Monday, May. 31, 1999

Numbers

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, Michelle Derrow, Tam Gray, Daniel Levy, Lina Lofaro, David Spitz, Flora Tartakovsky and Chris Taylor

$725 million Total fines the Justice Department levied on two of the world's largest drug companies for fixing vitamin prices

$1.4 billion Other antitrust fines collected by Justice since 1997

$95 million Annual budget for Justice's antitrust division

$28.5 million Box-office receipts on the opening day of Star Wars: Episode I

$300 million Estimated cost to the economy of people's skipping work to see the movie

77% Proportion of parents surveyed who say they would like to use a V-chip to block TV programs, if they had one

2 Number of nationwide electronics chain stores that stopped selling V-chip decoder boxes, for lack of interest

3% Teenage girls in Fiji with eating disorders in 1995, before TV arrived

15% Fijian girls with eating disorders three years after the islands got TV

Sources: Washington Post, CNN, AP, L.A. Times, Kaiser Foundation