Archbishop Wenski leads 90-mile motorcycle run

After a blessing, motorcycles roared their engines and drove out of St. Richard Catholic Church in Palmetto Bay to participate in the first Motorcycle Poker Run organized by the Archdiocese of Miami.

Heading the bikers: Archbishop Thomas Wenski wearing a biker’s leather jacket and riding his black Harley-Davidson Street Glide motorcycle.

“Bikers are people that are accustomed to praying because if you’re going to ride a motorcycle, you should know how to pray,” said Wenski, who has been riding his motorcycle for about 10 years. “This is a way to bring some good attention, find financial support for St. Luke’s Center [Catholic Charity] and have a good time.”

Behind him, more than 60 other riders followed for about 90 miles through South Florida roads.

“Today he is not just my spiritual leader,” said Natacha Quiroz, the only woman driving a motorcycle on her own. “He is my road leader.”

At every stop, including Robert Is Here, the fruit and vegetable farm stand in Florida City, Cafe 27 in Weston, and Peterson’s Harley-Davidson in Miami Gardens, the contestants picked up a card, eventually collecting a complete poker hand.

The bikers were also able to interact with the archbishop and others while competing for the $500 Harley-Davidson gift card.

But Wenski’s favorite stop was at the Schoenstatt Center in Homestead, where riders were able to stop at the chapel, say a private prayer and enjoy refreshments.

“It’s always good to ride with good people,” said Bob Borges of Hollywood, who rode with his daughter. “The problem with a lot of other rides is that they all go from bar to bar to bar, and I don’t drink when I ride.”

The Chrome Knights Motorcycle Association and other groups helped the archdiocese organize the poker run and guided the inexperienced drivers. Volunteers from the organization also helped guide the riders and stop traffic at intersections.

For Quiroz, who had never experienced riding in a group, the privilege of riding with the archbishop was indescribable.

“My heart is pounding so hard,” said Quiroz, who took out her motorcycle from her garage for the fist time in more than a year. “My motorcycle is the tiniest among these huge machines, and if you see me I look like a butterfly among eagles. But to know that I’m the only girl makes me feel like an eagle, I am proud.”

The Poker Run, according to the Rev. Luis Rivero, was also a way to show others that following Christ can be fun.

“It’s a way for us to learn to use the tools of today, speak the language of the younger generations and bridge the gap between the ancient and the new,” said Rivero, who has been riding his three-wheeled Spyder for the past three years. “The archbishop makes fun of me and says that because I have three wheels I’m still in training.”

The proceeds of the run will go to programs that help people in the community recover from various types of addiction, and Wenski is hoping to establish the poker run as annual event to support St. Luke’s.

“Many people know I’ve been riding a motorcycle for some years now, so hopefully they’ll support it even if they don’t ride a motorcycle,” Wenski said. “I pray before, during and after I ride my bike.”

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COUPLES ALERT! Date Night Pics at the Oscars

COUPLES ALERT: Date Night Pics at the Oscars

From expecting parents Channing Tatum & Jenna Dewan to Hollywood power couple Nicole Kidman & Keith Urban, Sunday's Oscars red carpet was full of well-suited celebrities! Click the pics to check out the hottest pairs on the red carpet!

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Total Kimfestation

You can run, but you can’t hide — from Kim Kardashian, that is. She’s everywhere, famous for being a professional celebrity who’s never really “done” anything to speak of.

It’s a falling Star — and not because of media cross-currents eating away circulation — but because it keeps chronicling the likes of KK as an anointed queen of pop culture. Even the checkout-aisle crowd is weary of the over-exposed plump tart, who is getting attention simply because she’s expecting. Indeed, Star’s cover trumpets: “Kim Got Pregnant For $22 Million!” Sure she did, the story goes, and it says Kim’s also using her baby bump to cover up fraud allegations. Along the edge of the cover, thumbnails of celebrities reveal another four show-business scandals, e.g., tragic last words of a star’s suicide, cocaine woes, divorce crises and battles with a new beau. Back in the early days of Star, in the late 1970s and 1980s — it turns 40 next year — the tabloid thrived on the hard work of real reporters. Not anymore.

