And unless something drastic is done, the city may start to eat itself:

New York City is growing fatter faster than the rest of America, a Health Department report said. The study, published in Preventing Chronic Disease, said that the city’s rate of obesity grew by 17 percent between 2002 and 2004, versus 6 percent nationwide. Diabetes also grew by 17 percent in the city, but remained unchanged in the rest of the country. “Obesity is now just as common in New York City as in the rest of the U.S.,” said study author Gretchen Van Wye. The department said the city gained 10 million pounds during the two years studied.

Or is it just because everyone quit smoking at the same time? Thanks a lot, Mayor:

While public health officials said the findings underscored the need for disease prevention programs, others drew a correlation between the rising obesity rate and a smoking ban that took effect in the city’s bars and restaurants in 2003. According to city health officials, about 240,000 New Yorkers quit smoking since the agency launched a comprehensive antismoking campaign in 2002.

Weight gain among individuals who quit smoking has been well documented. According to one study that evaluated weight gain after smoking cessation, researchers found the risk of weight gain is highest during the two years after a person quits. The study, published in 1998 in the Journal of Family Practice, found that on average, those who quit gain between 11 and 13 pounds.

“What you see on the micro level of your friends gaining weight after they quit smoking has to also have an effect on the macro level,” a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, Walter Olson, said. “Yes, it probably is true that one of the reasons America is gaining weight is because of tobacco going out.” He said the ban was probably “one factor among many” contributing to the high obesity rates here.

(Takeaway: If someone can blame a smoking ban for something, they will.)

Lost in the discussion about the mysterious, still-unexplained one million new residents is that the number includes a previously overlooked army of 300,000 new seniors, making New York City the nation’s top retirement destination:

The city’s elderly population is projected to jump 44 percent by 2030, which means there will be roughly 1.35 million senior citizens comprising 20 percent of the city population. That includes roughly one-third of the projected additional 1 million New Yorkers the Bloomberg administration expects here then. That surge motivated the PlaNYC initiative to address issues such as the environment, energy and the city’s aging infrastructure — but not so much its aging population.

The City Council yesterday announced that the New York Academy of Medicine will receive $125,000 to develop a blueprint to prepare the city for its aging population. It’s expected by April.

“Our focus has been on the cost of care and biomedical research,” said academy president Jo Ivey Boufford. “This deals with prevention — how people can be as healthy as they can be, as long as they can. . . . We’re creating a blueprint for investment over a number of years and policy action over a number of years.”

The Advance makes the situation sound that much more dire:

With New York City’s population expected to boom, adding nearly 1 million more residents by 2030, demographers predict that the number of elderly dwellers will increase by 300,000.

. . .

“There’s been much discussion and planning, appropriately so, about what the future of New York City will look like in 2030,” Ms. Quinn said in respect of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s environmental agenda to combat global warming. “But one of the things we’ve not yet looked at is the reality that by 2030, there will be 300,000 additional senior citizens in New York City.”

This should be easy to monitor because it’s not like the Staten Island Ferry is one of the three top tourist attractions in New York City or anything. Yup, right:

Taking pictures aboard the Staten Island Ferry? Watch where you’re pointing that camera, bub.

The recent scare in Washington state — two men, apparently of Middle Eastern descent, were spotted photographing sensitive areas of the ferryboats that ply Puget Sound — has triggered heightened sensitivity to shutterbugs.

Photography is officially permitted onboard and in terminals here, and with so many tourists enjoying the views of New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty from the boats each day, “picture-taking is a part of the experience,” acknowledged city Department of Transportation spokeswoman Molly Gordy.

An official memo sent to ferry staff in 2005 indicated that crew members were “not to prohibit anyone from taking photographs in any areas open to the public,” while remaining vigilant and informing security and supervisors if anything seems unusual about a passenger’s photo op.

“If pictures are being taken that seem suspicious, just as if a person is acting suspicious, NYPD on board would be alerted and the parties would be questioned,” Ms. Gordy said.

Is it a convenient way to use up some of that Homeland Security money or a profound cultural shift? You know, like role-playing games once were:

E-Tech Computers, located at 71-06 Grand Avenue in Maspeth, recently introduced a new security camera system that offers 360-degree views, making them ideal for warding off burglars, prowlers and other miscreants.

Eric, the proprietor of the store, said the time seemed right to expand into the field of home security. Currently, E-Tech has a variety of high-tech models for sale, some having the familiar security camera shape, while others are half-spherical and offer full-room views to guard against blind spots.

The employees of E-Tech take great personal pride in the cameras and security they offer. Not only are the cameras on the cutting edge, Eric said, but he believes they have never been more necessary in Maspeth, Middle Village or just about any part of the big city. “People get robbed,” he said. “Bad stuff happens.”

Staff members at the store agreed. “Right now, New York is becoming less safe,” one worker claimed. “People need something to record what happens.”

Still, the cameras represent a slight departure from the usual merchandise E-Tech sells. The store, which has been in business for five years, is best known for dealing in hardware and software, not surveillance technology.

Eric and his E-Tech co-workers, however, have the freedom to change directions depending on what they presume the market demands. After all, the store is not part of a computer conglomerate, but like so many Grand Avenue retailers, a homegrown business financed out of Eric’s own pocket. As such, the store offers some items one wouldn’t expect in a traditional computer store, such as 30-sided dice and replicas of samurai swords.

