That there are coyotes on Long Island now, where they haven’t been seen before (”Coyotes are firmly established throughout all New York counties except Long Island and New York City”), is freaky enough without seeing them within city limits:

Animal control officers set a trap at Rochdale Village after a coyote or similar creature was spotted prowling around a parking lot in the sprawling south Queens cooperative housing complex.

Six paragraphs into the Post story about a lawsuit filed against Steiner Sports, the entity responsible for reselling collectibles from Old Yankee Stadium, for allegedly selling seats not as advertised, this detail sticks out in particular:

Back in May, when the sale of seats was announced, Steiner and the Yankees made no secret of the fact that all the original paint would have to be stripped because of lead. A new color, resembling the faded blue, was used to simulate their original appearance.

The Yankees really do want to kill you.

Location Scout: Old Yankee Stadium.

*That’s from Bloomberg’s statement to the 9/11 Commission in May 2004, and the sad thing is that he was talking about the lack of inter-agency cooperation, not even intra-agency cooperation:

The New York Police Department has removed a senior official from one of its two sometimes competing antiterrorism units, after it played a role in disrupting a sensitive federal terrorism investigation, current and former police officials said on Wednesday. He was replaced by a top official from the other unit.

The investigation was disrupted two weeks ago when detectives from one of the units, the Intelligence Division, sought assistance from a Queens imam who then alerted the central suspect in the case to the inquiry.

The transfers, which removed one official from the Intelligence Division and replaced him with another from the Counterterrorism Bureau, came in recent days amid intense activity in the case. Federal agents and police detectives have been hunting through New York City and other places for operatives in a suspected Qaeda bomb plot.

Again, the NYPD is playing with the security of all Americans. When they’re good, oh they’re real good, but there’s also a huge lack of oversight here. People in California, Denver or even New Jersey don’t vote for Michael Bloomberg, much less Ray Kelly, and when the NYPD fucks up, it affects them, too. I’m surprised more people aren’t more pissed . . .

They are coming to get us, and no one is paying attention to the true danger:

It was one of those accidents inevitably described as one in a million: A New Yorker strolling down a leafy path crossed by thousands each day is hit on the head and critically injured by a rotted-out tree branch that snapped under its own weight off a massive pin oak tree.

The branch was four inches thick and fell 20 feet on Wednesday morning, putting a gash in the man’s skull, damaging his upper vertebrae and causing a partial lung collapse. The man, Sasha J. Blair-Goldensohn, 33, began to show preliminary signs of consciousness on Thursday, responding to verbal commands, said his mother, Gwenda Blair, in a phone interview.

. . .

People passing by the site of the accident, near the entrance at Central Park West and 63rd Street, gave a fairly consistent interpretation of the previous day’s events: One in a million accidents are a fact of life in a city of more than eight million people. Plummeting tree branches, most added, are somewhere near the bottom of their daily worries, below falling construction cranes and rogue pedicabs, not to mention the more mundane concerns of everyday life.

“It wouldn’t keep me out of the park,” said Katina Zachmanoglow, 52, as she sat in the shade of a large oak. “It’s too isolated of an incident to be concerned.”

“I’d probably be more concerned about a pigeon doing something to me,” she added.

“I’m more afraid of manholes,” said Sarah Crocker, a 27-year-old musician, cooling off after a jog.

In this tough economy, a young person is forced to explore internship opportunities as early as he possibly can:

A subway rider says he got the shock of his life when he peered into the cab and saw a kid behind the controls alongside the driver.

“I saw him driving. He couldn’t have been more than 8 or 9,” said Jules Cattie, 41. “That has to be the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Cattie, a lawyer who lives on the East Side, said he spotted the child after he got into the front car of a Lexington Ave. express train Sunday.

“I was just in shock,” he said. “I thought, ‘This is really dangerous.’”

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority yesterday said it has launched “a vigorous and thorough investigation” into the charge.

It’s not so much the fault of geese or even some turtles that will have their way with us but rather the worms, proving yet again that we need to stop the food chain in order to save ourselves:

Federal wildlife officials studying ways to prevent potentially fatal bird strikes, such as the one that forced a US Airways jet to make an emergency landing in the Hudson River in January, are focusing on mustard, which repels a favorite snack of birds — worms.

