Fine Print

Performers' contracts with the Orange County Fair reveal dining preferences: Michael Bolton demands "real, not faxed, menus" from the area's "finest" restaurants. Legal documents also divulge drinks of choice: Big Head Todd & the Monsters like, among other adult beverages, "smoooooooooth tequila." And they show the market value for each act: Legend Paul Simon pulls in $350,000 plus 85% of the gross box office for one night's work, but a reconstituted Jefferson Starship walks away with $30,000.

Radiohead has always endeavored to proceed on its own terms, and after a decade of working at it, the English band finds itself in a position that's virtually unprecedented for a group of its commercial and critical stature. Free and clear of all record label entanglements, Thom Yorke and company will be closely watched as a model for negotiating the potential and the pitfalls of an ever-shifting pop music landscape.

A pair of elderly women accused of fraudulently collecting more than $2 million in life insurance on two homeless men demonstrated a remarkable knowledge of the intricacies of life insurance policies, officials said, and aggressively used this expertise in pressing their claims.

When Marion and Joseph Young signed up for one of the new Medicare prescription drug plans, they did what government officials said everyone should do: Shop carefully. They found a plan with no premium and no deductible. Most important, they made sure it covered the critical medications needed for the struggle both are waging against multiple sclerosis.

MOST people wouldn't buy a $20,000 car without insurance to guard against loss or damage; why do travelers leave home without protecting a $10,000 family vacation? Mainly because they don't think they need trip insurance. But that's changing after an unprecedented trio of troubles -- airline bankruptcies, hurricanes and terrorism -- snarled travel plans for thousands last year. About one of every three travelers bought insurance in 2005, almost double the number who did before Sept.

SOON AFTER man figured out that he could communicate to others through markings on the walls, duplication and distribution became a primary concern for the creator. As the means of communicating through drawing and words evolved from cave walls to scrolls and, later, books, writers realized that with the help of others, their stories could reach more people -- and publishing was born.

BETWEEN THE "HALF A TRUTH" TV ads and the "always at dinnertime" recorded phone calls pitching one proposition or another, California's voters head to the polls today considerably confused. The most confusion, strangely enough, swirls around the seemingly simplest of the statewide ballot measures: Proposition 73, which would require a doctor to notify a minor's parents before she can have an abortion. Supporters have been casting this in terms certain to catch the sympathies of any parent.

The recent hurricanes in the Caribbean and the U.S. and terrorist attacks on London's transit system have prompted travelers to scrutinize trip insurance policies, a subject of some confusion since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S. "We got swamped with telephone calls after the London bombings," said Beth Godlin, senior vice president of travel markets for Access America, a large insurance company with offices in Richmond, Va. "Most people wanted to know what benefits they had."

I am just an avid traveler, not in the industry. Everyone seems to complain about the airlines, but not other industries' ads ["A Deal to Take Your Breath Away, Fine Print to Put It Back," Travel Insider, March 20]. I think the airlines do a great job, certainly up until a few years ago, when they all tried to be Southwest. You don't see Macy's advertising a sofa for $1,083; it prices it at $999 and adds the tax later. Harlan Levinson Los Angeles IT'S not the first time that I've read nor, I'm sure, is it the first time Jane Engle has written about airline print ads. I don't travel weekly but often enough to ignore the ads that infrequent travelers might get excited about.

Arthur Krieger makes money when he uses his credit card. The problem is, he doesn't make enough. Like many Americans, Krieger has a credit card that pays him a reward, or rebate, based on how much he charges. Krieger said he spent about $9,000 on his co-branded American Express-Costco card last year and got $89 cash back. But that was about $50 short of what he thought he'd been promised.