You can thank Ray Kelly for the new climate of fear in Staten Island this morning:

It is the sobering reality of post-9/11 life on Staten Island.

In New York City.

Across the country.

Terrorism is potentially lurking in every alleyway and on every street corner.

Most frightening is that the new-age terrorist does not have to wear a disguise or assimilate.

Because the person most likely to threaten our safety is made in America.

While the threat from overseas jihadist groups like al-Qaida remains real, New York City and other U.S. targets face an increasing and evolving threat from homegrown terrorists, such as those who planned to attack Fort Dix in New Jersey, according to an NYPD Intelligence Division report issued yesterday.

The report says resident terrorists are often “unremarkable” people who plan attacks on the U.S. after they are radicalized by social, economic or political “triggers.”

. . .

The radicalization process is often sparked by a personal crisis, the report says, such as the loss of a job; the experiencing of a real or perceived episode of discrimination, or the death of a close family member.

Without mentioning specific locales, the report says that “cafes, cab driver hangouts, flop houses, prisons, student associations, non-governmental organizations, hookah bars, butcher shops and bookstores” are frequently “rife with extremist rhetoric” and act as “radicalization incubators” for potential jihadists.

Once immersed in radical ideology, the jihadist often seeks to join with other like-minded individuals. Under the guidance of a “spiritual sanctioner,” such as a cleric, and an “operational leader,” groups such as these, the report says, can morph from “just being a bunch of guys” into operational terrorist cells.

The Internet is a powerful “driver” and “enabler” of jihad, according to the report, providing access to radical ideology; an anonymous, virtual meeting place for jihadists, and access to information about potential targets and weapons design.

Though not formal members of Al-Qaida, jihadists use the principles of Osama bin Laden’s terror network as “their inspiration and ideological reference point,” the report says.

They “look, act, talk and walk like everyone around them,” the study adds.

Of course it’s an issue for local law enforcement — they’re the ones best suited to tackle the threat:

Police officials said the report laid the groundwork for a public policy debate over the growing concern about homegrown terrorism and would serve as a tool for law enforcement to better understand threats in the United States compared with threats by Al Qaeda members overseas. Local law enforcement officers, corporate security officials and some politicians praised the Police Department for addressing the human factors at play in terrorist plots and for helping to synthesize trends in human behavior. But critics called the report a faulty stereotyping of entire communities of Arab people, a notion the Police Department rejected.

“The report is at odds with federal law enforcement findings, including those of the recently released National Intelligence Estimate, and uses unfortunate stereotyping of entire communities,” Kareem W. Shora, the national executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said in a statement.

The “sweeping generalizations” of the report may serve to cast a pall of suspicion over the entire American Muslim population, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said yesterday.

“The report also claims that signs of radicalization include positive changes in personal behavior such as giving up smoking, drinking and gambling,” said Parvez Ahmed, chairman of the group’s board, adding that the report made similar claims about those who wore Islamic clothing. “Is Islamic attire or giving up bad habits, which is something recommended by leaders of all faiths, now to be regarded as suspicious behavior?”

Police officials from New York visited Washington this week to brief officials, including those from the White House and the F.B.I., said Lawrence Sanchez, an assistant police commissioner.

Mark J. Mershon, assistant director in charge of the F.B.I.’s New York office, did not attend yesterday’s briefing. Stephen Kodak, an F.B.I. spokesman in Washington, said, “We have no comment on the report.”

Note the Power Point slide in the picture — remember, it’s easy to shut down homegrown terrorists when you goad them into committing crimes. Ostentatiously pronouncing that homegrown terrorists are the most dangerous threat out there is the only obvious thing to do . . .

The Daily News wants you to know that we are all going to die:

The Brooklyn Bridge is one of 166 city bridges labeled “structurally deficient,” putting it in the same category as the one that collapsed into the Mississippi River.

In fact, under the the feds’ rating system, the Brooklyn Bridge scored dramatically lower than the doomed Minneapolis bridge — and the Willis Ave. Bridge, which connects East Harlem to the Bronx, was not much better.

The Brooklyn Bridge also got lousy marks from the state, which called it one of three city bridges in “poor” condition with rusting steel joints and deteriorating brick and mortar on its ramps.

The biggest problem was the roadway deck on the Manhattan and Brooklyn approaches.

The state felt the “poor” rating was enough to raise concerns but not enough to shut down traffic like it did with the nearby Williamsburg Bridge in 1988.

At the city’s iconic landmark, a reporter observed considerable rust on metal structures and areas of missing brick work on the Manhattan anchorage.

Responding to the Daily News’ findings, Charles Carrier, a spokesman for the city Department of Transportation, said, “The bottom line is, if a bridge is unsafe, we close it. Obviously the Brooklyn Bridge was not deemed to be unsafe, but there are issues we’re going to be addressing.”

. . .

City officials stood by what they termed a “state of the art” inspection system and declined to perform additional checks on any of its bridges.

In New York, the federal government has labeled 2,110 bridges “structurally deficient,” of which 166 are in New York City, records show. The feds define this as structures with “deteriorated conditions of significant bridge elements.”

All of these bridges are rated by the U.S. Department of Transportation on the same 1-to-100 scale that gave the Minneapolis bridge a “sufficiency rating” of 50.

