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The mayor’s “windmill power plan” is the boldest environmental proposal yet from the billionaire independent, who has been trying to make energy efficiency a legacy of his administration.

Speaking at a major conference on alternative energy Tuesday night in Las Vegas, Bloomberg proposed putting windmills on top of city bridges, and skyscrapers, and turbines in the Hudson and East Rivers.

In terms of offshore locations, aides to the mayor told CBS 2’s Magee Hickey, the city is looking at the generally windy coast off of Queens, Brooklyn and Long Island for the turbines, which could provide 10 percent of the city’s electricity in just 10 years.

The plan also includes the use of solar panels, possibly on the roofs of public and private buildings:

“When it takes to producing clean power, we’re determined to make New York the number one city in the nation,” said Bloomberg.

To show how serious he is, the mayor had lunch with T. Boone Pickens – the oil baron trying to build the world’s largest wind farm in Texas – to talk about possibilities for such technology in New York City. Bloomberg gave companies until September 19 to submit innovative proposals to make the city “greener” by 2030:

The fall in application volume is the latest sign of a struggling housing market. On Tuesday, a Commerce Department report showed construction of homes and apartments fell in July to the lowest level in more than 17 years.

And while fewer new homes are being built, fewer customers are also refinancing existing mortgages. A sharp drop in refinance volume in recent weeks has been the leading driver of declining application volume.

The trade group’s application index fell to 419.3 during the week ended Aug. 15, its lowest level since the index hit 298.3 in December 2000, and a 1.5 percent decline from the prior week. Application volume is down 61 percent from its 2008 peak in February.

The MBA’s index peaked at 1,856.7 during the week ending May 30, 2003, at the height of the housing boom. An index value of 100 is equal to the application volume on March 16, 1990, the first week the MBA tracked application volume.

The survey provides a snapshot of mortgage lending activity among mortgage bankers, commercial banks and thrifts. It covers about 50 percent of all residential retail mortgage originations each week.

Application volume fell despite a drop in interest rates as well. The average rate for traditional, 30-year fixed-rate mortgages fell to 6.47 percent during the week ended Aug. 15, from 6.57 percent the previous week.

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“Those firms — Merrill, Wachovia and others — are going to have to raise that cash,” he said. “They are either going to have to get it from the Federal Reserve, through some direct or indirect means, which means more leverage, more Fed balance sheet, more regularly oversight or they’re going to have to get it in the capital markets.”

“The price in the Federal Reserve is about 2 plus percent, in the capital markets it’s four times as high,” Kotok said. “If they pay the higher price, there is no profitability for them so their franchises are jeopardised. This is a serious developing issue as we cure years of overleveraging.”

The service just handed Boeing a $36 million contract to “continue developing a truck-mounted, high-energy laser weapon system that will destroy rockets, artillery shells and mortar rounds,” according to a company statement.

Under the High Energy Laser Technology Demonstrator (HEL TD) Phase II contract, awarded Aug. 15, Boeing will complete the design of, then build, test and evaluate, a rugged beam control system on a Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck. Boeing also will develop the system-engineering requirements for the entire HEL TD laser weapon system.

In media centers, dormitories and arena bathrooms, pieces of tape cover logos of fire extinguishers, light switches, thermostats, bedroom night tables, soap dispensers and urinals. The Taiden Industrial translation headsets in a large conference room have had their logos covered, as have the American Standard faucets in the bathrooms nearby, and the ThyssenKrupp escalators down the hall.

Even the sign atop the InterContinental Beijing Beichen hotel, attached to the Main Press Center, has been obscured by an Olympic cloth wrap. InterContinental Hotels Group isn’t an Olympic sponsor. Gary Rosen, a spokesman for Intercontinental, says the company doesn’t mind complying with the brand restrictions because it had planned all along to formally open the hotel following completion of the Games.

The International Olympic Committee says that such “brand protection” is essential for the Games to raise the corporate money that keeps them going and growing. The Games get 40% of their revenue from sponsors, with the rest coming from broadcast rights, ticketing and licensing. Sponsors of China’s Games, believed to be the most lucrative ever, have contributed some $1.5 billion in cash, goods and services, estimates sports-marketing group Octagon.

The IOC says the brand-protection practices here in Beijing are consistent with procedures at past Olympics. Actual enforcement of IOC sponsorship-protection rules falls mostly to whichever city is hosting the Games, however, and by some indications no host has taken that role more seriously than China. In many cases, even products that don’t compete with anything made by official sponsors are having their logos covered.

