India News Blog @newzblogz.com

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's ruling Congress party was heading for defeat in polls in the states of Punjab and Uttarakhand on Tuesday, in elections seen as reflecting wider voter concern about inflation and economic reforms.

Though the results are not expected to destabilize the national coalition, which the Congress heads, the electoral losses may curb Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's ability to push through controversial reforms, analysts said.

Congress rules the northern farm state of Punjab, the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand as well as restive Manipur in India's isolated northeast, which all went to polls this month.

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NEW YORK — He occasionally searches for a word and has limited vision in the right corners of his eyes. But aside from some red scars that pocket his face, there are few outward signs that 13 months ago part of Bob Woodruff's skull was blown off by a roadside bomb in Iraq.

"I feel so lucky in so many ways," the ABC correspondent said Monday, seated in an airy conference room in the network's Manhattan headquarters. "I see what my family has gone through and I realize how difficult it has been."

In "To Iraq and Back: Bob Woodruff Reports," an hourlong documentary airing at 10 tonight on ABC, Woodruff tells the story of his recovery from the explosion that seriously wounded him and cameraman Doug Vogt. It's his first time on the air since an improvised explosive device hit the Iraqi personnel carrier they were riding in north of Baghdad in January 2006, just weeks after he and colleague Elizabeth Vargas had begun their short-lived pairing as co-anchors of the evening news.

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ATLANTA (AP) - Word that salmonella-tainted peanut butter from Georgia was sent to more than 60 countries comes at an awkward time for the state.

Governor is pushing to boost the state's trade ties around the globe. He's set to spend an unprecedented four weeks abroad later this year drumming up international business.

Experts say they don't expect the state to suffer much from the peanut butter scare.

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STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Volvo , the world's number two truck maker, said on Tuesday it had agreed to buy the road development machinery business of U.S. diversified manufacturer Ingersoll-Rand in a $1.3 billion cash deal.

The Gothenburg-based firm, which besides trucks makes buses, engines and a wide range of construction gear, said the deal also included 20 dealerships in North America as well as distribution arms in Europe and Russia.

Volvo said the acquisition fits with its strategy to expand in the $4 billion market for road construction equipment as well as strengthening its position in the North American materials handling equipment market.

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You can barely worm your way through the thicket of writhing bodies on the Chop Suey dance floor, where New York City DJ Jay Dabhi, aka Lil' Jay, has launched a bass-thumping, fist-pumping sea of otherworld exuberance. At one corner of a late September throng — the touring cast of "Bombay Dreams," just off a two-week run at Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre.

Here in this sweltering Capitol Hill club is a Seattle you may not recognize: A crowd of several hundred, most of them of Asian Indian descent, lost in the modern dance beats underlying traditional bhangra and popular Bollywood music.

The scene, sponsored by Sounds of the East, aka The Bollywood Project, has a distinctly Indian flavor drawing not only the adventurous but Asian Indians seeking cultural familiarity and reinforcement. And not far from Chop Suey, I Heart Shiva, the granddaddy of the local Asian Indian music scene, hosts twice-monthly events at the Baltic Room.

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For a growing number of young entrepreneurs, the best way to make money is by improving society. And for many socially minded students, the best way to promote change is through business.

Those ideas are coming together in a global competition at the University of Washington Business School this week.

The UW's Global Social Entrepreneurship Competition invites teams from around the world to submit business plans aimed at reducing poverty and pollution in the developing world. But the plans must also make sound financial sense.

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Weeks after becoming co-anchor of ABC's "World News Tonight" in January 2006, Bob Woodruff nearly died in a roadside bombing in Iraq. In "To Iraq and Back" (10 tonight, ABC), Woodruff documents his own recovery from a traumatic brain injury and examines the plight of U.S. soldiers with similar injuries. His report is at turns heartwarming and unsettling in the questions it raises about the government's ability to deal with them.

Woodruff spoke with reporters Monday. Some excerpts:

> On the near-fatal blast: "I remember driving along in a tank on that road and standing outside the opening at the top. When it actually exploded, I don't remember that. But I do remember at that moment, I saw my body floating below me. . . . I was asking if we were still alive. That's the last I remember."

