The Morning News

While Bollywood films often borrow liberally from Western movies, producers of “Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors” say their movie bears no resemblance to any film in the “Harry Potter” series.

“There is absolutely nothing to link ‘Hari Puttar’ with ‘Harry Potter,'” said Munish Purii, chief executive officer of Mumbai-based producer Mirchi Movies. Hari is a common name in India and “puttar” is Punabji for son, he said.

The 1.52 million students who took the test is a slight increase from last year but a jump of nearly 30 percent over the past decade. Minority students accounted for 40 percent of test-takers, and 36 percent were the first in their families to attend college. Nearly one in seven had a low enough family income to take the test for free.

“More than ever, the SAT reflects the face of education in this country,” said Gaston Caperton, president of the College Board, which owns the test and released the results Tuesday.

“Like everything else in life, there are times that you have to make an adjustment,” baseball commissioner Bud Selig said following Tuesday’s announcement. “My opposition to unlimited instant replay is still very much in play. I really think that the game has prospered for well over a century now doing things the way we did it.”

The 74-year-old Selig, who described himself as “old fashioned” and an admirer of baseball’s “human element,” softened his opposition following a rash of blown calls this year.

“We’re absolutely confident there is no credible threat to the candidate, the Democratic National Convention (in Denver), or the people of Colorado,” U.S. Attorney Troy Eid said in a statement.

ABC News quoted federal law enforcement officials saying the men, one of whom is alleged to have strong ties to a white supremacist gang, had admitted to a “crude” plan to use a rifle to kill Obama. Local media had reported the incident on Monday.

The bombing took place in the town of Jalawla in the north of volatile Diyala province, just a day after Kurdish Peshmerga security forces withdrew from the town at the request of the central government in Baghdad.

The attack, which also wounded 45 people, was the biggest for weeks in Iraq, where overall levels of violence have dropped sharply in the last year. It came amid Iraqi efforts to conclude a security deal with the United States that would require U.S. forces to leave Iraq by the end of 2011.

Flanked by two Russian flags, President Dmitry Medvedev announced he had signed decrees recognising the independence of the two regions at the heart of the conflict that erupted this month in Georgia.

“This is not an easy choice, but it is the only way to save the lives of people,” Medvedev said in a nationally-televised address.

Robert Maglakelidze took a taxi willing to drive him to Tbilisi and hurriedly bundled the prized belongings of Josef Vissarionovich Stalin into the car.

“I was scared for the museum. On August 11, I took Stalin’s personal effects in a taxi to the state museum in Tbilisi for safe keeping. I called the taxi and paid for it myself,” he told AFP.

Deputy police spokesman Major General Surapol Tuanthong said a few officers and protesters sustained minor injuries in scuffles as police tried to break through the gates of Government House, but pledged there would be no violence.

“Police have surrounded Government House and have taken up their positions. They are not going to disperse the crowd — we are trying to negotiate,” Surapol told AFP.

The European Commission wants all carmakers to reduce average emissions to 120 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre (0.6 miles) by 2012.

Under EU plans, they will be expected to make engines that emit no more than 130 grams while 10 grammes per kilometre are intended to be eliminated mainly through the use of cleaner fuels.

Highlighting key issues in the race for the presidency, an annual report by the Census Bureau showed that some 37.3 million Americans lived in poverty in the United States in 2007, an increase from the 36.5 million people in 2006.

While the numbers of poor people rose, numbers without health insurance paradoxically fell to 45.7 million people in 2007 from 47 million in 2006, the “Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage Report” showed.

The Commerce Department reported that sales of new one-family homes stood at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 515,000 units, while the consensus analyst forecast was 525,000.

On a 12-month basis, the pace of new home sales was 35.3 percent below the July 2007 level.

Construction has begun on a new facility for as many as 1,100 detainees to be run by Americans at a US airbase at Bagram 50 miles north of the capital of Kabul.

Although the facility will be built on a far smaller scale than the main facility in southern Iraq, Pentagon officials hope that the new center will address widespread concern among human rights groups and independent experts over alleged secret detentions and prisoner mistreatment at Bagram.

