Police: 4 wounded in shooting on Bourbon Street in New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS — Four people were shot on the French Quarter's iconic Bourbon Street, sending people running as revelers partied Saturday night amid the countdown to Mardi Gras, police and bystanders said. But the party was back in full force hours later as crowds returned afterward.

Two males and two females were wounded just before 9:30 p.m. time, New Orleans police spokesman Frank B. Robertson said. He reported that one male was in critical condition and had undergone surgery, while the other three were in stable condition. He did not release their ages.

Robertson said detectives were working to identify a suspect and determine a motive. A police statement said the shooting occurred on the French Quarter street, but did not provide the exact location where the shots were fired. He said he had no additional information immediately.

"They're just piecing together what happened," he added. Subsequent messages left with police seeking more information were not immediately returned.

The streets were crawling with bar-hopping throngs taking in the last weekend before Fat Tuesday, the enormous party that engulfs New Orleans each year with parades, gaudy floats and merrymakers tossing trinkets and beads to the crowds.

Bourbon Street street is home to strip clubs, watering holes and second-floor balconies lined by people who throw beads to revelers below each Mardi Gras season. The street often gets so crowded that officers have to control the crowds on horseback.

Patrick Clay, 21, an LSU student, told The Times-Picayune he was standing on the corner of Bourbon Street when suddenly he saw a crowd running and people screaming that there was a shooting.

"Everyone immediately started running and the cops immediately started running toward where people were running from," Clay said. "I was with a group of about seven people and at that point we all just kind of grasped hands and made our way through the crowd as soon as possible."

Afterward, police moved in to investigate. Many revelers said they stayed hunkered down in bars and other establishments until police cleared them to move freely.

WWL-TV reported that police had obtained surveillance video from one of the establishments as part of the investigation.

"We don't know what happened but they shut down the entire block for an hour," Peter Manabani, an employee at the Rat's Hole bar, told AP as loud music thumped in the background. He said the block reopened shortly before midnight and his establishment was again thronged entering the early hours.

Early Sunday there were no signs a shooting had occurred, as revelers had returned to party mode, packing the block anew amid a heavy police presence. Many milled about, wearing beads, drinking and carousing.

"It's scary. We heard about the shooting in the cab ride down here and almost turned around but it's our first Mardi Gras and we wanted to be here," said Ashley Holleran, 19, of Allendale, N.J., visiting with a friend from New York.

Laura Gonzalez, 21, of Baytown, Texas, said it was also her first Mardi Gras and she spent some time in the Fat Catz Bar nearby as police investigated the shooting. She said the bar quickly locked its doors soon after the shooting and wouldn't let anyone in or out while police kept the crime scene clear of throngs.

Asked if it was frightening, she responded: "Not really. We were just locked in a bar and we weren't going to let this one incident wreck our party."

Parades rolled all day Saturday but none on Bourbon Street because the streets are too narrow. One of the biggest Mardi Gras parades, the Krewe of Endymion, rolled down Canal Street and just skirted Bourbon Street a few hours before the shooting. Typically, once the parades end, partygoers head to the French Quarter.

The lifeblood tourism trade is vital to New Orleans and Mardis Gras is one of the city's signature events, along with Jazz Fest and major sporting events such as the recent Super Bowl. Yet decades-old problems persist and New Orleans remains plagued by violent crime, including gun violence that soared after Hurricane Katrina clobbered the city in 2005.

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‘Payoff’ to Qaeda

PARIS — A former US ambassador to Mali has alleged France paid a $17 million ransom to free hostages seized from a French mining site — cash she said funded the al Qaeda-linked militants its troops are now fighting.

French officials denied paying any ransom.

Vicki Huddleston said the money let al Qaeda’s North African branch flourish in Mali.

“Everyone is pretty much aware that money has passed hands indirectly through different accounts and it ends up in the treasury, let us say, of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” she told France’s iTélé TV in remarks airing yesterday.

She said the payment was intended to win freedom for seven hostages kidnapped in September 2010 in the Niger town of Arlit, where they were working with French nuclear company Areva.

Three, including a Frenchwoman, were freed in February 2011; four remain in the Islamists’ hands.

Claude Gueant, at the time the chief of staff to then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy, denied that France ever paid a ransom, and a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry dismissed the allegations.

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Meredith pans New Citi chief

It will take more than a new CEO to fix Citigroup.