Leave it to Us Weekly to suck the life out of celebrity dishing. The celeb rag is a downright drag to read. That’s mostly because it fails to dig up real dirt or titillating tidbits that might merit a read during a wait in the doctor’s office. Instead, readers get bored by a tired array of silly photo spreads. One titled “Umbrella Holders” shows — yes, you guessed it — photos of George Clooney and Justin Timberlake holding umbrellas. One might conclude that this is some sort of inside joke if it weren’t for other equally vapid photo features, such as “Stars — They’re Just Like Us!” If that were the case, why buy the magazine? The longer features fall flat, particularly the one on Kardashian clan matriarch Kris Jenner. Another piece fails to reveal any of the promised “secrets” of the final three women vying for the affection of ABC’s reality show “The Bachelor” Sean Lowe.

Since when did InTouch morph from celebrity mag to reality rag? The mag’s cover is overly strewn with reality stars we never heard of, touting news on the “virgin” bachelor and the “booty wars” of the “Real Housewives of Atlanta.” (Seems one of the “RHOA” stars is claiming a co-star’s tushie is filled with silicon.) But while we’re sick of hearing about the queens of reality TV, the Kardashians, we must admit that the cover story is scandalously intriguing. According to InTouch, Kris is so desperate to stay on top that she’s started promoting her young teen daughters, Kendall and Kylie.

It turns out there is more to life than looking at stunning actresses wearing swanky gowns. You can always fixate on their pregnancies, as the baby bump issue of OK! does this week. Pregnancy and childbirth is not a new phenomenon, so there is really not much to say. Jennifer Aniston is pregnant and getting married, in that order. It isn’t even scandalous. Yawn.

People is not keeping up with the Kardashians. Mercifully, you won’t find Kim or her sisters on the cover this week. This edition leads with the suicide of Mindy McCready. It is hard to tell if People just took a different route than competitors as some kind of Kardashian protest. People has only one Kardashian photo, and it has nothing to do with pregnancy or divorce. Photos of Kim and other fashionable women are compared with styles worn by dogs at the Westminster Dog Show. It is a new inter-species take on “Who Wore It Best?”

You can imagine that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has no love for the New Yorker. The March 4 issue’s convincing cover story “What’s Wrong With The Republicans” makes the case, after spending time with him, that he is a big part of the problem since he feels the Republican product is still saleable. Another revealing feature describes how reporters at the Newtown Bee weekly had mixed feelings reporting on the national tragedy that gripped their town. BTW, New Yorker editors, even the Newtown Bee wouldn’t have seen the news value in the “Talk of the Town” piece about how Bruce Ratner loves the food at the Barclays Center.

New York’s feature story on gay divorce is neither shocking nor particularly interesting. After all, a great majority of gay couples, it admits in the piece, are still trying to get married, not untie the knot. Better in the content-starved issue is a feature on St. John’s former dean Cecilia Chang and how she justified stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Catholic university before committing suicide. Even David Bowie, who has released his first album in 10 years, might have a chuckle at New York’s three-page tribute to him. The hard-to-read feature says he was “always sincere with his insincerity.” Even Bowie would have be smirking over that one — see China Girl or Tin Machine.

Time’s ground-breaking cover story on “Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us” will make readers angry and could possibly change the way people think about hospitals. Reporter/Editor Steven Brill makes the case that even hospital CEOs do not know why hospitals charge multiples more for aspirin and gauze than patients could pay in a drug store. Time does not necessarily get to the bottom of why hospitals charge so much but it deserves much credit for highlighting the huge inefficiencies.

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Miami medicine goes digital

About 10 years ago, Dr. Fleur Sack quit her practice as a family physician to become a hospital department head. Spurring her decision was the need to switch from paper records to electronic ones to keep her private practice profitable. “At that time, it would have cost about $50,000,” Dr. Sack recalled. “It was too expensive and it was too overwhelming.”

But times and technologies changed, and last year, Dr. Sack left her hospital job to restart her medical practice with an affordable system for managing electronic patient records. She agreed to a $5,000 setup fee and a subscription fee of $500 per month for the system. Her investment also qualified her for subsidy money, which the federal government pays in installments, and to date, her subsidy income has paid for the setup fee and about two years of monthly fees. “So far, I’ve got my check for $18,000,” she said. “There’s a total of $44,000 that I can get.”

