ALBANY

PATAKI CALLS SILVER COMMENT ‘DESPICABLE’ IN DNA BATTLE

In an escalating battle over how much to expand the state’s DNA database to solve and prevent crimes, the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, accused Governor Pataki yesterday of playing to a presidential electorate. “That is just despicable,” an angry Mr. Pataki said of Mr. Silver, a Manhattan Democrat.

– Associated Press

SENATE DEMOCRATS CHASTIZE PATAKI FOR LATE APPOINTMENTS

Governor Pataki is wrongly filling a slew of positions with political appointments that will last long into the next governor’s tenure, the Senate minority leader, David Paterson, said yesterday. Mr. Paterson, a Manhattan Democrat running for lieutenant governor as Eliot Spitzer’s running mate, said Mr. Pataki in recent weeks has made 27 appointments with combined annual salaries of $3.25 million. Six of the appointments will last until 2012 and five until 2011.

– Associated Press

LEGISLATURE SEEKS TO IMPROVE ORGAN DONATION SYSTEM

In its last days of deal making this legislative session, the Senate and Assembly agreed yesterday to try to make organ donation easier and faster. Several other deals involving as much as $5 billion in spending and tax cuts on issues that touch New Yorkers were also in the mix four days before the 2006 legislative session was expected to end. Yesterday’s agreements included one that would allow stores to sell beer beginning at 8 a.m. Sunday, eroding one of the last vestiges of the old “blue laws” that decades ago closed most stores on Sundays.

– Associated Press

CITYWIDE

COUNCIL TO TACKLE GLOBAL WARMING AT HEARING TODAY

The City Council is set to tackle global warming with a hearing today on a bill that would require a 30% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from governmental operations by 2021. The New York City Climate Protection Act would also create a program to encourage private businesses and groups to commit to reducing the emissions of pollutants. In other hearings today, council committees will examine what lawmakers say is an “obesity epidemic” in New York.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

MAYOR SAYS MEETING WITH BUSH LIKELY WON’T CHANGE FUNDING

Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday that he did not expect his brief conversation with President Bush to change the city’s Homeland Security allocation for this year. But the mayor, who is scheduled to testify this morning in front of the House Committee on Homeland Security in Washington, said it wouldn’t hurt. “As they say here in New York, it can’t hoit,” Mr. Bloomberg said as he put on his heaviest New York accent. On Monday, Mr. Bloomberg greeted Mr. Bush, who was in town for a speech, at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Despite the criticisms of the White House the dozens of elected leaders in New York have been making since New York’s homeland security allocation was cut by 40%, Mr. Bloomberg said he thanked the president and reserved his disappointment for Congress.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

MAYOR FORGETS MANNERS WHILE DISCUSSING NEW YORKERS’ POLITENESS

Mayor Bloomberg gushed yesterday about how polite New Yorkers are after a Reader’s Digest poll found that residents here have better manners than those in London, Toronto, and other international cities. But Mr. Bloomberg forgot his own manners for a moment, when he said the study “wasn’t one of those fictitious things made up by a p.r. department or Chamber of Commerce.” He had just delivered a speech to the New Bronx Chamber of Commerce, where he announced the formation of a “South Bronx Initiative.” The initiative will focus on improving the area.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

STUDY: GRADUATION RATE THIRD LOWEST IN NATION’S LARGEST DISTRICTS

The high school graduation rate in New York City is the third lowest of the nation’s largest school districts, according to a new national study. Only 39% of the city’s seniors graduated compared with 70% nationwide in 2002-03.The study, conducted by the Editorial Projects in Education, the research center that publishes Education Week, found that New Jersey has the highest graduation rate in the country at 85%.The city’s education department, which puts its graduation rate slightly above 50%, disputed the study, saying that the numbers were skewed because the researchers did not take into account the large number of students that move in and out of the system.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

POLICE BLOTTER

BROOKLYN GIRL STRUCK BY CAR, KILLED

A 5-year-old Brooklyn girl died yesterday morning after she was struck by an SUV while crossing the street to catch her school bus, police said. By the afternoon, Chana Friedlander had been laid to rest in accordance with an Orthodox Jewish custom to bury the dead as quickly as possible. Police said the girl ran onto Marcy Avenue in Williamsburg around 8:20 a.m., when a blue BMW struck and killed her. Friedlander died at the scene, and the traumatized 27-year-old driver was taken to Wyckoff Hospital in stable condition, police said. As of last night, no charges were filed against the driver, but police issued five summonses to the bus company and the driver. Police said they will continue to investigate whether the bus driver turned on his flashing lights, which drivers must stop for when children are boarding the bus. Speaking to reporters, the bus driver said the lights were on, although a spokesman for the United Federation of Teachers, Stuart Marques, said the SUV driver, a Department of Education occupational therapist, refuted that claim.

– Special to the Sun