Beating the beheaders

In the short time since he was elected Australia's prime minister, Tony Abbott has proved himself a determined world leader in the fight against Islamist terror.

In June, the PM declared that "it's certainly no time to be reducing the emphasis on good intelligence which has been a very important part of Australia's response to the terror threat."

This week, that intel paid off when his government foiled a directive from Afghanistan to behead innocent Australians in Sydney.

Two things that have special resonance for New York caught our attention:

First, more than 800 federal and local police executed 25 pre-dawn raids in 12 different Sydney suburbs to capture the suspects.

Second, Prime Minister Abbott says the plans to behead a random Australian was only days away from being carried out.

The events Down Under only confirm that Mayor de Blasio and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton weren't kidding when they warned about the threat of ISIS targeting New York.

But the success of Australian authorities in foiling this plot ought to underscore for the mayor and his police commissioner the foolishness of the decision to shut down NYPD's perfectly legal program to map communities where Islamist terrorists might seek help and sanctuary.

We're with Tony Abbott: This is no time to be closing down sources of vital intel.

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The nurses killed it

Remember the fear in Brooklyn's Cobble Hill neighborhood that it was going to lose its full-service hospital?

Then-candidate Bill de Blasio even got himself arrested outside SUNY's Midtown office as part of a protest against the state university's plans to unload its bankrupt Long Island College Hospital.

"People are going to be much sicker in this city if we keep losing hospitals," de Blasio said then.

Well, now it looks as though Cobble Hill has also lost the emergency room and clinics that were to replace it. For that, it can thank the nurses union and an activist judge.

Only a few weeks ago, it looked as if SUNY finally had a deal.

Under its terms, NYU's Langone Medical Center would run what was left of the hospital. That deal, alas, collapsed Thursday over demands by the nurses union that its members be hired to staff the new NYU medical facility.

The New York State Nurses Association had already won a temporary restraining order to keep the sale from going through. In that suit, the union had targeted SUNY — the seller.

But when Supreme Court Justice Johnny Lee Baynes ordered the union to sue the buyers as well — NYU's Langone Medical Center and developer Fortis Property Group — NYU pulled out of the deal.

Fortis says it still wants to go through with the $240 million sale but will be hard-pressed to find another medical partner. Which means the likeliest outcome is a total shutdown with no replacement.

Here's the bottom line: The community and judge who demanded more hospital beds get no beds at all. The union that demanded more jobs gets no jobs at all. And the man who egged it on is now mayor.

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Big drop in subway felonies so far this year: MTA, NYPD

Felonies in the subway system have plunged more than 14 percent so far this year, according to data ­released Friday by the NYPD and MTA.

From January through the end of August, there were 1,413 felonies, compared with 1,649 during the same period last year.

The decline was fueled by a dramatic decrease in robberies — 136 fewer this year than last. Grand larcenies also fell 7 percent, with 82 fewer so far this year.

Roughly six felonies are committed every day in the subway system, down from 17 in 1997.

The plunge in transit crime comes as top cop Bill Bratton has focused on quality-of-life crimes underground.

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3-D printer being sent to the International Space Station

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The 3-D printing boom is about to invade space.

NASA is sending a 3-D printer to the International Space Station in hopes that astronauts will be able to one day fix their spacecraft by cranking out spare parts on the spot.

The printer, made by a Northern California company called Made in Space, is among more than 5,000 pounds of space station cargo that's stuffed into a SpaceX Dragon capsule that was supposed to lift off before dawn Saturday. Rainy weather forced SpaceX to delay the launch until Sunday.

Besides real-time replacement parts at the station, NASA envisions astronauts, in the decades ahead, making entire habitats at faraway destinations like Mars.

"If we're really going to set up shop on Mars," we have to do this, Jeff Sheehy, NASA's senior technologist, said Friday. "We really can't afford to bring everything we need for an indefinite amount of time. We'll need to get to the point where we can make things that we need as we go."

At Kennedy Space Center, the company showed off a number of objects made by its 3-D printers. On display was a scaled-down model of an air filter that the Apollo 13 astronauts devised to survive their aborted moon mission in 1970. It took five hours to print the model in a lab.

