Word: auctions
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...everything that pays: car theft, gambling, prostitution, kidnap for ransom and even, astonishingly, petrol. The bulk of the bribes received by convicted customs chief Zhao came from smuggling gasoline. The racket worked like this: a tanker anchors in international waters and waits for motor launches to gather round. An auction follows, and the buyers smuggle the fuel to shore in barrels to sell to the nearest state-run station, no import duty paid. "The whole of southern China is running on smuggled gas," says Zheng. "And half the time, the government is controlling...
...make up the difference, Palm Beach County is going the way of the Ballot-Carrying Ryder Truck, which went for some $40,000 in a Yahoo online auction, and auctioning off the county's 5,000 Votomatics on eBay...
...exclude the media - another profession that requires little to zero credentials? The CBS Evening News is the lowest rated news broadcast and can't be doing too well financially. Why not auction off the anchor chair for one night a week to some multi-millionaire who wishes he were Dan Rather? In fact, it couldn't be more anxious-making for viewers than watching old Dan himself. Maybe that's how they should find Dan's successor - give it to the highest bidder; that might even make Viacom happy...
...observers such tactics smack of price-fixing, market discrimination and possible violation of antitrust law: if the player does not like the U.S. team negotiating the deal, his only recourse is to stay in Japan for another year. Nomo's American-based agent Don Nomura called it a "slave auction." The union, true to form, failed to file suit. Explained Toru Matsubara, secretary-general of the Japanese Baseball Players Association: "Trials last forever here." Japan was free to sell off its best talent. And there was little the fan could do. As a disgusted Tamaki creatively put it, "It makes...
...Nakamura owns more than 100 of the robots, which he carefully displays in a glass case at his parents' Los Angeles home. When Internet auction fever hit last year, the prices of the rarest robots - the $500-range machines intact in original box and Styrofoam - quadrupled, so Nakamura took a deep breath and hopped on a plane to Japan to hunt out the best deals. "It was the first time I'd traveled somewhere just to fulfill my toy fetish," he says of his trips down narrow Tokyo alleyways to check out tiny toy-shops. "But Japan is a mecca...