It’s Good To Be King . . .

The prince, on the other hand, has to listen to a bunch of presentations about the shipping industry:

Fort Wadsworth had a taste of royalty yesterday when Denmark’s Crown Prince Frederik toured the Coast Guard’s Vessel Traffic Center to observe how New York and New Jersey’s heavy volume of cargo and passenger vessel traffic is coordinated safely.

The visit was part of a five-day tour called Creative Nation, during which Prince Frederik — joined by Danish government and business leaders — aims to showcase and promote Danish business in the United States.

The prince, an officer in several branches of the Danish military, listened intently as Commander Ted Gangsei explained that Fort Wadsworth is home to the largest Coast Guard operational command center in the country.

. . .

Prince Frederik’s visit to the Big Apple is drawing major attention in Denmark, with several radio, television and print media representatives shadowing his every move here. Queen Margrethe, Prince Frederik’s mother, is the figurative head of state, and Prince Frederik is first in line for the throne.

Prince Frederik — who rang yesterday’s opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange — was scheduled to visit Danish companies with facilities in New York and New Jersey, as well as American businesses that use Danish products. He and his wife, Crown Princess Mary, and their 5-month-old daughter, Princess Isabella, are staying at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Manhattan.

Oppo-Research, Activate (But First Don’t Forget To Unfilter MySpace Pages At Work)!

If Bloomberg was going to run before (doubtful), he certainly won’t be able to now:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has promoted himself as a model of fiscal restraint, issuing dire warnings about the slowing economy, recently asking agencies to limit hiring, and even listing “fiscal responsibility” as an interest on his MySpace page.

At the same time, a review of the city’s budget since 1980 shows that Mr. Bloomberg has been presiding over one of the greatest expansions of city government since the John V. Lindsay administration, fueled by an extraordinary surge in real estate revenues, both from higher property taxes and transfer taxes from sales.

Since Mr. Bloomberg took office in 2002, the city budget, adjusted for inflation, has swelled faster than it has under any other mayor during the last 27 years, increasing by 23 percent, to $60 billion.

By contrast, spending rose 8 percent during Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s eight years, and 4 percent under Mayor David N. Dinkins, who served one four-year term. Mr. Bloomberg’s spending also outpaced that of Mayor Edward I. Koch, who increased the budget by 19 percent over his last two terms.

Maybe The WMDs Were Cleaning Solvents?

After discovering a leftover cache of poisonous gas in the United Nations I suppose this would be rather embarrassing:

When officials said that a potentially deadly chemical from Iraq had been found last month in a Midtown United Nations office, many questions followed. How did the sample get here? How did it get misplaced? And how could it sit in a box, unnoticed, for more than a decade at a world agency in the middle of New York?

But now, heaping embarrassment upon embarrassment, it appears that the chemical was merely a commercial solvent, a law enforcement official said.

Initially, officials said the substance was phosgene, an old-generation nerve-gas component used extensively at the end of World War I, and in Iraqi attacks against Kurds in the 1980s.

“We learned later,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the case, “that initial tests indicated it might be some kind of over-the-counter solvent, though we don’t know what kind.”

The sample, sealed in a container inside a plastic bag, which itself was inside a metal box, was reported to the State Department late last Wednesday and to other federal authorities on Thursday. It was discovered on Aug. 24 in an office of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission at East 48th Street, which was shutting down. Workers happened upon it while clearing out filing cabinets and boxes, said Ewen Buchanan, a spokesman for the agency.

Location Scout: United Nations.

A Priceless Addition To The Waterfront

The ProLogical end result to Staten Island’s NASCAR failure:

Concerns about race weekend traffic drove the NASCAR debate and ultimately killed a deal to build an 82,500-seat track on the edge of Bloomfield.

But those very same worries — this time over truck traffic, not eager Dale Earnhardt Jr. fans — will likely accompany a plan to build a large industrial park there.

And the entertainment value is nil.

International Speedway Corp. confirmed yesterday that it had reached a preliminary agreement to sell its land to ProLogis, the world’s largest developer of distribution warehouses — places that are also magnets for trucks.

Unlike the proposed NASCAR track, however, an industrial park is permitted under the site zoning and does not need City Council approval, something that proved elusive for NASCAR.

A spokesman for ProLogis, the publicly traded Denver-based Fortune 1000 company, said it had reached a preliminary agreement with ISC to acquire the 676-acre site in Bloomfield. The transaction is expected to close by year’s end.

. . .

The feared flood of fans on race weekends will be replaced by a steady stream of trucks to the site, minus the fun and brand-name sponsorships. Former Borough President Guy Molinari, who once worked as a lobbyist for the racetrack proposal, stopped short yesterday of saying, “I told you so.”

“You could have wound up with something very, very nice that would have endeared us to the rest of the world,” he contended of the failed NASCAR proposal. “They would have heard about us on Staten Island, and the image would have been improved by NASCAR coming to our shores.”

Molinari recalled that when ISC executives warned the community that if the track did not get built, the site would be used for industrial purposes, they were accused of strongarm tactics.

At the time, ISC officials estimated that as many as 2,200 trucks each day could traverse borough highways if the site was used for industrial purposes. An ominous ISC slide presentation showed smokestacks looming behind a line of trucks, and ISC claimed that three race weekends a year was preferable to the alternative. That prompted some lawmakers at the time to accuse the company of making threats to get support for a track.

“We didn’t aim to be threatening. We just aimed to set the facts out. I’m not surprised,” Molinari said yesterday of the ProLogis deal.

Earlier: Container Ships Are Exciting, But They Sure Don’t Go Vroom Like A NASCAR Track.

Maybe Barry Bonds Should Buy The Ball Back Just To, You Know, Keep Up Appearances . . .

Because apparently no one else will:

Online bidders didn’t storm the bases to scoop up Barry Bonds’ record-breaking home run ball last week.

Bidding for the historic ball opened at $100,000 on August 29 at
scpauctions.com Auctioneers said they expect the ball to be worth as much as $500,000 — but as of late last week, there were no takers.

Queens College student Matt Murphy, 21, caught the historic ball while on vacation in San Francisco last month. Murphy said he was forced to offer the ball at the online auction after he was slapped with a huge tax bill following his lucky catch.