Meredith Whitney, the influential bank analyst who garnered Wall Street glory by making accurate calls against Citi as the financial crisis was gathering steam, said she was “uninspired” by the bank’s newly minted boss, Michael Corbat.

“He didn’t give us an agenda and he didn’t even give us a stamp for when he’s going to give us an agenda, so it left people a little bit uninspired,” she said during an interview with Bloomberg TV yesterday.

Corbat got the top job in October after Citi’s powerful chairman, Michael O’Neill, orchestrated the ouster of Vikram Pandit.

She touted Bank of America, run by CEO Brian Moynihan, as a better investment for potential shareholders as a contrast to Citi. She set a 12-month price target on BofA shares of $15. The stock closed down 9 cents, at $11.84.

Whitney is betting that the firm will get the green light from regulators to buy back as much as $5 billion of shares, which would give shareholders a lift.

As for as Citi, Whitney wrote in a Jan. 17 note to clients that the sprawling firm lacks the “firepower” to make cuts and dial up revenues.

“Investors were disappointed by the lack of firepower to earnings, specifically the lack of reserve releases [against potential loan losses] . . .” she wrote.

“We note that [Citi’s] brethren already have identified specific cost saving initiatives,” she added, citing BofA’s “Project New BAC” to trim staff and expenses and a similar plan by Wells Fargo’s dubbed “Project Compass.”

Her 12-month price target for Citi is $47. Shares fell 18 cents to close at $42.87.

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WATCH: High-speed Los Angeles car chase ends in huge fireball

KTLA video still

A police chase in California ended in flames Wednesday night.

A Los Angeles police chase ended in a fireball Wednesday, with the high-speed pursuit caught on video.

KTLA video shows the chase - which involved a suspected drunken driver, the station reports.

The driver weaved in between cars, eluding authorities along a highway in Boyle Heights, a neighborhood on the east side of Los Angeles.

Eventually the suspect's car spun, crashing into a guardrail and bursting into flames.

As fire engulfed the wreckage, police approached the car and pulled the driver to safety.

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Does this make you want a sandwich?

CKE Restaurants/ Splash News

Cod almighty, this makes us hungry for more! Sizzling Sports Illustrated supermodel Nina Agdal seductively wolfs down a Charbroiled Atlantic Cod Fish Sandwich in an ad for Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s. Sure hope there were no bones in that thing.

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NYPD releases stop-frisk numbers: Most used in Brooklyn & Queens, nearly all stopped are black or Hispanic

The NYPD for the first time publicly released a report last night on its controversial stop-and-frisk procedure that breaks down by city precinct — and by race — those targeted.

The figures, all from 2011, show that the precinct with the most stops by sheer numbers was Brooklyn’s 75th, which includes East New York and Cypress Hills.

More than 31,000 people were stopped, 97 percent of them either black or Hispanic.

The 73 Precinct, covering Brownsville in Brooklyn, was the next highest with 25,167 stops. About 98 percent involved minorities.

In Queens, the 115th Precinct — which includes East Elmhurst, Corona and Jackson Heights — ranked third with 18,156 stops. Nearly 93 percent of those involved minorities, the figures show.

The 40th Precinct in The Bronx, which covers Mott Haven and Melrose, racked up the next highest number — 17,690 — with 98.5 percent of them involving minorities.

And at No. 5 was the 90th Precinct in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where there were 17,566 stops, with 88.6 percent involving minorities.

The New York Civil Liberties Union had fought for release of the stats last year.

After getting them, the civil-rights group published the figures on their Web site in May, saying they show a pattern of racial profiling — a charge that the NYPD denies.

The Police Department said it had no comment on why it was releasing the figures itself now.

As has been reported, the statistics show that overall, nearly 90 percent of those targeted by NYPD stop-and-frisks in the city in 2011 were either black or Hispanic.

Meanwhile, blacks and Hispanics together make up less than 53 percent of the population.

A total 685,724 people — 8.6 percent of the city’s population — were detained by cops for “reasonable suspicion.”

That was the highest number since the NYPD started recording stop-and-frisk figures in 2002.

Of that number, 9 percent also were white, and 4 percent were Asian, the figures showed.

The No. 1 reason for stop-and-frisks that year was possible weapons possession, the report said.

The statistics did not say how many of those stops resulted in arrests.

natasha.velez@nypost.com

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The good, the ads & the ugly

Some of the biggest scores and worst fumbles made during last night’s Super Bowl were made by advertisers.