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Bob Woodruff doesn't remember much about the day he almost died.

The former World News Tonight co-anchor was riding in an Army transport vehicle in Iraq last January, when a roadside bomb exploded nearby. The blast fractured Woodruff's skull, injured his jaw and broke his shoulder. Doug Vogt, an ABC News cameraman, also was hurt, though not as severely.

The details of that fateful day remain sketchy to Woodruff.

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SHANGHAI, China ? Wal-Mart is buying a 35 percent stake in a company that operates Trust-Mart, a major Chinese discount chain, as international competitors jostle for position in China's rapidly growing retail market.

Wal-Mart may eventually take managerial control of Taiwan-based Bounteous Co., which operates 101 Trust-Mart stores in 34 major cities in China, the U.S. retail giant said in a statement Tuesday.

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. Newspapers last year speculated a takeover of Trust-Mart would cost Wal-Mart about $1 billion.

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SHANGHAI, China ? Wal-Mart is buying a 35 percent stake in a company that operates Trust-Mart, a major Chinese discount chain, as international competitors jostle for position in China's rapidly growing retail market.

Wal-Mart may eventually take managerial control of Taiwan-based Bounteous Co., which operates 101 Trust-Mart stores in 34 major cities in China, the U.S. retail giant said in a statement Tuesday.

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. Newspapers last year speculated a takeover of Trust-Mart would cost Wal-Mart about $1 billion.

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HONG KONG/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's biggest retailer, will pay about $1 billion to take over a Chinese chain, challenging Carrefour as the largest operator of super-centers in booming China.

The acquisition of Bounteous Co. Ltd. by Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart, will be done in phases by 2010 and could trigger much-needed consolidation in China's ferociously competitive $1 trillion retail market.

Under terms of the deal, Wal-Mart is buying 35 percent of Taiwan-based Bounteous, which operates 101 hypermarkets in 34 Chinese cities under the Trust-Mart brand, and will acquire ownership control of the chain by 2010 if conditions are met.

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SHANGHAI, China - Wal-Mart is buying a 35 percent stake in a company that operates Trust-Mart, a major Chinese discount chain, as international competitors jostle for position in China's rapidly growing retail market.

Wal-Mart may eventually take managerial control of Taiwan-based Bounteous Co., which operates 101 Trust-Mart stores in 34 major cities in China, the U.S. retail giant said in a statement Tuesday.

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. Newspapers last year speculated a takeover of Trust-Mart would cost Wal-Mart about $1 billion.

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SHANGHAI, China - Wal-Mart is buying a 35 percent stake in a company that operates Trust-Mart, a major Chinese discount chain, as international competitors jostle for position in China's rapidly growing retail market.

Wal-Mart may eventually take managerial control of Taiwan-based Bounteous Co., which operates 101 Trust-Mart stores in 34 major cities in China, the U.S. retail giant said in a statement Tuesday.

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. Newspapers last year speculated a takeover of Trust-Mart would cost Wal-Mart about $1 billion.

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One of my favorite photographs of India shows a sadhu right out of central casting -- naked body, long matted hair and beard, ash-smeared forehead -- chatting away on a mobile phone.

The contrast says so much about today's India, a country that manages to live in several centuries at the same time.

There are other photographs I have seen over the years that illustrate the same phenomenon -- laborers carrying TV sets on their heads, a bullock-cart transporting rocket parts, a car overtaking an elephant, and so on. But there's something particularly special about the sadhu and his cell phone.

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NEW DELHI - Japan's Nissan Motor on Monday joined France's Renault SA's plan to build a car plant in southern India in collaboration with local automaker Mahindra & Mahindra amid strong demand for passenger cars from India's growing middle class.

The three companies will together invest about $900 million to build the plant near the southern Indian city of Chennai, said Pawan Goenka, president of the automotive division at Mahindra & Mahindra.

The plant, billed as one of India's largest with a capacity to manufacture 400,000 vehicles annually, is expected to roll out the first car in the second half of 2009, he said. It will manufacture both Renault and Nissan models.

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Facing escalating concerns about the potential vulnerability of U.S. space assets to terrorists and hostile governments, Boeing Co. for the first time is offering to install advanced antijamming technology on some future commercial satellites.

