Stiff proposition - Russia's embalming research center, which monitors Lenin's tomb, now accepts commercial orders. An embalming that will last for six months costs $300,000. A long-term mummification, like the one Stalin had done on Lenin, $1 million plus. So far, no buyers.
Must be a popular organization- It will cost San Francisco a reported $1 million to provide security for the United Nations's 50th anniversary. One dispatch said: "The final cost will not be known until officials find out how much it will cost to open a new jail wing to house protesters and to hire additional police."
It's in their genes? - Richmond, Virginia, officials, ducked a proposal to place a statue of late tennis great Arthur Ashe next to those of Confederate generals. The proposal to honor the Black athlete was rapped by the Heritage Preservation Association. It said another site would pay proper tribute to Ashe, "without violating the historic sensibilities of Richmond's Confederate-American population."
Bourgeois, petty bourgeois, and proletarian pasta - In an experiment, a transnational is marketing various brands of pasta in Venezuela. One is priced for the wealthy, a second for middle- class folks, and a third for the working class.
Be nice if that were their only weapons - In Miami, Delta Business Systems plugs its Canon copying equipment on a billboard declaring, "Business is a war. We'll supply the Canons."
Taking care of business - Rockwell International will pay $23.6 million to settle federal charges that it padded a B-1 bomber contract by $80 million. A spokesman assured the money has already been set aside and Rockwell's quarterly bottom line won't be affected.
Dime on the dollar - Richard Woodward, a lawyer with a Wall Street firm that handles big-time corporate mergers, was charged with passing inside trader information to his brother and a few friends. Together, they cleaned up $900,000 plus. Woodward and his brother settled a Securities and Exchange Commission complaint by agreeing to return $110,000 of their gains. They also pled guilty to a single federal count. Wonder how much time they'll do?
Knock on metal - For a mere $500, astrologer Joyce Jillson gave Ford honchos a list of the best dates in June to launch their reworked models of the Ford Taurus and the Mercury Sable. Joked a Ford spokesperson, "There seems to be kind of a natural link between astrology and automobiles."
They work that much harder? - Tracking the income of the chief executive officers of 124 top corporations, a researcher found that in 1992, the CEOs "earned" 145 times as much as the average worker. Last year, it increased to 187 times as much.