That kind of cash flow is one reason why so-called EHR software systems for electronic health records have been among the hottest-selling commercial products in the world of information technology. EHR system development is a growth industry in South Florida, too. Life sciences and biotechnology are among the high growth-potential sectors identified by the Beacon Council-led One Community One Goal economic development initiative unveiled in 2012; already, the University of Miami has opened a Health Science Technology Park while Florida International University has launched a program in its graduate school of business oriented toward biotechnology businesses.

For many young businesses in the area’s IT industry, government incentives are paving the way. The federal government is pushing doctors and hospitals to use electronic health records to cut wasteful spending and improve patient care while protecting patient privacy — sending digital information via encrypted systems, for example, rather than regular email.

Under a 2009 federal law known as the HITECH Act, maximum incentive payments for buying such systems range up to $44,000 for doctors with Medicare patients and up to $63,750 for doctors with Medicaid patients. Hospitals are eligible for larger incentive payments for becoming more paperless. The subsidy program isn’t permanent; eligible professionals must begin receiving payments by 2016. But by then, the federal government will be penalizing doctors and hospitals that take Medicare or Medicaid money without making meaningful use of electronic health records.

“What the government did is, they incentivized, and now they’re going to penalize,” said Andrew Carricarte, president and CEO of IOS Health Systems in Miami, one of the largest South Florida-based vendors of online software service for physician practices. He said insurance companies also may start penalizing physicians for failing to adopt electronic health records because “the commercial payers always follow Medicare and Medicaid.”

It’s all part of the growth story at IOS Health Systems, which has more than 2,000 physicians across the nation using its online EHR system. Carricarte said many of the company’s customers buy their second EHR system from IOS after their first one flopped. “Almost 40 percent of our sales come from customers who had systems and are now switching over to something else,” he said.

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Women’s History Month to kick off at Miami City Cemetery

Women’s History Month will kick off on March 1, with an invitation from the Women’s History Coalition of Miami-Dade County inviting the community to its observance at noon at the grave site of Julia Tuttle at the Miami City Cemetery, 1800 NE Second Ave.

The coalition begins the month-long celebration of women and their contributions to Miami and Dade County with this tribute to Tuttle, the founder of Miami. Penny Lambeth, chairwoman of the Cemetery Restoration committee, will portray Julia Tuttle, who was born in Cleveland and was an entrepreneur and businesswoman. As the founder of Miami, she is known as the only woman to found a major U.S. city. She and Mary Brickell owned the land the city was built on.

The coalition has a multi-ethnic board of directors elected by its membership annually. Its primary purpose is to coordinate and promote Women’s History Month, which is observed nationally each March.

This year is the 25th anniversary of the "Women of Impact" Award, also known as the "Julia." A luncheon celebrating the 2013 honorees and a Photographic Exhibition of the Women of Impact 1989-2013, will be from 3 to 5:30 p.m. on March 3, at the Hyatt Regency Coral Gables, 50 Alhambra Plaza in Coral Gables. The theme is "Women Inspiring Innovation Through Imagination: Celebrating Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics." Tickets are $50 per person and $45 for members of The Coalition. Reservations are due by Tuesday. Call 305-255-4944 or email Margaret Slama at margaretmslama@aol.com.

The honorees are, Scherley Busch, Milagros R. Fornell, Michelle Dunaj Lucking, Rhonda Omega Shirley, Margaret M. Slama, Dorothy M. Wallace, and Carol F. Williamson.

Also, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesday The coalition and the Miami-Dade County Commission for Women will have a lobby display at the Stephen P. Clark Center, 111 NW First St. Lambeth will again do her portrayal of Julia Tuttle. The Women’s History Month exhibit will be on display in the lobby throughout March.

Jazz band is a finalist in national competition

Our hats are off to Mark Hart, Executive and Artistic Director of Miami’s Community Arts Program All-Star Jazz Ensemble.

Hart got the word Wednesday that the All-Star Jazz Band was named among the 15 finalists in the prestigious 18th Annual Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition and Festival. The jazz group was chosen from over 100 recordings submitted from bands across the United States and Canada. It is the only after-school jazz band chosen from throughout the competition’s Region Four, made up of Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and West Virginia.

During the three-day Competition and Festival in New York City, May 10-12, the band will compete and participate in activities to include workshops and jam sessions. The three top placing bands will perform at Lincoln Center with Wynton Marsalis Artistic Director of Jazz at the Center, as guest soloist.

