City, state will pay millions in bias suit

NEW ORLEANS - The city and the state of Louisiana will pay the bulk of a $3.4 million racial discrimination judgment against the New Orleans district attorney's office, officials announced yesterday. The judgment was awarded to 36 employees, 35 white and one Hispanic, who were fired and replaced by black employees shortly after Eddie Jordan took over as the city's first black district attorney in 2003. Under the agreement, the city will pay about one third of the judgment, or more than $1.1 million. The state will pay about $1.6 million, subject to approval by a legislative committee later this year. The district attorney's office, which already has paid $300,000, will pay $300,000 more. (AP)

CHICAGO - University of Chicago police increased their patrols yesterday, a day after the shooting death of a Senegalese doctoral student and two other gun attacks near the campus. Amadou Cisse, 29, was shot to death early Monday, less than an hour after a university staff member was shot at while walking nearby and two female students were robbed at gunpoint, police said. The campus is in the upscale Hyde Park neighborhood but near impoverished parts of Chicago's South Side. (AP)

NEW YORK - An oil painting by Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo that was plucked from a sidewalk trash heap several years ago sold for more than $1 million yesterday at Sotheby's auction of Latin American art. The auction house had estimated that "Tres Personajes" ("Three Personages"), which was stolen from a Houston warehouse in 1977, would sell for between $750,000 and $1 million, but the work ended up selling for $1,049,000 including commission. The oil-and-sand canvas was rescued from oblivion when a New York woman, Elizabeth Gibson, spotted it in a pile of trash in Manhattan and decided to bring it home. (Reuters)