But for New Yorkers trapped on the other side of the currency imbalance, it’s easy to feel ambivalent about the invasion. An infusion of foreign money is welcome in a city faced with a wobbly economy and a possible budget gap in the billions. But even some locals who consider themselves cosmopolitan and internationalist confess to feeling envy, not to mention territorialism, in watching a outsiders treat their city like a Wal-Mart of hip.

Their party is raging just as the hangover has started to set in for Americans. Frictions do arise — especially in a summer of looming recession, where many locals do not feel rich enough or secure enough to travel abroad themselves. (And let’s not even get into their weeks of summer vacation).

“It’s Psych 101 — jealousy,” said Randi Ungar, 30, an online advertising sales manager who lives on the Upper West Side. “I’m jealous that I can’t go to Italy and buy 12 Prada bags, but they can come here and buy 18 of them.”

Steven Schoenfeld, a 45-year-old investment manager who lives near Lincoln Center, said that he welcomes the influx of visitors, in theory, as a boost to the local economy, but “sometimes you feel like it’s going to become a situation where they stop and take picture: ‘Look at that endangered species — a native New Yorker, with a briefcase, going to work.’ ”

Polly Blitzer, a former magazine beauty editor who now runs a beauty Web site, said she believes that a turf war is going on this summer between free-spending Europeans and locals over the chic bistros, spas, boutiques and department stores that she, a native New Yorker, used to consider her playground.

She said the point was driven home to her on a recent trip to Bergdorf Goodman to help her fiancé select a pair of shoes to go with his tuxedo for their wedding.

Wearing the sort of outfit that usually acts as a siren for department store salespeople — a Tory Burch shift dress and Jimmy Choo slingback heels — she instead found herself waiting behind a European couple in sneakers and bike shorts who “had made such massive purchases that we couldn’t get anyone to give us the time of day for our size 11 ½ Ferragamo party slippers,” recalled Ms. Blitzer, 32.

The Europeans, she said, “brought over bags and bags of shoes” while the salesman wrapped their orders and chatted them up about restaurants and travel. “I didn’t want to do the ahem-I’m-sitting-here thing, but we had to sit there for 5 or 10 minutes while these big spenders small-talked.”

They say one breed in particular — the lion’s mane — showed up about a month earlier than usual. The biologists blame everything from breeding conditions and climate change for the abundance of jellyfish so early in the season.

Cornell University biologist Mark Bain says there is “widespread evidence of increasing jellyfish around the world.”

CBS 2 HD has obtained exclusive information on the plan drivers love to hate.

Albany shot it down, but congestion pricing may get the green light anyway.

“I thought Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan was unique and well thought out,” Gov. David Paterson said on Tuesday.

Paterson told CBS 2 HD in an exclusive interview that the controversial proposal to charge drivers who enter the Central Business District of Manhattan a fee between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. Monday through Friday is back.

It may be just the ticket for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s budget woes, and a way to hold down fares and improve service.

“I think it’s a viable solution,” Paterson said.

Months ago Richard Ravitch was named by the governor to lead an independent commission to find ways to fund the MTA. He told CBS 2 HD he’d like to take another look at congestion pricing, too.

“I agree with (the governor) fully,” Ravitch said.

“He jumped. The train ran over him,” a police spokeswoman said.

“He wasn’t injured at all. He got up. He admonished the train operator for not crushing him.”

Trouble now will have to get by for the rest of her life on a measly $2 million.

While Helmsley, who died last August, was exceedingly generous to her 9-year-old Maltese in her will, she pointedly excluded grandkids Craig Panzirer, 40, and Meegan Panzirer Wesolko, 37, “for reasons which are known to them.”

In bombshell papers filed in Manhattan Surrogate’s Court, the siblings say the so-called Queen of Mean was not of sound mind or memory and did not have the mental capacity to make a will when she signed the document on July 15, 2005.

She died at 87.

. . .

Trouble is living in Florida with Carl Lekic, the general manager of the Helmsley Sandcastle Hotel.

In an affidavit, Lekic says Trouble appears to be very happy in her new permanent home and is doing well in all respects, and the extra cash wouldn’t buy her more happiness.

“Two million dollars . . . would be enough money to pay for Trouble’s maintenance and welfare at the highest standards of care for more than 10 years, which is more that twice her reasonably anticipated life expectancy,” he said.