Military and spy satellites use such hardware and other techniques to help prevent disruption of their signals. Now efforts are under way to expand at least some of the same protective devices to commercial space, which includes more than 250 large satellites in high-Earth orbits. Boeing's effort to provide sophisticated antennas designed to counteract jamming is part of a broader push -- supported by both industry and the Pentagon -- to safeguard commercial fleets in orbit.

"Some of our customers are looking for technology to potentially reduce the threat" of jamming, said Craig Cooning, deputy general manager of Boeing's Space and Intelligence Systems unit, which builds commercial and government satellites. Mr. Cooning said down the road, such safeguards "could become a differentiator" in the commercial marketplace.

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LOS ANGELES -- A highly drug-resistant form of tuberculosis has killed about 85 percent of South African HIV patients who have become infected, presenting one of the most worrisome problems in HIV and tuberculosis control, researchers reported Sunday.

About 330 cases of extensively drug-resistant, or ?XDR,? tuberculosis have been verified in South Africa over the past year, said Karin Weyer of the South African Medical Research Council in Pretoria.

The outbreak began in KwaZulu-Natal province last year and is found throughout the country, she said.

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The top business news from The Associated Press for the morning of Monday, February 26, 2007:

TXU Announces $32B Sale to Private Firms

DALLAS (AP) - TXU Corp., Texas' largest electricity producer, said Monday it has agreed to be sold to a group of private-equity firms for about $32 billion in what would be the largest private buyout in U.S. corporate history if shareholders go along. Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Texas Pacific Group led a group that included Goldman Sachs & Co. and three other Wall Street firms that will pay $69.25 per share for TXU. They will also assume about $13 billion in debt.

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You might think a hip guy like Cory McAbee, a Brooklyn-based artist, musician, and independent filmmaker with a preference for all-black outfits, would scoff at the idea of his work appearing on a screen about the size of a belt buckle, BusinessWeek.com reports.

In fact, McAbee is among a small but growing group of directors who are embracing mobile phone screens as a promising new venue. "I'm a huge fan of short films?I like making them," says McAbee, who was in Barcelona in February to attend the 3GSM mobile phone industry trade fair. "It's tough to get a feature distributed because of the limited number of big screens. But there are millions of little screens."

A lot of them these days are in India, the world's fastest-growing mobile phone market. That's why Bollywood director Sanjay Gupta was also in Barcelona, pacing in front of a hilltop palace and admiring the view of the city below. "As a filmmaker, I need as many outlets as I can find for my stories," Gupta said. As he sees it, mobile is the "fourth screen," after movie theaters, TV, and computers.

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We've been had. We buy expensive bottles of water when we could just turn on a faucet. How expensive? According to The Sierra Club, bottled water costs 1,000 times more than tap water.

But, you say, tap water isn't as safe. Wrong, at least in the United States. The National Resources Defense Council tested bottled water and found a third of it contaminated with bacteria, synthetic chemicals and arsenic. The FDA's regulations on bottled water are weaker than the EPA's regulations on tap water.

If our water really is defective, we can put a filter on our tap or contact our local water department. This introduces another issue that underscores Americans' foolishness.

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It's an early spring for Berkeley composer John Adams. He has put aside the memoir he's writing and postponed the premiere of a symphony based on his opera "Doctor Atomic," which had been set for Carnegie Hall.

This week, the aura is sweetness and light as he conducts the first American performances of "A Flowering Tree," his opera based on an Indian folk tale and inspired by Mozart's "The Magic Flute."

"This piece is a fairy tale," Adams says, his eyes lighting up as he leans across the dining table of his Craftsman-style hillside home. "I have never entered into that kind of magical garden in my music."

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The Kellogg School of Management isn't just for working professionals anymore.

Starting this fall, the graduate-level business school in Evanston will offer courses to undergraduate students at its Northwestern University home. Students will not be able to earn a full-fledged degree in business, but they will be able to learn about such topics as corporate finance and capital markets from Kellogg professors.

The course offerings are likely the beginning of a broader move into undergraduate education by one of the nation's most highly regarded business schools, said Dean Dipak Jain. Northwestern has not offered an undergraduate business degree since the late 1960s.

