BILL MAHER TO RECEIVE `FLYING PIG' AWARD (EMBARGOED UNTIL 6 A.M. EST,

BILL MAHER TO RECEIVE `FLYING PIG' AWARD (EMBARGOED UNTIL 6 A.M. EST, APRIL 1, 2000)

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (Wireless Flash) -- Talk show host Bill Maher has something new to talk about: He's just won a Flying Pig Award. The awards are handed out every April Fool's Day by magician and skeptic James Randi to "honor" scientists, journalists and others who promote ridiculous ideas concerning the paranormal. Randi says Maher wins his Flying Pig Award for taking "every hare- brained claim" about the paranormal seriously. The City of New York also receives a Flying Pig for its welfare work project which trains the unemployed on how to become a phone psychic. Even famed soothsayer Nostradamus gets a posthumous Flying Pig for incorrectly predicting the world would suffer a major catastrophe in July of 1999.