In the next few weeks, the West will be closely reading Russia’s actions and intentions in the Caucasus, including energy-rich Azerbaijan – and will start to shape a long-term response to what many see as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s bid to change the post-cold-war world, and potentially dominate former Soviet states.

But Moscow should be careful what it asks for. It just might find real downsides to its pursuit of greatness, including deeper isolation from the very world Russia feels has ignored it since the Soviet empire collapsed, say Western diplomats and foreign policy specialists.

It’s a scene replicated in nearly every town in South Africa, where rugby – a sport akin to football but without pads, forward passes, or TV time-outs – holds the same revered space as cricket holds in India and football in Texas. In nearly every town, that is, except for the black townships such as Diepsloot, where rugby is seen as a “white sport.”

“I’m doing this because I’m tired of hearing that rugby is a white sport,” says Bafana Thawuzeni, a Johannesburg fitness trainer and volunteer coach in Diepsloot. “Our country became free 14 years ago, so we should be equal. I’m doing this so that these kids have some exposure to all the sports in their country, not just the ones that blacks are supposed to be good at, like soccer.”

The House Judiciary Committee wants to force White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers to testify about the firing of federal prosecutors and the politicization of the Justice Department.

The White House contends that top aides are immune from such subpoenas.

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) human rights team was sent to the western province of Herat after local claims that scores of civilians were killed in Friday’s strikes.

“Investigations by UNAMA found convincing evidence, based on the testimony of eyewitnesses and others, that some 90 civilians were killed, including 60 children, 15 women and 15 men,” special representative Kai Eide said.

If this doesn’t sound like a good idea, it’s time to become informed about federal health privacy law.

Today, when Americans visit a healthcare provider for services (including dental and eye exams), they receive a form with a title such as “Notification of Privacy Rights.” Many assume that signing the form guarantees that personal information won’t be shared with third parties. But the form offers no such guarantees. And neither does federal law.

One worker caught in Monday’s sweep at the Howard Industries transformer plant said fellow workers applauded as immigrants were taken into custody. Federal officials said a tip from a union member prompted them to start investigating several years ago.

Fabiola Pena, 21, cradled her 2-year-old daughter as she described a chaotic scene at the plant as the raid began, followed by clapping.

Short in stature, the Ohio congressman leaped up onto his tip toes time and again, thrusting his arms out and up, getting the crowd to roar so loudly he had to yell into the microphone to be heard.

It will become known as the “Wake Up, America” speech.

The findings by a team of scientists at British and US universities challenge the assumption that the ancestors of people living today drove Neanderthals into extinction by producing better tools.

The research could lead to a fresh search for explanations about why Neanderthals vanished from Europe around 28,000 years ago, after living alongside modern humans for some 10,000 years.

The rare show of defiance – broadcast live on national television – set the stage for a combative legislature, even as Mugabe and his political foes try to negotiate a power sharing arrangement after disputed elections.

Mugabe’s speech could sometimes not be heard over the jeers of his opponents, who clapped and sang songs deriding him and the ZANU-PF. “ZANU is rotten. You are great liars,” they sang.

“I give you a 100 percent guarantee we will return,” vowed Yermile Kheladze, a Georgian from the Black Sea region of Abkhazia.

But like others questioned in street interviews in the capital, he was at a loss to say how Georgia would win back territories that have cemented their secession and emerged as Russian protectorates from this month’s short war between the two countries.

The poverty-fighting institution said there were 1.4 billion people — a quarter of the developing world — living in extreme poverty on less than $1.25 a day in 2005 in the world’s 10 to 20 poorest countries. Last year, the World Bank said there were 1 billion people living under the previous $1 a day poverty mark.

The new figures are likely to put fresh pressure on big donor countries to move more aggressively to combat global poverty, and on countries to introduce more-effective policies to help lift the poorest.

In the largely autonomous territory, streets are swept clean and people walk without fear — a stark contrast to the concrete walls and barbed wire that have defined life for most Iraqis in more than five years of war.

Still, about 60 Kurdish journalists were killed, threatened, attacked, or taken to court in the first half of 2008, says the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

The resignation of the unpopular Pervez Musharraf as president last week raised hopes the coalition, led by the party of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, would focus on mounting militant violence and a sagging economy.