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Years ago, when Kwame Agyei told people he was from Ghana, they'd say, Uganda?

Or sometimes they would think he'd said Guyana. People don't misunderstand now. Everyone knows about Ghanaian Kofi Annan, who just finished a decade as U.N. secretary-general. Ghana's Black Stars soccer team made it to the second round of the 2006 World Cup.

Agyei's young country is turning 50 in a few days, and Ghanaian immigrants from around the Sound are throwing a party Saturday to celebrate.

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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Gold may be the color of the coveted Oscar award but silver gowns dazzled the red carpet at the world's leading film awards, while those featuring intricate bodices, beading and master detail proved that exquisite workmanship always merits a second glance.

Helen Mirren, of "The Queen," chose a pale gold Christian LaCroix gown with a lace bodice for the evening, while Cate Blanchett chose a stunning silver beaded one-shoulder Armani Prive that captured the right amount of shimmer and elegance.

Kirsten Dunst's pale silvery blue gown featured delicate sequins and feathers at the hem, while Jennifer Lopez's Grecian-inspired Marchesa gown in a pale silvery shade of lilac was adorned with five tiers of sparkling beads at the neck.

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The demand for Scotch in expanding markets such as China and India is driving investment in distilleries and storage.

February 26, 2007

Diageo's decision to spend $78 million on the first large malt whiskey distillery to be built in Scotland for a generation is testament to the growing appeal of Scotch overseas.

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NEW DELHI (AP) -- Japan's Nissan Motor on Monday joined France's Renault SA's plan to build a car plant in southern India in collaboration with local automaker Mahindra & Mahindra amid strong demand for passenger cars from India's growing middle class. The three companies will together invest about $900 million to build the plant near the southern Indian city of Chennai, said Pawan Goenka, president of the automotive division at Mahindra & Mahindra. The plant, billed as one of India's larges...

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Penn Masala is not exactly another boy band, but you wouldn't know it from some of the fan postings on their Web site:

"You guys are so amazing!!!!!!! I love all your songs! Ya'll really need to come perform in Houston."

"You guys should really come to Boston. You'd love the city and I KNOW we'd love you."

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NEW DELHI ? Japan's Nissan Motor on Monday joined France's Renault SA's plan to build a car plant in southern India in collaboration with local automaker Mahindra & Mahindra amid strong demand for passenger cars from India's growing middle class.

The three companies will together invest about $900 million to build the plant near the southern Indian city of Chennai, said Pawan Goenka, president of the automotive division at Mahindra & Mahindra.

The plant, billed as one of India's largest with a capacity to manufacture 400,000 vehicles annually, is expected to roll out the first car in the second half of 2009, he said. It will manufacture both Renault and Nissan models.

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Britney is bald, but not the first celeb to be so bold

For The Associated Press

We may never know why Britney Spears shaved her head.

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Public policy is all about trade-offs. Economists understand this better than politicians because voters want to have their cake and eat it too, and politicians think whatever is popular must also be true.

Economists understand that if we put a chicken in every pot, it might cost us an aircraft carrier or a hospital. We can build a hospital, but it might come at the expense of a little patch of forest. We can protect a wetland, but that will make a new school more expensive.

You get it already. But in the history of trade-offs, never has there been a better one than trading a tiny amount of global warming for a massive amount of global prosperity. Earth got about 0.7 degrees Celsius warmer in the 20th century while it increased its GDP by 1,800 percent, by one estimate. How much of that 0.7 degrees can be laid at the feet of that 1,800 percent is unknowable, but let's stipulate that all of the warming was the result of our prosperity and that this warming is in fact indisputably bad (which is hardly obvious).

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Professors on the Berkeley campus have received a surprising number of job offers from European institutions in recent months, the latest volley in the battle to keep top faculty members in the East Bay.

Berkeley professors long have entertained offers from the Harvards and Stanfords, but the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschules are the new players.

The push is part of an effort by European governments to improve higher education on the continent, seen as a key to economic success during the next few decades.

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GAUHATI, India - Security forces searched the heavily forested mountain areas of northeastern India's troubled Manipur state Sunday, a day after 16 policemen were killed in a rebel ambush, an official said.

