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HOW CEO PAY GOT AWAY

It's springtime, which means shareholder activists and Big Labor have taken up their favorite pastime: railing against runaway CEO pay. This year's batch of proxy statements provides plenty of ammunition. The corner office of a typical Fortune 500 company comes with annual total compensation of $7.8 million, an increase of roughly 50% over last year. CEOs make a good 200 times more than the average factory worker, even if you throw in the 3% raise that working stiffs gained in 1996. The pay disparity is five times greater than it was 30 years ago--and it's growing. You can almost hear the...

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RAY KELLY, New York City Police Commissioner, on the arrest of a New Jersey man in one of the nation's most baffling missing-children cases, the disappearance more than three decades ago of 6-year-old Etan Patz.
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