If you were planning to head to the wine store tonight to pick up a bottle of American Chardonnay under $20, we have one word of advice: Don't.

[...]

Earlier this year, we conducted a tasting of inexpensive Australian Chardonnay and were disappointed by what we found...The wines were dull and lifeless. They tasted like water with some wood added.

[...]

Generally, we found the wines sweet and lacking charm, often with hints of pickling spices and far more wood than fruit. "Fake," "like Kool-Aid mix," "Scuppernong funkiness" -- these were just a few of our descriptions. Many of the wines were even more unpleasant on the finish than in the mouth, as though the overlying sugar got stripped away in the mouth and simply left the skeletal essence of the bad wine in the throat.

[...]

Of more than 50 wines, we can only recommend four -- and, to our surprise, one of them is from Rutherford Vintners, made by the producers of Two-Buck Chuck.

The Dow Jones Inexpensive American Chardonnay Index

In a tasting of American Chardonnay under $20, all from the 2003 vintage, these were our favorites.

Vineyard/Vintage Price Rating Tasters' Comments

St. Francis Winery & Vineyard (Sonoma County) $10.99 Very Good/ Delicious Best of tasting and best value. Tastes expensive, with tight, nicely acidic fruit, nutmeg and cinnamon and a good underpinning of earth and chalk. Classy and full. Good with lobster.

Clos du Bois (North Coast) $11.99 Very Good Vibrant. Easy to drink, with lovely, ripe fruit. Good to sip alone or with food.

J. Lohr Winery "Riverstone" (Arroyo Seco, Monterey) $11.99 Good/Very Good Rich and tart, with some mouthfeel. Interesting, with fruit and vitality. Well-balanced. Great with pork or veal.

Rutherford Vintners "Barrel Select" (Stanislaus County) $9.99 Good/Very Good Clean and fresh. The oak doesn't get in the way of the nice fruit.

Branches #1 (London), 2003

Tornado - Film Still with Telephone Pole, 2004

Modernism is a great gallery. They represent one of my favorite artists, Gottfried Helnwein. And if you visit in person, you'll get to see Helnwein's Modern Sleep.

Fire Protectionists List The List Authority New List Description: This file contains individuals who have purchased or inquired about purchasing a weapon because they are afraid of being attacked or robbed in their homes or elsewhere by criminals. Selects: 49,946 2004-2005 buyers & inquirers, quarterly hotline selection, phones, state, SCF and ZIP Contact: your list broker or The List Authority, 192 Third Ave., Westwood, NJ 07675 Phone: 201/666-0100; Fax: 201/358-2395 E-mail: maria@thelistauth.com

iPod Generation
List Service Direct Inc.
New List
Description: This file contains individuals who have purchased an iPod MP3 player. Selects: more than 2.1 million total file, 3-month hotline, geography, income, age, gender, marital status, mail order buyer, magazine subscriber, computer owner, donor, ethnicity, religion, book buyer, credit card holder, homeowner, length of residence and age of child present
Contact: your list broker or List Service Direct Inc., 2 Christie Heights Street, Leonia, NJ 07605
Phone: 201/585-1447;
Fax: 201/585-1732
E-Mail: info@listservicedirect.com

...subscribers to an online digital music community! These consumers pay anywhere from $9.00 to $19.99 a month to gain access to a diverse catalog of over 500,000 music downloads in a variety of genres from top independent labels. It is the only internet music service to focus on independent artists.

The datacard shows that the company has racial, religious, income, age, and gender information on its subscribers. I wonder what online music company it is? The full ad is below--click on the more link.

Actors pretending to be patients with symptoms of stress and fatigue were five times as likely to walk out of doctors' offices with a prescription when they mentioned seeing an ad for the heavily promoted antidepressant Paxil, according an unusual study being published today.