Army, police and paramilitary soldiers are searching the area where the attack took place and have recovered a cache of weapons, the state's police chief A.K. Parashar said. He did not give details about the kind of weapons found.

The attack involved 40 to 50 heavily armed rebels, Parashar added.

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Timothy Kephart decodes messages hidden in plain sight.

The criminal justice specialist?s company, Graffiti Tracker Inc., has been interpreting the meanings in wall scrawls throughout Southern California for the past year. Now he?s branching out to other parts of the country ? and even to India ? as he transforms graffiti into a business.

Eighteen cities now use the company?s services. Officials say the intelligence on graffiti helps fight crime.

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Sales of super-size business jets are hitting the stratosphere as people with the means to avoid the hassles of commercial airline travel increasingly opt to do so.

The current market for personal jets is shattering previous sales records as orders soar in Europe, the Middle East, India and China for the first time.

And in the U.S., private-jet operators and charter companies are snapping up planes to keep pace with an influx of business travelers who are fed up with airline travel, experts say.

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GUWAHATI, India (Reuters) - A massive manhunt is underway in the dense jungles of India's troubled northeastern state of Manipur after 16 policemen were killed in a militant ambush, a top military commander said on Sunday.

In the deadliest attack in the state for at least two years, more than 30 heavily armed militants threw grenades and fired from hilltops at a police patrol vehicle in Tamenglong district, about 85 km (50 miles) northwest of the state capital, Imphal.

The attack on Saturday came a day after provincial elections were held in Manipur, which borders Myanmar.

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The confrontation between the United States and Iran seems to grow more bitter every day. Last week, Iran defied a United Nations deadline to stop enriching uranium, which the U.S. claims is part of an Iranian program to build nuclear weapons. The U.S. also accuses Iran of supplying sophisticated bombs to kill American soldiers in Iraq. A second U.S. carrier battle group arrived in the region last week, but Defense Secretary Robert Gates insists that "we have no intention of attacking Iran." Uni...

1. Iran is a major exporter of crude oil, but it has to import gasoline because of its limited refinery capability. This shortcoming would make Iran particularly vulnerable to any blockade.

2. The CIA helped overthrow Iran's democratically elected government and installed a dictator in 1953. The joint U.S.-British covert action known as Operation Ajax turned Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh into a political prisoner and led to decades of repression, torture and assassination under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

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Fifteen police officers were killed Saturday when suspected rebels ambushed their patrol in India's remote northeast, officials said.

Sixty armed police officers who had been supervising elections in Bishenpur district were traveling in six vehicles back to their headquarters when rebels fired on them with automatic weapons, said local Police Chief Jayanta Singh.

A fierce gun battle ensued, Singh said, adding that the rebels then fled into a nearby dense forest. Fourteen policemen died at the scene and another officer died later at a hospital. "The death toll may rise as seven others are critically wounded," Singh said.

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Fair Oaks Toastmasters. 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Sundays, Fair Oaks Apartments, Media Room, 655 S. Fair Oaks Ave., Sunnyvale. Free. (408) 806-7624.

Monday, Feb. 26

Switch-On Toastmasters. 7 p.m. Mondays, Carrows Restaurant, banquet room, 910 Saratoga Ave., San Jose. (408) 253-3671, www.geocities.com/ switchon_toastmasters/ index.html

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Bill Steigerwald (Columnist WNJ, Dec. 22, 2006) is all wet; he is getting wet from melting glaciers and polar ice caps. Melting ice suggests global warming to me. I'm astounded Steigerwald avoids the scientific data and terms global warming as "scientific silliness."

Maybe he does not read scientific data or believe satellite photos that document thawing glaciers around the world and thawing ice caps at both poles.

The video "An Inconvenient Truth, A Global Warning" is certainly sobering and almost frightening. Former Vice-President Al Gore presents an eye-opening and compelling view of the future of the planet - and our civilization. Roger Friedman of Fox News states, "It doesn't matter whether you're a Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, your mind will be changed in a nanosecond" by the scientific facts presented.

