CITYWIDE

Comptroller Questions Use of WTC Lease Payments

The New York City comptroller, William Thompson Jr., is questioning whether the Port Authority, which owns the World Trade Center property, has rerouted $600 million in lease payments from the disaster site to pay for other projects. The suspected diversion Mr. Thompson said, is coming at the expense of the city — since every day ground zero remains dormant the city is losing tax dollars. Shortly after Mr Thompson’s accusations, the executive director of the Port Authority, Kenneth Ringler Jr. accused him of “suffering from serious misinformation,” noting in response that the authority has agreed to spend more than $2 billion on World Trade Center reconstruction. Mean while, workers will drill and excavate tomorrow to break ground on a September 11, 2001, memorial and museum near the footprints where the north and south towers once stood.

— Special to the Sun

Clarke Casts Herself As Feminists’ Best Choice

It was ladies’ night yesterday afternoon with Council Member Yvette Clarke, as the 11th Congressional District candidate brought a team of supporters to the steps of City Hall in an effort to cast her self as the best choice for feminists in the male-dominated contest, which so far has been focused on race, rather than gender. “We have to stop the Bush war on women,” she said. “Our leadership, our issues have been marginalized.” There are not enough women in Congress, she said. If there were more the country may not have gone to war with Iraq because of “the nature of females, which has to do with being protective of life.” The Brooklyn-Queens Chapter of the National Organization of Women has endorsed Ms. Clarke’s opponent, Chris Owens, saying that while Ms Clarke is a woman, she has “not actually initiated any legislation beneficial to women during her reign on the City Council.” Ms. Clarke countered that “nothing can replace the experience of being female in this race.”

— Special to the Sun

Part of the Bronx Loses Power

A power outage in the Eastchester section of the Bronx affected about 6,000 people for several hours yesterday. The outage also led to some subway problems. NYC Transit said no. 5 trains to Dyre Avenue had to slow down because signals were out. The 3 1/2-hour outage which was reported at 7:40 a.m., affected an area bordered by Boston Post Road and Edenwald Avenue, and between Provost and Baychester avenues, a Con Edison spokesman, Michael Clendenin said. It was the metro area’s second out age in as many days. On Monday, hundreds of Long Island Rail Road riders were stranded on their trains for hours when a loose tarp blown from a nearby water tower knocked Long Island Power Authority power lines onto the tracks Equipment failures have been blamed for a series of area outages in recent weeks, including the mid-July blackout that kept refrigerators and air conditioners off in parts of Queens for 10 days during the heat wave.

— Associated Press

S.I., Queens Residents Complain of Odor

Dozens of phone calls poured in and seven people were hospitalized with headaches and nausea after an unspecified odor blanketed sections of Staten Island and Queens yesterday. More than 100 Staten Islanders and a half-dozen Queens residents called about a strange gaseous smell, a fire department spokesman, Lieutenant Thomas Kane said. The calls began around 9:30 a.m and continued into the late afternoon Lieutenant Kane said the Staten Island calls came from the borough’s north shore, while the Queens callers were in the Rockaways. Boaters also called to report the smell. The U.S.Coast Guard and fire and utility officials were trying to locate the source of the odor. The Coast Guard said it dispatched pollution investigators after getting complaints from boaters about an odor west of the Bayonne Bridge, which connects New Jersey and Staten Island. The odor had not abated by late yesterday afternoon.

— Associated Press

STATEWIDE

Political Ad Pairs Clinton, Bin Laden

A Republican hoping to challenge Senator Clinton this fall is running a television ad that pairs Mrs. Clinton’s face with Osama bin Laden’s and accuses her of opposing national security programs that may have helped thwart a terror plot on America-bound flights from London. The ad, by the campaign of a former Yonkers mayor, John Spencer, suggests Mrs. Clinton is “playing politics with national security.” It shows images of newspaper headlines about the terror plot, followed by photos of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. bin Laden. “Senator Hillary Clinton opposed the Patriot Act and the NSA program that helped stop another 9/11. She’d leave us vulnerable,” the narrator says. An advisor to Mrs. Clinton, Howard Wolfson, called the ad factually inaccurate. Mrs. Clinton voted for the Patriot Act, which expanded the federal government’s ability to track terror suspects, in 2001. Last year, she was part of a Democrat-led filibuster that forced Republicans to accept curbs on the government’s power to investigate suspects, but she then voted to renew expiring sections of the Patriot Act. “Mr. Spencer’s history of making wild-eyed angry falsehoods like these are among the many reasons why no one takes him or his campaign seriously,” Mr. Wolfson said. A Spencer spokesman, Rob Ryan, defended the Clinton ad yesterday. “The ad speaks for itself,” he said. “It’s about the failure of Senator Clinton to take proper action to defend the state in a time of war.” Mr. Spencer faces Kathleen Troia “KT” McFarland for the GOP nomination to challenge the heavily favored Mrs. Clinton.The primary is September 12.

—Associated Press

City To Release More 9/11 Emergency Calls

Today, the city plans to release hours of emergency calls from September 11, 2001, after Fire Department officials said they had discovered hundreds of internal recordings made by firefighters who went to rescue people from the burning twin towers. The calls expected to be released include 10 new 911 calls that people made from the trade center, again with only the operators’ voices included. They include two calls that were withheld in March to be used as evidence at the trial of September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.

— Associated Press

POLICE BLOTTER

DNA Links Homeless Man To Alleged Rapes

A man already arrested for the attempted rape of one woman was charged by police yesterday with two other rapes of women in Harlem after DNA tests linked him to the crimes, police officials said. Phillip McKelvey, 41, was waiting to be arraigned on the two new rape charges last night. McKelvey was released from prison in June 2005 after serving 10 years for a burglary and kidnapping in the Bronx, police said. McKelvey allegedly raped a 50-year-old homeless woman in early July 2005 near 211 W. 141st St., police said. He then allegedly raped a 36-year-old homeless woman in the same area about a week later. The last incident happened on May 27 of this year. McKelvey allegedly attempted to rape and sodomize a 35-year-old woman behind a building on 143rd Street, police said. The woman did not immediately report the incident, but on July 20 she recognized him in the street and called police, who arrested him. The DNA tests came back positive for McKelvey this week, police said.

— Staff Reporter of the Sun