The nation in brief

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“The average senior is going to benefit by carefully scrutinizing their situation,

because every year the market changes.”

Avalere President Dan Mendelson,

whose firm projects that millions enrolled in some of the most popular Medicare prescription drug plans face doubledigit premium increases next year if they don’t shop for better deals Article, this pageMom pleads guilty to work as madam

NEW YORK - A suburban mother of four accused of moonlighting as a multimillion-dollar madam pleaded guilty Tuesday to promoting prostitution as part of a plea deal.

Anna Gristina, a legal U.S.

resident originally from the Scottish Highlands, made the plea in Manhattan court. The judge said she’ll be sentenced Nov. 20 to time served and probation, and she could also be deported.

She spent four months in jail before being released on $250,000 bond in June.

Her lawyers said Gristina lived on a 12-acre property in Monroe, about 50 miles north of New York City, and rescued animals and helped abandoned pet pigs find new homes.

But prosecutors accused the 45-year-old Gristina of having a roster of wealthy, well-placed clients and boasting of law-enforcement connections during 15 years in a business that made her millions.

She had been charged with a single count of promoting prostitution, stemming from a July 2011 tryst that authorities say she arranged involving two women and an undercover officer posing as a client.

Lift sanctions, Suu Kyi reiterates

FORT WAYNE, Ind.

  • Burma’s opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi reiterated a call Tuesday for the lifting of sanctions against her impoverished country, and vowed to use her new parliamentary role to foment more change.

Thousands of elated supporters greeted Suu Kyi with cheers, tears and a standing ovation as she took to the stage at the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum in Fort Wayne, Ind., the fourth stop on her 17-day U.S. tour.

Suu Kyi, 67, said the sanctions were effective in pushing the ruling junta to change, but that “they should now be lifted” so that Burma can rebuild its economy.

Suu Kyi was recently elected to parliament after spending 15 years under house arrest for opposing Burma’s military rulers.

Fort Wayne is home to one of the largest Burmese communities in the United States.

Handed ex-mayor cash, pal testifies

DETROIT - A college buddy who was granted immunity by federal prosecutors testified Tuesday that he delivered $90,000 in cash to Kwame Kilpatrick in 2008 while the former Detroit mayor’s family was settling in Texas after his resignation.

Mahlon Clift said he gave $50,000 to Kilpatrick in Dallas in September 2008, after the ex-mayor had pleaded guilty to lying in a civil trial. He said the balance changed hands at a Detroit apartment a month later, just days before Kilpatrick began a jail sentence.

Clift testified that the money came from Bobby Ferguson, the owner of a Detroit construction company and a co-defendant in the case.

Kilpatrick, 42, is charged with bribery, fraud, racketeering conspiracy and tax crimes. He’s accused of extorting money from people who wanted business from the city when he was mayor and rigging contracts to help Ferguson. Kilpatrick’s father and Detroit’s former water boss also are on trial.

Front Section, Pages 4 on 09/26/2012

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