The study employed an elaborate ruse -- sending actors with fake symptoms into 152 doctors' offices to see whether they would get prescriptions. Most who did not report symptoms of depression were not given medications, but when they asked for Paxil, 55 percent were given prescriptions, and 50 percent received diagnoses of depression...

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising soared after the FDA allowed drug promotions on television for the first time in 1997. Efforts to limit such advertising have run afoul of Supreme Court rulings protecting commercial speech.

The ads are regulated by the FDA's Division of Drug Marketing, Advertising and Communications. The office, which has barely three dozen employees, must review 30,000 to 40,000 ads a year. Acting commissioner Lester M. Crawford said recently that "our patience is sometimes worn thin" by the advertising claims.

Dan Troy, chief counsel for the FDA in President Bush's first term and now with a Washington law firm, said laws on drug advertising written by Congress in the 1960s have made it difficult to change policy. He added that most FDA professionals were "quite pro-DTC."

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Four of the five biggest names in accounting have resolved class-action litigation or regulatory complaints in recent weeks, in pacts totaling more than $186 million -- a costly few months for the firms as fallout from the accounting debacles of the late 1990s and early 2000s continues to spread.

Deloitte & Touche LLP is expected to announce today it will pay a $50 million fine to settle Securities and Exchange Commission civil charges that it failed to prevent massive fraud at cable company Adelphia Communications Corp.

In another case, the now-largely defunct accounting firm Arthur Andersen LLP agreed to a $65 million settlement in a class-action suit by investors in WorldCom Inc. over losses from stocks and bonds of the once-highflying telecommunications company now known as MCI Inc.

These follow a $22.4 million settlement the SEC reached last week with KPMG LLP related to its audits of Xerox Corp. from 1997 through 2000, and a $48 million settlement by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP last month to end class-action litigation over its audit of Safety-Kleen Corp., an industrial-waste-services company that filed for bankruptcy-court protection in 2000.

The only member of accounting's "Big Four" absent from the settlements of the past few weeks is Ernst & Young LLP. But in January it agreed to pay $84 million to settle a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Boston over its audit work more than a decade ago for the defunct Bank of New England Corp...

In Columbia, S.C., last month, PricewaterhouseCoopers reached its $48 million settlement to end litigation in federal court filed by institutional investors in Safety-Kleen's high-yield, or junk, bonds...

Campaign to Stop Corporate Killing

Every year some 5,000 workers are killed on the job and thousands more die from illnesses caused by occupational exposures. Many of these deaths are determined by state and federal OSHA investigations to be due to employers' reckless disregard for worker safety. But, as documented in a recent New York Times series, prosecutions of recklessly negligent employers are extremely rare. Of the 170,000 workplace deaths since 1982, only 16 convictions involving jail time have resulted. This despite the fact that 1,798 cases involving worker deaths were determined by OSHA to involve "willful" violations by employers--that is, violations in which the employer knew that workers' lives were being put at risk.

Killing a worker is currently considered a misdemeanor under federal law, with a maximum sentence of six months in jail. Even for willful violations, fines are typically under $25,000. Conviction for unlawful aerial harassment of mule deer, in contrast, can bring up to five years in jail and a $250,000 fine. It is time to reconsider our reluctance to employ significant criminal penalties in cases where gross negligence results in the death of a worker...

50 works, to be exhibited in Rome in June.

In an unusual move, the Chamber of Commerce is challenging the Justice Department's efforts to secure long prison terms for five individuals convicted of conspiracy and fraud in the EnronCorp. scandal.

The Chamber recently filed an amicus brief in the so-called Nigerian barge case, in which four former Merrill Lynch & Co. officials and a former Enron vice president were convicted last fall. The arguments put forth by the Chamber, which describes itself as the nation's largest business federation, with more than three million members, could affect the sentences in the barge case as well as other corporate-fraud trials.