Play highlights role of black churches

James Baldwin’s classic The Amen Corner, a three-act play addressing the themes of the role of a church in an African American family, and the effects of poverty born of racial prejudice on an African American community.

Directed by Teddy Harrell, Jr., the play stars Brandiss Seward, Janet Toni Mason, Sarah Gracel Anderson, Carolyn Johnson, Regina Hopkins Hodges, Larmar Hodges, Jeffery Cason Jr., André L. Gainey, Ajia Williams, Yvonne Strachan and Toddra Brunson-Solimon, and features Adrian Bell, Hasani Morey and Leondra Mitchell. The play is at the African Heritage Cultural Arts Center, 6161 NW 22nd Ave. in Liberty City.

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The week's winners and losers

WINNERS

DAVID EINHORN

Hedgie seeking to return some of Apple’s $137 billion to investors wins big court ruling.

MICHAEL CORBAT

Citibank CEO rakes in $11.5M pay package. Not bad for 4 months’ work.

LARRY PAGE

More good news for Google CEO: Analysts project $1K share price.

LOSERS

JAMIE DIMON

JPM CEO/chairman fights move to split the 2 jobs in wake of London Whale mess.

CHARLIE ERGEN

Dish Network boss has disappointing Q4; shares plunge earthward nearly 7 percent for the week.

QUEEN ELIZABETH

Moody’s sees sun setting on the empire’s finances, downgrades UK a notch to Aa1.

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Restaurant royalty and SoBe style

For Miami restaurateurs, this is Showtime.

With dozens of top toques — Bobby Flay, Todd English, Daniel Boloud and Masaharu Morimoto among the list — in town for the South Beach Wine & Food Festival, the pressure is on everywhere, from Michy’s to the new Catch Miami. The goal: Show everyone from around the country that Miami’s food scene has arrived on the national stage.

Chef Michelle Bernstein’s staff whipped up dishes designed to impress guests at Michy’s — like foie gras, oxtail and apple tarte tatin — while she juggled menus for multiple events. Bernstein kept her cellphone handy to make sure any chef friends could get a table, even though her namesake restaurant was sold out.

As always, Joe’s Stone Crab was a must-do stop for many, including Paula Deen and New York restaurateur Danny Meyer. Aussie Chef Curtis Stone attracted a string of admirers as he ate his way around town, with stops at Prime 112, Pubbelly Sushi and Puerto Sagua. Khong River House and Yardbird Southern Table & Bar hosted Meyer, The Food Network’s Anne Burrell and Chef Anita Lo.

Michael’s Genuine was another hot spot.

“This is kind of our coming out party for Khong and it’s our chance to knock it out of the park and wow people,” said John Kunkel, owner of Khong and Yardbird.

Prime 112 owner Myles Chefetz admits he’s a fanatic about checking plates when they come back from a chef’s table. And he’s always on the lookout for the table ordering 20 different items, because that’s usually a restaurateur doing research.

“If you have Jean-Gorges or Bobby Flay eating at your restaurant, you want to make sure he has a great experience,” Chefetz said. “You want to put your best foot forward because you know you’re going to get scrutinized.”

The Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival is not just a forum for impressing the culinary elite. It’s among the top three tourist draws for Miami restaurants and hotels. In its 12th year, the festival draws more than 60,000 people to Miami Beach for a weekend of decadence, featuring more than 50 events spread over four days.

It is neck and neck with two of the area’s other most prominent weekends: Art Basel and Presidents’ Day (which coincides with the Miami International Boat Show).

There’s the immediate economic impact, of course, but the festival has made its mark in other ways: helping transform Miami’s food scene from a cultural wasteland to one of the country’s hot spots, one where top chefs all want to set up shop.

“Twelve years ago I don’t know if you could even name five really good restaurants. Now, you can’t think of where you want to eat because there are so many good restaurants,” said Lee Brian Schrager, festival founder and vice president of communications for Southern Wine & Spirits, its host. “What the festival can take credit for is introducing the culinary world to the great talent down here, and really highlighting South Florida as a great dining destination.”

There has been plenty of indulgence to go around. Flay finally broke his losing streak and took home top honors at the Burger Bash with his award-winning crunchified green chili burger. At the Q, barbecue lovers had their choice of Al Roker’s lamb ribs with baked beans or Geoffrey Zakarian’s smoked tagarashi crusted tuna, among other offerings.

