That task grew more difficult in May, when news broke that federal prosecutors were looking into allegations that MCI, since 1994 and be-fore merging into WorldCom, had be-gun illegally disguising long-distance calls as local ones to avoid paying the Bells millions of dollars in access fees--and continues to do so.

FORBES: Screaming Match

We drove past my old high school: there were bars on the windows where there hadn't been before I went to prison, armed uniformed guards out front where be-fore there'd been old-lady hall monitors with whistles, and I imagined that the bars and the guards were there to protect the students from me and not some teenage crazy in a trench coat stuffed with home-made ordnance.

NPR: Chapter 1

Cisco may have driven Alantec into the arms of yet another fast-growing networking company, Fore Systems--though Fore itself is now rumoured to be a takeover candidate.

ECONOMIST: Can't stop starting businesses

Graffiti pictures by American star Jean-Michel Basquiat will be well to the fore, with their political undertones and emotional support of the black underdog.

WSJ: Collecting: Bacon, Richter and Basquiat to Headline Contemporary Art London Sales

The big question, of course, brought to the fore by Meredith Whitney and Nouriel Roubini recently is will we be facing widespread municipal bankruptcies rendering the muni-market a mine field of investor disasters?

FORBES: The New Realities Of Muni-Bond Investing