The Chamber's brief is an example, observers say, of a feeling within the business community that the government's crackdown on corporate behavior may have gone too far in the wake of the scandals at Enron and other big companies. With the passage of time, "perhaps the business community feels the climate is a bit better for them to push back" against some of those initiatives, says Robert Litt, a former senior Justice Department official and now a partner at the Washington law firm Arnold & Porter.

The Chamber has been particularly active, challenging moves by the Securities and Exchange Commission and Justice Department. For instance, it is supporting Arthur Andersen LLP's pending Supreme Court appeal of the accounting firm's 2002 obstruction-of-justice conviction for destroying documents related to longtime client Enron. The Chamber's amicus brief in the Andersen case, filed jointly with the Washington Legal Foundation, says that unless the rules for corporate conduct are better defined, the "increasingly aggressive prosecutions of white-collar crime will inflict incalculable economic and intangible harm on businesses, their employees and their shareholders."

[...]

The Chamber of Commerce's brief supporting the defendants' position argues that the "artificial inflation" of a stock price shouldn't be used to determine loss. A "loss" comes only when disclosure of the alleged fraud causes a drop in the price of the company's stock, the brief says -- adding that the government embraced this definition in a civil securities case that was decided this week by the Supreme Court. In that opinion, the High Court agreed that investors need to show a link between the alleged fraud and a decline in the company's stock price to proceed with civil suits.

There's a whiff of irrational exuberance in the air -- and it's emanating from the mutual-fund companies.

Remember the heady days of 1999 and early 2000, when fund companies ran breathless advertisements peddling stock-mutual funds with unsustainably high short-term performance?

Today's ads aren't nearly so irresponsible. But make no mistake: Performance advertising is back. That is bad news for gullible investors -- and it could be a bad sign for stocks.

...At the 2000 market peak, fund companies were hyping past performance like crazy, encouraging investors to buy the hottest funds at the worst possible time.

Indeed, the magazine's April 2000 issue included a staggering 20 advertisements touting stock-fund performance. Ten of those ads plugged stock funds with one-year gains of 100% or more.

As I see it, when a fund promotes past performance, there is an implicit suggestion that the results can be sustained. So what is the chance that a 100% gain will get repeated the next year? In April 2000, fund companies were clearly too busy raking in cash from investors to worry about such pesky issues.

...you ought to be cynical about the ads -- because the fund companies involved are clearly utterly cynical about you and your fellow fund investors. Fund companies know that past performance is no guarantee of future results. In fact, if you read the small print in these ads, you usually find words to that effect.

This is more than just legal boilerplate. It is a story told over and over again. Suppose, at year end 1969, that you had ranked diversified U.S. stock funds based on their 10-year performance and then bought the top 25%. Result: Over the next 10 years, you would have lagged behind the S&P 500, according to calculations using Lipper data by the Bogle Financial Markets Research Center in Malvern, Pa.

Similarly, the top performers from the 1970s were stock-market laggards in the 1980s, and the top performers from the 1980s fell behind the S&P 500 in the 1990s. And the current decade isn't looking too good, either. The top 25% of stock funds from the 1990s have fallen 5.2% a year during the past five calendar years, trailing the S&P 500's 2.3% annual loss.

Because past performance is such a rotten guide to the future, you should focus on other factors when picking funds...

Corey Greenberg, tech editor for NBC's "Today" show, appeared last July to praise Apple's iPod as "a great portable musical player . . . the coolest-looking one" and suggested a compatible device to "share your music with other people." "This is the way to go," he declared.

"Let's cut the Apple commercial here right now, okay?" co-host Matt Lauer interjected.

Lauer was onto something. Greenberg, an NBC contributor, confirmed yesterday that he has received payments from Apple as well as Sony, Hewlett-Packard, Seiko Epson, Creative Technology and Energizer Holdings, charging $15,000 apiece to talk up their products on news shows. The contracts were first disclosed by the Wall Street Journal.