Considering factors such as structural adequacy and safety, serviceability and functional obsolescence, the Brooklyn Bridge was given the lowest possible “sufficiency rating,” a zero.

On the other hand, Sewell Chan is not into fear mongering*:

More than 2,000 bridges in New York State meet the federal government’s definition of “structurally deficient,” from the heavily traveled on-ramps of the Brooklyn Bridge to a 28-foot span across Trout Brook near the Canadian border.

The bridge that collapsed Wednesday in Minneapolis had also been labeled structurally deficient. But the term can have a variety of implications, and does not necessarily mean that any of the bridges are in real danger of significant failure. Typically the finding means inspectors have identified some kind of deterioration, cracks or movement.

The ramps to the Brooklyn Bridge, which carries about 132,000 vehicles a day, were downgraded last year from fair to poor condition. Yesterday, city officials said $149 million in repairs to the span were under way and that the bridge was safe. Still, city inspectors were at the bridge yesterday afternoon to check on its condition.

. . .

In the last eight years, the city has spent $3 billion improving some of the 787 bridges it controls, said Lori A. Ardito, the first deputy transportation commissioner. As a result, Ms. Ardito said, the number of bridges that the city deems to be in poor condition dropped to 3 last year from 40 in 1997.

In addition to the Brooklyn Bridge, the two others were a pedestrian bridge at East 78th Street over the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive in Manhattan and a bridge at Willow Lake at 76th Road in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens.

Ms. Ardito said “poor” did not mean a structure was at risk of collapse. At the Brooklyn Bridge, the major problem is the roadway deck on the ramps, and not structures that support the roadway. She said a more complete rehabilitation was expected to start in 2010.

“The poor rating for the Brooklyn Bridge means that there’s only components of the bridge that are in poor condition,” she said. “They’re actually the ramps leading to the bridge, not the span of the bridge.”

*Not that he didn’t try . . .

Earlier: Nothing A Little Paint Won’t Fix.

Location Scout: Brooklyn Bridge.

The bold proposal to develop Pier 40 on Manhattan’s West Side — with plans for a dedicated Cirque du Soliel theater — has been derided by critics as “Vegas on the Hudson,” a cancerous, infectious Vegas on the Hudson:

Because the designs were first released late last year, community opposition has been tough and unified, with critics decrying the idea of a tourist hot-spot that would take the place of community recreation space and spread uncharacteristic development to the adjacent neighborhood.

“Clearly this is a regional tourist destination that would have little connection to the neighborhood and would solely be an attraction to tourists,” the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, Andrew Berman, said of Related’s proposal. “If you have Vegas on the Hudson next door, the tendency will be to look to develop similar uses in the inland area — and that would be totally unacceptable.”

Parent groups have been vocal about the Board of Education’s plans to increase the number of “schools within a school” — specialized magnet programs — throughout the city. Space considerations are a big issue, but then there’s this:

Park Slope parents are up in arms over a Department of Education proposal to insert a new small school focusing on Arabic language and culture inside the same building as their children’s elementary school.

Department officials faced what is becoming a familiar uproar over new small schools when they announced a proposal to locate the Khalil Gibran International Academy, one of the more than 200 small high schools created by the Bloomberg administration, inside P.S. 282, the Park Slope school.

. . .

Fearing that their children will lose art, music, and science classrooms and a library if Khalil Gibran moves into the Park Slope school’s top floor, parents reacted by “screaming and crying,” a parent who attended the meeting with department officials Monday night in the school’s auditorium, Jennifer Bacon-Fossati, said. She said parents were also concerned about the safety of their younger children, who may have to share bathrooms with the older students.

. . .

Another parent, who asked that her name be withheld to protect her child’s safety, said she feared that the school’s focus on Arabic culture and language may draw a backlash from right-wing groups that could threaten the building’s students.

“There are concerns of the kind of criticism this school could face,” she said. [Emph. added]

Lady, quit overreacting! The students are long gone by the time Sanitation gets there on trash day . . .

They act like being a convicted sex offender is a bad thing:

Nearly a third of the city’s most dangerous sex offenders live within just two blocks of an elementary or middle school — and authorities have no power to make them move farther away, the Daily News has learned.

The sobering findings emerged from the most exhaustive examination ever conducted of the state sex offender registry.

The disturbing report, completed by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn), shows that about 670 of the city’s 2,114 worst sex offenders live within two blocks of a school.

The clusters of sickos grow even larger a few more blocks away.

More than 85% of the city’s Level 2 and Level 3 sex offenders — the worst of the worst — live within a quarter-mile of a school, Weiner’s examination found. “Every day my kids when they leave the house I say a little prayer that they won’t cross one of these sex sickos,” Bronx mom Cynthia Hawkins, 35, said as she walked her kids home from Public School 33 in Highbridge.

Anthony Weiner: master of the low-hanging fruit.

So paranoid:

A graffiti crew called “Made U Look NYC” — or MUL NYC — is boasting to have spray-painted a piece spanning 10 subway cars last month, according to a Web site madeulooknyc.com.

The site is selling T-shirts featuring a photo of an R train with the Monopoly character painted on it, and promoting a 60-minute documentary about the piece’s creation that they plan to auction on eBay Mar. 1.

Some bloggers, however, speculate that the NYPD may be behind this stunt as a way to lure the culprits.