At a record $3.8 million for each 30-second spot, companies strived for buzz and attention.

Mercedes-Benz wound up on both the winning and losing sides last night, experts said.

In the winner, the carmaker tapped Willem Dafoe as the devil offering to give a man a car in return for his soul — only to be rejected when the guy learned he could buy it for $30,000.

The company’s losing ad teased viewers by implying it would show supermodel Kate Upton getting sudsy while washing a Mercedes — but ended with highschool football players doing the job.

Old folks can party hard — and down late-night tacos — like anyone else! The funny, raucous spot showed seniors out on the town, dancing, getting tattoos, getting freaky in a bathroom and eating at Taco Bell.

Taco Bell found the marketing end zone with senior citizens going crazy.

Perennial Super Bowl ad star GoDaddy.com grossed out experts with stunner Bar Refaeli giving a very wet kiss to a nerd.

Budweiser and Jeep both scored emotional points, using a baby Clydesdale and military families, respectively.

The Post’s panel of experts included Richard Kirshenbaum, CEO of NSG/SWAT; George Belch, chairman of the marketing department at San Diego State University; Timothy Calkins, marketing professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management; and Barbara Lippert, Mediapost.com editorat-large.

—Additional reporting by Claire Atkinson

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Deadly deserts

Ralph Peters

Violence in Allah’s name in northern Africa won’t end in my lifetime — and probably not in yours. The core question is: To what extent can the savagery be contained?

From the Atlantic coastline to the Suez Canal, struggling governments, impoverished populations and frankly backward societies struggle to find paths to modernization and to compete in a ruthless global economy. Religious fanatics for whom progress is a betrayal of faith hope to block development.

Still, if the only conflict was between Islamist terrorists and those who want civilized lives, the situation could be managed over time. But that struggle forms only one level in a layer cake of clashing visions and outright civil wars bedeviling a vast region. Much larger than Europe, the zone of contention encompasses the Maghreb, the countries touching the Mediterranean, and the Sahel, the bitterly poor states stretching down across desert wastes to the African savannah.

AFP/Getty Images

Figthers of the Islamic group Ansar Dine

The Sahel is the front line not only between the world of Islam and Christian-animist cultures in Africa’s heart, but between Arabs and light-skinned tribes in the north, and blacks to the south. No area in the world so explicitly illustrates the late, great Samuel Huntington’s concept of “the clash of civilizations.”

If racial and religious differences were not challenge enough, in the Maghreb the factions and interest groups are still more complicated. We view Egypt as locked in a contest between Islamists and “our guys,” Egyptians seeking new freedoms. But Egypt’s identity struggle is far more complex, involving social liberals, moderate Muslims, stern conservative Muslims (such as the Muslim Brotherhood) and outright fanatics. The military forms another constituency, while the business community defends its selfish interests. Then there are the supporters of the old Mubarak regime, the masses of educated-but-unemployed youth and the bitterly poor peasants.

Atop all that there’s the question of whether the values cherished by Arab societies can adapt to a globalized world.

The path to Egypt’s future will not be smooth — yet Egypt’s chances are better than those of many of its neighbors. Consider a few key countries in the region:

Mali

Viva la France! (Never thought I’d write that in The Post.) Contrary to a lot of media nonsense, the effective French intervention in Mali demonstrates that not every military response to Islamist terror has to become another Afghanistan: The French are welcome.

As extremists invariably do, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and its allies rapidly alienated their fellow Muslims — after hijacking a local uprising. The local version of Islam is far more humane and tolerant than the Wahhabi cult imposed by Islamist fanatics. To the foreign extremists, the Malian love of Sufi mysticism, ancient shrines and their own centuries of religious scholarship are all hateful — as is the Malian genius for music that’s pleased listeners around the world.

Have a comment on this PostOpinion column? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!

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Con Ed worker injured by explosion on UWS

On Friday a Con Ed worker was injured when a small electrical explosion burned his face and arms as he worked inside a tony Upper West Side apartment building, authorities said.

The explosion sent the unidentified Con Ed worker and one other injured person to New York Presbyterian Hospital/Cornell Medical Center in stable condition at about 12:50 p.m., the FDNY said.

The Con Ed worker suffered a flash burn to his face with first and second degree burns to his arms, neck and hands while working on a service box, Bob McGee, a spokesman for Con Ed said.

