compromise a subset of the company's servers.

Twitter is generally used to broadcast messages to the public, so the hacking might not immediately have yielded any important secrets. But the stolen credentials could be used to eavesdrop on private messages or track which Internet address a user is posting from.

That might be useful, for example, for an authoritarian regime trying to keep tabs on a journalist's movements.

"More realistically, someone could use that as an entry point into another service," Soltani said, noting that since few people bother using different passwords for different services, a password stolen from Twitter might be just as handy for reading a journalist's emails.

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Qns. man who tried to lure teen girls into his SUV arrested

A sicko who tried to lure two teen girls into his luxury SUV in Queens was arrested, police said today.

Angel Recalde, 43, of Flushing allegedly approached a 14-year-old about 8 p.m. Jan. 25 near Northern Boulevard and Parsons Boulevard and tried to get her to come towards his late-model Cadillac Escalade, cops said.

When she wouldn’t come near him, the sicko allegedly followed her in the car but eventually gave up and took off, authorities said.

Earlier that day, he also approached a 13-year-old on Northern Boulevard, near 102nd Street, and tried to talk to her about 7 a.m. When she walked away from him, he got out of the SUV and approached her again, police said.

The girl walked away, and the perv allegedly grabbed her arm. She bravely pulled away from him, and he got spooked and ran off, cops said.

He was arrested yesterday and charged with two counts of luring a child to commit a crime as well as endangering the welfare of a child and harassment.

Recalde has not been arraigned yet, records show.

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Majority of NY voters say equal pay for women should be top priority for Cuomo: poll

ALBANY – Equal pay for women should be at the top of Gov. Cuomo’s 2013 to-do list, more than half of New York voters say.

A Quinnipiac University poll out today found 53 percent of voters said the issue should be the highest priority for Cuomo and lawmakers this year, with another 36 percent urging that it be a high priority.

Following Quinnipiac’s release of poll results yesterday that showed a 30-point downward swing in Cuomo’s job approval rating after he signed a controversial gun control law, today’s numbers carried another warning for the popular first-term Democrat.

Voters were split on the direction of the state, with 50 percent saying they’re satisfied but 49 percent dissatisfied – down from 55-44 last month.

And 56 percent said they don’t think Cuomo will be able to keep his no-new-taxes pledge, while nearly as many (44 percent) think Cuomo’s agenda is aimed more at helping him become president rather than helping the state (47 percent).

Picking from a menu of left-leaning proposals in Cuomo’s State of the State speech earlier this month, voters said Cuomo and lawmakers should make campaign finance reform their second-highest priority, with 31 percent urging it to be tops on the list and 37 percent calling it a high priority.

That was followed by a bar exam-type test for teachers (28 percent highest, 43 percent high), merit pay for teachers (26, 45) and a longer school day or school year (17, 39).

The Jan.23-28 telephone survey of 1,127 state voters found raising the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour continues to enjoy strong across-the-board support (80-17), including 61-35 percent backing among Republicans.

State Senate GOP Leader Dean Skelos this week said he’s open to a compromise over Cuomo’s proposal to raise the rate to $8.75, possibly including a phase-in.

Fracking upstate’s Marcellus shale for natural gas — which Cuomo did not address in his State of the State speech and has not decided whether to green-light — continued splitting the electorate, with city voters opposed and upstate and suburban New Yorkers supportive.

The State Health Department is still reviewing the potential impact on human health of the controversial practice of injecting a high-pressure mix of chemicals, sand and water into shale rock, which supporters say will boost the economy but opponents claim will harm health and the environment.

In an open-ended question, 32 percent of voters identified the economy as the most important problem facing the state, followed by taxes (17 percent), education (nine percent), the state budget (seven percent) and gun control (four percent).

On equal pay, 60 percent of women made it their highest priority with 33 percent calling it a high priority; the numbers for men were 46 and 38 percent, respectively.

The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

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Cuomo's approval rating plummets after NY passes gun control law: poll

ALBANY – Gov. Cuomo’s job approval rating dropped like a speeding bullet this month as Republicans and gun owners started turning against him after he rammed through the nation’s first post-Newtown gun control law, a new poll has found.

Democrat Cuomo’s approval marks slid from 74-13 percent last month to 59-28 in the Quinnipiac poll out today — a day after the New York-affiliate of the National Rifle Association filed a notice of claim to sue to stop enforcement of the law, arguing it unconstitutionally deprives New Yorkers of their rights.

While voters in non-gun homes still gave Cuomo thumbs up by a whopping 68-19, those who live in households with guns turned against him by 50-40, the Jan. 23-28 telephone survey of 1,127 state voters found.

