Former Beatle linked to member of M.T.A.

It would seem improbable for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to be fodder for the British tabloids. But the London newspapers were in a tizzy yesterday with reports that Paul McCartney was having a romantic relationship with Nancy Shevell, who was appointed by Gov. George E. Pataki to the authority’s board in 2001.

Mr. McCartney, the former Beatle, is getting divorced from his second wife, Heather Mills McCartney. Ms. Shevell is the chairwoman of the authority’s committee that oversees capital construction, planning and real estate. Most notably, she plays an important oversight role for the Second Avenue subway project, whose cost is estimated at $5 billion for its first phase.

While news reports noted that Ms. Shevell was married, her husband, Bruce A. Blakeman, a Republican lawyer and member of the board of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said in an e-mail message: “I am legally separated from Nancy. The separation is amicable and mutual.”

The Sun, a British tabloid, reported that Ms. Shevell, 47, and Mr. McCartney, 65, spent last weekend together in the Hamptons. It said they ate at an East Hampton restaurant on Friday, visited each other’s homes on Saturday, and embraced before breakfast at a cafe on Sunday.

There were similar articles in other British news media, including The Telegraph, a conservative broadsheet, and The Mirror, a tabloid.

Ms. Shevell, a graduate of Arizona State University, is a vice president of her family’s businesses, New England Motor Freight, of Elizabeth, N.J., and the Shevell Group of Companies. She is a breast cancer survivor. (Mr. McCartney’s first wife, Linda, died of breast cancer in 1998.)

Until recently, Ms. Shevell was known as Nancy Shevell Blakeman. Mr. Blakeman is also a Pataki appointee, having been named to the Port Authority in 2001. He is a partner at Abrams, Fensterman, Fensterman, Eisman, Greenberg, Formato & Einiger in Lake Success, N.Y., and was majority leader of the Nassau County Legislature from 1996 to 1999.

The Blakemans have given contributions to Governor Pataki and President Bush.

A woman who answered the phone yesterday at a Manhattan residence of the Blakemans said no one was available for comment. Paul Freundlich, a spokesman for Mr. McCartney, said in an e-mail message, “We don’t comment on Paul’s private and personal or business affairs.”

Mr. McCartney’s divorce from Heather Mills McCartney has been a messy and public affair. The couple announced their separation last year. In a televised interview widely distributed on the Internet, she said last week that she had contemplated suicide because of the negative public attention.

Louisiana Legislator claims he is wrongly targeted by the FBI

A Louisiana legislator said Wednesday he is being investigated by the FBI and claimed it may be because he wouldn't give agents information about possible wrongdoing by Rep. William Jefferson and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin.

State Sen. Derrick Shepherd denied any wrongdoing and said he has no evidence of wrongdoing by either Jefferson or Nagin. He has not been charged with a crime.

Earlier this week, an FBI agent testified in a court hearing that Shepherd, a Democrat from suburban Marrero, helped a convicted felon launder more than $140,000 in bogus construction bond fees last year and kept nearly half the money.

Shepherd, at a news conference, said FBI agents visited his home months ago asking if he could provide evidence of wrongdoing by Jefferson or Nagin.

"I would hate to think that this investigation of me is in any way, connected to my inability to provide any information related to the prosecution of Congressman Jefferson or any investigation of Mayor Nagin that may be under way," Shepherd said.

U.S. Attorney Jim Letten, who has aggressively prosecuted New Orleans corruption cases, would not comment on Shepherd's claims. "I am not going to respond to anything Mr. Shepherd says," he said.

An FBI spokesman had no comment on Shepherd's claims.

Nagin, a Democrat who toyed with a run for governor this fall but did not qualify for the race, was not immediately available for comment, a spokesman said. In his two terms in office he has not been linked to allegations of wrongdoing and he has boasted that he has run a scandal-free administration.

In August, City Councilman Oliver Thomas stepped down after pleading guilty to federal charges of taking bribes during the administration of Nagin's predecessor, Marc Morial. Federal authorities have been investigating City Hall corruption for years, netting several guilty pleas from people connected to Morial's administration though Morial has not been accused of wrongdoing.

Jefferson, also a Democrat, is under indictment in Virginia on bribery, racketeering and other charges connected with an alleged Nigerian business scheme.