“If you were thinking of buying a T-shirt commemorating Made U Look’s painting of 10 whole NYC subway cars, you may want to reconsider now,” warned city blog RazorApple.com. Its recent posting of an explainer showing how the NYPD might be monitoring the site’s visitors got picked up by various blogs such as Gawker and Gothamist.

“It seems illogical that [MUL] would incriminate themselves in this way, with a Web site selling T-shirts,” Razor Apple’s editor Will Sherman told Metro yesterday, “but stranger things have happened.”

Sherman doesn’t doubt MUL was behind the “staggering feat” of painting the 750-foot-long piece — “Nothing this large was put on the subway since Easter Sunday 1988,” he said — but the site’s photos, which appear to have been taken at a rail yard on Dec. 26, seemed fishy, he thought. “It’s hard for me to believe they were able to film and take all those photos in daylight.”

He grew more suspicious after an e-mail exchange he had with “Frank,” who responded to the e-mail address listed on MUL NYC’s site. “He talked about other members in his crew, calling them ‘gentlemen,’” Sherman said. “I wouldn’t think you would describe the people in your crew like that.”

“Frank” denied allegations of police involvement in an e-mail to Metro.

Some stray dogs excite the imagination. Others — large black rottweilers, for example — just tend to freak out the neighbors:

Civic activist Mandingo Tshaka sounded the alarm on the stray pooch when he saw it roaming without a leash on his 46th Avenue block several times in the week before Christmas.

After he and other residents called 911, Tshaka said, police came and put the dog back behind the gate of his owner’s home, he said. Neighbors said the owners were away, but Tshaka said officers should have taken the dog away because it escaped again several times.

“Concerning this issue, they’ve been useless as tits on a boar hog,” he said of the police.

Police are not allowed to take a loose dog if someone claims custody of it. Officers would only capture a dog if they saw it pose a threat, according to Sgt. Liam Burns of the 111th Precinct. Burns said he has been in touch with the owner and is trying to resolve the issue.

The dog, a large black rottweiler, did not injure anyone but it did chase the mail carrier, Tshaka said.

On the afternoon of Dec. 27, the dog could be seen walking back and forth on 206th Street east of the Clearview Expressway. Tshaka, dressed in a full-length fur coat and holding a samurai sword at his side, watched it from his front door.

“I don’t like the fact that I have to keep in my front door a samurai sword,” he said. “People shouldn’t have to live in terror.”

Tshaka, no fan of dogs, then went on to make an unfortunate comparison:

Tshaka called the dog a “menace” and said he should have been taken away instead of put back behind the owner’s gate. He also suggested there was a double standard.

“If an African-American male had chased the mailman down the street, where would he be?” he said. “The system has more compassion for the dog than it does for my people.”

Ever cautious, the NYPD suggests conceiving of parenting as a massive CIA-caliber intelligence operation:

The Bloods and Crips in this city have numbers, weapons and pride themselves on all the crimes they commit.

But, all of their gangsta’ bluster can be rendered powerless by the tenacity of a nosy parent.

So say the NYPD, who still believe that the best deterrent to the proliferation of street gangs is a parent who makes it a point to know their child’s business.

“There is nothing wrong with snooping through your child’s things . . . to know who they are hanging out with,” encouraged Police Officer Mildred Roman, of the NYPD’s Community Affairs Training Unit, who kept parents on the edge of their seats recently during an frank discussion about street gangs and the ways parents can help dry up the flow of new recruits filling the ranks.

. . .

Giving a packed house at last week’s 69th Precinct Community Council in Canarsie a glance into the “thug life,” Roman explained that changes in a child’s dress, demeanor and how he greets his friends can all be indicators that he is planning to or may already have joined a gang.

But to be sure, a parent should look through the child’s notebooks, where, if he is consorting with gang members, he will be practicing their “alphabet.”

Roman went on to add “the best defense is a good offense” and that “that namby pamby Dr. Spock” is for “pussies” . . .

*No, that’s actually the headline.

Governor Spitzer’s new team starts out on the right foot by sounding a fresh theme of hope and prosperity:

It is not a matter of if, but of when the city’s subway system suffers a terrorist attack, Governor Spitzer’s pick as the state’s homeland security tsar, Michael Balboni, said.

Meanwhile, the Republican state senator who is resigning to join the new Spitzer administration said “not a lot is different” in terms of subway security since the attacks of September 11, 2001.

While he praised the ramped-up security at some tunnel entryways into the city as well as a greater police presence underground, he said the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has left gaping holes in the emergency preparedness of its conductors and train operators, who are responsible for initiating evacuations during emergencies. The MTA did not respond to a request for comment.

“There are some unspeakable potential threats out there,” Mr. Balboni said during a telephone interview over the weekend.

The Mayor, noting that the city’s population will grow by one million people by 2030, says New York will face dire infrastructure problems unless something drastic is done about it:

New York’s population will grow by nearly 1 million people by 2030 — pushing the city to the breaking point unless there are huge investments in energy, housing and transportation, Mayor Bloomberg warned yesterday.

New homes, jobs and better transit will be needed to deal with an influx equivalent to the populations of Boston and Miami combined, and it will cost billions, the mayor said at a Queens planning symposium.

“This growth could bring incredible benefits: Billions of dollars in new economic activity will be generated by new jobs, residents and visitors,” Bloomberg told an audience at the Queens Museum of Art.

