Copyright 2000 P.G. Publishing Co.
Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette
October 6, 2000, Friday, SOONER EDITION
SECTION: NATIONAL, Pg. A-20, NATIONAL BRIEFS
LENGTH: 613 words
HEADLINE: NO
HEADLINE
BODY:
SOTHEBY'S, CEO ADMIT
COLLUSION
NEW YORK --Sotheby's auction house and former chief executive
Diana D. Brooks pleaded guilty yesterday to fixing commission prices and fees
with rival Christie's, admitting they had ripped off clients for years.
Sotheby's, which controls virtually the entire $ 4 billion worldwide
auction market along with Christie's, admitted to an antitrust conspiracy
uncovered during a three-year investigation by the Justice Department.
Brooks, the first woman to head a major auction house and one of the
most powerful figures in the art world over the past decade, faces up to three
years in federal prison when she is sentenced Jan. 5.
Christie's, which
earlier confessed to its role in the scheme and cooperated with investigators,
will not face criminal charges.
Intestinal transplants
WASHINGTON -- Medicare will now pay the cost of intestinal transplants,
an operation that offers the only hope of survival for some patients, a federal
agency announced yesterday.
In a notice posted on its Web site, the
Health Care Financing Administration said Medicare would pay for transplanting
new intestines into some patients with intestine failure, but only at hospital
centers with a record of success in the procedure.
Lisa Rossi, a
spokeswoman at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said her center
would meet the HCFA standard to qualify for Medicare payment.
AIDS
funding
WASHINGTON -- Congress agreed yesterday to provide more than $ 1
billion a year for AIDS prevention and treatment in a bill that for the first
time factors in HIV infection as well as AIDS cases in determining how federal
money will be distributed.
The legislation reauthorizes for five years
the Ryan White CARE Act, which expired when the new fiscal year
began Oct. 1. The House approved the measure by a 411-0 vote and the Senate by
unanimous consent. It now goes the president for his signature.
The
sponsor, Rep. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said the emphasis on AIDS victims rather than
those infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, has been "devastating."
"While our attention was placed on AIDS the virus silently spread through
communities of color and more and more women became unknowingly infected." Every
year some 40,000 Americans become infected with HIV.
Supporters say the
new funding distribution will mean more money for programs that help infants,
women, minorities and people in rural areas.
Terror suspects held
NORRISTOWN, Pa. -- Two Tunisian men suspected of being international
terrorists have been arrested in Montgomery County.
Undercover police
working on a long-term drug sting saw the two men parked in a car in Norristown
and asked them for identification, District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr. said
yesterday.
The paperwork showed the men were in the United States on
expired passports. Castor told KYW-AM that police later learned that the men are
named in a list of international terrorism suspects who may be working in the
United States. Castor said federal authorities have been actively looking for
them.
Also in the nation . . .
Some new Ford Ranger pickups are
being equipped with a 15-inch Firestone ATX as a spare -- but
Bridgestone/Firestone Inc. said it is structurally different from the 15-inch
ATX tires being recalled ... NASA called off yesterday's launch of space shuttle
Discovery because of last-minute concerns over bolts on the external fuel tank
... A baby who police say was cut from the womb of his slain mother was released
from a Ravenna, Ohio, hospital yesterday in the custody of his father, Jon
Andrews, who took Oscar to the house of an unidentified relative.
LOAD-DATE: October 13, 2000 