The other victim was burned on his hands, neck and face, FDNY officials said.

It wasn't immediately clear whether the second victim was a resident in the Windermere – an upscale building on West 92 Street and West End Avenue – but a Con Ed spokesman confirmed there was only one worker injured.

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QB sneak hid kid from CBS bosses

Now that’s a misdirection play!

Desperate to keep his clean-cut all-American image intact, Dan Marino told no one but his wife that he had sired a baby with a co-worker, paying the mistress hush money and keeping his CBS Sports bosses — and even his longtime lawyer-agent — in the dark for seven years, sources told The Post yesterday.

“Danny did, as difficult as it was, tell his wife in 2005, when this occurred,” said a source close to Marino, referring to Claire Marino, who has six children with the Hall of Famer.

Marino, who has been a pregame analyst for CBS’s “The NFL Today” since 2003, stunned his Tiffany Network bosses by informing them of the tryst and secret love child after The Post told him the story was about to break.

Ryan Miner / Splash News

SCRAMBLIN’: Adour DanMarino stomps around New Orleans yesterday amid news of a love child with ex-CBS staffer Donna Savattere.

He also kept his longtime lawyer-agent — who had negotiated his contracts with the Miami Dolphins and CBS for 30 years — in the dark about the bombshell deal that paid CBS Sports production assistant Donna Savattere millions of dollars and that was cut in 2005, the year their girl was born, a source close to the former quarterback said.

And during the seven long years that Marino kept the tawdry secret from the public and his superiors at CBS, he signed “numerous contracts” that kept him lucratively employed, the source noted.

“CBS was not involved in any way, shape or form back in 2005,” when Marino cut the deal with Savattere using another lawyer, the source said.

She bore him daughter Chloe in June of that year — four months after Marino was voted into the NFL’s Hall of Fame for a dazzling career in which he became the league’s all-time leading passer at the time of his 1999 retirement.

Marino confessed to CBS Sports about the baby scandal only on Wednesday — right after The Post told Marino it would be exposing the affair and love child, a source close to him said.

Wednesday was also the Marinos’ 28th wedding anniversary. “At that point, Danny went to CBS,” the source said.

A second source, one familiar with the situation within CBS, confirmed that account as “absolutely true.”

“The first they heard about it was Wednesday,” that source said.

Asked about that account, CBS Sports spokeswoman Jen Sabatelle said, “CBS Sports executives first learned of this yesterday.”

Marino, 51, then also informed his lawyer-agent, Marvin Demoff, of the deal, telling him he had employed other people to handle the payout to Savattere, now 44.

The Marino source said he believed Marino did not use Demoff to negotiate the payment agreement with Savattere or inform the lawyer of its existence because of “embarrassment” over his adultery and love child.

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Miss America Mallory Hagan belts out National Anthem before Nets game

WireImage

Miss America Mallory Hagan sings the national anthem before the Brooklyn Nets game at Barclays Center Wednesday.

No lip sync needed.

Newly crowned Miss America Mallory Hagan belted out the National Anthem at the packed Barclays Center last night before the Nets game.

The former Brooklynite drew cheers and once again promised her adopted borough that she’ll be moving back after her Miss America reign ends.

“Once I came here, I never wanted to leave,” Hagan saidbefore her big performance..

Despite Hagan’s boost, the Nets were hammered by the reigning NBA champion Miami Heat, 105-85.

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Vanished SI mom on cam

Turkish police investigating the disappearance of a Staten Island woman are poring over security footage that shows her casually walking around and eating at a mall near her hostel just before she vanished.

Amateur photographer and married mom of two Sarai Sierra, 33, has been missing since Jan. 21, the day before she was supposed to fly home from Istanbul to New York.

Her friend, Maggie Rodriguez, was supposed to accompany her on the picture-taking trip but told The Post yesterday that she backed out at the last minute because she didn’t have enough money to go. She said she has been wrestling with the guilt ever since.

AP

Sarai Sierra

“It hurts quite a bit to know whatever happened wouldn’t have happened if there were two of us together,” Rodriguez said.

Sierra’s husband, Steven, and her brother, David Jimenez, flew to Istanbul to meet with police and diplomatic officials.

Sierra last spoke to her family on Jan. 21. She told them she was cutting her trip short to surprise her sons, ages 9 and 11.