This final rule announces NHTSA's determination for model year (MY) 2006 high-theft vehicle lines that are subject to the parts- marking requirements of the Federal motor vehicle theft prevention standard, and high-theft MY 2006 lines that are exempted from the parts-marking requirements because the vehicles are equipped with antitheft devices determined to meet certain statutory criteria pursuant to the statute relating to motor vehicle theft prevention.

[...]

The purpose of the theft prevention standard is to reduce the
incidence of motor vehicle theft by facilitating the tracing and
recovery of parts from stolen vehicles. The standard seeks to
facilitate such tracing by requiring that vehicle identification
numbers (VINs), VIN derivative numbers, or other symbols be placed on
major component vehicle parts. The theft prevention standard requires
motor vehicle manufacturers to inscribe or affix VINs onto covered
original equipment major component parts, and to inscribe or affix a
symbol identifying the manufacturer and a common symbol identifying the
replacement component parts for those original equipment parts, on all
vehicle lines selected as high-theft.

[...]

The agency annually publishes the names of the lines which were
previously listed as high-theft, and the lines which are being listed
for the first time and will be subject to the theft prevention standard
beginning in a given model year in Appendix A to Part 541. It also
identifies in Appendix A-I to Part 541 those lines that are exempted
from the theft prevention standard for a given model year under section
33104. Additionally, this listing identifies those lines (except light-
duty trucks) in Appendix B to Part 541 that have theft rates below the
1990/1991 median theft rate but are subject to the requirements of this
standard under section 33103.

[...]

Appendix A to Part 541--Lines Subject to the Requirements of This
Standard

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Manufacturer Subject lines
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ALFA ROMEO................... Milano 161 and 164.
BMW.......................... Z3, Z8.
CONSULIER.................... Consulier GTP.
DAEWOO....................... Korando, Musso (MPV), Nubira (2000-2002).
DAIMLERCHRYSLER.............. Chrysler Cirrus, Chrysler Fifth Avenue/
Newport, Chrysler Laser, Chrysler
LeBaron/Town & Country, Chrysler LeBaron
GTS, Chrysler's TC, Chrysler New Yorker
Fifth Avenue, Chrysler Sebring, Dodge
600, Dodge Aries, Dodge Avenger, Dodge
Colt, Dodge Daytona, Dodge Diplomat,
Dodge Lancer, Dodge Neon, Dodge Shadow,
Dodge Stratus, Dodge Stealth, Eagle
Summit, Eagle Talon, Jeep Cherokee
(MPV), Jeep Liberty (MPV), Jeep Wrangler
(MPV), Plymouth Caravelle, Plymouth
Colt, Plymouth Laser, Plymouth Gran
Fury, Plymouth Neon, Plymouth Reliant,
Plymouth Sundance, and Plymouth Breeze.
FERRARI...................... Mondial 8, 328.
FORD......................... Ford Aspire, Ford Escort, Ford Probe,
Lincoln Continental, Lincoln Mark,
Mercury Capri, Mercury Cougar, Merkur
Scorpio, and Merkur XR4Ti.
GENERAL MOTORS............... Buick Electra, Buick Reatta, Buick
Skylark, Chevrolet Nova, Chevrolet
Blazer (MPV), Chevrolet Prizm, Chevrolet
S-10 Pickup, Geo Storm, Chevrolet
Tracker (MPV), GMC Jimmy (MPV), GMC
Sonoma Pickup, Oldsmobile Achieva (1997-
1998), Oldsmobile Bravada, Oldsmobile
Cutlass, Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme
(1988-1997), Oldsmobile Intrigue,
Pontiac Fiero, Saturn Sports Coupe (1991-
2002).
HONDA........................ Accord, CRV (MPV), Odyssey (MPV),
Passport, Pilot (MPV), Prelude, S2000,
Acura Integra, Acura MDX (MPV), and
Acura RSX.
HYUNDAI...................... Accent, Sonata, Tiburon.
ISUZU........................ Amigo, Impulse, Rodeo, Rodeo Sport,
Stylus, Trooper/Trooper II, VehiCross
(MPV).
JAGUAR....................... XJ.
KIA MOTORS................... Optima, Rio, Sephia (1998-2002), Spectra.
LOTUS........................ Elan.
MASERATI..................... Biturbo, Quattroporte, 228.
MAZDA........................ 626 (1987-2002), MX-3, MX-6.
MERCEDES-BENZ................ 190 D, 190 E, 260E (1987-1989), 300 SE
(1988-1991), 300 TD (1987), 300 SDL
(1987), 300 SEL, 350 SDL (1990-1991),
420 SEL (1987-1991), 560 SEL (1987-
1991), 560 SEC (1987-1991), 560 SL.
MITSUBISHI................... Cordia, Eclipse, Lancer, Mirage, Montero
(MPV), Montero Sport (MPV), Tredia,
3000GT.
NISSAN....................... 240SX, Sentra/200SX, Xterra.
PEUGEOT...................... 405.
PORSCHE...................... 924S.
SUBARU....................... XT, SVX, Baja, Forester, Legacy Outback
(1995-2004).
SUZUKI....................... Aerio, X90 (MPV), Sidekick (1997-1998),
and Vitara/Grand Vitara (MPV).
TOYOTA....................... Toyota 4-Runner (MPV), Toyota Avalon,
Toyota Camry, Toyota Celica, Toyota
Corolla/Corolla Sport, Toyota Echo,
Toyota Highlander (MPV), Toyota Matrix
(MPV), Toyota MR2, Toyota MR2 Spyder,
Toyota Prius, Toyota RAV4 (MPV), Toyota
Sienna (MPV), Toyota Tercel, Lexus
IS300, Lexus RX300 (MPV), Scion xA,
Scion xB.
VOLKSWAGEN................... Audi Quattro, Volkswagen Scirocco.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Appendix A-I--High-Theft Lines With Antitheft Devices Which are
Exempted From the Parts-Marking Requirements of This Standard Pursuant
to 49 CFR Part 543

