October 26, 2000

AT&T Outlines Its Plan To Split Into Four Parts AT&T pulled back from an expensive three-year effort to become the first one-stop shop selling long-distance, wireless, cable television and Internet services as a single package with a single bill. Instead, the company announced, it will break itself into four parts. The nation's eighth-largest company, which only two decades ago dominated the telephone business and ranked with General Motors and Mobil among the nation's very largest companies, will soon be four much smaller businesses competing against many formidable, and sometimes larger, rivals. [Page A1.]

Joyce Purnick Metro Matters column discusses political subtext of Breast and Cervical Cancer Treatment and Prevention Act, which President Clinton signed in private in part because one of sponsors was Repr Rick Lazio; advocates for bill say that Lazio, who is running for US Senate from New York against Hillary Rodham Clinton, overstated his role in legislation (M)

Repr Rick A Lazio continues his campaigning in upstate New York, area which usually votes Republican; Lazio campaign workers notes that his Democratic opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton, has made an unusually aggressive effort in upstate areas and they feel his initial approach of assuming that Clinton would not be well received north of Westchester County was miscalculation; photo (M)

Cincinnati Art Museum will stage exhibit through January 14 of 88 masterpieces from National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, which is undergoing multimillion-dollar renovation; photo; tiket sales begin on October 27 for Kids' Night on Broadway, annual event that offers theater tickets free to children between six and 18 years of age when accompanied by adult who pays full-price ticket to participating show; concert at Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium of Metropolitan Museum of Art on October 27 will feature clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, wife Lucy, who is violinist and son Peter John, who is jazz pianist; playwright/screenwriter Robert Anderson will be subject of conference at Hofstra University Cultural Center in Hempstead, NY, that will involve Edward Albee, A R Gurney, Donald Margulies, George Grizzard, Eileen Heckart and Teresa Wright; photo (M)

Masafumi Okanda, former president of Liquid Audio Japan, which licenses software technology from Liquid Audio of Redwood City, Calif, is arrested on suspicion that he abducted former director of company and held him captive for three days in June 1999; police decline to identify victim or to say what Okanda's motive might have been (S)