Immigration is a big factor behind the projected growth, but experts also said the city’s success in reducing crime and improving services already is reversing decades of suburban flight.

The city must support the boom by building new infrastructure, including tunnels, energy plants and schools, Bloomberg said. Even more challenging, it must do so while reducing environmental damage, he said.

Planning experts at the forum offered suggestions, including taxing vehicles that drive into Manhattan’s most heavily trafficked neighborhoods, called congestion pricing, and charging residents by the pound for the trash they throw out.

Among the 10 goals the mayor laid out for the city to meet over the next 23 years were creating homes for 1 million new residents, huge upgrades in mass transit, adding parks, finishing the water tunnel, improving the efficiency of power plants and cleaning the city’s air, land and waterways.

Census figures (via Encyclopedia of New York City):

• 1930: 6,930,446
• 1940: 7,454,995
• 1950: 7,891,957
• 1960: 7,781,984
• 1970: 7,894,862
• 1980: 7,071,639
• 1990: 7,322,564
• 2000: 8,008,278*

Ooh, a demographic crisis is upon us because New York finally caught up with 1970 population levels. Scary.

That million new people are going to come from where exactly?

But of course as we know from recent world events, the best way to encourage action is to create a crisis.

*Sorry, the 2004 estimate was a shocking 8,085,742.

The Queens Gazette sure knows how to put a damper on all this holiday cheer:

It’s that time of year when lights twinkle and bells jingle, and we head out to shop for holiday gifts. But remember, behind every “Ho! Ho! Ho!” there’s a thief, a rip-off artist, or a small time thug waiting to fill his stocking by emptying your pockets.

Among the many useful tips is this, which seems easier said than done:

To help foil would-be purse-snatchers, carry your bag upside-down, with your hand on the latch or zipper. If a thief tries to snatch it, open the bag and let the contents fall to the floor. Most criminals are completely confused by this, police said. They don’t generally stick around to watch a crowd gather around you.

So if you see a sudden upturn in spilled personal effects this season, you’ll know where it came from.

The War on Christmas continues:

Santa Claus has been bumped.

Instead of having pride of place in the center of the Staten Island Mall, the Jolly Old Elf has been relegated to the JCPenney wing — separating him from the holiday congestion near the Christmas tree and train ride.

St. Nick also is being nudged out by two new kiosks installed in center court: Vonage, the online discount telephone company, and the Piercing Pagoda, which also has a kiosk in the Macy’s wing.

It’s a question of space, Mall general manager James Easley insists.

“Center court is always so crowded with . . . [long lines waiting] for Santa and the train. Moving Santa and his chair will allow us to accommodate a lot more people by spreading things out,” he said.

. . .

“These three things — the Christmas tree, the train and Santa — should be together,” said Patricia Leahy of Greenridge, mother of 3-year-old Christopher. “There is plenty of room in center court for a tree, Santa and the trains. I can’t figure out how Mall management thinks there is more room by JCPenney.”

At least Santa will be there, said Ms. Leahy, who e-mailed the Advance last week to check on what turned out to be a false report that Santa Claus would skip his appearance at the Mall in New Springville this year.

But she was skeptical about his new spot: “I personally think it is a way of de-Christmasing Christmas.”

New York’s nifty old lever-powered voting machines actually, finally, perhaps may be retired after this election:

Over the next few months, the New York City Board of Elections will have the formidable task of complying with the Help America Vote Act, which requires that updated voting machines be installed for the 2007 elections.

With many states already using varying types of the new machines in today’s election, the New York City Board of Elections, which has created an evaluation team, will no doubt be looking around the country to help determine a game plan for next year.

The board has already faced criticism for its failure to implement the voting machines for this election, but some experts say the delay could actually pay off.

“I think on one side of the coin, it’s a good thing that we’re not the guinea pigs,” the executive director of the Citizens Union and the Citizens Union Foundation, Dick Dadey, said.

New York failed to meet the deadline imposed for the Help America Vote Act, and was sued by the U.S. Department of Justice. The suit called for the New York City Board of Elections to implement a token amount of disabled voting machines for 2006 and to be fully compliant with all new voting machines for 2007.

. . .

The board is considering two types of voting machines: an optical scan device that reads a paper ballot that is filled out in a private voting booth, and a direct-reading electronic machine that functions like an automated teller machine with a push-button screen. The two technologies leave a paper trail.

In Ohio during the September primaries, the optical scan voting machines received criticisms. About 18,000 ballots were deemed unreadable by the scanners due to subtle paper variations. The optical scanners were manufactured by one of the same vendors that the city is considering, Diebold.

Hey Magic 8 Ball, are the mayor and his staff preparing for an economic slowdown? Outlook not so good:

In a surprising pullback, Mayor Bloomberg has asked agency heads to draw up plans to scale back spending on announced construction projects, The Post has learned.

One source said the cut could amount to as much as 25 percent of the four-year, $36.5 billion capital budget adopted in June. But Stu Loeser, the mayor’s spokesman, said that no such figure has been discussed and that, in any case, “no decisions have been made.”

He said agency heads received letters on Oct. 12 asking: “If what you had to do in the next four years was spread over five years, what would your priorities be?”

Just five months ago, Bloomberg and the City Council approved record expense and capital budgets and an ambitious list of projects throughout the five boroughs.

Over $10 billion was set aside for school construction and expansion and $2.6 billion allocated for rehabbing the four East River bridges and 68 other bridge structures.

