The announcement came after Mr. Bloomberg gave a speech denouncing partisan gridlock in Washington, stirring renewed speculation that he is preparing to run for president in 2008 as an independent or third-party candidate.

“I have filed papers with the New York City Board of Elections to change my status as a voter and register as unaffiliated with any political party,” he said in a statement issued while he was in California delivering political speeches.

“Although my plans for the future haven’t changed, I believe this brings my affiliation into alignment with how I have led and will continue to lead our city,” the mayor said.

Rebekah Johnson, 44, jumped from behind a row of bushes and waylaid Ganas leader Jeff Gross outside the commune’s Staten Island compound along a sloping section of Corson Avenue, shooting him six times with a .38-caliber pistol on Memorial Day 2006, police said.

Witnesses said Johnson quickly walked away down a hill, virtually disappearing for 13 months until a fugitive task force caught up with the hateful hippie has-been in the City of Brotherly Love.

Authorities said they tracked her there after she got sloppy and bought a car in Delaware using her real name, and opened a post office box in nearby Cherry Hill, N.J.

Johnson was placed under arrest at 11 a.m. after she stepped off a train from Camden, N.J., to Philadelphia in the city’s western section, where a dozen law-enforcement officers were waiting for her.

“We had prior intelligence that she was going to be there,” said Robert Kurtz, acting supervisor of the Marshals Service’s fugitive task force. “She didn’t try to escape.”

“Hot foods should be kept hot and cold foods should be kept cold. What is happening — for example, in a salad bar if food is not kept properly — could be contamination from an overgrowth of bacteria,” said Dr. Joseph Rahimian, attending physician at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Department of Infectious Diseases.

Health Department regulations mandate all cold foods, such as egg salad, be kept below 40 degrees.

That can be especially tough during the dog days of summer when daily temperatures soar.

“When a heat wave comes, like this week, my compressor works double,” said James Lee, executive chef at the Variety Café on West 48th Street.

“It usually turns on every half-hour, but when the temperature hits 90 degrees like this week, it turns on every 15 minutes. The energy bill goes up 25 percent during a heat wave to keep everything cool.”

. . .

According to Rahimian, bacteria can start growing within two hours for food not kept properly chilled — especially at large salad bars.

“I tend not to eat shellfish or sushi from these kinds of environments,” he said. “Cottage cheese and dairy products can go bad very easily in the summer months if it’s not the right temperature.”

Unpeeled fruits, which may not have been properly washed, are another risk, he added.

Very quickly, nasty food-borne pathogens such as bacillus cereus, campylobacter jejuni, E. coli and streptococcus can form.

Food poisoning, accompanied by bouts of diarrhea, nausea and vomiting, can strike immediately after contaminated food is ingested, but it can sometimes take longer. For instance, it can take anywhere from two to five days for symptoms of campylobacter infection, one of the most common causes of gastroenteritis, to strike.

Nationwide, there are about 76 million cases of food poisoning a year resulting in 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths.

The “conditional cash transfer” program, modeled on plans in places like Mexico and Brazil, is privately funded but administered by the city.

. . .

About 14,000 participants will take part in the two-year $53 million pilot program beginning this fall.

As many as 5,100 families of three living below the poverty line in six low-earning neighborhoods, with at least one kid in fourth, seventh or ninth grade in a public school, would participate in the educational part of the program.

Half of the families (the rest will serve as a control group to measure results) will get paid as much as $5,000 a year for meeting various clean-living goals.

Among those families, teenagers will get paid directly $50 for taking the PSAT (a warm-up for the SAT, the most widely used college entrance exam), $300 for getting 11 high school credits a year and $50 for getting a library card — and a whopping $600 for every Regents exam passed, up to a maximum of five.

That means some teens could be directly paid as much as $3,000 by the city. Five Regents are needed to graduate high school.

. . .

Recipients, being selected this summer before the program begins in the fall, can have the money deposited directly into their bank accounts.

Also, 4,100 adults who get Section 8 federal housing vouchers — with half serving as the control group — will get $150 monthly for working 30 hours a week, and $600 for every block of 140 hours in job training.

Records show the mayor — who happens to be swinging through San Francisco and Los Angeles starting today — has visited 20 U.S. cities in the last 18 months.

And that doesn’t count Albany or Washington, routine stops on the government circuit, or foreign countries such as Israel, Jordan, Ireland and Mexico that Bloomberg visited this year alone.

By comparison, in 2004, he took a total of 10 out-of-town trips. Five were to overseas destinations and three were to Albany and Washington.

In 2005, an election year, Bloomberg scaled down. Not a single U.S. city, outside of Albany, made it onto his itinerary.

Over the last 12 months, however, Bloomberg has hit enough cities on his private jet to qualify as a travel-guide writer.