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If you think the virtual classroom is a cold, faceless environment made up of things that look like they belong in "The Matrix," think again. There are real professors and students behind the technology, and they are working together to create a fun, enriching learning experience. Don't believe us? See what these four online professors have to say about the myths and misconceptions sometimes associated with online learning.

Teaching in Cyberspace

Keeping the class together when it's on an asynchronous schedule - meaning there's no set class time - is not an easy task for professors. They work just as hard as their students do. Because they are not in a live classroom setting with a set schedule, professors must constantly check and respond to students' e-mails and class discussion boards, post announcements, grade papers and move the class forward. In short, maintaining a classroom atmosphere 24/7 is an important part of the job.

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It gave no further details and a Goldman spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment.

Other global firms like the American International Group and JPMorgan are starting to do asset management business in India, where the mutual fund sector is growing fast.

The assets of the Indian mutual fund industry stood at 3.4 trillion rupees ($77.15 billion) at the end of January, up 62 percent from a year earlier, according to the Association of Mutual Funds in India, a lobby group.

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It seems to me that our language is getting more and more jumbled up by the all the alphabet soup we encounter every day. This kinda came home recently when we were watching a crime show where one of the characters said that he had "bolo'd" a suspect. I couldn't figure out why he would put a "bolo", a type of Western string tie which uses a sliding clasp, on the culprit. Then again he surely wouldn't use a "bolo", a large knife similar to a machete, or the South American throwing rope device whi...

An acronym, according to the purists on the subject, is a pronounceable word formed from each of the first letters of a series of words that describe an object, process, system, or organization. I don't think this is followed very carefully because additional letters from within a word are sometimes used and some words may be omitted. Radar, for example, is an acronym for "RAdio Detection And Ranging" and sonar comes from SOund Navigation And Ranging. We have gotten so used to some acronyms that...

According to the folks who catalogue them, acronyms can often have more than one meaning. "Laser" comes from Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation, but can also mean Lots of Applied Scientists Eat Regularly. Then, too, one might well find CRAP (Cheap Redundant Assorted Products) in a CRAP (Central Receiving And Processing) facility. (These are actual acronyms.)

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PARIS -- The discovery of the obvious is not a convincing casus belli, and the recent presentation in Baghdad of munitions of Iranian origin found in Iraq, merited comparison with Claude Rains' declaration that he was "shocked, shocked!" when told that gambling took place in Humphrey Bogart's Casablanca saloon.

Some critics of the George W. Bush administration, some specialists in Iranian arms, and some reporters have been skeptical about the Baghdad presentation, but I would think it perfectly reasonable for Iran to supply weapons to the Shia militias and insurgents in Iraq.

The United States has been trying to overthrow Iran's Islamist government since 1979. It has successfully organized U.N. Security Council sanctions against the country for its nuclear activities, and sponsors opponents of the regime, anti-regime propaganda and political warfare activities. American agents allegedly have been inside Iran promoting resistance among the Kurdish and Turkic-speaking minorities.

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    Trade Paperback Fiction

  Last Week/

Weeks on List

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We may never know why Britney Spears shaved her head.But she's hardly the first female celebrity to go hair-free. The difference: Most of those women lost their locks for their art.Historically, shaved heads have had practical purposes. In ancient Egypt men and women shaved their heads and wore wigs to protect against lice, among other things.

Forcing a woman to shave her head also has been used as a means of control and humiliation: Thousands of women lost their hair in Nazi concentration camps.These days, a shaved head is often a sign that a person is undergoing chemotherapy or is making a some kind of political or militant statement, said David Shmagin, stylist and manager of Robert Kree salon in New York, where clients include Drew Barrymore and Sarah Jessica Parker."It's a strength thing and to show they don't have to care about...

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Helen Akhondi, Elizabeth Baldoni, Austin Baumann, Avery Baumann, Efrain Bello, Paul Bobersky, Cynthia Brunson, Alannah Caisey, Brittany Comstock, Cassandra Cooley, Mary Cosgrove, Cassandra Curtis, Nicole Davies, Justin Davis, Kaitlyn Decker, Taylor Decker, Michael Deemer, Allison DeStefano, Krista Dietrich, Lauren Dougher, Mary Dunford, Emily Enkulenko, Daniel Esposito, Sarah Filipski, Edward Foley, Brianna Freeman, Psalm Fuentebella, Courtney,Gallagher, Jennifer Gerrity, Robert Gilroy, William ...

