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Sotheby's to auction rare Van Gogh artifact NEW YORK -- The art world was turned on its ear Wednesday when Sotheby's Auction House announced it would put up for auction the famous Valentine's Day gift presented by famed artist Vincent Van Gogh. "It'll be a starry, starry night for this auction," a spokesman said. "Michael Jackson and Mike Tyson are both expected to make a bid." PETE, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Ears, plans to protest, said spokesnut Daisy Sunshine. |
RICHMOND, VA. -- A federal suit filed here April 1, 1998, says the federal government is guilty of the same crimes being alleged against the tobacco companies. "From as early as 1964, government officials knew or should have known about the hazards of smoking" said an attorney from Dewey, Cheatham & Howe. "Yet they persisted in a pattern of obstructing justice, they continuously issued misleading statements -- and all the while they continued to collect billions in cigarette tax revenue." The suit asserts the government action amounted to a criminal conspiracy and seeks 34 years of back cigarette taxes, plus interest. Analysts believe to settle the suit, the government would have to pay an estimated $358 billion to the nation's four leading tobacco companies. "If it wasn't so tragic, it would sound like an April Fool's joke," said a lawyer involved in the case. "It was apparently criminal to sell cigarettes but completely legal to tax them." NEW YORK -- The nation's financial industry generates $140 million a day in profits, Motley Fool reported. (This is no joke.) Said a financial commentator on a Richmond, Va. television station: "The only sure-fire ways to get money remain the same -- to inherit it or marry it." (This is no joke.) Wrote James Fallows in 1974: "Reporters are prone to see in politicians what Skinner saw in rats: creatures so free from conviction, so totally dependent on the temptations and conditioning of their immediate environment, that to understand them requires nothing more complicated than a look at geography and lists of campaign contributors." That should be a joke, but it's not.
Suit seeks $358 billion payment
from the government to the Big Four tobacco companies
Wall Street investment secrets revealed
"The only people making money are the brokers."
Weather: Rain Today.
Market outlook: "It was a pretty grim scene."
Science: Cancer is good for you.
Comics: Dilbert adapts to engraved woodcut style.