After it rains, earthworms crawl onto the runway at La Guardia and JFK airports, providing a smorgasbord for hungry birds, who can then get caught in plane engines, researchers said.

Taking its cue from the Parks Department and Board of Education, the Long Island Rail Road recently instituted a new volunteer program to encourage community participation and trim costs:

A witness has told police that a Long Island Rail Road engineer let a passenger operate a train bound for New York City.

MTA Police Chief Michael Coan says the train ran smoothly and no one was injured.

The witness told police that he saw another passenger in the cab without the engineer during part of the run on July 2.

The double-decker train left Port Jefferson at 6:45 a.m. It normally has about 400 passengers and goes up to 80 mph.

Super-scary figure of the day:

New York City officials on Wednesday reported the deaths of three more people with swine flu, and estimated that more than half a million New Yorkers may have become sick from the virus.

Notes from Tuesday’s National Transportation Safety Board hearing on Flight 1549:

A few moments later, with the engines dead, attempts to restart them fruitless, and the Hudson fast approaching, Captain Sullenberger turned to Mr. Skiles and said, “Got any ideas?”

Mr. Skiles replied, “Actually, not.”

Hopefully there’s still time this season to get a H1N1 storyline into Ugly Betty:

Condé Nast workers received a memo telling them that “an employee working on the 12th floor at 4 Times Square” has tested positive for the virus, according to New York magazine. Vogue is on the 12th floor.

It’s tough these days to be a pig in this town:

There they stood, Tabitha and Sabrina, the loneliest animals at the Queens Zoo in Flushing.

Despite the name “swine flu,” it’s extremely rare for humans to be infected by being near a pig.

But most people don’t know that, so Tabitha and Sabrina, two female hogs, were left all but ostracized yesterday, along with their Vietnamese pot-bellied pal, Barbie.

No, it’s not just a coincidence, it’s probably actually swine flu:

A group of Queens high school students likely brought Mexico’s deadly swine flu epidemic to the city after they went on a wild spring-break party to Cancun earlier this month.

Some seniors from St. Francis Prep in Fresh Meadows took the trip over Easter hiatus two weeks ago. Days later, an outbreak of flu-like symptoms erupted at the school, leaving about 200 kids complaining of being ill.

Yesterday, city health officials confirmed that eight students “have probable human swine influenza” after testing positive for Influenza A, which officials say causes the swine strain of disease.

CBS2 is wondering whether a big flu outbreak at a school in Queens is swine-like:

As many as 75 students at St. Francis Preparatory School in Queens got sick on Thursday. More got sick on Friday. What health officials want to know is was it swine flu or something more benign.

There are mounting fears about a deadly swine flu virus that is reported to have killed as many as 60 people in Mexico, one that health officials fear has already seeped into the United States.

St. Francis Prep was ordered to cancel an evening program Friday night because the New York City Department of Health isn’t sure what made students sick Thursday and Friday with flu-like symptoms.

“I just saw lot a lot of kids lined up along the wall near the nurse’s office,” sophomore Kelsey Dittmeir said.

If it’s the flu, the question is what kind of flu? And could it be the unique strain suspected in 20 recent deaths?

Tests are underway.

End of the world scenarios, now with added earthquakes:

The trio of earthquakes that surprised New Jersey over the past month has seismologists wondering what’s next — and they say it doesn’t look good.

They call the geological fault lines crisscrossing Manhattan a perfect storm for a temblor that could topple older buildings, cause billions of dollars in damages and kill people citywide.

New York has survived at least three quakes measuring 5.0 on the Richter scale, but two of them hit back in the 1700s and the other centered on Coney Island in 1884, toppling chimneys.

The city should expect a jolt like that last one every 100 years, the experts warn — which means we’re overdue. Jersey’s recent baby quakes, which caused no damage and failed to rise above 3.0 in magnitude, may have been warning shots, they say.

A 6.0-magnitude quake could cause as much as $200 billion in damages, according to a 2003 study by the New York City Area Consortium for Earthquake Loss Mitigation.

Or an absurdly high caloric intake:

We interrupt coverage of the collapse of just about everything in sight to bring truly shocking news about the seven-digit numbers recently posted in chain restaurants.

It turns out that they are not quite what they seem to be at first glance, said Mahmuda Mukti, manager of a Popeye’s on 125th Street in Manhattan.