[[Page 20484]]

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Manufacturer Subject lines
------------------------------------------------------------------------
AUSTIN ROVER................. Sterling.
BMW.......................... MINI, X5, Z4, 3 Car Line, 5 Car Line, 6
Car Line, 7 Car Line, 8 Car Line.
DAIMLERCHRYSLER.............. Jeep Grand Cherokee, Chrysler Conquest,
Chrysler Imperial, Chrysler Town and
Country MPV.
FORD......................... Lincoln Town Car, Mustang, Mercury Sable
(2001-2004), Mercury Grand Marquis,
Taurus (2000-2004), Thunderbird.\1\
GENERAL MOTORS............... Buick Lucerne, Buick LeSabre \2\, Buick
LaCrosse/Century, Buick Park Avenue,
Buick Regal/Century \3\, Buick Riviera,
Cadillac Allante, Cadillac Deville,
Cadillac Seville, Chevrolet Corvette,
Chevrolet Cavalier, Chevrolet Classic,
Chevrolet Impala/Monte Carlo, Chevrolet
Lumina, Monte Carlo (1996-1999),
Chevrolet Malibu (2001-2003), Chevrolet
Uplander, Chevrolet Venture (2002-2004)
\4\, Oldsmobile Alero, Oldsmobile
Aurora, Oldsmobile Toronado, Pontiac
Bonneville, Pontiac Grand Am, Pontiac
Grand Prix, Pontiac Sunfire.
HONDA........................ Acura CL, Acura Legend (1991-1996), Acura
NSX, Acura RL, Acura SLX, Acura TL,
Acura Vigor (1992-1995).
ISUZU........................ Axiom, Impulse (1987-1991).
JAGUAR....................... XK.
MAZDA........................ 6, 929, MX-5 Miata \5\ RX-7, Millenia.
MERCEDES-BENZ................ 124 Car Line (the models within this line
are): 260E, 300D, 300E, 300CE, 300TE,
400E, 500E, 129 Car Line (1993-2002)-the
models within this line are: 300SL,
500SL, 600SL, SL320, SL500, SL600, 202
Car Line (the models within this line
are): C220, C230, C280, C36, and C43.
MITSUBISHI................... Galant, Starion, and Diamante.
NISSAN....................... Nissan Altima, Nissan Maxima, Nissan
Pathfinder, Nissan 300ZX, Infiniti G35,
Infiniti I30, Infiniti J30, Infiniti
M30, Infiniti M45, Infiniti QX4, and
Infiniti Q45.
PORSCHE...................... 911, 928, 968, 986 Boxster.
SAAB......................... 9-3, 900 (1994-1998), 9000 (1989-1998).
TOYOTA....................... Toyota Supra, Toyota Cressida, Lexus ES,
Lexus GS, Lexus LS, Lexus SC.
VOLKSWAGEN................... Audi 5000S, Audi 100/A6, Audi 200/S4/S6,
Audi Allroad Quattro (MPV), Audi
Cabriolet, Volkswagen Cabrio, Volkswagen
Corrado, Volkswagen Golf/GTI, Volkswagen
Jetta/Jetta III, Volkswagen Passat.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Granted an exemption from the partsmarking requirements beginning
with MY 2006.
\2\ The Buick LeSabre was renamed Buick Lucerne beginning with MY 2006.
\3\ The Buick Regal/Century was renamed Buick LaCrosse/Century beginning
with MY 2005.
\4\ The Chevrolet Venture was renamed the Chevrolet Uplander in MY 2005.