But a week after Musharraf stepped down, the alliance’s second biggest party, led by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, pulled out, complaining Bhutto’s party had reneged on promises to resolve a judicial dispute and on a replacement for Musharraf as president.

Authorities said they had detained four separatist leaders since Monday. They raided the homes of dozens of leaders in a sweep that began on Monday night.

Asiya Andrabi, chief of Kashmir’s women’s separatist group Dukhtaran-e-Milat (Daughters of the Muslim Faith) who led series of anti-India protests over the last two weeks was detained late on Tuesday, police said.

Besides the female mummy, the tomb contained the remains of two other adults and a child. It is the first intact Wari burial site discovered at Huaca Pucllana in the capital Lima, and researchers believe it dates from about 700 AD.

“We’d discovered other tombs before,” said Isabel Flores, director of the ruins. “But they always had holes, or were damaged. Never had we found a whole tomb like this one — intact,” she said, standing on the ancient plaza, a huge partially excavated mound of rocks, bricks and dirt.

Police moved into the impoverished and volatile Kalma in South Darfur on Monday. Casualty figures from subsequent clashes are impossible to verify, but residents have asked UN troops for burial shrouds and protection for funerals.

“It seems last night there was a build-up of security forces around the camp,” one UN official told AFP.

The assault comes as Pakistani security forces are battling Taliban militants in two areas that border Peshawar – the Bajaur tribal area and the valley of Swat. The extremists have vowed revenge, carrying out two suicide bomb attacks last week, although there was no claim of responsibility for the attempt on Tracy.

Tracy was attacked in her armor-plated vehicle just after she was driven out of her home in the university town residential district of Peshawar , the capital of the insurgency-plagued North West Frontier Province.

A German prosecutor is investigating Werner Wenning , Bayer’s chairman, and Friedrich Berschauer , the head of Bayer CropScience , after critics alleged that they knowingly polluted the environment.

The investigation was triggered by an Aug. 13 complaint filed by German beekeepers and consumer protection advocates, a Coalition against Bayer Dangers spokesman, Philipp Mimkes, said Monday.

One warned that her apartment building could be shut down because of unrepaired storm damage. There were legal notices and forms. What did they all mean? At age 51, Williams was embarrassed she could not read much more than her own name and address.

Three years after Katrina, residents of New Orleans are still buried in a blizzard of government paperwork. But for thousands of storm victims seeking federal aid, the challenge is made more difficult by a little-known obstacle: More than 40 percent of the city’s adults lack the literacy skills to comprehend basic government forms. And recovery programs have done little to ease the burden.

News of the award, which fell far short of the more than $2 billion in punitive damages that Mattel had asked the jury to award, sent the toy maker’s shares down 3.7 percent in after-hours trade.

The issue of whether MGA can continue to sell its flagship product will be decided at a later hearing by U.S. District Judge Stephen Larson, who presided over the three-month trial.

The Rosenbergs were convicted in 1951 of passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union and executed in 1953. Rosenberg supporters describe the case as a frame-up amid anti-communist McCarthyism hysteria and Cold War fear.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein allows the release of secret testimony from some key prosecution witnesses and offers historians an almost complete record of the secret testimony, lawyer David Vladeck said.

At the Magic Marketplace apparel trade show in Las Vegas, the largest such convention in the United States, apparel vendors and the retailers that sell their styles agreed that placing orders in August for spring is the exception, rather than the rule, in a sharp change from recent years.

The reason is insecurity over inventory levels in a difficult U.S. retail environment, where shoppers have curtailed spending on items such as apparel and footwear amid other more pressing concerns, such as higher gasoline and food prices.

The report by the Health and Human Services inspector general’s office said Medicare had matched purchases only with limited medical records from suppliers and not with orders from doctors.

Medicare had concluded it made about $700 million in improper payments in 2006 for equipment such as wheelchairs, oxygen and surgical supplies. It assumed that 7.5 percent of the claims were incorrect.

The $86 billion reduction in health costs, based on 2004 dollars, represents about a 50-fold return on the $1.8 billion California spent on the program, they said.

“The benefits of the program accrued very quickly and are very large,” Stanton Glantz, director of the University of California San Francisco Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, said in a statement.