Sasha Aronzen, Markis Blackwell, Cayla Boezi, Mary Burke, Samantha Burke, Najla Burrus, Corey Calpin, Nicole Chekan, Lorena Danun, Jamie Doyle, Chad Engleman, Amanda Friday, Rachael Friedman, Violette Fuller, Laura Garcia, Mark Granahan, Tamara Green, Matthew Harte, Patrick Hein, Charles Hendricks, Max Hildebrand, Edward Hoban, Molly Homesombeth, Eva Hopkins, Marissa Howe, Jackleyn Huanire, Joseph Kelleher, Aurora Kelly, Quinn Kelly, Franky Kerekes, Julia King, Breanna Kohut, Lindsay Lapresti, M...

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Starbucks founder Howard Schultz is telling executives at the world's biggest coffee chain that the company's expansion to 13,000 stores is "watering down" its brand.

Decisions to streamline store design, for example, may be more efficient and financially responsible, Schultz wrote in a memo Feb. 14 to Chief Executive Officer Jim Donald and other executives.

"However, one of the results has been stores that no longer have the soul of the past and reflect a chain of stores vs. the warm feeling of a neighborhood store," Schultz wrote. "Some people even call our stores sterile, cookie cutter, no longer reflecting the passion our partners feel about coffee."

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The Dow Jones Stoxx 600 index rose 0.2 percent. The Stoxx 50 gained 0.3 percent, and the Euro Stoxx 50, a measure for the nations sharing the euro, added 0.1 percent. National benchmarks rose in 13 of 18 Western European markets.

In Asia, the Morgan Stanley Capital International Asia-Pacific index rose 0.4 percent, reaching a record high for a second day. Japan's Nikkei 225 index added 0.4 percent. The Hang Seng index retreated 0.5 percent.

"There's still room for the price of oil to move higher," said Tomokatsu Mori at Fukoku Capital Management Inc. in Tokyo. "There's no need to worry about any negative factors causing a slump in commodity markets."

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BERKELEY - The new "Europe of Knowledge" could include a big chunk of UC Berkeley.

Professors on the Berkeley campus have received a surprising number of job offers from European institutions in recent months, the latest volley in the battle to keep top faculty members in the East Bay.

Berkeley professors have long entertained offers from the Harvards and Stanfords, but the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschules are the new players.

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LAHORE, Pakistan - The five small caskets were lined up head to foot at the border, each topped with a white wreath and scattered yellow flowers and holding the remains of a child killed in last week's train bombing in India.

The father of the five, Shaukat Ali, was only able to rescue his wife and their youngest - a toddler. The couple returned Saturday with the remains of the others, ages 6 to 15, for a funeral attended by thousands.

"My heart has broken. Only I know how I faced this tragedy," said Ali, 40, after arriving in the border village of Wagha, on the outskirts of Pakistan's eastern city of Lahore.

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GAUHATI, India - Fifteen police officers were killed Saturday after suspected rebels ambushed their patrol in India's remote northeast, officials said.

The policemen were returning from election duty in the district of Bishenpur in Manipur state when they were ambushed, said local police chief Jayanta Singh.

A convoy of 60 armed policemen in six vehicles was returning to the district headquarters in Bishenpur town after supervising the last phase of elections to Manipur's state legislature when rebels armed with automatic weapons fired on them, Singh said.

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Fourteen police killed in militant attack in India

2007-02-24

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NEW DELHI - Pakistan must clamp down on Islamic militants and keep them from attacking India if peace efforts between the nuclear-armed rivals are to succeed, India's president said Friday, days after the bombing of a train linking the countries killed 68 people.

Since the attack Sunday night on the Samjhauta Express in northern India, officials on both sides have shied away from the usual fingerpointing that follows such attacks.

But the comments by President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, made in a speech opening the budget session of Parliament, were the latest in a series of statements from Indian officials suggesting they believe the culprits to be militant groups based in Pakistan.

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