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AVOCADOS: Prepare at your own risk Avocados are so dangerous, they may soon carry a warning label in the UK. Amateur cooks just can’t seem to slice up the fruit — a staple of brunch fare and Mexican food — without also chopping into their hands, according to a report from the Times of London. British surgeons have seen such a spike in the number of people who seriously injure themselves while trying to penetrate avocados’ rubbery skin and remove its finicky pit that they’ve dubbed the condition “avocado hand.” The British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons is demanding a warning label on the trendy food, which is actually quite healthy if consumers can manage to remove the skin and pit without also removing their own fingers. The problem is so pervasive that doctors at London’s St. Thomas Hospital expect a “post-brunch surge” of avocado-related injuries on Saturdays, the paper reported. A warning label could also include avoca-do’s and don’ts on how to safely dismantle the apparently hazardous fruit, according to one proponent. “We don’t want to put people off the fruit, but I think warning labels are an effective way of dealing with this,” surgeon Simon Eccles told the Times of London. “Perhaps we could have a cartoon picture of an avocado with a knife, and a big red cross going through it?” Police said Wednesday they have identified a person of interest in an attack where two men hurled avocados like baseballs at a Bronx deli worker, breaking the victim’s jaw. NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said a tipster helped identify one of the two men caught on video in the bizarre May 29 attack at the Stadium Gourmet Deli near Yankee Stadium on E. 161st St. and Walton Ave. Cops are trying to find that person. Police said the two assailants ordered sandwiches around 4:45 a.m. and became enraged when the cook got the order wrong. Surveillance video released by cops Tuesday shows one of the men, his hair shaved close and dressed in a black T-shirt with a graphic print, grabbing an armful of $2 avocados from a display near the counter. He scowls, then starts throwing them, one at a time, at the employee, who clutches his face and collapses. A bearded man, dressed in jeans, a white shirt and a blue vest, and holding his belt in his hand, joins in moments later. He grabs a handful of avocados and starts hurling them, lashes his belt in the air, and pulls down a store display. The first man can be seen jumping over the counter before he snatched a bunch of bananas and tossed them at the workers. The 21-year-old clerk who bore the brunt of the attack, identified by sources as Amir Alzabibi, suffered fractures to his face and a broken jaw, cops said. Medics took him to Lincoln Hospital in stable condition. Police are calling it grand theft avocado. Three produce company workers have been arrested in the theft of up to $300,000 worth of avocados, according to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office. Thirty-eight-year-old Joseph Valenzuela, 28-year-old Carlos Chavez and 30-year-old Rahim Leblanc were each charged with grand theft of fruit and were being held in jail on bail of $250,000 each. They were arrested Wednesday. It was unclear whether they have attorneys. Detectives began investigating the suspects in May after receiving a tip that they were conducting unauthorized cash sales of avocados from a ripening facility in the city of Oxnard owned by the Mission Produce company. The company estimated the avocado loss at about $300,000, the sheriff’s office said. “We take these kinds of thefts seriously. It’s a big product here and in California,” sheriff’s Sgt. John Franchi told the Los Angeles Times. “Everybody loves avocados.”

TYLER There was never a major league baseball player with the first name of Tyler before 1993. Now there have been close to 40. Tyler Austin is currently the Yankee first baseman. Recently, infielder Tyler Wade made his debut. I think he’s cute.

China built a solar field in the shape of a giant panda Renewable energy is good for the environment and can, apparently, enhance youth education when presented in an absolutely adorable way.A new 248-acre solar panel field in Datong, China looks like a giant panda bear. The Panda Power Plant started delivering power to a grid in northwestern China this week, and a second power panda is expected to go up later this year. The builders, China Merchants New Energy Group, developed the pandas along with the United Nations Development Program as part of a bigger initiative to educate young people about clean energy. “As the future of development, the youth have the opportunity to contribute to world-wide sustainable development,” the UNDP wrote in a statement. “UNDP will work to promote and popularize the promotion of new energy through summer camps and open innovation design contests. The initiatives aim to engage the youth of China and assist in developing the future leaders in the green energy field.” In total, the plants will be able to produce 3.2 billion kilowatt-hours of solar energy over 25 years, roughly the same as running an average TV, 24 hours per day for 3.65 million years. And by generating so much power from the sun, the pandas are expected to reduce China’s carbon emissions by 2.74 million tons, the equivalent of emissions generated by powering an average home for 210,769 years.

Two gay high school students whose quotes were removed from their senior yearbook say they’re “disheartened and angry” by the “senseless censorship” behind the move. Joey Slivinski and Thomas Swartz, who recently graduated from Kearney High School in Missouri,told KCTVthey submitted their senior quotes for the yearbook on time just like their other classmates — only to realize that something was amiss when they cracked open the keepsake. Without warning, school district officials had scrubbed their quotes out of concern that they could “potentially offend” other students. “Of course I dress well, I didn’t spend all that time in the closet for nothing,” Slivinski’s original quote read. Swartz, meanwhile, had submitted this: “If Harry Potter taught us anything, it’s that no one should have to live in the closet.” Slivinki, in a Facebook post last week, said he had always felt that his sexual orientation was respected in his community until his quotes were scrubbed. “I put a very innocent quote as my senior quote and they took it away from me with absolutely no warning or option to change it,” Slivinski wrote, adding, “Our schools are supposed to be a place that you can express being who you are.” Swartz said in a Facebook post that he didn’t need to be “protected from small minded people” and that he came out to his parents when he was 15 years old. “The only people I need protection from are the people directly involved with deleting my statement and infringing upon my civil rights,” Swartz wrote last week. District officials said they were trying to “protect” students by removing the quotes but acknowledged their “mistake” in offending another group of students. “In an effort to protect our students, quotes that could potentially offend another student or groups of students are not published,” the statement read. “It is the school’s practice to err on the side of caution. Doing so in this case had the unintentional consequence of offending the very students the practice was designed to protect. We sincerely apologize to those students.” The district’s statement also noted the “importance of inclusion and acceptance,” particularly in an educational setting. “We work diligently to help every student feel safe, supported, and included,” the statement continued. “District staff participate in ongoing training around issues of diversity and support student organizations that do the same. That being said, we acknowledge our mistake and will use it as a learning opportunity to improve in the future.” Slivinski and Swartz told KCTV they plan to make stickers to insert their quotes back into their yearbooks as well as those of their friends. “I’m proud to be from Kearney and I’m proud to be whom I am,” Slivinski told the station. “I’m just disappointed at what happened.”