“But what the hell do they know about management and dealing with people? Nothing. If you look at my company, why, after all the success that we had before I ran for office would you not think that I couldn’t run the government? What the hell do I gotta do to prove myself? Or, after the success my company has had and our administration has had, why do you think I wouldn’t be qualified to be president of the United States? I mean, for God’s sake, I’m not running, but this is not different.”

Jessica Weinschenk and her boyfriend Justin Urra, 24, woke up at 3 pm and were shocked to learn that Mormons had briefly descended on their neighborhood.

“I threw my bike through some guy’s window who hit me and they ordered me to clean-up the Houston street station. I got the date, and went there, and some guy handed me cleaning stuff,” he said. “I sat down for a minute, thought about it, and was like, ‘I’m out of here.’ So I went to brunch at Café Colonial.”

They came to clear overgrown brush from the yard in what they might have thought was an abandoned building in Tompkinsville.

“All the copper pipes are gone,” said Galarza as he walked through the building, which smelled of urine, where the toilet and boiler had pipes removed. He pushed his toe against a buckled wood floor, showing how it had sustained water damage after the pipes were removed. “I’m going to talk to the legal department of the Health Department.”

The city’s health commissioner, Dr. Thomas A. Farley, announced on Monday that the Bloomberg administration would seek to ban smoking in city parks and beaches.

For many students, bungling more than half the questions on a test would mean an F and all that comes with it — months of remedial work, irksome teachers and, perhaps, a skimpy allowance. But on New York State’s math exam this year, seventh graders who correctly answered just 44 percent of questions were rewarded with a passing grade.

In New York City, which saw some of the largest gains, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has used the scores as evidence of his successful leadership of the schools. The jump in passing rates also helped 97 percent of the city’s schools earn A’s or B’s on their Department of Education report cards this year.