News In Brief

PAYBACK TIME

Any extra money a New York newspaper might have made selling copies of last week's expos on questionable practices in the police department should come in handy before long. For example, Newsday could use the cash to pay the traffic citations written on 14 of its delivery trucks in the hours after the story appeared. Not surprisingly, a cop who issued some of the tickets said he was "just doing my job." Under normal circumstances, Newsday's fleet averages one ticket every few months.

WE'RE ALL JUST CRUSHED

"It is," an official at Sotheby's auction house in London said, "an extremely unfortunate situation, and we've taken immediate steps to prevent it happening again." So what did happen? Well, a painting valued at almost $160,000 was unwittingly destroyed by Sotheby's workers. It had been delivered in a protective case that they mistook for an empty box and tossed into a rubbish compactor. No word on whether the culprits are still employed there.

Top-paid CEOs: salaries the rest of us can dream about

In Forbes magazine's annual ranking of the highest-paid chief executives in the US, six of the top 10 spots went to men heading computer-related firms. And three of them - Charles Wang, Bobby Johnson Jr., and Stephen Case - were top 10 newcomers. The 1999 ranking, calculated by salary, bonuses, and stock gains (amounts in millions):

1. Charles Wang,

Computer Associates $650.0

2. Bobby Johnson Jr.,

Foundry Networks $230.5

3. Mel Karmazin,

CBS $201.9

4. Millard Drexler,

Gap $172.8

5. John Chambers,

Cisco Systems $121.7

6. Stephen Case,

America Online $117.1

7. Louis Gerstner Jr.,

IBM $107.2

8. John Welch Jr.,

General Electric $106.9

9. Reuben Mark,

Colgate-Palmolive $97.2

10. Peter Karmanos Jr.,

Compuware $87.5

- Associated Press

(c) Copyright 2000. The Christian Science Publishing Society