SpaceX is making the supply run for NASA, the same California company that just won a huge contract to deliver U.S. astronauts to the space station. Its Falcon 9 rocket with an unmanned Dragon is scheduled to blast off at 1:52 a.m. Sunday; slightly better weather is expected.

This April 2014 photo provided by NASA shows a 3-D printer after it passed flight certification and acceptance testing at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.Photo: AP

Other Dragon payloads high on the cool or curious factor: a mouse X-ray machine and 20 mice; 30 fruit flies expected to have a population explosion in orbit, metal plating samples for a private research effort to build stronger golf clubs, and a $30 million instrument to measure the surface wind over Earth's oceans and improve hurricane forecasting.

The small 3-D printer on board is a demo unit meant to churn out sample items made from the same type of plastic used for Lego bricks.

It was designed to operate safely in weightlessness inside a sealed chamber. The printing process is the same as on Earth, creating an object with layer upon layer of plastic.

Once returned to Earth, the little 3-D creations will be "pulled and twisted and peeled and subjected to a lot of tests to determine the quality of the parts," said Sheehy.

Combined with efforts on the ground to make 3-D rocket parts out of metal — even entire engines — the space demonstrations "will give us confidence that the stuff we make by this method, even though it's new and innovative" does, indeed, have the durability of traditional parts, he said.

The space 3-D printer is barely a foot tall, 9½ inches wide and 14½ inches deep, counting the knobs on the front. A commercial 3-D printer — twice the size and dubbed "big brother" — will fly up next year, followed by a grinding machine for recycling discarded 3-D pieces.

NASA is sending a 3-D printer to the International Space Station in hopes that astronauts will be able to one day fix their spacecraft by cranking out spare parts on the spot.Photo: AP

"This is a huge, huge time for us," said Brad Kohlenberg, business development engineer for Made in Space.

The Mountain View, California, company has a staff of fewer than 25; most of them traveled to Cape Canaveral for the launch attempt.

This will be the fifth space station shipment for SpaceX, counting the 2012 test flight. The space agency also is paying Orbital Sciences Corp. of Virginia to make periodic deliveries.

SpaceX, along with Boeing, won huge contracts Tuesday for delivering U.S. astronauts to the space station beginning in 2017. That will enable NASA to stop relying so heavily on Russia, currently the only space station partner able to send crews up and down.

The Hawthorne, California, company founded by billionaire Elon Musk is shooting for its first crewed launch in 2016. The flight test crew will be a mix of NASA and SpaceX employees, confirmed Hans Koenigsmann, vice president of mission assurance for SpaceX. He said the company is still working out the details on whom to send up.

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Dozens of Turkish ISIS hostages freed

ANKARA, Turkey — Dozens of Turkish hostages seized by Islamic militants in Iraq three months ago were freed and safely returned to Turkey on Saturday, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said, ending Turkey's most serious hostage crisis.

The 49 hostages were captured from the Turkish Consulate in Mosul, Iraq on June 11, when the Islamic State group overran the city in its surge to seize large swaths of Iraq and Syria.

Their release contrasts with the recent beheadings of two U.S. journalists and a British aid worker by the Islamic State group, but it wasn't immediately clear what Turkey had done to secure the safe return of the hostages.

Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said the hostages are 49 Turkish consulate employees — 46 Turks and three local Iraqis. They include Consul General Ozturk Yilmaz, other diplomats, children and special forces police.

The hostages were released early on Saturday and had arrived in Turkey, Davutoglu told Turkish reporters during a visit to Baku, Azerbaijan. He cut his visit short to meet them in the province of Sanliurfa, near Turkey's border with Syria and was bringing them back to Ankara on his plane.

He didn't say where the release took place, but Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency said the hostages had been held in eight separate addresses in Mosul. Their whereabouts were monitored by drones and other means, it said.

Turkey had been reluctant to join a coalition to defeat the Islamic State group, citing the safety of its 49 kidnapped citizens. The United States had been careful not to push Turkey too hard as it tried to free the hostages.

The extremist group beheaded two U.S. journalists and a British aid worker who were working in Syria as payback for airstrikes that Washington has launched against them in Iraq.