\5\ Granted an exemption from the partsmarking requirements beginning
with MY 2005.

The image planned for the anti-Wal-Mart billboard was unusual - a fire-breathing Godzilla standing next to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge - and the language was strong: "The Wal-Monster will destroy Staten Island businesses and devastate our quality of life."

But New Yorkers may never see the billboard, which was supposed to go up on the island, because Clear Channel, the giant radio network that also runs an outdoor advertising company, has rejected it, saying its image and language are too inflammatory.

Officials of the labor union that was planning the message to help fight a Wal-Mart proposed for Staten Island yesterday accused Clear Channel of improper censorship, asserting that the company was taking pains not to offend Wal-Mart Stores, the country's largest company.

In November, Child magazine's Technology Editor James Oppenheim appeared on a local television show in Austin, Texas, and reviewed educational gadgets and toys. He praised "My ABC's Picture Book," a personalized photo album from Eastman Kodak Co.

[...]

There was one detail the audience didn't know: Kodak paid Mr. Oppenheim to mention the photo album, according to the company and Mr. Oppenheim. Neither Mr. Oppenheim nor KVUE disclosed the relationship to viewers. During the segment, Mr. Oppenheim praised products from other companies, including: Atari Inc., Microsoft Corp., Mattel Inc., Leapfrog Enterprises Inc. and RadioShack Corp. All paid for the privilege, Mr. Oppenheim says.

One month later, Mr. Oppenheim went on NBC's "Today" show, the U.S.'s biggest national morning news program, which is part of NBC's news division. "Kodak came out with a great idea," he said to host Ann Curry, before proceeding to talk about the same product he'd been paid to discuss on KVUE. Ms. Curry called it a "nice gift for a little child." Kodak says it didn't pay for the "Today" show mention. But neither Mr. Oppenheim nor NBC disclosed the prior arrangement to tout the product on local TV.

In the "Today" segment, Mr. Oppenheim talked about products made or sold by 15 companies. Nine were former clients and eight of those had paid him for product placement on local TV during the preceding year.

[...]

Mr. Oppenheim is part of a little-known network that connects product experts with advertisers and TV shows. The experts pitch themselves to companies willing to pay for a mention. Next, they approach local-TV stations and offer themselves up to be interviewed. Appearances frequently coincide with trade shows, such as the Consumer Electronics Show, or holidays including Christmas or Valentine's Day.

