NATION IN BRIEF

Billy Graham in Hospital Over Intestinal Bleeding

ASHEVILLE, N.C. -- Evangelist Billy Graham was admitted to a hospital near his home Saturday for evaluation and treatment of intestinal bleeding, hospital officials said.

Graham's doctors said the condition did not appear to be life-threatening, according to his spokesman, Larry Ross. Ross estimated that Graham, 88, could be released from the hospital in a couple of days.

Graham's condition stabilized in the hours after his admission, and an endoscopy and a scan found no areas of bleeding in the gastrointestinal tract, Mission Health & Hospitals in Asheville said in a statement.

Ross said Graham experienced a similar intestinal bleeding during a 1995 crusade in Toronto.

In June, Graham's wife of 64 years, Ruth Bell Graham, died after a long illness.

Medicare Won't Pay for Hospital-Caused Illness

Medicare will stop paying the costs of treating infections, falls, objects left in surgical patients and other problems that happen in hospitals that could have been prevented.

The rule change also blocks hospitals from billing patients for the cost of treatment required by a "hospital-acquired complication."

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services listed eight conditions -- including three serious types of preventable incidents sometimes called "never events" -- that Medicare will no longer pay for. It said that it will work to add three more conditions to the list next year.

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· NEW YORK -- Two firefighters were killed as a seven-alarm fire ripped through an abandoned skyscraper near Ground Zero, police said. The cause of the fire at the former Deutsche Bank building, which was devastated by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, was not immediately known.

· WICHITA -- A minister's family says he was stranded for two days at Orlando's airport after he apparently suffered a stroke. Airport officials say they are still trying to determine what happened to the Rev. Kenneth Davis, 72, between the time he arrived Monday aboard an AirTran flight and his discovery Wednesday on a curb outside the airport. Davis's son, Kenneth Davis Jr., said his father's stroke had left him unable to speak clearly.

· MIAMI -- The leaders of one of Brazil's largest evangelical churches were sentenced to nearly five months in prison after they pleaded guilty to smuggling more than $56,000 into the United States by hiding it in luggage, a child's backpack and a Bible case. Estevam Hernandes Filho and his wife, Sonia Haddad Moraes Hernandes, must serve an additional five months of house arrest in the United States and pay $60,000 in fines under a sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno.

· BOISE, Idaho -- Rep. Bill Sali (R-Idaho) has apologized to Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a Muslim, for suggesting that the nation's founders never intended for Muslims to serve in Congress. In an interview earlier this month with the Christian-based American Family News Network, Sali also questioned the wisdom of inviting a Hindu clergyman to give the morning prayer in the House. "Those are changes -- and they are not what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers," he said. Sali drew criticism last year for linking abortion to breast cancer rates during debates on the House floor.

-- From News Services