“Sometimes the customers look at it, and think they’re telephone numbers,” Ms. Mukti said. “I say to them, ‘That’s not phone numbers, that’s calories.’”

By city regulation, the chains have been required since July to disclose the range of calories contained in each item or meal. So, for instance, a very telephonelike number, 880-1545, is listed next to the three-piece chicken meal combo, with the range depending on the side dishes. You might think that it would be hard to pile 1,500 calories into a single meal — close to the daily recommended amount for many women — but you would be drastically wrong.

Khaliqya Terry, 18, easily hit four digits as she worked through a late afternoon lunch on Friday. She had three pieces of chicken, Cajun-battered fries, a small container of mashed potato with gravy, a biscuit and a medium cup of Hi-C.

“I didn’t know they had the calories up there,” said Ms. Terry, a high school student. “How much is mine?”

At least 1,545, maybe more, she was told.

“Is that bad?” she asked.

Bad or good, it’s close to a day’s worth.

She laughed and slammed her hand into the arm of her boyfriend, who had headphones on. “Michael, this is supposed to be the calories for the whole day,” she said. They would probably eat dinner at McDonald’s, she said.

. . .

At the Popeye’s, Dawn Henry’s jaw actually dropped when she saw that the breast, wings and fries ran from 735 to 1,400 calories.

“This really would make you not want to buy it,” said Ms. Henry, 32. She glanced up again at the menu.

“But, oh well,” she said, stepping up to place her order anyway.

. . . start driving again:

Sloshed straphangers made up nearly half of all accidental deaths underground during a 13- year Columbia University study.

“Now, if groups are going to a bar, then one should be a designated ’safe rider,’” warned health professor Robyn Gershon, the study’s author.

Between 1990 and 2003, 145 of 315 unintentional deaths came when boozy riders stumbled off the platform, fell suddenly ill or, in acts of liquid courage, jumped onto the tracks to retrieve a personal item.

Drunken riders died at higher rates than those who were killed or committed suicide. And today’s economy might not help the equation.

“With the changes to the financial picture in New York, there’s talk of an increase in alcohol intake,” Gershon said.

Since most Manhattanites don’t own cars, Gershon said people might think “it’s OK to drink to the point of intoxication because they’re not driving.”

. . . and then they see the sign saying that there’s never been a death on the Cyclone. And yet, you still “assume risk”:

A California musician who died days after riding the Cyclone should have known that riding the rickety 80-year-old Coney Island coaster is dangerous, the city says in new court papers.

Keith Shirasawa, 53, died in August 2007, five days after he snapped his neck and fractured several bones in his neck during a downhill plunge on the wooden roller coaster.

His family sued the city and the Cyclone’s operators last month.

In court papers filed yesterday in Manhattan Federal Court, city attorney Cynthia Goldman said Shirasawa should have known the risks involved.

“Any and all risks, hazards, defects and dangers to the extent alleged are of an open, obvious, apparent and inherent nature known and should have been known to [Shirasawa],” Goldman wrote.

This basically ensures that your mother will never get on there with you. Thanks.

Location Scout: The Cyclone.

The mayor’s drive to rid the city streets of cars gets a boost from the beneficiary of one of his other major initiatives:

A couple inches more, and this story would have been Francisco Vizuete’s obituary.

Instead, the 60-year-old limo driver has an amazing tale to tell: He barely escaped being crushed to death Monday by a tree that toppled onto his car.

The father of two grown daughters felt so lucky he bought a Lotto ticket last night.

“Maybe my guardian angel is still with me,” he smiled.

Vizuete, who drives for Long Island-based Vital Transportation, was about to pull away from 411 W. 54th St. to pick up a “VIP going to Newark Airport” when death knocked.

“I put the key in the ignition, heard this loud noise, and looked to my left,” he said, recalling he was too stunned to move. “The tree was falling straight at me. It was like slow motion. I couldn’t believe it.

“It was coming 5 or 6 inches from my head,” he said. “Glass went all over me and everything went dark for a while.”

The honey locust pancaked the front end of the limo, which Vizuete owns, but didn’t touch him. Saturday’s storm apparently split the tree down the middle and made it unstable.

When Vizuete opened his eyes, people were taking pictures and a passing bicyclist, Darryl Pitt, was dragging him out through the back passenger side door.

