National news briefs

Man pleads guilty to assaulting mayor

MILWAUKEE (AP) — The 21-year-old man accused of beating Milwaukee's mayor last summer pleaded guilty Tuesday in a deal with prosecutors, averting a trial that was scheduled to begin next week in the attack at the Wisconsin State Fair.

Anthony J. Peters was accused of turning on Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett in August when the mayor allegedly intervened in an argument between Peters and his daughter's grandmother outside the fairgrounds.

Peters and Barrett exchanged punches before Peters pulled out a metal club and hit Barrett several times, leaving the mayor with head, mouth and hand injuries, according to the criminal complaint.

4-month term given for reading confidential files

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A former UCLA School of Medicine researcher has been sentenced to four months in federal prison after reading the confidential medical files of celebrities such as Drew Barrymore, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Hanks.

Huping Zhou also was fined $2,000 at his sentencing Tuesday. He pleaded guilty in January to four misdemeanor counts of privacy violations.

Prosecutors claimed that before and after his 2003 firing, Zhou accessed private records of celebrities and co-workers more than 300 times.

Organ donors unless otherwise specified

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A New York assemblyman whose daughter is alive because of two kidney transplants wants his state to become the first in the nation to pass laws that would presume people want to donate their organs unless they specifically say otherwise.

Assemblyman Richard Brodsky believes the "presumed consent" measures would help combat a rising demand for healthy organs by patients forced to wait a year or more for transplants. Twenty-four European countries already have such laws in place, he said.

Elizabeth Post, guru of etiquette, dies

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Elizabeth Post, an etiquette expert known for writing books and magazine columns on manners, has died. She was 89.

Post died Saturday in the southwest Florida city of Naples, her family said. Post was the granddaughter-in-law of the country's foremost etiquette expert, Emily Post. In 1965, five years after the elder Post died, Elizabeth took the helm of the Emily Post Institute in Burlington, Vt.