WASHINGTON (NYT) -- It seems some speech is freer than others. Yun Soo Oh Park, better known as Tokyo Joe, and his lawyer, Ira Lee Sorkin, are likely to mount a free-speech defense in the first case the Securities and Exchange Commission has brought against an Internet stock-picking celebrity.
Last week, the SEC said Park lied about his past returns, secretly accepted a company's shares in exchange for recommending its stock and regularly sold shares he owned at the same time that he was urging his subscribers, roughly 4,000, to buy them. Sorkin suggested that his client was simply exercising his First Amendment right to free speech in his investing chat room. But after news of the case hit Tokyo Joe's Web site on Wednesday, the chat room's operators sent a message instructing participants to limit discussions to stocks; anyone who tried to discuss the case, was ousted from the room, a participant said.
Motivated at 85
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Feeling the weight of your New Year's resolutions? Jack LaLanne understands. "You know where most people with New Year's resolutions get their exercise?" the fitness guru asked. "Breaking their New Year's resolutions. That is their exercise."
At 85, LaLanne is fit and trim and just as excited about exercise as when he first began showing television audiences in the 1950s how to get in shape. He says the key is setting realistic goals and sticking with them. "You know, the average person means well," he said. "They read all this stuff. Somebody motivates them. They set their goals too high. They do it two or three times and say, `This is too tough.' And they quit."
That's the wrong approach, he said, before addressing an overflow crowd Friday at a fitness forum sponsored by a local hospital and outreach organization. "Staying in shape is a lifestyle," said LaLanne, who still works out two hours a day. "It is not something you do for two weeks or four months to lose 20 pounds. It is something you do for the rest of your life, just like... combing your hair."
Wrong number on Lucent
NEW YORK (NYT) -- When Lucent Technologies stunned investors Thursday night by announcing that first quarter profits would fall far short of expectations -- 36 to 39 cents a share, vs. forecasts of 54 cents -- no one, except perhaps the chairman, Richard McGinn, could have been more disappointed than Steven Levy.
Last year, Levy, a highly regarded analyst for Lehman Brothers, repeatedly raised concerns. Even after Lucent's shares rose strongly in October on better-than-expected earnings, he said management was promising faster growth than it could deliver. Then, on Nov. 8, with Lucent at $67.50, Levy changed his tune. In a report entitled Risks Abate... a Buy We Now Rate!, he raised his rating from neutral and predicted that Lucent would hit $90 within a year. Last Thursday morning, Levy raised his target to $95, citing his "bullish outlook" for telecommunications equipment.
Levy said Lucent management convinced him in November that the business and balance sheet were improving. But Thursday's announcement evidently showed him the limits of skillful accounting and explanations. "Not only were they going to stretch a lot," in reporting their results, he said, "but they couldn't get where they were going."
20 going on... 20?
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Loretta Lynn says she's celebrating her 20th anniversary as a performer, even though she first entertained on stage at the Grand Ole Opry in 1960.
Huh?
The Coal Miner's Daughter has an explanation for her curious math. "You see, I figure out my age the same way Jack Benny used to. He was always 39," the 67-year-old entertainer said Friday in a statement released by her Los Angeles publicist. "In fact, I liked the way he (Benny) did his math so much that me and (husband) Mooney named our first son Jack Benny Lynn."
She performs the anniversary show at the Grand Ole Opry later this month.
Junk e-mail?
SAN FRANCISCO (NYT) -- The sirens of Silicon Valley have called again. Gerri E. Detweiler, a longtime consumer advocate, is the co- founder of a new dot-com, Money for Mail, which pays consumers to read e-mail advertisements directed to their interests. Detweiler was quick to describe her company as a "pro-consumer organization," because consumers are being paid per advertisement read to volunteer information about themselves. She has joined with Larry Chiang, founder of United College Marketing Services, which markets credit cards to college students.
Money for Mail keeps individual data private -- a pledge that Detweiler says she is working hard to make credible -- but provides information to companies in bulk form, to help focus their advertising. "Our main goal is to show consumers, by paying them, that their information is worth something," she said.
Despite years with nonprofit organizations like the National Council of Individual Investors, Detweiler says she is prepared for the for-profit world. She will help persuade investors to buy stock in the company if it goes public.
Just another way to shop?
ATLANTA (Cox) -- More people are buying things from Web sites, but they are buying less, according to a study by the Wharton School of Business. America Online customers bought $2.5 billion worth of products during the holidays. While that is double what AOL subscribers spent the year before, it is still a drop in the bucket compared with the $70 billion to $80 billion worth of goods bought from traditional catalog retailers. So, is so-called electronic commerce going to revolutionize retail, or is it just the next generation of shopping?
The Wharton study found that the amount of money each person is spending online is dropping. The study also found that not every person who tries online shopping likes it. About 15 percent of the people who tried online shopping in 1997 did not do it again in 1998, according to the study. Half of the people who dropped out in 1998 returned in 1999 to shop online again. Privacy and trust were the reason most people did not come back.
"The implication is that online shopping is just another way of shopping," said Jerry Lohse, research director of the Wharton Forum on Electronic Commerce, which sponsors the Wharton Virtual Test Market.
The report tracks more than 23,000 people, 791 of whom have been on the panel for three years.
Kucinich rolls out the Web
WASHINGTON (AP) -- One of Congress' last Internet holdouts finally rolled out a Web page, and it's a barrel of fun. In the cyberspace of Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, bowling, polka and kielbasa links all have a place, along with serious policy papers on the issues he cares about most. In addition to routine information -- like where to find his district office, how to get a flag that's flown over the Capitol - - Kucinich stocked his computer storefront (www.house.gov/kucinich) with the basics of life in the Cleveland neighborhoods he represents: bowling, polka music and kielbasa, a Polish sausage. "Only on our Web site will Americans be able to find the answer to the age-old question, `Who stole the kiska,'" the congressman said.
Kiska is a kind of blood sausage. It's popular among Russian- Americans, and a variation spelled kiszka is popular among Polish- Americans. Some people who would never eat the stuff have heard about it in a song about a butcher-shop theft. Frank Yankovic's version of Who Stole the Kiska is one of more than a dozen polka snippets being posted on the Kucinich Web site. The Beer Barrel Polka is there, too. So is If You Can't Do the Polka, Don't Marry my Daughter, and as a bonus, an excerpt from the polka-rock band Brave Combo, whose Grammy- nominated compact disc offers a version of Purple Haze called The Jimi Hendrix Polka.
Zero for zero
NEW YORK (NYT) -- You might think Mitsubishi Motors would avoid the word "zero" in an American ad campaign, considering that the Mitsubishi Zero fighter terrorized the skies during World War II. But since July, the automaker (which no longer has ties to the plane's maker, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries) has been offering "zero zero zero till `00" -- zero down, zero interest, zero payments until the new year -- an offer it has extended until 2001.
Mitsubishi wasn't oblivious to the volatile verbal juxtaposition but decided that it wasn't a problem. "We did some informal research," said Peg Dilworth-Hunt, director of marketing for Mitsubishi Motor Sales of America, "and it didn't seem to be a concern among people we were targeting." The age of that group? Up to about 54, she said. Precisely those born since the war's end.
Dying isn't cheap
SAN MATEO, Calif. (AP) -- In Silicon Valley, getting a place for a family of four is expensive. Throw in a mountaintop view and a professionally tended yard and a $265,000 find is a steal.