Broadway Boulevard has been “an instant hit” for thrill seekers:

As if New York wasn’t stimulating enough already, the city has provided a new kind of thrill right in the heart of Midtown: an esplanade carved into Broadway where people can sit and relax as cars and trucks whiz by.

And while the esplanade seems to have become an instant hit with office workers and tourists — the metal benches, tables and chairs (some under red umbrellas) were rarely empty on Monday morning, even though they have been out for only a few days — many eyed the traffic warily.

“I think it’s dangerous,” said Vicki Lee, who nonetheless sat with two friends eating lunch at a cafe table on the esplanade just south of 38th Street. Ms. Lee, a clothing designer at a Midtown fashion company, was careful to sit so that she could keep an eye on the traffic heading downtown.

Her concern, she said, centered on the gray plastic planters arrayed every few feet along the edge of the esplanade as a buffer for the passing traffic. The planters were filled with soil, flowers and other plants and were too heavy for one person alone to budge. Yet they did not make Ms. Lee feel safe.

“You hear so many accidents of the cars going out of control and all they have here is plastic pots,” she said. But she dug into her salad and added, “We’re going to roll the dice and eat lunch here today.”

Not far away, Eric Sachinis and Grace Ong sat on two metal chairs pulled up to the edge of the esplanade closest to the traffic. They ate sandwiches and gazed at the passing cars.

“It’s a death trap,” Mr. Sachinis, a network administrator for a garment company, said with a laugh. “It’ll be up for a month and then somebody’ll get hit and they’ll take it down.”

“I like it, though,” said Ms. Ong, an administrative assistant, who observed that a pedestrian would be no safer on the sidewalk than on the esplanade if a car lost control. Besides, she said, the esplanade was a good spot for people watching. “That’s why you live in New York,” she said, “to watch everything go by.”

Creating Axioms: “New Yorkers Sit Anywhere”

Not to freak you out or anything, but:

A new analysis of 383 quakes in a 15,000-square-mile area around New York City estimates that a magnitude-5 earthquake in or around the city occurs on average once a century, and a magnitude-6 or larger quake occurs once every 670 years. An even larger magnitude-7 is estimated at once every 3,400 years.

Skin cancer will cause the deaths of 7,000 Americans this year, and maybe more if the most evil team in baseball has its way:

Yankee fans are seeing — and turning — red over a ban on sunscreen, which Stadium security guards say was widely expanded in the last few weeks.

Security guards collected garbage bags full of sunblock at the entrances to Yankee Stadium over the sweltering weekend, when temps hit 96 degrees and the UV index reached a skin-scorching 9 out of 10 — a move team officials said was to protect the Stadium from terrorism.

But fans baking in the bleachers and upper deck argued that the sun may be a bigger threat than Osama bin Laden.

“I was really pissed because, since I am Irish and I have a bald head, I need my sunblock,” said Sean Gavin, 40, who had to toss his SPF 30 at the gate Saturday.

“After they saw me dousing myself with it, it should have been obvious to them that it was sunblock and not some explosive.”

. . .

Four weeks ago, Stadium officials decided that sunscreen of all sizes and varieties would not be permitted, a security supervisor told The Post before last night’s game.

“There have been a lot of complaints,” he said. “We tell them to apply once and then throw it out.”

For fans who bring babies or young children to cheer on the home team, the guard had suggested they “beg” to take the sunblock in.

. . .

The Stadium does sell 1-ounce bottles of Arizona Sun SPF 15 for $5 — a huge markup that makes its beer seem cheap.

Dermatologists said that, security concerns or not, leaving 56,000 fans unprotected from potential skin cancer is “very dangerous.”

“This is especially bad for children, as their younger skin is particularly sensitive,” said Dr. Babar Rao, a specialist at the Skin and Cancer Center of New York. “Sunblock needs to be reapplied every two hours, even if you are not swimming in the ocean or pool.”

Major League Baseball even has a skin-cancer prevention program called “Play Sun Smart.”

An hour after being asked about the sunscreen ban, Yankee spokesman Jason Zillo told The Post that the rules would be changed to permit 3-ounce containers.

(And MLB doesn’t just have a namby-pamby “program” to battle skin cancer — it’s actually one of Commissioner Bud Selig’s pet projects, Selig himself diagnosed with skin cancer in 2004.)