The city was so flush that the mayor even found $2 billion for a new Retiree Health Benefits Trust Fund to help defray the future cost of city workers’ health benefits.

He also spent $200 million a year for each of the next four years to pay down debt service on bonds sold to fund the capital budget. Debt service is expected to cost taxpayers $4.8 billion this year and $6.1 billion in 2010.

1-800-HowsMyDriving for nannies:

While nanny is minding the baby, passersby now can rat out a Mary Poppins who’s less than practically perfect in every way.

Under a plan pushed by a New York City prosecutor, all they’ll have to do is take down the “license plate” on the tot’s stroller and send an e-mail to the parents.

The plates are registered to www.howsmynanny.com, a site where informants can plug in the tag’s unique number to alert parents to a nanny’s indiscretions.

Unlike the vague, gossipy “bad nanny” sightings that proliferate on mommy blogs but don’t necessarily reach a tots’ parents, “There’s no guesswork. You don’t have to say, ‘Is this my nanny?’” said Jill Starishevsky, the assistant district attorney hawking the plates.

Buyers pay $50 for a 4-inch-by-7-inch plate and private access to notes from tipsters, who can remain anonymous.

Then there’s 1-800-HowsMyParenting:

Starishevsky admitted the system isn’t perfect: Parents could find themselves in the position of receiving reports about themselves.

“So when my husband is doing pop-o-wheelies with the stroller, someone can tell me he’s doing an illegal act?” joked Jo-el Shea, who was jogging with her 14-week-old son in Central Park this week.

Rejected Post headline — “It’s Not The Size, It’s What You Do With It”:

City cops are on the alert for the SwissMiniGun — a 2.16-inch replica of a Colt Python capable of shooting bullets that are just one-third of an inch long.

The six-shot revolver — which sells for about $500 and can literally fit in the palm of a hand — is capable of causing serious damage, authorities say.

The guns cannot be imported legally, but smuggling is a concern, officials said.

Cops are also watching out for plastic handcuff keys that are approximately the size of a nickel.

The keys cannot be picked up by metal detectors and look like a pendant when worn on a chain.

The NYPD last Saturday warned the city’s 36,000 officers to “use extreme vigilance” when searching, guarding and transporting prisoners.

From cutesy literary allusion to full-scale war in just one day:

An explosion of bedbugs, the apple seed-size insects that hide in mattresses and furniture during the day and feast on unsuspecting sleepers at night, have terrorized visitors, outraged residents and are now stirring political action.

“It was horrible. I never wanted to go to sleep,” said Caitlin Heller, 27, a Queens College student whose Jackson Heights apartment was overrun by the bloodthirsty bugs. “They were painful, itchy, and all I thought about.”

“Even now, after they’ve been exterminated, I think I feel phantom bugs,” said Heller, who has started a blog about the topic. “Even a piece of lint scares me.”

. . .

City Councilwoman Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan) supported a measure this week to ban the sale of used mattresses — perhaps the No.1 carrier of bedbugs. But at a hearing Monday, a city official testified against the bill, saying the ban might do little to control infestations and would adversely impact poor people.

Brewer said that even if the bill fails, the sale of secondhand mattresses should be regulated.

“We need to educate residents and city officials about this growing problem,” said Brewer. “Right now, the city’s doing nothing, and we need to declare war.”

Go ahead, freak yourself out: Beasts Feast On Blood While Authorities Dither; NYPD Bedbug; Don’t Let The . . .; It’s Endemic, Pandemic, This Epidemic; Bedbugs Don’t Wait For Midterms Now, Do They?; Don’t Let The Gasoline-Soaked Bedbugs Burst Into Flames In The Middle Of The Night, Setting Your Living Quarters On Fire.

“Feasting on human blood,” “confounding officials” — it’s almost out of Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. A city under siege by a host of unwanted mischief makers:

New York City is experiencing a dramatic resurgence in bedbugs — those pesky oval insects that hide in the crevices of furniture and feast on human blood at night — and officials are confounded about how best to respond.

. . .

At a City Council hearing yesterday on the issue, entomologists and exterminators said that bedbugs have been proliferating at levels not seen in decades. The cause of the resurgence is not certain, but experts have speculated that increased international travel, a recent ban on powerful pesticides and the market in used furniture have been factors.

A bill by Councilwoman Gale A. Brewer of Manhattan would ban the sale of reconditioned mattresses — old mattresses with a new fabric cover sewn onto them, often with the original upholstery and padding underneath — and create a task force to study the issue and make recommendations within a year.

Within a year . . . by then it will be too late — bwahahaha!

See also: NYPD Bedbug; Don’t Let The . . .; It’s Endemic, Pandemic, This Epidemic; Bedbugs Don’t Wait For Midterms Now, Do They?; Don’t Let The Gasoline-Soaked Bedbugs Burst Into Flames In The Middle Of The Night, Setting Your Living Quarters On Fire.

There’s got to be a local angle here somewhere . . . ah — there it is:

New York beachgoers have a better chance of seeing the Loch Ness monster than getting fatally stung by a stingray like the one that killed “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin, experts said yesterday.

“The odds of that happening anywhere, let alone in New York, are next to impossible,” said Hans Walters, an animal expert at the New York Aquarium in Coney Island.

