June 24, 1999

Supreme Court places sharp new curbs on ability of Congress to make Federal law binding on states; Court, ruling 5 to 4 in three cases, makes states immune from suits by state employees for violations of Federal labor law (Alden v Maine), by patent owners for infringement of their patents by state universities and agencies (Florida v College Savings Bank), and by people bringing unfair-competition suits over states' activities in marketplace (College Savings Bank v Florida); decisions are issued on final day of Court's 1998-99 term; Justices Anthony M Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, and Chief Justice William H Rehnquist write majority opinions; they are joined by Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Clarence Thomas; Justices David H Souter, Stephen G Breyer, John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg are in dissent; photo (M)

State of the Art column describes 3Com Corp's new Palm VII handheld computer; calls it computer from the near future, time when people will keep little computers in their pockets and tap into Internet wirelessly, gathering news headlines, trading stocks, sending and receiving E-mail, calling up map for directions, paying bills, doing personal banking, ordering theater tickets, and host of other activities; Palm VII, which is now being sold only in New York City area, is priced at $599; drawing (M)

Harvey Araton Sports of The Times column discusses San Antonio Spur's victory over New York Knickerbockers in fourth game of NBA championship series; photo (M)

French court rejects claim for $1 million in damages brought by Wildenstein family, New York-based family of international art dealers, against Hector Feliciano, American writer who suggested in recent book, The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal The World's Greatest Works of Art, that French-Jewish family did business with Nazi officials during Germany's wartime occupation of France; rejects charge that Feliciano acted with serious and flagrant disregard for truth in suggesting commercial ties between Georgse Wildenstein, then head of family business, and some Nazi art dealers (M)

Qwest Communications International will sweeten its unsolicited offers for US West and Frontier Corp only days after both companies spurned it advances; Qwest's chief executive Joseph Nacchio is upping unsolicited offers to bring already-betrothed companies to bargaining table; revised bid is put at about $47 billion for both companies; last March, Frontier agreed to be acquired for $10.8 billion by Global Crossing, Qwest's rival; Global also agreed to merge with US West last month in deal valued then at $37 billion; value of Qwest's and Global Crossing's deal with US West and Frontier has dropped dramatically because of falling stock prices; graph (M)