Threadwatch reports that the United Press International is selling links based on PageRank values. If you visit the advertising section, specifically for text links you will clearly see UPI marketing those text links to manipulate rankings and not for direct traffic building purposes like this:
The benefits they list include “increasing Page Rank” and “improving search engine results.” Plus UPI listed out pages, with their current PageRank values and backlink counts for marketing reasons.
I have posted a screen capture at Flickr to document the full page it before Google removes all value from the links on this site. :-)