“It’s surprising they’d go to that extent,” says Toshihiko Shibuya, a spokesman for Matsushita Electric Industrial, which makes Panasonic products. “We’re happy that they’ve taken the effort to hide the names of products in our category,” he says.

But he finds it “very bizarre” that even toilet fixtures would have brand names covered up.

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Naturally, curious minds tend to wonder what’s under the tape. A few investigative journalists, bristling at all this control, have even removed pieces of tape.

Two members of the Warren Commission were initially not convinced that President John F. Kennedy had been shot from the sixth floor window of the Texas Book Depository, according to confidential FBI files released this week to The Post’s Joe Stephens.

The files detail the inner workings of a secret back channel that Gerald R. Ford, then a Michigan congressman who was one of seven members of the Warren Commission, opened in 1963 to J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. The declassified FBI memos are among scores of documents in the file on President Ford, who died in December 2006. At the request of The Post, the FBI this week released 500 pages of the bureau’s voluminous file.

Although it has long been known that he secretly spoke with the FBI, the newly obtained, previously classified records detail one visit Ford made to one of Hoover’s deputies just three weeks after joining the panel.

A December 1963 memo recounts that Ford told FBI Assistant Director Cartha D. DeLoach that two members remained unconvinced that Kennedy had been shot from the sixth floor window of the Texas Book Depository. In addition, three commission members “failed to understand” the trajectory of the slugs, Ford said.

Ford told DeLoach that commission discussions would continue and reassured him that those minority points of view on the commission “of course would represent no problem,” one internal FBI memo shows. The memo does not name the members involved and does not elaborate on what Ford meant by “no problem.”

Ford also told DeLoach that Chief Justice Earl Warren, who headed the commission, had told its members that “they should strive to have their hearings completed and the findings made public prior to July 1964, when the Presidential campaigns will begin to get hot. He stated it would be unfair to present the findings after July.” They missed their deadline, concluding in a report issued on September 24, 1964, that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination.

Much of the material in the overall FBI file on Ford concerns intelligence about his political adversaries when he was president, especially organizations that the bureau thought might disrupt Ford’s appearances around the country. But the file also sheds light on the investigation into Kennedy’s assassination and the FBI’s relationship with Ford, and shows how the bureau strove to curry favor with powerful politicians.

Another memo in the file, previously released with Warren Commission materials in 1978, details how Ford approached DeLoach in 1963 and offered to secretly inform the bureau about the inner workings of the then-ongoing Warren Commission investigation.

“Ford indicated he would keep me thoroughly advised as to the activities of the Commission,” DeLoach wrote. “He stated this would have to be done on a confidential basis, however he thought it should be done.”

Five days later, DeLoach had a second meeting with Ford and filed another confidential memo.

DeLoach recounted that he “carefully” informed Ford that the FBI had released none of its investigative findings to the media. Instead, he said, it looked as though commission members were beginning to leak portions of the FBI report.

“I referred to this week’s issue of ‘Newsweek’ magazine which contains a rather clear analysis of the report,” DeLoach wrote. “I told Congressman Ford that ‘Newsweek’ was owned by the ‘Washington Post’ and that apparently some one was trying to curry favor. I told him we, of course, did not get along very well with either the ‘Washington Post’ or ‘Newsweek.’ He [said] that he was in the same boat, that he liked neither one of these publications.”

The conversation, which has apparently not been previously reported, concluded with Ford saying he would like to take a confidential FBI report on the assassination with him on a family ski trip to Michigan. DeLoach offer to loan him an “Agent briefcase” with a lock, so Ford could safeguard the document.

Elsewhere in the FBI file on Ford, records show that as a young man, in 1942, Ford had applied to become an FBI agent. A background check at the time was favorable, the file says, “except for information that he was an isolationist and active in organizing an American First committee while at Yale University.” Ford later withdrew his application.

In 1965, Ford asked FBI technicians to check the phone line at his home in Northern Virginia for tampering; they found none. In another instance, Ford asked the FBI to look into the background of his personal maid; she came up clean.

The FBI file shows Hoover routinely tried to ingratiate himself with Ford by sending him personal notes — congratulating Ford on his re-election or his winning of an award, offering condolences on the death of Ford’s parents, thanking Ford for saying nice things about the bureau on the floor of Congress. There are repeated references in the file to Ford having “enjoyed cordial relations” with the bureau, and notes pointing out that the FBI had named Ford to the bureau’s “Special Correspondents List.”