Cownose and roughtail stingrays typically scour the ocean floor several miles off the Atlantic coast, but they occasionally swim closer to the shore in search of food, Walters said.

Unlike a 350-pound roughtail at the aquarium, the stingrays most likely to make an appearance in the waters off Coney Island or the Rockaways usually weigh less than 10 pounds, he said.

Nonetheless, the best way to avoid being stung by a stingray’s venomous barbs is by shuffling your feet in the sandy water, which tends to scare off marine life.

“I’ve heard of people bitten by bluefish and pinched by crabs, but I’ve never once heard of anybody stepping on a stingray in New York,” Walters said.

. . .

Despite the unlikely odds of being attacked, however, not all Coney Island beachgoers were ready to jump back in the water.

“Hell, no!” said Queens resident Derrick Morales, 21, who was sunning himself yesterday. “That’s crazy. You don’t know what the hell is out there.”

The Daily News joins in the fear mongering, showing us how in the event of a strong hurricane, the entire Rockaway peninsula could be toast:

Disaster is brewing in the Rockaways.

More than 100,000 people live on an 11-mile spit of sand with just three routes to the mainland. A moderate hurricane would cover the peninsula with water — and a heavy one would obliterate everything.

But even as the city’s emergency planners are practicing how to evacuate the Rockaways to save lives, city housing officials are eagerly pushing plans to build almost 4,000 new homes there — right in the path of coastal storms.

“It’s insane,” said Queens College Prof. Nicholas Coch, a nationally recognized hurricane expert. “People who live in Rockaways are really playing roulette with Mother Nature.”

Hundreds of upscale homes, priced higher than $500,000, already have been built at Arverne by the Sea, an $800 million development on land that had lain fallow for decades.

Demand is strong and the city Housing Preservation and Development Department envisions thousands more homes rising nearby — thanks to the allure of New York’s last undeveloped beachfront property.

“People are only as smart as their collective memories,” said John Lepore, head of the local Chamber of Commerce. “There’s not been major, major storms for a while, and people have become affluent, and everybody wants to live near the water.”

New Yorkers generally don’t think of their city as vulnerable to the kind of deadly storms that hit New Orleans, Miami or Houston. But experts say the city has been thrashed before — and is coming due for another devastating storm.

“Why do we forget our own history?” Coch asked. “We have a major development in an area where history has shown that hurricanes have done tremendous damage.”

An 1893 hurricane destroyed homes and hotels along the south-facing coast of the Rockaways, and subsequent storms reshaped sandbars and inlets of the area. A 1938 hurricane that ravaged Long Island swamped stretches of the Rockaways.

The Russian-language press is stirring up fears of a catastrophic hurricane hitting Brighton Beach:

Russian immigrants in Brighton Beach are living in fear of a hurricane threat to which the rest of New York City seems largely oblivious. Speculation that a severe storm could soon descend on Brooklyn has been rife among immigrant senior citizens, many of whom are reportedly stocking up on water and medicine in preparation for an emergency that is much less likely to happen than some of the local Russian press and broadcast outlets have reported.

. . .

“I know one businessman who closed his business,” the editor in chief of a local paper, Russkii Bazaar, Natalia Shapiro, said. “He went back to live in Russia until the hurricane season is over.”

Employees at Pharmacy Express on Brighton Beach Avenue said that in May, senior citizens started coming in saying they were worried about a hurricane. “People read the Russian-language newspapers, and they believe every word,” a pharmacist, Tatiana Shmaian, said. Ms. Shmaian said her daughter lives in Moscow and called her to make sure she was okay after hearing about a potential hurricane on Russian television.

“They’re hearing there’s going to be a hurricane in 24 hours,” Pat Singer of the Brighton Neighborhood Association said. Ms. Singer said senior citizens have come into her office and asked what they should do if the city declares a weather-related evacuation. “They’re old, they can’t run, and they’re scared,” she said. “Katrina scared a lot of people.”

Ms. Singer, who cannot read Russian, blamed the local Russian newspapers for the speculation, saying editors are trying to scare their readers in order to boost sales. “It’s a ghetto, a Russian ghetto neighborhood. They read their own newsletters, watch their own television stations,” she said.

The scare appears to have started in March, when several Russian-language newspapers in America published a re port that said: “In the coming summer, a powerful hurricane could descend on New York with a force no less forgiving than Katrina, which emptied New Orleans last year.” That warning also was picked up by news sources in Russia. Then, at the end of last month, the New York Russian paper V Novom Svete ran a cover story citing a French scientist who said a tsunami would rip through Manhattan on May 25.

Then again, the prospect of a hurricane hitting New York does seem pretty frightening . . .

Are that many people actually concerned that the powder used in the Phagwah Parade could be anthrax? Ask the community board that “raised concerns” about it:

Anthrax fears have forced organizers of the Phagwah Parade in Queens to curtail the use of powder and water during the festive Hindu celebration in Richmond Hill.

The joyous tradition of parade participants and many spectators squirting colored water and dousing one another’s heads and faces with red or white powder has triggered complaints, according to officials of Community Board 10, which expressed those concerns to police and organizers of the March 19 event.

Betty Braton, chairwoman of Community Board 10, which covers part of Richmond Hill, said she has received “numerous” complaints about the use of powder. Among those complaining, Braton said, were sanitation workers and Parks Department employees concerned that someone could mix anthrax with the harmless powder or slip into the parade crowd, which numbered 10,000 last year, and throw anthrax itself.

