WASHINGTON — The lobbying firm of John McCain's campaign manager was paid $15,000 a month for several years until last month by one of two housing companies taken over by the federal government, a person familiar with the financial arrangement said last night.

That money from Freddie Mac to the firm of Rick Davis was on top of more than $30,000 a month that went directly to Davis for five years starting in 2000.

The $30,000 a month came from both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the other housing entity now under government control because of the crisis in the financial markets.

All the payments were first reported by The New York Times, which posted a story on its Web site last night revealing the $15,000 a month to the firm of Davis Manafort. The newspaper quoted two people with knowledge of the arrangement.

In response to the disclosure, McCain's presidential campaign issued a statement saying Davis left the firm and stopped taking a salary in 2006.

PALIN MEETS WITH WORLD LEADERS

NEW YORK — Sarah Palin met her first world leaders yesterday.

It was a tightly controlled crash course on foreign policy for the Republican vice presidential candidate, the mayor-turned-governor who has been outside North America just once.

Palin met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe as a means to build her resume for voters concerned about her lack of experience in world affairs.

"I found her quite a capable woman," Karzai said afterward. "She asked the right questions on Afghanistan."

The self-described "hockey mom" also asked former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for insights on Georgia, Russia, China and Iran, and she'll see more leaders today on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meetings.

MAN ARRESTED BY OBAMA'S HOME

CHICAGO — Chicago police found a gun in the car of a man arrested yesterday near Barack Obama's home, though the U.S. Secret Service insisted the man never posed a threat to the Democratic presidential candidate.

The apparently intoxicated man wasn't armed when he was arrested as he approached security barriers posted with no-access signs a block from the home in the South Side neighborhood, said Chicago police spokesman Daniel O'Brien.

Police later searched his nearby car and found the gun, O'Brien said.

The man's name wasn't immediately released because he hadn't been charged, and U.S. Secret Service spokesman Malcolm Wiley said it did not appear the man would face federal charges.

BIDEN GOOFS ON DEPRESSION FACTS

WASHINGTON — Vice presidential candidate Joe Biden says today's leaders should take a lesson from the history books and follow fellow Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt's response to a financial crisis.

"When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened,' " Barack Obama's running mate recently told the "CBS Evening News."

Except, Republican Herbert Hoover was in office when the stock market crashed in October 1929. TV wasn't introduced to the public until a decade later, at the 1939 World's Fair. FDR was elected three years later when voters denied Hoover a second term.

Biden's spokesman, David Wade, countered: "I'm proud to say that we Democrats aren't experts at Herbert Hoover depression economics like John McCain and his pals. From Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton, we just get elected to clean up the economic mess these Republicans leave behind."