The segments are often broadcast live via satellite from a trade event and typically air during regular news programming in a way that's indistinguishable from the rest of the show. One reviewer may conduct dozens of interviews with local stations over the course of a day in what the industry calls a "satellite media tour." While this circuit is predominantly focused on the local television market, the big prize for marketers is a mention on national television shows, which carry far more clout with viewers.

[...]

Mr. Oppenheim's pitch is typical. Late last year, he invited electronics and game companies to join two satellite tours, according to a copy of his solicitation. "We expect these tours to sell out fast," Mr. Oppenheim wrote. "So please contact us as soon as possible to reserve a spot." The $12,500 fee per company, he explained, covered development, production and "spokesperson expenses."

[...]

For several years, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s Sam's Club paid trend and fashion expert Katlean de Monchy to get its jewelry mentioned on local TV. Ms. de Monchy's company, Nextpert News, charges $25,000 for a "special option" that includes Ms. de Monchy touting products on local shows, according to a copy of one of its pitches.

Then in January, Ms. de Monchy appeared as a guest on a "Good Morning America" segment explaining how to replicate fashions worn at the Golden Globe awards. "It's the accessories that really caught my eye, though. A lot of bling-bling," Ms. de Monchy told host Diane Sawyer, singling out a pair of diamond earrings available at Sam's Club.

Dee Breazeale, Sam's Club's vice president and divisional merchandise manager for jewelry, says the company didn't pay to get on ABC's "Good Morning America," but that the mention was "the icing on the cake." Ms. Breazeale adds that Sam's Club would probably not hire Ms. de Monchy if the payments were disclosed, because that would make her appearance seem too much like an infomercial. Ms. Breazeale says the paid segments are more effective than buying an ad. "It brings [the product] more to life," she says.

During the same "Good Morning America" segment, Ms. de Monchy showed off a pair of pointy-toed pumps, sold by another paying customer, shoe retailer DSW. Mike Levison, DSW's vice president of marketing, says he believed his company paid to get on "Good Morning America" as part of the satellite tour. With 10 being the ultimate marketing coup, he described the appearance as a "9 or 10."

...IRS data show far fewer agency audits aimed at large corporations providing investment advice, various kinds of banking and credit services and insurance than to corporations in other businesses. The big disparities -- documented in previously undisclosed data obtained and analyzed by TRAC -- concern corporations with $250 million or more in assets. The new IRS data document that on an overall basis only about one in three were audited. Other data show that despite recent IRS claims that it is vigorously enforcing the tax laws, the audit rate for all corporations has continued to decline along with the face-to-face audits of wealthy taxpayers.

Tests performed for The New York Times in March on salmon sold as wild by eight New York City stores, going for as much as $29 a pound, showed that the fish at six of the eight were farm raised. Farmed salmon, available year round, sells for $5 to $12 a pound in the city.

[...]

Only the sample bought at Eli's Manhattan on the Upper East Side ($22.99 a pound) tested wild. Salmon tested farmed at six stores: Dean & DeLuca in SoHo ($16.95); Grace's Marketplace ($28.99) and Leonard's ($19.95) on the Upper East Side; M. Slavin & Sons wholesale market at the Fulton Fish Market ($4.50 a pound for whole fish) and its Brooklyn retail store ($5.99); and Wild Edibles at the Grand Central Market ($20.99).

[...]

Officials at the stores had a variety of explanations.

Peter Leonard, an owner of Leonard's, said that his records did not go back as far as March 9, but that his sales clerks "must have gotten the salmon from the wrong pile in the back."

William Lettier, the vice president for retail operations at Dean & DeLuca, said four of his vendors could not provide him with their paper trail. He said he now wanted proof of the source of the fish from his vendors and would have his salmon spot-tested.

