USA

House and Senate negotiators were attempting to resolve issues blocking a Medicare drug bill as the Monitor went to press. In talks that ran late Wednesday, they debated proposed cuts in hospital payments and whether to have traditional Medicare compete with new managed-care plans. Max Baucus of Montana, one of the two Senate Democrats on the conference committee, said it was a "stretch" to believe all major issues could be resolved quickly.

The Senate voted Wednesday to impose tough limits on sending spam e-mail in a bill known as "Can Spam," although similar legislation has stalled in the House. The bill would prohibit senders of unsolicited commercial e-mail from disguising their identities and harvesting addresses off websites.

In their first face-to-face talks in two weeks, striking transit workers met with Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) officials in Los Angeles. The 2,200 Amalgamated Transit Union members who walked off the job Oct. 14 were joined by 6,000 bus and train operators in a push for better healthcare.

A 1932 Pulitzer Prize awarded to The New York Times should be revoked, a historian hired by the newspaper itself recommended. In response to complaints that Walter Duranty, who won the prize for a series on Russia, later ignored a forced famine in Ukraine, the Pulitzer Board is reviewing - but has not yet commented on - the writing that historian Mark von Hagen calls "propagandistic." No Pulitzer has been revoked since the prizes were first awarded in 1917.

About 90 fires were set in the streets of Morgantown, W. Va., early Thursday by fans of West Virginia University's football team after it upset a bitter rival, highly ranked Virginia Tech. Twenty people were charged with setting fires, disorderly conduct, or public intoxication, but no serious injuries were reported. Earlier in October, the school disciplined three students who participated in similar postgame mayhem.

Death-row inmates awarded a college student $10,000 Wednesday for publicly forgiving his father's murderer. Chante Mallard was sentenced in June to 50 years in prison for hitting Gregory Biggs with her car in Fort Worth, Texas, two years ago and leaving him to die. Biggs's son, Brandon, says she and her family are in his prayers. The scholarship money was raised through subscriptions and donations to a news-letter written by the inmates.