WHAT'S THE difference between cinnamon and menthol? For Big Tobacco, it's a distinction worth billions of dollars. Congress is seeking historic regulatory control of tobacco products, but political expedience and monetary interests are nibbling away at the legislation's health protections.

In boom times, few demanded to see a return on Norfolk's investment downtown, aside from all the new towers, condos, restaurants and stores where slums once stood. The physical transformation itself was enough.

SO THE ILLEGAL immigration problem is that all these people came into America without permission? We're in a national argument because people didn't fill out the right paperwork, stop at the right desk, come in through the right gate? Because they didn't play by the rules?

PLAY ALONG with me. Pretend it's early September. Local meteorologists are hysterical, preachers are praying up a storm, and CNN's Anderson Cooper has just lashed himself to a lamp post in front of your house. This can mean just one thing: A hurricane is headed our way. You've decided to hunker down at home and tough it out. You know you'll lose power. You don't know for how long.

DOMINION VIRGINIA POWER has asked for an 18 percent rate hike, which would raise the average monthly residential electricity bill from $91 to $107. The company says it needs the raise to compensate for huge increases in the cost of coal and natural gas, which it uses to generate electricity.

THE HIATUS is over for red-light running scofflaws in Virginia Beach. And they can't claim they weren't warned.

Faced with a national outcry over the high price of gasoline and soaring profits for energy companies, the oil and gas industry is waging an unusually pricey campaign to burnish its image. - The Washington Post, May 9  

THE VALUE of Gov. Tim Kaine's new transportation plan lies less in its particulars than in its author's willingness to find a consensus among lawmakers, commuters and taxpayers, Republican and Democrat, House and Senate, Southside and Peninsula.

YOU'VE GOT no talent, no friends and no personality. Let's face it: You need a new shampoo. We laugh at those ridiculous commercials, even as we reach past the cheap stuff for brand-name bottles on store shelves. There's no great harm if we spend a few extra dollars in pursuit of beauty and bliss, but what if the product those ads are peddling is a pill?

FROM POTHEADS to prostitutes to public urinators, they get it all in General District Court. I highly recommend a few hours there, especially if you can no longer afford movie tickets. Shoot, sometimes there's even nudity. Take Monday, for instance.