The Yankees Want To Kill You

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.)

Give A Hoot, Groping Brute!

Try explaining this PSA to your children:

City transit officials have prepared a campaign to combat deviants who grope or molest women on the subway — but have been sitting on it because of fears the ads could actually encourage sickos.

The New York City Transit campaign was set into motion after a study last year by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer found that 10 percent of women surveyed reported having been sexually abused in the subway and 63 percent claimed to have been sexually harassed.

Stringer recommended a publicawareness campaign, which NYC Transit quietly prepared. The agency made it as far as developing mock-ups, which never went to print.

Sources said the agency held off on launching the campaign out of fear it could actually provoke deviant behavior.

. . .

Anti-groping campaigns have been launched in cities such as Boston, where trains and buses are adorned with posters bearing such slogans as “Rub against me and I’ll expose you,” and “Flash someone and you’ll be exposed.”

The number of reported groping incidents there did rise with the campaign, officials said. Boston police said there were 38 incidents reported through June of this year compared with 17 during the same period last year — but attributed the rise to increased reporting.

Perhaps You Were Wondering Why No One Thought You Were Serious About Reducing Traffic Congestion?

I don’t know, closing lanes on Broadway to allow for cafe seating sounds like a great way to reduce soaring asthma rates:

In a surprising reshaping of the urban landscape, the city is creating a public esplanade along a portion of one of its most prominent streets, Broadway in Midtown, setting aside the east side of the roadway for a bicycle lane and a pedestrian walkway with cafe tables, chairs, umbrellas and flower-filled planters.

The esplanade, which the city is calling Broadway Boulevard, will run from 42nd Street to Herald Square. Scheduled to open in mid-August, it will change that section of Broadway from a four-lane to a two-lane street.

“I’m envisioning it as a public park on the street,” said Barbara Randall, the executive director of the Fashion Center Business Improvement District, which is working with the city’s Department of Transportation to create the boulevard.

The work, which has begun without a formal public announcement, reflects Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s sweeping vision of reducing pollution and traffic congestion in New York, and particularly Manhattan, by increasing open space and encouraging bike riding and other alternatives to cars.

The plan also makes clear that the Bloomberg administration, after losing its bid in Albany for a congestion-pricing plan that would have fought traffic by charging drivers to enter the area of Manhattan below 59th Street, intends to push ahead with smaller-scale initiatives to wrest at least part of the street from cars and trucks.

What Part Of 85 Activists Murdered, The Opposition Pulling Out Of A Runoff, Toddlers Having Their Legs Shattered And Elderly People Seeing Their Arms Broken Do You Not Understand?*

Clyde Haberman can’t say it so I will — Charles Barron is totally fucking disgusting for apologizing for Robert Mugabe in 2008. Wow:

Foreign leaders aren’t routinely honored with receptions at New York’s City Hall. In the last two decades, as best as we can tell, only two Africans have received this red-carpet treatment.

One was the revered Nelson Mandela. That was in 1990, when David N. Dinkins was mayor. Mr. Mandela had been released four months earlier from his 27 years of imprisonment in South Africa.

The other leader was President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Not many people put his name and “revered” together.

Perhaps they once did, when he led the liberation of his country, then called Rhodesia, from oppressive rule by its white minority. But by 2002, when he was ushered into New York’s seat of democracy, he was a certified human rights disaster.

Rights groups condemned him for jailing and torturing political opponents, for repressing independent-minded judges and journalists, for starving many of his people by denying government food aid to opposition-dominated districts.

His signature program, the seizure of white-owned farms, was blamed for contributing to mass hunger and for amounting to a land grab that benefited only his loyalists.

This was the man warmly welcomed at City Hall under the aegis of the City Council’s Black, Hispanic and Asian Caucus. His main host was Councilman Charles Barron of Brooklyn, a former Black Panther who has lost none of his zest for revolutionary oratory, 1960s-style.

Only a dozen of the Council’s 51 members attended the event. But the many who stayed away, fearing the third-rail potential of a racially sensitive issue, acquiesced with their silence. Gifford Miller, then the Council speaker, issued a statement calling the reception a matter of free speech.

Six years later, the human-rights situation in Zimbabwe has hardly improved. A runoff presidential election set for Friday has been marked by violence, with dozens of opposition supporters reported to have been killed. The opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, though he won the first election round, withdrew from the race and took refuge in the Dutch Embassy. On Wednesday, no less than Mr. Mandela registered strong disapproval, condemning the “tragic failure of leadership” in Zimbabwe.

Given all that, might Mr. Barron harbor second thoughts about having brought Mr. Mugabe into City Hall?

“Absolutely not,” the councilman said.

“Does he do things that I disagree with? Yes,” Mr. Barron said. But he clearly still regards Mr. Mugabe as a liberator more than an oppressor. “You didn’t care about black Africans when whites were killing them in Rhodesia,” he said. As he sees it, the real reason that Mr. Mugabe has come under strong attack from the West is the confiscation of white-owned farms.

Echoing Mr. Mugabe’s party line, he suggested that Mr. Tsvangirai is a tool of “British imperialism and the United States as well.” As for political violence, “I don’t think we can deny people are dying,” Mr. Barron said. “Who’s responsible and how many — we need to really get reports other than from the opposition.”

*Or do you not read the paper, moron?

Next Up: Opentable.com For City Hall Protests

And it wouldn’t be a protest at City Hall without Sheldon Silver:

The group scrambled under the portico at the top of the steps outside City Hall, seeking shelter from the rain. Paul Nagle, communications director for Councilman Alan J. Gerson, checked his cellphone for the time — 10:18 a.m. — and turned to the reporters gathered to cover the first of two back-to-back news conferences on the steps.

“O.K., we’re going to start as soon as Sheldon Silver gets through the magnetometers because we don’t want to lose New York 1 to the fire in Queens,” Mr. Nagle said.

Flustered, he had found himself juggling a competing news story and a delay by Mr. Silver, the speaker of the State Assembly and the news conference’s guest of honor, as the clock ticked toward the end of his allotted hour.

At 11 a.m., State Senator Eric Adams was scheduled to take over the spot.

“I’ll just wait for my turn,” Mr. Adams said as he stood off to the side.

The steps of City Hall — once the scene of loud, colorful protests and even a few violent riots — are now available only by appointment and must be booked much like a Saturday morning tee time.

With the public banned from City Hall Plaza, the only potential audience is the overstretched press corps, and only a few time slots — clustered around noon — really matter. Competition for them is intense.