Jonathan Meyer, a partner in Wild Edibles, said he had narrowed the source of his fish to two Northwest vendors and had suspended business connections with both.

At M. Slavin & Sons in Brooklyn, the store manager, Phil Cohen, said: "Our salmon is from Canada. All wild salmon in Canada is farm raised."

BENTONVILLE, Ark. – Last November, Thomas M. Coughlin, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s vice chairman, approached a lieutenant with an unusual request. He wanted Jared Bowen to approve around $2,000 in expense payments without any receipts.

Mr. Bowen, then a 31-year-old vice president, recalls that Mr. Coughlin briefly mentioned the money had been used for a "union project."

[...]

The tale involves another mystery: the "union project." Mr. Coughlin told several Wal-Mart employees that the money was actually being used for antiunion activities, including paying union staffers to tell him of pro-union workers in stores, according to people familiar with the matter. The fake invoices, Mr. Coughlin told these people, were simply a roundabout way of compensating him for out-of-pocket expenses in his antiunion campaign.

If Mr. Coughlin did pay union staffers for information, it would represent a criminal offense under the federal Taft-Hartley Act and ratchet up debate over the retail giant's labor policies. Wal-Mart has vigorously opposed unions since the time of Mr. Walton, who founded the company in 1962. That stance has roiled the retail industry as competing companies with unionized workers have tried to slash wages and benefits in an attempt to keep up with Wal-Mart's rock-bottom prices.

People familiar with the matter say that Mr. Coughlin is expected to use the "union project" as part of his defense to the charges about misappropriation of funds. These people give an explanation that wouldn't necessarily involve criminal activity: The payments went to former, rather than current, union people who had information about union activities at Wal-Mart. Even such payments, if made, could raise legal questions. According to Fred Feinstein, the former general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, they could violate the National Labor Relations Act and carry civil penalties.

However, it remains unclear whether any payments were made or whether the union project existed. It is possible that Mr. Coughlin's talk of antiunion work was a cover story to conceal misuse of Wal-Mart funds for personal or other purposes.

[...]

Mr. Coughlin embraced another longtime Wal-Mart tradition: antiunionism. Led by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, labor organizers have tried for years to unionize Wal-Mart's U.S. workers, who currently number 1.3 million, but they have met with fierce and well-organized opposition. Whenever Wal-Mart headquarters gets word that union sentiment is growing in one of its stores, it quickly dispatches a "labor team" to the site. A Wal-Mart spokeswoman says the team, which includes a company lawyer, makes sure that store managers obey laws on organizing.

A group of meatcutters at a Wal-Mart in Texas voted to unionize in 2000. Several weeks later the retailer announced it was introducing a new nationwide policy of stocking only prepackaged beef and would no longer need butchers. This month, Wal-Mart is set to close a store in Canada that voted to unionize. Wal-Mart says the store is not profitable....

...French students are doing what all students do: surfing the web via Google. Now President Jacques Chirac wants to stop this American cultural invasion by setting up a rival French search-engine. The idea was prompted by Google's plan to put online millions of texts from American and British university libraries. If English books are threatening to swamp cyberspace, Mr Chirac will not stand idly by.

He asked his culture minister, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, and Jean-Noël Jeanneney, head of France's Bibliothèque Nationale, to do the same for French texts—and create a home-grown search-engine to browse them. Why not let Google do the job? Its French version is used for 74% of internet searches in France. The answer is the vulgar criteria it uses to rank results. “I do not believe”, wrote Mr Donnedieu de Vabres in Le Monde, “that the only key to access our culture should be the automatic ranking by popularity, which has been behind Google's success.”

...Googlephobia is spreading. Mr Jeanneney has talked of the “risk of crushing domination by America in defining the view that future generations have of the world.” “I have nothing in particular against Google,” he told L'Express, a magazine. “I simply note that this commercial company is the expression of the American system, in which the law of the market is king.” Advertising muscle and consumer demand should not triumph over good taste and cultural sophistication.