Turkish leaders gave only limited details of the release and it wasn't clear what they had done to avoid a similar outcome for their hostages.

The Anadolu Agency reported no ransom had been paid and "no conditions were accepted in return for their release." The agency, which didn't cite any source, also reported there were five or six previous attempts to secure the Turks' release, but none of them were successful.

Davutoglu said the release was the result of the intelligence agency's "own methods," and not a "point operation" involving special forces, but didn't elaborate.

"After intense efforts that lasted days and weeks, in the early hours, our citizens were handed over to us and we brought them back to our country," Davutoglu said.

Meanwhile, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the Turks were freed through "a successful operation."

"I thank the prime minister and his colleagues for this operation which was pre-planned, whose every detail was calculated, which lasted through the night in total secrecy and ended successfully this morning," Erdogan said in a statement.

Iraqi military spokesman Lt. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi said the government had no information about the release of the hostages and didn't know where they had been held or where they were released.

Thirty-two Turkish truck drivers who were also seized in Mosul on June 6 were released a month later. Turkey did not provide information surrounding their release.

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Alibaba Group priced at $68 a share

It's set to be a $25 billion day for Jack Ma.

The founder's gargantuan Chinese e-commerce company, Alibaba Group, will sell its shares for $68 apiece on Friday morning on the New York Stock Exchange, which would make it the biggest initial public offering ever in the US.

The Alibaba IPO is one of the most anticipated this year, and would value the company at almost $168 billion — less than Facebook but more valuable than Amazon.

Alibaba, which was founded by Ma in 1999, started as a wholesale market for companies before adding other Web sites, such as Taobao, to become China's largest shopping site.

The company has 279 million active buyers — most of them in China — with $296 billion in total sales for the 12 months ended in June, according to the company's IPO filing.

That's more than eBay and Amazon's total sales — combined.

The projected $25 billion stock sale would put it ahead of Visa's nearly $18 billion IPO in 2008.

The shares were originally priced at as much as $66 last week, before getting bumped up to $68 amid rabid demand.

While Wall Street has been salivating to get its hands on the stock, the company comes with a slew of risks.

Alibaba doesn't sell any products but acts as a marketplace that provides its own payment system, Alipay, to conduct deals, according to regulatory filings.

The shares are expected to start trading sometime after 9:30 a.m. on Friday under the ticker BABA.

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Apple University hires Wenner Media’s Rev Chief David Kang

Apple University, the secretive in-house training program of the tech titan, has raided Wenner Media and hired away it chief revenue officer.

David Kang, a Harvard Business School grad, was Wenner's chief digital officer before being elevated to the CRO job this past June.

Kang is headed to Cupertino, Calif., by Sept. 30, sources said, where he will be a teacher.

A spokeswoman for Wenner, home of Rolling Stone, Men's Journal and Us Weekly, confirmed only that Kang had "resigned" — although he was still in the office as of Thursday.

Kang did not return a call seeking comment.

Apple University was started by Steve Jobs in 2008 and is run by the former head of the Yale School of Management, Joel Podolny.

We asked Apple for confirmation that Kang was headed to Apple — and to confirm his job title — but had not gotten a response by press time.

Apple is said to frown on its employees discussing the University, which is a year-round classroom training center.

On the Wenner front, it suggests the Jann Wenner's succession plan may have hit a speed bump.

Kang had developed mobile web apps for the company's three magazines and negotiated a content deal with Yahoo!

He was seen as a vital ally of Gus Wenner, the 23-year old son of the company founder.

The younger Wenner is being piped as the near-term successor to take over the company from his 68-year old dad.

No replacement has been named for Kang.

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Olive Garden workers have beef with Starboard

Restaurant workers blasted a hedge fund's elaborate menu of cost cuts for Olive Garden, charging that employees would foot the bill.

Starboard Value LP startled investors last week with a 294-page presentation that pressed Olive Garden parent Darden Restaurants to slash spending on myriad items, including the practice of offering unlimited breadsticks.

But it was Starboard's ideas on cutting labor spending that caught the eye of worker groups, including recommendations to eliminate prep cooks from the kitchen and force wait staff to do jobs previously done by bussers and food runners.