One memo notes: “Though we did experience some difficulty with all the members of the Warren Commission, Ford was of considerable help.” It points out Ford once requested an 8-by-10-inch photograph of Hoover, although its intended use was unknown.

The intensity with which Hoover’s FBI sought to gain favor with those who could later be of use is made clear in one memo written by a subordinate in 1963.

“In view of Congressman Ford’s friendly attitude toward the FBI, and the fact that he is a member of the House Appropriations Committee and will probably be reappointed to this Committee in the next session of Congress, it is felt he should be presented a copy of the Director’s new book, ‘A Study of Communism.’ The House Appropriations Committee, of course, is very important to us, and it is felt such a gesture would be very beneficial in connection with our Hill contact program.”

Before presenting the book to Ford, the file shows, Hoover autographed it.

In 1964, Ford and his wife, Betty, attended a party at DeLoach’s home. The next morning, Hoover followed up with an obsequious note, delivered by special messenger:

“My dear Congressman: I want to let you know how much I enjoyed talking to Mrs. Ford and you during the party at DeLoach’s home last night. Particularly, I was very pleased to discuss in this informal manner some vital issues of interest to you as well as the FBI. Let me say that I found your observations to be both helpful and germane. It is always encouraging to know that we have alert, vigorous Congressmen, such as you, who are aware of the needs and problems confronting our country, and I wish you every success in meeting your grave responsibilities.

In a survey of more than 3,000 computers, performance testing software developer Devil Mountain Software estimated that more than one in three new machines had either been downgraded by vendors such as Dell, or by customers once they bought the PC.

The results were garnered by the research firm’s CTO Craig Barth in collaboration with InfoWorld. He based the numbers on Devil Mountain’s Exo.performance.network by collating the vendor and system model number with computer vendors’ catalogues.

Barth used that data to identify PCs that had probably been shipped within the past six months – a period of time when it was highly likely that most new machines came pre-installed with Vista.

The move came as a small column of Russian tanks and armored vehicles left the strategic Georgian city of Gori in the first sign of a Russian pullback of troops from Georgia after a cease-fire intended to end fighting that reignited Cold War tensions. The two countries on Tuesday also exchanged prisoners captured during their brief war.

However, Russian soldiers took Georgian servicemen prisoner at a key port and commandeered U.S. Humvees. An Associated Press photographer saw Russian trucks and armored personnel carriers leaving the port with about 20 blindfolded and handcuffed men riding on them.

Port spokesman Eduard Mashevoriani said the men were Georgian soldiers.

The Labor Department’s Producer Price Index, which measures prices at the factory door, climbed 1.2 percent after a 1.8 percent gain in June. But so-called core producer prices, which exclude food and energy, jumped 0.7 percent in July after a 0.2 percent June increase.

The steep jump in core prices rattled financial markets, driving stock futures down and causing futures markets to scale up the odds for an interest-rate hike this year by the U.S. Federal Reserve. The dollar gained in value on the prospect of higher rates.

The rise in monthly core producer prices was the strongest since November 2006 and implied that price gains were spreading outside the food and energy sectors, certain to trouble Fed policy-makers who want to prevent price pressure from gaining too strong a foothold.

Analysts said some of the July price jump was likely caused by higher prices for motor vehicles, which was unlikely to be sustained given that sales are sluggish.

“There is evidence of pass-through of wholesale prices to retail, but manufacturers are being squeezed for their cost of inputs without much success in passing them through to customers,” said Dana Saporta, an economist with Dresdner Kleinwort Securities LLC in New York.

Core producer prices rose 3.5 percent on a year-over-year basis in July, the strongest increase since mid-1991.

“The U.S. is not out of the woods. I think the financial crisis is at the halfway point, perhaps. I would even go further to say ‘the worst is to come’,” he told a financial conference.

“We’re not just going to see mid-sized banks go under in the next few months, we’re going to see a whopper, we’re going to see a big one, one of the big investment banks or big banks,” said Rogoff, who is an economics professor at Harvard University and was the International Monetary Fund’s chief economist from 2001 to 2004.

“We have to see more consolidation in the financial sector before this is over,” he said, when asked for early signs of an end to the crisis.

“Probably Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — despite what U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson said — these giant mortgage guarantee agencies are not going to exist in their present form in a few years.”