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Ex-NYCiSchool principal in Regents test cheat

The former principal of the high-performing NYCiSchool improperly allowed one of her teachers to re-grade and raise scores on high school Regents exams, school investigators found.

She was among nearly 100 educators — including 17 principals, 61 teachers, seven assistant principals and nine other staffers — who have been implicated in cheating probes by the city Department of Education since 2006, according to documents obtained under a Freedom of Information Act filing.

It took the Department of Education nearly 18 months to comply with The Post’s request for cheating cases confirmed by its internal investigative arm, the Office of Special Investigations — in violation of the rules governing public access to documents.

Among the recent cases, NYCiSchool principal Alisa Berger let teacher Susan Herzog re-grade the June 2010 Living Environment Regents exam by herself after they had already been graded.

Herzog said she raised the scores given to students for certain questions after clarifying proper procedures with the State Education Department.

Berger told The Post that student scores were both raised and lowered, but that no students’ grade was changed from failing to passing.

“Did I make a procedural mistake? I did. Was it cheating? Absolutely not,” said Berger, who unrelatedly left the downtown school last year.

Among the biggest cases of cheating, teachers at Hillcrest HS in Queens were found to have bumped up the scores of 255 students on the English Regents exams back in 2006.

The case was never made public and no teachers were punished because the re-scoring practice, known as “scrubbing,” wasn’t technically prohibited.

In another case, Manhattan teacher Iris Ventura helped several classrooms of 8th graders with the state’s high-stakes math exams — at the request of MS 322 principal Erica Zigelman, investigators found.

Despite the DOE’s stated no tolerance policy for cheating, they were both let off with letters of reprimand.

In 2011, Ventura was caught cheating again — this time telling four 7th graders to check their answers on the state math exams, probers found.

She was again let off with a letter in her file, and has since resigned, according to the DOE.

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JonBenet Ramsey grand jury voted to indict parents in 1999, but DA refused to press case: report

AP

John and Patsy Ramsey, parents of slain child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, drew attention from a Colorado grand jury investigating their daughter's death.

The Colorado grand jury looking into the death of JonBenet Ramsey had actually voted to indict the slain tot beauty queen’s parents 13 years ago, though prosecutors decline to press the case, according to a bombshell new report.

The grand jury voted in 1999 to indict both John and Patsy Ramsey on charges of child abuse resulting in death, a Class II felony that can carry up to 48 years in prison, sources told Colorado’s Boulder Daily Camera newspaper.

The paper said Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter never reveled the indictment vote, but refused to sign it.

He announced the end of the investigation, telling the media: “I and my prosecution task force believe we do not have sufficient evidence to warrant a filing of charges against anyone who has been investigated at this time.”

The former child beauty queen was murdered in the family’s Boulder home on Christmas Day in 1996.

ZUMA PRESS

JonBenet Ramsey was found murdered on Christmas Day in 1996.

While Patsy died in 2006, a lawyer for John Ramsey yesterday hailed Hunter’s actions.

“If what you report actually happened, then there were some very professional and brave people in Alex’s office,” his attorney Bryan Morgan told the paper.

Experts are unclear whether the DA’s acted properly in not signing the indictment, the paper said.

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Qns. shooting ends city's nine-day murder-free streak

The city broke a nine-day murder-free streak last night when a man was found dead in the basement of a Queens apartment complex, police said.

The 20-year-old victim, whose name was not released, had been shot in the head.

He was found just after 6 p.m. in a building in the LeFrak City complex in Corona.

The slaying was the first in the city since Jan. 16, when Jennifer Rivera, 20, and her uncle, Jason Rivera, 30, were gunned down execution-style while sitting a parked car in The Bronx.

The nine days without murders came amid brutally low temperatures that cops say usually keeps criminals indoors — and homicides and other street crime to a minimum.

Last year saw just 414 homicides — a record chalked up to concentrating police operations in high-crime areas.

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Assad kin on the run

The Syrian civil war has gotten so bad that even the mother and sister of brutal ruler Bashar al-Assad have fled the country, said US officials.

Assad’s mother, Anisa Makhlouf, who’s in her 70s, and his eldest sister, Bushra, went to the United Arab Emirates recently as rebels edged closer to the Syrian capital, Damascus.

Bushra had been married to Assad’s deputy defense minister, Gen. Assef Shawkat, who was killed in a Damascus bomb attack in July.

“Members of the regime, little by little, are flaking off,” said US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford.