. . . better art nearly drowns and kills:

A pair of kayakers who paddled too close to the New York City Waterfalls installation under the Brooklyn Bridge nearly drowned when swift currents and the falls’ suction mechanism capsized their boat, police said.

“I wanted to get a closer look at the waterfalls, and then it sucked us in,” said Vladimer Spector, 37, one of the two men plucked from the East River by the NYPD Harbor Patrol.

He and Bert Rosenblatt, 36, were part of a group of real estate developers who left Red Hook for a tour of the falls with the nonprofit Long Island City Community Boathouse.

As they approached the waterfall, they started to lose control of their boat, police said.

“They were too enthralled with the waterfalls,” said John McGarvey, one of the outing’s coordinators.

By the time the pair realized the power of the water, it was too late.

“I lost my shoes because the current was so strong,” said Rosenblatt, who lives in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, and owns Vicus Partners on Madison Ave. “My life didn’t flash before my eyes or anything like that, but I was definitely scared.”

The falls were turned off for 15 minutes during the rescue.

Now that we’re prepared for a devastating Category 4 or 5 hurricane (right? right?), we can look forward to the next great disaster — a flu pandemic that will surely kill hundreds of thousands of city residents:

Be afraid, be very afraid. There is no telling what the next disaster will be. Another terrorist attack? A steam pipe explosion like the one that shut down several blocks of Lexington Avenue a year ago? Or perhaps a pandemic flu that would cripple New York City’s economy by making people afraid to go to work or ride on subways and buses?

That was the message at a daylong workshop conducted on Tuesday by the city’s health and emergency management agencies, intended to give businesses tips on how to cope with the potential calamities.

The workshop had all the portentous, overwrought atmosphere of movies about how the world is coming to an end and everyone had better be ready, from “War of the Worlds” to the latest M. Night Shyamalan film. Only in this faux disaster, the participants — some of whom have spent years immersing themselves in the subject — were treating it with deadly earnestness.

The possibility of an influenza pandemic was the disaster du jour. Dr. Isaac B. Weisfuse, the city’s deputy health commissioner for disease control, told an audience of about 300 business people that since history repeats itself, he considers it likely that there will be a worldwide outbreak of flu, possibly a mutation of the current avian flu, sometime in the 21st century, just as there were killer disease epidemics in virtually every other century.

“Everybody in the whole state — local governments, businesses large and small, families — should be preparing,” Dr. Weisfuse told the gathering at New York University.

Just as Americans built bomb shelters and stocked them with crackers during the Cold War, the city has been stockpiling supplies to combat pandemic flu, Dr. Weisfuse assured his audience. He announced that 25 million surgical face masks — known as P.P.E.’s, short for “personal protective equipment” — are secreted in a New York City warehouse.

“I’m very proud of this collection,” Dr. Weisfuse said, showing a slide of the rows upon rows of boxed-up masks, like the treasure in an Indiana Jones movie. “We have more face masks than you could ever imagine.”

But, still not enough. The stockpile is equal to three for each of the city’s eight million residents, and epidemiologists recommend changing those face masks twice a day. “Look at all these lovely boxes,” Dr. Weisfuse said. “They’re going to be empty after about a day and a half of pandemic.”

(One audience member, who said he managed a 42-story residential high-rise, wondered how many microns of particle size the mask should be able to guard against. Dr. Weisfuse replied, in essence, that it does not mater, because the masks are so loose that some germs are bound to escape from the sides.)

Counterfeit Louis Vuitton handbags, sure. But counterfeit condoms, too? Not to sound harsh, but if you’re cheap enough to buy condoms at a 99-cent store, you probably deserve what you get:

Careful with those Trojan brand condoms from the discount store. They may not be the real thing.

Same with the Barbie doll and the Louis Vuitton handbag.

In raids in the metropolitan area yesterday, federal agents arrested at least eight people and charged them with heading a counterfeit products ring. Authorities say the ring has been smuggling into the country and then distributing massive quantities of fake brand-name goods manufactured in China, including Apple iPods, Major League Baseball and National Football League caps and Marvel comic books.

The counterfeits, which included millions of the phony Trojans, were sold for the past three years mainly in small discount stores in the area, as well as elsewhere in the country, including Texas and Virginia, according to court documents.