Jefferson was re-elected last year despite the indictment. Shepherd was one of several challengers in the primary election, placing third. He later endorsed Jefferson in a runoff election, which Jefferson won over the second-place finisher, state Rep. Karen Carter.

Indian-American Wins Vote to Be Louisiana's Governor

Bobby Jindal, a conservative Republican congressman from the New Orleans suburbs and the son of immigrants from India, was elected Louisiana’s governor Saturday, inheriting a state that was suffering well before Hurricane Katrina left lingering scars two years ago.

Mr. Jindal, 36, defeated three main challengers in an open primary, becoming this state’s first nonwhite governor since a Reconstruction-era figure briefly held the office 130 years ago.

With more than 90 percent of the vote counted, Mr. Jindal received 53 percent, above the 50 percent-plus-one threshold needed to avoid a runoff in November. He will be the nation’s first Indian-American governor when he takes office in January.

Mr. Jindal’s victory over a state Democratic party weakened by perceptions of post-hurricane incompetence and corruption was expected, as he has had an overwhelming lead in polls for months. The incumbent, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, hurt by stumbles after Hurricane Katrina, did not seek re-election.

The ascendancy of the Brown- and Oxford-educated Mr. Jindal, an unabashed policy wonk who has produced a stream of multipoint plans, is likely to be regarded as a racial breakthrough of sorts in this once-segregated state. Still, it is one with qualifiers attached.

For one thing, he is by now a familiar figure in Louisiana, having made a strong run for the governorship in 2003, though losing to Ms. Blanco. Before that he had held a series of high-profile administrative jobs, including state health secretary at the age of 24, when he earned a reputation for efficiency — critics said cold-bloodedness — for slashing a bloated budget, cutting jobs and lowering reimbursements to doctors.

For another, he did not have the support of a majority of the state’s blacks, about a third of the population, who vote Democratic.

Yet Mr. Jindal, with his decisive victory on Saturday, appears to have overcome a significant racial hurdle that blocked him in 2003, according to analysts: race-based opposition in the deeply conservative northern and eastern parishes of Louisiana that once supported the Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

A born-again Roman Catholic, Mr. Jindal made a particular campaign target of these areas, visiting them frequently and bringing his brand of devout Christianity to their rural churches. His social-conservative message — teaching “intelligent design” as an alternative to evolution in public schools, a total ban on abortion, repealing hate-crimes laws — would have been welcome in these areas.

Mr. Jindal campaigned as a cautious reformer, promising a more ethical government, for example, with greater transparency from lobbyists and legislators. His extensive résumé helped him project an image of competence, as did his detailed if conventional policy prescriptions — both evidently appealing to voters here weary of missteps in government since Hurricane Katrina.

But he faces significant challenges. He takes over what is now the nation’s poorest, most uneducated and most unhealthy state, by a number of important measures.

Cleaning up the Capitol in Baton Rouge, which Mr. Jindal has promised to make his first order of business, is unlikely to be regarded as a top priority, as it hardly has been in the past, by a Legislature jealous of its perquisites.

Mr. Jindal has promised to focus resources on the state’s ports, roads and research universities, which have received little state investment. But again, parochial interests and factionalism in a state with strong regional and ethnic divisions often work against these broader initiatives at the Capitol.

And Mr. Jindal, as a fiscal conservative, has had much to say about what he terms “out-of-control spending” but little about a regressive tax structure that relies heavily on sales taxes.

City Official: 9/11 Dust did not kill detective

New York City's chief medical examiner has concluded that the death of a city police detective who worked hundreds of hours on the smoldering debris pile at ground zero after the Sept. 11 attacks was not caused by exposure to toxic dust.

Contradicting a New Jersey pathologist who had found the death "directly related" to ground zero dust, the medical examiner, Dr. Charles S. Hirsch, acknowledged that "foreign material" had been found in the lungs of the detective, James Zadroga, but insisted that it had not come from the trade center site.

In a letter to the detective's father, Joseph Zadroga, of Little Egg Harbor, N.J., Hirsch did not cite a cause of death. But he said his review of medical records, the earlier autopsy report and slides of the victim's lung tissue - all provided by the detective's family - had found no link to the trade center.