The! Biggest! News! of! the! Day! - Not Nortel, Qualcomm or M&A Deals

Here are some of the contenders for today's biggest...news...of...the...day...

• A disappointing outlook from Nortel Networks (NT)...
• Word that Barclays may be on the verge of buying ABN Amro (ABN)...
• Word that ServiceMaster Co. (SVM) is being bought by a private-equity firm...
• A complaint by Nokia (NOK) that Qualcomm's (QCOM) "European patents are exhausted in respect of products placed on the European Union market with a Qualcomm license"...
• Some mildly cautious comments on the small-caps group as it said "it's probably time to rebalance your portfolio and shift some of your gains in small stocks to the big-cap sector"...however it is also said it isn't time to abandon small caps...
• Some skepticism [subscription required] on housing stocks...
• A look [subscription required] into the proliferation of exchange traded funds (ETF) as it said that "288 more ETFs are pending before the Securities and Exchange Commission"...
• A debate-worthy column from Herb Greenberg that talks about semiconductors and housing...
• Disappointing drug results for AtheroGenics Inc. (AGIX) that have the stock indicated down 60 percent....

While those are all stories worth watching, I think it is obviously clear that the biggest story is this - Thieves make off with gold block from Japan museum...according to the article, a group of masked men "snatched a block of gold bullion valued at roughly $1.71 million from a Japanese museum that allowed visitors to touch the 221-pound piece"...

So let me get this straight, the museum displays a 200-pound hunk of gold without any sort of " sensors or burglar alarms" and it then gets stolen? The "news" should have been it wasn't stolen sooner...