A spokeswoman for Church and Dwight, the company that manufactures the legitimate Trojan condoms in the United States, declined to comment on whether the counterfeit Chinese condoms could fail to prevent pregnancies or the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

But a source familiar with the federal investigation said that while the counterfeit condoms were of inferior quality, samples had been tested and they were no riskier to use than legitimate ones.

The packaging of the Chinese condoms is almost identical to the legitimate ones, except that the counterfeit packaging is plastic, while the legitimate product is packaged in aluminum foil, said another source familiar with the investigation. “They [the counterfeiters] spent all their money on printing,” said the source.

It may be impossible to hop on an E train to safety:

The city’s plan to get people out of the path of a hurricane might make anyone uncomfortable who remembers Aug. 8, 2007.

That’s when three inches of rain came down in one hour and flooding shut down the subway.

“We would use our mass-transit system to evacuate the majority of people,” said Amy Schultz of the Office of Emergency Management at a City Council hearing yesterday.

An OEM brochure offers the same advice: “If the city issues an evacuation order . . . use public transportation if possible.”

That might not be possible. After last August’s meltdown, MTA chief Eliot Sander said the subway can handle only about an inch and a half of rain in an hour.

A major storm would “severely” affect the subway, Schultz acknowledged, but the evacuation would begin early, perhaps days before the storm.

“We’ve worked out the timing,” she said. “We have to ensure there’s enough time so the subway can be shut down.” Trains would not run during a hurricane.

August 8, 2007 . . . oh yeah, that sucked.

When that trip to the shore or holiday with the in-laws turns potentially deadly:

When Lauren Papapietro boarded a New Jersey Transit train at Pennsylvania Station in February, she stood in the vestibule between the cars with a half-dozen other passengers, as she does most nights when seats are scarce. As the train rolled out of the station, the door six inches from where she stood opened for nearly a minute before the train stopped and the conductors scurried to close it.

“I was scared to death,” said Ms. Papapietro, 21, a senior at Monmouth University who works at a public relations firm in Manhattan. “I kind of trust New Jersey Transit to get me back and forth, and I really hope this doesn’t happen again.”

Yet doors on New Jersey Transit trains have opened improperly at least four other times in the past two months, far more frequently than on moving Metro-North or Long Island Rail Road trains.

Then in February, as a train left the North Elizabeth station during the evening rush, the third and fourth cars uncoupled, leaving hundreds of passengers in cars not attached to an engine.

While New Jersey Transit says that the problem of malfunctioning doors is not widespread, these isolated incidents have shaken employees and riders alike.

. . .

Riders are routinely told not to stand between cars, but feel compelled to do so during peak hours when cars are so crowded that it is standing- room-only and conductors cannot make their way through the aisle to collect fares.

When questioned, rail industry consultants said they wondered whether New Jersey Transit is cutting corners on maintenance, or is stretched too thin as it tries to keep up with record demand.

“It raises concerns and sounds to me like something that needs to be reviewed in detail,” said James E. Burnett Jr., a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, the federal government’s safety watchdog responsible for investigating accidents. “It’s a serious thing for doors to come open and cars to come uncoupled. The ideal response is to investigate this and to determine where the responsibility lies, not necessarily for accountability, but to make safety corrections.”

Time was, New Yorkers only concerned themselves with jumbo jets flying into buildings. Now they worry about cranes, as well:

New York has always been a city of construction cranes: They are the steel crutches of the skyline, forever pulling it upward. But when one of them collapsed on the East Side on Saturday — killing at least four people, demolishing a building and damaging at least five others — the disaster exposed the often-uneasy relationship cranes have had with the New Yorkers who walk below them.

Officials said that about 250 cranes were now in operation in the five boroughs, a telling sign of the city’s building boom. Construction cranes are towering behemoths, signposts of the city’s prosperity that dominate the skyline for months but often go unnoticed.

Yet on Sunday, those who lived, worked or happened to be walking near the cranes looked upward with anxiety, their nerves rattled by Saturday’s collapse.

A gas station cashier who works below a crane at West 24th Street and 10th Avenue said he trusted God to protect him. A neighbor who lives across the street, Ana Gonçalves, puts her faith in the builders and hopes they know what they are doing. Victor Simpkins, another neighbor, has watched the crane for weeks, but now he looks up at it with a new suspicion.

“If that thing would fall over, my building would be toast,” said Mr. Simpkins, 53, a designer and filmmaker.