Parade organizers encouraged participants to refrain from using powder during the 2002 parade in the wake of the post-Sept. 11 anthrax scare, but have not felt the need to issue such a warning since then. Organizers reluctantly agreed to the board’s request this year.

Pandit Chandrica Persaud, a Hindu priest with the Phagwah Parade & Festival Committee, said the request to halt the use of powder was misguided.

“That is absolutely out of order because they use the powder on the float, they don’t go and throw it on people who don’t want it [thrown on them]; but as usual, the community boards are making all the problems,” Persaud said. “But we have to carry out our religious activities.”

. . .

The use of powder and water are symbolic practices that date back thousands of years to religious observances in India.

Braton said she understands the symbolism, but cautioned that health and security comes first. She suggested the practice be moved indoors, where it would be easier to guarantee only celebrants would be present.

“Everyone has an absolute right to observe their religion, but no one has an absolute right to do it in a setting where someone else could have a problem from it,” Braton said. “For example, if there is an asthmatic standing on the street — no one’s religious observances has a right to put that person into harm.”

A West Village man has been hospitalized for a case of “accidental,” “naturally occurring” anthrax:

A New York City man has been hospitalized with a case of anthrax that a federal law enforcement official said may have been contracted from animal skins during a visit to Africa.

The infection appeared to be accidental, and authorities did not believe it was related to terrorism, the official said.

The man traveled recently to the west coast of Africa and became ill shortly after his return, said a federal law enforcement official, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

It was not clear how the man came into contact with the deadly substance, but aides to Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was related to his job as a drummer and that federal and city officials traced the exposure to New York City after the man became ill in Pennsylvania.

After the luckiest man in New York escaped death by rolling into the subway track trough, the Times investigates all manners in which one can protect themselves in the path of an oncoming subway train:

Short of “stand away from the platform edge,” there are no hard-and-fast official guidelines to survive an oncoming New York City subway train. “There really is no one thing we can tell people that would work in every situation,” said Paul Fleuranges, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Depending on the station, one can seek refuge from an oncoming train in a few ways. None are foolproof.

A police detective with experience in the transit bureau recalled his training in last-ditch methods for surviving an oncoming train.

“They told us, ‘Get to the cutouts or be able to roll underneath the platform,’” he said, referring to niches cut into the subway tunnels and the space under some platforms themselves, where homeless people have been known to sleep.

A quick-thinking person may also find safety beneath the train, in the so-called trough between the tracks, which offers up to two feet of space below a train.

In 2003, a researcher for an Internet brokerage firm, Brandon Crismon, was pushed into the path of an oncoming No. 5 train at the Union Square station. He scrambled into the trough and lay flat, in what his half brother described as “kung-fu mode.”

The train stopped after two cars had passed over Mr. Crismon. He suffered a broken leg, cuts and bruises. He was lucky: The depths of troughs vary, Mr. Fleuranges said.

Finally, and no less a long shot, a person could try outrunning the train to the end of the platform, where it would presumably stop. In this and all situations, falling on to the electrified third rail could be fatal.

Meanwhile, researchers are collecting data about 12-9s, as they’re known in subway parlance*:

It is a fleeting fear surely shared by many a New Yorker who has leaned over a station platform searching for the dim headlights of an approaching subway car. One slip of the foot or one well-timed push is all it would take to land in front of a moving train.

Now, a group of doctors has examined the fate of those who ended up on the tracks and made it to the hospital.

The findings of the study, which looked at more than 200 injuries suffered by people brought to Bellevue Hospital Center during a 13-year period, are at times grisly and sometimes macabre, and often tragic, but undeniably fascinating for those who travel beneath the city.

The study, to be published in the March issue of The American Journal of Public Health, is hardly conclusive: According to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, there were 702 cases of people on the tracks between 1990 and 2003, the same period as the study. Roughly half of them resulted in death. But this is the first time a single hospital has tried to determine what can be gleaned from its cases.

Many of those taken to Bellevue were only slightly injured, with more than half of them leaving the hospital without requiring follow-up care. Only one of every 10 victims who made it to the hospital died, a credit to both the medical care they received and the response time of emergency workers.

*See here for “12-9″ lingo.

Please tell me this was just some dippy art-school project (like this was!):

A suitcase found Thursday morning in Brooklyn — chock-full of photos of Big Apple landmarks and subway stations — provoked a massive mobilization of antiterror units when it was finally opened two days later, police said.

“The pictures had everything — from Police Plaza to 26 Federal Plaza. It was scary,” said Derwin McDuffie, 40, a security guard at Linden Plaza, where the bag was found.

“The weird thing is if a tourist took those pictures, there would be people in them. There was nobody in these.”

He said the black bag contained clothes and disposable cameras — along with color snapshots of City Hall, the Empire State Building, the Brooklyn Bridge and A- and G-line subway stations.

The Joint Terrorist Task Force, the NYPD Bomb Squad and hazmat and other antiterrorism units responded to the call.

Security guards had found the suitcase Thursday morning on a staircase in a parking garage and stuck it in Lost and Found.

Three clear bottles were found to contain just soap, but the bag was seized for investigation, sources said.

Meanwhile, a man who went to pick it up Friday vanished when told it had been taken to Lost and Found, said McDuffie, who didn’t see the man.