The telecommunications giant is virtually everywhere, wining and dining delegates and members of Congress with a relentless schedule of luncheons and evening parties.

AT&T has the most high-profile corporate presence in Denver. It is a major sponsor at the convention, it is holding daily lunches for state delegations at the Pinnacle Club, with its startling views of the Rocky Mountain range, and is co-hosting other receptions as well.

On Monday, AT&T threw an exclusive party for the Blue Dogs, the House’s moderate and conservative Democrats, at the historic Mile High Station in downtown Denver. Among the guests was House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., who in June led Blue Dogs in crafting a compromise bill that shielded telecommunications companies from lawsuits arising from the government’s terrorism-era warrantless eavesdropping.

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The party of President George W. Bush and his would-be successor, Arizona Sen. John McCain, has sent a slew of its leading stars to crash Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama’s party in the electoral battleground state of Colorado.

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The former Massachusetts governor, who dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination and is said to be on McCain’s short list for a vice presidential running mate in the November 4 election, came to Denver for lunch with reporters and a splashy news conference to hammer home a message that Obama is not ready to lead.

“In my own life, in my own small way, I have tried to give back to this country that has given me so much,” she said. “See, that’s why I left a job at a big law firm for a career in public service, working to empower young people to volunteer in their communities.”

Why that’s wrong: She omitted the fact that she later went on to a high paying job at the University of Chicago Medical Center , where she worked in community and external affairs. In March 2005 , she was promoted to vice president for community and external affairs, and her salary jumped from $121,910 to $316,962 , which included a one-time bonus. In 2006, her salary was $273,618 , according to the Chicago Tribune .

On Tuesday, though, the automaker took two steps toward further cranking up Focus production, announcing that it would sink $75 million into the body-making part of an SUV factory next door to the Wayne Assembly Plant, where the Focus is built.

If demand stays strong, the SUV plant will quickly start producing Focus bodies, eliminating what is now a bottleneck that is slowing production.

Costs for key ingredients like corn and soybean meal were up more than 33 percent in the quarter and the price it took to raise hogs soared 25 percent. The hog production sector lost $38.8 million – down from a profit of $93 million a year ago – on the higher costs.

Overall, Smithfield said Tuesday, it lost $12.6 million, or 9 cents per share, in the period, down from a profit of $54.6 million, or 41 cents per share, a year earlier. The company said the loss was due in part to a $20.1 million write-down in the value of commodity contracts, which hurt earnings by 15 cents a share.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. data released Tuesday show 117 banks and thrifts were considered to be in trouble in the second quarter, up from 90 in the prior quarter and the biggest tally since mid-2003.

The FDIC also said that federally-insured banks and savings institutions earned $5 billion in the April-June period, down from $36.8 billion a year earlier. The roughly 8,500 banks and thrifts also set aside a record $50.2 billion to cover losses from soured mortgages and other loans in the second quarter.

Citigroup will make refunds to the 53,000 customers affected, and pay $3.5 million in damages and civil penalties to the state of California, which had been investigating the questionable practices for three years, the attorney general said.

The bank will also pay 10 percent interest to California customers, who accounted for $1.6 million of the money “swept” out of accounts and into a Citi fund between 1992 and 2003.

Estimated second-half losses of more than $1 billion each would likely leave the two with excess capital over minimums of $20.3 billion for Fannie Mae and $12.7 billion for Freddie Mac, Citigroup analyst Bradley Ball said on a conference call on Tuesday.

“Our analysis suggests they have breathing room, and where they probably need to raise additional capital at some point, there is no urgency to do so,” said Ball. He recommended buying shares despite “challenges.”

At their latest policy meeting on August 5, members of the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee agreed that softening labor markets, high energy prices and a continuing housing contraction would weigh on future growth, leaving U.S. economic activity “damped” for several quarters.

“In addition, members saw continuing downside risks to this outlook, particularly reflecting possible further deterioration in financial conditions,” the Fed said in minutes of the meeting released on Tuesday.

The economy contracted 0.5 percent in the three months to June and economists, in light of the latest poor data, now question whether it could tip into recession, defined as two straight quarters of falling output.

A monthly business climate index calculated by the economic research institute Ifo fell from 97.5 points in July to 94.8 points this month, its lowest level since August 2005.