. . .

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg acknowledged the danger of high-rise construction, but said residents near cranes were generally safe. “Do I think that you should worry if there’s a crane across the street?” the mayor said at a news conference on Sunday. “No. This is such a rare thing that I don’t think we should worry about it.”

But as cranes have proliferated, so, too, have accidents associated with them. Last year, there were eight crane-related “accidents,” up from five in 2006; and 21 crane-related “incidents,” up from 14. As the city’s Department of Buildings defines them, “accidents” involve fatalities or injuries, and “incidents” do not.

The collapse of the 205-foot crane on Saturday — described by city and union officials as one of the worst crane accidents in memory — gave rise to a grim New York City parlor game, one that pedestrians have doubtlessly played in the back of their minds over the years: If that crane fell, where would it hit?

“We thought about it, and we think if it falls, it will probably fall into the park or bounce off that clock tower,” said Jarrod Shandley, 25, who lives with two roommates in a penthouse that looks out onto a crane at East 23rd Street and Madison Avenue.

. . .

Some New Yorkers showed no fear of cranes. Mr. Shandley, who lives in the penthouse, said crane anxiety after Saturday’s collapse was “an irrational fear.” Mr. Shandley, who works for a financial research company, added, “I don’t think you should be any more worried about a crane than crossing the street and getting hit by a cab.”

Consumers seem to be wildly unimpressed by sushi-mercury scares:

Sara Barokas, a substitute teacher, noticed the yellow-and-red signs above the sushi case at the Gourmet Garage market on Broadway: “Protect yourself and your family!!! Mercury in sushi.”

By the time the sliding doors parted and she walked in at noontime on Wednesday, she had also heard about laboratory tests that found high levels of mercury in tuna bought at 20 Manhattan stores and restaurants, including the Gourmet Garage. Its tuna had the second-highest mercury level in the study, 1.25 parts per million.

She bought 12 pieces of tuna sushi anyway.

“It’s something I enjoy,” she said. “I don’t eat sushi every day, so in moderation is it really a problem? It sounds like one of those everyday things they tell us could be harmful. Last week, what was it, caffeine for pregnant women is harmful? That’s common sense.”

Next time you’re weekending at the Hamptons, consider the tsunami threat:

The risk is low. But the consequences could be high, with deadly waves striking the coastal communities of Long Island, Connecticut and New Jersey and killing thousands of people.

Today, the federal government is announcing that it has completed the mid-Atlantic region’s risk assessments for the killer mounds of water known as tsunamis, or tidal waves.

Scientists have long considered the West Coast of North America as the side of the continent most likely to suffer earthquakes and the undersea disturbances that raise tsunamis. But in recent years, with a growing appreciation of the diverse origins of the giant waves and their potential for havoc, experts have found new reasons for vigilance along the East Coast.

“Tsunamis are a real threat,” said Lisa Taylor, an official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is conducting the assessments for coastal regions that are considered at risk. A main factor is whether the land rises sharply or gently, the latter being more prone to poundings from unexpectedly high waves.

The project creates elevation maps of coastal lands and adjacent seafloors, helping scientists better forecast the areas that a tsunami would flood. The giant waves can arise hundreds of miles away, in theory giving emergency planners hours to send people to higher ground.

Part of the new analysis focuses on the easternmost area of Long Island, including East Hampton and Southampton, and the southeastern coast of Connecticut, including Mystic and Old Saybrook. The analysis also evaluates the risk for Atlantic City.

The bug of the hour has an air of great power:

The MRSA “superbug” infection that led to the death of a 12-year-old in Brooklyn last month is now showing up in schools and other public settings on Staten Island.

A Wagner College student came down with MRSA and a high school student at St. Joseph by-the-Sea has been rumored to have a drug-resistant strain of the infection, though officials at the Huguenot school have not confirmed that case.

A Wagner College spokesman confirmed yesterday that a student at the Grymes Hill campus had been diagnosed last week with MRSA, which often manifests as a skin infection and is resistant to most, but not all antibiotics. Officials there issued a campus-wide e-mail recently and mailed a letter to parents stating that a student had been found to have had the infection.

“. . . The student has responded well, and though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not require or even recommend community notification where there is a single, isolated case of MRSA diagnosed, we believed it prudent to share this information,” Wagner President Richard Guarasci wrote to parents.