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Miami police union challenges officer’s firing for fatal shooting

The Fraternal Order of Police filed a lawsuit against the city of Miami on Friday, asserting that an officer who fatally shot an unarmed motorist in 2011 was improperly fired from the police department.

Officer Reynaldo Goyos shot and killed Travis McNeil as he sat in a car at a Little Haiti intersection. It was one of a string of seven deadly shootings of black men in the inner city by Miami police officers in 2010 and 2011.

Goyos was cleared of criminal wrongdoing by prosecutors in 2012. But he was terminated last month after the department’s Firearms Review Board concluded that the shooting was unjustified.

The police union lawsuit claims that the board violated state open-government laws by failing to open its meetings to the public.

Goyos “was improperly terminated by the city of Miami Police Department by a review board that violates the law,” union President Javier Ortiz wrote in a statement.

The lawsuit contends that Goyos should be reinstated.

City Attorney Julie O. Bru declined to discuss the specifics of the case. “We reviewed the allegations, and the city maintains that the board has operated consistent with the requirements of law,” she said.

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Diogo Morgado as Jesus in 'The Bible'

Producer Mark Burnett and his wife Roma Downey are bringing The Bible to television with an epic, 10-hour, five-part miniseries, and ET's Nancy O'Dell is with the man who portrays Jesus, Diogo Morgado, and the actor who embodies St. Peter, Darwin Shaw.

Pics: Adorable Tots: Celebs and Their Cute Kids!

"Jesus is definitely the most complete and complex figure of mankind; he's just someone who belongs to millions and billions of families all around the world," says Portuguese star Morgado, a religious man himself. "Just [given] the chance [to play him], I'm like, 'Okay, I'm going to try to just give an example of my Jesus.'"

Premiering Sunday, March 3 at 8 p.m. on History, The Bible brings to life some of the more well-known tales from the ancient tome from Genesis through Revelation, including David and Goliath, Noah's Ark, the Exodus, Daniel in the Lion's Den and the crucifixion/resurrection of Jesus. Shot in Morocco, the series is narrated by Emmy winner Keith David with a musical score by Oscar winner Hans Zimmer, also stars Downey as Mother Mary and includes Paul Brightwell, Greg Hicks, Sebastian Knapp, Amber Rose Revah, Greg Hicks and Simon Kunz.

Related: First Look at Russell Crowe as 'Noah' 

Watch the video for the actors' take on tackling such iconic figures – and see the amusing moment after Nancy sneezes in front of Morgado!

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Suisse M&A big cheese

Swiss financial giant Credit Suisse and relative newcomer LionTree Advisors are putting up some surprisingly strong numbers early in Wall Street’s investment banking leagues.

LionTree, run by former UBS rainmaker Aryeh Bourkoff, is ranked seventh on the coveted merger and acquisition rankings in the US, with some $18.2 billion in transactions, including Liberty Global’s $23 billion bid to acquire Virgin Media, according to Thomson Reuters.

The investment boutique is in its first year of operation, after Bourkoff hung out his own shingle in July.

By comparison, Bourkoff’s former firm, UBS, which has been slashing staff in droves, ranks 18th in the overall M&A tables through Feb. 22.

Meanwhile, leading the technology “league tables” is Credit Suisse, which has bagged some choice deals, including advising private-equity firm Silver Lake on its bid to purchase PC-maker Dell.

This time last year, Credit Suisse was an also-ran, languishing at No. 25 in US tech M&A, according to Thomson Reuters.

Insiders, however, say that the bank’s telecom media and technology unit, led by David Wah and Mark Simonian, has made some key hires, pushing the bank into the upper echelon.

Credit Suisse, anticipating that the tech space would be a big driver for M&A activity, hired tech banker Chris Gaertner away from Bank of America less than a year ago.

The Swiss bank also relocated a key member of its M&A team, Anthony Armstrong, closer to Silicon Valley so the firm can rub elbows with brainy tech CEOs.

One major factor benefiting all banks is a decidedly more upbeat economic outlook shared by corporate bosses, which has driven a recent deal-making resurgence.

To be sure, it’s too early to declare any winners.

A smaller firm like LionTree is likely to lose ground to perennial leaders JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.

mark.decambre@nypost.com

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