Settlement: Four law firms in state are among dozens that will share the California award. Dissenter says decision "shocks the conscience." Nearly 60 law firms that helped California garner $25.4 billion as part of a national cigarette litigation settlement will split $1.25 billion in fees, according to a national arbitration panel decision obtained by The Times. ...

GENEVA (AP) - Anti-smoking groups reacted angrily Tuesday to a report by cigarette giant Philip Morris that said tobacco could save a government millions of dollars in health care and pensions because many smokers die earlier. The report, commissioned by Philip Morris from research company Arthur D. Little International, looked at the cost of smoking in the Czech Republic in 1999, and concluded that the government had benefited from the ``indirect positive effects'' of early deaths. ...

The Government is considering taking legal action against the tobacco industry to recoup the treatment costs of people harmed by smoking. ...

A Jefferson County judge ruled Monday a tobacco tax collected by seven Jefferson County cities is unconstitutional and that any revenue collected was done so illegally. The ruling affects Bessemer, Hoover, Trussville, Homewood, Hueytown, Vestavia Hills and Mountain Brook. ...

Courts: Firm proposes a meeting with Colombian and EU lawyers in two cigarette smuggling cases. Philip Morris Cos. is proposing settlement talks with the European Union and a group of Columbian states that have sued tobacco companies for allegedly promoting a global wave of cigarette smuggling. ...

KENNETH CLARKE, the former chancellor and Tory leadership contender, has been informed that he wrongly told MPs that his tobacco company was not involved in the organisation of cigarette smuggling. ...

Bennet S. LeBow,owner of the Liggett group,admitted last March,as part of the settlement of the tobacco cases against Liggett,that cigarettes are addictive. Yesterday, he reiterated that admission under oath in the flight attendents case in Florida. The other tobacco companies have yet to tell the truth and admit that cigarettes are addictive and kill people. It is one of the glaring omissions from the global tobacco settlement and one that needes to be cured before the public, the President and Congress consider the tobacco deal. xcerpts from reports of the trial follow: ...

Talk about cockeyed optimists. Tobacco giant Philip Morris actually sees a silver lining in the deadly health effects caused by cigarettes. Namely: People who die prematurely from smoking-induced diseases save governments money they might otherwise spend on health care, pensions and housing payments. ...

Let's hear it for the tobacco industry! The latest happy news from the jovial operators of this express service to the Pearly Gates comes from the Czech Republic. Philip Morris officials have been passing around an economic analysis that came up with the delightful finding that the early death of smokers is good for the Czech economy. ...

Gianpaolo and Carlo Messina were nobodies in tobacco four years ago when they set up Yesmoke.com, an online cigarette shop run out of a duty-free zone in the Swiss Alps. Today, the Italian brothers are grossing about $100 million (?83 million) in annual sales and stoking the ire of both Big Tobacco and the Big Apple. ...