"We're people, we aren't assets to be sold off," said Steve Gazzo, who has been employed by Olive Garden for the past six years.

Officials at Starboard, which is looking to replace Darden's entire board at the company's Oct. 8 shareholder meeting, didn't respond to a request for comment Thursday.

In its presentation last week, Starboard said Darden's Olive Garden restaurants and LongHorn Steakhouses could save as much as $36 million a year by reducing the ranks of prep cooks and outsourcing it to suppliers.

"The Olive Garden and LongHorn menus appear too complex with too many items, making it inefficient to prep and make entrees," Starboard griped on page 117 of its presentation. "Increased complexity also drives more effort tied to training of restaurant staff."

Separately Thursday, Darden said in a statement that Starboard's hyper-detailed demands amounted to "micromanaging" that could hamper the company's search for a new CEO.

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Louise Blouin hit with new lawsuit

There is more trouble for The Red Queen.

The mini art-publishing empire of Louise Blouin took its biggest hit to date as printing giant R.R. Donnelley slapped the publisher of Modern Painters and Art + Auction with a new lawsuit. The suit seeks a judgment after Blouin stopped making payments on a $1 million printing tab, it is alleged.

Donnelley had already dragged Blouin to court earlier this year, claiming at that time she owed them $754,588.96.

She was able to get a $15,000 "credit" on the bill and agreed in a March 19 settlement to begin making $20,000 a month installment payments.

While she was making payments on the past due amount, the printer very generously started printing her magazines again and allowed her to run up a new bill of $290,370.54

But then in July the payments stopped. The latest suit, filed by Donnelley lawyer Samuel Grafton on Sept. 16 says the unpaid tab has swollen to $1,008,024.07.

Blouin, dubbed The Red Queen by former employees, at one time was pegged as among the 200 richest women in Britain thanks to the sale of a auto classified shopper empire that was founded by herself and her now ex-husband.

The Red Queen was derived from her fashion attire as well as for her "off with their heads" management style.

In the Donnelley case, she had personally guaranteed the payments in her mid-March settlement and is named as a defendant in the suit along with Louise Blouin Media and LTB Media.

Blouin recently put her posh duplex in a Richard Meir-designed building on Charles St. on the block for $34 million, according to the Real Deal.

Blouin also owns a beachfront home with a fancy guest house on Gin Lane in Southampton. Neither of those addresses are listed as her residence in the Donnelley suit, which puts her home at 88
Laight St. in Manhattan, not far from the new offices the firm moved into earlier this year.

Media Ink attempted to reach Blouin by text, e-mail and phone without success.

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Roger Goodell, Ray Rice react in similar manners

The crisis over domestic violence by NFL players and Commissioner Roger Goodell's admitted mishandling of the Ray Rice matter has the football executive reacting in a manner very similar to the former Ravens running back.

As recently as Thursday, Goodell was forced to deal with angry corporate partners and try to convince them his missteps will not be repeated, that he has taken steps to improve his understanding of the matter and that it won't happen again.

"The league is saying things like, 'We're sorry. We'll get it right next time. Let's overlook this,' " says David Johnson, a crisis-communications expert at Strategic Vision.

"And you can hear Rice saying the same thing about himself while apologizing to his wife."

Rice was seen in a video made public earlier this month punching his wife in an Atlantic City casino elevator in July and then dragging her limp body pout into the hall.

The video sparked a national debate on domestic violence among NFL players — and Goodell's handling of the situation.

Goodell gave Rice just a two-game suspension — which many thought was too light. It wasn't until the video surfaced that the commish got tough.

After the video came out, Rice was fired by his team.

It didn't help Goodell's position when other players were hit with similar charges.

"Every infraction is going to get warped into a bigger and bigger public-relations crisis," Johnson says.

Had the NFL given the player an indefinite suspension then — rather than wait until a horrific second video surfaced — it would have some credibility.

"It could have said we dealt with it," Johnson says.

That may have kept Goodell from having to resort to after the fact Rice-like actions — trying to convince NFL team owners, and the nation, that has learned from his mistakes and that it will never happen again.

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