Paris museum snaps up Bronte manuscript for $1.1 million

A French museum paid 691,000 pounds ($1.1 million) on Thursday for a miniature manuscript written by Charlotte Bronte, ending hopes it would return to the British author's former home that is now a museum.

The 1830 booklet, which fits comfortably into the palm of a hand, had been expected to fetch 200-300,000 pounds, and the final price was an auction record for a manuscript by any of the Bronte sisters.

After what Sotheby's described as a "tense bidding battle," the manuscript was bought by La Musee des Lettres et Manuscrits in Paris, where it will be exhibited in January.

The news came as a blow to the Bronte Parsonage Museum in the famous literary family's former home in northern England which had launched an appeal to buy the artifact.

The museum already owns four of the six tiny booklets, and one remains untraced.

"This is unquestionably the most significant Bronte manuscript to come to light in decades and an important part of our broader literary heritage," said Andrew McCarthy, director of the Bronte Parsonage Museum.

"It belongs in Haworth and we are bitterly disappointed that scholars and members of the public may now not have the opportunity to study and enjoy it as part of our public collection."

The museum had secured a grant of just over 613,000 pounds to secure lot no. 46 from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, a fund of "last resort" to keep key treasures in the country, but it proved insufficient.

WOMAN IN THE ATTIC

The booklet by the author of the 19th century classic "Jane Eyre" contains more than 4,000 words in miniature letters on 19 pages, which measure less than 1.5 by 2.5 inches.

Bronte wrote the manuscript when she was 14 and living with her family at Haworth in Yorkshire, and it was one of six hand-written "Young Men's Magazines" she created at that time.

The magazine is set in the fantasy world of "Glass Town," the earliest of the fictional worlds created by the four Bronte siblings that included Charlotte's younger sister Emily who went on to write "Wuthering Heights."

Sotheby's, which auctioned the mini-magazine as part of its English literature sale in London, called it "the most important Bronte manuscript to have appeared at public auction in more than 30 years."

"This tiny manuscript represents (Bronte's) first burst of creativity and provides a rare and intimate insight into one of history's great literary minds," said Philip Errington, Sotheby's specialist in the books and manuscripts department.

The magazine includes a passage describing a character's madness which appears to be a precursor to the famous scene in Jane Eyre when Mr. Rochester's insane wife, kept in the attic, seeks revenge by setting fire to the bed-curtains.

Overall the auction raised 1.7 million pounds including buyer's premium, compared with pre-sale expectations of 1.1-1.6 million pounds not including the premium.

Buffett charity lunch sells for $2.63 million (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A steak lunch at Smith & Wollensky in Manhattan starts at $36.50. The same lunch, eaten in the company of legendary investor Warren Buffett, costs approximately $2.63 million.

That was the final result of the annual online charity auction for lunch with the "Oracle of Omaha," which ended late Friday night. A total of two bidders entered eight bids in the eBay (EBAY.O) auction, which started last Sunday.

The final bid was actually for just under $2.35 million, but the anonymous winner added to that after the auction to surpass last year's winning bid by $111, organizers said.

Interest was much lower than in 2010, when nine bidders made a total of 77 bids for the luncheon.

The proceeds benefit GLIDE, a San Francisco charity that Buffett was introduced to by his late first wife, Susan.

Buffett, 80, is the chief executive of the insurance-to-ice-cream conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway (BRKa.N) and one of the world's richest men.

His fondness for red meat is also well known; during Berkshire's annual shareholder meeting in Omaha he urges investors to visit his favorite steakhouses for a T-bone steak or two.

(Reporting by Ben Berkowitz; Editing by Paul Simao)

More Than 1 Million Americans Now Living With HIV: CDC (HealthDay)

THURSDAY, June 2 (HealthDay News) -- Although HIV/AIDS continues to be an epidemic with no cure, thanks to powerful medications more HIV-infected Americans are living longer and healthier lives, federal health officials said Thursday.

By the close of 2008 there were 1,178,350 people in the United States living with HIV, 20 percent of whom don't know they are infected, according to researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Our prevalence of individuals with HIV continues to increase," said Dr. Michael A. Kolber, professor of medicine and director of the Comprehensive AIDS Program at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. He was not involved with the CDC study.

AIDS has taken a terrible toll on the United States since cases were first reported by CDC researchers 30 years ago this week. Since that time, 594,496 Americans have died of the disease, the CDC said.

However, thanks to the advent of HIV-suppressing medications, infection can now be considered less of a death sentence and more of a chronic disease, because "antiretroviral [drug] therapy is highly effective," Kolber said.

Still, the rising number on new infections is troubling. "People do not need to get HIV, it's a preventable disease," Kolber said. "But we also need to identify individuals with HIV and get them into care, which will reduce transmission."

In fact, one recent study found that if started early after diagnosis, antiretroviral medications can help cut HIV transmission to a sex partner by 96 percent. Adding condoms to that preventive strategy ups the odds even further that a partner will remain uninfected.

Too many people with HIV don't even realize that they carry the virus. What is needed is better access to testing and care, Kolber said. "We know that when people are tested positive it decreases their sexual activity in many cases. And if you get people into care we can reduce their viral loads. And when people are low viral loads they transmit the disease much less."

HIV should be treated like any other sexually transmitted disease, Kolber said. "The more frequently we test the better chance we get in getting the right number and making an impact on the disease," he said.

According to CDC director Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, many Americans may have become too complacent about HIV, no longer viewing it as a major health threat.

"Over the last three decades, prevention efforts have helped reduce new infections and treatment advances have allowed people with HIV to live longer, healthier lives," Frieden said in a news release. "But as these improvements have taken place, our nation's collective sense of crisis has waned. Far too many Americans underestimate their risk of infection, or believe HIV is no longer a serious health threat, but they must understand that HIV remains an incurable infection. We must increase our resolve to end this epidemic."

The CDC says that each year in the United States, some 50,000 people become newly infected with HIV.

Over half of these new infections are among gay and bisexual men, and of these about 50 percent are African-American, according to the CDC report in the June 3 issue of its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).

In another report in the same issue of the journal, the CDC contends that gay and bisexual men might benefit from more frequent HIV testing.

To support this motion, the agency used data from the National HIV Behavioral Surveillance System, which collected data on gay and bisexual men in 21 major cities throughout the country who did not test positive for HIV in earlier testing.

Yet when tested as part of this study, 7 percent of these men, who had been tested in the past year, now tested positive for the virus, the researchers found.

Based on that, they conclude that too few gay and bisexual men are getting annual HIV tests and even among those who did get tested in the past year, many are newly infected.

Among gay and bisexual men, blacks were most likely to be infected but unaware of their infection (14.5 percent), followed by Hispanic men (6.7 percent) and white men (3 percent), the researchers found.

In addition, less-educated men were less likely to be tested, as were poorer men, which suggests that access to testing needs to be expanded and these populations need to be targeted, the authors said.

"African-Americans make up about 12 percent of the population, but 50 percent of the new infections," Kolber said. "And it is usually in the urban areas among the lower socioeconomic, lower educated individuals," he added.

More information

For more information on HIV, visit the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.