Shannon DeCelle

Governor Cuomo

Cuomo himself had predicted the slide during a radio interview yesterday with Post columnist Fredric U. Dicker on Albany’s Talk 1300 AM radio.

While Republicans gave Cuomo a 68-18 percent approval mark in a Quinnipiac survey Dec. 12 — two days before a crazed gunman killed 20 first-graders and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. — the GOP is virtually evenly split on the governor now.

Support for Cuomo dropped across the board. His approval rating among independents fell from 70-12 to 54-32, among Democrats from 82-9 to 74-14, among women from 73-12 to 64-23 and among men from 74-14 to 54-33.

Some 34 percent of voters – and 59 percent of Republicans – said Cuomo’s law goes “too far” in restricting gun owners’ rights, while 30 percent of all voters said it doesn’t go far enough in protecting public safety.

But another 30 percent of voters, including 20 percent of Republicans, say the law is “about right.”

Cuomo shouldn’t necessarily worry, according to Quinnipiac’s poll director.

“With approval ratings that consistently topped 70 percent, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo had the political capital to spend when he set out to pass the toughest gun control laws in the nation,” Maurice Carroll said. “It is possible that the gun law cost him some of that political capital, but a 2-1 job approval rating still makes him the envy of most governors.”

Carroll also noted Cuomo lost some GOP support after legalizing gay marriage in 2011 but “got it back.”

And voters gave strong approval to a key element of the gun law: a requirement that mental health professionals report potentially dangerous patients to police for possible confiscation of weapons. Democrats backed that provision 76-19, Republicans by 71-24 and independents 71-23.

And by 56-32 percent voters rejected the argument that fewer mentally ill people will seek help because of the new gun law.

Additionally, voters by 48-40 percent said stricter gun laws will do more to reduce gun violence in school than armed guards – as the NRA proposed.

Quinnipiac found voters in blue New York by 46-22 percent have an unfavorable opinion of the NRA leadership.

The poll also found a slight dip in job approval ratings for President Obama (57-39 percent, from 62-35 last month) and US Sens. Chuck Schumer (60-30, down from 63-23) and Kirsten Gillibrand (57-21, down from 61-18).

The poll has a a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

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NYC pulling down 'Don't Honk' signs

The city's "Don't Honk" signs are coming down, but it's still against the law to blow a car horn unnecessarily.

The city Department of Transportation says all the signs will be removed by the end of the year.

City officials say the decision is part of an effort to de-clutter the streets of signs that generally go ignored, according to The New York Times.

Unnecessary honking carries a $350 fine but is rarely enforced.

The DOT says complaints about honking have declined 63 percent since 2008.

But City Councilwoman Gale Brewer said in a letter to the DOT: "I can't tell you how many requests I get for 'no honking' signs."

Angel Chevrestt

The signs were introduced during Mayor Ed Koch's administration.

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Suspect wanted for trying to lure girls into SUV

The NYPD is looking for a suspect who tried to lure two girls into his SUV in separate incidents in Queens.

Police say the incidents occurred hours apart on Friday.

The suspect drives a late model Cadillac Escalade. He's described as light-skinned and between 30 and 35.

Police say he drove alongside a 13-year-old girl at 7 a.m. on Northern Boulevard at 102nd Street and engaged her in a conversation. When she walked away, police say the suspect exited the SUV and grabbed her by the arm. She pulled away and fled.

In the second incident, the suspect drove alongside a 14-year-old girl and motioned her to approach the SUV on Northern and Parson boulevards. The girl fled when he continued to follow her.

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245 people dead in Brazil nightclub fire

BRASILIA, Brazil — A fire swept through a crowded nightclub in southern Brazil early Sunday, killing 245 people and leaving hundreds injured, police and firefighters said.

Sandro Meinerz, a spokesman for the police in the city of Santa Maria, told local media that the fire broke out at the Kiss club while a band was performing. He said at least 200 people were injured.

The cause of the fire is not yet known, officials said. The total number of victims is still unclear and there may be hundreds injured, Civil Police and regional government spokesman Marcelo Arigoni told Radio Gaucha.

EPA

Rescue workers tend to victims outside Kiss nightclub in Brazil.

Arigoni told the radio station a truck carrying 70 bodies had arrived at the Municipal Sports Center, which was being used as an improvised morgue.

Diario de Santa Maria reported that the fire started at around 2 a.m.

Rodrigo Moura, whom the paper identified as a security guard at the club, said it was at its maximum capacity of between 1,000 and 2,000, and partygoers were pushing and shoving to escape.