Meanwhile, at least another 140 people were killed in Syria yesterday, according to activist groups. The death toll since the civil war began in March 2011 is well over 60,000, according to the United Nations.

The latest fatalities came as Assad’s army unleashed a barrage of rocket and artillery fire on rebel-held areas in a central province as part of a widening offensive against the rebels.

At the UN, officials said a record number of Syrians streamed into Jordan this month, doubling the population of the kingdom’s already cramped refugee camp to 65,000.

More than 30,000 people arrived at the Zaatari camp in January — with at least 6,000 in the past two days.

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Mayor Bloomberg blasted at candidates forum

William Miller

New York City mayoral hopeful Joseph Lhota at at a Thursday forum discussion.

It looks like Mayor Bloomberg is in for a very long campaign year.

The mayor got battered last night at a forum in the East New York section of Brooklyn that featured Republican contender Joe Lhota in his first appearance with other candidates.

The former MTA chairman offered carefully constructed responses to questions that focused on affordable housing before a packed audience at the St. Paul Community Baptist Church.

But most of his Democratic rivals, as well as Republican hopeful Tom Allon, unloaded at just about every opportunity at Bloomberg.

"It's quite possible Mayor Bloomberg does not know what mold is," mocked Comptroller John Liu when the questioning turned to the city's response to super-storm Sandy.

All six candidates agreed the city hasn't done enough to help residents still struggling to recover.

"This is a city administration that wanted to run a marathon while people were just moving into shelters and unfortunately bodies were still being found," said former Comptroller Bill Thompson.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who is closest the the mayor of all those running, said mold removal should have been included in the "rapid repairs" program initiated by the city after a homeowner from Gerritsen Beach said hundreds of homes there might be lost due to spreading contamination.

Bloomberg has said that he doesn't intend to respond to every single issue raised by his would-be successors.

But Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson felt compelled to tweet last night, "Reality check-- Bloomberg at 65-23 (per cent in polls) on Hurricane Sandy performance."

The harshest attacks on the mayor came during a discussion of the Housing Authority and its embattled chairman, John Rhea.

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio charged that the agency can't function well "if the mayor doesn't care about people who live in public housing. There's an old colorful Sicilian expression that says the head stinks from the head down."

Longshot GOP hopeful Tom Allon went him one better by describing Rhea as the "Cathie Black" of housing, a stinging reference to the schools chancellor appointed by the mayor who lasted 96 days.

There's not much political downside for the Democratic candidates hammering away at Bloomberg before the primary, where the electorate tends to lean to the left and the mayor is an easy target.

The one place where Bloomberg got some credit was his ambitious program to build or rehabilitate 165,000 housing units before he leaves office, the largest such project in the nation.

Every candidate pledged to keep that pace of 15,000 added apartments a year. None explained how they'd paid for them.

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It’s plenty of 20 – plus flurries

When they say it’s “too cold to snow,” don’t believe them. A dusting of 1 to 2 inches is expected when snow showers develop tomorrow afternoon and continue into the evening.

Before that we’ll get more struggling sunshine today, with temperatures peaking at 21 degrees — but icy winds feeling like only 2 degrees. Tonight’s low temperature will be about 13, forecasters said.

Tomorrow’s temps should be more of the same, with a high around 22 degrees.

The weekend will be warmer, but just a bit. Saturday’s high is expected to be 24 and Sunday’s will be 27.

Don’t expect relief until next week. Forecasters say temps will finally go above freezing and hit 36 on Monday, 40 on Tuesday and a positively balmy 48 onWednesday. Andy Soltis

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An absentee mayor

Bob McManus

Remember the time Mike Bloomberg jetted off to sunny Bermuda as a monster snowstorm bore down on the five boroughs? Never again, he said afterward, woefully, while the city ever-so-slowly dug itself out of the drifts.

Well, some tigers just can’t change their stripes.

For there he was last week, down in Maryland giving America a firearms intervention while the United Federation of Teachers and his own crack Department of Education negotiators pulled his pants down on teacher-quality reform.

Transforming the city’s public-school system into a national model for quality and effectiveness was once right at the top of Mayor Mike’s personal legacy list.

AP

Busy in Baltimore: Mayor Bloomberg waiting to speak at a gun-violence summit while his aides were bungling teacher-evaluation talks back home.