Ezekiel Corte Real, 23, was quoted by the paper as saying that he helped people to escape. "I just got out because I'm very strong," he said.

"Sad Sunday", tweeted Tarso Genro, the governor of the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. He said all possible action was being taken and that he would be in the city later in the day.

Santa Maria, at the southern tip of Brazil near the borders with Argentina and Uruguay, is a major university city with a population of around a quarter of a million.

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Guilty gun seller ‘Scarfaces’ 25 yrs.

Say hello to your little verdict.

A brazen gun trafficker who liked to quote from “Scarface” — and who was caught on surveillance video selling an AR-15-style assault rifle on a Chelsea street corner — was quickly convicted by a Manhattan jury yesterday.

It took less than five hours to find Sentell Smith guilty of the entire 21-count indictment against him, including the state’s toughest gun-sale statute, first-degree criminal weapons sales, reserved for gun dealers caught selling 10 or more guns.

The experience left jurors shell-shocked.

“That was a scary gun,” one juror, who declined to give her name, said of the .223-caliber Remington semiautomatic assault rifle Smith sold for $2,000 to an undercover parked at 27th Street and Seventh Avenue in July 2011.

Steven Hirsch

SENTELL SMITH Kingpin? Try pinhead.

A year-long investigation by the Manhattan DA’s Violent Criminal Enterprises Unit and NYPD caught the Alabama native on video getting into a car with the rifle hidden inside a long body pillow. Footage shows him tossing the pillow onto the back seat before he climbs into the front passenger seat and negotiates the sale.

“You f--k with me, you f--king with the best,” Smith boasts on another surveillance tape, quoting Al Pacino’s character in the iconic ’80s gangster flick.

Smith sold undercovers a total of 11 guns, including two sales he brokered on a Rikers pay phone. Investigators said each gun sold for $1,000 or more, and each had been circulating on the streets for years.

Smith was a rarity: a gun-trafficking defendant who took the stand in his own defense. “I was entrapped,” he told jurors yesterday, claiming bizarrely that the money he was taped handling was actually just being loaned.

“The defendant’s story really stretches the boundaries of the laugh test,” assistant district attorney Christopher Prevost said in closing arguments.

Smith faces at least 25 years prison when he is sentenced Feb. 13 before Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Edward McLaughlin.

laura.italiano@nypost.com

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Elderly woman struck and killed by private bus in Brooklyn

An elderly woman woman was struck and killed by a private bus in Brooklyn this morning, authorities said.

She was hit about 7:15 a.m. in Canarsie on Avenue K and East 105th Street and died at the scene, according to an FDNY spokesman.

No criminality is suspected, police said.

Benny J. Stumbo

Police at the scene today.

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Rare posters seized by Nazis net $2.5M at NYC auction

A poster collection seized from a Jewish collector by the Nazis and only returned to his descendants in recent years has brought in approximately $2.5 million at a New York auction.

Born in 1881, Hans Sachs started collecting posters as a teen and became Germany's leading private collector with 12,500 posters. The Nazis seized the collection in 1938, and the posters were held behind the Iron Curtain in East Berlin.

His grandson Peter Sachs went through a legal battle for several years to get back what was left of the collection.

Just over 1,200 posters were sold by Guernsey's over the weekend in the first of three sales.

AP

Peter Sachs poses in front of two posters, pieces from his father Hans Sachs' Poster Collection, in 2007.

A poster called "Kunstsalon Aktuaryus" dating to around 1900 sold for $57,950.

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Charlie Brown voice actor arrested for 'stalking'

SAN DIEGO — Authorities in California say the voice actor who portrayed Charlie Brown in many "Peanuts" shows was arrested on charges that include stalking.

US Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman Angelica de Cima said Peter Robbins was arrested Sunday at the San Ysidro Port of Entry. She told U-T San Diego that a background check yielded a warrant against Robbins from the San Diego County sheriff's department.

A sheriff's spokeswoman said she did not have details about the warrant.

The 56-year-old is set to be arraigned Wednesday on counts of making a threat to cause death or great bodily injury and of stalking. His manager has declined to comment.

Robbins was the voice of Charlie Brown for TV specials, "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown."

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Parts of LI get over 3 inches of snow as arctic blast continues through end of week

Wayne Carrington

Parts of Long Island woke up to snow this morning.

Parts of Long Island got more than three inches of snow late Monday.

Strong winds and frigid temperatures are expected today with wind chills dipping into the single digits through tomorrow.

Meteorologists say Brookhaven and southern and eastern communities received over three inches of snow.

The city is expected to see snow by Friday with highs only in the upper 20s.

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