But then came the third-term blahs, the departure of Joel Klein as schools chancellor, the ensuing Cathy Black debacle, the ascendancy of the thuggish United Federation of Teachers boss Mike Mulgrew — and the now-pervasive sense that Bloomberg no longer much gives a damn about the city’s 1,400 schools.

Fact is, he’s always been long on big ideas and short on follow-through (congestion pricing, anyone?). The schools seem to be no different.

Bloomberg won mayoral control of the Board of Education early on — a signal victory, though one built on the largely unappreciated efforts of his predecessor, Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Then came a lot of churning, but not much change.

Certainly not when it came to dealing with Albany.

He dispatched naïve deputies to the capital city to negotiate charter-school and school-closure reform with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver — and wound up with laws studded with subsections designed to weaken, not strengthen, mayoral control.

And that’s how it worked out.

Fast forward to last week’s teacher-evaluation horror show, a repeat of what had come before: Mike delegated, his deputies dithered and the UFT carried the day

More, the union can now credibly — if dishonestly — argue that the potential loss of hundreds of millions in state and federal school aid is all Mike’s fault.

The money is the carrot in a state law requiring that the city and its unions negotiate objective evaluation standards for teachers and supervisors.

This always was going to be a tough fight. Mulgrew would sooner jam hot needles in his eyes than allow even the most egregiously incompetent teachers to be dismissed.

But as negotiations closed in on last Thursday’s deadline, the union had an unexpected ally at the table: Shael Polakow-Suransky, the policy factotum forced on Bloomberg by Albany as its price for allowing Cathy Black to become chancellor.

Black imploded after just weeks on the job, but Polakow-Suransky remained.

And Polakow-Suransky, it seems, is no fan of standardized testing, a key tool — if not the key tool — in any credible teacher-evaluation regimen.

“He doesn’t believe in testing,” says one high-ranking participant in the talks. “He negotiated it away — and when Mike [came back and] found out, he exploded.”

This brought negotiations to an end in a spray of invective, with state Education Commissioner John King essentially (and not unreasonably) blaming the breakdown on Bloomberg while threatening to withhold perhaps $1 billion in education aid from the city.

But, correcting for the bad hand the mayor had dealt himself, Bloomberg is spot on: One can’t objectively evaluate teachers without, well, objective evaluation metrics.

That is, without standardized tests.

Many pupils, if not most, will do fine without much testing.

Still, you can’t perform an education on a child, like an appendectomy. It’s a process, and many children — for reasons of class, culture, economic circumstance or personal disinclination to participate — resist it more than others.

These are the children who desperately need the readin’, ’ritin’ and ’rithmatic rubric that comprises the core of most test prep.

And in that sense, test performance is an entirely valid — indeed, critical — standard against which to judge teachers.

So if Polakow-Suransky doesn’t like standardized testing — well, too bad about Polakow-Suransky. And no matter that such views enjoy considerable currency among the Columbia Teachers College crew that drives policy at the Department of Education; they have no legitimate presence in Bloomberg administration negotiating positions.

And they certainly shouldn’t have come as such a surprise to the mayor himself.

That is, Mike should have been paying much closer attention to what was being proposed in his name.

For while education isn’t as sexy as assault rifles, he started the reform fight. He really should devote what time he has remaining in City Hall to working for its successful conclusion.

rmcmanus8@gmail.com

Have a comment on this PostOpinion column? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!

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Bath salts bust in Hell's Kitchen

Byron Smith

Police at the scene on West 54th Street where officials had suspected a meth lab — cops found illegal bath salts instead.

Something foul is cooking in Hell’s Kitchen.

Police raided a West 54th Street co-op and found pounds of the illegal designer drug "bath salts" in a possible drug lab after neighbors complained that apartment smelled of cat urine, sources and witnesses said.

“One officer said, ‘I don't want to go in there,” said Chelsea Blakeburn, 20, who lives next to the third floor apartment and smelled the stench.

Blackburn said that a neighbor upstairs in the five story walk up — which is two blocks from a police precinct — was the one who called authorities.

Pounds of a white substance, believed to be illegal bath salts, were found in the apartment’s refrigerator along with beakers, according to police sources.

Bath salts are a low-grade synthetic drug with effects similar to cocaine and methamphetamine.

A 44-year old man who lives in the apartment is being questioned by police, but has not been charged, police said.

Neighbors describe the man as “bizarre and strange.”

DEP has not finished testing the substance and will make a final determination.

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